Buddhism: A Westerner’s Quest for Meaning

For most of my life, I had been drawn to spirituality in the Christian faith tradition. In the search for deeper meaning, I acquired both undergraduate and graduate degrees relating to theology and spirituality.

It was within my Christian heritage that I was first introduced to Buddhism through an internationally-known Christian meditation teacher. There were times when he quoted from the Dhammapada in his meditation talks.

This source piqued my interest, and from that small, indirect beginning, my interest in Buddhism and Buddhist spirituality has grown over the past few years. Having acquired many books on Buddhism, having participated in three online courses (representing both Theravadan and Mahayanan traditions), and having taken Refuge, I now feel ready to go further in my studies.

This is one reason why I have chosen to develop this website, giving an overview of Buddhism. My purpose is three-fold: To provide a comprehensive and well informed overview of Buddhism, to become a better Buddhist practitioner, as well as to pursue the aspiration to write articles and even a book(s) relating to Buddhism.

I continue to be inspired in how Buddhism communicates its vision of existence through three great images:

Perfect Vision is a vision, first of all, of our actual present state of bondage to conditioned existence as represented by the Wheel of Life. It is also a vision of our potential future state of Enlightenment as represented by the Buddha, or the mandala of Buddhas, or a Pure Land. Finally it is a vision of the path or way leading from the one to the other – a vision, if you like, of the whole future course of evolution (Sangharakshita, The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, revised edition, 2007).

In other words, a way to wisdom, compassion, and freedom from suffering has been made available for all to personally investigate.

And it is toward assisting in this pursuit that this website is being developed.

Alexander Peck

Brisbane, Australia