October 12, 2008
The Drepung Loseling Monastery is located in Chamblee, Georgia, about five miles outside the Atlanta city limits. After many years of working out of temporary and rented facilities, the monastery bought the former Dresden Church, completely redesigning the space to include a prayer hall, library, gallery, and meeting rooms.
Old Dresden Church (March 2007) and Drepung Loseling Monastery (Oct. 2007)
I was a bit nervous on Sunday morning as I drove to the monastery. I’d never attended any sort of guided meditation in my life and I didn’t know exactly what to expect or who I’d meet there. I was very pleasantly surprised. The first thing I noticed when I walked up the front steps was the very colorfully adorned front doors.
I knew (from the monastery’s website) that the Dalai Lama himself had entered through these same doors in October of 2007 for the monastery’s dedication ceremony. Entering was quite intimidating for me.
(His Holiness, on the left, looks like such a regular guy, just a plain old man in sensible shoes and a robe, a grandfather out retrieving the Sunday paper from the end of his driveway.)
Inside the hushed foyer about a dozen or so people of all sorts were milling about. It was split about 50/50 male and female with an equal distribution of young and old, two young Asian couples, another four older Asian people, middle-aged white men and women, one black male, and one guy who looked to be in his late 50s was using a portable oxygen device. I’d guess there were a total of 40 people there for the hour-long meditation and teaching.
Plenty of literature was available at the information desk and there was a separate lending library, small gallery, offices, and a gift shop. An advanced meditation session was just finishing up in the prayer room as one by one we removed our shoes and placed them on shelves in a small room near the library. The cool marble floor felt nice under my bare feet.
The monastery’s website lists the morning’s session as:
Sunday Morning Shamatha Meditation
11:00am – Noon, weekly
Shamatha is a simple yet effective meditation method for bringing increased clarity, stability and focus to the mind. The word “shamatha” is Sanskrit for “calm abiding” and refers to the mind’s ability to remain in a peaceful and focused state of awareness on any given object once trained to do so. In these sessions, we learn how to train our mind to calmly abide on whatever object we choose, beginning with the simple incoming and outgoing of our own breath.
Shamatha is not a specifically “Buddhist” meditation, and one does not need to be a Buddhist to practice it. Studies have shown it can help to alleviate stress and promote health and well-being. It is also considered a fundamental practice for those interested in the spiritual path.
Newcomers are always welcome. Instruction is provided in each session, followed by a half-hour meditation and a question and answer period. There is no need to bring anything, although it is good if you wear comfortable clothing. Chairs are available for those not comfortable sitting on the floor.
If you enjoy the meditation and wish to learn more, consider attending the Foundation Series (the first retreat is on Shamatha meditation) or one of our other courses on meditation.
When the prayer room was clear, we entered. The first four rows featured dark blue cushions with pillows specially designed for meditation (“butt pillows” is all I could think to call them), with folding chairs set up in the remaining rows for those not comfortable on the floor. I took a cushion three rows back next to a guy with close-cropped gray hair wearing jeans, a bright red polo shirt, and a diamond earring.
Announcements were made by a volunteer who reminded me of a cross between the actors Will Ferrell and Ron Perlman. He then introduced our teacher for the morning and invited us all to stand. We did, and some people bowed, palms together.
Geshe Ngawang Phende, our teaching monk, bowed three times to the Buddha statue at the front of the room behind the “throne”, prostrating himself and touching his forehead to the floor. He then bowed to us and took a seat at the front of the room.
Geshe Ngawang Phende was born in Nepal in 1968. As a little boy he became a monk at Drubthob Rinpoche’s monastery in Nepal for two years where he received his initial monastic training. He joined Drepung Loseling Monastery, south India in 1982 at the age of 12, where he successfully completed his monastic education and passed Geshe Lharampa examination in 2001. He then attended Guymey Monastery for further Tantric studies and stayed there for a year. Geshe Ngawang was the resident teacher at the Lam Rim Tibetan Buddhist Center in Johannesburg, South Africa for almost four years. Twice he has been on the Mystical Arts of Tibet tour and now, is one of the resident teachers at DLM. (Bio from the monastery’s website.)
His English was mostly good, but he sometimes spoke very quickly and excitedly, which was difficult to follow at times. He spoke about the basics of meditation — to clear the mind of negative thoughts. He stressed happiness (“that is the point” he repeated) by concentrating on positive thoughts of compassion.
He spoke about the nature of anger and how it springs from attachment and selfishness, which he termed ‘self-cherishing mind.’ His example included a glass of water on a table in front of him. He said if he became somehow very attached to the glass, if it held significant importance to him (just an ordinary object, the way I feel about writing pens) if someone were to accidentally break or destroy it, he would become angry at the person who broke it and angry that his favorite glass was no more.
It was a simplistic metaphor, but I appreciated it.
Next, he gave some basic instructions on shamatha meditation (calm abiding). We were advised to concentrate on our breathing and nothing else. He tapped a wooden stick on the side of a brass bowl and said to meditate for 10 minutes.
Of course it was difficult to clear my mind: the usual thoughts of what I would do later in the day intruded, as did ridiculous thoughts of the pillows we were seated upon. I wondered how many people’s behinds had sat on them over the previous year. This was not conducive to meditation, so I tried to concentrate on the beige shirt on the back of the guy in front of me, but it became a blank canvas soon covered with symbols and colors (perhaps reflective of the colorful banners and tapestries in the prayer room itself). I tried to concentrate on my breathing against the hushed hum of the room’s central air unit.
Amid all of this silence, I half expected my Presbyterian pastor to begin the weekly prayer of compassion for those in need or suffering, and then the collective Lord’s Prayer from the congregation. It was very odd.
There was a soft rustling and then the sound of the brass bowl signaling the end of the meditation. I couldn’t tell if 10 minutes had passed or not. I guess it really didn’t matter. I feel like such a beginner, as if I have a very long way to go to be effective at meditation.
The teacher took some questions, and someone asked about fear and how to overcome it. The teacher gave an example that I wasn’t sure I agreed with, but perhaps I didn’t fully understand it. He told us to imagine a criminal, someone we might be fearful of. He then asked us to imagine that criminal’s mother and ask ourselves if that criminal could be loved by his mother, wasn’t he the same person? Someone at once could be feared and loved, but aren’t they the same? My thought was, this person had done something violent to be a criminal, so didn’t they deserve to be feared? Maybe the criminal’s mother was also fearful of her son? I guess I could see where he was coming from: when we label people and say to ourselves that someone is different from us and that we can’t get along with them, we forever see them in that light. Compassion tells us that we are all connected and that we need to clear our minds of negative thoughts, or more precisely, to cease projecting our negative thoughts onto others.
After the questions were answered, we rose and bowed as he bowed to us and left the room. Everyone quietly padded from the room to retrieve their shoes.
All in all, a very interesting experience.
