After realizing my goal of achieving my dream job, I was in the state or world of heaven, also called rapture. The ten worlds are hell, hunger, animality, anger, humanity, heaven, learning, realization, boddhisattva and Buddhahood. These are life states that humans inhabit during the course of their days. Personally, I think I tend to navigate towards the life condition of hunger because I have a tendency to never be satisfied about where I am in life and to long for more. When I first learned about the concept of the ten worlds it was something that really resonated with me. Of course, we all desire to remain in the world of Buddhahood, but the great thing about this practice is that even from the lower paths such as hell, hunger and animality it is possible to bring out our Buddha nature. In fact, in all the other nine worlds it is possible to manifest Buddhahood.
My friend Dean Nichols turned out to be a protective force for me in the universe. When I was living in Rochester, I became good friends with Dean. We hung out a lot at the Bug Jar a local bar. I told Dean about my new job. At this point in time, I had no car, no apartment and no way to drive to Chaffee on my own. Dean was going to be moving to Spain, to be with his wife Sophia, so he offered to sell me his car. He also loaned me the money I needed to get my registration, insurance and pay taxes to put my car on the road. Dean allowed me to buy his car on credit. I would make monthly payments to him that I could afford. He was incredibly generous and really came through for me when I really needed a break.
Unfortunately, after I achieved my goal, I began to be very arrogant. I thought to myself that I got this job on my own and based on my own merit. I thought that I didn’t need to chant and so I stopped. I stopped chanting when I needed to be chanting nam myoho renge kyo more than ever to deal with this new challenge. Tom was fairly new to the
company and made a lot of changes many of them unpopular. He fired a lot of people who had worked there for a long time. I was hired under his leadership and so I was not well liked either. The job was stressful, and I had a long commute back and forth from work. I timed myself and it was a 52-minute drive from Buffalo. I was crashing at my friend Pam’s apartment. It soon became apparent to Tom that I really didn’t know anything about marketing. As his marketing assistant this was a big problem. I was fired after about three weeks on the job.
I had even gotten an apartment in East Aurora to be closer to my job. The property
owner was very nice and allowed me to put down a $50 deposit to hold it. After I got fired, I had to tell him that I couldn’t take the apartment. Needless to say, he was unhappy about that. But things work out for a reason. If I had kept the job and stayed in East Aurora, I might not have met the man that would become my life partner.
I was part of a group of friends that met every Sunday for Indian Buffet. My friend Pam had orchestrated this. We would meet every week to eat delicious Indian food and connect with one another. One person from that group would become very important to my life. His name is Bill Smythe. I met Bill through the Indian buffet crew. He asked me out on a date and I said, “yes.” We went out to listen to live music at the Calumet. Bill was interested in Klezmer music and asked me to join him. We had a lot of fun hanging out and listening to live music. I felt safe with Bill and that I could confide in him. On our first date, I told him that I was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. He didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction so I figured that was a good sign.