not all who wander are lost...

aloha rose and fellow travelers,

i just received this interesting/insightful message from a friend on the west coast. he was generous enough to allow me to share it with you. i found it got me thinking...and also, that not all who "wonder" are lost either! :)

love and light-
kat

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So a few years back we get a new agent in our office and he turns out to be the Dalai Lama's nephew. He's teaching Buddhism at the local community college on the side and we get to be friends and start having some grasshopper to grasshopper deep philosophical discussions. I remember one night we are going back and forth and I'm telling him my reservations about the whole interpretation of "life is suffering" thing, and the rigid disciplines of Buddhism ... I tell him I think Buddhism is great and balance is important but life is about experiencing and suffering is just a part of it and I don't want to give that up ... I want to laugh all of my laughter and weep all of my tears.

Say Kat, have you ever read Conversations With God? It's main premise is that ... well that we are God experiencing God. There is a Salinger short story, the last story in “Nine Stories.” Teddy is an “enlightened” child prodigy of some notoriety on a cruise ship and a reporter on the boat recognizes him. He asks Teddy about his first mystical experience and Teddy says, “I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all that,” Teddy says, “It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.”

(Color me crazy but I think I do know what Teddy meant)

Okay, I digress. Anyway, Tenzin (the Dalai Lama's nephew) says that without the rigid disciplines of Buddhism we are like a boat adrift on the sea--with no direction--not aimed at any port. Lost.

And I thought, that's me. But lost? Hmm, adrift maybe--lost no. I told him that you are only lost if you have a destination. Adrift and without a map or rudder is fine if you don't really have expectations or anywhere in particular to go. One shore holds as many experiences as the next ... a real Buddha knows that all roads lead to the same place. :)

I think it was then that I noticed his head was in his hands and shaking back and forth.