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I've been intensively learning about Buddhism, trauma, and personal transformation the past 2 years. My main take-way is that it's extremely difficult to build understanding on this topics. More than once my mind has been completely changed by unexpected pieces of information.
The more I learn, the more I'm filled with a deep frustration with the ignorance of these topics in the general population and amongst trusted experts—especially those in the medical fields, psychotherapy, and amongst philosophers, writers, artists.
I read articles in the New York times on psychology, I read people's takes on religion, on religious practice like meditation, on their own psychology, and I feel a mixture of enraged and sad. How could so much be known, yet we all know so little?
Then I'm reminded that so much I do know came, for instance, by spending some time at a monastery—something vanishingly few people will ever have the opportunity to do. Also much I learned came from programs I spent thousands of dollars on. Lived, rare, irreplaceable experiences.
One can read about everything I experienced, but good luck even knowing what books to look for—and without first-hand experience, one probably wouldn't even be interested. We follow paths of growth we know and believe, not those which are foreign and merely described to us.
I think I've stepped into a certain type of destiny: one in pursuit of obscure treasures. Incredible things written in old books about things faraway, scarcely believable. Surely they are elaborated—but are they really? How can we know?
Children will ask me what I did with my life, and I will explain that I spent many hours staring at a bowl. They will look up and say "I want to be a fireman." I will tell them that's a wonderful aspiration and I think they'll do wonderfully.
But then I hope one day to be able to teach and to share the knowledge I've found, and maybe it will be very helpful. Maybe it will change things. Maybe one day we'll live in a world where all the magic in the world is known by all.
Really, I am scared. Scared to live in this world, with these people, with these problems. I'm scared to share what I know, to be of service, even to be awake.
I think it's important to have a rich imagination for the pre-modern world. A world where people were directly in touch with the tools of their own survival. Where death was nearby, and where everything was filled with deep significance.
Think of hunger, of cold, of the rich smell of incense. Of birds—so many more than today, since they have all died. Of the sound of the wind in the trees. Of silence at night, and bells in the distance. No cars. Preparing an animal. Sharpening a blade. Washing rice. Fear, grief.
And think of the profound ignorance of those times compared to today. The singularity of a life, a family, a village, unaware of what's beyond itself. Of the possibility of true travel and adventure. Foreign, alien things.
