Thank you for all the beautiful feedback from my last email. I was honestly surprised by how many people reached out both in person and by email, sharing that they didn’t know I was a Buddhist practitioner.
I loved hearing your questions and your curiosity about what that means and how I arrived on this path.
Like many things in life, it wasn’t a straight line. It has been winding, evolving, and looking back, probably began long before I realized it consciously.
The summer of 1996 changed my life in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.
My dad survived a bone marrow transplant for a form of leukemia that he had very slim odds of beating. He would often tell a story about his oncologist pressing him up against the wall and saying:
“Larry, this is one part medicine, one part attitude, and one part God. I’ll take care of my part, you take care of the other two.”
At that time my dad was a stressed, overworked corporate lawyer and a devoted atheist. But something shifted after that experience. As he rebuilt his life, he became curious about this mysterious “God” component.
He began studying many of the world’s religions and eventually found Buddhism.
As a college student, I watched him change. He became softer, kinder, and deeply generous. It was as though something in him had opened.
I took note of that transformation — even though I didn’t fully understand it yet.
Fast forward to 2016.
I was struggling deeply — suffering, as Buddhism would describe it.
My dad had passed in 2012. I had gone through a divorce. Internally, I felt lost.
Around that time, podcasts were becoming more accessible, and I found immense solace listening to Western Buddhist teachers like Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. Through their teachings, I began to understand attachment and how much suffering comes from our attempts to hold tightly to what cannot stay the same.
Just being in the presence of that wisdom helped carry me through a very difficult period.
Then came 2020 — a year that shifted so much for all of us.
That’s when I discovered the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, a school of consciousness studies that deeply shaped my own Buddhist healing path. My teacher, Isa Gucciardi, is a Tibetan Buddhist who studied directly with the Dalai Lama and founded the school to help people walk the path of the Bodhisattva.
The Bodhisattva path is rooted in the idea that as we gain healing and insight, we return to the world to help others reduce suffering and find their own liberation.
I took my Bodhisattva vows and became a minister in the Buddhist church in 2022.
Today, Buddhism is less a religion for me and more a lens — a philosophy and a practical framework that guides how I understand healing and human experience.
This Buddhist healing path has given me two teachings I return to again and again in my work:
The Four Noble Truths, which teach that suffering is part of being human, that it arises from attachment, aversion, and misunderstanding — and that there is a path toward freedom.
And the Four Immeasurables:
- Compassion
- Loving-kindness
- Empathetic joy
- Equanimity
Qualities we can never have too much of.
In my work with clients, we explore what blocks these qualities from being fully expressed, and gently begin untangling the patterns that keep people stuck.
Because ultimately, this path is about liberation.
Not perfection. Not becoming someone new.
But uncovering the freedom that already exists beneath the layers of conditioning and suffering — breaking down the internal walls we build that only keep us from living life from our truest and highest selves.
My Buddhist healing path continues to shape how I show up in the world and in my work every day. It is, quite simply, the lens through which I see everything.
I’ll leave you with a little teaser…
Very soon I’ll be announcing a new podcast project with two dear friends and fellow travelers on this path. It’s called Inner Threads, and through open, honest conversations we’ll be exploring healing, awareness, and what it means to walk a path of awakening together.
