My First Believe

I have been following the Buddhist Path when I am still a child. As teenage adolescent I began to do as many teenage adolescents, to question what I found about me. This was not just in the sense of rebelling against parental and societal norms, but a deeper questioning that sought to know something of the mystery of life, even something of the meaning of life.

I was fascinated at how different people were: everyone and everything seemed so unique. I wondered why this was the case and to what extent these differences are reconciled with the need to communicate and relate, the need, essentially, for harmony. I became particularly interested in how increasing digitization was leading to a rethinking of what it meant to be human, particularly as I found that expressed in contemporary philosophy and critical theory.

Unfortunately, interesting as such explorations were, they are written in an abstract language that excludes most people. I wanted more of a practical vision , a way of understanding the world that people could relate to and live out so that they would be fulfilled and happy. Such a desire though was not enough...

Convinced of the view that those who followed a religous life did so because they were somehow lacking reason: faith, I believe, was always blind. It took a period of my life that I was thoroughly fed up with in order to seek some change. I simply did not wish to continue living in the way I had been: often characterized by anxiety and fear - little was I aware that this is how most people live!

I learned to meditate and was drwan to Buddhism rather than other religions. I couldn't see through the forms of Christianity to the spirit beneath, not least the notion of a creator God. Islam was too culturally foreign and seemed from my limited perspective at least to be too similar to Christianity. Buddhism though seemed to offer an ideal for humanity.: the Buddha was a human being afterall, not a God, and his teaching was that anyone could also become Enlightened.

I began quite simply. The Buddha taught that if one acts with kindness towards oneself and others then one will experience kindness in oneself and from others. Putting this into practice I just found that it worked.

At its most sublime this culminates in the transcendence of any distinction between self and other, althought quite what this means I don't know! Lost, that is what I am. Lost in a word of confusion. One thing lead to another. I felt like a dust that the wind blows and found no where.

I first believe him. I have accepted him as my lord and savior and chosen to let go of my old selfish life. So great is God's love for us that I am humbled at the greatness or his forgiving grace. His mercy abounded forever. For even I, A merepust in the face of the Earth, here now and gone tomorrow has been taken cared of with compassion by my masters touch!

Praise be the name of the Lord our God. For his love is everlasting to everlasting!