65 Understanding

I made a big, free, secure space in my classes and I invited my students to be honest and to tell the truth of their own lives in the universe. My students trusted me, they confessed and disclosed almost anything, it seemed, and together we experienced amazing success.

I asked my students to identify in 250 words or less the peak experience of human life, the greatest, deepest, highest, best experience it is possible for a human being to have and to know in life on earth between birth and death. They wrote of intoxication, sex, love, marriage, children, family, knowledge, power, fame, wealth, longevity, salvation, sleep.

I wrote, too—

On truth and understanding.

Who am I really? Where did all this come from—the 70 sextillion twinkling stars, dark empty space, the radiant sphere of the sun, the mysterious cold white geometry of the moon, our big mudball earth, we 6.5 billion human ants on it, the showers, the soakers, the storms, the rivers rolling to the one big deep green sea? You and me—hey, and that little gnat right there—where are we all going? Why are we born? Why must we die? What should we do while we’re here? Why does life seem so horribly unequal and unfair? Why do some suffer and die while others party and play golf? Why have I been healthy and happy for sixty-three years while innocent, loving children suffer deformity, disfigurement, neglect, molestation, torture, and death? Why are we heartless, cold, and cruel? Why do we taunt and torment the weak? Why do we kill? Why do we hate? Why is there eternal war? How can I help the helpless, the poor, the sick, the dying, the dead? How should I feel in the knowledge of suffering? Why are the moving, changing colors of the sky so beautiful every day? Why do I feel joy? Why awe? What is the meaning of my tears? Why do I cry? What does laughter mean? Why do I laugh? More than anything else, I want to understand.

The principles of good writing, good thinking, and good living are not dissimilar, and as I thought and wrote I also corresponded by email with Billy. We exchanged thoughts on teaching, on religion and philosophy, on psychology, on our common experience in 1975, and on our Buddhist practice. Soon John joined us and the dialogue became a colloquy. We described our practice, our disappointments, our failures, our joys.

I wondered often about a teacher.

Buddhist—

John, I supposed, had been my first.

Billy my second.

When I moved to Omaha, at the local state university I had stumbled across The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation by the Tibetan monk Chögyam Trungpa, just one of several books required by the instructor of a course in comparative religion. "Birth is an expression of the separateness between mother and child," Trungpa explains. "Either you are going to witness your child's death or the child is going to witness your death. Perhaps this is a very grim way of looking at life, but still it is true." I had loved the book, the chapter "Suffering" especially.

Trungpa:

We begin our spiritual journey by asking questions, by doubting our deceptions. There is continual uncertainty as to what is real and unreal, what is happiness and what is misery. We experience this moment by moment and year by year as our lives unfold. We keep on asking questions and eventually the questions turn sour and begin to rot. They turn into pain. Pain increases as the questions become more solid and the answers more elusive.

Immediately I sent my friend Billy a copy. He reacted just as I had and, not long after, Billy attended a seminar with Trungpa and formally committed first to Shambhala and then to Vajrayana.

Hooked.