Clear Mind, Open Heart - Gratitude for Eric Kolvig
Eric Kolvig is the reason I’m a Dharma teacher, but he doesn’t know that. I attended his funeral this month and was reminded of how, in one evening, a talk he gave changed the trajectory of my life.
I lived in Tucson in 2010, volunteering as an aid worker in a humanitarian crisis zone. I was spiraling into a crisis of my own due to the intensity of the work. Eric was giving a talk on Buddhism and Social Justice, and I saw his talk as an opportunity to find inspiration. His talk would bridge the freedom meditation offers with the political freedom I aspired to in my humanitarian work, but there was a catch. His talk wasn’t inspiring.
It was the opposite of inspiring, like salt for my wounded state. His message was that privileged meditation practitioners in the West were ignorant and not doing enough to solve the world’s problems. We needed to inform ourselves and take more action.
I wasn’t conscious of it then, but martyrdom was the moral compass guiding my humanitarian work. Taking more action would have meant my death or imprisonment. Not to mention, I made the worst party guest because I wanted to educate or yell at anyone who wasn’t trying to save the world. I was a mess. Amidst the worst days of their lives, the victims I worked with in crisis zones would ask me, “Are you okay?”
After Eric’s talk, he took questions, and I presented my dilemma. “I meditate to feel present, but now I’m present with overwhelming suffering. I don’t want to meditate anymore. What should I do?” I expected criticism from him, highlighting how I’ve failed because I needed to do more or better. Without missing a beat, he replied,
“You must take care of yourself.”
I will always be impressed that Eric responded to me with care. I could not find it for myself. He offered it instead. His advice was right, and I often think of it.
That night was a pivotal moment in my path. In retrospect, I mark it as the transition to embodying my ideals instead of sacrificing myself for them, a coming of age for my values. My path of self-care was a long journey beyond that night, but coincidently, the same night forged an unexpected connection that supported it.
A peculiar person sat beside me at the talk and, feeling resonance with my question, invited me to dinner after the talk. I regretfully declined, but I did want to connect with him, and luckily, the persistent stranger extended a second and even better invitation. “Would you like to attend a sweat lodge ceremony on the reservation with me tomorrow?” It was a fantastic invitation from someone I had just met. I said yes.
The person was Tucker Peck. When we met, it was clear we’d be friends, but I didn’t realize it would be a friendship that reflected its inception: meeting at a Dharma talk and then bonding through a sacred shamanic ceremony. As you’d expect from that origin story, we both became Dharma teachers, and he’s my teaching partner.
Tucker’s persistence, one of many character traits I admire in him, ensured that we connected in the first place. It catalyzed us to spend as many moments together as possible during my last days in Tucson. When I moved to Oregon, Tucker visited me not once but twice during the summer at the farm I was living and working at. When Tucker decided to start an online Sangha in 2012, one of the first of its kind, he convinced me to join even though I had no interest in talking about meditation online with strangers. When I tried to quit, he convinced me to rejoin, and as a result, I started meditating daily and for more time than ever. When my well-being and mental health improved to previously unimaginable stable and content states, he convinced me to teach meditation, even though I had no interest in teaching it. I’ve tried to quit teaching more than once, but Tucker’s support has prevailed, and teaching became my full-time livelihood in 2018.
The greatest gift Tucker’s persistence provided during those days in Tucson was always rejecting my depressed and deluded worldview. I was stuck in a state reflective of a humanitarian crisis zone, even when I wasn’t there. From that place, it was impossible to see and feel that the worst days of our lives are not every day of our lives. We are not only our worst experiences, just as humanity is not only its worst atrocities.
That last sentence still make me cry, perhaps out of grief that I and everyone has the worst day of their life. Or maybe I cry out of relief. I know the reality of deeply bad days, but also the reality of good ones. In my fortunate case, the good ones are increasingly more enjoyable, and the bad days are increasingly less, which certainly makes life worth living. My journey would seem to point to a possibility of healing, but even more profound to me is that the inevitable bad days feel less personal.
I didn’t know it at the talk, but, Eric suffered from severe depression and PTSD, and he spoke openly about this fact as a Dharma teacher. In his artie Crazy and Free he wrote-
As much as I’d like cures for these diseases, I haven’t yet found them. But in the seeking I’ve managed to find something better than a cure: a reality beyond any concern for sickness or health, life or death. “I” still suffer from PTSD and depression; I’m still crazy. And all the while the Natural Great Peace that we are lives on unharmed and unharmable. As awareness grounds itself more and more surely in that Natural Great Peace, the diseases appear more like mirages – though still nasty mirages, I’ll admit!
Eric’s funeral celebrated the possibility of a life remembered because of its love. I remember Eric by his love, not because I was close with him, but because his life brought forward a reality of Dharma practice that embraced mental health instead of excluding it. I am certain that becoming aware of my overwhelmed mindstates and caring for them every chance possible, was a process that gave me capacity to care for myself. Eric and Tucker especially made that possible for me, and I now do my best to support others in the same trajectory.
Goodbye, for now Eric. Thank you for your Dharma and for enduring your life so that others like me may find hope and also be free from suffering. Thank you for showing that neither healing nor Insight happen in isolation. I’ll see you at the Bodhisattva party when we turn off the light and forever shut the door on Samsara.
If you’d like to read more about Eric and some of his writings, including the Crazy and Free article quoted here, Tucker posted a number of his essays
