The Beatles, the Buddha, and me!

Every now and then, I am asked if I’m a Buddhist. It’s a difficult question to answer…but let me give it a whirl.

It all began in the winter of 1968 when the Beatles went to India to meditate with MaharishiiMahesh Yogi, a guru who became the creator and leader of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement.

The Mararishi and the Fab Four, 1968

Of course, at sixteen years old, what did I know about meditation? Or Indians for that matter? At the time, I had never met someone who was born in India or even of Indian descent. There were simply no Indians at Shelton High School in the 1960s that I recall.

But for kids my age, the Beatles held a certain mystique, and, for the most part, whatever they were interested in, we were interested in. Arguably the most important rock band ever, the Beatles’ influence transcended music.

Soon after the Beatles visited India, I remember seeing Maharishi, a gentle old man with a foreign accent, on American television talk shows with the Fab Four. Suddenly, George Harrison was adding the exotic sounds of the sitar to songs like “Norwegian Wood.” George would go on to have a deep and lifelong connection to the Hare Krishna movement.

George, playing sitar

As a teen, it’s hard to process everything that’s happening to you, so you tuck things away in the file cabinet of your mind only to find them surfacing at a later date.

That date came about six years later when I was a young English teacher at Shelton High School. A student of mine told me that his family was learning to meditate the TM way. I immediately thought of the Beatles. I also knew something was missing from my life, and I instinctively felt meditation might be the answer. The student gave me a book about the benefits of TM, but nowhere in the volume did it explain how to meditate. That, I found out, would cost me two hundred dollars to learn. In the mid-1970s, two hundred dollars was a lot of money. Learning to meditate would have to wait.

Soon, with the birth of two children and family responsibilities, the stress felt overwhelming and the need became greater. I purchased a book about yoga and learned some hatha yoga postures.

Fast forward ten years later, and the desire to meditate hasn’t left me. A memory…

…Seeing a small ad in the New Haven Advocate – Fran tells me that there is free meditation instruction at the New Haven Zen Center every Tuesday night.

The next Tuesday, I make my way to the address in the ad. It is an old Victorian house in a Yale neighborhood. Upon entering the house, I see a sign, “Please remove shoes.” I think to myself, Okay…if I have to.

At the top of the stairs, I find myself in a long room with a dozen meditation cushions on each side, and an imposing gold statue of the Buddha on a pedestal at one end. I am intimidated to say the least. After all, I grew up Catholic, and even to go into a church of a Protestant denomination felt like sacrilege. I remember visiting a church bazaar in the basement of a local Methodist church as a boy and being certain I would fry in Hell for the transgression.

I can hear the hum of conversation and the rattling of silverware from the next room, and my guess is that there are people who live here. Probably seasoned, “zenned out” meditators. In my nervousness I feel psyched out, and minutes later, I tiptoe back down the stairs, slip my shoes back on, and hightail it out of there.

Becoming a meditator is, once more, put on hold.

In the meantime, I found myself buying books on the topic. One way or another, I figured, I will learn to meditate. But what was the “right way” to do it?

Perhaps a decade after my misadventure at the New Haven Zen Center, in a conversation with a fellow teacher who also wanted to learn to meditate, she said, “There’s a Buddhist center in New Haven that teaches meditation.”

“I know,” I replied, “I’ve been there,” and I went on to tell her the whole story of my comical visit to the New Haven Zen Center.

“If we go together, maybe you won’t feel uncomfortable,” she suggested, so we made a date to go to New Haven the next Sunday.

When she drove into the Westville section of New Haven, I said, “Wait! This isn’t where it is. The place I went to was near Woolsey Hall…down by Yale.”

She assured me that she had the correct address. It was known as the Center for Dzogchen Studies and was also located in a house, right next door to a bar I had frequented when I was in college. At the Center for Dzogchen Studies, I would learn a meditation practice, free of charge, which is still part of my life decades later. The word “Dzogchen” is very hard to explain (or completely understand), but it is a Tibetan Buddhist concept meaning: Great Perfection.

I would learn from two lamas (Buddhist teachers) there – Lama Padma Karma, who had been born on a Caribbean Island but received his high school and college education in the U.S., and Lama Tsundru, a native of Tibet. These two wonderful men are people who were completely immersed in their Buddhist life and whom I considered to be highly evolved, spiritually, in a way I had observed in few if any Catholic priests.

Before I knew it, I found myself taking a deep dive into Buddhism, visiting the center three and four times a week. We would meditate and then have profound discussions – and I even began to receive instruction in the Tibetan language from Lama Tsundru.

Lama Padma Karma

When we opened Center Stage in 2005, running a full-time theater swallowed Fran and me whole, and, sadly, I stopped going to the center. It has since moved to another state.

The thing is, my visits to the New Haven Zen Center and the Center for Dzogchen Studies were undoubtedly vital parts of my karmic journey on this planet. After all, my only goal was to learn to meditate; in no way was I seeking a new religion.

I can give dozens of examples of that Buddhist pull I’m speaking of. Let me add that Hinduism began calling to me too. Buddhism was, after all, an offshoot of Hinduism. And that “pull” repeatedly manifested itself throughout my adult life in subtle and not so subtle ways.

There was the time when Fran was in New York getting costume items for a show, and the Indian woman who owned the store, for no apparent reason, gave Fran a wall hanging of Ganesha, the Hindu deity with an elephant head, known as the “remover of obstacles.” I knew nothing of Ganesha but still felt compelled to hang it in our kitchen where it still dwells today. Currently, we have at least another half dozen Ganesha statues in our home…and several Krishna statues.

So often, we have stumbled upon a Buddhist store in one city or another, experiencing a pull to buy a Buddhist (or Hindu) image, piece of jewelry, or other spiritual artifact.

There are so many examples of randomly finding our way to Buddhist places. Last year, we spent a few days in Beacon, New York, a great little town with lots of shops, restaurants, etc. We couldn’t have known, but there is a Tibetan store in town — right up our alley. In conversation with the Tibetan owner, he told us there was a Buddhist monastery very nearby. The next day we took a drive, not knowing what to expect. As we entered the building, we could hear monks chanting behind closed doors. And before we knew it, Fran and I were invited into a large room where more than a dozen monks in maroon robes, male and female, chanted in a rhythmic monotone (characteristic of Tibetan chanting), rang bells, clashed cymbals, and beat drums. I thought to myself: Only us!

Similarly, when we were in Los Angeles three years ago, our friend Michael surprised us by taking us to a venerable shrine in Malibu, established by a famous Eastern teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda…one of the most peaceful and beautiful places we have ever been to!

A few days later, while visiting Sedona, Arizona, someone told us about a Buddhist stupa (shrine) on American Indian sacred land. We had no idea. The next day, we visited the holy site where we spent a few hours in silent meditation.

Sedona, 2022

Going back just a few more years, in 2019 on the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, we visited the museum commemorating the famous rock concert. Little did we know, there was a Buddhist temple nearby. Another Buddhist encounter for Gary and Fran.

These are just a few examples. There have been many others.

Today, every room in our home has a statue of the Buddha – a reminder that peace, mindfulness, and dwelling in the present moment are what we strive for. By the way, in our home, Buddhist and Hindu images exist in harmony along with statues of Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis of Assisi, Fran’s patron saint.

Most importantly, on my sixtieth birthday, Fran surprised me with a gift of a Thangka painting of the primordial Buddha, created by Lama Tsundru who is an eminent Thangka painter. It is worthy of note that having this painting in our home, from a Buddhist perspective, is similar to having the blessed Eucharist in one’s home. It is in front of this painting that I sit and meditate on a regular basis and intend to continue doing so until I die.

Thangka painting

(Buddha, by the way, is not God. If you have never heard me narrate a short story I wrote – “My Father’s Buddha” – check it out.)

So, am I Buddhist? Maybe! Buddhism has profoundly impacted my life, for sure. That said, Fran and I would rather not label ourselves. We like to say, “the truth is the truth is the truth” – and it doesn’t matter if that truth comes from Buddha or Jesus or from any other source. In our minds, the teachings of Jesus and Buddha and all great sages run parallel to each other. For inexplicable reasons, the Buddha’s voice has been the most prominent one for me.

Given our Buddhist and Hindu inclinations, Fran and I like to think we live in a country where religious freedom is alive and well, and we pray that never changes.

Of one thing there is no doubt. No matter where we go, the Buddha finds us…and he has been doing so for quite a long time.