When I saw the prompt to write a religious conversion story I thought it might be an interesting experience. I’ve never written an account of my spiritual journey before.
It can’t really be said that I converted to Buddhism from another religion. I didn’t convert from Christianity to Buddhism. I would have to say that I converted from Atheism to Buddhism. From Atheism & Nihilism to Buddhism.
When I was growing up in a small town in the thumb of Michigan, I very rarely attended church. I went to Sunday School a little bit, but I don’t remember how much. I’ll have to ask my Mom about that.
My parents never went to church when I was growing up. They both believed in a higher power, I think, but didn’t feel the need to join a church, apparently.
I was always a curious child and interested in many things. However, I don’t recall feeling any loss at not having a strong connection to church.
My curiosity did lead me to wonder about bigger picture type things. During high school I did give Christianity a pretty serious shot, I’d say. At an age when many teenagers are rebelling against their upbringing and acting out against it, I was doing the opposite and searching for something to believe.
Perhaps, it was because I didn’t have that strong push from my parents that I was willing to dive into Christianity in high school.
So, in 10 th grade I joined Youth For Christ. Every Wednesday we met at the house of the YFC director for Honest to God. I don’t remember too much about these evenings other than a bunch of us sat around a living room and talked. All of my friends went.
I also was part of a singing group called Straight From the Heart. Two of my friends and I created a Christian rap that we performed over an instrumental of a Young MC song. We performed this as part of our concert at churches and once in front of some program at our high school.
For whatever reason, I don’t have a lot of memories of how I actually thought & felt about Christianity at this time. I think I tried to believe, but it didn’t really make a huge impact on me. It was a belief system to me, something to be reasoned about, something either logical or illogical. But, it was never something I really felt.
My rebellion came after I left high school and went to college. Well, maybe more accurately it was immaturity & irresponsibility rather than rebellion. I smoked marijuana every day, drank a lot, hardly went to my classes (often went to them high when I did go). This behavior, naturally, resulted in my flunking out after one year.
There was certainly very little thought of religion at this time. In addition to the aforementioned behaviors, I also lied, stole, cheated, and didn’t really have any remorse for any of it either.
By the time I moved to Florida in 1996 I was an unapologetic Atheist. I considered myself a rationalist, a realist, and theists were ignorant people who believed in fairy tales. In my mind, we were here by accident, nothing at all mattered, and in the end we died at that was that. It’s safe to say that this cheery ideology resulted in many years of suffering from an undiagnosed depression.
Seven years after moving to Florida auspicious things began to happen. I remember, before any of this started, saying a couple of times that I was curious about Buddhism and wanted to look into it. I don’t think I knew anything about it, but there was something that intrigued me about it.
I had a friend who was taking a literature class at St. Petersburg College and one of the books they were reading was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. My friend told me a little about it; the only thing I remember him saying was something about the journey being the point rather than any destination.
Whatever he said, it provoked me to by a copy of Siddhartha at the local Borders. After I read this short novel, my life changed forever. It changed in abrupt and drastic ways.
A chord was certainly struck by this little book. A new possibility arose; here was an alternative way to live life- that was completely unknown to me. This was not an empty belief system that you had to accept blindly. This was something one actually did . This was a life where one was his own savior.
At this point in my life I was becoming quite overweight. I ate, drank, and smoked without restraint or moderation. Immediately following reading this book I became a vegan. It’s hard for me to account for this now. There is hardly any mention at all of not eating meat in the novel. Pork & beef were the first to go; then chicken, then turkey; and finally sea food. Over the next year I lost over seventy pounds.
While searching for more books to read about Buddhism on Amazon, I happened upon a book called The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. This book was really good, but I don’t think I was ready for it at that point. I ordered another one of his books (actually a transcription of a lecture series) called the Tao of Philosophy. This is one of about six books in a series called The Love of Wisdom.
The Tao of Philosophy is what really sank the hook into me. It blew me away. A whole new world was opening up before me that I didn’t know existed. Over the next five years I read almost all of Alan Watts’ books, and listened to many of his lectures- over and over again. I had found a new hero, guru, role model, inspiration, and idol. I participated in internet message boards, and also created one of my own, where myself and a gang of like-minded individuals participated in spirited dialogue about Alan Watts and the philosophies he taught (mainly Zen & Taoism, but also Hinduism, and other forms of Buddhism).
Alan Watts, it seems, most identified with Taoism as a personal life style. It was this brand of spirituality that I claimed for my labeling purposes during this period as well. These were miraculous teachings to me- the words of truth.
But, they remained beautiful words, and not a lot more. I found solace in these ideas, and at times, I rested in the knowledge that they pointed to. However, much of the time I was still depressed. Reading about these wonderful people, theories, and ways of being didn’t automatically negate a lifetime of conditioning. And although what first attracted me to Buddhism was the onus that was placed on the practitioner, what I now realize is that I wasn’t really practicing like the Buddha, I was merely philosophizing.
There were some elements missing at this time. At a point-in-time along this journey I met a little oracle that helped me further down the path. Well, maybe not an oracle, just someone who came along in such a way you’d think she was planted.
We met on MySpace. We had a common interest- a loose leaf tea lounge in Tampa. One day I clicked on her profile from the tea lounge’s page and noticed that we had quite a few similar tastes (movies, food, etc.). I also noticed that she listed herself as a Buddhist. At this time, the only Buddhists I knew were online and lived far away. I didn’t know any Buddhists in my actual face-to-face life.
So, I emailed her through MySpace and told her I liked her profile. One thing led to another, and soon we were having lunch at Sweet Tomatoes together. She worked for an acupuncturist who happened to be a long time Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and teacher. He held a weekly class at a yoga studio very close to my apartment.
This was a totally new, interesting, and wonderful experience. Even though I hadn’t before been particularly interested in Tibetan Buddhism, it was quite a great experience to be with a live group of people receiving Buddhist teachings, ten minutes from my apartment.
Although I had, for a long time, considered myself a Buddhist (or Taoist), I was now learning more about the formal ceremonies that one can participate in to “officially” become a Buddhist. In Buddhism this is called “taking refuge,” that is taking refuge in the three jewels (Buddha, dharma, and sangha). The refuge ceremony is conducted by a qualified preceptor who received refuge from a qualified preceptor, and on and on in an unbroken link of teachers & students that can be traced back to the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who lived over 2,5000 years ago.
It was also during this time that I was becoming interested in taking refuge that my friend, who introduced me to this Dzogchen group I had been attending, lent me a copy of Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa. This book lays out, in penetrating, brilliant, and beautiful language, the entire path of Tibetan Buddhism. When I read this book I had a similar “blown away” experience that I did when I first read Alan Watts. Except, I was thinking that this guy was what Alan Watts was talking about.
During my search for opportunities to take refuge in the three jewels, I researched all of the local Buddhist communities and contacted them about taking refuge. One of the places I contacted during that time was Shambhala St. Petersburg.
The name Shambhala didn’t ring any bells for me at the time I first heard it. However, after reading Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, I next bought Chogyam Trungpa’s book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. This amazing book describes the complete path to waking up through the Shambhala teachings.
Finally, it dawned on me that the Shambhala that Chogyam Trungpa was talking about in the Sacred Path of the Warrior was affiliated with Shambhala St. Petersburg that I had found through Google. I was very excited to discover that there was a community right in my area practicing the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa. I found out that every Sunday evening they have an “open house,” which consists of a teacher giving meditation instruction followed by sitting and walking meditation practice, and then a talk and discussion. My aforementioned Buddhist guardian angel & I went to an open house shortly after this initial discovery.
I instantly felt at home there and have been a very active member of the community ever since. I soon found out that what was missing from my early years of getting into Buddhist teachings was a strong & consistent mediation practice. I began to do many weekend retreats and established a short daily sitting routine. It was only then that actual changes began to occur.
What I began to discover through meditating were that the thoughts that had been bogging me down in depression for those many years were very insubstantial & untrue. Meditation practice began to have a stabilizing effect on my mind and also allowed me to begin to connect to a vast sense of spaciousness. I was starting to be able to recognize patterns of thoughts (based on basically nothing) that were binding me down like a mental strait-jacket.
Today I continue to spend several days a week at Shambhala St. Petersburg, while also practicing at home. I have attended and staffed many retreats and classes. My practice has allowed me to largely replace those nihilistic feelings of meaninglessness and despair with feelings of kindness, compassion, and the realization that, in fact, everything matters. Every action & even thought has a snowball effect in our inter-connected world.
Shortly after beginning my relationship with Shambhala St. Petersburg I did finally take refuge in the three jewels on October 7, 2007. The preceptor was a Tibetan yogi from the Drikung Kagyu lineage named Drupon Rinchen Dorje Rinpoche. He was a visiting teacher invited by the local Ratnashri Drikung Kagyu group. Since that time, I’ve made further commitments. In June of 2008, I took my bodhisattva vows with an acharya (senior teacher) in our Shambhala lineage. Then, in 2010, I took samaya with Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (the current lineage holder of Shambhala Buddhism and heir of his father, Chogyam Trungpa) as my root guru in the Shambhala vajrayana path.
Taking refuge is a commitment you are making to take the Buddha as your example, to the dharma as the teachings or means to follow the example of the Buddha, and to the sangha– the community of practitioners following the path along side you. The bodhisattva vow is a commitment to not only work for your own liberation from suffering, but to also help all other sentient beings to wake up, as well. The vajrayana path is a more intense method that one can undergo in an effort to wake up much more quickly, to be of benefit to others sooner.
Looking back, my journey has had a sense of inevitability to it. It seems that everything happened just as it was supposed to. I never really thought much about it, but my Dad actually had a statue of the Buddha that was kept in our living room for years when I was growing up. I think he said he got in Thailand when he was over there as part of the Vietnam War. It sat on a shelf in the living room and my Dad used to keep these big over-sized ear phones from the stereo on the Buddha’s head. I don’t remember ever talking about who the Buddha was, or anything like that. Did that have some sub-conscious effect on my becoming a Buddhist? Some Buddhists would say that maybe I chose that family because I was already a Buddhist, or destined to become one.
When I was young I used to criticize my parents for not having taught me about religion, or a lot of other things, while I was growing up. Now, I am extremely thankful for that. It allowed me to be open to many different things and not be prejudiced against things that are not mainstream. I see so many people who have triggers and hang-ups based on things that were coded into their brains when they were younger. But, I guess they are on their own path too, and everything is happening just as it needs to for them too.
Today, I am extremely happy & satisfied with my spiritual practice. It has helped me and those around me in countless ways. As a Buddhist, I have no desire to convert the world to Buddhism. What I do hope is that all of us, on our separate (but inter-connected journeys) can be kind to each other, treat everyone with respect, and work together to eradicate the needless suffering that takes place in our world.