My first glimpse of the Pure Land occurred, I think, in 1994 whist sat alone on the shoreline at a place called Weston. It is here on the outskirts of Southampton that the mouth of the Itchen River and the Solent meet. On the opposite shore stands the Fawley Oil Refinery. Not only is the Solent one of the busiest waterways in the world, the Port of Southampton is a deep-water harbor that is able to accommodate seafaring vessels of great tonnage, both passenger and industrial.
I had traveled on one of the ferries to France myself several times in the preceding years. Once or twice on holiday and many more times on the pretense of business. In each case I was running away from something. Whenever I got to wherever I was going, I always discovered that what I ran from was Me. Furthermore, my presence there, on the shore and in the ‘here and now’ confirmed also that every time I went – I came back.

Seeing in the distance the hundreds if not thousands of similar souls sailing too and fro ... my thoughts drifted and I began to reminisce.

I was brought up as an only child. My parents divorced when I was 14 and I left home to live alone and ‘on my wits’ when I was 16. This first year on my own may be described as adventurous; the next would be better described as homeless. Thus it was my Karma to have no adult perception of home or family. I married when I was 18, divorced at 28. Married again at 30, divorced again at 40. At this landmark age at which I was previously been given to believe "life begins", I was in fact again, homeless.

Sat there, 1994, alone on the shore at Weston, it was industry that dominated my view, and it was the pollution caused by this industry that disfigured the shore all around me. This waste was corporate, anonymous and shapeless.

The waste jettisoned from the busy passenger ferries and countless pleasure craft was more defined and recognizable as human, both organic and inorganic. Corporeal. I was, in general, disgusted. Disgusted at the view and the foul mess that I sat amidst.

It was then, as I sat there alone on the shore with head in hands and nearly in tears; I saw right there between my feet in the shingle and sand, an industrious ant.
It was with great purpose that it carried off a fragment of I know not what, from I known not where too I know not where. The ant was doing OK ... it belonged here! It was not sat alone with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was small, and it wasn't doing rocket science, but it functioned nevertheless as member of a much larger, unseen community, and it had a job to do.

At that instant I understood that everything was just the way it was, that I should stop complaining and looking down and, like the ant, just get on with it.

In the retelling of this time and my adventures to date it is probable that I have, by the exclusion of detail, glamorized. In so doing I may have also implied some certainty in personal understanding. This is also not so and at the time the fact was the opposite. I was certain then only that I did not know.

In this safe certainty, if only as a human, sat head in hands on the shore … I belonged; I had a place and this was it, and for me, life in Amida's Light began.

The waste jettisoned from the busy passenger ferries and countless pleasure craft was more defined and recognizable as human, both organic and inorganic. Corporeal. I was, in general, disgusted. Disgusted at the view and the foul mess that I sat amidst.

It was then, as I sat there alone on the shore with head in hands and nearly in tears; I saw right there between my feet in the shingle and sand, an industrious ant.
It was with great purpose that it carried off a fragment of I know not what, from I known not where too I know not where. The ant was doing OK ... it belonged here! It was not sat alone with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was small, and it wasn't doing rocket science, but it functioned nevertheless as member of a much larger, unseen community, and it had a job to do.

At that instant I understood that everything was just the way it was, that I should stop complaining and looking down and, like the ant, just get on with it.

In the retelling of this time and my adventures to date it is probable that I have, by the exclusion of detail, glamorized. In so doing I may have also implied some certainty in personal understanding. This is also not so and at the time the fact was the opposite. I was certain then only that I did not know.

In this safe certainty, if only as a human, sat head in hands on the shore … I belonged; I had a place and this was it, and for me, life in Amida's Light began.

Gary Robinson