When I was in the lower sixth at school – in a ‘World Religions’ class, I remember the teacher showing us slides of monks in orange robes with shaved heads. I experienced a simultaneous sense of bewilderment and dim recognition.

The teacher then went on to explain what must have been the Four Noble Truths and she said that Buddhism was founded on the concept of everything being suffering – I remember thinking, ‘Well, that sounds like a miserable religion!!’ But of all religions she covered, Buddhism, and the image of the saffron-robed monks is the only one etched in my memory – a landmark in some sense.

About three years later, during some time I spent in France. I had just finished reading a science fiction book called The Mind Parasites, by Colin Wilson. In it, the main character develops the, as yet, untapped power of the mind to fight off the mind parasites. These are embedded deep in the unconscious, sapping the mind of its awareness and ability to fulfil its potential. This particularly resonated with me - my deep sense that we do not use even a small percentage of our human potential awakening a strong wish to find a way to unlock it.
Shortly after finishing the book, while I was travelling, I met a good looking and mysterious young man who happened to be meditating on the beach. When I asked him to talk about what he was doing and why, he wouldn’t – which not only added to his attractiveness, but also made me keen to explore the possibilities that meditation had to offer when I returned home.

At the start of my final year at university, I tried out various meditation classes – but they just didn’t ‘click’. One day, however, I saw another notice offering meditation classes on one of the University Society notice boards. I duly turned up on the Sunday afternoon, to find a motley group of around twenty people. I wondered what I had let myself in for. The teacher soon appeared – bearded, softly spoken, and unlike anyone I had met before. He gave an introductory talk – and spoke about the mind in a way that made complete sense to me at the time. He spoke about things in a way that, certainly in my previous experience, no one had spoken to me before – and I just knew that what was being said had a ring of truth. It was instantly and manifestly recognizable as the way forward.

I later learned that the first step of the eightfold path is called ‘right view’, which requires there to be some recognition already - some germ of understanding that knows when one connects with the teaching. This was my first step.