Find Deathless

Many years ago, I went to a University Buddhist Society, to a lecture by a monk. It was evening and I walked through damp fog from my home to the university. I recall that the lecture was poorly attended and that the then modern looking building was bleak in the damp night. Who was the monk? I don’t know. What was the lecture was about? I don’t recall. His English was very poor. What I remember was that he kept repeating, “Find Deathless”. At the time, I knew little of Buddhism and my only mental reference for this was to a Christian afterlife.

The lecture finished and I left. The fog had thickened dramatically and I had to consciously think about direction in order to find my way home. As I walked slowly through the dark gloom I felt separated from the normal everyday. The city was an unknown place filled with greyness and splashes of orange street-light. My mind was filled with the refrain “Find Deathless”.

What is it about this memory that makes it stick? The details of my perception of the surroundings and my mental state are not clear. Yet I know that the circumstance made me remember a place beyond perception. Where is “Deathless”? What is “Deathless”?

When I got home I was excited and told my friend of my experience and almost certainly intellectualised it. Nonetheless between the alternation of that perception of the world and the emotive mantra “Find Deathless” I knew or remembered something that reinforced the direction I wanted to travel in. Years later, it still occasionally pops into my mind.
Who was that monk? I am grateful to him.