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I was raised in a very strict Evangelical, Fundamentalist Christian household. I had a feeling from the very beginning that it was all bullshit, but I tell you what, I tried valiantly to hang in there. As I got into college, I had moved onto reading Kierkegaard and other Christian Existentialist in order to try to make my religion make any damn sense. Paul Tillich also figured in prominently. Honestly I still really like a whole lot of what both Kierkegaard and Tillich have to say.

Anyway after doing that for a bit, I realized that there was no point in all the mental gymnastics I was doing. I was clinging to this thing because I was raised with it, and that is a lousy reason. So I tossed that shit overboard. For about a minute I hopped onto the New Atheist train. Several things there immediately became obvious to me though. The first was that while I generally agreed with them, they were kind of dicks to everyone. That was kind of not cool in my book. Then there was fact that they seemed to be completely missing a part of life. There seemed there was a sense of mystery, I guess, that that kind of stark atheism just misses. That is not quite it. Maybe wonder or some other ineffable quality. The whole thing just seemed too mean, with a pat answer for everything. And it does a lousy job of answering the whole, "Ok, so what do I do now?"

It was about this time that my ex-wife (we were married at the time) gave me the book Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner. As a side not here, I think Brad is kind of a creeper, and a lot of his teachings strike me as a little simplistic these days, but he will always have a bit of a special place in my heart for bringing me into Buddhism. Anyway, so I read that, and stuff in there just kept ringing true for me. I have always been a little bit of a philosophy dork, and there were so many things things in Buddhism, specifically Zen, that struck me as applied philosophy. Philosophy taken out of the clouds and actually put into practice. Which, as it happens to be, had been one of my major critiques of philosophy for a long time.

"In relation to their systems most systematizers are like a man who has built a vast palace while he himself lives nearby in a barn; they themselves do not live in the vast systematic edifice. But in matters of the spirit this is and remains a decisive objection. Spiritually, a man's thoughts must be the building in which he lives—otherwise it's wrong." -Soren Kierkegaard

While the above quote was specifically about Hegel, it has much broader application.

Anyway, being that as it may, there were lots of things about Buddhism that rang very true to me. So I started reading everything I could put my hands on about it. In addition to this, I found that there was a temple near me, the Houston Zen Center. I immediately felt comfortable there, though it seems like I was the youngest member there by a decade or two. Then a couple of guys and myself wanted a more youth oriented group, so we sent out an email to Noah Levine and got permission to use the name Dharma Punx for the group. We have been meeting for a couple of years now.
My schedule is all messed up with work, so getting up to the zen center is kind of a pain in the ass, but I make it up there as often as I can. I sit zazen with some regularity. I have a fantastic teacher in Gaelyn Godwin. Not only is she brilliant and possible one of the most wise people I have ever met, she has got a wicked wit on her. She is constantly messing with me, but in a most perfectly loving and gentle way. She has been a profound influence on my life.

I have taken the lay precepts. I have been talking about here in another decade or so, when I reach retirement age, going into the practice full time, and taking the full monastic vows. We'll see. No definite plans, but that is one of the ideas I have floating around my head.