Helen Hobart, Sacramento, California
“I am a chaplain at a psychiatric center at an acute care facility, where people are mostly involuntarily, because they have tried to harm themselves or sometimes others. So I often meet people in a time of near death, brought from the ER. They are facing the consequences of their anxiety, depression, grief. Because of that, I have this beautiful opportunity to be with people who really want to look anew, to begin anew. It makes them very real, they are done with cliches, they are done with easy answers. Together we can talk about what really matters, and hang out in uncertainty or sorrow or shared experience, recognizing each person as unique. There is a way that sharing is highly respectful and helpful. So I get the honor of being with people when they want to get under the surface of things and find an authentic life. How wonderful is that?”
“I was a hippie in San Francisco in ’67. I did yoga and meditation in the tradition of Paramahansa Yogananda, and then I thought I better go to India and find my guru. So I took off like many on the hippie trail. In India, I visited a number of ashrams and eventually made my way down to Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, I told some Peace Corps people that I was looking for a teacher. They told me, oh you have to go see Nyanaponika Thera, he is here in the forest. So they directed me down these muddy pathways in the forest of Kandy and I knocked on the door of this little white house. There I met Nyanaponika Thera, whom I knew nothing about, but he changed my life by speaking in a way I never heard anyone speak before. He treated me like I was welcome. I wasn’t just another skinny little bedraggled hippie girl. He taught me meditation and walking meditation with complete presence and no judgment.”
“I am at a place where whatever the mess is, I am going to be up for it, because the buck stops here. I’ll take it on. Sticky, challenging situations consistently show me the Dharma is the most lovely path to be on, I don’t have to fight it, or go overboard about anything, because things can take care of themselves. With enough kindness, I can apparently manage most stuff. My daughter is in a war zone right now promoting a sense of alternative to violence, and it’s true, when it’s time for her to evacuate, because the bombings are too intense, I am on edge. And if anything happened to my children, I would be a mess, there is no doubt about that, but my experience keeps showing me that as long as I pay attention, truly the present moment is a wonderful moment, that’s not just a nice saying, it is true, as far as I can tell it’s true. When I get myself out of the way. The struggle is of my own making.”
“Sometimes I want Sangha to be a bit like Cheers, where people know your name and they are happy to see you. Sometimes I think of Sangha as a place where people are willing to accept me as I am, despite my screw-ups, because we have a practice that helps us with that. So I see it as a kind of wholesome new family, but as I look past those initial needs in me to have a family, I see Sangha kind of like Rumi says, as the field beyond right and wrong, let us meet there. It’s the field of playing and trying out our new ways of being ourselves. It’s our field where we can express who we are and learn from each other free of fear about judgment. It’s the field for practice. It’s the Sangha Jewel, it’s where we get nourished, not only through the teachings but also by the knowledge that people are there to do something so counter-cultural. We really do want to live with wisdom and compassion. Essentially we all sit down because we are going against the stream of materialism and delusion, we are trying to get real, so it’s nourishing. Sangha is also the beloved community, it is the place where the Buddha shines more physically perhaps, or more publicly. Our lives are fairly non-affirmed by the culture, and so in the setting of Sangha, the Buddha shines in a little more bright light – the Buddha in ourselves and in the tradition. When you go to Asia, it’s amazing to see signs of this path all over the place, there are shrines and monks, and it feels like you are no longer a tiny piece of the minority, the whole culture supports the practice, but here it’s up to the Sangha to be that country. So it’s very important that it be welcoming and inclusive.”