I was raised without religion. My parents are rational, intellectual, and basically atheist – one comes from a vaguely Christian family, the other from a slightly Jewish one, and they never really made anything of it. They are both professors; they don’t believe, they think. So I had to wonder what they would make of my interest in Buddhism, and this blog.
But what really stuck was the bit about God being inside of me – me! I found this extremely appealing….
This isn’t the first time that I’ve strayed a little from their secular perspective on things. When I was four or five, I went through a bit of a God-curious phase, which my parents put up with amiably enough. I had a Christian babysitter who told me that the Lord was everywhere, even inside of me. Probably, her main point had to do with not thinking I could get away with something just because she didn’t see me do it, because God always knows. But what really stuck was the bit about God being inside of me – me! I found this extremely appealing – it may have confirmed something that I had already suspected. At home that evening, according to my parents, I/God was very excited to tell them what I’d learned, and also to demonstrate: “God is standing on one foot. God is jumping on the couch. God is doing ballet!”
Around the same time, I started telling my mom that I wanted to go to church. She told me it would be boring. I said I wanted to go anyway. Finally she gave in, and took me on Palm Sunday, when they gave you cut palm branches at the door and sang more songs than usual. Even so, it was pretty boring, and I don’t think I ever asked to go back. But I do remember standing on the sidewalk in the sun afterwards, fanning myself with my palm leaf and watching everyone come outside, thinking there was something mysterious and maybe even respectable about these people that came and did this every week.
It had simple, sweet watercolor illustrations and stories in which good conquered evil, justice was served and miracles were delivered just when you’d almost lost hope.
Then there was the Little Book About God, which must have been a gift from the babysitter or another random believer that somehow wandered into my parents’ social circle, which they failed to hide or throw out before I got my hands on it. I wanted them to read it to me all the time, and to their credit, they often did. It had simple, sweet watercolor illustrations and stories in which good conquered evil, justice was served and miracles were delivered just when you’d almost lost hope. I loved the angels and the rainbows and the fertile gardens, but mostly I loved the pure and certain truths.
But it didn’t last – my piety had pretty much faded by the time I hit elementary school. In high school, when my respect for any established authority was at an all time low, maybe there were even times that my parents wished they could hold me down and review some of the key moral principles I’d found so compelling in my Little Book About God days. But on the other side of the adolescent storms, they were soon convinced that I was in fact mentally and morally sound.
Until now? I did wonder at first – what will they make of this? Will they think I’ve gone religious on them? But clearly, a lot has changed since my days of preschool performances as divine ballerina. What’s happened is that, as they’ve been reading the blog, it’s sparked a lot of interesting philosophical conversations. This time around, it’s not so much: “OK, I guess we’ll go to church if you really want to,” but rather, to quote a recent email from my Mom, “You make me think. That’s good.”
And the values that come out of this close study of humankind are values my parents have shown me since before I can remember: kindness, honesty, and unselfishness.
It makes sense. The insights of Buddhism are not the simple, certain truths I found comforting as a small child – which, to the rational-minded, is a great comfort. There is plenty of room for analytical thinking, skepticism, questioning and debate. The Buddhist tendency is not to close down or to oversimplify, but, like science, to continuously open up, take apart, and push further, looking for truth not in God, but in human experience. And the values that come out of this close study of humankind are values my parents have shown me since before I can remember: kindness, honesty, and unselfishness. So in a way, I guess my interest in Buddhism goes to show that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.