We like to get out into the Peak District when we can. Our New Year’s walk in the first week of January is now a regular event – a gentle two or three hours walk together followed by a meal in a local vegetarian cafe. When the weather’s warmer later in the year we sometimes substitute a post-walk picnic.

Walks are a great opportunity for individuals to chat in ones and twos, to get to know one another, to share experience and to ask those questions that one might be shy about raising in a more formal or public context.

Once one has established a regular practice it can be all too easy to fall into a bit of a rut. A comfortable routine of sitting takes over from a sense of the actual purpose and immediacy of training; and we stop noticing how much of the day we lose to inattention or at the mercy of self-centred habits.

As a way of renewing our commitment to and enthusiasm for training, we have nominated January as a lay training period. Individuals who choose to take part undertake to intensify and sharpen their practice over the whole month with the support of others making the same effort.

To ensure this is more than a vague and general commitment, each person reflects on where the weak points of their training lie and completes a (private) written undertaking specifying in some detail how they plan to step up their daily practice. Though this reflects each individual’s personal circumstances and needs, it involves such areas as meditation, mindfulness, preceptual living, study and relationships with others.

During the month people are able to seek support, share experience and ask for advice from each other through the

group’s on-line forum, in one-to-one chats as part of a ‘buddy’ system and face-to-face in a mid-monthly discussion morning.

By the end of the month people generally find, often with surprise, that they are able to sustain a much fuller and more attentive daily practice; and that training has once again moved to the forefront of their concerns.

The momentum from the January training period is also carried forward by adopting a shared theme for each subsequent month. This year, for example, we are nominating one of the ten precepts for each month.

Those who take part commit themselves to observing that precept as strictly as possible during the month and reflecting on what the observance and non-observance of the precept teaches. That practical experience can then both inform and be informed by some study of relevant readings bearing on the chosen precept. Our fuller understanding of what the precept means in practice is again shared through exchanges in our on-line forum, through the buddy system and in a mid-monthly discussion morning.

Individuals from neighbouring groups frequently take part in many of our activities. However, there are also occasions when all the OBC meditation groups in the area do their best to join together in a common activity. To date these have generally been held in Leeds around the celebration of Wesak and of the Buddha’s enlightenment.