By Kate Fleming

I met Andrew Cohen in 1986, in Devon, England. Within days of beginning to attend what Andrew was then calling satsang, I was immersed, dissolved, and overwhelmed by a depth of living realization and a magnitude and singularity of Love that I had never dreamed was possible. It was the beginning of the most important relationship of my life, a relationship that I was both utterly unprepared for and had sought for with all my heart for most of my conscious existence. But to backtrack…

At the time I met Andrew I was deeply involved with the Buddhist/Vipassana community and had been since I was 19, when I did my first 10-day retreat at the Insight Meditation center in Barre, Massachusetts. It was there that I first fell deeply in love with the teachings of the Buddha, and later met Christopher Titmus with whom I developed a mentor/student relationship and friendship. It was he who encouraged me to deepen my practice by going to Wales for his annual month-long summer silent retreat; which I did the summer I turned 21. Afterward, he encouraged me strongly to go to India for his winter retreat in Bodh Gaya, with the goal of perhaps going afterward to Thailand to ordain, as he had many years before. Read the rest of this entry »