Note: This is one of the little daily moments I record. Mainly I do so for my own private purposes, as I feel any attempt to transfer them for all to see would result in a great dulling of their significance to me and no reasonable benefit to the reader. This is an exception.
I’ve been talking to somebody new here, someone a little older than me (maybe 25 or 30), who works in a company that does creative installations in museums like the Met and the Rubin in New York City. Soft spoken, with the gentle, slightly lilting voice of many of the Western Buddhists I meet, at first I wasn’t especially drawn to him at all. But, today, we walked for about two hours, just around the shrine (as Buddhists do, accumulating merits for each circumambulation), me openly voicing all the complaints I had about Buddhism as a non-believer and talking about the difficulties I’ve had trying to interpret Buddhist philosophy. He gave simple, kind, reasoned answers, each delivered with as soft tilt of the head. His manner was entirely unpatronizing, and his belief and reasoning was sincere.
I later learned he was a second-generation Buddhist, raised in a (thriving!) Buddhist community in Nova Scotia, where a notable Buddhist Rinpoche believed the gateway to Buddhism in the West would be. Surrounded by sincere practice, he’s certainly inherited some of it. It’s been a little dizzying being here, as someone still searching in a land full of people who have each found their thing and are chasing it wildly, often with wide-eyed, joyous abandon or ugly, faux-Sage-like pomp. There are very few people who I connect with in such a way that I feel I can ask them unfiltered questions about their deep beliefs and receive beautiful, balanced, benevolent answers. I hold these people close to my heart. Our conversation may not have been so long, nor too in-depth, but it was complete, round in that miraculous way only spur-of-the-moment conversations can be, where you wind up at the end sore-legged, sated, and better for having journeyed.
My decision to study first classical Buddhist philosophy before attempting practice was fundamentally mistaken and rooted in a very Western-philosophical mindset, I realized. I need some of that real experience. I need to feel a little bit of what he called the “trick-jokes” of a non-dualism that isn’t quite monism either, of cognition undiluted by cognition, to even understand where classical Vedic and Buddhist authors are coming from. Not the Hindu meditation I’ve tried with my Dadi, which she enters into sure that it is correct and ethical and godly, but an open and exploratory course. One I slowly feel out in pinches and whispers. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Besides, I like walking. I like the shrine. It seems sensible on all accounts. Here it is. For me, a little life-giving ritual: a daily walk.
I’ve been talking to somebody new here, someone a little older than me (maybe 25 or 30), who works in a company that does creative installations in museums like the Met and the Rubin in New York City. Soft spoken, with the gentle, slightly lilting voice of many of the Western Buddhists I meet, at first I wasn’t especially drawn to him at all. But, today, we walked for about two hours, just around the shrine (as Buddhists do, accumulating merits for each circumambulation), me openly voicing all the complaints I had about Buddhism as a non-believer and talking about the difficulties I’ve had trying to interpret Buddhist philosophy. He gave simple, kind, reasoned answers, each delivered with as soft tilt of the head. His manner was entirely unpatronizing, and his belief and reasoning was sincere.
I later learned he was a second-generation Buddhist, raised in a (thriving!) Buddhist community in Nova Scotia, where a notable Buddhist Rinpoche believed the gateway to Buddhism in the West would be. Surrounded by sincere practice, he’s certainly inherited some of it. It’s been a little dizzying being here, as someone still searching in a land full of people who have each found their thing and are chasing it wildly, often with wide-eyed, joyous abandon or ugly, faux-Sage-like pomp. There are very few people who I connect with in such a way that I feel I can ask them unfiltered questions about their deep beliefs and receive beautiful, balanced, benevolent answers. I hold these people close to my heart. Our conversation may not have been so long, nor too in-depth, but it was complete, round in that miraculous way only spur-of-the-moment conversations can be, where you wind up at the end sore-legged, sated, and better for having journeyed.
My decision to study first classical Buddhist philosophy before attempting practice was fundamentally mistaken and rooted in a very Western-philosophical mindset, I realized. I need some of that real experience. I need to feel a little bit of what he called the “trick-jokes” of a non-dualism that isn’t quite monism either, of cognition undiluted by cognition, to even understand where classical Vedic and Buddhist authors are coming from. Not the Hindu meditation I’ve tried with my Dadi, which she enters into sure that it is correct and ethical and godly, but an open and exploratory course. One I slowly feel out in pinches and whispers. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Besides, I like walking. I like the shrine. It seems sensible on all accounts. Here it is. For me, a little life-giving ritual: a daily walk.