In my darker moments, I sometimes wonder if Buddhism in the West has become a plaything for middle class dilettantes, a sizeable number of whom seem to prefer to turn their back on current realities—because they can.
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I learned that stillness is not about comfort. It’s about honesty. And in that honesty, for the first time, I began to see that what I’d really been running from all along wasn’t the law—it was myself.
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I was suffering because it’s in the nature of life to suffer: illness happens, pain happens, death happens, even the groovy things like dub reggae, samosas and Kung Fu Panda can’t hide the fact that life sucks, if you allow it to. The Second Noble Truth, with all the semantic shenanigans associated with what dukkha really means, is likewise very simple.
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To my mind there’s something deeply immoral about a spiritual tradition reaching the West and screwing people for money.
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I was on the point of abandoning Buddhism a few months ago. I’d hit a brick wall. Every time I sat down to meditate, I was flooded with anxiety. The mind seemed to take more pleasure in intrusive thoughts, fears I hadn’t felt for decades and an odd reluctance to even look at the cover of a book on Buddhism.
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