1995 - An Unexpected Thought

Having arrived back in 1991 on the shores of Sydney - both bereft and broken - I started to put my life back together.

One of my important decisions was to find spiritual guidance. I had been a big fan of Werner Erhardt and “The Forum” - his more grown-up version of EST - but now I was broke. I couldn’t afford those kinds of “yah! Yah!” topline change-your-life type seminars.

Over the years, Buddhism has always attracted me as a common sense philosophy.

“And Buddhism is cheap” I thought, “I can afford that.”

I resolved that every week I would find a different Buddhist group in Sydney to visit. My idea was that I would know when I found the right place, and I would keep on visiting new centres until the magic happened.

Meanwhile, I was working on improving my profile as an Alexscovery teacher when freelance journalist Vicky Mackenzie contacted me to do an article on Alexander for the Sydney Morning Herald or The Sun, I can’t remember which. After the interview, we got to chat, and I asked her what projects she was involved in?

She told me about her book “Reincarnation: The Boy Lama” (Wisdom Publications, 1996) about her Buddhist teacher Lama Yeshe who founded the FPMT* with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. I was so surprised - so I told Vicky about my quest, and she insisted I visit Lama Yeshe’s centre in Sydney - the Vajrayana Institute.

I looked them up and saw that the following weekend they had a course called “Everything You Wanted to Know About Buddhism But Were Afraid to Ask.” I laughed - this seemed my kind of place. When I turned up on Saturday morning, there was an old acting friend I hadn’t seen for years. After hugs and screams I realised - the magic has happened.

I was home at last.

Every time I think of Lama Yeshe - even now as I write - I start sobbing. It is really odd. But when I shared this with other “Yeshe students” they usually exclaim:

“Oh! So do I !!!”

I never met Lama Yeshe. But I had been chasing him without knowing for years. The Manjuishri Institute - where Don Burton held a residential I taught at - was originally an FPMT Centre. One of my homes in London while training in the 70s - when Lama was still alive - was just around the corner from an FPMT Centre. 

Anyway, life in Sydney was getting better. I was teaching at two acting schools, had private students and kept producing the Direction Journal. One day, as I was walking to the acting school, I got the thought:

“Is this it? Am I going to spend the rest of my life doing this?”

And then an unexpected new thought welled up from within me:

“You have to go to Japan.”

What?!

*FPMT = Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.

This is the ninth in a series of daily emails exploring my challenges in communicating Alexander’s Discovery.