on Buddhism

I’m a struggling Buddhist. I enjoy going to the monastery, listening to the abbot lecture on Buddhism, eating Thai/Lao food, and even just going for a walk on the twenty-some acre property. The Dhammasala feels like home to me, but I guess I spent quite a bit of time at the wat in my village when I was growing up. My youngest uncle was a monk during the rainy season and my grandmother would drop me off when she was to busy to drag me along. She was a midwife/herbalist/entrepreneur and didn’t always have the time or energy to take along a potty-mouthed, half-falang (foreigner: i.e., American) brat all over northeastern Thailand.
My understanding of Buddhism has changed over time. My first exposure, of course, was in Thailand—a few miles from the northeastern City of Udon Thani, not far from the Mekong River, which is also the border with Laos. My family is Lao, living in Thailand, or “Isaan”—someone made the journey across the river at some point and took up residence amidst the rice paddies in what used to be a sparsely populated area. Not quite Thai, but not really Lao either.
The form of Buddhism prevalent in Thailand is Theravada—the teachings of the Elders. The monks receive instruction in Pali, the same language that the historical Buddha used nearly 2500 years ago. The lay people, especially in remote parts of Thailand, infuse their Buddhism with animism and other indigenous belief systems. Their understanding of the dhamma is quite different from the monks.
My mother taught me what she knew as I was growing up in Detroit, but she stressed prayers to an omniscient, omnipotent deity. She was also well versed in superstition, astrology, and fortune telling. I didn’t see much difference between the Buddhism of my mother and the Christianity of my neighbors and classmates. There was no mention of meditation, at least none that I can recall.
At university, I studied Buddhism on my own, at the behest of some friends and acquaintances. It started as an outgrowth of some of our experiences with states of consciousness—chemical and otherwise—and took on a life of its own. Many of the books that I read then were on Zen—I really liked the spirit of many of the writings. Although I now admit that I really had no idea what they were talking about.