Choice

One of my good friends is a Buddhist monk. He lives in a monestary in Chinatown in New York City now, but for the past fifteen years he lived in Malawi, Africa, where he established an AIDS treatment and education facility, and an orphanage for children whose parents had died of AIDS.

This monk comes from New Jersey and he moved to Taiwan in his late teens and spent most of his life there until going to Africa as a lay buddhist prior to his ordination. But he grew up gay, wild, self-indulgent....he says he knows he racked up some serious negative karma on the way.

I look at him and I see a good monk, but also just a good person. That same guy from Jersey, but a bit calmer and more peaceful.

He's become a spiritual guide of sorts for me. Not by what he teaches, just by example. Sometimes I think that I'm a good guy, you know, I help out, I put bad guys away, I'm out there in the trenches. But then I see his face all serene and still, and how he moves through this world, and I am both chagrined and inspired.

We all have such a long way to go.

But as Monk Cheng Man says, just go "slowly by slowly" and we'll get there.


I hope he's right.