Thank You for Calling Roshi Travel. How Will You Help You?

So the wife and I are finally getting a vacation. We take at least a couple of trips regularly but for us, a vacation involves a couple of things.

• No drives over three hours
• Just us on the trip
• No visiting family members

Keeping those things in mind, we haven’t had a real vacation since a cruise three years ago.

So tomorrow we’re heading off to London for a week. This is something we’ve been looking forward to for a while now. I’ve done quite a bit of traveling as I used to be a travel agent. My wife has done some but not a lot. Interestingly, I’ve never been to London. I’ve been to both Scotland and Ireland but never England – unless you count layovers at Heathrow (I do not). The only time she’s been to Europe was our belated honeymoon to Paris so this is going to be a nice bit of exploring for both of us.

How will this fit into practice? Well, I could easily use this as an excuse to blow off practice altogether for a week but really I see vacations as condensed practice opportunities.

The great thing about traveling is the barrage of new experiences, new smells, new sounds, new flavors all coming at you, rapid fire. How one handles those sensations is, to me, what one’s practice should be about. There’s no pillow. No statue. No opportunity to sit. You simply move and experience and – hopefully – remain mindful through it all.

And in a city like London, if you do manage to remain truly mindful you get to absorb the buildup of over a thousand years of people’s lives and loves and works. Nice stuff if you can do it right.

Of course, I could be very wrong about this. This could just be the buildup of my own preconceptions of the small but shiny new insights that I believe I have acquired.

Perhaps one-on-one travels with a Roshi might be a nice way to practice.

We do have free net access in the hotel room. Perhaps I’ll write a blog entry every day while I’m there.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

P.S.

Thanks to “Irrepressible Angst”, my unofficial blogging muse. When I go a long time without posting, it’s due to my laziness. So far, whenever I start again, it’s due to her prodding.

So it begins.

I’m sure there are other blogs like this.

OK. Hang on.

I just looked. There’s this one. Not dissimilar.

So here’s the scoop. I’ve frittered around on the edges of Buddhism for a number of years now. I’ve never really committed to it for a variety of reasons all of which amount to excuses. Lately, a number of aspects of my life have conspired to push me towards that commitment but there is one excuse that is actually valid: I live in hell. Well, not actually hell. It’s rural Indiana, which, if you’ve ever been here…

Here in the middle of nowhere, difference is viewed as something about which one should be suspicious, if not harbor deep seated fears. Here’s a perfect example. There are a number of restaurants in town but not one of them is Italian. Why? Too exotic. I’m not making that up.

So, yeah, Buddhism is way beyond the definition of possible, let alone normal around here. My nearest hope for a little of that ol’ time sangha? 64 miles. Not exactly conducive to Sunday services.

But I’m ignoring all my excuses, valid or otherwise, and jumping in feet first. And I’m going to use this blog as my own little personal journal. I’m doing that for a couple of reasons. First, writing with a pen makes my hand cramp up. What can I say? I’m a wuss. Second, I know there are others out there in my boat and certainly there will be more. Perhaps my successes and failures can help someone else.

What prompted this? Well, I know it all sounds so very Al Gore-hybrid vehicle-oxygen bar- spirulina-Earth Shoes-stop me before I date myself even further, but I just spent a week listening to His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak on Atisha’s “Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment“. It’s not like his teachings came out of the blue and conked me over the head. They simply reinforced a lot of things that I’ve been working on mentally for a long while now. Rather than having a stranger present some new hip way of thinking, it was more like having a friend ask if you’re ever going to grow up.

So, I guess I am and you get to come along for the ride. But who am I?

I’m an I.T. Manager in my forties. I’m happily married, a father of two and a grandfather of one. My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world. Although she is not a Buddhist and has no leanings in that direction, she fully supports my choices. As a matter of fact, she is the one who got me the tickets to see His Holiness.

My personality runs in contrast to what most people think of when they think of Buddhists. I’m a confirmed pessimist. I don’t care much for other people. I can be openly hostile and rather foul-mouthed. Like I care.

But I do believe that these things have caused my life to be more difficult than it has needed to be and at times has caused unnecessary suffering for those around me. Although it may void my membership in the Curmudgeon’s Hall of Fame, I’ve never wished for other people to be made unhappy by my actions and I’ve always believed that the world would be a better place if people stopped making each other miserable. It’s just time that I start to accept that I’m one of those people.

Anywho…

It’s time to get rolling. Actually, I got rolling a few days before going to see His Holiness. I’ve been meditating twice a day and over the past couple of days I’ve made a specific effort to focus as much as possible on spreading compassion. The next 24 hours should be fairly easy but come Monday, I head back to work and that’s when the real effort begins.

Stay tuned.