Tig-Le House – mindfulness, meditation and dharma teacher
Ian Hackett
Born in Perth, Western Australia 1972, Ian’s journey into the dharma teachings began at 15 years of age. He discovered meditation with a practice group at Perth Modern School. Ian practised with various groups and individuals from different cultural traditions, including Krishna, Sannyasin, Miriwoong and Bundjalung peoples, in the following years. Later, Ian received formal instruction in the universalist Buddha-dharma tradition, including mindfulness, meditation and mind training techniques through the lineage network of The Late Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche, Anandha Bodhi. Ian interweaves these practices with acute early environmental awareness and over 30 years in regenerative bushland management, Landcare and permaculture. Ian shares the dharma, focusing on a social-ecological lens for health, peace and Refuge.
Ian grew up between living in the city and much time spent at the family farm north of Perth in Yuat country. As a young boy, from around seven years of age, Ian learned a deep love and care for nature from being allowed to roam freely on the farm, spending much of his time in the uncleared bushland, creeks and gullies on the property. He remembers being engrossed in the changes of the seasons. He speaks gently of the relationships between the sky, land and water, the plants, insects, native and feral animals, stock, native forest vegetation and crops. Ian describes the feeling of being embedded in the flow and wholeness of it all, wide-eyed and glad. He was always amazed at nature’s seasonal cycles of rest and renewal. Ian also talks of the memories of harm inflicted on the landscape by land-clearing activities for the unsustainable farming practices that had become the basis of modern industrial agriculture. Most of the property was slowly cleared, many more paddocks were created, creeks and gullies were heavily degraded by overgrazing, and a cascade of ecological disasters unfolded, including the inner human ecology of a young emergent man.
Later, from the late 1980s to the end of the 1990s, Ian worked across the Western Australian wheat belt. He then began travelling and working around Australia, seeking extended periods of exploration and isolation in the challenging and stunningly disciplined wilderness of various Australian landscapes. This exploration led to working on manual removal environmental weed management programs on the vast WA Kimberley river systems. Ian has hiked off-track in the Daintree and worked in the rainforests around Cairns and Lismore. He studied permaculture and WWOOF’ed at Tyalgum in NSW with Bill Mollison, going on to design and implement permaculture projects. As an environmental activist, Ian joined forest conservation efforts in the Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales and the Southwest forests of Western Australia.
Throughout this journey, Ian continued working with the meditative practices he had learned, receiving more instruction from other sources and cultural perspectives and participating in small community meditation groups, personal retreats, and training.
In the early 2000s, Ian studied Landcare and bushland regeneration in the sub-tropics. He worked with environmental training and employment projects before returning to his home state of Western Australia, where he finished his formal bushland regeneration and land management studies and began working in the Great Southern and Southwest. With his partner Wendy and their three children, Ian supported community environmental groups. He established a commercial organic nursery and a working permaculture farm.
During this time, the accumulation of Ian’s life experiences led him to search for new meditative practices that could support a calmer, more stable purposeful, healthy engagement with daily life rather than seeking meditative experiences. His search led him to mindfulness and contemplative meditation in the Secular Universalist Buddhist Dharma tradition. Ian began training under mentor Karma Lama Chime Shore of the Origins Centre, Balingup, Western Australia. While this is an ancient secular, non-religious tradition, the practices are carried within the framework of a lineage of Burmese and Tibetan Buddhist teachers stretching back many centuries.
During his training, Ian was requested by his mentor to begin teaching. Following teaching at the centre, Ian and his family opened Tig-Le House at his family residence in Margaret River in 2012, where Ian continues to weave together mindfulness and contemplative meditation training and practices with a lens for socio-ecological health, the growth of life-affirming individuals and communities with a biocentric perspective.
Ian shares regular community-based mindfulness sessions, mindfulness, meditation, and nature retreats through Tig-Le House and other venues. You can attend sessions on Buddhist studies and sacred ceremonies. Ian leads community mindful walking sessions, forest ecology, and regenerative bushland management walks on private bushland; Ian teachers on local permaculture design courses. These retreats, classes and group work contribute to participants’ experiences by building foundations that encourage the possibilities for increased emergence of a healthy humanity working for the health and peace of the world, realized in everyday life and living.
Ian acknowledges significant influences on his spiritual and ecological development path, including Elder (name withheld for cultural reasons) of Miriwoong country (Wyndham, Kununurra, Ord River, Keep River and Nicholson River areas); Yuat country (Wannamal); Muli Muli community members and Elders of the Bundjalung Nation (Northern Rivers Region, NSW); Lama Karma Chime Shore (Origins Centre, Western Australian); Lama Choyin Rinpoche (Rumtek, Sikkim); H.H. 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje (Karma Kagyu); Goreng, Menang and Wardandi/Wadandi custodians of the Noongar Nation (Albany, Denmark and Margaret River Regions); the Late Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche / Anandha Bodhi, Sayadaw U Thila Wonta Mon. Mahathera (Burmese Mon.); and there are many more.
Ian’s focus is to continue the work of this cross-cultural teaching tradition and to develop culturally appropriate forms of mindfulness and meditation training in an ecological context to meet the complexities of the unfolding global challenge whilst remaining true to ancient secular and sacred Buddhist wisdom.
You can find Ian’s teaching calendar here at Mindfulness and meditation calendar (tiglehouse.org) and his latest retreat schedule here Mindfulness and Meditation, Ecodharma and Nature retreats (tiglehouse.org) or go to the Tig-Le House resources and offerings page to download a useable mindfulness or dharma resources here at Mindfulness resources, meditations and offerings (tiglehouse.org).
