Peace Inside

THERE WAS ONE PARTICULAR experience that really helped me get through my beginning times of being ordained—going to jail. This is how it happened.

I occasionally used the temple car to pick up Shrfu, my teacher, go to the printers, or run miscellaneous errands. In the process I managed to accrue a lot of parking tickets. I didn’t pay them much attention because I figured what we were doing was tremendously important for the world, and we didn’t have time to be bothered with minutia—we’d simply transcend these minor annoyances because the Buddha was on our side. Apparently the city of San Francisco didn’t see things quite the same way, because they kept sending us notices, notices, and more notices about the overdue tickets. When they finally sent an order to appear in court, I figured it was time to deal with the problem. I’d just go