Buddhist Studies
By Sherry Schwarz
A gap year between high school and college was time well spent for Cole Taylor. Like her fellow high school seniors, she had applied to colleges “on time,” but unlike her peers, she deferred her acceptance to Smith College in order to study abroad. “Part of my motivation was that I felt really burnt out after high school.”
Cole had already gone abroad with the organization Where There Be Dragons (www.wheretherebedragons.com) during the summer after her junior year. Her group trekked to Nepal’s Mount Kailas, the most sacred pilgrimage for Buddhists in that region. “It was mind blowing,” said Cole. “Those six weeks changed a lot of things for me. I was faced with a world completely unlike my own. I had to reevaluate how I thought about wealth, spirituality and the worth of a human life. The combination of culture shock and the physical challenge forced me to do a lot of self-introspection.”
After graduating from high school, Cole enrolled in another Dragons program, this time on a Tibetan studies semester. She spent three months visiting sacred sites in Tibet, Kathmandu and India.
“It was the best decision I could have made. I think a lot of kids who get shuttled right into college when they are still really young and haven’t lived on their own may take that newfound freedom and not know what to do with it or how to engage themselves in their studies. This time off grounded me and gave me a way to know myself better and recognize how significant it is that I can get an education.”
In Tibet, Cole and her peers could not bring certain books into the country because they were banned. They couldn’t talk about the Dali Lama, knowing that to do so would be dangerous to their Tibetan traveling companions. “It was a good experience to be aware of the privileges we have in this country,” she said. “People talk about culture shock, but when you are in a country where even the little things you take for granted, like knowing how to use your utensils, are no longer familiar, it is that much more overwhelming. You end up questioning your lifestyle. You realize how much wealth you have, whether you are considered wealthy in the U.S. or not.”
Returning home a second time proved harder than it had been the year before. Cole found herself reflecting on her spirituality and how she had changed personally. “Geographical movement is a big process, and I think a lot of times you don’t realize how much you’ve broken yourself down and rebuilt yourself until you get home—and that’s the really hard part. People don’t understand what you’ve done and what you’ve seen. I came home from my semester and cried for a week because I was so overwhelmed. I wanted to hold onto my experience, but at the same time I wanted to fit back in.”
Cole recalled going to the grocery store during that time. “In India I could smell the food at the markets, and back in the U.S. everything seemed so surreal. I wanted to find a way to live that made me feel really, really present.”
In Buddhism, Cole found a personal connection and spiritual idea that she could hold onto. “Buddhism resonated with me because of its emphasis on compassion and nonattachment.”
Cole considered pursuing her interest academically, but Smith College did not have a Buddhist studies major, and she was also concerned about translating such a personal part of her life into “the impersonal world of academia.”
But in her second semester, Cole took a class on violence and nonviolence that incorporated some East Asian philosophy and connected many Nepali and Indian social issues with religion and ethics. “I started to see how much broader the field really is,” she said.
Now in her sophomore year, Cole is working with department heads from art, anthropology, philosophy and religion to form a Buddhist studies major.
In January she went to the Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India for a one-month philosophy program run by Smith College professor Jay Garfield. She and 15 other students from Smith College and nearby colleges, as well as from the Univ. of Tasmania, studied Tibetan Buddhism and philosophy alongside monks, nuns and laypeople. (You can read about this experience on the abroad view web site.)
Next year Cole plans to study in Southeast Asia with a program that incorporates field studies. She hopes to accumulate enough research for a potential thesis. “Whatever I end up focusing on, I want to make sure it has to do with locals,” she said. “I’ve had professors who can read Sanskrit, which is amazing, but I want to be able to speak with people. It is impressive, for example, how much Tibetans know about Buddhist philosophies and texts. I am interested in how synonymous the religious sphere is with daily life there.”