Ten days weighted towards sitting rather than travelling. Six of them in silence, inside the monastic timetable, eating nothing solid after midday.
Prices are not published yet — every journey is quoted for your dates and group size.
Sri Lanka has maintained an unbroken forest-monastery tradition — the āraññavāsī or forest-dwelling lineage — for more than two thousand years, from the Pansukūlika ascetics of Ritigala down to the present. It is the reason serious practitioners come here rather than somewhere with better beaches.
So: you take the eight precepts on the first evening. You wear white. You rise at half past four. You eat the morning meal after the Saṅgha has eaten and the midday meal before noon, and after that nothing solid until the next morning. You keep noble silence for six days, which means no talking, no reading, no writing and no phone — including to each other. You sit for between five and seven hours a day, broken by walking meditation, and you see the teacher once a day for a short interview.
People find days three and four difficult. That is normal and it is not a sign that anything has gone wrong. There is always a way out — you can break silence and speak to us at any time, and nobody will make you feel you have failed.
The host monastery and the teacher are not named on this page because the arrangement is confirmed per retreat, and we will not print a monk's name as a marketing asset. You will be told exactly where you are going and who is teaching before you commit to anything.
Met at the airport and driven to the monastery. You are shown your kuṭi — a single plain room — and given white cloth if you need it. In the evening you take the eight precepts formally, with the chanting, and the timetable begins. You may still talk today.
The first full day inside the timetable: waking bell at 04:30, morning chanting and Buddha pūjā at 05:00, then sitting. Instruction in ānāpānasati — mindfulness of breathing — as samatha practice, with clear, unmystical guidance on posture, on what to do with pain in the knees, and on what to do when nothing happens. Walking meditation on a cleared forest path in the late afternoon. Silence begins after the evening pūjā.
Two days of the same shape, deliberately. Sitting, walking, the two meals, the afternoon Dhamma talk, the evening pūjā with lamps and flowers. A daily interview with the teacher — five or ten minutes, the only speaking you do. This is where most people meet real restlessness, and where the practice actually starts.
A day out, still in silence, to Ritigala: a mountain ridge rising six hundred metres out of flat scrub, where the rag-robe ascetics built long straight stone meditation walkways, double-platform cells and rock-cut ponds. Almost nobody goes there. You walk the walkways rather than photograph them.
The practice turns from settling the mind to looking at what it is made of: instruction in vipassanā — the direct observation of arising and passing in the body and mind, of the three characteristics of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self. Sitting periods lengthen. Interviews continue daily. Silence unbroken.
Silence is released after the morning meal, and the group talks for the first time in six days, which is always strange and usually funny. You offer dāna to the community that has hosted you — buying and preparing the food yourselves — and receive the anumodanā chanting. Long question-and-answer session with the teacher in the afternoon, about taking any of this home.
A gentle re-entry rather than a straight run to the airport: the five painted caves at Dambulla, twenty-two centuries of continuous monastic use, and then the drive south. Most people find they want a quiet day rather than a busy one, and this is it.
Notation lifts to the photograph. Every image here is a real, freely-licensed photograph of the actual site.
Tell us about your practice so far — how long you have been sitting, what you have been taught, and what you are hoping this will do. We will tell you straight whether ten days of silence is the right thing for you now.
