It's true that Eastern philosophy and religion were not unknown to me as a child, since my father has explored much in that area, and written books more or less in that area, too.

Another part of the rejection I mention was the realisation that Buddhism quite simply ignores or dismisses a whole hemisphere of human experience that finds expression in and is enshrined by the mystery religions.

Zen, on the other hand, is not so dogmatically sterile, though there are certainly traces and more than traces of this austerity. However, with Zen we have not only the void, but the fertile void. The ink lines in a sumi-e painting show this fertility of the void ever ready to brim over into existence.

I think the seventies caught the last red rays of the dying sun of this innocence, but were already a little cold and drab.

I went for a walk in the rain. Recently, whenever it rains, I feel like I want to go for a walk.

If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms.

I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me.