Roberta Culbertson is not the first or only person in Charlottesville to discover, with the help of Eastern philosophy, that, as she says, “everyday stuff is spiritual. Every moment is a spiritual moment.” Indeed, the mystical and airy influence of a one-world approach to living has taken firm hold here. Just look at the meditation centers and yoga studios popping up like organic mushrooms across the landscape.
But Culbertson’s path into Tibetan Buddhism was perhaps more circuitous than most. About a year ago, she formally became a Buddhist in a ceremony called “taking refuge”—essentially, declaring a commitment to “achieve enlightenment for yourself and all beings.” Before that, she’d been a born-again Christian and an Episcopalian. She also had dabbled in Zen Buddhism and practiced yoga and shamanism. Clearly, as she acknowledges, she battled with herself about her beliefs.
“It seems so hubristic, so full of chutzpah to say ‘I can decide what I believe in,’” she says. “Belief doesn’t have anything to do with it. I can believe or not believe in gravity, but gravity still is going to pull me down if I trip.” Eventually, Buddhism’s emphasis on practice, rather than belief, drew her in.
A meditation technique called shinay—“calm abiding”—is a key part of this practice. Now 52, Culbertson had previously practiced meditation in several settings. Last summer, a trip to a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia helped her become familiar with its benefits on a deeper level. “There’s this wonderful stream of compassion that exists in the universe,” she says. “Normally it’s on some radio station that we don’t get because we’re only playing with the AM dial. When you meditate you kind of end up on the FM dial and you find this incredible, beautiful station. It’s very subtle.”
Culbertson, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology, says regular meditation helps her to be more relaxed and forgiving. She says this is a “physiological, biological change in your mind.”
She is comforted, too, by the way Buddhism describes the world’s structure. A key tenet to the philosophy is karma, wherein our actions have consequences that reverberate from one lifetime to the next. “Buddhism asks ‘How can I start right now in this lifetime balancing out some of the things I did, not doing more bad things, so that in my next lifetime I’ll be able to go a little bit farther?’”
Culbertson uses what amounts to Eastern-tinged affirmations to balance her karma: “‘May he find happiness and the root of happiness.’ Anytime I catch myself being judgmental I say that,” she says. “It realigns me.”
The idea of karma helps her deal with the presence of evil in the world, too. “I look at John Lee Malvo,” she says, referring to the alleged Beltway Sniper. “I see a guy who did horrible things. But what I know as a Buddhist is that he’s going to suffer to rebalance the universe. And what that brings up in me is compassion,” she says, rather than anger or judgment.
In her practice, Culbertson is involved with Kagyu Samchen Choling, a Buddhist retreat center in Ivy. The center draws lamas, or teachers, from around the world and students from around the region. For Culbertson, however, it’s simply a place to make connections.
“It is important for people, whatever their religion, to get together,” she says. “I need the guidance, the support, and the general kick in the butt” of belonging to a community.