I have to live with myself, and so
I want to be fit for myself to know;
I want to be able, as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye

(Edgar Guest : Myself)

My earliest memories in this life go back to mid-Wales in the 1940's: German prisoners of war being marched past our country cottage; jack-frost patterns on the window during the arctic winter of 1947; my mother giving tea and food to tramps at the door - probably those evading the call-up to fight against the Nazis. I remember one who didn't seem to be a tramp at all, though he was 'a man of the road' - he was clean and sweet-smelling and had twinkling eyes and wore a faded old green velvet suit. Then there was the boredom of being at school, and feeling an outsider because all thirty other boys and girls at our village school spoke Welsh in the playground whilst I spoke only English. My mother told me that my father had died before I was born. He had been a teacher, a piano player. He was a Catholic, already married and with children, though he was separated from his wife when he and my mother met. I was the product of a brief and passionate affair between this man and my mother, but he had died - of a heart attack whilst playing cricket with his students - before I was born. It was quite a stigma to be an unmarried mother in those days. Anyway, I was glad to be my mother's son. She married the man who was to become my step-father when I was two years old and I got on well with him, soon regarding him as my 'real' father.

In 1949 we moved from Wales to my step-father's mother's house in West Ewell, near Epsom in Surrey, south of London. There were eleven of us in that three-bedroom suburban house, and I detested it - I felt trapped after having experienced the freedom of the Welsh countryside and living in a house which, though small, had been occupied only by my mother, step-father, half-sister, my aunt Esther and myself.       

Two years after moving to suburbia I was sent to boarding school - in Caterham. Though I was very shy at first, I did well in my studies and soon moved to near the top of the class. I wasn't so good at sports - I didn't take to ball games at all. Perhaps this had something to do with my father dying whilst playing cricket. But I did take to cross-country running and got into the school team. I enjoyed swimming - we had a swimming pool at school - and going for long walks. I did well at art and at woodwork, and in fact at more or less everything except Latin, which I found boring until I discovered I could translate poems - I began with some by Catullus - and from then on I did reasonably well. I was eventually voted Senior Prefect (or head boy), rather to my surprise. Being rather shy by nature, I didn't start a sexual relationship with a girl until my early twenties, though I had had a 'gay' relationship with a boy of my own age at school. I really can't claim there was anything spiritual in any of my sexual relationships - it was simply an enjoyment of poor old sex - which tends to be blamed for so many things nowadays.       

I went to Cambridge University to study Sciences but soon discovered I had made (for me) a very unsuitable choice. I began to feel very depressed and even suicidal as the University authorities would not let me change my course of studies. I decided to stay on at Trinity College and study whatever I wanted. I began by reading The Lord of the Rings, by Tolkein, and went on to become a bookworm. I read so many books - everything from Beowulf and Chaucer to Freud, Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir. I read poetry, pored over art books, went to films, listened to lots of classical music recitals, and generally educated myself.      

 I left University after the first year, and spent five months in Italy, returning to the UK to study Architecture. Whilst a student, I fell in love and got married. It was a big mistake. We had a child - a boy - whom I loved, but my wife and I got more and more out of communication. Perhaps it was my fault as much as hers, but there was no denying we were in difficulties.

In 1970 I qualified for a Diploma in Architecture and started working professionally. By this time my marriage was on the rocks. I felt I had no choice but to leave and so I did, making it clear that I would give my wife whatever support she needed. She never asked me for anything, but kept the child more and more to herself. That caused me a lot of grief.

I soon fell in love again, and began sharing a flat with my 'second wife' as I call her, though we were never officially married. Everything was OK at first. We were living in London, and eventually settled in Highgate, near Hampstead Heath. I had a well-paid job in Architecture, but I wasn't happy. I was continually troubled by the idea that nothing could last, and it seemed to me that the more I enjoyed something, the more afraid I became of losing it. It was an existential problem, you might say. I began to think of the interest I had had in my teens in yoga and meditation, and began searching for a Meditation Guru - there were quite a lot of them about in the heady flower-power days of the 60's and early 70's.

Then I met the FWBO and Sangharakshita, was deeply impressed by him and plunged into the study and practice of the Buddha-dharma. Gisela, my second wife, began to become rather apprehensive as my emotional engagement began to shift from her to Buddhism and the FWBO. In 1972 I was ordained by Sangharakshita and given the name Ashvajit - the Conqueror of the horse of distractedness.

You are welcome to contact me by email

This page was updated on Wednesday 7 March 2007