About my new book, EVERY BUDDHA, SAME PRICE

The events in this journal took place over twenty-five years ago, beginning shortly before I took the Five Buddhist Precepts in 1993. I was in my mid-forties, facing the usual midlife crises, exacerbated by an early empty nest. My daughter was in college. My son, age 15, went to live with his father. Now that my children were out of the house, I needed to pick myself off the floor of day to day life in twentieth-century America whose central purpose had eluded me.

Entering a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery, I realize, is not a typical reaction to this stage of life. But I had some unfinished business, below my level of awareness, that I had yet to revisit. As an impressionable teenager I had lived through the domestic upheavals of the Vietnam War. I had been shaped by images of the horrors we had wrought in that tiny, vulnerable country. Within the broader context of my search for fulfillment and meaning, I believe these early feelings of guilt and outrage led me to the doorstep of a local Vietnamese temple. My spiritual discomfort and yearnings had suddenly presented me with my first learning opportunity. What would I make of it?

By the age of 46, I already agreed with the Buddha’s diagnosis of the existential problem we all face: “Life is suffering.” Now I was ready to confront it more scientifically. Was there a way out of suffering? And what was suffering, anyway? Was it self-generated, or imposed from the outside? Could I jump off the hamster wheel that keeps us all distracted until we die? The fact that Buddhism was a practice and not a religion was essential to my desire for a pragmatic approach to the problem. I wanted answers, based on experience.

This isn’t a journal about how I conquered my problems and fears through Buddhism. My experiences read more like a travelogue into new and unfamiliar territory, a spiritual adventure that led me to some unexpected places. There was quite a bit of blundering involved—sometimes bordering on the slapstick—bliss and pain in equal measure, and a mysterious case of mistaken identity. And plenty of suffering, which is a case of mistaken identity in itself.

In the intervening years twenty-plus years since I wrote this journal, many changes have taken place at Kim Son and Plum Village, though at the time of this writing, Master Tu of Kim Son and Thich Nhat Hanh, are still in charge of their respective monasteries. Both institutions were in their early adolescence at the time of my ordination. Many of the monks and nuns I knew then have moved on. Those who persevered, rose through the ranks. I have changed some of the names.

To my Vietnamese brothers, sisters and friends, thank you for welcoming me into your world. I remain grateful for your practical advice, humorous insight and patience with my radical cluelessness. I learned, but slowly. Please forgive any inaccuracies or misstatements.

Gratitude also to the many spiritual seekers, skeptics and agnostics who listened and talked, advised and cajoled, laughed and cried with me along the way. To those who weren’t there, I trust the journal speaks for itself.