‘Travel Makes You a Buddhist’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 12.09.10 | 2:59 PM ET
Matt Gross has lost many things on the road: a waxed-cotton newsboy, umbrellas, his security blanket. Here’s what he’s learned from the disappearing objects:
Recently, I wrote about how you sometimes need to be a Zen Buddhist to survive the discomforts of travel. Well, it works the other way, too. Travel makes you a Buddhist, teaching you that attachments are, all too often, only temporary. A scarf left on a Portuguese beach, a new Tunisian friend whose e-mail address proves unreadable—they come and they go.
But of course, they never go completely. We remember them: how gently they caressed our neck—the scarf, I mean—and they survive, like all the really important things that happen to us when we travel, as memories.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Dehradun 12.11.10 | 4:33 AM ET
I definitely agree with you. When you are lost there is hardly anyone to help you out. you need to find your own way.
Kristina 12.13.10 | 9:30 PM ET
Pensive pensive pensive… =) Very nice post. Agree with you that losing things teach us how material stuff doesn’t really matter than we thought so. Witty post! I like it!
The Virgin Backpacker 12.13.10 | 11:50 PM ET
You’re so so right Michael!
I was gutted to lose my wallet in Italy-mostly as it had a couple of names and phone numbers and some Danish money.
However I quickly ‘got over it’ and started appreciating moments such as receiving the book ‘Into the Wild’ from a girl I’d stayed with in Estonia and passing it on to a guy on a plane from Munich to Athens!
samantha janney 12.19.10 | 7:42 PM ET
Great post Michael. I have found that traveling brings out the best and worst in people but hopefully it also expands our horizons, exposes us to something new and helps make us a better person. I’ve had people I’ve just met show incredible kindness and generosity when traveling abroad which makes me want to extend the same to others I meet along the way!
Globester 12.21.10 | 5:30 AM ET
ya it happens during traveling..but we learn lot of things from good and worst experiences..