Wide Awake
A Buddhist Guide for Teens
By Diana Winston

Buddha

This image of the Buddha is available as a poster from Buddhism Depot.

Introduction: riding the roller coaster

Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1

Wide Awake

To order this book, head to your nearest independent bookseller or to Amazon.com. Published by Perigee Books (A division of PenguinPutnam Group). Publication date 5 August 2003.

Why is it that the teenage years can feel like a roller coaster ride? At first the view at the top is great, you can relax, lean back, and coast. You were just asked out by the guy or girl of your dreams, you may have been awarded the scholarship you were hoping for, and you passed your driver's test. Then suddenly, out of the blue, you careen to the bottom of the tracks. Your parents announce they are getting a divorce, your best friend tells you he or she is moving, or you open your eyes, as if for the first time, to the suffering on the planet- as well as your very own neighborhood- violence, poverty, injustice.

In truth, life for most people, no matter what our age, is filled with continual ups and downs, swings into extremes, happiness and unhappiness. How can anyone ever find safety and security amid these changes? Constant changes can make life far too stressful. All of you experience, to varying degrees, difficult situations at home- fighting with parents or siblings, the pressures at school- to do well or to even be there at all, competitive social dynamics, and relationship problems. So many of us have minds that are plagued with anxiety and worry.

Difficult choices regularly present themselves. Should you hang out with that crowd you like so much even though they may be seriously involved with drugs? Should you and your girlfriend or boyfriend break up? Should you smoke (anything)? Shoplift? Have sex? Stop having sex?

And the larger "life questions" can plague us: What am I going to do when I finish high school? Am I straight or gay? Will I ever make an impact on the world? And some will be haunted by questions about being alive: What is it all about? Is there a purpose to my life? Really, who am I?

How do we make sense of the roller coaster of the teenage years? Where are the sign posts for life? What maps are there? Who are the mentors? Are there any instruction books? What kind of guidelines are out there to help during these confusing yet certainly wonderful times?

This book, an introduction to the teachings and practices of the Buddha, is written for you, no matter what your experiences or background. Through teachings and practices of the Buddha, anybody can find a peace and steadiness amid life's turbulent changes. This book may not make your life less stressful, but it might show you another option to relate to life's ups and downs. It will not hand you the answers to your questions, but it will provide you with a framework, and offer tools, suggestions, and practices, so that you can arrive at the answers yourself.

Buddhism offers practices, specifically meditation, to help us relax, calm down, and concentrate our minds. From this calm, spacious and quiet mind, we can discover who indeed we really are, free from our conceptions and judgements of how we are supposed to be. In fact, the Buddhist meditation technique, which I will present in the book, is one of the most profound and accessible ways I know of for finding answers to those fundamental identity questions.

The age-old wisdom of the Buddha also provides guidelines for making choices, practical advice that makes sense even 2,500 year after the Buddha's death. Buddhist ethical teachings-on values, morals, or how to conduct our lives-can lead to healthier and more harmonious ways of being in the world. In order to benefit from the teachings, we do not have to think of ourselves as "religious" or even "spiritual," although many practicing Buddhists are both of these. The principles of Buddhism may be put into practice at the most mundane level of everyday life. They are of practical use to anyone of any religion, or no religion, of any background, on any path.

You may have picked up this book for a number of reasons. Perhaps you have a specific spiritual question or just a vague spiritual longing. Perhaps you have a life question you need an answer to. Perhaps you feel like you have been on that roller coaster a little too long, and are looking for a little peace and freedom from stress. Or maybe you are not even sure why you picked this book up, you just feel drawn somehow.

The Buddha once said, "Be a lamp unto yourself." This meant that ultimately, you are your own best guide. You can illuminate yourself with truth and understanding, but it certainly helps to have a little guidance along the path. This book is meant in that spirit.

How did I get started?

I grew up with a hippie mother who was a spiritual seeker. We lived in a conservative New England town, but inside our house we hung pictures of gurus (spiritual teachers) on the walls. We ate tofu, talked about reincarnation, and demonstrated for peace at marches and rallies. My dad more or less put up with it, although spirituality was not his interest. I was always embarrassed by my weird upbringing that didn't fit in a town with people named Chip and Muffy.

In junior high school I was unsure of the social rules and didn't have the right clothes or listen to the right music, I found solace in books, studying, and getting good grades. Yet I didn't want to be seen as different from the other kids.

In high school the real pressures began. My classmates and I were told, you are doing well in school; you can get into a good college; you can get a good job; then you will make a lot of money. It was the eighties, Ronald Reagan was president, and the financial security messages were even filtering down to sixteen-year olds. I was not sure I believed this hype, but I wanted to be accepted by the other kids. Drawn into the race, I studied harder than ever, competing for the best grades, trying to be first in my class.

The success I had worked so hard for came with my acceptance to college. Yet was the prestige and financial security I had been promised really what life was about? I entered college pretty suspicious of this cultural message.

In college I was soon swept away by student activism. I attended sit-ins and demonstrations against nuclear weapons and to protest apartheid in South Africa. I joined the women's political action group and formed a street theater company. I experimented with drugs, alcohol, and sexuality. I wore only black and smoked clove cigarettes. I saw so many of my friends under the spell of materialism, seeking approval, trying to fit into the system, and I knew I wanted no part of that.

I graduated from college unsure about my life and where it would take me. I had criticized the culture, but I also felt part of it. College had not prepared me for real life,.that was for sure. I was angry and resentful. What was I supposed to do with my life? I knew making money was not the answer, and I was burned out on activism.

My mother and her spiritual teachers had influenced me enough to consider that the answers to my problems might be in Asia. So in 1989, I flew to India. Four months later I was living in the Buddhist hill town of Dharamsala and working for a Tibetan rights organization. Each morning I awoke in my cramped hotel room to the sound of bells and chanting and the smell of incense, the mountain, sewage and urine.

The more I worked for the cause of Tibetan freedom from Chinese rule, the closer I grew to the Tibetan Buddhist culture. A friend suggested I try a Buddhist meditation retreat. I laughed at the idea! I believed myself to be far too political to be spiritual. But as my friendships grew with the Tibetan people, I became intrigued. One day I joined a ten-day study-retreat at a little meditation center on the nearby mountaintop.

At first most of it didn't make much sense to me, but one morning at 5AM, as thirty of us huddled together under our shawls in the cramped meditation hall, a short, solemn American nun spoke. She told us that the world will always have opposites: pairs of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and dishonor. This is the nature of the world; you cannot escape these opposites no matter how hard you try to experience only the pleasant half of each pair. She explained how most of us spend all our time running around after the desirable side, like praise, not accepting the fact that at some point we will also have blame.

Hearing this was as if I had put on a clean pair of eyeglasses when for twenty-two years I had been looking out through foggy lenses. Her words seemed to explain my life! At last, I thought, someone is telling me the truth about life. I have been running around.madly seeking only success and praise. Whenever I did not receive it, I was shattered. Who I am, I realized, is completely dependent upon what others think of me.

At first, though, I felt hopeless. To hear that everything gained will also be lost was not exactly comforting. But the next part of the nun's teachings blew my mind. This may be the truth of things, she said, but there is a deeper truth. We can train our minds to find happiness with what is. We can find peace and stability amid all the ups and downs in life. A much deeper peace is possible. This is the teaching of the Buddha.

After that eye-opening introduction, I threw myself into years of Buddhist meditation practice and study. I meditated on retreats of many months to deepen my intellectual understandings. I began to experience for myself the potential of a peaceful mind amid changing conditions of life. I spent years in silence, during which I learned who I actually was, even when I didn't want to face it. I even spent a year in Burma (Myanmar) living as a traditional Buddhist nun and practicing meditation in the forest. In 1993, I started teaching Buddhism to teenagers and I have seen how valuable these teachings have been in helping young people through the confusions and joys of growing up.

This is my story. You have your own. No matter what your story is, finding peace amid changing conditions is available to any of us.

* * *

Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens is about the teachings of the Buddha as I have come to understand and experience them. Sometimes I teach directly from the words of the Buddha. Sometimes I offer the interpretation of my teachers or their teachers. And sometimes I offer the teachings in a way that makes sense to me, and I hope makes sense.to you. I have also included the thoughts and voices of teenagers I know and have taught over the years; you will find these in italics throughout the book. Most of the names have been changed.

Please remember, you don't have to adopt Buddhism as your religion in order to read this book or to do any of the practices, exercises, or reflections I describe. Buddhism is a common sense and practical philosophy as well as a religion, and it can practiced by anyone. Many people find the insight and practices of Buddhism so helpful that they simply apply it to their lives, whether or not they are a Buddhist.

The book is divided into five sections. The first is "Starting Out On Your Journey," basic teaching of the Buddha to help you understand the Buddhist way of viewing the world. In the second section, "Learning to Meditate," I will introduce you to the basics of Buddhist meditation and discuss the difficulties and benefits of a meditation practice. The third section, "Surfacing Our Inner Goodness," applies some of the earlier teachings to the difficult issue of self-esteem. This section encourages us to be ourselves, fully. Fourth is "How Do We Live Our Lives?", a section dedicated to help you day-to-day, as you make decisions about issues like your sexuality, mind-altering substances, and communication. The last section, "Out In The World," provides you with some ideas about how you can apply Buddhist teachings to your relations with other people and the planet, as well as how to meaningfully express yourself through your work in the world and make a difference. The book is designed so that it can be read either from cover to cover or at random. You can pick it up when you are in the mood, find chapters that speak to you and read those. It is up to you.

My hope is that this book can serve a handbook for the roller coaster of the teenage years. I see it as a compass for when we are lost in difficult times, and a companion for.wonderful times, as well. The book is based in the incredible wisdom of a 2,500 year old tradition that still has value for us today. I hope this book will be useful to you in whatever you do. Through its teachings, may you be encouraged to always inquire within, access the peace and freedom that is available to you in every moment, and keep ...