When Silent Rain was first compiled, back in 1993, part of the idea of producing such a varied collection of material – talks, poems, travelogues and artwork – was that it would then provide an easy source for smaller offprints over the years. Things, however, rarely turn out as predicted by foresight and thus, up until now, no smaller booklets had been spawned from it.

This present book, Rain on the Nile, is something of a remedy for that, being both an outcome of that original intention as well as an arena for the offering up of some more recent material – to wit, the travelogue of a journey to Egypt made in December of 2006. In truth, without there having been plans to reprint some of the talks from Silent Rain, the Egyptian diary would never have been written.

The idea to select some talks from the book and to create this smaller reprint was originally that of Venerable Tenzin Chogkyi, an American nun practicing in the Tibetan tradition. She had been the recipient of a bequest from a family member and was of a mind to direct some of it to be used to bring parts of Silent Rain back into circulation, the original stock of books having long ago been exhausted. She had found the book very helpful in her own life and wished it to be accessible to others. She thus approached me, in the autumn of 2006, and floated the idea of such an offprint being sponsored by her. I readily agreed and, during the conversation, it was mentioned that I had plans to travel to Egypt with Luang Por Sumedho that December.