Christin's Behind-the-Scenes Sunday 🎥

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Dear Ones,

Thanks to many of you on this mailing list, this tweet took off on Friday:

Christin Chong, PhD 🪅 @ChristintweetsHi friends new and old! If you see this tweet in your timeline can you let me know a question you have pondered about Buddhism? I’ll help you get it answered by a monastic ☸️ (or dig up some useful resources)5:06 PM ∙ Feb 4, 202225Likes8Retweets

For my non-Twitter friends, it might continue to perplex as to why I have such a love-hate relationship with Twitter (see: the past few newsletters.)

So here are 3 reasons why I was excited to see this tweet take off:

**Finding the “intermediate”: **As mentioned in previous newsletters, I’ve been aiming to write a book about Buddhism based on this year’s tweets. Twitter has been the testing ground to see what topics are of interest to people, and I’ve been passionate about doing this because there is a lack of “intermediate” practitioner content. There’s tons of beginner books about Buddhism, and quite a lot of advanced content, but the space in between to make the connection between Buddhism-curious and getting on the path is wide open for people to get lost in. And I’m beginning to meet more people who are in this space together on Twitter.

Diving into deeper conversations: In the process, there has been an increase “spiritual serendipity” where I find out that friends listen to the same teachers, or get me into discussions that prompt me to check whether I truly understand the teachings (or more importantly, apply them to my life.) I also gather data about what truly matters to people about spirituality and where people get perplexed, which will help shape the book.

Going from finding restaurants to eating the food: But the most important discovery this week is realizing the application of this analogy:

“Just as the point of going to a restaurant is not to read the menu, but rather to eat, so the point of a Dharma book is not found in just reading it or even in understanding it. My hope is that the teachings herein are an encouragement to study the issue at hand.” - Gil Fronsdal, The Issue At Hand*

What I’d like to do a better job of conveying is that confusion and doubt is a humongous hindrance to the practice. I know because I’ve been there, in the “searching” phase, and it took me a long time to get to the “practice” phase now because finding clear teachings was hard. A lot of philosophical questions that arise from an intermediate level of understanding actually have very straightforward answers, but are buried from 1) poor web indexing and 2) teachers catering to beginners by necessity.

What I can offer is that I have spent a lot of time “looking for restaurant menus” and can point to where the good food is. And I’ll begin by answer the tweeted questions accordingly, with my decade long of teachings exposure.

But what I truly want to encourage is for people to eat the food. Because there’s only so much reading restaurant menus can do.

Warm Wishes,

Christin

*Highly recommend this free book that comes in multiple languages, multiple ebook formats, and available for free in paperback form. It’s the most complete introduction to Buddhism that is both secular and ethics-focused. Huge thanks to Jacob Roberts for reminding me about this resource!