Welcoming K-Tso Peters, Assistant Director and Jayasiddhi Jameson, Head of Facilities
In conversation with Trinkar Ötso, Director
Trinkar
Both of you have a long history with Gampo Abbey. Can you tell us what your first contact was with Gampo Abbey?
Jayasiddhi
I first came to Gampo Abbey in the winter of 2007, and when I arrived here the bay was frozen. Deep snow, frozen water. It was like something out of some North Pole disaster movie. I was really shocked and taken aback by it, it was fantastic. Wow, what a place to live. I was here for a six month residency at that time.
Trinkar
Were you already in robes then?
Jayasiddhi
I was a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, and I was wearing my blue robes that we had at that time and my kesa around my neck, like the Zen style kesa. I didn’t wear robes outside the Abbey, but I wore robes here. I remember Kalsang having his Parma Rabjung ordination during that visit. Ani Nyingje, I think was a Parma Rabjung at the time as well. Jinpa was head monk. Ani Migme was above the library in her room up there.
Trinkar
And that was the first of several subsequent visits?
Jayasiddhi
Yes, I came back again in 2009 for another six months. Then I came for two one-year residencies after that. And a short holiday. I came here for a couple of weeks as well, just for a visit somewhere in between.
Trinkar
Your last residency started in 2018 if I remember correctly. And you both left here in the summer of 2019.
K-Tso
Well, I left for a month in summer 2019 and then I came back for six months as a layperson, just supporting the community.
Trinkar
K-Tso, you and I arrived at the Abbey at the same time, in 2017. What originally inspired you to come here?
K-Tso:
My first arm’s length connection with the Abbey was in 2008 when I came up here without knowing the Abbey was even here and stayed at an off-grid cabin for a month just a few doors down from the Abbey. It rained the whole time. And that was the first time I saw a few monastics roaming around, but I made lots of assumptions about that. They were all in silence all the time. I didn’t know anything about Buddhism at that time, but I was quite an active meditator. It was when I was doing my initial training as an energy healer. That was my first connection physically in my body here, in this part of Cape Breton, but my family is from Cape Breton.
My great great grandfather immigrated to Cape Breton in 1841, I think that makes me fourth generation. And they landed first at Crowis Mountain. And were there for a little while and then were in Middle River and then ultimately made their way to Boularderie Island on the south side where my mom was born. And my grandmother lived there until right shortly before her passing. My connection with the land and the place is ancestral.
In 2016 I took refuge at the Toronto Shambhala Center with Gaylon Ferguson. Before that I had become quite active in the Toronto Shambhala Center, finding Buddhism. Oh gosh, how did I miss Buddhism? I was involved in a lot of spiritual practices and circled around Buddhism for quite a long time before I actually made a strong, more formal connection by taking refuge. Then I did a three-month program at Karme Chöling called the Mukpo Institute, which was really great living there, doing a lot of study, and being involved with the community. I loved it.
I knew I wanted a kind of full immersion living in community full time and devoting my life to practice and service. In an interview with Irini Rockwell, she vaguely suggested, well, why not try Gampo Abbey? Initially, I was not really interested in that. I never aspired or had any interest in monasticism, to be honest, but I really wanted a longer, deep retreat and practice community. In the end, I basically called up; it looked like it was close by and there was one spot remaining for a monastic residency starting in just a few months, in January 2017.
I quickly dissolved most of my life in Toronto and got someone to take over my apartment, and transplanted my whole life up for the nine months. I have to say it suited me so well that I ended up staying for three years, and here I am again back. I feel a really strong connection with this place. For me, it’s been really vital in my path as a Buddhist, and in my sense of self in many ways.
Jayasiddhi
I’d been practicing in the Buddhist tradition since ’97. I’d been ordained in the Triratna Buddhist Order since 2005, and during that period I’d had a really strong interest in monasticism. But Triratna Buddhist Order doesn’t have a monastic sangha as such. It does have some people that take extra vows and they become Anagarikas, which is like Parma Rabjung I guess. But there aren’t any institutions where those people come together and practice any monastic forms. For them, it’s about renunciation and celibacy living outside of mainstream society to concentrate on practice. But there aren’t the monastic forms or institutions that you find in say, Zen or Tibetan Buddhism. I was interested in what I could learn to bring back into my tradition.
And I had a good friend called Max Bals who’d been here a year or two earlier, he had been an attendant to Ani Migme. He was a member of Triratna. And I was in good contact with him, and I asked him about Gampo Abbey, and he said, oh yeah, that would be the place to go to experiment with monasticism. I contacted the Abbey and had a few conversations with Les (Ste. Marie), who was the director back then, and decided, yeah, let’s come and give it a go. So I came for a six-month tentative taster, and then I knew I had to leave because I was going on a pilgrimage to India at the end of that. At the end of those six months, I wasn’t sure whether monasticism was for me or not, so I came back in 2009 to have another crack at it.
At the end of 2009, I thought, well, that’s probably it. I think I may be done with monasticism now. But of course that was not quite true, was it? I ended up coming back another two times. And taking vows here as well, which I took back to Wales when I returned to The Hermitage of The Awakened Heart.
I came here in 2015 because I really wanted to study the Buddha Nature teachings in the Lion Year because it’s very much what Lama Shenpen, my teacher, emphasizes. I came here to do that. I wasn’t particularly interested in monasticism at that point. But then having been in robes for a few months, I thought, wow, this feels fantastic. This feels much easier than it ever has done before. Maybe I could be a life monastic. I asked Lama Shenpen what she thought, and she said, well, take a temporary ordination, and we’ll see how it goes. We don’t have monastics in the Awakened Heart Sangha, so it would be a new thing. I said, “Okay, how about five years?” And she said, “How about three?” So we went for three, which worked out well. I left here at the end of that year, having taken my Brahmacharya precepts with Ani Migme at Fall River at the first Karma Changchub Ling house (KCCL). Then I was in robes back in Wales, our retreat center there for two years. At the end of that I thought, well, I’m going to hand back my vows. Where would be a good place to do that? I thought I’d like to come back and finish the adventure where it started back in 2007. I came back to return my vows and that’s when I met K-Tso.
Trinkar
And tell us that story.
Jayasiddhi
I really wasn’t sure about K-Tso.
K-Tso
We didn’t like each other.
Jayasiddhi
I thought she was a bit too formal, a bit tight, a bit bossy. Which was later proved right.
K-Tso
My family confirms this.
Jayasiddhi (to K-Tso)
And you were interested in Lama Shenpen weren’t you?
K-Tso
Well, that’s not how we got chatting. I was interested in knowing how The Hermitage of the Awakened Heart was run. I was curious: oh, are there things we can learn from another perspective? We had a lunch meeting here in the library, at this very table. And I was asking you questions about how it worked there, and we got talking about Lama Shenpen, and then you sent me some recordings of her giving an introduction to the formless practice in that sangha. And it was so helpful. I listened to that recording so many times. And eventually, I had an interview with her, and that was really great.
Jayasiddhi
That’s how we became friends.
K-Tso
I saw you as such a serious practitioner.
Jayasiddhi
So we wondered what it would be like to have a relationship.
K-Tso
I mean, I think that was the thing that was most key to me, I wondered how can the Dharma be the main focus of your relationship, how do you orient your whole life around that?
Trinkar
And how was your life together in Wales? You arrived there as a couple when you went back. But Jayasiddhi, you had lived in The Hermitage of The Awakened Heart for quite a few years by then.
Jayasiddhi
Then I was here for a year. Then, after I left here, I went back and got a job in a residential school for children with learning disabilities. And we lived in a little damp flat, didn’t we, in a town called Dolgellau just as Covid began. K-Tso arrived just in time for the first lockdown, which is a bit challenging for you, K-Tso, wasn’t it? Being stuck in a strange country.
K-Tso
Well, I got to do two retreats with Lama Shenpen when I first got there. And then lockdown hit. And we lived about an hour away from The Hermitage of The Awakened Heart. And we were trying to be as close as possible so I could do volunteer work while I was waiting for my visa to come through. From my experience being here at the Abbey and being part of a community here, I knew that I wanted a strong community. That was really important to me to have that sangha connection, making such a big move.
Jayasiddhi
You got stuck in rural Wales, unable to go to The Hermitage of The Awakened Heart, the place that we travelled all the way back from Canada to be near. So we sat an hour away for the best part of a year, waiting for the situation to ripen, and then we were able to go and work there.
K-Tso
Well, we started volunteering. They have a six month volunteer program, and so that’s what we started doing. And then they asked us to stay on and work.
Trinkar
And what were your roles there?
Jayasiddhi
I was The Hermitage manager, responsible for general management of the retreat center and repairs and maintenance, administration.
K-Tso
And I was Lama Shenpen’s attendant. Not out of the gate, but pretty soon after. And we supported the day-to-day operations of keeping it all ticking over and opening the shrines.
Trinkar
And how many buildings did you have?
Jayasiddhi
Well, we had the main house, which contained the shrine room and Lama Shenpen’s accommodation, which is a big stone, traditional Welsh farmhouse. We had two converted animal blocks, stables and a cow shed with two other buildings. And we had two wooden cabins and what would you call it, a mobile home or a trailer. We built a solitary retreat during that time.
K-Tso
And the shed, of course.
Jayasiddhi
yes, the shed and the pigsty where we kept the boiler.
Trinkar
And what inspired you to come back to Gampo Abbey at the end of those three years?
K-Tso
Well, we had maintained quite a bit of contact. I managed to visit every year since I had left. It was really important for me to maintain that contact and support the situation and my heart connection with the people and the place. My experience for the three years being here was so powerful, just as a person. It really changed my life in so many beneficial ways that I never wanted that connection to waiver. Knowing that there was this opportunity felt like a really good opportunity to be of service. And, of course, it’s completely in alignment with our aspirations to live our life completely, full-time, or however you want to say, immersed in the Dharma.
Trinkar
The Dharma and fixing old buildings.
Jayasiddhi
Building Dharma through Dharma buildings.
Trinkar
One roll of duct tape at a time. And what were your first impressions when you came back to the land?
K-Tso
Well, for me, I felt the energy was so strong. There’s a kind of relaxing into what’s happening, and the energy of the land and the place. I don’t know, is it the practice? Is it the actual environment? I think it’s all these things combined. I’ve had these moments where I’ve been walking through the main building and it is as if having never left, a timeless environment in a way. I had to shake my head the other day coming up the stairs and looking down and not seeing robes.
Jayasiddhi
There were a couple of places in my life that I really felt like home, and this is one of them. Which is why I’ve kept coming back, feeling a deep connection to the place. And although the people here changed to some degree, there’s always some continuity of people here that I feel a connection with. Coming back, I was just struck by the beauty of the place again, every time I come back. Although this time it was summer and there was no ice on the sea, it was beautiful blue skies and blue sea and the mountains and just the Abbey buildings. Just looking down from the road there and seeing the Abbey building sitting there.
Trinkar
I’m so delighted to hear that you don’t go, oh no, look at that. We’re going to have paint. Look at the state of …
K-Tso
(Laughing) You did mention the paint first off as soon as we rolled up.
Jayasiddhi
But the practice here is so embedded in the place. And like you say, you’re walking down the corridors and you get those flashbacks of memories of, do you remember that time such and such a monk put the baseball through that window. The Yarnes that we’ve done here, all the different people that I’ve met here through the years. I want to continue, I want to contribute to that continuity of practice here so that it’s available for the people that come next.
Trinkar
And is there anything from your years at The Hermitage of The Awakened Heart that you’re inspired to kind of carry with you to here?
K-Tso
I feel like we tried to bring a lot of what was here to there! They’re very different. I mean, I think for me now having a Sadhana practice, which I didn’t have when I was here before, that piece I find really quite different. Bringing that here feels like we’re bringing Lama Shenpen here.
Jayasiddhi
Lama Shenpen has quite a strong connection to mythical landscape. We did a lot of pilgrimage at the end of every retreat, and for Solstice and other big events. We would go out into the Welsh countryside and often go to ancient places, stone circles and burial mounds. In the late 1990s Lama Shenpen and Rigdzin Shikpo (the founders of The Hermitage of The Awakened Heart) had asked Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche where to build a retreat centre. Rinpoche did a divination and identified an area in North Wales. He also pointed out various mountains and lakes as special places and encouraged them to do practices there.
So after retreats we visited sites sacred to the indigenous pre-Christian peoples such as standing stones and burial mounds, as well as springs and healing wells associated with both pagan and Celtic Christian ancestors. We did fire pujas in those places as a way to bless the place and to bless the people and the animals there, join heaven and earth in that way that Chögyam Trungpa had talked about. And she had been encouraged to do that by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, to really connect with that landscape. So I think I’ve learned something from that I think we could bring here, because the landscape here is so special.
K-Tso
I think the period of time when I was here, there wasn’t an active connection with Indigenous people of the area. And I’m definitely interested in making connections in that way because of being on Mi’kmaq territory. And it feels interesting to learn what happened before. It does feel like there’s many sacred sites, even though there’s not the stones, like in Wales.
