This is the strange thing about existing in time. As [Philip] Larkin puts it, "truly, though our element is time, we are not used to the strange perspectives open at each moment of our lives" - something like that.

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.

Some Buddhists, however, never seem to get past the void, and I suppose I view this as a kind of Buddhist 'Old Testament' that I don't especially like.

[Someone] said that what I described as the Buddhist voice - the life-denying voice of censure and guilt - sounded to him very much like a Catholic voice. This is, indeed, a mystery, and it intrigues me, too.

The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world.

I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.

I have a bit of a struggle with some aspects of or forms of Buddhism, but Zen I find to be mainly congenial.