“Most of us can relate to the observation that there is suffering. The very fertile question is, why? What makes us prone to suffering?”
- B. Alan Wallace, The Four Immeasurables: Cultivating a Boundless Heart
I remember the exhilaration of getting a standing desk for my first “office job.” After months of sedentary discomfort, I would finally be able to stretch my legs while I worked and get some relief for my lower back. But the novelty wore off quicker than I anticipated. I shifted my weight to one leg, then the other. I rested my elbow on the desk, only to find my shoulder sore five minutes later. I finally gave in and lowered the desk, relaxing into my chair - ah, that’s better! A little while later, my tailbone started to throb… and up I went again.
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Upon reflection, our lives might seem like an artful dance of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. This dance seems perfectly logical to perform. Should we really go out of our way to get an extra dose of dissatisfaction if we haven’t had any by 5:00 PM? No, of course not. Shouldn’t we do our very best to look after our happiness and wellbeing? Yes, absolutely.
But if this is all so logical, then why are we “prone to suffering”? Why do we experience dissatisfaction, even when we might have everything we ever thought we needed?
Let’s examine our dance more closely. Chances are, if we are still dodging pain and searching for pleasure, we have not yet found a single source of happiness that is unchanging, always delivering the goods. This begs the question: are we performing a refined tango on our own Broadway stage, or do we step a little more frantically, as if we were trying to keep our feet from burning on hot desert sand? Are we confident that we are really waltzing toward lasting pleasure, or at times, does it feel like we are wandering toward mirage after mirage?
Most of us haven’t wandered deserts like the mystics of the ancient world. But how desert-like is our mental and emotional landscape? We are thirsty for someone or something that will fully and finally satisfy us. We venture toward mirages that are beautiful and promise this lasting happiness, and somehow, we are always left with a tinge of dissatisfaction. So we continue to wander.
But where do our mirages exist? Are they really out there, in the real world? No. A mirage is a projection of our own minds.
To ask “What makes us prone to suffering?” is also to ask:
How do we free ourselves from our own personal mirages?
How do we find genuine and lasting satisfaction in this human life?
In essence, these questions have guided my life’s spiritual journey. Below, I provide a brief synopsis of my spiritual and academic background, both of which are the foundation for my current aspirations to enter long-term retreat, teach meditation that truly alleviates suffering, and find meaningful intersections between the truths of Christian and Buddhist contemplative practice.
Seeds of truth and Doubt
I was a religious kid. At my First Communion in second grade, my Grandma gave me a Rosary with a little instruction booklet, and praying the Rosary became a near daily habit. While I didn’t have the vocabulary to express it, I knew praying the Rosary felt like a doorway to experiencing deeper truths of reality. Praying like this simply felt right.
However, the over-simplified faith of my childhood quickly dissolved when I reached adolescence. My sexual awakening induced confusion and guilt. I also struggled to comprehend the levels of human suffering I would see on the news. I became preoccupied with God’s true identity, sin, death, and the afterlife. I became terrified of ghosts and murderers - forces of evil that could take my life before I was ready.
Ironically, I also worried about the possibility that my religious beliefs could be totally wrong. I would imagine entering the afterlife - a sea of clouds and light - and seeing not the God of Christianity, but a towering, fat, laughing golden Buddha (like the ones I saw in store windows at the mall). He would stare down at me, and send me to a pit of fire off in the distance because I had chosen the wrong religion.
While my abject fears eventually subsided, the imprint of my anxieties carried through into my teen years. As I received Confirmation in tenth grade, my unanswered questions about sin, suffering, death, and God’s true nature became the seeds for a low-grade discontentment with Catholicism. At the same time, I was nurtured by the kindness and humor of my teachers and friends at my Catholic high school. Their presence on weekend retreats and in my daily life gave me hope that I could tap into something true about existence by following the Catholic path.
Broadening Horizons
In college, I found a second home in my university’s Catholic community, which became the bedrock of my social, spiritual, and working life. The staff and students who made up this community were both kind-hearted and interested in meaningful spiritual growth. On retreats, at mass, and at shared meals, I learned that it was possible to have a complicated relationship with my faith and still make meaningful spiritual growth.
Within this context, I found my way to a religion major. In classes, I was mesmerized by the range of worldviews that innumerable human beings had lived and died by throughout history. While my discontents with Catholicism remained constant, I took solace in the variety of ways humans found meaning in their lives through religion and philosophy. Most, if not all of these systems had to be pointing toward something true about the nature of our existence and our purpose.
As I continued my studies, I was profoundly affected by the piercing clarity of basic Buddhist philosophy and meditation instructions. The first Noble Truth resonated with me immediately; not that “life is suffering,” but that ignorance, attachment, and aversion simply lead to dissatisfaction. The Buddha’s subsequent claims were equally compelling: just as dissatisfaction arises, so can it cease. Furthermore, there is a path to the cessation of that dissatisfaction. It was like my personal world, along with all of my confusion and hunger for answers, was unwinding from its tight center: my own mind. All of a sudden, every breath felt like an opportunity for awakening.
By the time I completed my degree at the University of Rochester, I was lucky enough to have received teachings from multiple experienced Buddhist teachers. I had attended a few meditation retreats, and began to keep a relatively stable practice. Because I remained heavily involved in my Catholic community, I learned to walk the line between Catholicism and Buddhism. In the back of my mind, I wondered if I would ever reconcile the deep pull that I felt from both paths.
Finding my Path
After graduation, I moved to Boston to begin a teaching internship and a master’s program in education. Just as I started to take the lead in my host classroom, COVID-19 brought all of our plans and routines to a screeching halt. My life was suspended in limbo: the long-term relationship I was in ended, I had no job prospects for the upcoming school year, and I had virtually no work to do.
In this strange, humbling, upside-down pause, I was introduced to the teachings of Lama B. Alan Wallace and Dr. Eva Natanya, two highly educated and experienced teachers in Tibetan Buddhism. I found that while remaining completely true to the context and intent of the Buddhist philosophy and meditation they taught, they also highlighted the subtle but profound truths that underlie the world’s many contemplative traditions. Furthermore, they emphasized the importance of the rigorous scientific study of the nature of consciousness, and offered various models for the inclusion of contemplative practice as a legitimate mode of scientific inquiry.
Because of their example, my discontents and questions - my religious baggage - had the opportunity to grow into positive aspirations, which I hope will not only benefit myself, but many others.
My aspirations are:
Develop meditative concentration and insight in long-term retreat to thoroughly alleviate my own mental afflictions of ignorance, attachment, and aversion.
Use my contemplative experience in retreat to provide others with sound and practical guidance in meditation that has the true potential to alleviate personal suffering.
Combine my contemplative experience with rigorous scholarship to find meaningful intersections between Christian and Buddhist truths. I hope my effort in this regard will help to pave the way for what my primary teacher, Lama B. Alan Wallace, calls a “contemplative renaissance,” a revitalization of ancient contemplative practices which are made accessible to all, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof.
If you are moved to support me in actualizing my aspirations, please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to my retreat fund. Your consistent support helps me:
Make short “ramp-up” retreats to deepen my practice in preparation for long term retreat
Study contemplative intersections between Christianity and Buddhism
Save for the costs of long-term retreat (food and lodging for multiple months)
Thank you for your time and generosity. Wishing you wellness and happiness,