What's your story?

Gunnar

Hello,
I am interested in hearing some of your stories. Being that most of us here are from North America, and probably weren’t raised in a Buddhist fashion, how did you guys begin your practice? Did you pick up a book? Meet a monk? More importantly tell your story about the first time at a temple, and your subsequent conversion. What did you learn?

Thanks all!

Gunnar

comicallyinsane

I've been training martial arts most of my life. About 9 years ago I met a grandmaster from China and he taught me Kung Fu. He taught a little about Buddhism. I thought about it for a few years but never found a lot of info. I wasn't looking very hard either. I had a lot of issues with Christianity and I kept finding that it didn't make any sense to me. So I finally found some info on Buddhism and then I found this site and since then I've read some books and practiced and I've changed for the better.

RichardH

I was born in a small Roma encampment in the Carpathian mountains. As an 8 yearold I was sold by my heavily indebted father to the Russian circus. The Burly trainer Vlad taught me how to be a contortionist-juggler and I was able to juggle while quite contorted. Then at age 16, just as I perfected my act, there was a terrible fire in the big top and we were suddenly refugees. The bearded lady Creena, the wolf boy Yuri, and I, set off to far Siberia after hearing rumors of work. We were briefly employed as Sealers on lake Baikal but soon felt bad for the seals. After drifting for five years around Vostok, Me and the wolf boy slipped aboard a tramp steamer to Japan. He was immediately adopted by a kindly old lady in Sapporo. I carried on as a wandering Monk. Unforunately just as The great Soto master San...suchi took took me in, war broke out. The big one, WW2. Noticing my agility at kite flying the local captain enrolled me in kamkazi training school, where for the first time in my life I felt the joy of sharing common purpose. ..... It gets fuzzy from there.

comicallyinsane

I bet the wolf boy was a heavy drinker.

BrotherBob

Richard, very artistic! and funny!

Can't match that! Here's a bit of my story:

During one lunchtime recess, while in the fourth grade, at Lincoln Elementary School, in Cupertino Calif, a long time ago (1963), I say a little oriental kid being picked on by a couple of school bullies. These guys were shoving this kid around and calling him all kinds of names. Well, to shorten the story, this little kid eventually started throwing these guys around like rag dolls. So, I decided to get to know him and learn his secret.

He and I became really good friends and his family kind of adopted me. His father was descended from a noble samurai family, a martial arts master, and Rinzai Zen priest. Over time he graciously allowed me to train with his sons at his home, which included a lot!!! of Zazen.

I imagine that was the start of the path for this old fool.

comicallyinsane

Was the kid a heavy drinker?

BrotherBob

Jackie??

comicallyinsane

Slide Jackie Slide. Oh that's from Sanford and Son.

Brigid

Richard Herman wrote: »

I was born in a small Roma encampment in the Carpathian mountains. As an 8 yearold I was sold by my heavily indebted father to the Russian circus. The Burly trainer Vlad taught me how to be a contortionist-juggler and I was able to juggle while quite contorted. Then at age 16, just as I perfected my act, there was a terrible fire in the big top and we were suddenly refugees. The bearded lady Creena, the wolf boy Yuri, and I, set off to far Siberia after hearing rumors of work. We were briefly employed as Sealers on lake Baikal but soon felt bad for the seals. After drifting for five years around Vostok, Me and the wolf boy slipped aboard a tramp steamer to Japan. He was immediately adopted by a kindly old lady in Sapporo. I carried on as a wandering Monk. Unforunately just as The great Soto master San...suchi took took me in, war broke out. The big one, WW2. Noticing my agility at kite flying the local captain enrolled me in kamkazi training school, where for the first time in my life I felt the joy of sharing common purpose. ..... It gets fuzzy from there.

comicallyinsane wrote: »

I bet the wolf boy was a heavy drinker.

comicallyinsane wrote: »

Was the kid a heavy drinker?

LMAO!!!!!

RayfieldNeel

My "story" starts with martial arts as well. Took 3 years of Tae Kwon Do in college, from a real ball-buster sabunim. I noticed that something about spending time with the forms (what the Koreans call pumse, and the Japanese call kata) left me feeling very serene and relaxed. I took a college course in Buddhism, and became fascinated, though it would be a number of years before that evolved into a practice.

I tried out various forms of Christianity, but could never get past the dogma. I could never reconcile my engineer's view of the world with the Protestant Church's idea of God, and there seemed to be all sorts of discrepancies between what's now practiced in the modern Church, and what Jesus reportedly said. (To me) I continue to sporadically attend a church with my wife and kids; there are nuggets of wisdom there, and the kids/wife enjoy it.

Stress became a real problem for me a few years ago; I was walking around with a king-sized knot in my stomach, from a combination of job and family burdens. I found Jon Kabat-Zinn's work on mindfulness, and entered into that world from the secular angle. I began a daily practice of very brief meditation. It seemed to help.

Something very personal and painful happened to me a couple of years back, and I began looking for different ways to understand my suffering. Since then I've become something of a "salad bar" Buddhist. I pick from the Theravada and Mahayana/Zen bowls as needed. Currently meeting with a Thich Nhat Hanh sangha in town, but still really looking for that person that I can identify with as "my teacher". Now trying to meditate between 30 min and an hour a day.

I don't know where this path will take me...but I think perhaps I'm at least pointed in the right direction.

skydancer

Hi Gunnar--

I first tried to read a guided meditation into a tape. The book was by Stephen Levine and was called "A Gradual Awakening". I did the best I could but was hungry for more.

Then I attended some buddhist teachings and soon after took myself off to a ten day Vipassana retreat.

I hadn't sat still for minutes and the program at my first retreat was quite rigorous. Up at five sit for an hour walking meditation for 45 minutes, breakfast in silence, sit walk sit walk one hour or 45 minutes, even eating was done in meditation.

I was just a dharma crybaby in the beginning. Everything hurt and we couldn't even make eye contact with another.

Yet I had a profound shift.

Two of the people who had organized the retreat were killed in an automobile accident during my first retreat. I hadn't cried for my dad's suicide and the flood gates opened and my heart along with it.

It was a rather dramatic introduction to the practice, but I'm a long term drama queen.

Whoops just noticed there are two of these story threads. Hope that's ok.

Love-N-Peace

I was born on Mount Scaffol-Pike where my mother was promtly taken away by a Russian sea eagle. My father Sadam was busy in the East so I was raised by the native mountain sheep. It was when I was seven years old and came across a Swedish nudist colony I realised I was human. We was on the plane back to Sweden when it was attacked by budgies. Several clogged up the engine and we were sent plummeting into the ocean. Luckily I was rescued by a porpoise who took me inland. When we was near the port however the porpoise and I were captured by a Japanese whaling company. I spent three months gutting belugas until I fell through an anomaly aboard the Titanic. After we hit the iceburg I was sent back into the water where the belugas seeked their bloody revenge. My head was frozen and my body was restored by a German scientist in 2315. I seeked to return home and on my eleventh birthday Professor Forpserosenschneigenhabelhorton built me a time machine. I travelled to the new year of 2010 where I was taken in by a hamster horder. Five days before my twelth birthday she drowned in her own seed and nutty cheese soup. I released the hamsters into a Scottish island just off Denmark where I'd been told they lived. I presently live under an old lady's bed in Southern Stockholm.