The Journey Begins: A Little Taste Of The Narrow Way

by Chris Lemig Posted on May 21, 2013

The Narrow Way is now available on Amazon or to order from a local bookstore near you (even better!).

By all accounts I should be dead. But instead, through some miracle of chance or karma, I am alive. I do not pretend to even begin to understand how I came to wake up from my long and nightmarish sleep. Instead I just smile, a little dumbly and serenely, in the midst of the crowded airport as I wait for the long flight to India. In three hours I will head off on a pilgrimage, a spiritual quest that has been almost a year in the making. That leaves me plenty of time to think and wonder about this new arc that I am on, this upward spiral that for so long had sent me soaring down, down to a hard and hopeless bottom.

My old life comes into clear focus now. The free fall of eight thousand dark nights and blinding days. Countless hits and drinks and drags. The suicides, the self-sabotage, the shame. Twenty years of hiding, alone and afraid, and in the end all I had to show for it were the jagged shards of broken bonds and promises and dreams.

Was that really me? Was that my wake of destruction that I left behind? Would I ever be able to truly change and make amends?

Yes. It was me and I have already changed. As for amends, I will just have to wait and see.

I shiver and shake the memories off, safe on the firm earth for now. I look out the window onto the tarmac. The plane has already rolled up to the gate and the ground crew buzzes around like a stirred up hive of bees. They execute their synchronized dance of cleaning, restocking and refueling and my heart thumps louder and faster as I realize there is no turning back now. This is it. The moment of departure is at hand.

We are to fly up and over the top of the world, across Greenland then the Netherlands, arcing steadily over the brow of the earth until we roll down her eastern cheek like a tiny, shining tear. Fifteen hours from now New Delhi will come into view and I will press my nose into the glass like a ten year-old boy until it is mashed and sore. The lights of the city will fan out into the night and the humid air will be thick with the smoke of a million campfires. Still, the air will be good there, just as good as it is here and I will breathe it in, in great gasps fueled by the excitement and the shock and the fear of being in that strange place.

Then the air will turn thin and cool as I make my way up, up into the Himalayan foothills and the home of the Dalai Lama. It will feel good on my skin, chill and damp at night, and I will take it into my nostrils as I breathe slowly and surely in Dharamsala, learning again how to watch that simple thing, learning how to watch the breath.

I will wake in the early morning, in the cold and the dark, light candles and let myself be swept away by the spell of the melody of the deep mantras of the monks. I will walk in lock step with them for a pace or two on the path to liberation and I will see the goal clear and bright, so close that I will reach out and almost touch it.

Refreshed and renewed, I will make my way back down into the hot plains of great mother India and she will open her arms to me. There, I will follow in the footsteps of the Buddha. I will walk where he walked and see what he saw. There will be guides and signs and portents. There will be magic and mystery and illumination. Everyone and everything I come across will be my teacher. And though there will be hardship and I will cry for days, it will wring my heart free of all its toughness, until it becomes soft and pliant and I can finally put it to good use. I catch my reflection in the glass and see that I am trembling now. Then I smile warmly at the new me and think: it’s OK if none of this is true.

“We will now begin boarding flight two-nine-two with direct service to New Delhi,” the attendant calls over the loudspeaker.

The voice blows through my fantasies and daydreams and they collapse like a house of cards. It is real now. Whatever is to come is out of my hands. I feel the earth under my feet, solid and real. There is no time to waver, no time for remorse or even hope. It is time to take that first step. It is time to answer the call…

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Breaking New Ground: An Interview With Chris Lemig

by Chris Lemig Posted on May 17, 2013

How long have you been writing?

I started writing when I was very young. I think I was in second grade when I wrote my first book of poems. I stitched it together out of notebook paper and knitting yarn.

I wrote frantically in my early 20′s. Mostly drunken ramblings and poetry. I also did some journalism during a more or less lucid stretch in my mid 20′s.

Still, I didn’t really call myself a writer until I started working on The Narrow Way in 2009. Not only was I in a more confident state of mind, but I also realized that I had been writing pretty much non-stop since that first collection of poems.

How many books have you written?

Other than my first poetry book, just one. The Narrow Way.

I hear you’re writing a new novel. What’s it about?

Ah, the novel. That’s a tough one. I’m still working on the short, one-line answer to that.

Let’s just say it’s quite a departure from my memoir. I wanted to do something completely different, to write about something that had nothing to do with my personal life.

So for this story, I decided to pull all the stops and just let my imagination run loose.

It’s a spiritual adventure story set in America. It has everything: Hopi prophecies, 11 year old messiahs, preacher’s daughters from Texas, conspiracies to end the world and even prairie dogs who pray to the sun.

When did you come out as being gay and how did you come out?

I was a late bloomer. As I talk about in The Narrow Way, I was deeply in the closet for many years. After telling lies for so long, it becomes harder and harder to finally tell the truth.

So I came out to my wife when I was about 35 years old. It was very painful for both of us.

After that, I was still on the fence about coming out to my family but after I got beaten to a pulp one night, I realized I couldn’t hide anymore.

I called my brother and my Dad the next day and they were totally fine with it. They were relieved actaully. And so was I.

How long have you been clean and sober?

It will be six years this October.

When did you become interested in Buddhism and how did it change your life?

A couple of months before I came out and got sober, I had written in my journal that I wanted to look into Tibetan Buddhism. It was a kind of calling. But I knew that it wouldn’t do me any good if I was still drinking and using.

So about a week after I made my first real effort to get sober, I picked up Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

There were times as I was reading it that I couldn’t stop crying. It was like I was a giant bell and I’d just been whacked with a massive hammer. I felt like “This is what I’ve been missing my whole life!”

All the ideas made so much sense.

I didn’t call myself a Buddhist right away but I knew I was onto something big. So I kept reading and studying and after a few months decided that the only thing to do was to go to India and see the birthplace of this incredible philosophy with my own eyes.

I’ve been Dharma Bum ever since.

You went to India for the first time in 2008. Was it what you were expecting?

Not at all. I thought I’d prepared myself pretty well. I’d watched travel documentaries, interviewed people who’d gone themselves, read tons of books and did all kinds of research on the internet but nothing prepared me for when I first got off that plane.

The shock is impossible to describe. The poverty, the smell of rotting and pollution, the intense noise and confusion just bowled me over.

Culture shock set in on the second day and I just locked myself in my hotel room for 15 hours.

It got better though…

What’s one of your favorite memories from that first trip?

Seeing His Holiness The Dalai Lama for the first time. I realized right away that it was the whole reason I’d come, whether I knew it or not.

It was right at the start of the trip. I went to five days of his teachings and at the end took Refuge for the first time. It was like, the absolute best blessing for my journey to come.

How about one of your least favorite?

I was at the train station in Gaya, India. It was 3 in the morning and I wasn’t sure if my train was coming or not. No one spoke English and my Hindi was broken at best.

As I waited there in the dark, I saw a young man crawl out from under a pile of filthy rags. He was starving to death right before my eyes. Skin and bones. He peed on himself as he was trying to get up. After he did, he just disappeared down the tracks and I never saw him again.

It was a big shock and very heartbreaking. But India is like that: there’s so much beauty and so much suffering all coexisting at the same time.

How can Buddhism be of help to people who are struggling with addiction and recovery?

First of all, I want to say that when we’re taking those first steps on the path of recovery we need to admit that we’re powerless, that we don’t have any control over our addiction. It’s the hardest thing to do but we need to make ourselves humble.

So although I didn’t work the 12 Steps per se, I still advise anyone who’s taking their recovery seriously to be 100% open to any and all treatments and help available.

That being said, I think Buddhism is the perfect complement to the path of recovery. In a sense, I think it’s the ultimate path to recovery. After all, we’re all junkies in our own way. We are all addicted to our delusions, our selfishness, our negative emotions and thoughts. We’re completely hooked on habits and ways of thinking that bring us nothing but misery.

What the Buddhist path offers us is a method to see our mistaken view on things and give us ways to change that view.

We start out by acknowleging that our current sitution is intolerable and it’s all because of our own ignorance. Then, once we get through that shock, we’re ready to accept the fact that there’s a solution to our problem: we can stop the suffering. The way we do that is by culitvating good ethical behavior, mindfulness and a realistic way of looking at ourselves and the world.

Darren Littlejohn does a great job of correlating Buddism and the path of recovery in his book The 12-Step Buddhist.

There are lots of addiction memoirs our there. Why did you write The Narrow Way?

Story telling is one of the most important aspects of being human. We’re hardwired for it. It’s how we learn about ourselves and the world we live in. It’s what gives our lives context and meaning.

Sure, there are lots of addiction stories out there. It’s a sign of the times. But I think that every addiction story can shed some light on what we’re all going through everyday. By understanding someone else’s suffering, we gain insight into our own. By hearing about other people’s victories, we become inspired to better ourselves.

My true wish is that The Narrow Way helps others who are on their own paths of self-discovery. I think my story is one that many people will be able to relate to and that it will simply be a confirmation that no matter how bad off we are or were, we can always improve ourselves and find meaning in our lives.

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All Of This Is Going To Turn Out Fine In The End

by Chris Lemig Posted on May 10, 2013

almost may

In celebration of Mother’s Day, I read this piece at the Listen To Your Mother Denver. Love you, Mom!

Be on the lookout for the official video of the whole show this summer!

I’m not the only one to have had a difficult relationship with my mother. In fact, I’m sure that almost everyone who’s known her has.

But growing up gay in Connecticut in the 1980′s with a mom who was not only deeply religious but also a little bit crazy didn’t make for a Norman Rockwell kind of childhood.

Things were fine before I hit that dreaded age where children transform from their sweet innocent selves into those alien creatures we call adolescents.

Before that, it was all fun and games. Lazy summer days at the beach, tramping through the thick east coast forests, trapping frogs and fireflies in mason jars, rolling around in the mud just like any other ten-year old boy.

It was Bruce Springsteen nostalgia through and through.

But when I began to realize that I wasn’t really like the other boys, things started to get strange.

It was just around that time that my parents went through a difficult divorce. My mom remarried soon after that. The man she chose was…well…let’s just say he wasn’t from the “fresh” aisle. I’m no expert, but as I look back, not only was he most probably bi-polar and very disturbed, he was also viciously homophobic.

As the signs of my homosexuality began to show, I felt judged all the time. I didn’t really have a word for it yet. All I knew was I was different. I also knew that whatever I was, it wasn’t OK and I just assumed that everyone else around me felt the same way.

Where Angels Cry

My mom says to this day that she didn’t know I was gay then. I believe her mostly because I know how hard I worked to hide myself from them.

It was the pain of that hiding that led me to all sorts of rebelling and acting out. I listened to heavy metal music, which my Mom absolutely hated. A bonus for sure. I smoked cigarettes and pilfered booze from the dining room liquor cabinet. I started to talk back to my teachers at school and to get into all sorts of trouble. I became what they called back then a “problem child”.

I don’t know if I was looking for attention from my Mom and step dad, but one thing’s for sure: I got it. One day they ransacked my room and found all the artifacts of my newly discovered sexuality.

Maybe it was too much for them to handle. Or maybe they just didn’t really want to know the truth.

That week, my Mom sent me off to a psychiatrist and for me the message was clear:

There was something wrong with me. I was broken. I was somehow tainted and maybe even a little bit dirty.

So after that, I worked even harder to hide the truth of me, not only from my Mom, my step dad and the world but from myself as well. That was the trick that would bite me on the ass for years to come.

The new “family-unit” moved out to California after that and my Mother’s decisions became more and more questionable. There was a lot of talk about Divine plans and Missions from God. There were brushes with all kinds of New Age gurus and philosophers. We had a close call with a pretty nasty cult and for a little while it looked like my brother and I had a bright future of handing out flowers at the airport laid out in front of us.

My step dad was the main architect of this crazy house of mirrors and he became more and more erratic and paranoid as I moved through the already agonizing years of high school.

My brother and I hated and feared him. But we felt powerless against him and his ranting, and for a long time it seemed like we didn’t even have a mother. There was just no one there to shield us from him.

One night he came in to my room and shook me out of a deep sleep. He hissed at me as he pressed my shoulder hard into the mattress. He pointed to my leather-clad rock and roll heroes on the posters in my room.

“You wanna look at pictures of men with cocks sticking out of their pants,” he said. “You do it when you on your own.”

I was sent home to live with my Dad about a year later. I felt discarded, unwanted, ashamed, and completely alone. I wandered aimlessly for almost twenty years after that.

I drifted further and further from my mother during that time. When we did talk it sometimes ended in me getting so angry that I would slam down the phone and not call her again for a year or more.

All that time, my own demons and addictions were getting the best of me. I almost died, by accident or by choice, a dozen times or more.

Years went by and my unmanageable life finally got my attention. I don’t know why I started to realize it, maybe I was just so afraid of dying, but I didn’t want to hide anymore. And after a long road of hard work and getting the help I needed, I found the courage to come out to myself, to my family and to the world.

It’s been about five years since I came out to my mother. She was the last one in my family that I told. I was still scared of the rejection and the judgment I was certain I was going to get. But as it turned out, all those years that I had been struggling, she had been growing and changing herself.

I’ll never forget the day. I took her for a walk around Memorial Lake in Colorado Springs one scorching summer morning. It was just after one of those years of not speaking.

“Mom, I’m gay,” I told her.

And that was all it took.

Now it hasn’t been all smooth sailing since then but our relationship that was for so long fraught with difficulty and bitterness, has become something I had given up hope on a long time ago:

A Mother-Son relationship.

All that support, protection and wisdom that I missed out on in those early years is being heaped on me now.

These days there isn’t a day that goes by where she doesn’t remind me that she’s there for me.

“Hey hon,” she said on a voicemail the other day. “Just had some thoughts about getting the word out about your book: Maybe you can get yourself nominated as a LGBT icon on this Gay history website I found. And what about a Wikipedia page for you? I also heard that October is National Coming Out month so maybe you can have an event or two around that time. Oh, and did you ever think about getting in touch with Ellen DeGeneres? You never know…”

Who are you and who replaced my mother with the President of The World Gay Rights Coalition? I wanted to say.

But this is the kind of stuff we talk about now. And it’s not unnatural or forced either, like she’s making a point to show me she’s more open-minded. She is more open-minded.

I have to say it’s a little strange at times, all this encouragement and love. I’m not complaining at all, but sometimes I really don’t know how to respond to support like this. What I do know is that I’m so proud of her. She’s come so far. And even though my life is night and day compared to what it used to be, I think she’s the one who’s traveled the furthest down the harder road.

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The End Of The Narrow Way Book Tour? I Think Not…

by Chris Lemig Posted on May 4, 2013

Well, the first leg of The Narrow Way Book Tour has formally come to a close.

I started out with a bang at Monte Cristo Bookshop in my hometown of New London, CT and finished up here in Denver with a stop at the historic Tattered Cover Book Store in downtown.

It was a great time all around. I met a lot of beautiful new people and was constantly blown away by the love and support that kept pouring in from family and friends.

Many thanks and much love to all of you!

Although I don’t have any events scheduled until this fall, I do have some things in the works for the summer time.

These include another visit to the Fort Collins and Denver LGBT Pride Centers, Out Boulder, a few more local bookstores, libraries, churches and Buddhist centers.

So be on the look out for me in your (mostly Colorado) community!

In the mean time, I’m continuing to work on my new novel, studying (and even trying to teach) Tibetan and working on a new look and focus for The Narrow Way blog.

Stay tuned and stay in touch!

Oh yes. And thank you, as always, for reading!

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The Way Of The Bodhisattva Is A Path Not A Light Switch

by Chris Lemig Posted on April 26, 2013

There is a light

I just finished a week-long retreat with my teacher, Anyen Rinpoche.

It was a wonderful way to transition back into life in the States. A reminder that Dharma is everywhere, not just in faraway places like India and Nepal.

Rinpoche gave many precious instructions during the week.

But the gem that really glimmered for me was in response to a student’s question about how to live a balanced life as a Buddhist practitioner:

How can we relax while maintaining an enthused and energetic daily practice?

I get it.

Sometimes we bring our Western workaholic mindset even to the cushion. As a result, we can feel out of balance. We can start to look at practice as an item on a to-do list.

31/365 - Stress.

Or worse, some kind of martyr’s burden or painful self-sacrifice.

Rinpoche smiled as he listened to the question.

“If we want to be Bodhisattvas,” he said. “We can’t be worried about personal relaxing time.”

It seemed a little harsh at first. Not at all in line with my expectation of some kind of Post-Enlightenment Retirement Plan.

“Whoa! What do you mean?” I found myself thinking. “Does this mean that I have to give up all of my personal aspirations and dreams of worldly success for me and only me?

The short answer?

Yes.

This is the whole point of the path. To gradually erode the selfish ego that has kept us wrapped up so tight that we have become completely unavailable to help others.

It’s a habitual way of thinking that we’ve cultivated our whole lives (and countless lifetimes before this one). It’s not something we can wave a magic wand over and hope simply goes away.

It takes effort, study, practice and maybe even some convincing.

But it’s not impossible. And we don’t have to do it all at once.

The way of the bodhisattva is a path not a light switch. We move along it one step at a time.

The point is that we make the genuine aspiration to lessen our self-attachment. We cultivate mindfulness to check up on ourselves and the actions of our body, speech and mind.

We hold to this aspiration by noticing our mistakes and making the effort to improve, little by little, day by day.

And as those days turn into months and years, hopefully it begins to dawn on us that we’re not losing anything at all.

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A Meaningful Life

by Chris Lemig Posted on April 13, 2013

This is taken from a talk on The Narrow Way book tour.

Our lives are not insular. They touch many people.

Even if we’re very private people, we still interact with hundreds if not thousands of people during our lifetimes.

Every day we meet grocery store clerks, the people we stand next to in line at the bank, co-workers, neighbors, friends, family, customer service people on the phone…Our sphere of influence is really quite vast. And the actions we normally consider to be inconsequential, really have the potential to be very powerful.

Let’s use our imaginations for a moment and tell a little story. Probably something like this has happened to all of us.

Let’s say that we dropped our wallet or purse before heading into the grocery store. A total stranger picks it up and returns it to us.

At the very least, we’d be grateful. That feeling of gratitude makes us feel good, it makes us hopeful, if even only for a moment, that people have the capacity for honesty and goodness.

We might smile spontaneously as we’re standing in line waiting to check out. This smile is seen by the grocery store clerk and it makes her feel good as well. And so the grocery store clerk’s mood is lifted up, if only for a moment. Maybe she goes home and is especially kind to her kids, her husband (or her wife). And so the ripple widens.

This isn’t just fantasy, check your own experience and call to mind a time when someone’s mood, good or bad, affected yours.

So if small actions have the potential to cause such effects then what about being out of the closet?

The same butterfly effect takes place. When we are out of the closet, when we value ourselves regardless of how others value us, when we love and respect ourselves, this attitude radiates from us like solar warmth and light. It affects people in a positive way, whether we’re aware of it or not.

When we are out, open and free we set an example for others, for LGBT people as well as people who still hold onto to their ignorance and prejudice about us. When we’re out in this way we can change people’s perceptions of us and this can have wide reaching implications for the larger society.

Let’s say the normally homophobic guy we work with or live near now knows someone who’s gay. The stereotype is, if not shattered, then at least is worn down just a little bit.

This is how things slowly change and it all starts with us, being confident in our self-worth, in our value to our society and in our value as human beings.

Our lives can be impactful and meaningful. Our confidence in our essential goodness gives us strength and peace of mind. We can be at ease knowing that there was never anything wrong with us in the first place and that we have a right to happiness just like everyone else.

Believing that our lives can’t make a difference is a choice, not a reality. We are far more powerful than we think. Our thoughts and actions have a much further reach than our own private sphere. We can bring about change for the better in our lives, in our relationships, in our communities and even in our world.

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The Narrow Way Book Tour Begins!

by Chris Lemig Posted on March 31, 2013

I got back from India last Monday and after a wonderful reunion with my Dad who I hadn’t seen in almost a year, I kicked off The Official Narrow Way Book Tour!

The first stop was Monte Cristo Bookshop in downtown New London, CT. I couldn’t have asked for a better venue. For one thing, I was born in New London. In fact, I learned my ABC’s, catechism and long division just around the corner at St. Mary’s Catholic school.

I was deeply moved by the crowd that showed up on an unseasonably cold Friday night. Family, friends (two dear ones even flew in from Colorado) and a handful of new readers took up every available seat.

I have to admit I was a little nervous at first. This was my first reading ever and, despite a short stint in a high school rock band, I still get a little wobbly in front of a crowd.

As it turned out I had nothing to fear. I took a deep breath after the shop owner, Chris Jones, introduced me and plunged right in.

I was going to read from Chapter 1, a dark scene of hopeless addiction, but decided instead to go with the chapter called “Refuge”. I think it was a good choice. The message of the book is about redemption after all.

With Monte Cristo owner, Chris Jones.
With Monte Cristo owner, Chris Jones.

 

All in all, it was a perfect start to this new chapter of the life of The Narrow Way. There was so much love and support coming from those seats in front of me that I didn’t feel any fear at all. And long before the night ended I knew the best part of this story is yet to come…

I will be doing talks, readings and book signings throughout the U.S. for the foreseeable future. Look for updates on Facebook, Twitter or check out the Event Calendar at the top of this page.

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A Few Thoughts On Leaving India As I Get Ready To Hop On The Bus To Delhi

by Chris Lemig Posted on March 21, 2013

Today is my last day in McLeod Ganj, India. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for almost a year.

There are so many emotions rolling around this morning as I make my final preparations to leave my second home.

I’ve met so many wonderful people here. You make friends quickly when you’re living in a foreign country. The shared experience is so intense that you bond, almost on a molecular level, with those who are going through the same thing.

So even though I’ve got lots of Buddhist teachings on impermanence to fall back on, the parting still stings a little.

I’m going to miss all these kindred spirits but I’m honored to know all these heros and heroines who are braving so much to live lives of meaning.

But still, I’m happy. My time here has been well spent and worth all the effort I put into getting here. I got to travel all around India and Nepal. I made a good start in learning Tibetan. I saw His Holiness the Dalai Lama many times. I got to meet Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, too.

On top of all that, The Narrow Way was published and when I head back to the States I will get exactly three days to reorient myself before I start a whirlwind book tour.

Five years ago, I never would have imagined a life like this. I have to say, I am both amazed and grateful.

So that’s it for now. One chapter closes and another begins. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next…

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A Sneak Peek Of The Narrow Way

by Chris Lemig Posted on March 16, 2013

Here’s a quick peek at The Narrow Way. I hope you enjoy it! If you’d like to get a copy for yourself or a friend, please click here.

Chapter 8

The Teachings

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~ The Buddha

Venerable Jampa Dekyi faces the altar in the gompa at Tushita and there is no doubt, no fear and no shame in her eyes as she bows. Before her is the massive golden statue of the Tibetan saint, Tsongkhapa. He looks down at us with wide eyes that stare out from the illumination we have all come here to taste. He is adorned in saffron silk robes and offerings of snapdragons, apples, incense and chocolates, all the bounties of this life, have been lovingly scattered around him. Other Buddhas hang in the form of thanka paintings on the high walls and I try to pick them out from my studies. My tongue gets twisted in knots as I sound out the strange Sanskrit names to myself: Maitreya, Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Vajrasattva. I watch and wait as the nun prostrates herself to all of these, laying her body out full length and flat on the floor three times before taking her seat.

Oh how the sight fills me with awe and admiration! To believe! I mean truly believe! Twenty years now running away from faith and belief, trapped inside in the Temple of Me, following the rites and insane rituals of the Doctrine and the Church of Me. Where did it ever lead me? To more and more suffering. To hopelessness. To the needless punishment of myself and everyone around me.

But today I stand apart from the rest of the group. Today I am not merely a seeker. I am a Buddhist now. And though I am still uncertain, still kneading the tough heart of disbelief that stands on the edge of the great commitment, I am almost ready.

So when the teacher finally sits I begin my own bows. I bow to her with all the reverence I can muster, as if she were the Buddha himself manifest here before me now. I bow to the words she is about to speak, the Dharma, the teachings that lead to liberation. I bow to the Sangha, the community of those who have followed the words and attained the ultimate freedom from suffering for themselves. I bow with all my faults and short- comings of the past, present and future, held out as an offering in my open hands. I bow for every unkind word I have ever spoken, for every piece of bread I ever stole, for every time I betrayed myself, abandoned myself, gave up on myself. Yet through all of this I bow without a trace of self-pity or loathing. I am simply me, faults and all, and that is good enough.

When I take my seat again I am filled with gratitude. I am here! I am alive! How many times did I wish for my heart to simply stop beating? How many times did I try to step into that great void? Too many.

But now I look up at the nun and the thankas and all the students sitting around me furiously taking down notes and trying so hard to understand. We are all trying so hard to under- stand. Suddenly I don’t mind the pain in my knees as much any more. The boredom gives way to a growing joy and I think that this would be a good way to spend a part of my life. To sit and quietly listen for a change. To devote myself to learning as much as I can. To slough off the arrogance and false pride of the addict and finally concede to the possibility that someone else might just have a few of the answers.

“When did your mind begin?” the nun asks. She smiles at us now the smile of an old Australian grandmother as her eyes sparkle through thick rimmed glasses. There is not a trace of arrogance behind them, only certainty. She has asked the question of herself many times before. She has spent long days and nights searching for the beginning of the mind and after shining the bright light of concentration on it has discovered that each moment of mind depends on a similar, previous moment. Tracing back the cause, she has found that our minds stretch far back into inconceivable, beginningless time.

I follow the line of reasoning myself, checking my own experience. I stretch my memories back as far as I can. Then, when I can’t remember anymore, I let my imagination take over. I go all the way back to the darkness and heat of the womb, all the way to the point of conception. But there, I stop. Where was my mind before that? What caused it to be in the first place? Was it the coming together of sperm and egg? Or did it just spring out of nowhere without any cause at all?

“Our minds are beginningless,” she says still smiling. “Our mind streams continue on and on, taking new rebirths again and again. In fact we have been born countless times in countless different forms.”

And so the old nun tells us a story with no beginning or end. She tells us the story of our minds, confused and deluded, grasping at phantoms and ghosts and things that were never even there. She tells us how we cling to a self that we believe is real. We cater to its endless desires; indulge all its petty whims. What’s more, we believe that this self is the body we inhabit. We cherish it and protect it and serve it with every ounce of energy we have. But then, without warning or notice, the body dies leaving the mind untethered and afraid. Desperate, we search for another body to be born into and in our great fear, it doesn’t matter what kind of body it is. It could be an animal, an insect, a fish. All we care about is finding some solid, permanent place where we can feel safe again and rest.

But there is no rest here in samsara, this endless wheel of cyclic existence. Instead we wander eon after eon feeling alone and lost, thinking we are unique and separate, thinking that we are the only ones who suffer, that we are the only ones who truly matter.

“I want you all to imagine something now,” Jampa Dekyi says. “Just assume for a moment that all of this is true, that you have been born countless times before. Let us also assume that there are countless beings in countless universes who have also been born countless times. If all of this is true then it stands to reason that each and every one of those sentient beings has been your mother an infinite number of times.”

This is the vast view of Buddhism and our minds collectively explode.

“Now let us meditate on the kindness of your mother in this life,” she says.

My teeth start to grind until I wonder when they will crack and shatter. My muscles tense. I thought I made peace with my mother before I came here. I thought I forgave her and asked for her forgiveness. I thought I had already sifted through the rubble of the past and found a new foundation to build on. But here, in India, ten thousand miles away, I find that all of that brick and mortar has not yet set.

So cautiously I meditate on the kindness of my mother taking careful, unsure steps into this old house. At first, it’s like poking the hornets’ nest of all my anger and resentment. Kindness? Mother? For years I never put those two words in the same sentence. It was my mother who was to blame for all the tragedy of my life and I had laid that blame squarely at her feet for years. She was not a source of comfort to me, but the cause all my suffering. She was the one who had made me hate myself. She was the one who made me ashamed for being gay. She was the reason I drank and got high and wanted to die. If only she had tried harder to understand. If only she had…

But I stop myself and return to the sound of the nun’s steady voice.

“Try to imagine the sacrifices your mother made for you all the way from the time you were conceived,” she says.

So here, I stop resisting. I stop playing the old loop that’s been droning on for so many years. I go back in my mind, trying to imagine what it would have been like: the sickness, the weight gain, the discomfort. I imagine her, night after night, trying to turn herself over in bed, unable to get comfortable. I imagine the kicking and the turning, the prodding and poking of the life inside of her. Then I try to imagine the pain of childbirth itself and though I come up short, I begin to understand a little. At least I know what pain is and I realize that I have never really endured it willingly for someone else. I imagine all the sleepless nights my mother experienced after my birth, how she got up whenever I cried, without hesitation or thought for herself. Then I remember that there was always food on the table and a warm, dry place to sleep. I remember her defending me against bullies and Irish setters, risking her reputation and even lying for me to protect me. Even when I rebelled against her and tried so hard to hurt her as a way to call attention to my pain, she still loved me and to the best of her ability and wisdom gave me all the care and support that she could. At the very least, no matter what her faults, no matter what mistakes she made, I am here right now mostly because of her.

“Now generate the wish to repay that kindness,” Jampa Dekyi says. “Even if you think it would take your whole life to do so, make that sincere wish.”

It is a tall order but I try anyway.

“Now,” the nun says. “Let go of all the limitations you think you have and apply that feeling to all beings, remembering that every one of them, every human being, every fish in all the oceans, every bird in the sky, every frog and every insect, has shown you infinite kindness throughout your beginningless lives.”

My heart opens and a little bit of light begins to creep in. I imagine the presence of all those limitless sentient beings around me, all my kind mothers of the past, present and future, all of them suffering in their own way. They don’t seem so much like disembodied strangers anymore and just by admitting this to myself, that there are others out there besides me, I feel a huge relief. Here is the purpose I have been seeking in a purposeless life! Here is the potential to be of help to others who are suffering just like me, who want happiness just like me. And what’s more, Buddhism claims to show me how to live this way.

The meditation comes to an end. We untwist our legs, massaging the knotted muscles and joints. As I look around, I see that everyone’s faces are glowing with crescent smiles and faraway looks and with a quiet, little laugh I realize that I am not so unique or alone after all.

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Graduation!

by Chris Lemig Posted on March 7, 2013

Esukhia Gradutation

From the time I started this whole business of learning Tibetan, I had my doubts that I would be able to pull it off.

I mean, it’s an extremely difficult language for westerners to learn. That’s not negative, self-defeating thinking. It’s just the truth.

Since I got here there have been two kinds of stories that I’ve heard about westerners who tackle this nearly insurmountable task.

1. The “Magical Being” Story.

This is the story of the student who comes to India or Nepal to learn Tibetan because of a divine calling. These students get off the bus knowing nothing about the language, not even the alphabet.

Despite this, they sign up for advanced Tibetan language courses or maybe they move into a monastery or a nunnery. No one expects them to succeed and they are blatantly discouraged to pursue their dream by everyone: Tibetans, teachers, other students.

But somehow, in two weeks they not only learn the alphabet and how to read the various scripts but are having little bursts of spontaneous conversation with the locals.

Within six months they are speaking fluently, teaching the finest points of grammar back to it’s native speakers who then hold them up as the shining example of how we all should go about this task.

As I soon discovered, I was not this kind of “magical being” and so this story became anything but helpful for me.

2. The “I Don’t Need Tibetan, English Is Good Enough” Story

This story is about the student who comes here with the best intentions. He or she really wants to study the Dharma. They decided that it would be wonderful to do so in Tibetan, the language that has been honed for this purpose for 1,500 years.

They start out strong. They take some of the classes that are offered here but are soon dismayed when months go by and they can’t even tell you how to say “hello”.

They go for a year without being able to hold a simple conversation about the weather and so decide to take a break. A year goes by and they start over from scratch and repeat the cycle.

But after a couple of goes at this they throw up their hands, discouraged by the lack of teaching method and seeming incomprehensiblity of a language that is as about as easy to learn as, well, as Tibetan.

But there’s another story that no one seems to tell here even though I’ve seen that it’s the most common experience of all. It’s the story of people who grind through it day after day. This is how I did it. It’s how all of my fellow classmates did it as well. Day after day, speaking, listening, practicing. Putting up with the exhaustion, the headaches, the lack of sleep and the fear that we would never get it.

But we did get it.

On Friday, I got my certificate for the completion of what I call Phase 1. It’s by no means the end. In fact, it’s just the beginning. I will be coming back to continue to study and make my way towards fluency. But for now, I’m calling this a success.

I’m not only one who’s made it this far. Big congratulations to Nikki, Mads, Liv, Lily, Martina, Lionel, Jigme, Freya, Adam, Jasmine and all of the other amazing students at Esukhia. If it weren’t for your inspiring dedication and effort, I don’t think I would have made it myself. Many thanks and good luck to you all!

Posted in India 2012 | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments