In 2011, I participated in a discussion board about spirituality.  A gentleman named Sam had a question:  What do people think about the relationship between home life and homelessness in Buddhism?

I replied.

Hi Sam,

My first thought is that homelessness has no tug on me, that I need a home, with my wife, and at the school where I teach.  Here is where I open myself to other human beings, and where I foster an opening in some of them.  I retire in four years, and I want to contribute for this time at school, to deepen with kids and adults.  And onward with Jody.

However, there is a tug … for two-and-a-half months to ride my bicycle across Canada with 25 other travellers, being with the land and being with Canadians.  Homelessness with a home at the end.

Bruce

***

My first thought is that I’m fascinated to see the words of a slightly younger man.  I wonder how I’ll feel at age 70 about what I’ve written in this blog. Hey, who knows, maybe I’ll still be writing it.

I have an affection for this 62-year-old.  I know that downstairs somewhere I have some notes that I wrote as a teenager.  No doubt I’ll feel the same love for that young guy.

Today I look at homelessness in a different light.  I have no interest in huddling under a blanket beneath some overpass.  Or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl.  And I realize that not having a warm place to sleep is a punch in the gut for thousands of Canadians, and for countless people worldwide.  I am sad for them.

My personal sense of homelessness is in not holding a place to be “mine”. On my very first day at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, a volunteer greeted me at the door.  Just about the first thing she said was “You need to go into the meditation hall and pick out your spot for the week.  Put a coat or a blanket down so other people will know this place is yours.”

Okay.

So I did, picking a chair on the side of the room.  After supper, it was time for a sitting and I walked into the hall, put the blanket under the seat, and sat down.  Immediately (as in that very instant!), it was wrong.  So wrong.  The teachers talked, we all sat still in an effort to meditate, and I didn’t get a darned thing out of it.  All I could think of was “Yuck”.

I’ve been to three silent meditation retreats.  That was the one and only time that I possessed a portion of the room.  Since then, I walk into the hall with this light curiosity … “I wonder where I’ll sit this time.”  Yes.

Only once did I come in and find all of the chairs full.  (I’ve never learned to sit upright on a cushion.)  That time, a few of the chairs were occupied by stuff rather than by human beings.  I just stood there for thirty seconds, not knowing what to do.  Not wanting to take someone else’s belongings and put them on the floor.  Finally, a young man stood up, moved towards me, bowed, and put his hand on a blanketed chair.  I returned his bow, removed the blanket, and sat.  Thank you, my friend.

May I continue to move lightly across the planet.