Opening to Practice
About ten years ago, a man gave me a copy of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. He leaned into my face and in a low, conspiratorial voice, said, “This book will change your life.”
With the stroke of that well-intentioned invitation to enter the dharma stream, every bone in my body braced itself against all things Buddhist.
I was just finishing college; the man was a teacher’s assistant for a course on American history, and during that semester I fell in love with Thomas Jefferson. My idealism about the United States was evidenced in everything I said and wrote.
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