I grew up Methodist in Stuart, Virginia, a small town near the Blue Ridge mountains in the southwestern part of the state. While my parents did not worship in a formal manner, they asked me to go to church with my grandparents until I was fifteen or so. I liked going to church because it pointed to the sacred in life. At the same time, the Scriptures didn't quite ring true for me. I don't believe in God, as there is the fundamental idea that we are stained and can only be purified through accepting something or someone we cannot see. When I no longer had to go to go to church, I stopped.

When I was in the forth or fifth grade, I took a Tae Kwon Do class at the local high school, after which we meditated. That must have been the seed that made get interested in Buddhist texts in my late teens. I read the Diamond Sutra, the Heart Sutra, and others. I read voraciously, and I just happened to pick them up somewhere along the way. They touched something in me because they seemed grounded and based on experience rather than faith the belief in things yet unseen.

Later, a former assistant of Allen Ginsberg gave me a copy of Chogyam Trungpa's Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, which articulated many of my misgivings with theistic religion. In short, I cannot accept that someone who has the power to relieve the immense pain and suffering in the world might not do it." Perhaps it had something to do with the existential current that I picked up from the books I was reading in school, and which might have mirrored some late adolescent alienation I had felt, but it did ring true for me that there is suffering, that there are sources of suffering, and that there is the potential of cessation of suffering. The texts taught me that there is a path to realize that potential, so I embarked on learning everything I could about Buddhism.

Almost fifteen years later, I still read and reread The Heart Sutra, which is the essential teaching of emptiness and voidness. I also return to a book by Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, which is the best book outlining the basic practices of Tibetan Buddhism. I also read anything by Trungpa Rinpoche, whose books are in a voice that is written for Western ears. I try to sit every morning, alternating between basic meditation practices, such as Samatha ("dwelling in tranquility") and Vipassana ("clear seeing," or awareness) practice, and Tonglen, which is a powerful way of dealing with pain and loss, and essentially opening your heart. I see it as my grounding for the day, a note that will resound throughout the morning, afternoon, and night. With that aspiration as a foundation, it helps me focus in everything I do.

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