Fields of Gold
Coming Soon
“After that [meditation] course, I made my mind up. It was quite clear that this is the way that I want to be living. This is the road that I want to be going down,” says Oliver Tanner. “Ollie,” as he is known, reflects on the many twists that led him from a young backpacker to a dedicated meditation practitioner and scholar.
Born in London, Ollie grew up in a typical urban environment, with little exposure to spirituality or meditation. His early life was characterized by a sense of searching—a desire to understand himself and his place in the world. He spent his teenage years struggling with a pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction. School life was a challenge, and despite his efforts, he often felt disconnected from the conventional path laid out for him. He worked several odd jobs after high school, from waiting tables to construction, and eventually knew he wanted to see the wider world.
And so his story began, as many spiritual journeys do, with an initial sense of restlessness, a feeling that something was missing, and a need for exploration and growth. At 19, Ollie set out on a year of travel that took him to Malaysia, Thailand, and eventually Australia. It was during this period that Ollie first heard whispers of meditation—rumors of its transformative potential, stories from fellow travelers, and a sense that this might be the key to unlocking the fulfillment he sought. Though intrigued, it took a few more years before he finally would try it.
Back in England after his travels, Ollie struggled to reintegrate into conventional life. He felt a growing discontent with the “nine-to-five” job culture. During this period, he began practicing Ashtanga yoga, which offered a glimpse into the inner stillness he was seeking. He also began experimenting on his own with meditation, but at that point, his practice was informal—mostly reading and trying things out, without any personal instruction or guidance.
Eventually, Ollie decided to embark on a journey to McLeod Ganj in India to practice yoga with his mother and sister. He also hoped to meet the Dalai Lama, but instead of that, he found something else: a fellow traveler told him about a nearby vipassana meditation center in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. Though there were no courses at the time of his visit, he would keep the pamphlet, and ultimately attend his first ten-day course in Ontario, Canada, when he was 23.
At the time, Ollie was working on various organic farms through WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), where he was learning about sustainable living and community life. He says that he had been grappling with a sense of “incompleteness” at this time, feeling that there was a gap between his yoga practice and the deeper peace he hoped to find. During the course, a profound realization came to him: peace wasn't something to be passively attained—it requires conscious effort towards ethical living and inner work. “It was like coming home,” Ollie recalls of his course experience. “It changed everything. That ten-day course was a big shift.”
Ollie spent the subsequent years attending and serving at meditation centers in the Goenka tradition. Outside the retreat environment, he found work as a vegetarian chef, carpenter, and temporary laborer—anything that would allow him to save enough money to sit more courses, and especially to return to India and travel to Burma. He also studied carpentry more intently as a possible profession.
In 2009, Ollie finally flew to India, where he attended a Teacher’s Self Course with S.N. Goenka at the Great Global Pagoda. While at Dharma Giri, a meditator friend heard of Ollie’s aspiration to travel to Burma, and when he learned that Ollie was short of funds, offered to provide him a loan for his flight.
From the moment he arrived there, he was enthralled. “I remember seeing young monks walking on the road, going on alms around,” he says. “Even having that memory now, I get a thrill. There is a delight thinking about that! It was such an inspiring thing.” In Myanmar, he found a country where meditation wasn't just an activity confined to specific sessions; it was a way of living, woven into the culture and supported by the community, and he describes people living with a sense of “effortless virtue.” Like many foreign yogis, he was deeply touched by the generosity of the Burmese people, and their open-hearted way of supporting anyone who wished to pursue the path of meditation. “I suddenly saw a broader picture of Buddhist culture and Buddhist traditions,” he says. “Meeting people from different traditions, and seeing the Dhamma as a living tradition. It was very liberating.”
Ollie returned to the UK, where he became the Center Manager at Dhamma Dipa, and began taking long courses on a regular basis. Although he had basically transformed his life to revolve around the Dhamma, he found, much to his chagrin, that he wasn’t able to change his deeper habit patterns. “After the courses, there's a period of time where you're not falling back, but then slowly, things start creeping in,” he says, referencing the hours he’d spend binging tv and movies. “This is just my personal experience. This is what I found, that I was slipping back into these old habits.” And so he decided that what he really needed was to go back to Myanmar and immerse himself more deeply the Buddhist life he’d found there. “I thought having the opportunity to live for an extended period of time in in Myanmar would be really fruitful,” he says. “It would have a big impact of this more integrated [approach], rather than ‘You do your practice, and then you've got your day, and then you come back to your practice.’"
Ollie ended up enrolling at the International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University (ITBMU) in Yangon, where he took courses in Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and Pāli. “I'm not an academic person at all,” he admits, remarking on the irony of how his career path emerged. “Academia was not my strong thing at school. I was very a sports-orientated person!” The year was 2015, and following the NLD’s stunning election victory and Aung San Suu Kyi stepping into her State Councilor role, it was an exciting time to be in the Golden Land. “There was this feeling,” he says. “You just got a sense that in the air was this change.”
It was also at ITBMU where Ollie discovered the importance of the Paṭṭhāna—the final book of the Abhidhamma, revered in Myanmar for its depth, complexity, and perceived protective qualities. The Paṭṭhāna explores the intricate conditional relationships between mental and physical phenomena, providing a foundational understanding of how states of consciousness and matter interrelate. Ollie references one story to relay this: “I remember going through [the airport] and there was an immigration officer at the counter, and I walked up with my passport, and she's reciting the Paṭṭhāna at the counter! She looks up, puts her book down, stops chanting, takes my passport, stamps it. I walk off, and she continues chanting. So the Paṭṭhāna is woven into the fabric of Myanmar Buddhist culture.”
Ollie would later learn that many believe the preservation of the Buddha Sasana depends on the continuous recitation of the Paṭṭhāna, as the decline of the Sasana is thought to start with the disappearance of this crucial text. Ollie also notes that the practice of Goenka’s teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin (as with most Burmese Buddhist meditative traditions), was largely influenced by the Paṭṭhāna. U Ba Khin studied the Abhidhamma rigorously, similar to how monks are trained, and incorporated its insights into his practice, using it to deepen his understanding of meditation processes like jhana. U Ba Khin’s approach was also strongly shaped by the Vissudhimagga, which has greatly influenced many Vipassana traditions in Myanmar.
Even as Ollie continued to deepen his practice in the Goenka tradition, he began to feel some dissatisfaction. “Going to sit courses, it just felt constricted,” he recalls. And gradually, his practice evolved away from the formal Goenka structure.
At one point, he made plans to go to Taunggyi in Shan State, where the weather is cooler, and sit his own one-month self-course at a monastery there. This was an important turning point in his spiritual practice. “I suddenly realized that it's all on me, like I have to take responsibility! I can't rely on anyone,” he says. “I felt that I needed to find my own natural rhythm. If it's time to walk, it's time to walk. If it’s time to sit, it's time to sit. If it's time to relax, it's time to relax. I can't be told when to do that, because it's about finding your own natural rhythm… and that’s when I really started seeing the support that studying, the words of the Buddha, has for practice. In fact, there was really no more distinction between theory and practice! There's no more ‘the study and the practice.’ It was one integrated approach.”
Before this change of perspective, “practice” to him meant formal sitting, as Goenka courses stress, but he realized that mindfulness can be developed throughout the day, anywhere. “Practice was no longer about just on the cushion; suddenly it's whatever you're doing! We've heard that many times before, but somehow this time it was different. It was just being in that environment [in Myanmar], and basically allowing yourself to take that independence, and develop that skillfulness to know what to do in certain situations.”
Ollie’s studies at ITBMU added another layer of insight. No longer just experiencing thoughts and emotions as felt sensation like he had been instructed as a Goenka meditator, he began to analyze and understand them in their own right, based directly on the teachings in the Pāḷi suttas, which he was now more deeply learning about at the university. This reinforced his insight that academic study and meditative practice were not distinct, but rather ideally integrated. In particular, he realized that academic study adds a nuanced intellectual framework that enriches one's meditative journey. And while Ollie emphasizes that intensive practice is crucial, he also feels that a solid understanding of the foundational texts provides valuable context that enriches the experiential process of meditation.
As an example, he notes that while “bhāvāna” is often translated as meditation, a more accurate definition would be “develop” or “cultivate.” This simple, linguistic insight in turn broadened his overall perspective on the practice, strengthening his realization that meditation is more about the ongoing development of wholesome mental states throughout daily life than sitting cross-legged on a cushion.
Ollie’s personal life was also taking new dimensions: a fellow university student, from Sri Lanka, soon become his wife. After four years in Yangon, and with his wife now seven months pregnant, they decided to move to Colombo. Ollie enrolled in a master's program at the University of Kelaniya; their son was born soon after their arrival in the country. During their first year there, he balanced studying, building a house, and taking an advanced Pāḷi course. His academic journey was rewarding, especially since the methodological approach to Buddhist teachings in Sri Lanka differed greatly from Myanmar’s. Sri Lanka focused more on early Buddhist teachings like the suttas, contrasted to Myanmar's emphasis on Abhidhamma. After finishing his master's, Ollie became a visiting lecturer at the university and eventually pursued a Ph.D., choosing the Paṭṭhāna as his topic.
Ollie understands that few meditators can follow the remarkable life of travel, extended study, and intensive practice that has characterized his own path, but he does have some words of wisdom for those on the spiritual path. “It's about being sincere and honest with yourself. That's what I did, just seeing where you're at. It takes courage to step outside and to give yourself permission to question. And one piece of advice that I would give is that there's no better place than the direct words of the Buddha.” Ollie adds that the availability of resources today, especially through the internet, has made accessing Pāḷi texts and their translations much easier. At the same time, he stresses that it’s not totally necessary to study Pāḷi directly, since there are many excellent translations available. For him, the most significant influence has been spending time with the original words of the Buddha, which makes him feel connected to the Buddha as his teacher. He acknowledges that many meditators prefer to rely on living teachers, but for Ollie, it has been incredibly helpful to go back to those early Buddhist teachings in order to gain a much simpler and clearer understanding of the Buddha's approach to cultivation and practice.
What is more, Ollie’s experience has been that by taking confidence in and inspiration from those foundational teachings, one is then able to transcend the limitations of specific traditions. He highlights the value of approaching the suttas reflectively, not merely reading them like a book, but deeply pondering and meditating on their meaning in lived experience. This creates an unshakable foundation for the meditator, as individual traditions sometimes have inconsistencies.
“It's been good to talk openly, and I hope anyone listening might get something from maybe the journey that I've gone on.”