A Quote by Tara Brach
When I was first introduced to Buddhism in a high school World Studies class, I dismissed it out of hand. This was during the hedonistic days of the late '60s, and this spiritual path seemed so grim with its concern about attachment and, apparently, anti-pleasure.
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Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the conditions and problems that most concern me - anti-colonial theories, Foucault, critical disability studies, prison studies and the like are rarely seen in standard US Law School curricula, where students are still fighting on many campuses to get a single class on race or poverty offered - I developed most of my thinking about these topics through activist reading groups and collaborative writing projects with other activist scholars.
When I was starting out, I followed along the path that seemed to be marked out for me - from high school to college to law school to professional life.
When I was a kid, for me, the '60s seemed so far away. But I was actually born in the late '60s.
It just seemed like Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism - because that's mainly what I've been exposed to - was a real solid organization of teachings to point someone in the right direction. Some real well thought out stuff. But I don't know, like, every last detail about Buddhism.
I took a class my freshman year in high school called Intro To Film, and I was introduced to Robert Altman's films, and I wrote my first paper on a filmmaker and it was Altman's 'M*A*S*H,' and Nashville and I think 'Short Cuts' or 'The Player,' I don't remember.
9/11 was my first day teaching at Harvard University. My classes were all canceled and I got back to town two days later. I'm one of those people who doesn't think the world has changed any at all since 9/11. It just seemed to be almost inevitable, something like that. That's one of the reasons why the backstory of Fay Grim goes all the way back into the '80s. I was trying to sketch out the continuity of all this hanky-panky between the security agencies of the world.
The first play I ever saw - I was in junior high school - was a high school production of Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit,' which seemed to me absolutely magical.
I was only fifteen when I finished my high-school studies, always having held first rank in my class. The fatigue of growth and study compelled me to take almost a year's rest in the country. I then returned to my father in Warsaw, hoping to teach in the free schools.
I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.
Going to high school in rural Florida, we always partied down in the woods. Somebody - one of the rednecks - would leave class and mow a path out to a field, and we'd drive out there. Dude, every party I went to was lit by a bonfire. Acoustic guitar.
Well! I feel happy these days. I've started taking a herbal anti-depressant. It's called Saint John's Wort. Apparently it's the best-selling anti-depressant in many places. It's the most popular anti-depressant in Germany... After, I'm guessing, amnesia.
I was performing at a New Jersey high school, and I asked a class of 2,000 students, 'How many of you love mathematics?' and only one hand went up. And that was the hand of the maths teacher!
I played football and ran track in junior high, but by high school I was getting serious about my studies.
Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.
I don't know if one's more typecasting than the other, or what I am more like. But I know that the high school I went to was a private school. It was prep school. It was a boarding school. So we didn't have a shop class. We didn't have Saturday detention. We went to school on Saturday. We did have Sunday study, which you very rarely get, because then you have 13 straight days of school. Who wants that?
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