?in Dan's defense, i would also be deeply skeptical if someone told me they were doing what i am doing. i will tell you about what that is, but it requires a lot of background, so, fair warning. also, be advised that i am likely to speak about things in ways that might surprise you. to be fair, it surprises me too, but i cannot deny the experiences of the last two years. and again, my dear friend andy, my now former girlfriend becca, and my therapist, hanna, all of whom are deeply skeptical people, all admit that despite the unlikeliness of it all, they all agree that what i am doing is sound and not evidence of some crisis that i'm running from.

okay, with that, as i think you all know by now, i have been practicing tibetan buddhism since roughly late-spring/early-summer 2019. and as you all also have some idea, the years of the pandemic have been especially harsh for me and my family. admittedly, at this time last year i was indeed in a deep crisis that led to me checking in to a psychiatric facility because i was as suicidal as i've ever been in my life. shortly thereafter my mother died from the covid that i brought into the family. because of all this i took about 7 months of medical leave from my job and in fact at that point i had sort of abandoned my buddhist practice because in my despair i reasoned that it wasn't doing anything for me. but as this period progressed, i ultimately found that i missed the many beneficial aspects of my meditation practice and so in about late february or march of last year i returned to daily meditation. at that time, i figured out that the reason i had abandoned my practice for a while was because i had mistaken ideas about just what exactly it could do for me. to put it succinctly, i had been operating under the impression that if i continued my practice and continued helping my family in all the ways i was, that eventually things would improve ?. of course this isn't what happened and frankly anyone who doesn't realize that things are not going to improve any time soon hasn't been paying attention for the last five or six years. so as i returned to my practice i found it deepening significantly.

now, i don't know how much y'all know about tibetan buddhism, but to give you a brief history, buddhism was brought to tibet by indians beginning in roughly the 8th century. the buddhism that was being practiced in india by that time was a form known as vajrayana, or tantric buddhism. without getting toooo deeply into it, tantric buddhism is alll about a personal relationship between a student and a tantric teacher or guru. i'm sure i don't have to inform any of you of the many controversies and problems associated with tantric buddhism as it has been propagated in the west, including charges of abuse both sexual and otherwise. there have been a number of horrifying scandals surrounding tantric buddhism in the west beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present day. because of these (not to mention the fact that in order to practice tantric buddhism one must have access to a qualified tantric teacher with whom one feels a strong connection) i had decided fairly early on in my practice that i wasn't even going to attempt to go down that road. just too many potential problems and nowhere near enough qualified teachers, especially ones that a relatively poor person like me might have access to.?

having said that, last summer as my practice was getting more serious and i was looking to make connections with other buddhists, i started reading some books written by a guy called Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, who is a very prestigious reincarnate lama, as well as an actually really interesting filmmaker under the name Khyentse Norbu (seriously, no bullshit, his movies are worth checking out). Khyentse is someone who is very clearly concerned with transplanting buddhism to the west because tibet is a non-starter and if the tradition is going to survive it must move (as it did from india to tibet centuries ago). so his books are written for people like me, westerners with interest in the buddhadharma who are also very skeptical of the problems associated with tantric buddhism. honestly, he could have written several of his books specifically for me. what i found i them was first of all an extremely sincere and extremely smart guy who has no illusions about the problems associated with tantra, specifically in a western context. as i read his books i was amazed to find that literally every single concern i have is directly addressed by him in a fearlessly honest manner.?

having read his books i immediately moved on to everything i could find on the internet written by him (there's a lot and it's virtually all brilliant). so one night i'm reading some articles he wrote and it suddenly occurred to me with great clarity and urgency that this was the guy i didn't even know i was looking for and i wanted to ask him to be my teacher. but of course how the fuck was i supposed to make that happen. ?as i say, he is one of the most well known living tibetan masters, especially in the west, in addition to being a well regarded filmmaker, who has thousands of students all over the world and who travels virtually constantly all over the world giving teachings. so i decided to write him an email ?. while i couldn't find an email address for him directly, the guy has founded several well known organizations dedicated to different aspects of spreading the dharma, including one called the Khyentse Foundation, which is mainly concerned with funding buddhist education for promising students. so i wrote a fucking long as hell and excruciatingly sincere email, first asking him to be my teacher and explaining why i felt so strongly about it and sent it to a general contact email at the Khyentse Foundation. i really didn't think it would work but several days after sending it i received an email from a ?very nice woman at the foundation. after making it clear that she had read my entire email and was moved by it, she explained that i had in fact contacted the Khyentse Foundation. she went on to say that they have a system for communicating requests to Khyentse but that they have a strict rule that any message or request must be limited to one or two sentences at most (my email was something like five or six thousand words) and asked if i could possibly make my request to fit those requirements. she did also say that she could send my original email to his secretary in case they wanted more information. so i wrote a brief request and sent it along and proceeded to wait for about a week. when i heard back from her i thought at first that i was getting the brush off, but, reading between the lines i saw that wasn't the case at all. while she did not indicate that he had accepted my request, she made it clear what i needed to do next in order to move the process along. i won't get into too much detail here but before one can even begin tantric training, there are a host of preliminary practices (these are referred to as ng?ndro in tibetan) that must be completed, and this can take many years depending on the pace at which one works. so she basically told me that before asking him directly to be my teacher i should begin the ng?ndro practices under the auspices of an organization he founded, which has teachers hand picked by Khyentse to help and advise students through this. so i joined his ng?ndro organization and chose a mexican man from guadalajara named Carlo as my ng?ndro advisor.

okay, now it's time to get a little woo woo metaphysical. there are things about the last two years, and my experience with buddhist practice, as well as details from my life more broadly that started to make me feel like none of this was an accident. and as my practice continued and i got to know carlo better, i have more or less concluded that these are not coincidences. i'll paint a picture for you. the first thing is simply the fact that as soon as i really started getting into these practices (as well as the basic view of buddhism in general) it really felt like slipping on a glove. it wasn't hard or weird and in fact i took to it immediately. then there are these facts about my life:

i was born to a family who are members of a highly devout and decidedly insular religious community tucked into the mountains. also, my mother was born on the literal same day (same year) as the current Dalai Lama. these things all would strike most people as coincidences and, not so long ago, i would have said the same thing. there are other things that i could mention, but i'm afraid you might find them dubious, so i'll refrain, but the long and short of it is, i am absolutely certain that none of this is new to me and that in fact everything that has happened in my life has been leading me directly to this point and i am doing work that was begun long before i was born. and that work specifically is forging a new, indigenous western buddhist tradition.

going back to the spread of buddhism to tibet, as i mentioned, it was brought there over the course of more than a century by indian buddhist masters. as i'm sure you know, buddhism was founded in india, and as you probably also know, it is virtually extinct here now. this extinction was the result of a number of forces, including the beginning of islamic incursions into india, which destroyed the huge infrastructure of monasteries in india. at the same time, what we now call hinduism was making a comeback and that meant that buddhists lost much of the royal patronage they had enjoyed since the time of ashoka. all this happened just as the tradition was being transmitted to tibet. but it's important to understand that this transition was far from smooth and there were a couple of centuries during which there was a lot of pressure from traditional tibetan sources to reject it outright. the story of how this was overcome focuses on an indian tantric master known as guru padmasambhava (which means "lotus-born master"). put simply, because the traditional tibetan tutelary gods were opposed to the introduction of buddhism to tibet and spoiled attempts to build the first monastery there, padmasambhava was summoned to subdue the local tutelary gods, and he did this by incorporating them into what became tibetan buddhism. in other words, buddhism had to be made tibetan before tibetans would become buddhists.

as i said, the work of bringing tantric buddhism to the west began in the 1970s, and frankly it hasn't really gone all that well (remember all those scandals?). not only that, because of the specifics of western culture, many people, including people otherwise open to buddhism, are unable to reconcile some of the important aspects of the buddhist view (i'm talking mainly here about karma and rebirth). what i've come to realize is that the typical western objections to these concepts more or less boil down to misconceptions of how they work as well as misconceptions about our present scientific worldview. this email is already long as fuck, so i won't get into it now, but if you are interested i can get more deeply into these things another time. but basically, what i concluded is that in order for this stuff to stick in the west it has to be reconceived in a way that takes western culture into account. in other words, in order for westerners to accept buddhism buddhism will have to be made western and the tutelary gods of the west (in a phrase, scientific materialism) must be subdued or appeased.

the truly amazing thing is that as soon as i came to realize this, it was like i opened a floodgate somewhere and ideas just began flowing with tremendous force and prodigiousness. and again, i'll refer you to becca, andy and hanna, all of whom have heard them and all of whom agree that they are not just sound but in some aspects actually fucking brilliant. so, i saw the course of the rest of my life before me.

anyway, sometime this summer i decided that the next time i went to india i wanted to, first, do pilgrimage to the major sites associated with the buddha's life, and second ?travel up to the tibetan colonies in himachal pradesh and try to track down Khyentse directly. it being summer 2021, with india still banning tourists in the country because of covid, i figured that might be a year or two away at least.?

now i have to give you a little more background. a few months before i went to india in 2019, i met this woman named priya who was a software engineer at my office who is from andhra pradesh in southern india very near where we visited. when she learned that i was going to south india and loved south indian movies we became fast friends. when the pandemic began, i had a lot of concern for priya because i knew she was living on her own in a very foreign country with no transportation of her own at a really fucking scary time. so with becca's support i decided i needed to do what i could to look out for her. this meant picking her up every couple of weeks and driving her to the indian grocer in gaithersburg as well as helping her to make appointments and taking her to see apartments when she had to move. priya, of course, was deeply appreciative of all the help. and also she informed me that she was engaged to be married though the wedding was delayed because there was opposition from both families because of caste difference. but she said that as soon as they were able to get the families on board they would plan the wedding and that i would be invited. i'm sure i don't have to tell you that being invited to a traditional indian wedding (in india) is a rare opportunity for a white boy like me, so i resolved then and told her as much that when it happened i would do everything in my power to attend.?

so, things are going along this past fall. my buddhist practice was deepening and at the same time my alienation from my job was becoming untenable. it got so bad that i had to level with my supervisor about it because i was finding ?it difficult to do the bare minimum at my job. as it happened, this forced my hand, and my supervisors boss immediately came to me and asked me to tell her when my last day of work would be. so i said i would work through the end of 2021 and that would be it. i didn't know what i was going to do instead but i was weirdly sanguine about the whole thing. then, about a week later, i got a text from priya: my wedding will be on december 29, can you come? my immediate thought was fuck no i can't, i'm broke as hell i just quit my job and besides i think india is still not issuing tourist visas. but, i said i wasn't sure but i would try my very best, really thinking there was no way it was going to happen. but then i checked and discovered that india had resumed issuing tourist visas that very week and so i started shopping for airfare. because the timing was so short it cost about twice as much as the last trip, but i had enough room on a credit card and so i bought a ticket. and again, i had determined that the next time i found myself in india i was going to seek out my guy. besides that, i was more or less determined that i was not going to come back to the u.s. for some time if that were at all possible.

so this brings us more or less up to date, except to say that i bought the ticket the week of thanksgiving, which meant i had to inform my girlfriend, all my friends, and my family, that i was going to india and i wasn't sure when i would be coming back. this caused a crisis and the last six weeks or so have been very very difficult and there is still quite a bit of resentment on the part of some for what they see as a selfish move on my part. here is the thing, this sudden break with everything in my life has been so hard and so fucking scary that if i didn't have absolute certainty about what i'm doing, i am absolutely convinced i would have backed out.

before closing i want to share a couple more details that double down on the downright fated feeling this whole thing has for me. one, with respect to Carlo, he is a really really interesting guy. ?he's a few years younger than us (i think he is 40), he's gay, like us, and he met Khyentse in 2001 while a student at u. of british columbia (nice detail, eh steinberger?). shortly thereafter he became a monk, which he was for ten years before returning his robes and he is now the principal of an english language international school in guadalajara (nice detail, eh buck?). anyway, i really have come to appreciate him a lot but he also has this maddening way of being coy with me about certain things. like he is supportive of the things i'm trying to do but he doesn't let on much in the way of what he thinks personally or what Khyentse himself might know or think. but, a few weeks before i left we were messaging with each other about my plans and i was talking about my concerns about the brevity of my visa. when we came to india in 2019, we were issued tourist visas that were good for five years with multiple entries, with a limit of six months for any consecutive stay. so people who wanted to stay in india longer would just take a weekend in thailand every six months. but since the pandemic, all those visas were canceled and they are now only issuing 30-day, single entry visas that are not extendable. so i was talking about this and expressing my concerns about running out of time and he sent me a voice message that began with him saying very forcefully "you canNOT postpone this trip!" when i listened to it it spooked me a little but also felt as though he let something slip. i shared the message with becca and it spooked her even more. then, possibly the craziest part happened just as i was preparing to go. my flight to hyderabad left december 26, and like virtually every country who allows foreigners to enter, india requires a negative rt-pcr covid test taken within 72 hours of departure. now y'all remember that week. it's just when this omicron horseshit really started popping. so i made an appointment on the 23rd at a local pharmacy that a friend had gone to for the same reason ?a few days earlier, but when the day came i showed up and they informed me they had run out of tests. so i scrambled to find a place that was taking walkins and found one in college park. so i'm driving to this place when suddenly i realized that for more than ?a mile i had been driving past a line of cars managed by police, all of whom were waiting to get a test at the same place. so that was a non-starter. so at that point i began freaking out a little and i went home and searched for some place that could give me an appointment. the only thing i could find was an urgent care in chevy chase with an opening the morning of the 24th. the thing is, though, this wasn't appropriate to my situation, but rather it was a thing for someone who thought they may have covid. the office clearly indicated it could take 4-5 days for the results to come through, way longer than i had. but the way i ?figured it i was out of options and i had to do something. ?even when i was at the place, the receptionist and the doctor both told me i would not get my results back in time, but i got the test all the same. my flight left at 10:30 the morning of the 26th so i had to get there early as fuck. my sister sarah drove me and all the while she's like what are you going to do if they won't let you on the plane and i was just like i'll cross that bridge when i get to it. so i get to the airport and at the check in counter the boy asked me for my rt-pcr test, and i showed him the paperwork that said i had gotten it but that id yet to receive my results. the guy was clear: india won't let you in without it so we can't check you in unless you have it. then he said that they have testing downstairs and perhaps you can go down there and find out if they can get you a result by 9:30, so i went down to the testing site and there was chaos down there, scores of people all trying to get tests and being told that they weren't doing any that day. i was crushed. i phoned my sister and by that point i was literally bawling and told her they weren't going to let me on the plane. she tried to calm me down and said she was turning around and would come get me. i thought that was it. i messaged carlo and priya and broke the news and proceeded to wait for sarah to come get me. ?all this time i am periodically checking to see if the results had come in and when i did so at around 9:15 (so with fifteen minutes to spare) the results posted and the test was negative and i raced back to the counter and the woman there asked if my results came through and i confirmed they had and she rushed me through check in and i managed to get on the plane.?

here too, an argument can be made for just good luck or coincidence but with everything else that had happened this was further confirmation of the rightness of what i am doing.

so here's where we stand the evening of january 6, 2022: ?i attended my friends wedding in andhra, which was one of the most amazing and special experiences of my life, and priya's whole damn family treated me like i was fucking royalty. a few days afterward i took a train from vijayawada to delhi and from there i took a flight to dharamshala, the location of the tibetan government-in-exile. after staying there a few days i got a ride to Bir, about 60 kilometers away, and i'm staying at the deer park institute, which is an educational and research institution founded by khyentse and is next door to where he lives. i as yet don't even know if he is in india, but i indicated to carlo earlier today that i intend to seek ordination and asked if he thought that was a good idea. he said that even the desire to do this is very auspicious but since it's such an unfamiliar way of living for someone from the west, he indicated that we should ask Khyentse directly. i asked him if he thought i should reach out directly to his secretary and he has become coy again, which makes me think that he is in contact with him directly already. so i don't yet know what is going to happen, but it seems very likely that i will soon take ordination as a buddhist monk. i think this is the necessary step because in order for me to do the work i see myself doing, i have a lot to learn in the meantime.?

i will keep you abreast of developments.

-df