Yesterday we took our last trip and it was to a Buddhist Zen Center. I thought that it was a really cool place. The first thing we did as we enter the center was to take off our shoes and coats. Another place where you have to do that, I like walking around in my socks and found it quite fun. Then we enter a small room that looked like it was a classroom in a basement.
In this small room where floor mats and pillows on them and always chairs surrounding the floor mats. We all took a place on either the mats or chairs and waited for farther instruction. I decided to sit on the floor mats. It was comfortable for about 5 minutes and then my foot started to fall asleep as the two people who ran the center talked. Right before we started the actually mediation part the lady offer as pillows which we could place under ours kneels as we sat. Surprisingly the pillows worked amazingly and my foot did not fall asleep as fast as the first time although it did fall asleep again.
For the mediation part we used the Korean method of mediation. We started off by one person opening the alter and then one of the head people got up and did a solo chant. After the solo chant we all did a chant in English. After that we started the actually mediation part. One of the head guys hit a wooden stick to start us off. We did not have to sit in the locus position, but we did have to keep our eyes open and stare at a 45 degree angle. We were to mediation on the question “What am I?” which I found my mind wondering far from the question many times. All together I did found the mediation part really fun. We only mediated for 10 minutes instead of the regular 25 minutes. It was a quick 10 minutes too. I really was not ready for him to hit the wooden stick again.
I though going to the center was really cool and found it really fun to mediate. I think I am going to have to try it again sometime!
Catherine!
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