I have always been drawn to the ancient cultures of Asia, from India, to Tibet, to China, Japan and many others.  The people are often beautiful and so different from the European faces I grew up amidst.

It was this a predictable thing, that in my exploration of religion in my early to mid twenties I would find myself drawn to Buddhism, the Indian philosophy that spread so far across Asia.  At first I read mostly Tibetan books, including seeing the Dalai Llama speak in Melbourne.  Around 1994 I attended a yoga class at the Theosophical society in inner city Melbourne.  At their book shop I asked the attendant what book he would recommend about Buddhism, not one that was inspired by Buddhism or tried to teach some modern school of it, but a book that was truest to the historical teachings of the Buddha.  I didn't know then that little if anything was written down till hundreds of years after the Buddha died, but the man recommended a book "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula.  I remember a few years later a monk telling me it was "A Handbook of Buddhism".

This set me on a path, which in many ways I am still on.   The first great change was I started meditating regularly.  I had dabbled with other types before, but I kept up this practise daily for a number of years, though fell out of it when I started work too early to let me get up on time.  The second great change was my embracing of vegetarianism.  It seems so clear to me "May all beings be free of suffering" I wonder still how people can call themselves Buddhist and still eat animals from factory farms.

When I went to University I joined the Buddhist Society, and though I have never called myself a Buddhist I ended up as it's Vice President for a year, and did their first website.  I then became more enamoured by athiesm, and the writings of people like Noam Chomsky, but still Buddhism has stayed with me still.  I like to go to temples and churches whatever part of the world I am in, they are often the most beautiful buildings, built as they are by communities for their own glorification, but when I go to Buddhist ones they have more meaning for me, touch me in a deeper way.

For those who like coincidences, I have an unusual one here.  My first version of E.A.R.T.H. the heading of the Transcedence part I had in mind a picture I thought was on the cover of a book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior my friend had once showed me.  It was very similar to The Wandered Above the Sea of Fog, but I remembered the person being dressed in a kimono.  Anyway I didn't have any photos of myself like that, so reluctantly decided to try to find someone else's version of it.  This vexed me a little as almost everything on my website I had done myself.  In any case I found it difficult even then to find something, until I happened upon a picture of the buddha, with a hazy sunset behind him.  I thought I can switch the direction of the buddha and it will do.  Still it always sat in the back of my mind that it wasn't my picture.

Fast forward a few years and I have trapsed up to see the big Buddha, had a great lunch and then wandered a bit down the paths which surround it.  I had a few hours to kill so I saw a path that said "Lantau Mountain" and started walking up it.  The sun started to set, and I was out of shape and it started to get quite steep.  Worried I wouldn't get back in time, or in one piece in the dark I turned to see the view you have in this photo, snapped it, wiped the sweat from my brow and proceeded back down the mountain.

It was only when looking back through my photos months later in Australia that I realised I had taken almost exactly the same photo, from the same mountain, with the same sunset, as the photo in my Transendence heading.  I have now replaced it with my own, the one you see above.  This is one of the great coincidences of my life.