Environment

The insight and guidance found in the Buddha’s core teachings, such as impermanence, interdependence, and compassion clearly speak to the heart of environmental issues today.

The Lindholme Hall Estate, provides a rare purpose and opportunity to put these teachings into practice. The Buddha asked us to examine things carefully. When we take time to do this, it becomes clear that nothing lasts forever and that everything is impermanent. Seeing that nothing lasts, we become more inclined to take care of finite resources.

We are not isolated individuals. On the contrary, we are fundamentally interconnected. Properly checking how things are, we can see that all phenomena, physical and mental, arise through the coming together of many causes and conditions. All our actions have a corresponding result and so everything we do, think and say matters; we make a difference.

Mire Emergency Project

Based at Gomde UK, this is an exciting volunteer-led project to propagate locally-sourced mire-building mosses to help recover a carbon sequestering bog on Hatfield Moors.

This will benefit biodiversity, hold rainwater on the Moors and reduce downstream flood risk and tackle climate change.

Find out more

Carbon Emissions Shrink as Gomde Grows - A Model of Self sufficiency

We are overjoyed to announce a three fold increase in our generation of renewable energy alongside further significant reductions in our carbon emissions.

Thanks to Rinpoche’s kind guidance, since its inception in 2010 Gomde UK has consistently worked to increase its environmental sustainability. Our success is built on multiple interventions including, conservation, land management, food production, building practice and the harvesting of renewable energy. Thanks to this approach we have been able to increase our operations and building stock while at the same time further lowering our carbon footprint. Please read more about our Carbon Strategy below.

Gomde UK Carbon Strategy

For many years Gomde UK has been active in the fields of sustainability and conservation. Implementing our policy has enabled us to halve our carbon footprint of our buildings from 29.6 to 15.05 metric tonne, a track record that has been achieved step by step over the last 11 years. Galvanised by the increasing climate crisis and seeing what was within our reach, we have now created a plan for net zero carbon emissions.

To underpin our policy and planning, we have been working with independent economics & policy research consultant, Murray Rudd, who has produced a paper to put Gomde UK’s past efforts and future aspirations into context.

Read paper Read plan

The Lindholme Estate – A rare and precious habitat

Gomde UK is sited on the Lindholme Hall Estate in South Yorkshire. Its size, beauty and seclusion provide a wonderful human habitat for reflecting, studying and meditating especially as nature supports connecting with the natural openness and peace of the mind.

The Lindholme Hall Estate is a 180-acre ‘island’ in the centre of the 3,500-acre Hatfield Moor. Once reachable only by boat, the island is now connected to nearby Hatfield village by a one-mile causeway. It is understood that the gravel ridge which now forms Lindholme Island was laid down during the last ice age some 16–20,000 years ago. Two geological sections have been exposed in the south of the estate which provide rare evidence of the limits of the last glaciation in Eastern England.

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Conservation at Gomde UK

Nature is a support for seeing the natural spaciousness of the mind. In this sense and in so many other ways, the natural world is an extremely precious resource.

The 180-acre estate, which includes 60 cares of rare uncut peat land, is managed under a conservation stewardship agreement (HLS) enabling all our land management to have conservation as its priority. In addition, a group of expert volunteers, the Lindholme Old Moor Management group (LOM), help manage the rarest and most fragile parts of the Estate and provide expert advice for our wider conservation efforts.

Read More LOM Group

Sustainability & Self-Sufficiency

Alongside our conservation work, we are committed to a practical policy of sustainability and self-sufficiency. This includes harvesting renewable energy equivalent to our needs (wood and sun), tending and expanding our organic vegetable garden and orchard, and ensuring that all our operational practices nurture and sustain the environment.

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Building for the future

It is our aim that all building and development undertaken at Gomde will be energy-efficient to minimise energy load now and in the future, thereby reducing costs and caring for the environment. We are building for future generations. The new Thubten Chokor Ling Temple has been designed to last for 500 years. Knowing all to be impermanent, much emphasis has been placed on the structural design which incorporates proven strength and durability, partnered with simplicity and accessibility for maintenance and repair in the long term.

During all our building efforts since 2010, we have always considered the impact on the environment and continually worked to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. We ensure all buildings are substantially insulated, install energy-efficient forms of heating — air source heat pumps, we have installed solar photovoltaic arrays to harvest electrical energy and a log gasification boiler considered to be carbon neutral, for central heating and hot water.

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