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1. This thread is about my religion, and is very self-indulgent, so feel free to scroll on by. Yesterday someone attacked me twice on the basis that I'm an "alleged Buddhist Barrister". Well, whoever they were, they knew I was a barrister, as they later name-checked my chambers.
2. So the only thing that "alleged" could have referred to is my religion. I've been a practicing Buddhist since 1993. Following the death of a very dear friend (which I've talked about recently, in relation to It's A Sin), I felt as if my legs had been cut out from under me.
3. I struggled to understand the world, why bad things happened to lovely people who didn't deserve it. I had no ethical framework that gave me answers that made sense. I was looking for answers. I had some good friends at the time who were Baha'i, and very nearly converted.
4. (In truth, the reason I didn't was because of their strict rules relating to alcohol and sex outside marriage). Eventually, a wonderful man who was a friend of friends came to lunch one bank holiday weekend. My friends had warned me he was "a bit weird - he's a Buddhist."
5. I was expecting to meet someone with a shaved head and maroon robes. I met a lovely guy who seemed to be everything that was "normal", but who exuded a sense of calm and happiness that I desperately needed. I literally interrogated him during lunch about his faith.
6. That lunch changed my life forever. He taught me how to chant, explained what I was doing it for, left me with some books and a prayer book, and I started practising, which involves daily chanting and study. I have not always been good at it. When Mum died Xmas '03 I relapsed.
7. I stopped going to meetings because I found it hard not to cry. I tried to chant at home still, but gradually found I was doing it less and less. I was lucky that my husband (whom I'd met at a Buddhist meeting a year to the day after my friend had died) kept chanting "for" me.
8. It took me a while to realise I was suffering from clinical depression. It took me a good while after that to realise that I would benefit from therapy. I found a brilliant Gestalt therapist, who gradually got me back onto my feet again.
9. But the one thing that I realised during that therapy was that I already had the tools I needed to live a happy life. The tool box was my Buddhist practice, and the tools were chanting, studying, and focusing on happiness for myself and others. I started practising again.
10. To sum up: it's not a fad; it's not something I do to be "fashionable". It is a fundamental part of who I am and how I live. Call me a crank, call me whatever you want. I don't care. But attacking me on the basis of my faith is nothing less than bigotry.
11. As I said yesterday, I take responsibility for my own karma. Just because you have formed an erroneous idea in your mind of what a Buddhist must be, and how we must behave, doesn't give you the right to claim my faith is somehow fake.
Nam myoho renge kyo.
Nam myoho renge kyo.
