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josh0
Hi, my name's Josh. I've been interested in Buddhism and meditation for many years, but have never really had a regular practice despite a number of false starts. I'm determined to change that, however, and hopefully from the time that I write this onwards I'll be able to say that I do have a regular practice. I was first exposed to Buddhism in 5th grade, when everyone in the class was assigned a religion to present on (I was assigned Methodism...). A little later I was over at a friend's house when his mom asked if we wanted to come along on an errand. Long story short, we ended up at Abhayagiri where, I guess, she had something she needed to do. We basically just wandered the grounds and at some point got scolded by a monk for playing around with some incense we found. That was my second exposure to Buddhism. I don't recall that I felt any particular affinity to it at the time, but it definitely piqued my interest and never really dropped off my radar. In the following years I went through a probably fairly typical period of questioning the beliefs I had been raised with (Christian with a smattering of Judaism) during which time I engaged in quite a lot of deep contemplation on the nature of the universe and my place in it. Eventually I came to a few conclusions and, in my freshman year at a Catholic high school, I felt confident in declaring myself an atheist. It was around this time that I started looking into Buddhism again, and discovered that, at least superficially, it didn't seem to contradict any of the beliefs I had formed for myself. Being somewhat insecure in my new-found non-Christianity, however I was wary of throwing my lot in with the first new religion that came around and didn't take my explorations of Buddhism any further. In college I took a couple of religion classes, mostly focused on Eastern religions, until eventually I ended up in class specifically about Theravada Buddhism. This was a bit of an eye opening experience for me, and I learned that not only was Buddhism superficially compatible with my own observations about the way things worked, but as I dug deeper into it that aparent compatibility was maintained. Still wary of organized religion I kept my interest in Buddhist purely academic, but delved quite deeply into it until, in my Junior year, I actually felt that it was appropriate to say that my beliefs were Buddhist. I attempted, for the first time, to begin meditation practice, which I managed to maintain with fairly decent regularity until I graduated. Then for a long time nothing happened. I spent some time in China, engaging in decidedly unproductive and unskillful activities (but boy were they fun), and eventually moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area and got a real job. After about 6 months being back in the Bay Area and dealing with the annoyances of real life, as it were, I found my interest in Buddhism beginning to revive itself. I started listening to Ajahn Brahm's dhamma talk podcast during my commute, and began looking for a local meditation center which I hoped would help give me the motivation to practice in ernest. Alas, the distractions of life (namely women and alcohol) kept getting in the way, and I never really got around to going. Eventually a business trip took me to Boston where I met my now wife, and a fairly long chain of events led to me quitting my job, moving across the country, getting engaged, moving in with her, starting my own business, buying a house, and getting married (in that order). Which pretty much brings us to the present moment. During the past two years that I've lived here (first in Cambridge, now in Somerville) I've gone to the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center a handful of times, but, to this point, have never been able to motivate mysef to keep it up. Now however, partly out of annoyance at my own lack of discipline, partly out of inspiration from having read Daniel's book and others (especially some of Bhikkhu Boddhi's works which I find very inspiring), but mostly out of a desire to explore and realize the true benefits of meditation. I've been putting much more effort into maintaining my practice and, I believe, made at least some modicum of early progress. I'm hoping to find the time (and, sadly, money) to go on my first retreat in the near future (though it will probably have to wait until '09 as pretty much all my free time for the rest of this year is already spoken for). Until then I am determined to maintain a daily meditation practice with at least 30 minutes of sitting per day, and hopefully more. And, well, that should be a fairly thorough summary of the relevant facts of my life. SAY HELLO! Leave me a comment below, or send me a private message or compliment!
Latest page update: Aug 19 2008, 3:20 PM EDT
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