Brian Buchiarelli:  

Hello friends I left LA for Georgetown University in Washington DC. I was in the Foreign Service School with an International Relations major. That was because I was the AFS student to Germany in the summer of '68, and I caught the travel and international diplomacy bug. I saw the Berlin Wall, and thought about that happening in LA... if a wall went up between LA and Orange Counties. And I worked at Disneyland climbing the Matterhorn, and what if, one night after work, I could never again drive home. I was so upset by the thought of the wall.. that I really celebrated when it came down. I did not think the Berlin Wall would come down in my lifetime.. but it did! Then I quit Georgetown to become an anti-war activist. 1971. The Moratorium. I decided that I did not want to represent US Foreign Policy because of the war in Viet Nam. I became a paramedic and helped the students who were getting shot and tear gassed in the riots in Washington DC. Little known memory.. some 13,000 people were arrested in a week, and barbed wire was put around the JFK Memorial Stadium to house them when the jails got full. Helicopters flew overhead, and the National Guard and Civil Defense Units were out in force. That was the time of Kent State. My best friend Tommy, standing beside me in DC, was shot in the face by a tear gas canister. I had to put him on a stretcher and take him to Georgetown University Medical Center. I then started studying World Religions, and found Baba Ram Dass and Paramhansa Yogananda and Alan Watts, and the Rinzai Buddhist Zendo, here in LA. And the Self Realization Fellowship and the Lake Shrine and Mt. Washington.. so near to where I now live. I went on to UCLA, and Fullerton community College and lived in Taiwan and China and received my BA from Cal State Long Beach in Asian Studies, specializing in China, Japan and India. I learned to speak, read and write in Mandarin. I loved it, and while working on my Major in Asian Studies degree, I was accepted into the Exchange Student/Teacher Program with Feng Chia University in Tai Chung, Taiwan, where I lived for two years. It was awesome. And I loved my travels to Japan, where I stayed in Kyoto studying Zazen at the Myoshinji Monastery, where Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, my Roshi at the LA temple studied. He arranged a letter of introduction for me there. I also loved Korea, Thailand and India. In India I caught up with His Holiness, the Dali Lama, when he was teaching in Bodh Gaya, under the Bodhi three, where the Buddha became enlightened. I was ...Expand for more