Blue Jean Buddha

Voices of Young Buddhists

Sumi Loundon Kim, Sumi Loundon Kim

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780861718009
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filosofía oriental

In an age when the Dalai Lama's image has been used to sell computers, rock stars have used tantra to enhance their image, and for many, Nirvana calls to mind a a favorite band, what does Buddhism mean to twenty-somethings? Blue Jean Buddha offers real stories about young Buddhists in their own words that affirm and inform the young adult Buddhist experience. This one-of-a-kind book is about the experiences of young people in America-from their late teens to early thirties-who have embraced Buddhism. Thirty-three first-person narratives reflect on a broad range of life-stories, lessons, and livelihood issues, such as growing up in a Zen center, struggling with relationships, caring for the dying, and using marathon running as meditation. Throughout, up-and-coming author Sumi Loundon provides an illuminating context for the tremendous variety of experiences shared in the book.Blue Jean Buddha was named a finalist in the 2002 Independent Publisher Book Awards (Multicultural Non-Fiction - Young Adult) as well in NAPRA's Nautilus Awards, in the Personal Journey/Memoir/Biography category.

INTRODUCTION

“I did a lot of drugs before I was Buddhist.”

“Well, I did a lot of drugs because I was Buddhist.”

“Was asking my girlfriend to get an abortion un-Buddhist?”

“I had a vision of the goddess Tara.

Was she real or was it just me projecting something?”

THESE WERE THE QUESTIONS that a few Buddhist friends and I discussed in a series of evening gatherings aimed at bringing dharma into our daily lives. Though many of our debates remained unresolved, we felt affirmed that creating a life around the Buddha’s profound teachings gives rise to some critical and complex issues. What is the balance of medication and meditation for treating depression? Is the academic study of Buddhism an intellectual distraction or a complement to practice? Should one search for a Buddhist partner? Is the impetus to become a celibate monastic stemming from fear of intimate relationships or is it from a true desire for liberation? How should we interpret the five precepts: Is alcohol completely forbidden or is mindful drinking acceptable if one doesn’t lose control? How can Buddhism be integrated into athletics, art, city life, and other religions? This section explores some of the questions that young Buddhists ask as their path in the dharma unfolds.

THE PERFECT BUDDHIST BOYFRIEND

Lillian Guild

“ASSHOLE!”

I screamed it with the full force of my being, slamming the door behind him as he walked silently out of my study. “Oh, God, did I really just say that?” I thought. The walls seemed to reverberate with the word, pushing me into a little ball. I curled up and began sobbing. How had I gone from being so in love with this man to screaming at him? I hated who I was becoming in this relationship, and I resented him for it. Memories flooded back of standing in front of my father as a little girl, of me feeling worthless, paralyzed, unable to defend myself as he screamed Asshole! and Bitch! at me for some little thing or another. I began crying so deeply that my throat locked in pain.

Where was my dignity? What a disaster this relationship was. This wasn’t how I imagined it, having a Buddhist boyfriend; this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

When I was in college, there was a debate in the religious community about whether one needed to date someone of the same faith in order to have a deep, meaningful relationship. At the time, I dismissed the whole idea. After all, wasn’t love supposed to transcend identity? My boyfriend was an atheist, and I saw him as more compassionate than some of my Christian friends who just talked about ethics all the time. But I often felt shy and self-conscious around him when it came to my Buddhist practice. At an early point in the relationship, I tested him by doing some morning prayers in Tibetan, lighting incense and candles, and quietly meditating while he sat in my worn recliner watching. As I was going down for a bow, I caught his smirk out of the corner of my eye. He tried to hide his amusement and disregard for my morning ritual, but it was too late. From that morning on, I rarely prayed in front of him. He was still in college when I graduated, and though we made promises to stay together, it quickly dissolved when I met Jasper, a muscular and handsome Buddhist who worked at the same nonprofit organization in Santa Fe as me.

Wasn’t love supposed to transcend identity?

Jasper became my first Buddhist boyfriend, and wow, did sparks fly! We meditated and chanted together, did yoga, and talked long into the night about dharma. It was like breathing pure oxygen. I felt myself growing as a practitioner. I felt supported and encouraged by him. I even felt our sex life was better because we liked to experiment with yogic energy circulation. We also brought a mindfulness to our relationship that made our time together very deep, very bonding. I began to ally myself with the other side of the religious-partner debate, believing that it was indeed essential to have a partner of the same faith.

About a year into the relationship, an older friend of mine, Donna, surprised me by commenting on how wonderful it must be to have a Buddhist relationship. Given how bad the relationship with her boyfriend was I could see why she’d think someone Buddhist might be better, but I still wondered why. Oh, she mused, you’re so calm and peaceful from all the meditation, you try to be wise and compassionate, you don’t focus heavily on yourself because you don’t think the self exists, you have control of your emotions.

So that’s how Jasper and I looked on the outside? But just because we aspire to understand no-self, to meditate, to be compassionate, doesn’t mean that we were or we do. If we were all those things, we’d be buddhas already! But Donna’s reasoning made some sense: having both been dharma bums for so many years, Jasper and I knew how to appear Buddhist. The right clothes were from dharma closets (free clothes left by wealthier retreatants), so they were just slightly shabby but not slouchy. The right hair was long and looked inexpensive. The right expression was serene or friendly. The right voice was soft and pleasing. The right speech never included anything negative, even if it needed to be expressed. The right sitting was on the cushion (definitely not a chair!), and retreats were mandatory. The right learning was to read the latest books, have a subscription to Shambhala Sun and Tricycle. The right worship was to have a nice altar, mumble prayers, and have some mala around the neck or wrist. And, the right partner was a meditating Buddhist. The problem was, I think we began to believe that these outward modes actually expressed some inner truth. In reality, many wounds festered. Our frustrations got hotter and hotter until that day, just a few months before we broke up, I screamed what previously had been unscreamable: “Asshole!”

I told Donna not to fool herself. Our relationship was just as violent, perhaps more so, than others I had seen. There was never any physical abuse, but we were constantly violating the respect and love we supposedly had for each other. Ironically, one of the biggest fights we had had to do with meditation practice. Jasper practiced a form of meditation that centered on cultivating compassion every morning and sometimes into the late evening. I’m not much of a meditator myself, but I did try to practice mindfulness of body, speech, and mind in everything I did. He needled me for not being able to sit on the cushion. I made fun of him for not bringing practice into his everyday life, for spending so many hours meditating. I preferred to wake up, check email, have a cup of tea, and listen to the latest news on NPR. He liked to wake up, do an hour of yoga, and then another hour or two of meditation. Because of our differences, we decided to keep separate rooms, which worked well until that one morning.

Just because we aspire to understand no-self doesn’t mean we do.

I had forgotten to get a notebook from his room the night before. He was doing the compassion meditation on a cushion as I entered the room as quietly as I could. Just as I was leaving, he exploded.

“Why are you disturbing my meditation when I’ve asked you so many times not to come into my room when I’m practicing?” he demanded.

I tried to apologize but in fact I felt stung. “I just needed to get my notebook. I’m sorry. I know you don’t like it when I disrupt your meditation.” He looked very angry and repeated himself.

I began getting pissed off and defensive. I made a nasty face and said, “Look at you, you say you’re practicing compassion, but in the middle of it you treat me like dirt. Where is your compassion when it’s needed the most?”

He was quiet. I walked out and closed the door. The whole day I felt tense and angry. When I got home later, we tried to patch things up but got into a huge fight instead. It ended by my screaming the last thing I ever wanted to hear myself sincerely call someone.

We began to believe that these outward modes actually expressed some inner truth.

Granted, we argued about different things than your typical couple might, but the anger, fear, and grief were just as potent as with any couple. Power struggles, territoriality concerns, abandonment wounds, control issues—all the things that arise from a bad childhood—appeared within two months, just after our “honeymoon period” was ending. Even though we both strove for insight, peacefulness, and compassion, our practice manifested itself selectively. If anything, our practice might have forced our issues to the surface more dramatically and much earlier than in a conventional relationship because we were so intensely aware of every flicker of negative emotion. We were brave enough to confront the issue, knowing that an argument about who moved the plant to the other window was really a power struggle caused by not enough recognition as children. But even with our courage to be honest, with hours dedicated to cultivating communication skills, to try couples’ therapy, to admit when we were wrong, to try to be caring—toward the end, this Buddhist relationship was depleting, not enriching, us.

I began to think, after three years of passionate loving and arguing we spent together, that having a Buddhist partner was irrelevant. The kind of growth Jasper and I needed is necessary with any mature couple. I began to think that spirituality was actually a bad impetus for a relationship, at least for me. It seemed that our self-perceptions as spiritual beings, as Buddhists, made our relationship worse. Forcing ourselves to be “good Buddhists” was actually a façade, which covered our deeper anxieties and feelings. Things were out of balance. We’d be honest about less consequential things and blind to certain true vulnerabilities. At a subtle level we were perhaps using the fact that we were Buddhist to excuse ourselves from real respect, communication, listening, and love. Maybe we believed our Buddhist masks so much that we held each other to very high standards. When one of us would explode, the other was supposed to be a buddha, with infinite understanding and wisdom. And, just as Jasper was hiding from himself by sitting on the cushion, I was hiding from myself by not meditating.

It seemed that our self-perceptions as spiritual beings made our relationship worse.

To have a Buddhist boyfriend or not? Today, I think I had it wrong both ways when the debate was framed originally: It’s not that one needs to have a spiritual partner to develop a good relationship, but rather a good relationship can be a springboard for developing one’s self spiritually. Instead of Buddhism being the basis for relationship, it now seems to me that the fundamentals of relationship—love, care, kindness, respect, honesty—are the foundation of being Buddhist.

LILLIAN GUILD, 31, IS WRITING UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME.

THE BACKWARD STEP

Paul W. Morris

“Given the cost of living, the ambient hypertension and the clattering grind, the decision to move to New York remains at least somewhat irrational, requiring a kind of quasi-religious commitment.”

—Kurt Andersen, from “My First Year in New York,”
The New York Times Magazine, September 17, 2000

MY KOAN BEGINS with a departure: I had to leave New York so that I could return to it.

Manhattan never held much allure for me. Growing up and attending school in rural New England, I always preferred bucolic spaciousness to urban sprawl and could never reconcile the city’s frenetic pace with my own need for a sedate environment. I was an infrequent and reluctant visitor ever since getting lost as a child on the sidewalks of midtown. Separated from my parents in the hurtling immediacy of pedestrian traffic, I panicked, feeling suffocated among the throngs of passersby, wondering if I’d be alone forever. Moments later, my father plucked me from the torrent and I was safe, able to breathe again. After such a brush with loss, I was in no hurry to return. But for the hordes of pilgrims journeying to the city every year, New York’s appeal is undeniable—it is the ubermetropolis, the alpha and omega of cities, and their dream of this Mecca is fulfilled once they make it their home.

I failed to understand this devotion and resisted moving to Manhattan for many months after graduating college. I was, however, devoted to my girlfriend and eventually moved one bitter January weekend to be with her. My obstinacy matched her fervor for the city. We agreed that I wouldn’t be long in New York, a year at most, then it was off to Asia, the West Coast, and graduate school, in that order. I longed to embody my undergraduate studies in sacred literature and live for a while on an island or atop a mountain, developing my practice without disruption before returning to the academy. At that early twenty-something, post-college crossroads, I believed myself capable of divining the entire course of my life, certain that I not only knew the Path but that I was making progress on it. I kept friends and family and the city itself at bay by insisting that New York was not part of the equation, that it was just a detour, a distraction. This is the secret toll the city exacts from its inhabitants: reinforcing a false construct that serves as a barrier separating self from other.

I believed myself capa...