In my life, I was always looking for the truth.
My dad was a lawyer, a good man with
strongly fixed opinions. My mom was a full
blown schizophrenic, constantly walking
around the house talking to herself and
crying. So, it was like growing up between
a rock and an hallucination. I didn’t
recognize the truth in anything they said.
“Normal” for me was not as it was for
most middle class families. I felt like I was
waiting for someone to tell me what
was going on.
When it was time for college, I didn’t know
what I wanted to study, what I wanted to
become. I wrote a paragraph abut it years
ago:
"At the college interview I couldn’t tell
them what I wanted to be, which may be
why I didn’t get into Harvard…I hadn’t
a clue…I just wanted to find out what
the fuck was going on with having a life
anyway…which no one I encountered
even seemed to consider…like life was
a freight train I was on, going where no
one knew, but I had to get with that
Program, in some way, to be some how
successful at something, while, all the
while, we were all barreling along towards
some unknown destination. It never made
sense to me…”
I wanted to help people….I don’t know why.
My time at college was spent looking…trying
to find out what made sense. I did a lot of
theatre. I also encountered Buddhism, which
seemed to have potential. Strangely, a feeling
would arise from nowhere sometimes that
someone was looking for me. There was a tune
I would listen to that moved me: “How Long”
by John Fahey. How long before I would find
what I was looking for? Would I ever find it?
I did radical theatre for a year after college.
It was social satire at its finest. It did have
an effect on the audience. Some people
walked out….some took the whole cast to
their homes to party. But I realized it wasn’t
going to change anybody’s minds or help
them that much. I though: “Maybe
Buddhism”. I was in a waiting room for a
doctor and overheard two guys talking
about a Tibetan teacher that smoked
cigarettes and drank liquor while he was
giving talks. Something clicked in my mind
and I thought: “That could be my teacher”.
I moved to Boston and went up to Vermont
to meet this man, Chogyam Trungpa,
Rinpoche. When I laid eyes on him, I knew
I had found what I was looking for…the
truth in the form of a man. I also knew on
the spot that what I was going to have to
do wasn’t going to be easy.
To make a long story short, the best word
I could use to describe the next thirty years
is excruciating….excruciating beauty, pain
and effort. Uncompromising clarity. In the
beginning, I didn’t know how long it would
be until I understood the teachings, or if I
ever would. But I had faith that what I had
seen in him was correct and true…so I just
kept going.
At this point, I know I was right. I make no
claims as to any Buddhist “realization.”
Only that because of the path I did stop
drinking and I did stop thinking. “Thinking”
meaning the monkey mind of discursive
thought left home like a bad housemate
I’d lived with my whole life.
Now, my teacher is gone. How long until I
see him again? I’ll have to die and be
reborn and find him again. Given this life,
how hard could it be? One thing I’m sure
of is this life was no accident.
