Closet Buddhist
I've been told several times by 'practicing Buddhists' that I'm something of a closet Buddhist. I've read just a smattering of Buddhist stuff, and I can begin to see why people might see me that way from what I've read. Just like a good deal of religious (and, erm, even more non-religious) texts/beliefs, there is a lot to be gleaned from various Buddhist ways of thinking. I don't mean to dabble in a superficial way and think that I've come out with some great truths, but dabbling does provide me some insight, in the way that, say, reading some Nietzsche (but probably not understanding in a terribly deep way) can provide some insights.
I stumbled across an interview with Sharon Salzberg, who has written some books on the subject of faith in general--from but it seems not completely limited by her own Buddhist perspective. One of the things she said struck me as particularly meaningful to my present situation, as well as a strong sense of empathy that I got when I read somthing k recently talked about in her blog.
Sharon Salzberg notes that suffering, rather than being something that only separates us from others (when I feel suffering, sometimes I also feel some added alienation, even if I'm suffering from alienation in the first place, for instance), but that it's something that actually binds us together in some sense, something we all have in common. We all have suffered, in various ways. There is a strange sort of comfort to be had from that, I think, along the lines of a sort of shadow of 'we're all in this together' sort of thinking. I have always thought that people who respond to somebody's pain with "everybody feels that way, everybody goes through pain" were sort of missing the point--but now I'm thinking that I was missing the point. The point of reminding somebody who's suffering that others feel that way too isn't like saying "buck up, little camper!"--it's a reminder that at a fundamental level our experiences do converge, and that they do converge can be very important.
In my current case, that others have felt/will feel the way I do right now (i.e. anxious, sad, unloved, alienated and the like) points to the fact that it's part of living, part of what it means to be alive and a person. Why does that comfort me?
Not sure. But it does.
I've been told several times by 'practicing Buddhists' that I'm something of a closet Buddhist. I've read just a smattering of Buddhist stuff, and I can begin to see why people might see me that way from what I've read. Just like a good deal of religious (and, erm, even more non-religious) texts/beliefs, there is a lot to be gleaned from various Buddhist ways of thinking. I don't mean to dabble in a superficial way and think that I've come out with some great truths, but dabbling does provide me some insight, in the way that, say, reading some Nietzsche (but probably not understanding in a terribly deep way) can provide some insights.
I stumbled across an interview with Sharon Salzberg, who has written some books on the subject of faith in general--from but it seems not completely limited by her own Buddhist perspective. One of the things she said struck me as particularly meaningful to my present situation, as well as a strong sense of empathy that I got when I read somthing k recently talked about in her blog.
Sharon Salzberg notes that suffering, rather than being something that only separates us from others (when I feel suffering, sometimes I also feel some added alienation, even if I'm suffering from alienation in the first place, for instance), but that it's something that actually binds us together in some sense, something we all have in common. We all have suffered, in various ways. There is a strange sort of comfort to be had from that, I think, along the lines of a sort of shadow of 'we're all in this together' sort of thinking. I have always thought that people who respond to somebody's pain with "everybody feels that way, everybody goes through pain" were sort of missing the point--but now I'm thinking that I was missing the point. The point of reminding somebody who's suffering that others feel that way too isn't like saying "buck up, little camper!"--it's a reminder that at a fundamental level our experiences do converge, and that they do converge can be very important.
In my current case, that others have felt/will feel the way I do right now (i.e. anxious, sad, unloved, alienated and the like) points to the fact that it's part of living, part of what it means to be alive and a person. Why does that comfort me?
Not sure. But it does.
posted by Jeff Pollet at 7:53 PM
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