Crossing Nebraska

Many years ago now I had a neighbor – a pretty young woman who played violin in the symphony. She was healthy and good natured, with an abundance of friends and stimulating work that took her to beautiful places all over the world. Her home was brightly furnished and stylish, and her European sedan was shiny and clean. There didn’t seem to be a single thing in the world that she lacked – with the exception of me, of course! Oh, the crush I had on that woman! We were taking a walk one day and, knowing of my interest in Buddhism, she asked me for my take on it. Anyway, I took a deep breath and began what I thought would be a fairly involved monologue about how our existence is suffering and that this suffering is rooted in our fundamental ignorance of the nature of reality. I anticipated that these first two Noble Truths were going to sound like a real downer, so I intended to make my way fairly quickly to the Buddhist equivalent of Christianity’s “good news” – that this suffering ca...

I have a confession to make. I’m really not all that much of a believer – not even when it comes to Buddhism. Oh, generally speaking, I probably still believe far more than I actually know. For instance, I believe that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth. Sure, I could do a little research and figure out how to check the veracity of such an allegation. For right now, though, I’m okay with just believing it – as long as it stays close enough to keep me warm without getting so close that it burns me up. Notwithstanding such instances of selective belief, I do try to live my life as unencumbered by it as possible; and that’s why over the course of my lifetime I’ve grown to embrace one of the major tenets of Dogen Zenji’s philosophy – namely, cultivation and verification. Zen practice for Dogen was less about belief than it was about cultivating practice and – through the actualization of practice – verifying truth. There was a time when I really tried to be a believer. I was c...