Rinpoche's Journey In The Spiritual Sense Of The World

When we were reading this book I really didn’t think too much of it, it isn’t sci-fi, dark fantasy or a manga for comic so I really wasn’t super interested in maintaining this world and these characters in my head and internalizing Otto’s struggles and Rinpoche’s actions. But after finishing the book I can see where this type of story can be incredibly helpful to people that are struggling with spirituality, and even to people who aren’t spiritual at all. Throughout the book I felt that Otto was almost taking one step forward two steps back in his journey to spiritual enlightenment which now I can see wasn’t the case at all. I always thought that Rinpoche’s actions were just a ridiculous way to make the point itself shine through and seem

This journey is something that I can relate to on a very minor scale, there have been several points in my life at which I have had to change my view of life, but the most significant was probably after I started to be properly medicated for my ADHD, Depression, and Several Anxiety disorders. When this journey started Otto viewed the spiritual sense of the world as certain events with meaning, that only served to further the pain, confusion, and anger when Jeannie dies. At this point Rinpoche is already his guru and spiritual advisor so his sister and Rinpoche’s wife Cecelia decides to send Otto on another journey with Rinpoche to try and find meaning, and understand himself, and the world around him once again. But by this point Otto is already used to Rinpoche’s shenanigans to a certain degree, and he has already become a fairly spiritual person so he is questioning all of those things and putting them against the death of his wife. Rinpoche however is not a spiritual advisor/ guru for nothing, he knows that Otto is focusing on each event and searching for meaning

I was under the impression that these were normal things and that you should the the good old Irish thing and never talk about it with anyone. But freshmen year it started to become very bad and other people began to notice so I went to see a psychiatrist and was tested for all of the above. There was another thing that happened during this time though, we found out that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder coupled with a severe vitamin D deficiency due to my body not processing vitamin D properly. This as it turns out, as well as all of the other things, is something that I inherited from my Dad and Grandpa. They both had all of these issues their whole lives and dealt with it in different ways. My Grandpa didn’t have time to be depressed as an Irish immigrant working 3 jobs in boston at all times. But my Dad experienced all of this in a household where you ignore anything that doesn’t really require a trip to the hospital. So throughout highschool and college he was a subpar student busting his ass and getting nowhere, which combined with the depression turned him to alcohol during that time. Luckily he is great now and is on medication so he is happy as a clam which is how he always was when he wasn’t dealing with these issues. And that gave me an outlet to understand and deal with the things I was going through. Similar to Rinpoche