Even before I held my high school diploma in my hands, I went in search of the place “Somewhere.” Graduation parties, conventions, training courses didn’t matter to me. After all, as a 13-year-old, I had already taken on every job in order to be able to hike around Jamaica six years later. I searched and searched. In the Australian bush, underwater in the Great Barrier Reef, between tigers (one actually crossed my path in the jungle of Thailand) and elephants. On steamers in Laos – in 1996 there was hardly any infrastructure there – and between temples in Myanmar.

Memory from Myanmar as a 21-year-old: I am sitting in a cave. Around me are Buddha statues that glow dark golden in the light of the oil lamps. The cave dweller, a Buddhist nun, invites me to stay. Her advice for me: to get a visa and spend a year with her in this cave, deeply penetrating Buddhism, the teaching of suffering and the end of suffering. I feel my whole body wanting it. I tremble. Deep inside I know: That, exactly that, is what I want! I lack the courage. A few days later, I leave.

Obviously, life has other plans. On my own houseboat in Holland, I throw myself into it. Into life. And almost don’t come out again. Many people I had to deal with during this time are already dead. It was too much of this way of life, which can only be endured with numbing.
Working with the homeless and drug addicts during my social pedagogy studies fulfills me on the one hand, but is also unbearable on the other. Good thing I have the books on Buddhism. After two years, I go back to Asia.