Buddha #1: Josh Swiller

A famous Tibetan Buddhist training is to regard everyone you meet in the world as the Buddha.  That is, everyone you meet has something profound to teach. Figuring out what the teaching is, is your job.

I don't know if it's just me, but I've been finding Buddhas all over the place recently. The Tibetan training encourages you to find the Buddha even in horrible, vile people who act precisely opposite to the way you would expect the Buddha to act. That's not the kind of person I'm finding.

The kind of person I'm finding talks like the Buddha talks. They seem like actual living Buddhas, people who at least in one sphere of their lives have gained real wisdom, and have the ability to share their wisdom in a compelling way. 

My favorite person of this type is the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan. Time after time in his National Geographic TV program, Cesar walks into a home riven with human anxieties that the house pet has picked up and is acting out. With his patented "calm assertive energy" Cesar proceeds each time to cooly diagnose the problem and settle things down, usually dispensing gems of Buddhistic wisdom in the process. I'll write about Cesar and his wisdom gems of peace and tranquility soon.

And, I'll start adding a feature to The Journalist and the Buddha, of quick snapshots of all the Buddhas I meet and learn from along my own life's path.

Let's start with Buddha #1, a young man named Josh Swiller, interviewed the other day on NPR (thanks to my friend Alexa Olesen in Beijing for the link). Josh was profoundly deaf for most of his life until three  years ago, when he received a cochlear implant. Now he hears almost 100 percent.

Here is an exchange between NPR's Scott Simon and Swiller:

Simon:  Are there times, now that you are hearing the whole cacophony of sounds that is our world, that you sometimes miss the quiet?

Swiller:  Oh, sure. One of the most amazing things about deafness and the signing deaf community is that when you are deaf without hearing aids or implants you are alone with your thoughts a lot. And I think being alone with your thoughts, it promotes empathy for other people. Because you get to see that having a mind with all its complaints and thoughts and worries is not an easy  thing for anyone. If you ever spend time in the deaf community, it’s one of the most wonderful, compassionate communities. I think maybe with all of the noise we have in our modern world that gets lost a little bit.

The Buddha couldn't have said it better himself. It sounds to me as if profound deafness naturally nurtures the insights one seeks through vipassana or "insight" meditation. One such insight being what a huge  pain in the ass it is to have a human mind, endlessly storming off in all directions.

The theory of Buddhist insight meditation is that such insights tend to cause compassion to arise. And here we have Josh Swiller, saying this often happens for people who are stone deaf.

For the full interview click here.

Amazing.