Being Peace and Practicing Peace: New Mexico Buddhists and the Peace Within

This article presents the spiritual journeys and practices of two American Buddhists living in New Mexico in the early twenty-first century and conceives of their oral history narratives as spiritual autobiographies. It also uses the concept of “being present” to draw parallels between Buddhist meditative practices and the practice of oral history interviewing. Ultimately, however, the author concludes that the presentation of oral history, whether in aural, written, or visual form, cannot adequately convey the embodied and ephemeral experience of the interview itself. Only the narrator and interviewer are present for the moment of mutual creation and exploration that constitute the practice of oral history interviewing.