How I got into Buddhism

You might be interested in how I became involved in the study of Buddhism. I didn’t grow up in a Buddhist enviroment. I suspect that that is true also for many of you. I came into Buddhism when I was a young man studying Christian Theology at university. And one of the biggest challenges we faced in those days was to try to find something to fill our four month summer vacation between the two years of our program, and I, being the naive guy that I was on those days, I ended doing an expedition to the desert of central Iran, to study the life of Iranian nomads. We got to the desert and we found no nomads other than ourselves.

But when we got to the end of that trip, as I was sitting near the Friday Mosque gazing up to the great work, I began to muse a little bit about the lot of things that I have seen and I decided that I wanted to do nothing more with my life than to study the civilizations of Asia. So I got back home and began to study Sanskrit, the language of India. I followed my nose and eventually I ended up studying comparative religion and one thing followed another and I found myself swimming happily through the philosophical tradition of India’s Buddhist community and also the philosophical tradition of Tibet.

Buddhism has become an endless source of fascination for me, and I’m looking forward very much to have a chance to share that fascination with you.