Yesterday's Buddhist

Yesterday I finished reading Pankaj Mishra's An End to Suffering, The Buddha in the World. It was an interesting book. It's a good review of the Buddha's life, Buddhism's waxing and waning development since its inception, including its disappearance from India, surrounded by political events at different times in history. He covers Buddhism's rise in the West, and it's relation to Western philosophy. Woven into this is personal reflection, his rise from obscurity into the meritocracy, and a discussion of the usefulness of Buddhist practice today. I was hoping for more insight into Buddhism as practice, but instead got a lot of contemplative, meditative history. The book is well-written, and covers a vast subject matter in relatively little space. As a result, it felt summary and fleeting. I enjoyed reading it, and definitely got something out of it, but I still don't feel like I learned enough about Buddhism as practice. I was hoping to be instructed on applying Buddhist practice to my own life, but was disappointed in this. Perhaps that's something I can only learn through personal investigation.

Last night there was a program on the BBC on Chinese and Japanese gardens. Apparently each small stone carefully manicured in a Japanese Zen garden represents a drop of water. Each drop, or stone, creates a ripple and has significance. It's supposed to be a metaphor for the deeds of (wo)men. Everything we do, however slight, creates a ripple effect. Each choice we make radiates out to others in an interconnected web. I wonder. Perhaps I ought to think more this way. Hum, in this light, my life hasn't always been a model of "right action," and I have a great propensity to being catatonically overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all, something that's resulted in a hermit life. Is paralysis a choice? I wonder. Isn't it the fear of making a choice? I wonder again.

Sometimes I think I've been a practicing Buddhist for the past decade, living in seclusion here, thinking, almost in a meditative state everyday. Except that my thought is too scattered. I guess I'd need more discipline for that to be true. Still, it's a mildly appealing thought, and distantly true. Truly successful Buddhists are probably a lot less angry, and a lot more contented than I am. (Buddhists have the great gift of laughter I'm attempting to cultivate in myself.)

I watched a documentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead in which a Tibetan monk says that we can never truly get rid of anger. Our emotions are in constant flux. I guess the point is to become more aware, and to become more disciplined at modulating emotion, or at not allowing every gulf at every moment of the day to rule over us.

I'm definitely going to find out. I know it isn't practical, possible, perhaps even desirable to become a Buddhist Nun in today's world. Sometimes I like to imagine that I'm a defacto nun. In any case, I do believe that I've been on a de facto Buddhist quest of sorts all of these years. My life has been set to the test. This month I intend on embarking on a more concerted path toward becoming a conscious Buddhist, without the robes, and with all my hair intact. I've always liked my hair.