Now that our life in Hawaii is dissolving, now that my PhD is done, now that I have side-stepped the traditional next steps of a career path, now that I'm headed into retreat, now that we've written a semi-Buddhist book, the questions have come storming --

Lately I have been experiencing a kind of reckoning with myself.

It concerns a way of being that I have been embodying, on and off, for many years.

Friday I finished my clinical internship.

Saturday I got my PhD.

Sunday we shaved our heads.

Mindfulness has hit the big time. It's in schools, it's in hospitals, it's even at Google and Facebook and General Motors. Many of our friends are delighted by this development. Others are dismayed and disturbed. Here are some thoughts about the situation, written with my friend and fellow meditation teacher, Scott Tusa.

Three blogs back I mentioned that Devon and I plan to shave our heads before we step into meditation retreat for a few months in September.

Which made some folks ask: why the heck would anyone shave their head?

Ten years ago this month I left the monastery.

Ten years of building a life. Of marriage. We own a house. I'm 6 weeks out from earning my PhD.

And yet . . .

I still believe monastic life is the best life.

In this post, read the sad/happy/crazy making story of how our title came to be. And then not to be. And then to be again.

Enjoy,
Craig

I have never in my life wanted a job. I have never wanted a career. I have never wanted, for any minute that I can recall, to be settled, have children, buy a house, mend gutters, go to cocktail parties, or talk about what's on TV.

When I was young, people told me this was a phase. They said I would regret my flagrant disregard for our culture's norms. Now I'm forty-one years old. And, if anything, I have only clarified my intention to walk away from it all.

Ah yes, emptiness. The cornerstone of the Buddha's teaching—the realization of which leads to absolute non-clinging, the total end of suffering, and something we sometimes call "enlightenment" or "awakening."

The problem, of course, is that while emptiness is actually a non-conceptual experience, to train in it, we need teachings and methods.