3 Lancaster Grove ('The Other Vihara')
London, England · 1965–1967
51.54880°N, -0.16980°E
Key Facts
- ◆ Rented by Terry Delamare partly to give Sangharakshita a place of retreat; the landlady was 'old Mrs Hartmann'.
- ◆ Sangharakshita visited at least once or twice a week from November 1965; the fifteen-minute walk took him up Haverstock Hill, left into Belsize Avenue, then left into Lancaster Grove.
- ◆ After returning from India in March 1967, Sangharakshita and Terry moved back here from Centre House.
- ◆ The nightingales heard through its open windows were described as 'perhaps descended from the very bird that had inspired Keats's ode'.
- ◆ Sangharakshita described it as the fulfilment of a recurring dream about a private monastery alongside a public one.
“The flat to which Terry had moved was situated in Lancaster Grove, conveniently equidistant from Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage Underground stations, and not far from the Hampstead Public Library… The upstairs, eastward-looking front room at 3 Lancaster Grove was certainly quiet — much quieter than my own room on busy Haverstock Hill.”
— Moving Against the Stream
“The truth was that at this time my centre of spiritual gravity had begun to shift from the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara to the Other Vihara, or rather, to that for which the Other Vihara, as the outward embodiment of the private monastery or hermitage of my dreams, had come to stand. This shift was eventually to have far-reaching consequences, not only for me but for the Buddhist movement in Britain, even for Western Buddhism as a whole.”
— Moving Against the Stream
Source: Moving Against the Stream
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