The Story of Rebirth - a Memoir

 I was born in a castle, yes a castle, Airthrey Castle to be exact. This wonderful building was designed by the Scottish architect, Robert Adam, and constructed in 1791. It is located just outside of the small town of Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, Central Scotland. The castle was used as a maternity hospital during and after World War II before becoming part of Stirling University in 1965.

So here I was born and was brought up in the tiny village of Larbert about eight miles south of what is now the university. I cannot remember the exact year but it was when I was about six years old, I went with my mum, dad and brother in my dad’s car, to the area called The Trossachs. I recall it was a warm Sunday morning when we set off for what is some of the most beautiful and stunning landscapes in the whole of the country. It is also the location of the famous Loch Lomond.

Anyway, we were approaching the area where dad was steering the car around winding roads bordered on both sides with small mountains and ancient woods. I had never witnessed such beautiful sweeping countrysides before. The landscape got even more rugged as dad decided to pull into a lay-by for a five-minute rest. So I stepped out of the car and my senses were overwhelmed by the scent of flowers, of the conifer forest, the fresh, cool scent of Loch Lomond just 100 metres away, the earthy smell of the soil and of course the pine trees.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, after all I was a little boy, but somehow from somewhere I thought this wasn’t the first time. In fact, my eyes closed for about two minutes and then the sounds of the tweets of the little blackbirds, blue tits and the hovering hunter, the kestrel. My mum came over to me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Ian, what’s up?”

I came out of my reverie, my mind being somewhere else, in another era in time . . . where had I been?

So fast forward to the early 70s where I was getting interested in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, and everything else in between. I started reading about Indian history and the British Raj and the Indian subcontinent. And of course, I got ‘addicted’ to Indian curries. Why? There followed my first marriage and the birth of my son in the 80s. I was already a Buddhist by now and my book, Buddhism in Britain, had been published. And so I moved on.

My first marriage came to an end and by the year 2001, I was already married to my second wife. She was aware of my interest in India and related topics and then one day she said, “Ian, why don’t you go to India?” I thought about it for a minute and said, yes, I am going to India. So it was in September 2003 that I found myself on a flight to India where I would spend a couple of days in New Delhi before setting off to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh on the foothills of the Himalayas. There I would hopefully meet with the Dalai Lama and make friends with some of the many Tibetans who’d made this part of India their home.

Well, after two sultry and, I hate to say it, smelly days in New Delhi, I was off to the Indira Gandhi International Airport to catch a flight to Pathankot Airport up in the Punjab. This flight took approximately one hour and forty-five minutes and I must confess it was a very bumpy ride! But we all had a safe flight and landing, and after a long wait to get through the arrivals terminal, I eventually got into a battered-up old taxi. The driver didn’t know much English but nevertheless, I was on my way to my destination: Dharamsala.

One of my overarching memories was how the long and twisting road was so narrow and passing vehicles and swerving to miss on-coming vehicles was, putting it bluntly, very scary. But it was the scenery. How to describe this magnificent northern area of India. Well, I was just awestruck by the scenery, the snowcapped mountains (actually the Himalayan foothills), the abundant forests, the alpine meadows and the small lake.

And then . . . something, something away down in the depths of my being came to the fore. I immediately asked the driver to stop. He turned to me and replied, “Okay just two minutes.” I continued to stare in awe at what I was witnessing and then we pulled over onto a small clifftop lay-by . . .

I got out of the car and stepped over to the edge. There was a slight silent breeze that seemed to grip my consciousness and suddenly I was taken back all those years to that moment near Loch Lomond in the Trossachs. I now know why I had that strange vision as a little boy; I now knew that, yes, I had been here before, had been on the foothills of the Himalayas . . . rebirth, or reincarnation, had suddenly become a definite reality. And this explained why, over many years going back to the 70s, I had this infatuation with India, its culture, religions, the Indian subcontinent.

The driver came over to me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Sir, are you okay?”

I turned to him with a beaming smile, “Yes, oh yes, very much so!”