OUR STORY

Sanditthika was founded in 2014 when Beth (at that time Sayalay Anuttara) was looking for a place to meditate. Keeping a precept to abstain from using money, she found herself in Almeria, begging for food with her alms bowl at the local market, and taking shelter in the caves in the hills surrounding the town.

After some weeks of moving from cave to cave, Beth stumbled upon the Cuevas de San Joaquin – a mountain of caves on the outskirts of Almeria town that had been dug during the Franco era. At the time, they were inhabited by an eclectic group of hippies, drug addicts, and petit criminals who agreed to let her stay.

Soon they became friends, and as Beth spent her days meditating the influence began to rub off. Within a few months, the caves were drug and alcohol free and Beth was teaching meditation to her cave dwelling companions.

The following year some of Beth’s Dhamma friends came to join the caves community, and Sanditthika started to grow. A cave was offered to anyone who wanted to stay and meditate, a communal meditation cave was redecorated, and daily sittings were established at 7am and 7pm.

In the ten years that followed, the caves provided a Dhamma refuge to dozens of meditators from around the world, and were home to many stories of great transformation.

In 2023, we took the difficult decision to say goodbye to our home at the caves. Not being able to legally own the space had put a hard limit on our ability to grow the caves community. As we found our land in Granada, it became clear that it was time for Sanditthika to move home and begin a new chapter.

However, there is much from the caves that we will carry with us – a deep commitment to simplicity, to providing refuge, to living in harmony with nature, and to profound and liberating meditation practice.