Zen

Today I went to an introduction to meditation session at the "Zen Dojo Darmstadt" to see what the scene is there. I found the building, and it is just an apartment building in the midst of shops on a busy cobblestone street near the middle of the city. There were lots of people waling by and Christmas decorations and lights were up. There is a small sign that says "Zen Dojo" on the door. The door is locked. I pressed the "Zen Dojo" button, among all the other buttons with people's names, and the door immediately unlocked and I went in. A completely empty hallway, with stairs going up and down. Up or down? I went up, and saw a door with a Zen sign on it.

The door was half open. As I knocked I was greeted and welcomed in (in German) by a thin bald man. He asked if I was the American (I had emailed a few days earlier saying I was interested). I said yes. He was very gentle and jovial in his manner, and made me feel very comfortable. We introduced ourselves and talked a bit. I took my shoes off and hung up my coat in the small coat/shoe room. He changed into his black robe.

I was the only person there, but I was strangely not at all uncomfortable. The place on the inside is just the coat room, a bathroom, another room which I didn't get to see inside, a closet for meditation cushions, and the meditation room. He guided me to closet and we both took a meditation cushion and a mat. He instructed me on the proper way to carry the thing into the meditation room, and we went in. "step in with your left foot first, bow, then walk around the Buddha statue and find your place to sit. Put down the mat and the cushion on the floor. Bow to the wall, turn clockwise, bow to the room, turn clockwise again and sit on the mat facing the wall. All this ceremonial stuff seemed a bit silly. Our conversation was a mix of English and German. When his English was missing a word or phrase, he would just go into German, and many times I would say in English what I thought he meant, and often his eyes lit up and he said "yeah! exactly!" and repeated the English version - like he had heard it before but just couldn't remember it before.

We sat down, just the two of us, and he explained to me that they practice meditation from the Sōtō Zen sect. He explained that this is one of two major Japanese Zen schools, the other being Rinzai. He said many other schools of Zen focus more on mental trips focused around koans which eventually lead to some deep insight, whereas their practice focuses more on breathing, posture, and simple meditation directed more at the body than at the brain. "What we do is we just give ourselves up to the universe with this posture. Our existence is beyond our control - we are not the reason for our own existence - so we can give ourselves totally to simply appreciating our own existence." Sometimes he didn't seem to totally make sense, but he was so completely sure about what be was saying, and it seemed to all be very clear to him.

Then he went through how to do Zen meditation. "Put the left hand over the right hand and put the tips of the thumbs together. When you are thinking too much the thumbs tend to push together and go up. When you are falling asleep the thumbs fall down. Maintain just enough pressure as though you were holding a piece of paper between them. They should be always straight across." All the same as at the Cambridge Zen Center. I didn't say anything, just let him continue. "Focus on your breath. Don't force anything about your breathing, just focus on it. When thoughts come into your head, just notice them, let them go, and return to focusing on the breath. Zen is about existing fully in the present moment. This is when consciousness is completely clear. Our consciousness is like that to begin with, but it is clouded by our thoughts. The only thing that is really real is this empty consciousness. Our thoughts are made by our head, therefore are not objectively real, and are always a delusion."

As he was talking with me, some more people trickled in. There was an Asian girl who had never sat Zen before, and some other people who had evidently been there before, because they had robes. The guy I was talking with was apparently the leader of the group. The meditation began with the hitting of some wooden thing in loud, evenly spaced beats which get faster and faster and then fade away. By this time everyone is sitting at their cushion facing the wall. Then a large bell is rang a bunch of times. The sound of the bell was quite cutting. It was almost like the only thing that existed for a brief moment was the sound of that bell.

The leader walked around, and he corrected my posture by pushing in my lower back and pushing back my forehead. It reminded me of one time at the Cambridge Zen center during a meditation session one guy got corrected by a teacher because his thumbs were falling, and he started crying. I could tell he just felt like a complete failure, and couldn't take it. He never made a sound, but was definitely crying. Eventually he settled down into meditation again, every once in a while frowning again. I felt proud of myself for being able to handle being corrected. Then thought to myself that feeling proud is not really the right thing to do. Then that little mental automata petered out and then just the breath. This is what meditation is like - seeds of thoughts creep into your consciousness then you start following them through without realizing that your consciousness has transitioned from experiencing reality - the outside world - to experiencing thought-space - the inside world. Then you realize that you are in thought space - like realizing you are in a dream - and let the mental space traversal fade away and come back again to the breath. Over and over.

Afterwords I learned that this is a Zen Dojo, not a Zen Center, which means that it is just a space where people come to practice meditation and chanting. Nobody lives there, there are no talks given there, just meditation and chanting. Interesting. I thanked the guy and left. Outside I talked for a while with the Asian girl who was there for the first time. She was quite interesting. She said that from what little she has read about Zen it resonates very well with her own personal philosophy, so she decided to check it out. She is involved in an anarchist group of young people, also an anti-fascist group, and told me she is sometimes involved in political activism. She asked me if I am politically active at all, then why not, then said maybe I should be. It felt a little like those pushy religious fanatics, a bit cult-like.

On the way home I ran into Megan and Caitlin on the street. I ran up to them in glee and gave Megan a hug. I was in an ecstatically good mood after meditating. We threw a big keg party for Caitlin's 20th birthday, and it was an excellent time. Now I have a half full keg of locally brewed German beer in my room. Imagine that!