Speak Out! 
Flowers Fall
The Bodhisattva Heart I Used to Know
I am in the process of applying for a teaching job at Bard's summer Language and Thinking Institute. They asked for a writing sample, so I figured I would give a chapter from my book-in-progress, Sweet Jesus. I like it, other people seem to like it, and it is a good reflection of my current writing and thought. It is about the Christian writer/minister/emergent church leader/super-awesome guy Brian McLaren, and the subtlety of his conversion story. It is not a critique, it is not angry—on the contrary, it is pretty gentle, though I like to think probing, thorough, and important.
But then I started to think, hey, this is Bard. I wonder how they will like a piece on mystical Christianity. And then I thought, "I know: I will give them something I wrote when I was a doctoral student (I never finished) in rhetoric and linguistics." When I did my coursework, I was in my late 20s, teaching writing to African-American and Caribbean students in Brooklyn, and I was chock-full of at-ti-tude, or, to put it more kindly—I really had a pair. Of course I know this about myself. It's part of my ongoing story. But when I moved aside Azzie's cage, as we call it (her "playpen"), to open up the bottom drawers of my filing cabinet, I was in for a bit of a shocker.
Crouching there, opening up the drawer, I actually got the wind knocked out of me. My heart started racing as I saw manila file after manila file, lined up with tabs in my handwriting with titles like "Creole," "Bidialectalism," "Good Intro to BE [Black English] (from the web)," "Whiteness as Descriptor." Sweet Jesus is right! Big, thick, scholarly article after big, thick, scholarly article, all with my scribbles lining the pages, Post-It notes attached to the sides, apparently to remind me of something really important. One blue tab really caught my eye, and my heart, actually: It read "Resistance." Man, alive. What is that?
I opened up the file that read "Hard Copies of My Work," and started reading, ostensibly looking for something to send to Bard, but more urgently, looking for some sign that all of this work was actually done by me. It was. I remember it now. I remember combing articles about "BE" I ordered through interlibrary loan; I remember waking up at five in the morning to study Noam Chomsky. I remember really wanting to know—passionately needing to know—why subject-verb agreement was such a difficult "error' to treat among my black students. I can't believe the earnestness with which I wrote about the capitalistic machine of the grammar enterprise. How smart! I am stunned by how much I cared. And how hard I worked. On someone else's behalf. Sure, I wanted to impress my professors and colleagues; sure, I wanted to be someone in my field. But more than any of that, I truly wanted to understand why black students were always in remedial writing classes, because it was so obviously, unbearably unfair. And the injustice stung me, for real.
Whatever I think now about my somewhat paternalistic approach to the issues I was concerned with, I am blown away by what was so real in my dedication.
The other side is that while I was doing all that really good work, I was in utter hell. I was unbearably anxious, lonely, confused, and lost. I do not exaggerate. Soon thereafter, I started to practice Buddhism. And I was saved (hence my current interest in born-again Christians). In fact, part of what led me to the dharma was realizing that the academy didn't care enough. I wanted to save all beings, not just get grants to study some idiosyncratic detail of the world.
Now I feel pretty good. But I don't give much. Okay, so I take good enough care of my kid. But I also want a medal for it. Yeah, I'm working on this and that, but it's so all about me.
Maybe the bodhisattva heart was more alive in me before I ever heard the word.
Hopefully, it's just taking a nap.
Bethany Saltman lives in Phoenicia with her husband, Thayer, and baby, Azalea. She has been a student of John Daido Loori Roshi, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, for ten years. Her work has been published in magazines like The Sun, Buddhadharma, Geez, and, of course, Chronogram. She is currently working on a book called Sweet Jesus: Americans Convert to Christianity. E-mail Bethany at Bethanysaltman@gmail.com.