Daniel Grevious, Sacramento, California
“What brought me to Buddhist practice was essentially emotional and psychological pain. Nothing worked, nothing could alleviate it, and nothing would make it subside. It just felt awful. I felt like I was hurting inside, my heart hurt, and I felt empty. There were multiple days when I felt like I could barely get out of bed. My pain came from denying the fact that there was a spiritual component of my life that I didn’t acknowledge. At the time, I was working in emergency services, so I saw a lot of bad things in a relatively short period of time, which I was unable to deal with. I was diagnosed with PTSD, made some really bad decisions, ended up getting a divorce, and wasn’t able to see my children as much as I wanted to. I had gone through a couple of jobs, but wasn’t able to hold anything down. These experiences caused my severe depression. Then, one day, a couple of friends suggested I try Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group, and I did. It was nice, so I kept going, and before long I started to see some pretty good results. I decided that this is something I want to do.”
“My wife is Christian and I am Buddhist, but she accepts my beliefs, and I embrace her beliefs as well. In a way, I also consider myself a Christian. Being Buddhist has helped me to be a better Christian. Before I knew anything about Buddhism, I wasn’t a very good Christian, but now, because I study and practice Buddhism, it allows me to be a better Christian than I could have ever been. As far as the dynamic between us goes, I would say there is no one size fits all. It just so happens that she is perfect for me, and I feel like I am at least moderately tolerable to her.”
“I had a great relationship with my mother, but not such a great relationship with my dad. I think a lot of that had to do with his young adult life and not wanting me to know what it consisted of. He tried to teach me from his experiences without actually showing me what he went through. That caused a lot of tension and anger between us, because I didn’t understand. My dad teaching me how to play baseball is one of the strongest memories of my childhood. This memory makes me feel happy and important, but at the same time I wonder why that was the only time I felt that strongly about my relationship with my dad. And then I think that maybe he just didn’t know how to express his emotions. The honest male expression of emotions is fairly new, as men we are taught to repress our emotions and work beyond them, or just flat out deny them, but we don’t get to say, oh yeah, I am sad, or depressed, or I feel like crying and just need to be alone right now. We don’t get to do that, it’s always push through, push forward, move ahead, and especially in Western culture, crush your opposition. Now, being a father, I encourage all of my kids to express their emotions in the most appropriate way they know.”
“The way I practice and the way I live is interwoven. Everything is practice – when I wake up in the morning, when I go to work, when I come home from work, interacting with my wife and kids, even when I am alone and just inside my head, I am practicing. I try to weave my practice throughout my entire life, and I just do what I can in a way that is manageable. Part of the goal for me is to be a better person, and end up being the best person I can be.”
“When strong emotions arise, my practice is trying to stay calm, focusing on what is going on in the moment, being forgiving of myself and other people, mostly of myself, and realizing that a vast majority of the things that happen don’t matter, and working from there, I try to let go of what doesn’t matter.”
“For me the most universal vision of love is accepting people and things for what they are, and at the same time wanting them to be and do better, while not trying to force my vision of ‘better’ on them. I am not so good at receiving love, but I am getting better. The giving of love is just there, I try to love everybody, and it’s very rare for me not to love another human being. It’s one of those things that just is. I think it is important to accept who you are. My wife can’t find me a tolerable human being until I find myself tolerable. If I can’t enjoy my own company, nobody else will.”