Over the past 30 years or so, I have been a fairly neutral person. And while this aura of neutrality is sound in most business environments, there is a brutal price. The ability to experience emotions has become impaired and I drum up feelings for whatever occasion thrown my way.
The person presented herein, printed upon this page, is a solid actor. If known by all, he would have been chosen as ‘Best Actor’ at any academy award. He is skillfully deft and he applies his craft well. For me, it is hard to state where the actor was and the real person begins.
I, the Unknown Buddhist, grew-up Catholic. At the tender age of eighteen, I valiantly marched off to serve a four year military tour abroad and after several years of college, at twenty-four, I began a business career. At the age of fifty, the following Ojibway saying was in fact my life,
“Ten years ago …..
I turned my face for a moment
and it became my life.”
Poet and author David Whyte wrote of a similar moment in the “Heart Aroused” where a woman in a corporate workshop says quietly to the room “Ten years ago…I turned my head for a moment and it became my life”
Like all of you, I have had many wonderful times in my life. First of all, after traveling many, many years, can sympathize with the Ryan Bingham character of “Up In The Air.” I have tasted the morning dew upon the Chijia Mountain, slept under the stars in Huacachina, and dove into the warm clear waters of Truk Lagoon.
While I have experienced tremendous beauty, life is a circle and you can never get joy if you do not have the courage to weep. Thus, my personal journey has found me retracing the anti-Apartheid steps in Soweto, suffering tears at ‘Ground Zero,’ holding the hands of Asian tsunami victims passing from this world and writing letters to families of those I supported in Africa and South America.
After the Catholic Church found no room for me, I believe I may have found a home meditating and living life as an ‘Unknown Buddhist.” This blog is about my Buddhist journey. For one year, I will faithfully study Buddhism and live being a Buddhist. My goal is to feel alive, as if there is some reinforcement that acknowledges my own personal worth and revitalizes this fifty-two year old gentleman. While no longer the man of my youth, it is through this journey that I will reach beyond myself, to go against age’s stealth demolition and awake every morning, gathering my resolve and use the love I have to abolish the darkened moon and thrust the sun back into sky.
It doesn’t matter where you been or where you’re at, your religion or faith, your compass, your wisdom and heart bare no reproach. Rather I want your gentle acceptance, guidance, and loving kindness to remind me of what love is really like, to feel safe and lay my heart open, exposing my journey and soul to your inner light.
My words cannot express the deep sense introspection I have missed over the years.