Welcome to Meditation, Tea & Shame

It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, it’s going to heat up again today, but the morning is cool. It seems like a good day to finally go to the Minnesota Zen Center to see how they meditate. Even though I’m really happy with Terger as my new meditation center home, I’m still curious about this big beautiful Spanish style home on Lake Calhoun that houses the Minnesota Zen Center. So I go.

I walk up the paved path and enter into a porch-way that overlooks the Lake, and I could just stay here all day. I’ve been trying to imagine the home of my dreams, just for the sake of creating the intention of where I want to live next, and well, this, or someplace like it, is it. I’m greeted by Rosemary, who seems to be in charge here, and we wait, as we take off our shoes and for everyone who will arrive for this intro session, to arrive.

Once it seems that we’re all here, we are shown into the main meditation room on the first floor, and then led up to the third floor. Thin memories of playing with friends in houses like this come through to me, I grew up just on the other side of the lake, and the third floors, or attics of these homes were often play rooms for us kids. All the while I’m here, I’m getting the notion that this kind of meditation, Zen meditation, is different than Tibetan Buddhist meditation. This Zen mediation is much more formal. I’m getting uncomfortable by it, and trying to check in; am I uncomfortable because I’m new and alone, (the other new comers here are in pairs)? And I wonder, why am I uncomfortable with the formality?

Rosemary introduces herself as a priest, and this tells me that this woman likes hierarchy, and likes titles, fair enough. I’m a little disturbed by the catholic similarities, but staying aware of my bias, I sit still and listen. Remembering that I need to have an open heart chakra, that my meditation, right now for life, is lovingkindness and compassion. Not all meditation centers are for everyone, and who knows, maybe I’m resisting because I need more discipline, more formality in my life, maybe? She asks if anyone has had any experience with meditation, and I share that I have, and that I’ve attended a seminar with Mingyur Rinpoche.

Then after she talks about how they meditate here, in this tradition, and explains the importance of the formality and ritual, we meditate. Problem is, we’re on the third floor, where it’s hot, and so there is a fan blowing, right in my face. I’m dealing, but while meditating, this causes me to both sneeze and cough. I compose myself, meditating enough to calm the tickle and to assure myself I can sit quietly, even though I desperately need a drink of water. My mind is wandering, I want to live in this house. I want to make some friends, I’d hoped maybe I’d make friends here, and it’s not turning out that way. Is it my ego? It’s obvious they want donations, here, unlike Terger, where it’s free, both financially and emotionally. I want to go now, but I stay, I’m still trying to keep an open mind.

After we meditate, Rosemary calmly talks about how you should not move when you meditate because it disturbs others. Well, meditate on the pain, unless of course you just have to be rude and move, and well, then, you should bow to excuse yourself to the people around you. This is in direct contrast to Mingyur Rinpoche’s teaching, he says, meditate on whatever distracts you, then go back to your original meditation. Thankfully, she wasn’t bringing up that not only did I move, but I also sneezed and coughed.

She goes on now, saying that if you sneeze or cough, that too, disturbs others. I’m starting to realize that this is about me. I sit there, new, guilty, wanting to say, “It was the fan!” This is about me in more ways than Rosemary realizes, and my newfound awareness of competition in myself, makes me aware of this horrible competition that is going on with this woman, as she goes on to tell us all how she now longer sneezes or coughs whatsoever during meditation practice. Well of course not, she’s a priest now. This comparison between my sneezing and coughing and her ability to control it is not lost on me. I struggle to maintain my loving compassion for her in the midst of this. Although she seems to not have loving compassion for someone new in her center, I remind myself that I didn’t know her before she began her practice, and so for her, she may be closer to compassion than she was before she started, all those years ago.

She reminds us that they’d like donations at the end. I struggle with the idea of having to pay for this introduction to their center and my humiliation as a teaching tool. She is calmly unaware of any of this. I only have bigger bills, (when did this happen?) and put $5.00 in the basket. I’ve decided at this point to stay for the teaching, maybe this will redeem the Zen Center for me. It did not. The teacher read some poetry and talked a bit about the concept of intimacy, something I didn’t feel here. Something about having intimacy with your meditation pillow, then taking that out into your world. I went out into my world, with the feeling of someone attempting to shame me, but with an awareness that this shame didn’t belong to me.