My Story Part I: A Pale Blue Dot, Mr. Sagan?

One of the things that I and many other people enjoy are "how did you get into Buddhism" stories. We all have our journeys, some epic and some subtle, and in this four part story, I offer "a backward glance o'er traveled roads".

As a kid growing up in Da Boogie Down Bronx, my earliest recollection of anything even remotely Buddhist related involves (not surprisingly) fat statues at Chinese take out joints and kung fu ass kicking monks. My first real exposure came in my freshman year of high school in the Global Studies class. Taught by Mr. Peter Tarr, we learned the basics of Asian history and culture, which of course included discussions of Buddhism. While I learned the basics (Four Noble Truths, etc.) the only thing that really stuck in my head was how cool words like 'bodhisattva' sounded.

On the home front, I come from an essentially non religious background; my mother being born a Hindu but later becoming Christian while my father (in spite of granddad's conviction) is an A&P Catholic...you'll only find him at Mass on Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday.

Although I was always an inward looking boy, my sense of inquisitiveness really started to boil up during my senior year in high school. There were many things going on at that time of my life: a serious romantic relationship, the college application process, and the sense of "big change" all around. One day in the bookstore, I noticed a paperback copy of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos". I had heard of him before and the cover claimed it to be the best selling science book in English. I figured I'd give it a go, especially since I've always loved astronomy and science in general. My expectation was that it was a general treatise of astronomy as a science. What quickly became apparent was that "Cosmos" was dealing with, well, everything. Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Classic "big questions". The sense of wonderment and awe about the universe stayed with me. Going off to college at SUNY Stony Brook, living in a dorm, and experiencing college life (or lack thereof in the case of a chemistry major) only added to my sense of wonderment about everything. This all changed on a Tuesday morning in September of 2001. This was/is perhaps the defining event of my generation and like many, it lead me to do a lot of soul searching.

All of the fun speculation about Big Bangs, quantum entanglement, and my odds of gravitationally attracting cute girls stopped. What arose was a question that has been asked since time immemorial, "why do people suffer"? Although I was never a spiritual person, I did feel deep down that, this was something far beyond the realm of my general agnostic/humanist outlook.

One day, I was in the Barnes and Noble at Union Square, 14th Street and I wandered into the Buddhism/Eastern Philosophy section. I looked around and thought to myself, "well Buddha was a smart guy, let's see what he has to say about things". There are as many books on Buddhism nowadays as there are tires in the Hudson River but I wound up taking a skinny little book called "The Dhammapada". It seemed like a good choice; it was small, in verse form, and apparently a classic text. The translation I got was by Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana. Opening this book was truly the first step my life-long voyage.

I was hooked and yet I was completely bewildered. So much of what the Buddha was saying seemed so familiar and sensical to me, it was as if I had always been following his teachings but didn't really know it. The next step was to find out as much as I possibly could...