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    Bus Stop Buddhism: How I Got Home
    Bus Stop Buddhism: How I Got Home
    Bus Stop Buddhism: How I Got Home
    Ebook260 pages

    Bus Stop Buddhism: How I Got Home

    By Anne Amber Garland

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    About this ebook

    A tree-hugging dyke schoolteacher takes Buddhist vows at a bus stop. A moving and entertaining chronicle of the search for home. Humorous and compassionate stories about religion, physics, education and relationships. Here is a fresh interpretation of a time-honored spiritual path.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu Publishing Services
    Release dateMay 22, 2015
    ISBN9781483428840
    Bus Stop Buddhism: How I Got Home

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      Book preview

      Bus Stop Buddhism - Anne Amber Garland

      BUS STOP BUDDHISM

      HOW I GOT HOME

      There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

      – Leonard Cohen

      Anne Amber Garland

      Copyright © 2015 Anne Amber Garland.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

      This is a true story – as true as I can make it. Names have been changed.

      Parts of this book were previously published in The Mountains Have Made Us, vol. 1; Southwest Literary Center of Recursos de Santa Fe; 2005.

      Cover by Silva Tenenbein

      BusStopBuddhism@gmail.com

      ISBN: 978-1-4834-2885-7 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4834-2884-0 (e)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 5/8/2015

      Contents

      Introduction

      1968 - 1981   Longing For Home (Sitting)

      1982 - 1992   Shelter (Taking Refuge)

      1993 - 2002   The Bus (4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path)

      2001 - 2004   Hotels (The Brahmaviharas)

      2005 - 2012   Homelessness (Freedom)

      2013 - 2014   Home (Paying Attention)

      Contents (Details)

      Introduction

      The Cracks

      Longing For Home

      Why Buddhism Called Me

      The Wake-Up Call

      Not Moving

      Drugs

      White Women Chanting

      Alcohol

      Many Paths

      Parallels

      Mountain Climbing

      Moment

      The Slow Dance

      Shelter

      Choice

      A Roof

      Buddha Refuge:

      Sleeping Buddhas

      No Excuses

      Incarnation

      Refuge in the Buddha

      Dharma Refuge:

      Homelessness

      Molecules

      Formlessness

      No Line Between Us

      True

      Sangha Refuge:

      We

      Bus Stop

      The Sangha

      Vows:

      Everybody Eats Somebody

      Tax Form 1040

      Begging Bowl

      Sex

      12 Steps

      The Bus

      Four Truths

      The Wheel

      Anger, Injustice and Right Everything

      Rights

      Right View:

      No Sunday School

      Dropping Buddha

      Sacred

      Right Thought:

      What To Think?

      I Meant to Kiss You

      Meteorology

      Right Speech:

      Not Necessary

      Bifurcation

      Right Action:

      Justice

      Rape

      Right Livelihood:

      Risk

      Loser Dad

      Right Effort:

      Backwards Buffalo

      Keep On

      Right Mindfulness:

      Backwards

      Gender Dysphoria

      Right Concentration:

      The Jewel

      Just Do It

      Hotels

      The Abode of the Gods

      Joy

      Karuna:

      Buddha’s Mom

      The Lady

      Metta:

      User-Friendly Meditation

      Mudita:

      Polyamory

      Upekka:

      Deep

      Right Heartbreak

      Hotels

      Desire

      Spiderwoman

      Algebra

      Axis of Evil

      Vows Again

      Rapt

      Closure

      Homelessness

      The End, Otherwise Known as The Beginning

      2010 Sucked

      Moving

      Now

      Stories From the Sangha:

      Mercedes

      Paradox

      Standardized Tests

      Replaceable

      Culture

      Curriculum

      Death and Education

      Young and Beautiful

      Religion

      Washing Dishes and Bolivia

      Today

      Quadratic Equations

      Failure

      Museum

      Gun Control

      Weeding the Desert

      Ramon

      The Men

      Teachers

      Breath

      Home

      60

      Living Room

      Oct. 29, 1 p.m.

      Oct. 29, 5 p.m.

      Oct. 30, 5 p.m.

      Jan. 16, 6 a.m.

      Jan. 16, 9:30 a.m.

      The Bus. Again.

      Introduction

      The Cracks

      The light should surely be filling me, given the number of cracks in my soul.

      My life is a jumble, my heart’s held together with strings of forgiveness and hope and resolve. I’m a dyke and a biker, a grandma and activist; I’m a school teacher and an adoptive mom. I’m a recovering drug addict and, formerly, I was a liar, a cheat and a thief. I’m a Buddhist, an unorthodox version. I’m searching for home, hoping for grace and trying to keep my vows.

      I offer you this: my realizations, my striving for honor, my attempt to be present and to apply Buddhist teachings to a messy, imperfect and very rich life.

      And if you, too, are seeking some refuge, some home,

      I seek beside you,

      On some path, some road; next to you or in some parallel perceptual universe,

      Always moving, a new refuge each moment. Life does not stand still.

      The things that have formed me I learned in motion. The light that illuminates my life comes in glimpses. I’ve never yet made it to where I’m going. Perpetually travelling, continually seeking, I took my lay Buddhist vows at a bus stop.

      1968 - 1981

      Longing For Home

      Sitting, Climbing, Dancing

      Why Buddhism Called Me

      I just want to go home. Wherever that is. I’ve had so many homes, I lost count at 40.

      I want my own tulips, year after year, my own back door, my own kitchen counter, carefully chosen art on the walls.

      Searching for home, searching for refuge,

      Safety,

      Shelter.

      Dependable,

      Still.

      I became a mason; I built homes for others, but kept on moving myself.

      Kept moving. Kept leaving the solidity of mud bricks and wood, of lintels and cupboards, for roads and lovers and jobs and adventure.

      The place that I lasted the longest of all was a tipi,

      Moveable,

      Light.

      A portable home. You can’t tell I lived there. The path is erased by pine needles now.

      A trailer,

      With wheels,

      Comes in second for length, and even that one has moved.

      And so many apartments, so many trees that I thought I would stay near and claim as my own. I meant to stay there, at each new location. I wanted the house, the garden, the forest, all becoming familiar with time. I wanted the cats in the window, the lamplight guiding me home down the road.

      The plane flying over the place I return to comes down in an airport I recognize now.

      But the view beneath me shows more well-known roads than houses that I have returned to.

      Permanence has always eluded me.

      Permanence eludes.

      Buddhism in two words.

      The Wake-Up Call

      1968:

      I discovered drugs, protested wars and racism, began to understand how poverty and wealth

      Rule

      Everything.

      Wake up call.

      Feminism, at first, did not impress me. I was waiting, hoping, for my Prince Charming. I didn’t want to rescue myself.

      Bob Dylan and Cream. It was the ’60s.

      More drugs. It was the ’60s.

      Religion. Religions. Ecumenical youth group meetings, a Congregational church, a Jewish Seder, Catholic Mass. Light and oneness on a mountainside; guitars and politics in church.

      I tried to convince my mother she should let me go to New York to get a mantra from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

      I was 14.

      She wasn’t buying it.

      I knew there was some kind of rightness in this world.

      Someone, many someones, had carried a lantern up high in the mountains.

      Its light was visible. The path had to exist.

      Someone, many someones, had written poems, had painted visions, had twirled for hours and spun into the universe.

      I thought perhaps I might get home that way.

      I was looking for the stairway to heaven.

      Or a guidebook to heaven on earth.

      Not Moving

      At 17, I started traveling, which is very different from moving.

      With traveling, you get to come home.

      So the place we’d lived in for 3 years suddenly became home when I returned to it.

      In Bolivia I thought home might be the high Andes: a white house with red tiles on the roof.

      Canada, China, Cuba. Every place I went to, I thought I could make into home.

      And every place I came back to I perceived as home.

      Wanting home so badly, I set up little kitchen and bedroom areas by the side of the road at night when I was hitch-hiking around the country.

      The drug scene didn’t lend itself to settling.

      Somewhere between Valley of the Dolls and Blood In, Blood Out I wandered around, and sat at kitchen tables getting wasted.

      Entire planets could be saved in the time I spent at kitchen tables getting high.

      And then sitting there high.

      And sitting.

      In my Buddhist practice, I have a lot more trouble sitting. My mind is alive now. And sitting still and not being entertaining or entertained feels like death to my rambunctious mind.

      Sitting, they said, is our practice.

      I practiced sitting.

      Uncomfortable.

      In a chair, gazing out the window, daydreaming of greatness or characters in a novel, I can sit and sit and sit. Avoiding the mopping, shifting the pillows, I sit for hours, a hand dangling over the arm of the favorite chair.

      But the meditation cushion thing:

      Another matter.

      Asian sitting: Specific postures, for those who are thin, disciplined and used to sitting on the floor. Full lotus, each foot on the opposite thigh.

      American Generic sitting: Shopping around for the best position, then choosing a school of Buddhism to adopt, (shopping around for the ideology to match our personalities).

      I lean toward shopper Buddhism myself.

      I’ve tried many postures.

      A straight spine, I think, has much to recommend it. That’s all I know.

      Not moving

      Half lotus position

      Quarter lotus position

      Eighth lotus position

      I end up

      Sort of cross-legged, babying my banged-up knees.

      The full lotus is hopefully not a requirement for enlightenment. I can’t do it.

      I sit.

      And shift.

      And once in a while the shifting stops.

      The mind stills.

      The heart opens.

      Stillness.

      Not moving.

      Returning to home

      Over and over.

      And the mind wanders, the body shifts.

      And we bring it back.

      Over and over.

      Practice.

      Not moving.

      Not easy.

      But maybe it’s the way home.

      Drugs

      Drugs.

      Amazing, fantastic, mind-expanding, fascinating.

      And then not.

      I sat, stoned.

      A lot.

      Ineffective and inefficient methodology.

      It was interesting, but bouts of violence interspersed with semi-comatose sitting isn’t the route to peace, compassion or light.

      White Women Chanting

      Formal instruction:

      Parvati, a Hindu, lived next door to the women’s land collective.

      I’d get up at 5, go sit on the side of the mountain, chant and meditate before hitch-hiking to town, to my job at a mechanic’s shop.

      I was still using drugs, but even then I was wanting goodness, and love and compassion; even then I was believing in altruism, adamant about honesty, attempting generosity and service to others.

      We tried.

      We lived collectively. We worked toward consensus in everything from dinner to actions for world peace.

      We protested injustice and war and uranium mining.

      We mothered the children together, refusing to believe it was only one woman’s responsibility to raise the future. At least that was the theory.

      We were building utopia and home, and safety from the military-industrial complex.

      I was lovers then with the woman who was to become my Forever Friend, Dharma buddy and sister in song.

      So,

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