Maya Angelou died a month ago. She was a person I always admired even though I was not very familiar with her work. Her death moved me to change that, so I have been reading some of her books, poetry, and essays. What I found was what I expected: She was a buddha! A christian sort of buddha, but a buddha just the same. Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now is a collection of essays that takes about an hour to read, and it's probably the most non-buddhist/Buddhist text I've ever read. Parts of it are practically secular sutras, if there is such a thing. Of the many things she wrote that I admired, I found this one below to be particularly applicable.
I'm taken aback when people walk up and tell me the are Christian. My first response is the question "Already?" It seems to me a lifelong endeavor to try to live the life of a Christian. I believe that is also true for the Buddhist, for the Muslim, for the Jainist, for the Jew, and for the Taoist who try to live their beliefs. The idyllic conditions cannot be arrived at and held on to eternally. It is the search itself that one finds ecstasy.
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