Dear Friends and Students,

Ever since I was a little girl I was always interested in why I looked the way I did. I wondered how and why the inner being was interwoven with the outer.

As time passed this fascination morphed into a state of sound awareness wherein the dialogue in my mind seemed to speed up and speak aloud in a voice that was not my own. This experience was both intriguing and frightening. As I got older if I found myself in a room with a few people, their manifestation would get larger and their voices would get louder and louder.

These experiences were mysterious and lured me into questioning why was I here on earth, who I was, and in growing up, what was the nature of getting older.

I found I was both fearful of aging and yet very motivated to find answers to these phenomena. When I tried to speak to my mother about it, she said “Leslie, you think too much, ignore it”. This left me feeling flat with not too many options for these lifelong questions.

So in the simplest of ways I became a ‘seeker’ always on the lookout for someone or something that could direct me on a path to understanding. It was when I first was introduced to the bust of a Black Buddha resting high on the wall of my best friend Ilene’s living room that I perceived a being whose presence was ephemeral, with the soft slant of his eyes, the subtle smile of his lips, that I realized I had touched the depth of a being who had no end.

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