Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Coincidences

Yesterday was my birthday, and as chance (fate? luck?) would have it, I was born in the same year that Gary and Radha got married. This is just one of the many happy coincidences we've discovered since the project began, and during this time I've come to know more and more deeply that some things are just meant to be. I've listened to each of them tell their stories, and watched the ways in which the past inevitably takes on hues of the present.

The story of their coming together would read very differently had it gone any other way. If Radha had chosen not to go to the 1976 silent retreat in Newport, or if Gary had never gone to visit her at the dome that fall, or if their marriage had fallen apart during the difficult times they shared together - if any of these things had happened, it wouldn't be the same book.

This is why I don't indulge in hypotheticals.

The fact that it did happen, and even with all the shadows of memory, it is a beautiful story. One of the first intimate conversations I had with Gary, I asked him, "Why did you leave the vows?" I didn't understand how someone who had been so committed, so rigorous, so steely in his resolve could have possible forgiven himself after realizing he had taken a vow he couldn't keep. Gary's answer, however, was as genuine as it was insightful. He responded: it wasn't my dharma.

This was something I understood. In my own life, I have lived - by the most conservative measure - three separate lives. Each of them has been beautiful in its own way, and likewise each of them has been painful to leave behind. When Gary answered me that day in December 2007, I immediately knew that the transition from monasticism to the life of the householder was a painful one because it meant letting go of many of the concepts he had spent the previous five years believing about himself.

Furthermore, I understood (perhaps even more than he did at the time) that it wasn't a matter of the vows not being right for him, but rather a question of him not being right for the vows. I believe this is a sadness we have all felt at one time or another, the moment of realizing we are not the people we thought we were, and I was curious to know more about how it all unfolded.

- Jeremy