Ending of Dukkha, in a simple statement. To end my own Dukkha. Getting into Buddhism in particular was to end Dukkha. Getting into meditation originally, the main cause was that I was losing hair. I was going bald. I was 22 years old, Rosemary and I started living together, and she said, "You're eating terrible." I was eating junk food, I was eating what was called TV dinners in America. You buy it in the store, stick it in the oven, pull it out and eat it. I was eating really crummy food, and I was going bald.
Rosemary wasn't too much in favor of this. We were in the library and she found a book on how to live to be 100. How to be healthy, strong, fit - stop sugar and salt. Ok, I stopped sugar and salt, and my hair grew back. Salt in particular is the number one enemy for your hair, in case you did not know. So we started living healthier with our diet. Then she found a yoga book and started living healthier with her body.
I didn't want any religion, no thanks. Yoga, ok, I could see, physical exercise, I was a professional swimming coach, these exercises made sense. Stretch the body, be more flexible. So I started using them, I taught my swimmers, I saw results, my swimmers were able to swim faster and so on. So that was good, the physical stuff was pretty good.
Now in the back of the yoga book, there was a little meditation. After a while we looked at the back of the book and sat down in meditation, and I liked it. I didn't just like it, I loved it. The very first sit, it was like being at home. It was like, "I've done this before." According to Buddhism, yes, I've done lots of this before. It felt so comfortable, I felt so much at home, I became addicted to it. I was hooked. From then on we kept the practice going, on and on. So that was how we got into meditation and into Buddhism, in particular, was because the Yoga practice was not good enough, it didn't have enough tools. When we hit some big Dukkha in our life, the Yoga practice didn't help, we were searching for something more, something better, we found Buddhism and we were thrilled.