A NOTE FROM PERRY
After the publication of “Buddha or Bust” in hardcover in June 2006, I embarked on a five-city book tour, speaking not only at bookstores but also to Buddhist groups and organizations such as the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco.
I realized I had become, to adapt Anne Tyler’s phrase, the “accidental dharma teacher.” To be clear and in the interest of full disclosure, I am not a dharma teacher, though it is true I have been falling on and off the meditation cushion for some 30 years, ever keeping in mind the old Zen saying: “Fall off the cushion 10 times, get on it 11.”
I am a journalist who has come to realize the skills I learned that make me a good reporter – to be a seeker of truth, to continually maintain a “sufficiently inquiring mind,” to keep asking questions and to build my truths around what I myself experience, to be in the moment and scan a room or someone’s eyes or my own body for insights into what is really going on, to really “be with” someone I am interviewing – are the very same skills that make me a good Buddhist practitioner. And vice versa: practicing Buddhism makes me a good journalist. When I began working on the National Geographic Magazine article that evolved into the book “Buddha or Bust,” I described myself as a journalist who dabbled in Buddhism. Now I would say I am a Buddhist who dabbles in journalism.
The more I spoke across the country after the publication, the more I heard a yearning for some sort of spiritual guidance. Every sentient person asks the questions that are fundamental to the essential spiritual quest, the central questions every religion attempts to answer: “Who am I? Why am I here? What is the glue that holds together this whole paradigm we call life? And how can I make it to the weekend with a little less suffering and a little more happiness?”
At first I felt uneasy answering some of the questions I fielded, such as “What is the difference between TM and Buddhism?” or “How do I deal with anger?” Over time I found that my own research, my interviews with the world’s greatest Buddhist thinkers and practitioners, my extensive readings and the two years I had myself been asking similar questions gave me the confidence and just enough collected wisdom to offer suggestions that helped people move just a little further along in their own search for truth, meaning and happiness. OK, so maybe my wisdom is pass-along wisdom: I often draw on and quote freely from my 90-minute interview with the Dalai Lama, or my long interview with Thich Nhat Hanh or with S.N. Goenka. But who better to defer to?