I Meet My Teacher

I wasn't the most likely person to be initiated on the pathway to enlightenment. All my life I'd had a super-rational view of the world. I believed that everything in the world could be explained rationally or scientifically. As a child, I was something of a math prodigy, and from there I moved on to the study of computer science both as a career and for academic interest.

I was also extremely biased against religion. For me, one of my great interests in life was trying to convince myself which of the world's religions was the most bogus. I got some sort of perverse satisfaction out of "convincing" myself that Eastern religions were just as bogus as their Western counterparts. Indeed, I made it my personal mission in life--one might say obsession--to persuade others to abandon their own religious beliefs. I denounced others as "deluded" when they showed any kind of religious faith. I recall announcing to others that I was making it my mission in life to dissuade them of any spiritual faith they might have. I denounced fellow scientists for not applying the same skepticism to Christianity and Buddhism as they applied to astrology and the paranormal. For me, it was all complete bullshit, and any scientist who admitted to any belief in Christianity or Buddhism or other faiths was a traitor.

It was occasionally pointed out to me that in my denunciations of religion, I got rather emotional and was perhaps not being quite as rational a being as I pretended to be. But I took such criticisms with a heavy dose of salt, because after all, I knew I was right, and so what did it matter whether I happened to get emotional about it?

It also gradually became apparent to me that my rational approach to life was perhaps not serving me quite as well as I had hoped. I'd been a brilliant mathematician in my high school and undergraduate days, winning national and international honors in that field. I realized, though, that pure mathematicians didn't make a whole lot of money, and that job security was questionable. I gradually began to branch out into computer science, although I continued along the academic track, studying for a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence at Stanford.

The more deeply I got into computer science, however, the more I realized that there was something more to computer science than rote programming of a computer. The mechanics of computer code might be purely mathematical, but designing software on a large scale was as much an art form as it was a science. I continued to approach it very rationally, and I found that my Ph.D. program was much more challenging than my earlier work in math. I had particular difficulty with my qualifying exams, and in general the first five years of my Ph.D. program were a very tough ordeal, and this was before I'd even really gotten started on my dissertation, which was supposed to be the toughest part of all. I also had no idea whatsoever how long it might take to finish my Ph.D., although I'd heard the horror stories of a student going berserk after nineteen unsuccessful years in a math Ph.D. program and murdering his advisor with a hammer.

However, one day I happened to see a poster on campus advertising a meditation class to be held in Menlo Park a few days hence. For some reason--I'm not really sure why--I decided to attend this class. The class was given by a long-term disciple of Dr. Frederick Lenz. Dr. Lenz, who quite recently retired from the active teaching of self-discovery after 28 years, was then a Buddhist teacher also known as Rama. We meditated to music produced by Rama's band. At the end of the lecture I wasn't exactly sure what to make of the whole process, but I sure noticed that I had a lot more energy than I had before.

Nevertheless, I soon convince myself, just as I always had before, that I was basically dealing with a bunch of Buddhist lunatics. I even showed my roommate a copy of the advertising poster, and we had a good laugh over it, basically making fun of the whole program.

But these "Buddhist lunatics" sure seemed to have a lot of energy, and I sure didn't mind getting some of that energy, which happened to feel really good. So I went back to the class the next week. At that time, I was invited to attend a meeting with Rama himself. I was told how, when you meditate with Rama, the room often fills with a golden light and you get a major empowerment out of the experience. I was skeptical, but my skepticism was beginning to weaken. There was something sincere and true about the program that Rama was offering which I couldn't put into words. At the rational level, I still doubted Rama and his students, but at the deeper level, the second attention, I was beginning to feel the truth of what they were teaching.

I decided that I had to meet Rama at least once. I was getting so much energy out of attending these classes and meditating on my own that I figured there had to be something to it. Nevertheless, the timing didn't work out for that first meeting with Rama, and it was another month before I had the chance to meet Rama at a dinner in San Francisco. Driving up to the city from Palo Alto, I felt a certain sense of excitement, like this was going to be an important event in my life. The dinner was held at a hotel in San Francisco, and before dinner was served, Rama circulated throughout the room. As he reached our table, I was introduced to Rama. Rama and I talked briefly about my Ph.D. program, and after Rama moved on, I was told in an excited whisper that Rama had given me an empowerment for the Ph.D. program, and that my Ph.D. program was now likely to really take off.

But I still wasn't convinced. Though we had an intense meditation that evening, for most of the evening, Rama played the comedian, telling hilarious off-color jokes about "Woody Allen's dick" and "Fergie's breasts". He was really funny, but I couldn't tell whether this guy was just a funny guy who knew how to get people to have intense meditations, or whether he was something more.

But it's funny. From that day forward, all the difficulties I was having with my Ph.D. program just seemed to melt away. After so many years of obstacles, suddenly it was almost completely smooth sailing. I graduated just over a year later, which was about six months ahead of even my most wildly optimistic projections of my graduation date. Anyone who has any familiarity with Ph.D. programs will know that it is extremely rare to finish ahead of schedule--that delays which can last years are much more the norm. By the time I was done my Ph.D. program I was convinced that what Rama had to offer was something very real.