Who and How We Buddhists Are

 As it happens, I was only one of a flock of people who have been flying to Vancouver and going to the monastery to see Rinpoche before he departed for Asia, since nobody knows for how long. Another was a tall, slim gray-haired British grandmother named Niki who came almost simultaneously from London. She had survived bladder cancer and a law career to become a yoga teacher while her husband keeps up his hectic work as cartoonist for a major London daily. Niki roomed with Nancy, an athletic Rhode Island blue-blood grandmother and retired social worker, a former prom queen who teaches sailing.

Ling-Lung came from Kansas where she lives with her Swiss husband, a retired anthropology professor. She has her own high degree in anthropology but rather than use it, she runs a Dharma group and translates Buddhists texts for publication in Chinese. Shortly after she went home with a request from Rinpoche to translate another book, she was leaving first for a monastery in northern India and then Taiwan where her unmarried brother is ailing and needs her.

Julia showed up from Halifax where she teaches economics at Dalhousie University. Her specialty has become, as she puts it, CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility, and by the vagaries of the profession, she's ended up as the leading authority on how mining companies can clean up their act. How auspicious. I pointed her to Joan, whose gold mine CSR was feeding the entire monastery and its guests five nights a week. We talked about Mongolia, where Julia hadn't realized mining was now so profound because she's moved on to become the Canadian government's agent for establishing trade ties with Cuba and now spends a lot of time back in the country her family fled when she was a baby. "It's been really interesting for me as an emigre and as a Buddhist to be there trying to scope out how new businesses can continue the decency ethos of socialism." 

Retired teachers Pat and Clark made the trip from Denver even though Pat had heart surgery only a few weeks before and was worrying about their son who'd just been transferred by his tech company to San Francisco and couldn't find an affordable place to live. Forty-something Carolyn who used to live in Guatemala came from where she lives now with a man she met on retreat, Moab, Utah, and brought her brocaded Tibetan chuba to wear when she got to see Rinpoche to ask a question about her meditation practice. Thirty-something Nathan took the bus up from Seattle to ask his question and stayed overnight, looking for a ride back to the bus. A few weeks before, Alan drove his old car up from San Francisco where a year ago he, a Berkeley grad, retired from the Fire Department and launched what's become an international career as a Feldenkreis teacher. 

Dr John came unexpectedly from Newfoundland. Having satisfied his 2-year contract for emergency room surgical services way up above Gander, he had been moving his stuff including his little Fit car to northeast Nova Scotia to begin a one year retreat in a large center there when he was summoned to serve as Rinpoche's doctor. So one moment he was sitting up in a corner of his room reciting mantras and another he was in a tie and jacket accompanying Rinpoche to the orthopedist. John, who has been trained as a field surgeon and worked briefly for Doctors Without Borders, is going to be responsible for taking care of 79-year-old, frail Rinpoche while they are at his main monastery, an hour from a decent hospital. Meanwhile his wife Sara closed her yoga studio in Newfoundland and is heading to New Zealand to study biodynamic gardening. Together they plan to move next year onto a ground-breaking off-the-grid, biodynamic commune in the middle of Canada and try their hand at no harming.

Just a snapshot of who and how some Western Buddhists are: almost all in the caring professions or like Julia making caring part of their profession. 









~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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