Taking the Practice Seriously

Shambhala SunSpace blogger Jill S. Schneiderman noticed an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday. And she wasn't the only one; James Atlas' "Buddhists' Delight" is currently the most-emailed story on the Times site. (And interestingly enough, the Washington Post published an American-Buddhism piece yesterday, too.) Here Schneiderman responds to Atlas's piece.
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Tengboche Buddhist monastery, Nepal (via Creative Commons)

Yesterday I read "Buddhists' Delight," an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times by James Atlas, a long-time literary journalist who has written for the New Yorker and published a biography of Saul Bellow. In the piece Atlas describes four days he spent at a Buddhist meditation center "in retreat, from a frenetic Manhattan life." It's obvious from the essay that Atlas brought "beginner's mind" to the retreat and his report of this first encounter with Buddhist meditation is pretty insightful. Atlas' piece is a good introduction to the experience and I intend to give it to friends who are contemplating the possibility of sitting a multi-day retreat. Nonetheless, as experienced meditators know, there's more to meditation than beginners may realize.

So although it's a bit outside my usual bailiwick of earth science and dharma, I wanted to add to Atlas' observations from my position as a professional educator who is convinced that the practice of meditation is not only powerful but crucial to the rehabilitation of a society and planet in critically ill condition.  Atlas recognizes that meditation is an important tool for individuals trying to cope with the insane state of our world; he even notes the heft of Engaged Buddhism.

While sitting this morning I heard the carillon ring the early morning hour and I felt grateful, as I always do, to the monastic traditions that created the institution of the Monastery, the precursor to the modern University. Though most universities today have lost the spiritual dimension that once accompanied the educational mission of the Monastery, as an educator today, I aspire to reclaim the spiritual as a legitimate dimension of higher education.

As a regular practitioner and frequent retreatant at the Garrison Institute, I have experienced the transformational power of meditation that Atlas reports having sensed while he was on retreat in Vermont. Though as a beginner in the practice he may not realize it, Atlas has tapped into what multitudes of more experienced meditators know: meditation transforms minds and lives.

In "The University" a chapter in his book The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future, Ecotheologian Thomas Berry  admonishes readers that universities should "reorient the human community toward a greater awareness that the human exists, survives, and becomes whole only within the single great community of the planet Earth. " The bells ringing in the carillon of the Vassar College Chapel every hour remind me of this; the bells validate my impulse to teach meditation as a tool for societal rehabilitation.

Read more from Jill S. Schneiderman here.

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Heart Sutra (Music by Imee Ooi) - Lyrics Sanskrit and English

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