The Buddha in Our Bellies

A mysterious ailment rips through young Keith's guts, while his relations with family and the world are fraying. His only hope for healing lies in the least expected, most vulnerable place. Yoshiko grows up determined to work for peace beyond her remote mountainside village and move past her family trauma of Stalin's forced labour camps and post-war starvation.

A third character enters these tales, paralleling and reflecting Keith and Yoshiko's stories. Twenty-five centuries ago, Siddhartha wandered the highways and forests of north-east India. He became the Buddha and his experience reverberates today. The Buddha in Our Bellies speculates on his childhood, his suffering, departure from home, fall, salvation, and awakening. His relationship with three remarkable women is told - his wife whom he abandoned, the milk-maid who saved him, and a grief torn widow who became his friend.

The Buddha in Our Bellies spans continents and centuries in stories of identity and belonging - where do we fit? Yoshiko's memoirs of struggle, hope, and self-reliance intertwine with Keith's journeys from pain to purpose, Buddhist tales, and poetry.

"To read Keith Robinson is to go on a journey. He sets you down on a river of in-between spaces, of knowing and not knowing, belonging and not belonging, of illness and health, and keeps you flowing along a current of evocative prose. Sometimes contemplative, sometimes turbulent and harrowing, this memoir is rich and full, and will carry you all the way to a great wide sea." - Traci Skuce, writing coach, The Writer's Journey; author of Hunger Moon

"The Buddha in Our Bellies is a candid observation of what it means to be human. With endearing sensitivity and wit it describes falling prey to a destructive ailment and honing the spiritual resilience to tame the beast." - Garry Hoffart, educator

"I feel this story. The Buddha in Our Bellies touches places in me that I recognize but haven't explored. This is the story I want to walk with for mys