Am I a “Convert” to Buddhism?

How could I be? Although I’d grown up in a predominantly Jewish suburb, we weren’t that Jewish. I’d seldom been to temple. Maybe a funeral, maybe a bar mitzvah, maybe a wedding. An occasional seder. One bris. There wasn’t all that much to convert. Or so I thought. I believed in freedom of religion. I had a lot to learn when I got to Carleton College in 1960. In Minnesota, whoever I thought I was, I was Jewish.  One of the kids in the dorm, very sweet, asked to pat my head. He was checking for horns. My best friend’s mother wouldn’t let me in her house.

As close as I got to conversion was Jukai – which many people think of as a Zen conversion ceremony. I didn’t see it that way. Jukai was a recognition ceremony, a public acknowledgement that I’d found a refuge in Zen practice.

Are you Jewish? Are you Buddhist? I’d only taken the question semi-seriously once. Freshman year, a questionnaire circulated. One question listed religions with boxes for check marks. I checked “Buddhism.” A year earlier I had stumbled on D.T. Suzuki’s intro to Zen and spent the summer in the the North Carolina hills imagining myself a Zen monk. I forgot about the survey. Apparently, lots of people had. They didn’t get around to tabulating the results until our senior year. When I read that there was one Buddhist in our class, I was surprised. Who was he? I got a friend with access to the confidential, raw data to look. I was the Buddhist. I’d completely forgotten that check mark.

I’m still Jewish. Many people think of me as Buddhist, as a Zennie. Sometimes, I think I might be more Jewish today than I was when I plunged into Zen practice. But I think it’s more accurate to say that I’ve become more aware of my Jewishness, attitudes and ways of being that came to me unnoticed from my parents, in my genes, or subtly through their being. These noticings have been among the gifts of my Zen practice.