New Buddhist centre for Ipswich

Swadipa swaps robes for overalls as he gives the new centre a lick of paint

Ipswich's Buddhists have opened a new centre which replaces the old one in the town centre.

The new venue is in an old Ransomes factory on Friars Bridge Road near the Princes Street roundabout.

The old centre was above shops in The Thoroughfare behind a fairly anonymous-looking doorway.

Buddhist secretary Swadipa said: "We were renting it and loads of people who've lived in Ipswich all their lives and didn't realise it was there."

"As with quite a few people, I was drawn to Buddhism because I was finding work quite stressful, as anybody who's worked in the NHS can sympathise with," said Swadipa.

After years of planning, the Buddhists moved into their new premises in July. It has a meeting room, meditation room, kitchen, study room, office and a lift to provide access for people with disabilities.

The old Buddhist Centre was in between O'Briens and Evolution

The Ipswich Buddhist Group (members of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) was founded in 1985 and operated out of someone's front room before classes moved around a variety of hired rooms.

In 2001, they opened their own centre above the Buddhist Evolution shop just off the Cornhill.

"We made it a very nice space," said Swadipa. "We did enquire with the landlord about putting a sign above the door, but that proved to be difficult."

Enlightened spending

The new building is the same size as the old Thoroughfare venue which covered two floors above the shops. It cost £165,000 to buy and was mainly funded by the sale of the Buddhist community house (or 'maitriloka') on Hadleigh Road.

"Unfortunately, living in a community was becoming less popular with people, so occupation and rent was dropping. We were able to get a bit of capital together, but we still have a mortgage and encourage people to attend and give generously."

The main space in the building is for meditation, which requires a certain amount of peace and tranquility. It's right next to a busy roundabout, but Swadipa said it's not as noisy as you'd think: "Surprisingly, our experience in the building is that it's not too bad.

"Most of our activities are at evenings and weekends and, at those times, it doesn't seem to be a big problem."

David becomes Swadipa

Like most western Buddhists, Swadipa found the religion, rather than being born into it, and eventually decided to take a Buddhist name alongside the name his parents gave him, which was/is David Vasey.

"I was a doctor doing gynaecology at Ipswich Hospital until I retired three years ago.

A thanka wall-hanging in the meditation room at the new centre

"A colleague introduced me to a meditation course. My stress levels didn't go down in the workplace, but my ability to cope with them improved a lot.

"That is the message of Buddhism. It doesn't change your external circumstances, but it changes you internally so that you can work with problems better.

"It's quite nerve-wracking [the naming ceremony] that someone's going to be looking at you and selecting a name with a meaning that reflects something about you. 'Dipa' means lamp or light and 'swa' means to himself or his own - so a light to himself.

"So that's my task now - to make my life a bit brighter and shine for other people."