#154: Kory Goldberg is Along The Path
Kory Goldberg’s story begins in a small, English-speaking, Jewish enclave in Quebec. His first stirrings of spirituality were rooted in his own Jewish tradition, but he soon expanded his search and began exploring Sufism, Buddhism, and yoga.
When Kory was just nineteen, he spent a year studying in India through the University of Minnesota. After the program ended, he stayed on, getting by with the little remaining pocket money he still had on him. “I'm going to travel around and just keep seeking out whatever I was seeking out,” he recalls thinking at the time, “you know, the truth, a path to ultimate truth, connectedness, interdependence! I was just looking for something and I was also looking for a teacher.”
Kory was fortunate enough to attend daily lectures given by the Dalai Lama, and later visited the Root Institute of Wisdom and Culture in Bodhgaya, a socially engaged meditation center in the tradition of Lama Zopa. Although he arrived too late to be accepted into the upcoming course, he was provided lodging at the Institute, and the two resident monks—one from a Tibetan lineage, and the other from the Thai Forest Tradition—provided casual instructions for practice. Kory applied himself thoroughly, and was able to achieve higher states of concentration, giving him a taste for the path that would come to follow.
But like many others on a spiritual journey, he would find that the arc of his trajectory was not exactly linear. Some months later, he was in Dharamsala, visiting a Canadian monk who he had met at the Root Institute, and getting more guidance. But then came the shocking news that the Dalai Lama’s tutor had just been assassinated, and the monk was not able to continue their sessions. But he did suggest that Kory might try a vipassana course in the tradition of S.N. Goenka as an alternative.
The result was transformative. “Everything seemed familiar,” Kory describes. “The chanting, even though it was the first time I heard Goenkaji’s voice, it just sounded familiar, it resonated! It seemed protective. I just felt at ease. And I hadn't felt that at ease in a long time.” Because the stress of traveling through India was disrupting his ability to go deeper into the practice, Kory made his way to the tradition’s main meditation center, Dhamma Giri, in Igatpuri. There he took his second course, and was also fortunate to get the opportunity to meditate in Goenka’s presence.
Now a student at McGill University in Montreal, Kory was pleased to find that two professors from the Faculty of Religious Studies led group sittings, one focused on ānāpāna, and the other a Zen practice. Although he appreciated the comradery, he felt strongly that Goenka was his teacher, and so began sitting and serving vipassana courses at centers in Quebec, Massachusetts, and California, among other places, often following his practice with hikes deep in nature that lasted up to two weeks.
Some years later, he was attending a Science and Spirituality conference hosted at one vipassana center that turned out to have a lasting impact on his life. Kory tells the story: “I told myself at the end of that course, okay, now I'm ready to meet my partner! And lo and behold, it's Metta Day, and there's a lot of people at the center, because Goenkaji has just arrived as well… And I saw a friend who said to me, ‘Oh, I just served a course in Quebec with this young woman named Michelle, you should really meet her. She's just standing over there in the corner.’ And I turned my head and I looked at her and I said, ‘Oh, that's my wife. And then we met and sure enough, 23 years later, we're still together! In that time, we've been a great support for each other, sitting and serving together a lot, especially before we had children. And then we've gone to India together. We did the one-year Pāḷi program at Dhamma Giri. After that, we spent a lot of time traveling.”
Fortuitously, he had met fellow meditators Carl Franz and Loretta Haven, authors of the legendary People’s Guide to Mexico, in India. Between courses at one point, Kory and his wife were talking to them, along with Paul and Susan Fleischman and some Burmese meditators, reflecting on the possibility of a similar travel book for Myanmar. While Kory didn’t know enough to attempt such a guide, Paul then pushed him to take on the project for India, instead. The rest is history. As Kory explains, “In our innocence, or naivety, or stupidity, we're like, ‘That sounds like a good idea!’” And thus the idea for their book, Along The Path: The Meditator’s Companion to the Buddha’s Land, was born.
For the next seven years, Carl served as an advisor while Kory and Michelle periodically trekked all over northern India, refining their book while also taking in tips and submissions from meditators taking their own journeys in the region. During this time, Kory also somehow balanced a PhD program at the University of Quebec, teaching at Champlain College, helping bring a son into the world, and buying their first property.
To write convincingly about India’s important Buddhist sites, Kory not only researched their history and location, but also learned about the people from the past who had played a role in helping uncover what in many cases had been a long, forgotten history. This included characters such as 7th century Chinese pilgrims and 19th century British administrators and scholars. But Kory’s mission was very different from theirs: as more people around the world began to come to the subcontinent to practice meditation and seek out the origins of their spiritual path, many did not know exactly where to go, or what had actually happened at the different sites. In this regard, Along The Path was a groundbreaking work, making these places far more accessible and inspiring to those trying to reach them.
When asked if he saw himself as following in the line of those academics, Kory responds, “Yes, and no, I mean, it's just a completely different time and a completely different setting. I'm a completely different person with completely different background and upbringing! But as you ask the question, I think, ‘Okay, well, maybe I do have a place in the long line of mostly Western scholars who are looking at these places along the Buddhist circuit in India.’”
Kory also found himself in the interesting position of having to balance the perspectives and voices of his rigorous academic work at the university with the inspirational, spiritual writing of his book. Kory reconciled these two disparate directions by viewing it like two wings of a bird as opposed to emphasizing any dissonance. “My critical academic work has helped me shed light on my biases and on my opinions, and even on some of my shadows,” he notes. “I was able to use them as tools, or objects of investigation in my meditation practice. And then on the flip side, I feel like the meditation really helped me ground myself in my practice, and help me frame questions that were useful… I came to my research from the perspective as an engaged academic, but it wasn't just critical analysis for the sake of critical analysis. I really wanted it to be useful in some sense. And I feel like my meditation practice really helped me do that. And my meditation practice also helped me be open, I feel very open, more open minded when I was interviewing people.”
Following the book’s publication, Kory was asked to lead pilgrimages to the special sites he had written about. As he also attended and supported various pilgrimages to Myanmar, he has unique insight into the contrasts between leading meditative journeys into the two societies. “Myanmar is way more complex,” he notes right away. “There's so many living traditions! When you look at India, for example, if you want to learn meditation, it's pretty much Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka, or nothing… if you want to learn meditation [in India], you're going to learn this one kind of practice. Whereas in Myanmar, there there's hundreds and hundreds of masters and traditions. So you have this whole buffet that you can choose from! And obviously, when you mix in with the long cultural tradition, and you mix in the political tensions and conflicts, it's just it's just a very different story because it's so much more dynamic and alive.”
In terms of itineraries, Kory notes that while there is just one, basic Buddhist pilgrimage route in India, there are literally infinite possibilities available in Myanmar, depending on one’s background and interests. Another difference is in the way the pilgrim groups were received. Because there are few living Buddhist communities left in India, Kory found that those arranging their group needs saw them more as customers in a business transaction, whereas in Myanmar, they were welcomed with open arms. “People were just so happy to see us, no matter where we went!” he recalls. “People's arms were just open, especially when we dressed in the traditional [Burmese style] pilgrimage clothing.”
Ironically, Kory had initially resisted wearing this attire. He saw it both as a loss of identity, a kind of uniform. But he decided to try it out, at least for a day. “First, I'm like so embarrassed,” he recalls thinking. “Then you see [the Burmese people who are] taking pictures, and they're smiling! They shake our hands and talk to us and ask us where we're from. And they're so happy! They're just so happy, and so honored. So here's this group of people who, for all intents and purposes, we're from another planet, like these aliens coming dressed the way they do in their most sacred, lay attire, and they were just so happy, even though we're awkward, and we're wearing our longyis all wrong, and we might do inappropriate things. [But] they're just so happy that we're showing interest in a very sincere way, and they recognize that our intentions are good and pure.” Coupled with this warm embrace, Kory remains filled with the memory of the enormous generosity he received over the course of his visits to the Golden Land, from snacks being quietly deposited in front of him while meditating at Sule Pagoda, to meals being provided along the side of the road when the buses would invariably break down.
Yet these deep feelings of gratitude make it all the harder for Kory to follow what is now transpiring in Myanmar. “I can't possibly imagine what it's like to be in such a horrible situation,” he notes sadly. “In Myanmar, we have these enlightened meditation masters doing so much good for the world, and the repercussions ripple out across the globe! At the same time, we have these really dangerous, ignorant people causing so much trauma and pain and grief and suffering. And it's like you have both of them side by side. You have the Dhamma energy and you have that Mara energy. That's just the reality as it is, and those negative sides, it's just very painful to see. And so how can we bear witness to that, and [yet] stay grounded same time?”
Kory hesitates in choosing the right words to describe the very complicated and messy situation in the Golden Land. “I understand how people get might get upset in Burma, when people on the outside say, ‘Oh, they're just so resilient!’” he says. “I understand how that could be insulting, if it's not said from a place of authenticity… It can just be used as just a way to bypass action or serious reflection. But on the other hand, it can also be expressed as a genuine, sincere observation of what these incredibly strong people are going through, and how they're responding to the situation with wisdom… When I see what the people in Myanmar are going through right now, some of them are just responding in such courageous ways that, I hope that if I'm ever in that position, that I could be as strong as they are.”