Finding the Spiritual Path

November 25, 2025•5 min read

My spiritual journey began when I was 17 years old. I was a high school junior living in California, and I liked to go to the local library to do my homework. One day after working for a while, as one does at the library, I started to peruse the books around me. The section of the library I was working in was the religion section, and the books next to me were about Buddhism.

I decided to take a look at one of the books. I picked out a book that I thought had a cool-looking cover, with an image of a Buddha and what looked like rays coming out of his mind. This was it:

Book cover - Awakening the Buddha Within

It was Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das. I remember when I started reading this book, it was unlike anything I had read or heard up until that point. I felt that for the first time, someone was speaking directly to the core of my being, to the essence of my experiences in life. The author talked about suffering and the nature of the mind. He addressed the pain and suffering that was such a large, unspoken part of my life experience, and how there was a reason or a cause behind it all. He talked about how there is a way of development, a path to train the mind, so that you can cultivate for yourself experiences of happiness and freedom, rather than dissatisfaction and mental anguish.

I still remember a moment while reading this book, when I was riding the bus home from school. As the most essential parts of my life were being addressed, I was thinking, why is this the first time in my life that I am hearing about this? Why do people not talk about the intense suffering that we experience from within our minds, and how can we fundamentally change or improve it? It did not make sense to me.

This book changed my life, and since then I have been seeking the path that Lama Surya Das pointed to with his words. I had my first experience in dharma, in words of deep truth and healing, and this was what I wanted to pursue. I wanted to develop in this mind training, mind healing, learning to be inwardly at peace and free. It felt like the most essential thing: my mind and how I can work with it to not keep creating miseries for myself.

For the next eight years, I searched for more. I would check out books from that Buddhism section of the library, by Lama Surya Das, Thich Nhat Hanh, and other spiritual teachers. I found a nearby meditation center and attended classes with Tibetan Buddhist monks. When I went off to college, I continued to explore nearby meditation classes and Buddhist groups. I developed a daily meditation practice, and searched for a way to inner freedom.

Throughout this time I learned a lot, but I somehow still felt I was not quite finding what I was looking for. My most magical, transformative experiences came from spiritual books, from reading the words of ancient masters like the Buddha, the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita. These books talked of mastering the mind, of finding spiritual freedom. They expressed unbounded love, joy, and selflessness. I felt the truth of these words, but I felt I was not able to find it in my own life and practices. Many of the Buddhist practices I learned up to that point, such as chanting and prostrations, felt like they were made for a different culture, and I could not figure out how to make them work for me. I felt stuck and a little bit of despair. I thought that spiritual freedom was only available in deeply Asian cultures, that it was not available to a westerner like me who needed to be in modern America and could not lead the lifestyle of an eastern renunciate monk.

One day this changed. After moving to a new city, I decided to try looking for another meditation group. I found one and attended a meditation class with a Japanese teacher with a gentle demeanor. I thought he was very nice, and although the meditation was unusual (there was upbeat background music) I enjoyed it, so I went back. It turned out this organization actually had many teachers, and gradually I attended meditation classes with many of them. At this point I started feeling there was something different about this group. First of all, I had never been in an organization with so many willing meditation teachers. There were men and women, all ages and ethnicities, but mostly westerners! So many westerners who were deeply committed to meditation and spiritual practice. And from these westerners I felt a sense that they knew something, that they had a deep inner understanding of meditation and the realizations that come from a dedicated practice.

As I continued to learn the practices of this group, I felt like a duck in a happy pond. Everything here was tailored for an American, a westerner. There was athletics and physical wellness. There was a focus on career, on having a successful meditation practice alongside a successful life in the world. And above all, there was a supportive community of people who knew about meditation, and who were willing to share that development through structured, repeatable practices that fit perfectly in a modern lifestyle. As I continued to practice, I found my life improving, as well as my states of mind. I became happier, healthier, smiled more, and enjoyed being with the people around me more. And I found my meditation practice developing dramatically. Everything that I felt was missing, I started to find.

From this, I learned that the source of the books I revered, what teachers such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, and others were expressing, does still exist in this world. I learned that Buddha’s meditations and realizations do not have to be something that only existed thousands of years ago, and that is only real in books and second-hand accounts, but not accessible in this modern world, or in a western lifestyle. I learned that a modern American can find a path to spiritual freedom too.