My interest in Buddhism began five or six years before this picture was taken at a temple near Jilong, Taiwan, in the early sixties. The man in charge of this seven day chan meditation session was Nan Huai-jin of Taipei; he is the layman sitting to the left of the main monk in the front row, fifth from our right as we look at the photo. I’m in the middle of the fourth row with friends Doug and Ron near the ends of that row. We were in our early twenties.

In those days I thought there was a chance, that enlightenment was around the next corner, that whatever it was it was somewhere. Just needed a bit more time, a tad more effort to get a taste. As a Brit mountain climber told me as we walked a couple miles from the guest house into the city of Lhasa, Tibet, in 1980, drinking Jack from a silver flask, when I boldly asked what the key was to climbing big mountains, “You put one foot in front of the other, mate.” (Later, after we had circumambulated the Jokhan, killed the flask and were actually talking to Tibetans, God forbid, the Chinese security police rounded us up and gave us a free jeep ride back to our isolated redoubt.)