Geology and Buddhism in East Yorkshire, England.

Welcome to Mike Horne's Web Pages. Perhaps I should introduce myself and explain why these pages are on the World Wide Web?

I live in Hull, East Yorkshire, U.K. and have been interested in Geology and Buddhism for many years. I first got interested in geology in my early teens and still get a thrill when I find a fossil. I was lucky to be able to study it in 6th Form and went to Hull University to do a geology degree. My interest in Buddhism started at University, but I did not practice meditation perhaps because I did not meet any other Buddhist. I regained an interest at the age of 34, attended an evening class, taught by Chris Cook, and then took two correspondence courses. I have settled into the Soto Zen (Serene Reflection Meditation) tradition.

I work at Hull University and became involved in a Staff Training Programme. This coincided with the opportunity to teach geology to a Workers Education Association group in Goole, with my friend Lynden Emery. When he gave up teaching the classes I continued by myself running geology classes for the University of Hull Centre for Lifelong Learning. When Chris Cook stopped his night class, I asked the University if I could start one and they agreed.

Why do I carry on with these web pages? - the simplest answer is that I enjoy it. Writing the course notes and web pages has made me look at the subjects again, try to keep up to date with developments and think carefully about how to pass the information on to others. It also is a good way of backing up my files!

Publishing on the web is also a good way of passing on scientific research to others. It makes your work freely available to others immediately. Also it means that you can write up parts of your work as you do it in short segments (which are more suitable for the web anyway) rather than saving it for a long article. It gets you into the habit of writing things as they make sense to you, rather than putting the writing off - and for many researchers the writing up is the hardest part of the research!

I have tried to ensure that the work on this site is original, in the sense that it I have not directly copied other people's text and have only used other peoples' pictures with their permission. In another sense it is not original - the rocks I study have been there for millions of years and I have assimilated other peoples' ideas about them; and Buddhism is just an expression of something that has existed for a long time.

There are various ways to navigate my web sites - from the menu above from the site map, from my index of geology pages or Buddhism pages, or from the list of my geology classes, or just click away and see what happens. Some of the pages with photographs are on a different servers which have advertising beyond my control.

Best wishes to you all,

Mike.