I am writing this abstract after having completed the text. Writing this autobiography has taken me several months during which I have had the opportunity, after many years, to think about the events in my life. I don’t normally think of my past. It is an interesting perspective to do so now at the age of eighty when the issues that are important at this age are what will I leave behind and how do I want people to remember me. Let me share some of my thoughts.
By nature, I am a very private person. For example, I have never wanted to have any personal presence on social media. But once I agreed to write about my life, I showed a first draft to a close friend and she gave a very useful critique. She told me I needed to consider my relationship with the readers. I should rewrite it as if it were a letter to a newly made friend and not as if it were an article in a history book. Let people know you as a person, she advised, as someone who has faced difficulties in early life and has turned to Buddhism to overcome them. Let people know of the passions that have driven you and of the teachers and friends who have supported and helped you along the way. Go beyond your comfort zone and open yourself up to your students and readers.
At first, I resisted. Traditionally, Buddhist teachers do not do this. The Tibetan saying is that the best teacher is the one that lives on the other side of the mountains. There should be an air of mystique about the person. Traditional Tibetan biographies of Buddhist teachers are called “namthar” (rnam-thar), which means a “liberating account.” They are written to inspire the reader to strive for liberation by following the Buddhist path as the subject of the namthar has done. They list everything that the subject has studied and taught, but present very little about their personal life or personality.
Now that there has been a first generation of Western Buddhist teachers and people are interested to learn about their lives, the question is whether the traditional namthar style is appropriate for the task. Would another approach be better suited and more beneficial for a Western audience? I decided that my friend was right and I amended and expanded the text.
In doing so, the main question for me was what is the purpose of sharing my life story with others? Derek Kolleeny, the senior Tibetan Buddhist teacher who requested I write it, thought it could be helpful for aspiring Western Buddhist translators and teachers to learn of the hard work my generation has put into our training. He felt that it would inspire them to work hard themselves. All well and good, but the prospective audience on studybuddhism.com is much wider than that. So I analyzed to figure out what benefit the general public could possibly derive from reading my autobiography.
Just to offer the public an interesting story for their entertainment is not a very profound reason for writing this text. To write it so that people will get to know and appreciate me as a person seems rather narcissistic and is not my purpose. Neither is it my purpose to show off and impress others so that they will be in awe of me and of what I have done. When I asked my nephew to read through the revised manuscript, he told me after completing it, “You’re a unicorn. Your life has been one-of-a-kind and not something that anyone could possibly replicate.” I would add, as my sister has said, it is not a life that others can relate to. So why have I taken all the time to write this?
I am not anywhere near the level of the subjects of the Tibetan namthars, but I hope that, as with a namthar, readers will learn something of benefit from it. The main lesson, I believe, is that it is possible to transform and improve your personality if it has features you find that cause problems and unhappiness. In addition, when a unique opportunity arises to do something that you are capable of doing and, upon logical analysis, you conclude that it will be of benefit both to you and to others, you need to risk taking advantage of it. Everything in life is risky, but with hard work and a good motivation, you will have a better chance of having success.
May reading this work be of some benefit to you.