April 28, 2002

Eight and a half years ago my life changed course when I became a mom. The ordinary miracle of my son’s birth was an experience still beyond my ability with words. When I became pregnant with my second child a year later I had become interested in being more ‘there’ for the experience. Though my son’s birth had gone much as planned, there was some time when my mind seemed to be lost in a kind of chaos. I had long had an interest in Buddhist meditation and this seemed the time to look into it more closely. Seven months pregnant I went to an overnight meditation class at the Zen Buddhist Temple. Even this small amount of instruction made the difference: I was present for every single moment of my daughter’s birth. In fact I was so calm and my breathing so regular that the people attending me didn’t know I had begun pushing! This experience of clarity, of being present, while in a good deal of pain, led me to inquire further into Buddhist teachings. And for the next several years I attended services and briefly became a member of a temple.

Oddly enough my kids, who had most helped me get started, were rarely welcome on this Buddhist path. I was looking for a stronger connection between my practice and my family life. My practice seemed isolated. I couldn’t or wouldn’t feel at home at the temple and my attendance waned. And as the kids grew older the issue of religious experience for them loomed. So I came to First one Sunday in 1999 after hearing about Unitarianism from a friend.

After only one service I started to notice a whole bunch of other things I’d been missing. Music. Singing. Talking. Challenges. Even crying. Coffee. I had been so focused on a certain perspective of Buddhist practice that I had neglected to notice a number of other important aspects of life, parts of myself that had been left behind over the years.

When Tim Law started a Buddhist Practice Group here two-and-a-half years ago I began an ongoing process of integrating some of those parts of me: my chosen path and my historical path. I have been interested to discover that I feel much more connected to that historical path than ever before. The deeper my practice becomes the wider it also becomes. I mean the more I experience life from a Buddhist perspective, the more I experience it from a Christian perspective. Humanist, Native, Pagan, and other wisdom teachings seem connected by the same threads. I am more whole. I am more me and, of course,… not me. It was when I became a Unitarian that I also began to CALL myself a Buddhist. Rather than comparing myself only to monks and other singularly devoted individuals where I invariably felt unequal, at First my practice took on a new respectability, a ‘this is where I am now and that’s okay’ place. Here, I continue to run into other people in a situation similar to mine who have taken similar and dissimilar paths. My practice has deepened (not just increased) and become more relevant in my daily life because the group only continues if a small number of us put the effort into it. And my understanding of the teachings has deepened (through reading AND through hearing others’ takes). My connections with this community continue to deepen, not only with the BPG but with the congregation as a whole, particularly through the monthly small groups coaching meetings and the activities sponsored by the RE programme.

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha – the three jewels. Yes, this is where this Westerner with an inclination toward following a traditionally Eastern path can get it together. As a Unitarian, I now know I’m a Buddhist.

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