The Buddha House

The Buddha House - a seventeen-year memoir adventure

In 2000, Sylvia and David bought a large, derelict 1750's haunted country house on the Isle of Wight. It's over-run with many kinds of fungi, rodents and other unpleasant gifts left behind by previous owners. The couple are excited, though wary, starting out on this change of direction in their forties, newly in love and hoping to run the complex as a combined family home and mindfulness retreat centre. They start enthusiasm for the adventure, have many encounters with supposedly exorcised ghosts, contractors with foibles, strange neighbours, and others they employ, to make it habitable.

In the process, they uncover famous art connections, a murder mystery story, and a house with its own identity and personality.

The house and garden is also the setting for their personally designed wedding, many happy and challenging family times, lots of friends and family visiting, and a business that's not quite enough to live from fully but allows a great work-life balance. In 2007 David takes early retirement from his paid employment and Sylvia is following her dream of research, studying for a PhD in Mindfulness and ADHD. All seems well, life is following a path not quite envisaged, but they allow it to lead them until it changes again.

In 2008, Sylvia has a total breakdown following the death of her father. She cannot work, barely leave the house, hardly sleeps and is haunted by reawakened memories of her childhood. They won't survive financially, but Sylvia can't move. David takes over and converts the house into two holiday letting units and it's here they meet the best and worst of the British public.

It takes Sylvia years to fully recover and her diagnosis of complex trauma and PTSD is enlightened further when she is also diagnosed with ADHD, as are both her sons. But times are changing and although they have held their own financially, the house and garden are finally becoming a burden they can no longer shoulder. The day comes when they must make the decision to leave.

All through the story, Sylvia brings out the essential teachings of the Buddha and how they both live with these teachings centrally in their lives, how it sustains them, enables them to navigate the difficulties and maintain equanimity. Sylvia never fully recovers from her breakdown, her nervous system experienced such a traumatic shock it becomes overreactive to any further stressors and she must learn to live a very different life, returning to her love of writing and poetry, and creating a brand new garden from scratch in a new home.