I came to Buddhism - or rather Buddhism came to me, on a cold bathroom floor in a hotel in Hong Kong...

I'd never been religious - or should I say I've never been aChristian - my family was Lutheran - and brought me up as a Lutheran- I'm from South Carolina and my 4 brothers and I were forced to go to c church each and every Sunday whether we wanted to or not.

So after I left home I never looked at the inside of another church again thankfully - it wasn't for me - it never had been.

I went into the Navy, and while stationed in Iceland met a girl whom I married. Like so many, I was too young and silly to get married -but you can't tell a bone-headed young guy anything - especially a bone-headed Sailor for crying out loud. It wasn't meant to be a marriage but we tried to make it that way. My new bride was of the Catholic variety - and didn't seem to mind that she'd married an Atheist (Boy did her parents though!!! :-)

It didn't take long to come to understand that the marriage wasn't right - it was wrong from the start and got worse and worse - lots of fighting and we both knew it would end. My life wasn't very happy those days - I knew suffering well. Later after we both got out of the Navy we were in living/working in Australia - and finally had put in the paper work for a divorce. Having kids - it was very difficult indeed for everyone - we all suffered.

We took one last vacation together - I don't know exactly WHY we'd do this when we were only weeks away from a divorce - but we did....we went to Hong Kong because it wasn't so far away.  It was NOT a happy vacation - more fighting, more anger....

We fought so much during that 3-4 day Hong Kong vacation that I found myself getting away from the sadness and my soon-to-be-ex-wife- and where else to get away in Hong Kong but down in the streets.

So many many many people in Hong Kong - I'd never seen so many people in my LIFE! They were EVERYWHERE! There was NO WAY to getaway from all those people! So I simply would stand in front of my hotel door and jump into the moving walking crowd - like a man jumping into a river. And that river of people would sweep me away -up one street, down another, across roads, up sidewalks, down sidewalks - SO MANY PEOPLE!!! It was both humorous and at the same time really got me thinking - where did all of these people come from? Where are they GOING!? :-) The funniest part of the Hong Kong streets was that *I* was not going anywhere - I was simply WALKING WITH THEM - if anything I was escaping the fighting that would happen back up in the hotel room.

I couldn't take it anymore - all the people - and that night I returned to the hotel room - and the bickering began soon after. I WAS TRAPPED - an angry wife in a small hotel room - or a crowd of a billion people in the streets below!! ARRRGHHH! But I found a place to hide from it all - the BATH ROOM - a man's hideaway from the troubles of the world.

And on the way into that bathroom I grabbed a book to read - a book that was already in the hotel room - there beside the TV - a small red book - THE TEACHINGS OF THE BUDDHA.

I went into that hotel bathroom escaping my troubles, with a full pack of smokes and a book about The Buddha - and I came out of that bathroom many hours later with blacker lungs and a Buddhist!!

WOW! I had thought that Buddhists were "foreigners" that worshiped a statue of a bald fat dude - Oh how wrong I was! That book HIT ME man - I mean it HIT ME - this book wasn't about falling to your knees to worship anyone or anything - it wasn't about pits of Hell, it wasn't about "do this" and "don't do that" - it was all common sense - but at the same time it was WONDERFUL! It was if I had read the book before - it was everything I'd believed in for so long! It was ME!! The thousands of people in the street below me - the walking among them, the fighting, the book - it was all very conducive to my learning of Buddhism that night, I believe now, because I was a trapped man - everywhere around me were strangers, fighting, sadness - and here I was a tiny speck of a human among millions - surrounded by suffering and anger - on a cold hard bathroom floor....

That was about 5 years ago - I've since remarried, and in that 5 years have studied many forms of Buddhism and met many Buddhists -about a year or two ago - I decided I AM a Buddhist - not to put a label on me - but by golly I feel I belong a Buddhist - it's for me. But as one of my favorite sayings goes - "Don't' be a Buddhist - be a BUDDHA!!" :-)

I have attended several temples in my area (Dallas) - one was PureLand, the other was more generic - and I have plans to visit a Zen temple soon. One of the greatest messages of the Dhamma to me is the message of compassion - and it really is truly becoming more and more a part of me to practice compassion and love for those around me. It's SO important. As His Holiness The Dalai Lama says - "My religion is kindness".