A comment on experience

At varying places in conversation with me, I will eventually let slip that I am Buddhist. (I could go off an whole tangent about whether I truly “am” one, or if I only “feel” like I am one, and who or what would make me feel better about saying that I am one, but let’s just pretend that I can just unilaterally say that I am one without qualifying it too much.) I’ve encountered a variety of reactions, but a few strike me as being common.

I like respectful acceptance. People ask me questions about the nature of my practice (i.e. if I was a lay Buddhist, if it was from my family, etc.). People link it up with the things I am passionate about. It’s incredibly affirming.

Then there’s the fact acceptance version. This one tends to be really quiet, like I just let out a conversation killer, or people just read a line in my Facebook profile. People don’t pursue the thread of the conversation where it was, like I just announced I was birthed by process of hatching from an egg. I get the feeling that people just can’t relate to it, so they try to keep a respectful distance by not playing anthropologist, keeping their preconceptions to themselves by not interacting with it as a subject, getting judgmental or indulging any curiosity they may have. Buddhism doesn’t have to be an intensely personal thing for me, but a lot of people like to treat it as if it is, so I play along.

I haven’t quite sussed out the most interesting reaction I ever received, or my own reactions to the reception. This person asked point-blank, “Are you a Buddhist?”

I said, “Yes.”

“I’ve read so many books about Buddhism, I have such a tall stack of them at home. It’s unbelievable.”

Pause. “I’ve read a few. I try to practice.”

This interaction was repeated a second time at later date, in another conversation when he recalled that I was Buddhist.

These reactions always kind of puzzle me, because the only thing Buddhism has ever meant to me (aside from being incredibly precious as an embrace of all experience) is that it means I’ve admitted to myself that I don’t really think I know anything, I don’t think I’m right about anything, and that I’m constantly trying to make the best learning out of the worst times. And that maybe I want to try and be a force of compassion in the world, just a little. It all doesn’t seem so weird to me, but that’s just because I haven’t gotten into the “how”‘s yet, which is where all the real questions bloom. I think what’s most intimidating is that the things that we socially accept as being wholly good and positive are not always so, and that I have done enough of the quiet opposing of it to feel OK with calling myself “Buddhist.”
I can’t help but mentally use the memory of that interaction as something I know what I kinda don’t want to be – an “armchair Buddhist” of sorts who doesn’t apply the teachings and the perspective to themselves. This, of course, is utter bull, since everyone’s always trying their darnedest to get at something they don’t really know about.

I’m currently soaking in what is about my 6th book about practice, and I have about two more that people have given me that are in Vancouver which I haven’t started. I should really ask them to stop getting such books for me, because they only ever encourage more reading and not actual practice, though I know their intentions are true. The books are refreshing, I suppose; but the point is to become the source of one’s own inspiration and to find it in the things that are already in my life, not seek them out in the self-help section. I like to think I’ve done OK.

(This post brought to you by an averted panic attack.)