In 1978, we were investigating into different Eastern religions; we had a yoga practice following the teachings of Patanjali which focused on concentration practices. We had a tendency to analytical thinking in our life, we had seen that Dukkha exists, and we had seen that the cause of it lies in our craving and in our own ignorance; but unfortunately we did not know the 3rd and the 4th Noble Truths.
We had read through many different teachings, and Buddhism was the next on our list. We read that his teachings were compiled in the "Three Baskets of Wisdom", so we went to the library and asked for a book, titled "Three Baskets of Wisdom". But we did not know, at that time, that the "Three Baskets of Wisdom" is all of the Suttas, a full book case of encyclopedia type books, and they did not have a book with that title!
So we kept on searching. One day in our small town in Queensland, Steve was going into town and going to different places there, and he kept seeing a fellow who was not from our town in each of these different places. Finally Steve went up to him and said, "I think I'm meant to meet you."
Steve invited him to our place, he was from Byron Bay, and because we were a bit of a hippy-type and he was a hippy-type, which was kind of rare in that small town of Queensland, we gave him a meal and he stayed overnight. A couple of years later, we were going down to Sydney, on the way to see some friends and we stopped in Byron Bay to meet the fellow for the first time since our first meeting.
He had a book on his shelf called "The Light of Asia". I picked up that book, I started reading it and I could not stop reading it. This was when I first heard about the Four Noble Truths. It was then that I became a Buddhist, instantly.
Then as soon as we got to Sydney, we got the newspaper out, I thought, "I have to find a Buddhist monastery!" Fortunately, two months before a Thai Wat had opened in Sydney, and at that particular time Phra Kantipalo was there giving a teaching upstairs and downstairs was Ilse Ledermann who later became Ayya Khema. She gave us a teaching on Kamma and it all sounded great. We had come to see Dukkha, the cause of it, and then we found the Four Noble Truths. It was wonderful! The Light of Asia, an inspiring, epic poem of the Buddha's life, ignited something in us that we were missing in our concentration practice, and that we had been searching for.