Different threads

When I started meditating 17 or 18 years ago I had just split up with my partner & was finding it hard to cope with. The flyer didn't specify that it was Samatha meditation or even that it was Buddhist, not that I know whether it would have made any difference if it had... In any case I became interested and drawn into that side of things & found, and still find, it immensely interesting and useful in dealing with everyday life.

I was brought up pretty much agnostic, if not atheist, although my father was clearly a seeker, & had flirted with Catholicism and Quakerism. My parents were Conscientious Objectors in WW2, which profoundly affected family life - my father had left a good job at the beginning of the war as the factory where he was on the managerial side started making weapons; consequently we always struggled financially as he worked in bookshops, taught the clarinet, did peoples' accounts etc. Looking back, it doesn't surprise me that I became interested in Buddhism. My parents seemed to me to be different from most people at the time - very leftwing and quite bohemian. I remember being taken to a Quaker meeting when I was quite young, and on an Aldermaston march at age 15. They remained pacifists all their lives, and we always had Peace News delivered to the house.

The biggest clue I think comes from my very clear memory of reading a book that was in the house called Seven Years in Tibet at the age of about 17. I was absolutely fascinated by the powers of the mind described in the book, and remember vividly trying to exercise mind over matter by moving a little glass gnome I had by the power of my mind. Sadly I never perfected the art! But the book had a profound effect on me, which I have never forgotten.

Also around that time my father was going to talks by Krishnamurti, was interested in Gurdjieff, and Christmas Humphries was an oft-mentioned name. Before he died in 1987, he read The Tibetan Book of the Dead from cover to cover. All that must have rubbed off.

Though I was never drawn to the various Indian gurus around, or anything smacking of New Age, there was obviously the seed of something lying dormant in my psyche which by chance or kamma led me quite subconsciously to Samatha.