A Buddhist monk meditating.
Braving the wind and rain this past Wednesday, I forced myself to leave my cozy bed and trek my way over to the chapel for an evening of Buddhist mediations. I had done a little meditation in high school as a part of our physical education requirement, but I had a feeling this was going to be a somewhat different experience from laying on a dirty gymnasium floor while my overweight male gym teacher yelled, in a less than soothing voice, that everyone was to immediately imagine themselves on a beach.
I had told a few of my friends that I was planning on attending the meditation that day and had received some troubling responses. I was left with the overall impression that I would be trapped in the chapel for the next few hours, in painful silence and led through this meditation by a nondescript, ageless man who coughed a lot and made it impossible to get into the zone. For other unexplainable reasons, I also thought there may be men in robes with shaved heads chanting, despite my knowledge that this was a silent activity from the mildly death provoking slogan I recalled for the group last year of “Come into the Quiet.”
When I finally scurried into the Chapel, the space seemed to have been transformed from the backdrop for lively a cappella concerts into a peaceful, serene expanse. As soon as I passed through the foyer I felt a deep urge to take off my rain boots, the incessant squeaking from the wet soles seeming to destroy the quiet sanctuary. As I walked past the pews I was drawn towards the subtle smell of incense and the soft flicker of nine golden flames, arranged in groups of three and surrounded by tiny pebbles. The cushions from the pews had been organized in a rectangle around the candles and small colorful pillows that were vaguely reminiscent of oversized smushed gumdrops were placed intermittently on the velvety padding. I took my seat on a small yellow pillow and, with very little instruction other than an initial greeting from the group leader (who as it turns out is not a strange man with whooping cough) closed my eyes and did my best to mimic the four fellow mediators in my midst.
Surprisingly, my high school training came back to me and I sat with the best posture I could, eyes closed, trying to relax my body and clear my mind of any thoughts. As I sat, at first struggling to keep my body upright yet unstressed, I felt a peculiar feeling running up my spine and washing over the back of my skull. I felt as if my vertebrae had been turned into cement and suddenly it wasn’t so difficult to sit upright, it was as if I had unlocked the secret to perfect posture. Yet this feeling did not last for long, so I turned to an alternative method of meditating, allowing thoughts to cross my mind uninhibited but with no judgment and as little conscious thought attached to them as possible. And just like that it was six o’clock. I won’t deny that at times I got a little fidgety, opening my eyes at one point to stare at the woman across from me and wonder how she could possibly cross her legs like that in such tight jeans, but overall I felt refreshed and rewarded in my efforts.
At the end of the meditation, as everyone helped to put away the various plushy objects and package up the mood lighting, I got to talk to Nick Luce ’14, the sophomore who runs the group. He told me his first exposure to meditations was a Buddhist teacher in high school who guided his class through some meditations. He found it quite enjoyable and a great way to “wind down from the stress of day-to-day life” so when he saw an advertisement for the group at Conn he decided to check it out. Having taken over the group this year he explained, “The amount of people that attend the meditation varies from week to week, but a small group of employees of the college attend on a regular basis,” as well as students who come periodically. He is also greatly assisted by Amy Hannum, a former staff member and part-time student at the college, who joined the group when John Bitters in Counseling Services started it six years ago. She has found that “meditation helps to maintain a connection to healing energy and a tranquil state of mind that makes life less stressful” and so has continued to come on Wednesdays despite having left the college.
Overall, both the atmosphere of the group and the meditation experience itself shattered some misconceptions I had and were greatly affective in helping me mellow out after a tough week. Even if sitting in silence isn’t “your thing” I encourage everyone to do something for themselves and give it a try. •
