Dharma
I was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2026 after sixteen years of practice. This page gathers everything on the site about that life.
Sīlavāpi is the name I was given at ordination. It is rooted in sīla - ethical practice - which feels right: for me the dharma has never been separate from work, community, or how a piece of software treats the people who use it.
Away from the cushion I'm a trustee of Breathworks, a charity teaching mindfulness-based approaches to living with pain and illness - work that sits very close to my own experience of living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
I didn't come to the dharma to escape a hard life. I came to learn how to meet it.
Writing
Preparing to thrive on the three-month ordination retreat at Akashavana - fitness, medical planning, kit and coping with the mountain weather - from someone who once was not sure her body could manage it.
Sitting in complete stillness with more than 620 Order members at Wymondham, and what I worked out about how to survive, and enjoy, a first convention.
Over the last three months I’ve attended an 11‑week residential ordination retreat up in the mountains of Aragón in southern Spain. During this retreat I was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order and given the name Sīlavāpi by my preceptor, Acalavajrī…
