Rijumati Wallis
I am male. I was born in London in 1965, educated at the City of London School and Cambridge University where I received an MA in Mathematics in 1988. In 1984, aged 19, I undertook my first long trip to Asia, during which I visited India for 3 months. This trip had a decisive influence on the course of my life. I started meditating regularly in 1986 with a worldwide Buddhist Movement called the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. I realised that I was a Buddhist and was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order in 1993, receiving the name Rijumati at my ordination (the name means honest mind). I worked in a Buddhist ethical trading company Windhorse Trading Ltd from 1988 to 2007. During that time I became a director of the company, ran the IT department, worked as a sales director and as general manager. The company was very successful in the 1990s, listed in the Independent Top 100 fastest growing UK companies several years running. It employs some 200 people and trades with countries all over the world. Throughout that period I regularly undertook long Buddhist retreats for up to four months at a time, sometimes in solitude, sometimes living in a monastic context. Over the last 24 years I have studied, practised and taught Buddhism and meditation, largely but not exclusively in the UK. In 2007 I left the company an undertook a journey around the world, a form of pilgrimage, which was the inspiration for this book. I am considering writing two other books, one on Buddhism and Science, another on the connection between the image of the Buddha and western mythology. I currently live in Barcelona where I am working to establish a new Buddhist centre in the city.
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