To Buddh or Not to Buddh

One of the questions I get asked most often when I tell people that I study Buddhism in grad school is whether or not I'm a Buddhist. I don't like this question because I've never come up with an adequate answer. Folks usually seem to be disappointed that I'm not meditating for umpteen hours a day and this usually grinds the conversation to a halt. That's not a problem for me because I don't normally like to talk in detail about what I actually do as a graduate student for fear of boring my conversational partner to death. Actually learning some of what might be termed the canonical languages of Buddhism such as Sanskrit and Tibetan don't seem to count for much unless I am on a cushion somewhere with slitted eyes thinking hard about nothing. I've had discussions with true blue Western Buddhists about how all of the work that goes into translation and reading and thinking about the history of Buddhism entitles me to call myself a Buddhist or not. I have other terms I'd prefer to be called, but I can't reveal them until I get my own little tax-free church up and running. More on that later.

I have to vet folks carefully to see if they can handle the minutiae that my work actually involves. I've often had discussions with a previous roommate of mine who was also a grad student about how he thought that studying Buddhism was much sexier than what he was studying (let's say, medieval history somewhere east of the Fertile Crescent). However, unless I start hanging out with lamas in caves and subsisting on nettles (and those of you who know me know how likely THAT is), I'm afraid the sex factor for the general populace will remain low.