Jan Deckers writes from Ghent, in Belgium, with the excellent news their new retreat centre Metta Vihara is nearly ready. Triratna’s Dutch and Belgian Sanghas have for many years been fundraising, property-searching, planning and seeking official permissions for a new Buddhist Retreat Centre in the South of the Netherlands - and it’s nearly here! He says -

“We can hardly believe it ourselves: the building is nearly finished. If the gods allow it we will take possession on March 2nd, just a month away! Then it’s ours and we can start painting and furbishing!

Now that construction work is nearly finished, we are allowed to look inside now and then and everyone agrees it’s great: full of light, sober, beautiful, inducing silence...

The building contractor is working steadily on; some days more than fifteen people are on the job: putting up the frames for the upstairs rooms, plumbing, installing the electricity. Now and then we do some work ourselves: the sides of a few hundred MDF-boards had to be painted before they could be installed. We’re also looking forward to the arrival of an immense concrete tank for our rainwater, which we’ll be flushing the toilets with”.

There's more pictures on the Metta Vihara website.

We'll be posting again as soon as we've news of their official opening. In the meantime - SADHU Metta Vihara!