Before we move to the next chapter, present Day Alana, wants to share a few final thoughts. Mostly, I want to admit that the issue of my fear that I am a bad Buddhist has softened, but it is not gone entirely. I still don’t particularly enjoy going to temple and I still feel a bit guilty about it. Sometimes it is because I find temple distracting from my personal practice (too many random topics in a teaching when I already have plenty of my own to consider). Sometimes its just too loud and crowded. But there is the part of me that is afraid of being pushed, of being judged, of having my sense of practice = refuge tainted in some way.

Also, I still feel like a fraud some of the time; I worry when I speak harshly to my family or obsess over the latest beauty trend that someone will find me out as an impostor. Forget someone else finding me out – I worry, in my heart of hearts that I am an impostor. After all, here I am working so hard to walk this path, to make Buddhism the center of my life, and still I am so frivolous, vain and harsh.

But now, I see all these traits, this fear and this guilt, not as evidence that I can’t succeed, but as evidence I really have no choice but to try. So each day I practice, each night I set my intentions for that practice. In waking and in sleep, I hunt for evidence to fix my wrong views, I work to build my wisdom, so that one of these days, no matter if I’m a good Buddhist or a Bad Buddhist I can finally become a free.