My path in Buddhism has been unusual. I often feel at odds with conventional sanghas and meditation centers because my entry point was not what it was “supposed” to be. I didn’t come through a conversion experience. I came through desperation—through psilocybin and raw trauma, when my life fell apart and I needed a container to hold the pieces. Displacement, heartbreak, homelessness: these were my initiations.
Because of this, my practice has always felt more raw, feral, and untamed than what I usually encounter on the cushion. My whole life I assumed awakening meant transcendence and profound settling. I’m learning it can also mean a deep rewilding.
At every step I’ve found resonance with esoteric practices—pagan, witchcraft, occult—that often point to truths overlooked in conventional Buddhism. My Roman Catholic upbringing, too, left me with a strong affinity for the tangible and sacramental.
What I’ve come to understand is that the only place we can ever begin is right here, right now, exactly where we are. And we begin there again, and again, and again, because “right now” never truly passes. For me, that’s meant beginning in heartbreak in San Francisco, beginning while homeless in Seattle, beginning in recovery from wounds deeper than I thought survivable, and beginning while in the middle of a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology.
The true point of entry isn’t a precepts class or a cushion. It is always the suffering of this moment, here and now.
I can be followed on BlueSky @foxfiredharma.bsky.social.