It is mid afternoon and already getting dark as we approach Samye Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Scotland. The air is bitter, and bright prayer flags – red, yellow, blue and green – hang dripping in the Scottish rain, while a gold Buddha shines out of a pond choked with weed.
My friend Jo and I have been deposited by the number 112 bus from Lockerbie for a weekend's mindfulness meditation course at the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery to be built in the west. The building's arcs of red and gold have been standing proud in the Scottish Lowlands since 1967. We walk down an avenue of white pillars and bare trees, passing a peacock bravely holding out against the cold.
At the reception a monk, swathed in burgundy and orange robes, signs us in, palpably irritated. You might think a not-so-welcoming greeting would dampen our enthusiasm for the weekend – far from it. An irked monk: how brilliant that the tedium of office life gets to us all.
We pay £114: £62 for the weekend course in mindfulness meditation (one Friday night session and four over the weekend), and £26 a night for a twin room and three vegetarian meals a day – making this my cheapest retreat ever. Then we go upstairs and make our own beds. The bed linen, like the crockery, has been rescued from Oxfam. My duvet cover is 70s floral, while Jo's has the kind of red, black and grey graphics I last saw when I hung out with teenage boys and did a lot of snogging.
Perhaps we're responding to whatever karma brought the monks to this spot in the first place, or it may just be that this is a non-manipulative environment, but we already feel happy to be here. These people don't want to sell us anything, they're just here with teachings they believe in.
After dinner of leek and potato soup, we file into the temple with 12 others for our first session with Clive Holmes, a Buddhist who is teaching the mostly secular meditation course this weekend. Mindfulness is a particular form of meditation that has gained credence in the west via clinical studies that have proved its efficacy in helping people change their relationship with themselves – whether the problem is chronic pain, anxiety, stress, depression, addiction or general malaise. It is now taught in most US and South African hospitals, and was recently recommended by the Mental Health Foundation for more extensive use in the UK.
Clive comes in late, grey hair flying, and quickly establishes himself as full of laughter and life, chuckling even at bad jokes. We do the group thing: introduce ourselves, explain why we're here, and then start the first meditation.
We have an idea in the west that meditation is best done alone. In the east, it's often a group activity, and here, sitting in a temple side-room decorated with cloth wall hangings, with group endeavour around me, listening to Clive's gentle voice, I fall into not-thinking with uncharacteristic relief. Like most, I'm pretty addicted to thinking, but Clive – who has spent a year in silent retreat – tees us up brilliantly for some mental quiet time.
The monastery is set in a remote valley by the river Esk, surrounded by low fells and patches of coniferous forest. With sessions each morning and afternoon, group meals and very few places to go – the tea rooms, the river, the temple, the accommodation block – the weekend unfolds gently. We learn about mindfulness and compassion, we take long walks in the wind and the wet, we eat lunches of veggie curries and simple teas. Classes last for a few hours, during which time our mixed group sits wrapped in blankets in the red and gold bedecked temple: cross-legged, on chairs, leaning against pillars. Clive talks about some aspects of mindfulness and then leads guided meditations. One feature of the monastery (population 60) having non-denominational residents and guests as well as monks is that the atmosphere is open and non-pious. Meditating, we sit there – body like a mountain, breath like the wind, mind like the sky – each of us doing as best we can. The practice is pretty mundane, but the shift in happiness it brings is profound.
On Sunday it's time to go, which feels like more of a pause than a goodbye. Hugs are exchanged. Thanks are given. An old guy with a kind face – one of the locals who drops in for prayers – invites me to tea the next time I'm around. And we leave our site of learning, with its draughty hallways and bags of sliced bread, walking out past the peacocks. The prayer flags hang, waiting for a dry day to blow their blessings into the wind, and we take with us the richest of holiday gifts: the certainty that nothing is perfect, and everything is fine.
• Samye Ling runs weekend courses and mindfulness courses year-round. The centre is in Eskdalemuir, 15 miles from Lockerbie (rail links), or two hours' drive from Glasgow or Edinburgh airports.
