Feynman, Father, Buddhist?

"...What was he (Richard Feynman) like as a father? 

Fantastic. Fun, supportive, sweet, silly. He went to great lengths to entertain us. When I was young, the nightly ritual included him scouring the house for the correct stuffed animal, with me rejecting each and every offering until I had the desired one, or until he had made me laugh with his efforts. I’m not sure which was more important. He also made for an excellent radio. I would sit on his lap and turn his nose, and he would make up songs from different radio stations.

Do you have any favorite letters?

The personal ones—the ones to his first wife, his mother and my mother. He was a devoted husband and son, and the letters are loving and often funny, full of his personality. Perhaps my very favorite: a letter to his mother in which he mentions coming across an article about pine needle tea and the high levels of vitamin C that pine needles have. Then he says, “So, of course, I had to make pine needle tea. I did while visiting Putzie [nickname for his first wife] Sunday, not that either of us were short on Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) but my curiosity was aroused. Result—fair. Not too wonderful, not too bad. About as good as regular tea, but different. Crush the pine needles up—pour on boiling water and allow to steep a while. Serve hot, or with ice and lemon. Cheap. Remarkable fact is it tastes like pine needles.”

You mention in your preface that you’re still learning from him. What did he teach you?

While working on the book I became a better communicator and a better writer. I was inspired by one thing in particular I found going through these files. In an article on education he wrote for Caltech’s Engineering and Science he stated: "The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. He was speaking of mathematics textbooks at the time, but I think this statement in part explains why he was such an effective and marvelous communicator.

These letters are testimony to his skill and desire to be plainly understood—and, of course, to his passion and curiosity about the world. Again, his own words, this time from a letter to a young student seeking his advice, explain it best: "You cannot develop a personality with physics alone, the rest of life must be worked in."

~Michelle Feynman, daughter of Richard Feynman, Physicist

“If you simply do what's in the books, you're not following the Buddha's method. The Buddha didn't follow what was in books. He had to use his own powers of ingenuity. We have the advantage that we're building on the discoveries he made, but we still have to go back and make those same discoveries for ourselves. We have to use the same method he used. And one element in that method is this ability to improvise.

...A British physicist who went to study with Feynman in Cornell was amazed by, on the one hand, how brilliant he was in physics, but also how playful he was. After a while he realized that the two were connected. If you don't learn to play around with ideas, you don't see new things. If you don't learn to play around with what's happening in the mind, you don't make any discoveries.

The Buddha was the type of person who made discoveries. You have to make yourself the type of person who makes discoveries, even if it's simply to reconfirm what he discovered. You have to go through the same process, really testing things.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu - "Standing Where the Buddha Stood"