It all began at the end of 2009. I was going through a lot at the time but the worst was watching my father’s failing struggle against lung cancer. He was slowly withering away, each day being worse than the day before. And towards the end I just wanted him to die. I just wanted his suffering to stop. I couldn’t enjoy anything anymore – worrying all the time just took the joy out of life.

Although I knew that worrying was pointless, I couldn’t seem to help myself. No matter what I tried—positive thinking, getting busy, accepting the worst, etc.—there was no controlling it. And somehow, I found that curious. Why couldn’t I just stop? There was obviously no point to it – whatever’s going to happen will inevitably happen regardless of how I feel about it, I thought.

So I began to try and figure out how to stop worrying.

And so it happened, that one day when I was discussing this plight with some friends, one of them said something that I believe set in motion something truly remarkable.

“You should try being more in the present moment,” he said, in effect, kick-starting the thing.

I don’t remember how I responded, but I immediately knew that he had said something important. Once I got home that night I went online and looked for more information on “being in the moment.” I soon discovered some Buddhist teachings. It was some YouTube clips of some Australian monk whose dharma talks had been filmed and put up online. I watched almost all of them. I don’t really know why I enjoyed those talks so much; there wasn’t anything special about them. Perhaps I just liked the way the guy talked.

Anyway, this gave me a glimpse of what Buddhism was about, and although this guy had talked briefly—and somewhat vaguely—about this thing called enlightenment, I soon found others who openly discussed it. I learned that enlightenment wasn’t something mythical – it was something real; something that ordinary people like me could attain. It was something that could be
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