International Gay & Lesbian Review

In the Lap of the Buddha

• Nonfiction
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Publication Date: 1994
• 289 pages, notes, suggested readings, insight meditation center information and index

Lately I've found myself falling in love with and making love to a great many men… Somehow it helps me stay connected. These love affairs have taken place between the sheets and under the covers of books written by some very hot, very seductive and incredibly sensitive men. Through their words I've shared an inter-connected inter-related, (ness) with my gay lover/brother friends. I've learned to dance unashamedly naked around the volcano with Guy Kettelhack-fisting and french-kissing in an eruptive flow of collective resolve. Mark Doty's, “Heaven's Coast,” was truly a shared dream and Mark Matousek's, “Sex Death, Enlightenment,” had me begging for more… I've hitched across gay America with my bunk-buddy Darrell Yates Rist in “Heartlands,” making new friends and finding love in all the “right” places. Toby Johnson's own “Life Perspective” allowed me to live, laugh and make love with Tom & Ben in a time remembered and it was with a voyeur's indulgence that I silently witnessed Nathan & Roy's evocation of love and belongingness so seductively captured by Jim Grimsley in “Dream Boy.”

There is however a new love in my life. His name is Gavin Harrison. I met Gavin while reading his wise and warmly written, “In The Lap of the Buddha.” I believe Gavin speaks to that need in me and perhaps in many of us, which seeks a connection one with another to fill the whole and to ease the ache. It is through Gavin's personal struggle with childhood abuse and AIDS that he opens himself to a larger healing.

Born from his own great open heart he takes me beyond that which I perceive to be life's worst—not pushing away or being pushed away, not clinging to or being clung to but simply resting and being with what is. Real fearlessness, Chgyam Trungpa writes, “is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart.” In the lap of the Buddha I found wisdom, beauty, warmth and compassion. In the lap of the Buddha I found you… In the lap of the Buddha I found me.

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