It was the largest Buddha I had ever seen. Six feet tall and make of shining dark wood, his eyes were closed with a peaceful quarter-smile. His feet were in the full lotus posture, legs crossed with each foot resting on the opposite thigh, sole facing the sky. He was on a large raised platform above the ground. Around him lay lilies and sunflowers in vases, and the priest had lit three small candles in the space in front of him. The chanting would soon begin.

I was attending my first Buddhist service. I was looking forward to seeing how the texts we would read described the thoughts I was having about the world around me–the rich fullness of every moment.

Two hours before, I was sitting on a bench outside a Thai restaurant, my only companions the rapidly falling temperature and incomprehensibly large cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon that seemed to be plucked from a Miyazaki film. I was waiting to join a group of people for dinner before evening meditation at the temple. I knew no one.

As five PM rolled around, a man with a white beard pulled up in a white car. He got out, and I saw that he was wearing what looked like a nylon beanie, pulled over his bald head. He seemed to be around sixty-five years old. I called to him.

“I’ve got a crazy question for you! Are you part of the evening meditation group?”

“Yes, I am!” he exclaimed. “John.”

He walked to me and stuck out his hand.

“I’m Leif,” I said, shaking his hand.

We went into the restaurant and sat down. Soon after, others joined us, and then we were eight strong, talking about how our weeks were going and what we’d like to eat. Next to me sat a man who introduced himself as Lesson. With a bushy red beard and a tentative Minnesota accent, he told me he was an aspiring bodhisattva–someone who is trying to become a Buddha through embodying core values like compassion and equanimity. I asked him what he did to earn a living. He told me that he had spent fourteen years in the hospitality industry, but that now he was living off $300,000 he had saved. It tickled me that he was the only one who ordered alcohol when the waitress asked about drinks. Everyone else had water while Lesson sipped on a whisky ginger.

I immediately felt at ease talking to John. He had a grounded nature that made silence easy, though I had just met him. He was quick to laugh, and laughed genuinely. I was easily the youngest by thirty-five years. The group members clearly knew each other, and they asked each other about grandkids and who was doing what during retirement.

I was surprised that each person ordered meat in their Thai food: chicken and shrimp. That is, however, the beauty of the Buddhist way: there are many acceptable paths. Even the Buddhist monks in the earliest monasteries, the ones begging for their food, would eat meat if it were placed in their bowl.

Buddhism is quite human. If you don’t eat meat, but you’re in the remote mountains of Italy and your friend’s nonna just made her signature meatballs from the secret family recipe, the only option is to go with the flow. And that’s okay. I ordered pad Thai with tofu and excused myself to the bathroom.

When I came back, everyone’s food had arrived. John looked at his own portion size and looked at me.

“Try eating this in one sitting!” he said, gazing down at his mound of drunken noodles and chicken.

I leaned in as if telling him a secret.

“Don’t tempt me” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. Then his eyes widened, his mouth dropped, his mouth formed into a giant smile, and he let out a two-syllable laugh that seemed to come from the earth. Lesson munched silently on his tempura vegetables beside me.

Since he was the youngest person besides me, I started talking to Lesson. Unprompted, he let out a stream of words about the teachers he was following. His great beard bouncing up and down as he talked, he told me about all the teachers he had followed and learned from. When he offered me an onion ring from his tempura plate, I found it endearing.

He had a large piece of tempura in his beard for the last quarter of the evening, and I agonized over whether letting him know would tie him more or less to the world of appearances. I decided that on the path to spiritual enlightenment, he probably wasn’t the first messy eater, and let the thought go.

After paying, we left the restaurant, but not before I snuck a look at Lesson’s check. The aspiring Buddha tipped 18%. As I was leaving, I asked him if he was going to the ceremony tonight.

“Yes, I’ll see you there. But in full transparency, first I’m going to find a dispensary between here and the temple.”

Walking to the temple through a quiet neighborhood, I contemplated the aspiring Buddha smoking Sour Diesel and giggled quietly.

When I arrived, I waited outside for a a few minutes after pressing the doorbell. John answered the door and told me to take my shoes off. I asked him what I could do to help. He looked at me.

“That’s good, because here, we all just pitch in. Follow me upstairs,” he said as he disappeared behind one of the several corridors sprawled out in front of me. Leaving my shoes in the lobby, I climbed the stairs.

Taking in the immense Buddha statue, the reverence of the space hit me immediately. John seemed not to notice my reaction as he fiddled with the Zoom settings for virtual attendees. Another bald man came out from behind a curtain. John introduced us.

“Leif, this is Gardener. Gardener, this is Leif.”

Gardener welcomed me and, after hearing that I wanted to help set up, put me to work distributing chant books and meditation cushions in a semi circle in front of the Buddha. He seemed to be the Buddhist-in-charge, and he sat in front of the semi-circle with a large singing bowl, waiting for everyone to file in.

When the event started, we, including Lesson now sporting a tempura-free beard and possibly a cannabis high, began chanting the words in the booklet I had laid out. We chanted about pregnant tigresses, wish-fulfilling jewels, and names like Dorje Trölo, all too quickly to consciously comprehend the meaning of the words, which had a mind-altering effect.

During the chanting–of which we must have done an hour or so–I found myself slipping into a realm that allowed me to comprehend meaning without comprehending words. Chanting put me into a trance-like state where the text washed over me like cool August rain. Underneath the conscious comprehension, I touched a deeper knowing beyond language. The feeling was particularly pronounced when all of our chanting voices coalesced into a single sound.

Periodically, we would stop chanting and let the mind rest in meditation. The first time we did so, I took a quick look at Gardener to follow his lead; I felt like the kid at church who peeks to see if everyone else has their eyes open during prayer.

Though I hadn’t noticed when choosing my meditation cushion, I had chosen a seat directly in front of the Buddha. During another few minutes of post-chant meditation, I gazed softly at the Buddha’s face. The polished wood of the Buddha’s closed eyes reflected the room’s light, making it appear that the Buddha had wide-open cat eyes with yellow, almond-shaped pupils. While I was chanting and meditating in the temple, the Buddha’s closed eyes become the most open of them all.

After the chanting ended, Gardener asked us if we had any stories about Trungpa Rinpoche, since–I had realized–this service was to commemorate the death of the Tibetan Buddhist guru. It was then that I realized just what history I had stumbled into. People shared stories about meeting the guru in person and working with him. They threw out dates like 1973 and 1981. One person would start a story and others would join in to correct a year that the guru came to their town. They all seemed to have a shared history of learning from this guru nearby or in Boulder, Colorado. One person detailed driving back to Trungpa Rinpoche’s home base in Boulder–where both he and the guru were living–from a peyote session in New Mexico in the 80s. He picked up a hitchhiker. The woman told him, “I don’t know how difficult this will be, but I need to get to Boulder, Colorado to see Trungpa Rinpoche.” After the story, Lesson raised his hand to share with the group, only to let us know that he had to leave early.

At the end of sharing stories, Gardener said, “There will be less and less of us who will be able to talk about meeting Trungpa Rinpoche in person in the coming years,” smiled, and looked down. I had stumbled into something from another era, a forty year old community of people who remember the years when Trungpa Rinpoche helped introduced Tibetan Buddhism to the West.

Gardener then let us know that there would be tea and donut holes served on the first floor. Most people left, and after I helped clean up, I took the bus home and slept deeply. When I had a nightmare that night, I meditated through it–unheard of when I’ve had bad dreams in the past.

The most meaningful thing about the night was that, without speaking a word to each other about meditation or Buddhism, the entire night was imbued with a shared sense of purpose. Being in the temple felt right. Meditating with other Buddhists felt right. Connecting with myself and others felt right. There was a reverence for the space that was light and airy, not heavy and rule-bound. As someone trying to find a community of like-minded people in Portland, this was one of the best nights I’ve had in a year.

Buddhism doesn’t just expect us to live exclusively in the world where you transcend birth and death; you also need to pay the electricity bill and feed the cat. It hadn’t mattered that I had never been to this temple before and had no experience with Tibetan Buddhism. I wouldn’t have mattered had I ordered a whisky ginger at dinner, had meat in my noodles, or needed to leave the ceremony early. The only thing that mattered that night was the commitment to the Buddhist way, in all its kaleidoscopic forms.

After the service, John came up to me from where he was breaking down the AV equipment.

“That was a dose!” he said, eyes smiling.

“A hero’s dose,” I agreed.

I told him that I loved the chanting. How not being able to comprehend the words allowed me to touch a deeper meaning.

“I think there’s a lesson in there,” he said, smiled at me, and went back to work.