"A Turning Point", number 156 of 188 from Robert Aitken's book Miniatures of a Zen Master.

Robert Aitken shares with us one of his life path turning point events. During a gathering of "young would-be writers" a reviewer mentioned that Aitken's poetry sounded like Japanese or Chinese verse. He had not considered this before this. From there he found Asataro Miyamori's Haiku: Ancient and Modern and Arthur Waley's Translations from the Chinese.

"With this a train of karma got fired up, and it's still tooting along."

My turning point was when I was convinced by the changes I saw in my friend Richard Ibey, to follow him and encounter EST. This fired up my "train of karma... and it's still tooting along".