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Explore the Meditative Gardens, woodlands and meadows. As you walk under our magnificent Beech tree you will see the Tori Arch which enters into the Shinto woodlands. On your journey you will pass the wishing tree and enter into the reflective ponds, you may even get the chance to see our heron or kingfisher.
The ponds provide a calm, reflective space in the landscape and also an ecological sound way for processing the grey water from the centre. The flow forms aerate the water as it travels through the pond system creating a healthy environment for fish and rare aquatic plants.
Across from the ponds you will see an ornamental herb garden where we are growing medicinal herbs that in-turn will heal the land and heal people. The formal box hedges and central fountain are classic sacred garden designs.
Walk the seven sided meditative labyrinth. Our former gardener Ed, when he became agitated, would walk the labyrinth and regain his sense of calm.
You will come across universal symbols associated with a wide range of faiths that have been carved from local limestone, explore and discover the language of symbols.
You will see a naturally fallen oak with a tree of life figurative stone; we are planting an oak circle for future generations.
The Reverse Spiral provides a healing experience. You enter the spiral, walk in a single direction leaving your past cares behind. As you meet yourself in the centre you leave on a different path symbolising a process of transformation and renewal.
We draw on nature and the positive life energy of plants and water to create a healing environment.
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Gardens are a retreat from stress and aggravation. They cool, heal, and make new, inspiring a feeling of joy in people. They provide relief from the hardness of the vision of traffic, offices and concrete, adding softness to the eye.
The Hero’s Journey
Some American brain specialist took encephalograph readings of travellers. They found that changes of scenery and awareness of the passage of seasons through the year stimulated the rhythms of the brain, contributing to a sense of well being and an active purpose in life.
Monotonus surroundings and tedious regular activity wove patterns which produced fatigue, nervous disorders, apathy, self-disgust and violent reactions. Hardly surprising, then, a generation cushioned from the cold by central heating, from the heat by air conditioning, carted in antiseptic transports from one identical house to another, should feel the need for journeys of mind or body, for pep pills or tranquillisers, or the cathartic journeys of sex, music and dance. We spend far too much time in shuttered rooms.
Children need paths to explore, to take bearings on the earth in which they live, as a navigator takes bearings of familiar landmarks. If we excavate the memories of childhood, we remember the paths first, things and people second – paths down the garden, the way to school, the way around the house, corridors through the bracken or long grass. Tracking the paths of animals was the first most important element in the education of early man.
The few ‘primitive’ peoples in the forgotten corners of the earth understand this simple fact about our nature better than we do. They are perpetually mobile. The golden brow babies of the Kalahari Bushmen hunters never cry and are among the most content babies in the world. They also grow up to be the gentlest people. They are happy with their lot, which they consider ideal.
The best thing is to walk. We should follow the Chinese poet Li Po in ‘ the hardships of travel are the many branches of the way. For life is a journey through the wilderness. This concept, universal to the point of banality, could not have survived unless it were biologically true. None of our revolutionary heroes is worth a thing until they have been on a good walk….
A tramp I once met best described this involuntary compulsion to wander. ‘it’s as though the tide was pulling you along the high road. I’m like the Arctic Tern. That’s a beautiful white bird, you know, which flies from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again.
Bruce Chatwin the nomadic alternative from his book the Anatomy of Restlessness.
Enjoy the winding pathways throughout Matara
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