difficult <\/span>it must be to be an American these days\u2026). I was a bit sick, and slightly puzzled by the question, so I didn\u2019t have much of an answer.<\/p>\nMy thought at the time was that American <\/span>applies to such a diverse slice of humanity. So we had a terrible leader for eight years, one who stepped all over the constitution, alienated our nation from much of the world and \u2013 oh yea \u2013 ordered wars killing countless tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers. And we all \u2013 American and otherwise \u2013 no doubt felt a certain helplessness about it. Of course that is with the caveat that yes, 53% or so of the voting Americans elected him in 2004, after the first four years of terrible policy (not to mention his hilariously fumbling verbiage).<\/p>\nAnd yet I look at the British leader of the time, Tony Blair, a man I deeply admired until he somehow transformed into Bush\u2019s lapdog \u2013 and the many other governments itching to support our American foolishness. In a re-telling of the story of Kisa<\/span> Gotami<\/span>, I could have urged my friend to find me a single mustard seed from a country in which no person had blindly followed Bush\u2019s doctrines \u2013 or any others that proved equally disastrous.<\/p>\nI am afraid that for me being American has little to do with my government; which I think is really not all that different from most industrialized states. For me <\/span>American <\/span>is more about the tradition of bucking traditions, of eclecticism, of sometimes charging into utterly foolish situations, and yet also of communities and family<\/span>. Nothing is a given in America (save death and taxes); we are forced to choose \u2013 our jobs, our cities, our traditions. And yet we are also wealthy with resources so we can be lazy and not choose, but merely free-ride<\/span> or follow blindly.<\/p>\nBeing Buddhist is an even more complicated story: practicing meditation for just over eight years now, becoming a vegetarian, trying to live a life somewhere between that ideal of Gandhian simplicity and the materialist excess of so much of our culture. One of my teachers in England had a young son and a classmate of mine asked the boy, \u201care you a Buddhist?\u201d The boy nodded unhesitatingly. The teacher, a great scholar of Buddhism<\/a> and practitioner in his own right, remarked, \u201cyes, it\u2019s easy when you ask a child.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nFor us foolish grown-ups, the whole idea of labels gets sticky. It can be so much baggage \u2013 both your own (oh, look at me, I\u2019m a buuuuuuddhist<\/span>)<\/span> and that of others. An elderly gentleman in England once asked me, \u201care you a church-goer, young man?\u201d I thought for a moment and responded, simply, \u201cI\u2019m a Buddhist.\u201d \u201coh,\u201d he responded. And then, thinking for a moment he continued, \u201cwell at least your not a <\/span>Mooslim<\/span><\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nYep.<\/p>\n
There is also something elusive about describing \u201cthe <\/span>Buddhist <\/span>story\u201d as I know it. <\/span> The Buddhist story seems to be something like: sit down, shut up, meditate, watch your stories evaporate (oooh<\/span>, we can make that a rhyme). We stop being Buddhist<\/span> and simply be. Right? Or perhaps that\u2019s just a story too: a \u201cmeta-narrative\u201d of self-deception (oh, christ<\/span>, now we\u2019re post-modernists). Or nagarjunians<\/span>? I\u2019d prefer Sunyatavadins<\/span><\/span>. But I digress.<\/p>\nBut as far as there is a story of Being Buddhist<\/span>, and there must be, it is the story of the path from suffering to awakening<\/span>. The story, the path, the suffering, and the awakening are all as unique and individual (and yet connected) as the patterns of our fingers.<\/p>\n
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