My family members were all Buddhist practitioners, from my grandmother to my parents, and I just went along with them. But I didn’t really know much apart from the fact that we are Buddhist. We would go to the temple once in a while, mostly for the New Year, or…
“I was raised in a Catholic family, but over the years I became disenchanted. It just didn’t fit with me. I was very cynical for years, anti established religion and any religious institution. Then I came to meditation through my Aikido teacher. I was aware enough to realize that I…
“I went to the temple to practice Buddhism when I was 13 years old. I really enjoyed listening to the monks chanting. The sound touched me deeply. When I am chanting, the Buddha’s teachings enter me, and when I prostrate to the Buddha, I feel very close to him. I…
“I have been going inside the prisons for about 12 years. The reason I started is because it is my karma. My eldest son is in prison. It was a struggle when he was younger, dealing with his addiction problems. We couldn’t help him, as much as we tried. And…
“Already in High School I thought about Buddhism, not because I questioned the validity of my faith, because I grew up Catholic, I just didn’t believe there was anything wrong with other religions. When I was growing up, my parents separated and got a divorce. It wasn’t an easy divorce,…
“I am a chaplain at a psychiatric center at an acute care facility, where people are mostly involuntarily, because they have tried to harm themselves or sometimes others. So I often meet people in a time of near death, brought from the ER. They are facing the consequences of…
“One day, when I was a child in Vietnam, I was walking with my grandmother to the temple. A monk was coming downhill as we were walking uphill. He held his reed hat sideways to cover his face from the sun, and he looked very relaxed, very beautiful. It is…
