The Very Beginning of My Meditation Journey
They say falling in love can lead to any number of unexpected outcomes, right? When I fell in love, it led to the dharma, a more fortunate outcome I could not imagine. Of course, it also led to marriage, but that proved a more temporary condition.
I was living in Boulder, Colorado, in my first marriage, driving Boulder Valley school bus #91 for a living, and coming up on turning 28. Even though Boulder was the home of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I had never heard of him until the driver of school bus #93 gave me a copy of Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. He also collected planks of barn wood from my acre on the plains to use for his waterbed frame in exchange for Bob Dylan’s latest album: Desire.
One thing led to another, and the driver of school bus #93 took me down to the meditation hall at 1111 Pearl Street to sit for the first time. It felt like a golden opportunity, and I was hooked. February 1976.
As you may know, the seventies in Boulder were wild times; Trungpa Rinpoche had set about taming us all and we were eager for the truth of existence. He was so generous with his playful insistent wisdom, and we all did our best. We are still doing our best.
I went on retreat at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center several months after meeting Trungpa Rinpoche, taking only one book with me: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Suzuki Roshi. In it, I read that falling in love is a genuine way to stumble into the dharma.
Who knew that I would be falling in love with a bigger life than I had ever imagined?
What brought you to the Buddhist Path? We invite you to send us your stories to share them here!
Written by Leland Williams