Lion’s Roar Affiliate Editor Mariana Restrepo shares her journey in direction of embodying all sides of her intersectional identities.
Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Picture by Aleksandr Zykov.
As I discover myself staring into the horizon, for a second it appears like time has stopped. I acknowledge the ocean of limitless inexperienced, the hills, the valleys, the mountains assembly the sky, and the river that cuts by them. An amazing feeling of familiarity takes over, and for a second I neglect the place I’m. For a second, I’m again house, or at the least the place house as soon as was, midway the world over, within the Andean mountain ranges.
“Is all the things okay?” David asks.
A lady carrying a colourful kurta with a child on her again passes by, and I’m immediately reminded of the place I’m. The mountains in entrance of me usually are not the Andes, lush with espresso and sugar cane, however as an alternative house to tea and rice terraces. I’m standing within the Kathmandu Valley, surrounded by the Himalayas.
“Are you okay?” he asks once more.
It takes me a second to verbalize what I simply skilled, and even then, I’m undecided I can. How can I clarify that I fully acknowledge the panorama that lays earlier than me, when it’s my first time seeing it? I inform him about my hometown, and the way its landscapes look virtually precisely the identical. For a second I doubt my reminiscence of the landscapes impressed behind my eyelids. However I’m certain I’ve seen them earlier than.
“Sure, I’m house,” I say.
Nearly ten years later, I dig by my archives to search out the photograph I took that day, in addition to the one I took once I went again to Colombia years later. The similarity is uncanny.
Who I’m, how I see myself and the way others see me, is at all times altering.
Many speak in regards to the feeling of “coming house” once they go to Nepal or India for the primary time, and I too felt that approach. It was a recognition of the acquainted amongst the overseas — the overseas but to turn into acquainted. Looking back, that journey to Nepal and that have was, in a approach, the start of the merging of my totally different identities. It was a coming house to myself.
Who I’m, had at all times been conditioned by who was asking the query. I’m a Latina. A Colombian. A professor of faith. A meditator. A Buddhist. A retreat practitioner. A spouse. A mom. The listing goes on. Nonetheless, it at all times felt as if once I was a type of, I used to be not the others. As if my totally different identities had been in battle with one another.
I arrived in Nepal as a scholar of faith, finding out Buddhism from a tutorial perspective, quickly to turn into a pupil of Buddhism, a practitioner. This was the primary of my self-perceived identification conflicts round Buddhism. I used to be both a scholar of Buddhism, or I used to be a practitioner — I couldn’t be each. It took a few years and far exploration earlier than I felt comfy calling myself a Buddhist, and even longer earlier than I’d disclose it to others.
The writer, Mariana Restrepo.
Previous to my journey to Nepal, I had by no means met a Latinx Buddhist. I had by no means even heard of Buddhism rising up in Colombia. This led to an unstated understanding that to be Colombian was to be not-Buddhist. As I turned extra Buddhist, I felt as if these round me perceived me as changing into much less Colombian, as if I used to be selecting my Buddhist identification over my Colombian identification. As I stepped myself deeper into Buddhism, I by some means grabbed onto the overseas cultural gadgets that felt acquainted to me and my very own cultural background. I began to see myself mirrored within the totally different points of my Buddhist identification, and the cultures that had been house to it. I wore juttis (Indian sneakers) as an alternative of alpargatas (conventional Colombian sneakers). I wore kurtas, sarees and lehengas, not faldas chapoleras. I traded tintos and bandeja paisa for chai and thalis.
I keep in mind conversations the place I talked about how I felt at house in India and Nepal, and the way I felt so overseas and “different” once I traveled to Colombia. Visiting my hometown, folks would typically remark how my accent wasn’t fairly proper, how the way in which I dressed was not the way in which I used to be speculated to, how my pursuits weren’t what was anticipated. Figuring out as a Buddhist was a heavy accountability. I felt as if I used to be a spokesperson for Buddhism. I used to be typically put ready the place I needed to defend Buddhist traditions and practices that had been so overseas and simply misunderstood to my relations. It was simpler to maintain issues separate — to place forth the identification that was most acquainted to a specific context.
As I turned steeped within the Buddhist custom, one other sort of dichotomy emerged. Training in a closely monastic Tibetan Buddhist lineage, which championed contemplative retreat, there was little room for anything. A devoted practitioner was one whose life revolved round apply, and who made an effort to weed out something that may get in the way in which of a contemplative life-style. The aim was long run retreat and ideally monasticism. Relationships, household, and kids had been all seen as obstacles and attachments. My desires of changing into a mom, on this context, had been at odds with my Buddhist path — or so it appeared. I’m now a mom and a spouse, and whereas my apply seems totally different today, it’s as helpful, and offers me with simply as a lot perception, as my time in solitary retreat.
As I step into the function of a Buddhist/meditation trainer of a Latinx/Spanish language sangha, I’m being known as to embody all these totally different sides of my identification. It’s by all these totally different intersections of my identification that I’m able to talk the dharma from a spot of authenticity. Identification is an ever altering strategy of integration. Who I’m, how I see myself and the way others see me, is at all times altering. Self-perception is just not mounted, it’s fluid. Giving myself any such flexibility and fluidity has allowed me to acknowledge and combine components of myself I beforehand perceived as being in battle with one another, maintaining my experiences compartmentalized. Integrating, merging, and bringing my totally different experiences collectively permits me to share from a spot of authenticity.
Final fact, in accordance with Shantideva, is the reality of a scarcity of inherent existence in any and all phenomena (learn: identities). Relative fact is the infinite appearances which might be shifting, altering, contradicting, and evolving. The center approach is to decide on one over the opposite, however to see each side of the identical coin.
Wanting on the horizon, as soon as once more recognizing the overseas panorama earlier than me, it’s the Appalachian mountains which I now name house.