NATURE AND THE LAMA OF APPEARANCES (PDF-1639)

I want to say something about how natural dharma is, at least in my experience. To do this, I have to share a bit of my own history, a personal story of finding the dharma. It might be useful to some of you who love nature as I do. I was born and raised in Lancaster Pennsylvania until the 6th grade, at which time my family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where I then grew up. Those early years in Pennsylvania were idyllic. In Lancaster we lived out in the country where my parents built a house. It was the first house built in that area, and it was wedged between two very large farms. There was no one else around for many years. I grew up surrounded by nature. At the end of our back yard was a vast field in which, when fresh plowed, I would find arrowheads. Otherwise that field had corn, tobacco, wheat, or alfalfa. And beyond that field was a small water-filled quarry where my younger brothers and I built a raft, and there were also islands of woods in that sea of farmland in which we roamed. Lancaster is known as the "Garden Spot of the World," and it is that.