Welcome to Shambhala

My first glimpse of eastern philosophy/religion was when I read Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha as a teenager. Not long after that, a friend gave me the book, Be Here Now by Ram Dass. It was the 70‘s and I was taking yoga classes, and learning to cook with tofu. How to tell between the hip and the hippie? How to tell between the cult and the way?

Being the Catholic that I was, and my parents expecting me to attend mass the way they did, I was in a sort of no-man’s land, searching for spiritual answers on my own. Fortunately, my family attended a liberal Catholic church. Our parish even went so far as to remodel and remove all the pews and kneelers from the sanctuary and go with modern brown plastic chairs. Although other religions weren’t necessarily sanctioned, they weren’t condemned either. We sang Morning Has Broken as a church hymn.

Yet I still wondered?

How did one become enlightened?

I have been reading up on meditation. That’s what I do. I read up on things. I read and as I read, I practice a little. I’m reading Awakening Through Love by John Makransky and my daughter Erin gave me her copy of Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I’ve also got Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You.

Now I was ready to try it. To actually go to a meditation center. I’ve been on the email mailing list of Minneapolis’ Shambhala Center for years now. I thought I would have been to a meditation center before now, but it seems it takes years sometimes for me to get from interest to actually getting motivated to do something new. The Shambhala Center was offering a free beginner’s meditation class and so I asked my daughter Erin if she wanted to go. She had taken a class on meditation at the University of Minnesota and loved it. She was willing to go.

So on Saturday, I map-quested directions from Erin’s to the Shambhala Center and picked her up at 8:00 am. When we got there we were welcomed with bagels and fruit and juice and tea. There were about 10-12 of us, all nervous, all new to meditation. It was a three hour class and it was great. We learned the history of Shambhala. It is a philosophy/myth/story that I could live with, especially with the space open for my own belief of the historical context. I need to be able to have space for not being certain. When we meditated together as a group I went to a wonderful place, peaceful, so maybe all my trial runs had paid off.

I now need to find a time to fit in a meditation practice. I believe I will eventually. I haven’t really meditated since Saturday. Oh, I breathe deeply and try to live mindfully. I actually listen to my breath and take time outs at my desk at work to breathe deeply. But it is not a practice yet.

I will let you know if I become enlightened, or maybe you will be able to tell.