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Middle American Buddhist
“There are only two mistakes one can make on the path, not starting, and not going all the way.” Not the Buddha.
You can awaken fully on the Buddhist path right where you are. Buddhism is as available to middle America as it is to anywhere else.
Buddhism in the United States operates with a particular fact that is not exactly a problem, but it can be kind of suboptimal for ordinary practitioners. Especially in the age of the world wide web, we have available a huge array of sources for Buddhist teaching, including the original teachings of the Buddha himself. This is a great thing, but for practitioners, it can be overwhelming. The Buddha himself was very clear that we all have Buddha nature and the capacity to awaken completely, we just don’t recognize it because we have lived countless lifetimes in which we have covered up our Buddha nature with defilements, which boil down to three: greed, hatred, and delusion.
So imagine that you want to overcome your own greed, hatred, and delusion. If you feel the need to verify that your mind has these characteristics, try meditating. Meditation has the effect of allowing you to start seeing all the unpleasant thoughts roaming around in your mind that you usually don’t notice. Don’t expect meditation to bring peace and happiness, not at the beginning, anyway.
