About Me
Ondy’s Story
The past seems, on reflection, to be about navigating a series of stepping stones across a river whose other side is hidden in mist. As we step out, the stone behind us disappears. One has to move forward, and the beginning is somewhere we are no more able to return to.
We can look back, but even then, the scene is hazy. That life is a journey is a common enough metaphor, but it seems one that is driven by necessity rather than the wish to get anywhere.
This is because we don’t have a map or a destination in mind but merely the experience of being alive and having to get on with it — choices we don’t necessarily have the tools to make decisions about.
The journey
Stepping stones became rocks beneath her feet.
I have had varied experience in life and can offer up some little wisdom and advice like anyone whose life spans seven decades, but the wisdom that has stabilised the slippery stones of my growing-up years now feel like rocks beneath my feet.
There is a map and a destination. I am now landscaping as opposed to tolerating weeds, you might say.
In 1980, at the appropriate adult age of 29, I landed on a rock that changed the course of my journey. In that year, just leaving behind the assassination of John Lennon and a haphazard career in teaching, I sold my house, gave up my job and moved into a community of Buddhists to be near a Tibetan Lama I had fallen in love with.
Self-discovery
A different kind of love.
This asexual exotic monastic appeared to me to be unlike any other human being I had ever met. It wasn’t a romantic kind of love although it delivered as many blows to my ego as many a marriage.
Yet these smacks and kicks and sound bashing and beating of an image I had spent a lifetime creating, paradoxically left me wanting more, and I’m no masochist.
After a session of meditation and teachings about the nature of our minds, I felt the ecstasy time and time again of self-discovery that I can only liken to giving birth after a tough labour.
Continuing practice
Bringing profound wisdom into everyday life.
This was the beginning of my spiritual quest, that continues to this day. I lived in that community, studying with great Lamas and learning to live Buddhism “off the cushion” before returning to a life where I could integrate what I had learned into “normal society.”
My job soon became clear. Take the esoteric exoticism out of what I had experienced and bring it into the marketplace, where everyone could benefit from the profound wisdom and compassion contained within Buddhist teachings.