So for those that are reading this for the first time, a brief catch up. This is going to be about my own personal experiences with Buddhism, for those a little unsure about Buddhism I've already written 2 brief primers, one about the history of the man known as the Buddha (here) and another about the core Buddhist teachings (here).
As I have said in the previous dairies, there is plenty more about Buddhism and the Buddha that I'm not covering and I encourage those interested to look up authors like Pema Chodron, The Dali Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh among many others.
To talk about Buddhism and me, one should start at the begining and that begining stretches quites some time back. To start with, as comments I've made previously would suggest I hail from Missouri, specifically St Louis. Why is this important? Because Missouri (and St Louis especially) is a often time paradoxical mix of liberal and conservative and in many ways my family examplifies that.
I grew up in a very Roman Catholic house and more over I grew up both devout and a believer. Every Sunday we'd go to mass and even young I, 9 times out of 10 really wanted to go. Looking back now, I think it's because I've always been mostly an idealist, someone that sees the world could be a better place and doesn't understand why it's not. So there is 13 year old me, newly confirmed convinced that Roman Catholicism is all that's right with the world and is the answer for the world. And like any good Christian family my family sent me to a Christian high school, actually a really prestigous one for the area; and that's where one could say it all went wrong or right.
I am perhaps a natural scienctist, even in grade school "why does it do that?", "how does it do that?" were some of my favorite questions; I can say with no shame that Albert Einstien was a hero to me and I just knew that I wanted to become a scienctist. So it was envitable I suppose that I turned that questioning nature to my faith; to be fair I had thought I had already questioned my faith and had thought that I would always be Roman Catholic.
That said, it's not like I one day woke up and said "I'm not Roman Catholic I'm Buddhist"; instead over the course of the next three years I would slowly question my faith till I could no longer comfortably call myself a Catholic.
So how did I start to question my faith? In small ways, like why is it that mass is necessairy? How is that people can profess tolerance and yet then be so blind to thier prejudgices? Why can't people reguardless of sexual orientation be treated as people? Why is it that only certain authors were 'allowed' into the bible and why is that so much of the church's offical teachings come not from Jesus but from his followers?
And there were many more. At first it was mostly an exercise in my curosity, in indulging my almost insatisible need to know. And thus my first year of high school was mostly a continuation of grade school; sure there were the normal growing pains of moving onward but my faith was intact and not even scratched.
The tipping point really came sophmore year, which marked the start of what would be a strong contender to 'worst 2 consecutive years of my life'. The year started bad with me getting into more and more discussion and outright discession with my religion teachers as I accepted less and less of Church doctrine. Ranging from rejecting the 7 arguements that god created the universe (for those unfamilair with them they are arguements that only god could have created this reality and arguements used are things like God as the watchmaker, only humans are truely intelligent and so on), to rejecting the window dressing that the Church has put on it's more 'colorful' years (events like the Spanish Inquisition) and even rejecting what I saw as an intolerant social agenda.
I'm not going to rehash those arguements, or even go into more detail; some what because it's in the past and that is where it should stay and some what because I'm not sure how well those wounds have healed and I have no desire to find out.
Compounding matters, my cousin who was going to turn three years old died early Novemember of a rare complication or a rare cancer and really I for the first time in my life found no comfort in my faith. In fact all that my faith had to offer were pithy sayings about 'God's will'; well me being me I didn't and couldn't just accept that. Perhaps it would have been better if I could have, but I didn't and the events after my cousins death completely destroyed my faith. I just couldn't admit it at the time.
In the interests of brevity and some privacy I'm going to gloss over a couple of other things that played a part as well. I will just simply saying that at the same time all this was happening I was dealing with a rare condition myself involving my knees that forced me to not only abandon any sports but to be careful even doing such basic things as walking.
And so there started junior year and there I was dealing with so much and having lost not only my faith but a substancial part of my personal identity.
To say I reacted badly is an understatement and I got involved with pot, my sometime probelm with authority blossomed into a full time probelm and I did a number of things that I wish I hadn't.
I'm not going to explain more about my junior year other then to say that I was lost and I didn't know it or even really care.
Senior year really saved me though, and it was all because of chance. As I was attending a Catholic school we had to take 4 years of religion but the last year were electives and I just happened to take World's Religion as one of them. The class really opened my eyes and I ended up turning the class into my unoffical search for a religion I could beleive in.
I looked at several but the only one that appealed to me was Buddhism, with it's emphasis on believing only what you experience and it's emphasis on the truth and not dogma(now I later found out that's not always true per say that each sect is different and some are more dogmatic then others), with it's belief that enlightenment depends on you not anyone else, and with it's relavtively few core beliefs.At the time finding these things out were a blessing. It was like finding something out that I had already instinctively knew was true I just didn't know how to say it.
And so I began praticing (probably badly at the time) though at first it was hard. There was so much I was angry, bitter and even sorrowful about and there were (and even are) some things I find hard to forgive.
But I've stuck with it and continued my practices and over alot of time I got alot better. So much so that even while I write this, while it's painful to an extent I do not suffer. I can look back on those years and see they largely formed who I am and provided the tools and strength for me to overcome a deep almost sucidial depression and to continue on.
I am not perfect, I'm not even close. I still don't always think before I speak, I still don't take well with authority and I still have my temper to watch. I still have an averision to talking about my beliefs, let alone practicing mediation among others. But I'm working on it.
So that's how I found Buddhism and what I feel best explains why I so like it.
Buddhism isn't about some higher power that is going to save you, it's about saving yourself. It's about being able to accept that sometimes, even often times, you will hurt but that we don't have to let that hurt become suffering. To me it's about finding the courage to be awake, to be aware and realize that if we want to be better then we were when we woke up then we need to apply constant effort and be constantly watching our habits, actions and words. It's about being able to see that we are all human and frail and failable and that we should lift each other up not beat each other down.
I don't know what the future holds, but I don't worry about that because I know that as I have seen myself though past events with the help of Buddhism so too will I deal with the future when it happens.
That's me and Buddhism, thank you for reading