A Tibetan Buddhist Monk
Leads Me to Master

In April 1999, while I was studying at Wollongong University on the southeast coast of Australia, I met a sister-initiate sitting behind a small table near the school’s duck pond on market day. On the table was a display of Master’s books and pamphlets that immediately grabbed my attention due to the words “Immediate Enlightenment” printed on their covers.

Since my parents had introduced me to meditation at the age of twelve, I was familiar with spiritual practice, but during that time I was still living the university party life, although sparks of spirituality always remained burning within me. After asking the sister some questions about the Quan Yin Method I realized that two-and-a-half hours of meditation a day would not leave me much time to party but I nonetheless took a sample booklet as I was still very curious. I later read the booklet and thoroughly agreed with everything Master said, but knew I was not ready for such a method. However, the spiritual embers within were beginning to burn more strongly!

During the course of the next year I began meditating daily using another method and read numerous spiritual books. Then one day I went to a local beach to read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, a master of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and learned that to become fully enlightened one needed a living Master. As I had never read this before, I was surprised. Then, while sitting on the grass overlooking the beautiful beach with my book in hand, I prayed sincerely to Padmasambhava, founder of the Nyingma lineage, to lead me to the highest Master and quickest method for reaching full awakening enlightenment because my longing to be enlightened had grown strong when the party scene and other things that entertained me became boring. Even my longtime surfing hobby failed to fulfill me anymore.

The next morning I awoke early and my attention was drawn to a bright light shining forth from the chest of drawers in my bedroom. I then opened the top drawer, which was full of my university books, and found the source of the light to be Master’s sample booklet, which I had been given a year or two earlier by the sister-initiate and had forgotten about. Next I was reminded of my prayer the day before, called the local contact person and learned the Convenient Method.

About six months afterwards another amazing miracle occurred around the time I learned that a Quan Yin messenger was coming to Australia to conduct an initiation. The contact person informed me of this fact and I registered to be initiated although many doubts and hindrances still remained in my mind. Then two weeks later I experienced intense mental anguish when I was caught in the middle of a devastating family feud, fell to my knees, and prayed deeply for Master to send the messenger quickly as I longed for initiation and felt ready. One minute later the phone rang and it was the contact person informing me of the date and time of my initiation!

Thus, I thank Master for compassionately guiding my complex mind on this path of the highest wisdom through the wise words of a Tibetan monk.