2023-11-27-Gil-Gil's Story (1 of 5) First Interest in Buddhism

12:55AM Nov 28, 2023

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

monastery

felt

inspired

statue

religion

interesting

buddha

buddhism

thought

atheist

started

india

years

tour

bit

pacifist

santa barbara

disturbed

peaceful

chapel

So hello and this Monday I'm sitting here in Redwood City, they Insight Meditation Center and delighted to be in this kind of time together. So for the I've thought over the weekend about different themes to do for this week for the 7am, YouTube. And we've been doing this now for a long time, many, we can say years now since the beginning of the pandemic. And I've done many themes. And this weekend and thinking about what to do, I couldn't I thought about different things, but none of them really had a spark for me, none of them really was something that I could feel felt like I could come here and embody or feel a deep heart connection to. So I think that what I'd like to do is to fall back on a certain default that I that might be interesting for for you, since some of you have been listening to me here for a long time. And do something maybe uncharacteristic, and and that is a talk a little bit about myself, maybe some of you would like to know more about me, mostly here and these 7am sittings, I've talked about the dharma and occasionally I mentioned something autobiographical, but maybe some of you don't know much about me and might be interesting to hear a little bit. And to make it interesting for me. I think that maybe talk a little bit about the background of my life in a way that brought me to practice and, and then brought me here to IMC and even here now teaching with all of you. So I hope that that's interesting enough to hear this and then feel a little bit apologetic that it's not giving you some specific dharma topic to chew on and, and maybe that'll come out of as I talk to you a little bit about my life. So

So I came to the dharma first time, probably first contact with it was when I was probably 11 years old. And my family, my my mother, and the father and myself. My father was working in Italy at that time. And otherwise, we had a home in Los Angeles. And, and I had the summer, I father apparently had the summer free from work. And so the decision was to return to Los Angeles, I think with a ticket that was paid for by his work by going traveling to the east, and along the way there, we stopped in Thailand. And first we stopped in India and and the way in India, my father, read I was reading a book, I think it was called the wonder of India. And he commented to me that one of the characteristics of Indian religions was to be very inclusive, that somehow all religions can, all the different forms of religion in India could somehow be held together and seen as you know, one big, maybe harmonious religious family. And and I was really inspired by that I would put I grew up in a non religious household. My parents were atheist, but they were disinterested atheists, it wasn't like a big deal for them. It just, you know, it's like, if that, you know, I was originally born in Norway, and, you know, they have a pantheon of Nordic gods, you know, like that, that from 1000 years ago. They got Thor and who didn't. And those never came up in our family discussions. They were I don't think my family believed in Thor who didn't, but it was never a topic of interest. It just didn't occur to them. So in the same way, being an atheist was in that kind of way. It just didn't occur to talk about something like religion or gods or things like that. But Hearing the statement about how ecumenical things were inclusive, they weren't indeed, I was kind of inspired by that harmony that that seemed to imply. And then we went to Thailand. And I remember seeing the in Bangkok there's a big statue of the reclining Buddha, gold, baby. I don't know how long it is, but it's probably 40 feet long at least. And and I remember seeing the Buddha a sling i It's not it's this looks like a sleeping Buddha. But it's the Buddha in the posture in which he died, is laying down and he's laying down on his right side and unusual statues. He's he has one hand underneath his cheek, and he's kind of resting on it. And, and I was inspired by that statue. But not religiously, I thought, oh, that's the ideal way of sleeping, sleeping on your right side. And so I think they're quite a bit then I would, that's how I slept under inspired by what I saw on that statue. And when I was 14, the, my mother bought a copy for herself of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, I read it and was inspired by it, by the what I felt was a simplicity and the peace and non contentiousness of that life that the Buddha was represented to live in that novel. So these things didn't make a big impression on me. But then, I think the next big impression was that when I was 18, I was traveling around Europe by myself. And except for people, I would travel a little bit with a few days. And I came to this great cathedral, monastery cold mode shot my mom's side and Michelle. It's on the coast of Normandy or Brittany, and it has architecturally it looks a little bit like a Disneyland palace. Castle that's rising up from his hilltop that does have a little island and rises up as spires up into the sky. And then I went through it on a tour that they gave, and, and we came to the oldest. And the whole the whole time there was I spent the night there on the island at a Pax Christi hostel that had a feeling there was like little kitty cat exactly like a cave with a little ancient feeling kind of stone building where there was a wood table and wood chairs, and we were served bread in the morning, like we were, you know, that the last supper or something and there was a priest there who was very friendly and talked to us. And it just felt like we'd I stepped into it kind of timeless, almost like I was in the monastery already. And then the next morning, I went into the tour of the monastery. And the monastery had been built around a very simple one room stone, maybe cottage or stone stone chapel, at the very top of the hill. And slowly over the centuries that was added to but as we tour took us through that original chapel, as soon as we stepped into its cool, quiet, peaceful space, something in my body shifted, and everything got really peaceful and quiet, and had never experienced this the peace and quiet. And even though the tour kept going, I tried to linger as long as I could in that chapel, to feel that. That experience. And that made a huge impression on me. And maybe that's when I remember that time when I was a teenager, my baby was after that, that I spent time wondering if I could join a Catholic monastery and become a monk. Even though I was an atheist, there was something about the atmosphere of that life and getting up early and walking around the kind of what I imagined was architecture a peaceful place that kind of represented that experience. And it was like that experience I had in the chapel. And I wanted to have my life kind of dedicated, devoted not to God, not to religion. But that to that experience of peace. That experience of deep sense of calm that I had that it felt so healthy. It felt so holistic, it felt like this is like I couldn't imagine anything better than this. But I didn't do that. I went to college, and I went to college during the Vietnam War. And I was draftable. And it during that time, and the dorms the first year there was a really intense debates about War and the Vietnam War. And I was always the extreme pacifist in the discussions and I don't know where My pacifism came from, but it was really clear that I would not fight that that was an impossible for me, it wasn't like, I could give a good originally, I couldn't give a good philosophical, political, religious reason for why I would not fight, pick up a gun. He just was kind of, by disposition impossible for me to do something like that. But then I defended my, my, my, my pacifist stance with my friends. And, and I found myself disturbed by what I discovered about myself. And that is that I had the strong physician that involved if necessary, to be involved in civil disobedience, passive disobedience, to stand up and protest and interfere, the harm being caused in society in the world. And, and so, but what I discovered was that I was afraid to die. And I thought that if I take my belief seriously, I have to have the same courage as a military soldier who goes into battle, I had to be able to put myself in harm's way in order to be involved in, in protesting or working for a non violent change. And, and I was afraid to die. And the dissonance between what my beliefs were, and what I was capable, really disturbed me a lot. And that became where I started to search for some approach some way of living something that would help me deal with this fear of death. So I couldn't live with my ideals. And that was when I first kind of somehow thought about Buddhism that Buddhism had an answer. At the same time I was at, was going to college at University of California, Santa Barbara, which is right on the coast. And you can see from the coastline of the university, you can look out and see oil platforms. And just before I got there, there was a massive oil spill on the Santa Barbara beaches. So that was kind of current and I was began, got interested in environmental studies, and I actually became an environmental studies major for a while. And at first, I was going to studying the science of it all. And I felt science is not going to solve this problems. It's a political issue. So I started studying political science. And that was interesting, but that, I thought, that's not going to be enough, just politics is not going to change this. And in the language of 1973 or so. It was,

what needed to happen if a change of consciousness and that's where I started looking, well, who were what, what, what orientation, what teachings, what way of life can really help us change our consciousness, so that we can have the change that would really help this world of ours. And so then I started looking around. And, and the things that spoke to me the most was Taoism and Buddhism, that seemed to speak to, you know, a radical different way of living in harmony with the world rather than did disharmony that over consumes over destroys over, you know, abuses the world in order to support our lifestyles. And, and so that was my beginning. So this thing about looking for a solution to the fear of death, looking for a solution to our social world, ecological issues. I began being oriented towards Buddhism and Eastern religion. And and then I dropped out of college, and I'll pick up that story tomorrow. So hopefully this is interesting for you and, and if it is, I'm very happy to continue telling it. Thank you