The Three Jewels - Part 2

Some time after meeting Geshe Roach, I started attending dharma classes he held on the lower East side of Manhattan. Those early classes were taught in a student's loft space, decorated with beautiful hanging Thanka paintings and Buddha statues.

At some point, I started videotaping the classes with Geshe Roach's permission. All of his classes were audiotaped on cassette and later assembled into an archive. In fact, the Asian Classics Institute produced an entire series of courses for Buddhist home studies that were distributed to lay people, including prison inmates. Payment was based on one's ability to pay. The studies focused on the texts and topics Buddhist monks were taught to attain the geshe degree, awarded to monastics at the conclusion of a full course of studies.

As I videotaped the classes, the idea for a documentary started to take shape. The classes were filled with American converts who, like me, were being instructed in what I would consider orthodox and very pure Buddhist teachings, fundamental courses on morality, ethics, and that most fascinating topic, emptiness.

Genesis

Since 1997 I have been working on a documentary titled “The Lotus in the New World: Buddhism in America”. The inspiration for this project began in 1996 when my (then) wife Michele and I sponsored a series of Buddhist talks at the Ethical Culture Society center in Teaneck, NJ. The previous year, Michele lost her mother to cancer, a prolonged and painful ordeal for both of us, and that experience sparked our commitment to being proactive Buddhists.

At that time I was often traveling to Singapore and Malaysia on business and was spending countless hours in airplanes. At a bookstore in Singapore I picked up an introductory book on Buddhism by an Indian author and devoured it cover to cover during the flight home. Hungry for more, I started reading book after book, from Suzuki to Thurman to Deshung Rinpoche to the Dalai Lama.

In my quest to understand the process of death and dying from a Buddhist point of view and to make sense of my mother-in-law’s passing and my own mortality (I was hospitalized for a week on the eve of my 40th birthday, diagnosed with sarcoidosis), I read “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”. Although it didn’t make much sense at the time, I found it a mystical and fascinating read. It was as though a huge gate had opened, engulfing my consciousness in blinding light, illuminating and expanding my perception of what it means to be Buddhist.

Michele and I invited many speakers to take part in our Dharma Talk series. Amongst them were Reverend Nakagaki, Lama Pema Wangdak, Geshe Lozang Jamsphel, Geshe Michael Roach, and Roshi Pat Enkyo Ohara. This wonderful experience started Michele on a quest to open a Dharma Center in our home, and since 1998 our basement in Cresskill, NJ has housed the Palden Sakya Center with Lama Pema Wangdak as the resident teacher. Lama Pema has lived with our family since 1998.

In 1997 I decided to produce a documentary about Buddhism in America, devoting nights and weekends to videotaping teachers, dharma centers, and events in the New York metropolitan area. This documentary has expanded into a multi-part television series exploring all the different American Buddhist sects and traditions, from historical (Asian immigration, the Tibetan diaspora, etc.), sociological, and religious viewpoints, through interviews with scholars, priests, monks, nuns, and especially lay people. The show is intended to present the breadth and diversity of an emerging and distinctly American Buddhism, our nation’s fastest growing and 4th largest religion.

I have amassed over 43 hours of video interviews and events, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s opening of the Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, NY, His Holiness Sakya Trizin's Vajra Yogini initiation at the NY Buddhist Church, and an introduction to the series by Academy Award winning actress Ellen Burstyn.

In 1999, after traveling to Nepal to film a fundraising documentary for the Pema Tsal Monastery in Kathmandu, I was diagnosed with colon cancer and underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments. It took over 6 months to begin to feel normal and to resume my life, and since my father’s passing in February, 2000 I have, unfortunately, not had the time to edit the documentary footage or do any further filming.

The first segment of the Buddhism in America documentary was placed on YouTube.com last October, 2006 and almost 3,600 people have viewed it to date (June, 2007).

Last October I turned 50, and this pivotal event sparked a lot of soul searching and reflection. I realized just how little I have really accomplished in my life, how unsatisfactory most of my pursuits have been (my screenwriting career, my dotcom venture, my relationships) and became depressed. The choices I have made, the karma I created, I could blame no one but myself for whatever dissatisfaction I felt. Since then I have been searching for some way to bring meaning and substance to my life, to make a difference.

The Buddhism in America project is my way of doing exactly this.