With a memoir with Buddhist in the title, do expect to read how the Dharma impacted my life. Here I am, in a forest outside Flagstaff in 2024, on the road with Dani and her Buddhist Nomads. Months earlier, in a desert in southern Arizon, I just happened to be camped by her van when I woke up with the sensation of an elephant crushing my chest. My Dharma adventure was about to begin.
But the story truly begins some four decades earlier: In Australia in the late eighties I experienced a work-related nervous breakdown. A guided loving-kindness meditation at a Tibetan center in Melbourne opened my eyes to the anger and resentment I harbored and set me on a course of recovery and healing. I stuck around for more realizations.
A decade or so later, back in the States, a manic reaction to an antidepressant unmasked my bipolar. Thanks to mindfulness practice (before mindfulness became mainstream), I learned to anticipate mood and energy shifts and take a proactive role in managing my condition. Sometimes it was as simple as stopping to smell the roses.
Cultivating a Buddhist outlook - we really need to call it an inlook - opened the way for further insights.
For me, Buddhism was a psychology. Bipolar takes no prisoners. My personal stakes couldn't be higher. At the time and later on, I kept fairly quiet about it. In my memoir, I break the silence.
But the story truly begins some four decades earlier: In Australia in the late eighties I experienced a work-related nervous breakdown. A guided loving-kindness meditation at a Tibetan center in Melbourne opened my eyes to the anger and resentment I harbored and set me on a course of recovery and healing. I stuck around for more realizations.
A decade or so later, back in the States, a manic reaction to an antidepressant unmasked my bipolar. Thanks to mindfulness practice (before mindfulness became mainstream), I learned to anticipate mood and energy shifts and take a proactive role in managing my condition. Sometimes it was as simple as stopping to smell the roses.
Cultivating a Buddhist outlook - we really need to call it an inlook - opened the way for further insights.
For me, Buddhism was a psychology. Bipolar takes no prisoners. My personal stakes couldn't be higher. At the time and later on, I kept fairly quiet about it. In my memoir, I break the silence.
As a mental health writer, part of my job was attending conferences. In the early 2000s, the brain science studies were coming in thick and fast. At long last, scientists were demonstrating a neural basis to behavior and how genes and environment interacted in complex ways.
A major part of this had to do with the stress response and how a hitherto little known part of the brain - the amygdala - kicked off fight or flight.
The science community was talking about developing new drugs, but I was not about to wait the 17 or so years it takes for a new medication that may or may not work to hit the market. New studies on neuroplasticity were coming in. It was time for me to take charge of my own condition. The tools were already there. They'd been around for thousands of years.
“Ancient wisdom meets modern science,” is how I described it to my readers. But I didn't exactly shout it from the rooftops. No, the time wasn't right. There was so much to learn and so much I didn't know. As many voices shouted to be heard, I quietly applied myself to mindfulness and other practices and carefully observed the results. Time would tell. Later, I unexpectedly found myself on the road. Then along came My Rather Improbable 2024. Time to break the silence …
A major part of this had to do with the stress response and how a hitherto little known part of the brain - the amygdala - kicked off fight or flight.
The science community was talking about developing new drugs, but I was not about to wait the 17 or so years it takes for a new medication that may or may not work to hit the market. New studies on neuroplasticity were coming in. It was time for me to take charge of my own condition. The tools were already there. They'd been around for thousands of years.
“Ancient wisdom meets modern science,” is how I described it to my readers. But I didn't exactly shout it from the rooftops. No, the time wasn't right. There was so much to learn and so much I didn't know. As many voices shouted to be heard, I quietly applied myself to mindfulness and other practices and carefully observed the results. Time would tell. Later, I unexpectedly found myself on the road. Then along came My Rather Improbable 2024. Time to break the silence …
Back in the early 2000s, early in my time as a mental health journalist, the brain science studies were coming in thick and fast. They strongly suggested that over time we could rewire our brains to the point where we could tone down our stressful reactions to our environment. Just what the doctor ordered. Just what Buddha (and the Vedic masters) ordered 2,600 years ago.
Over the years, the studies got more sophisticated, including uncovering new neural networks. Then the scientists got smart and started placing Buddhist monks and yoga practitioners in brain scan machines. The early findings were astonishing: Buddhism (and other practices) literally builds a better brain.
By then, I was nearing the end of my mental health writing career. I reported the findings but cautioned against making too much of them. We needed more studies. Time would tell.
Then came my heart attack and financial collapse of 2016. In early 2017, I hit the road and left my mental health research behind. Then, in 2024, I felt motivated to make a casual search. Holy crap! The studies were panning out. I needed to be shouting this from the rooftops. My newly published memoir, My Rather Improbable 2024, does just that. It also includes how I made friends with a skunk.
Over the years, the studies got more sophisticated, including uncovering new neural networks. Then the scientists got smart and started placing Buddhist monks and yoga practitioners in brain scan machines. The early findings were astonishing: Buddhism (and other practices) literally builds a better brain.
By then, I was nearing the end of my mental health writing career. I reported the findings but cautioned against making too much of them. We needed more studies. Time would tell.
Then came my heart attack and financial collapse of 2016. In early 2017, I hit the road and left my mental health research behind. Then, in 2024, I felt motivated to make a casual search. Holy crap! The studies were panning out. I needed to be shouting this from the rooftops. My newly published memoir, My Rather Improbable 2024, does just that. It also includes how I made friends with a skunk.
In my memoir, I observe that quantum physics has been misrepresented and abused so much that it needs to file a police report. Yet quantum physics and Buddhism (along with other Eastern traditions) form a near-perfect and uncanny overlay.
My starting point from way way back was the Heart Sutra and emptiness. This implied a mysterious quantum field and I was content to leave it at that. In my own mind, I had harmonized brain science with Buddhism without having to bring Oppenheimer and his equations into it. But then came the realization that brain science left a number a number of unanswered questions. Chief among them was where did thought and consciousness come from. Did they actually originate from outside the brain? The Nobel quantum physicist Roger Penrose thinks so. He also speculated that consciousness preceded biology. He received support from neuroscientist Stuart Hameroff, who suggested how the quantum field and the brain may interact. Hameroff describes himself as a "quantum Buddhist."
Suddenly, as I was writing my memoir, I was doing research in real time. Basically, how did lepton and meson connect to “I can't believe it's not butter.” The answer may forever elude us, but we need to be asking the questions. So, imagine Einstein and Buddha having a conversation. What would they be talking about?
My starting point from way way back was the Heart Sutra and emptiness. This implied a mysterious quantum field and I was content to leave it at that. In my own mind, I had harmonized brain science with Buddhism without having to bring Oppenheimer and his equations into it. But then came the realization that brain science left a number a number of unanswered questions. Chief among them was where did thought and consciousness come from. Did they actually originate from outside the brain? The Nobel quantum physicist Roger Penrose thinks so. He also speculated that consciousness preceded biology. He received support from neuroscientist Stuart Hameroff, who suggested how the quantum field and the brain may interact. Hameroff describes himself as a "quantum Buddhist."
Suddenly, as I was writing my memoir, I was doing research in real time. Basically, how did lepton and meson connect to “I can't believe it's not butter.” The answer may forever elude us, but we need to be asking the questions. So, imagine Einstein and Buddha having a conversation. What would they be talking about?
My Buddhist explorations were no mere academic or esoteric pursuits. My mental and physical well being was on the line. By the time I met Dani and her Buddhist Nomads in early 2024, I welcomed the prospect of taking a deeper dive.
Typical stories follow tried and true patterns: Student meets master, student finds truth, student achieves awakening. Real life is far more messy and complicated and this is what my memoir reflects. What began with promise and hope ended up dashed to bits in our human failings. I am disgraced, in exile, seeking a rock to attach to and (like the sea slug) eat my own brain.
Of all things, this is where my story truly starts. But without Dani, this story never would have begun.
Typical stories follow tried and true patterns: Student meets master, student finds truth, student achieves awakening. Real life is far more messy and complicated and this is what my memoir reflects. What began with promise and hope ended up dashed to bits in our human failings. I am disgraced, in exile, seeking a rock to attach to and (like the sea slug) eat my own brain.
Of all things, this is where my story truly starts. But without Dani, this story never would have begun.
Now, alone in the forest, away from Dani and her Buddhist Nomads, I found myself able to step away and let go. This opened the way to being conked on the head by a metaphorical comet. Paradoxically, out of the blue, with no effort, I experienced a series of profound awakenings. Hit me on the head with a comet.
In the wake of an unexpected enlightenment experience, my alter-ego Squinty the Prospector became my spiritual guide. He serves the dual purpose of comic relief and keeping me grounded. In a series of dialogs, he validates my experiences, but urges me to pay close attention to other things going on in my life - in particular, my friendship with a skunk. Who knows? Next year it could be a …
