This kind of thing doesn't happen to me.
Jun. 29th, 2005 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allizonThis kind of thing doesn't happen to me.
I'm not a spiritual person, though I've lately been feeling like I need to open myself up the spiritual realm a bit more. Part of that comes from hitting my mid-thirties, I'd imagine, when I'm not feeling quite as invulnerable as I did when I was younger. But past that, I've been wanting to start to develop that connection with whatever version of "the divine" it is I believe in.
To that end, we've recently stated attending a Unitarian Universalist church. It's only been three weeks so far, and while I've certainly enjoyed going to this new church (more than I thought I would, honestly) and have happily agreed with most everything I've heard from the church's pulpit (I'm so, so relieved to have found a liberal church where I feel like my views are accepted), it hadn't yet led to any sort of "spiritual awakening" or anything of the sort.
Until Sunday.
Maybe "spiritual awakening" is a bit strong (and perhaps a bit hokey) for what actually happened, but I can't deny that something happened to me that I'd never felt before, and it made me feel like some sort of path has been revealed to me...or at least had been suggested to me.
First, a little background: I've long been interested in Zen Buddhism--about ten years or so. I was first introduced to the concepts during an Eastern Philosophy class in college, and both Buddhism and Taoism seemed to fit the vague cloud of notion I had in my head concerning how to treat other people and how the world worked. I've done some reading here and there over the years, but I never pursued studying either one all that seriously--my aversion to organized religion trumped my interest in these philosophies.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago: We discover Unitarian Universalism. One of the things that excited me so much about discovering Unitarianism was the acceptance of Buddhism as a valid part of the religion--and even the Religous Education classes. Knowing that I could be Unitarian and still actively study Buddhism--could be encourgaed to study it--helped re-pique my interest in it.
After church this last Sunday, we went to the RISD Museum (free admission between 10 and 1 on Sundays!) to check it out and, hopefully maybe, inspire my niece to want to attend RISD. The top floor of the museum contains their Asian and Egyptian Art exhibits as well as their Contemporary Art exhibit.
And it has the Buddha Room.
I'd seen the signs pointing the way to the Buddha Room while we were wandering around the Egyptian artifacts; I assumed it would be a room that would have a number of paintings or statues or ceramic pieces or what have you featuring images of the Buddha. (In fact, I wasn't sure it would have that--it might have just been a catchy name for one of the rooms, for all I knew.)
Uh uh.
Centered in the dark along the back wall of the Buddha Room, low lighting pointing upward at his beatific face, sits a ten-foot wooden sculpture of the Buddha. The thing's big. I was following quite a bit behind my family, having spent too long looking at the architectural plans and drawings for the new RISD Center, so I found myself alone in the dim room with the Big-Ass Buddha.
I've tried meditating any number of times over the last ten years or so. I'm not yet particularly good at it--my "monkey mind" tends to chatter on and on and on and resists my attempts to still it. Most of my attempts at meditation have consisted of my sitting and trying not to focus on anything, even what was directly in front of me, and it hasn't usually worked all that well.
But man, something happened to me when I looked at that big wooden statue.
I started off by just casually looking at the statue and admiring the size of the thing and the craftsmanship that must have gone into building it. I hadn't intended to look at it much more closely--but when I looked at the statue's face, when those docile, blank wooden eyes locked with mine, I felt like I went into an immediate trancelike state. I knew what was happening but couldn't seem to tear my eyes away from that face--I could barely seem to blink. I stared for so long and so hard at the statue that its face began to seem real to me, to seem human. Had the eyes blinked and the gentle smile turned toward me, I don't think I'd have felt surprised.
During most of the times I've tried meditating previously, I could sit in stillness (or as close as I could get to stillness, anyway) for half an hour or more and never truly have my mind reach the point where the outside world fell away. I have had that experience a few times, but never during a meditation practice. Something about that Buddha statue, though--my mind drilled down to focusing on the statue in a matter of seconds, everything else was distant, and the process both excited me and scared the hell out of me.
Like I said before, this kind of thing doesn't happen to me. I've always been a very pragmatic, feet-firmly-glued-to-the-ground kind of guy. It's one of the many reasons I actively resisted all forms of organized religion for as long as I did. So when something like this happens, I have to take it as meaning something for me.
When I told the wife about what happened, she asked if I'm a particularly suggestible person--the kind of person easy to hypnotize. I don't honestly know. But I think now that I'm more open to working on the spiritual aspect of myself, my mind was open to being suggestible to this philosophy thatI've already had an interest in. I feel like something inside of me was trying to post a signpost indicating the path I should be walking.
Does that mean I consider myself a Buddhist now? No, I don't--not yet, anyway. I have an amazing amount of reading and studying ahead of me before I could possibly honestly call myself a Buddhist... if I ever can.
But I've talked before about wanting a framework of morality and beliefs in which I could raise my kids. And I've come to realize that maybe I need a framework, too. If I want to touch the divine in myself, maybe I've found the route I need to take to get there.
I'm not a spiritual person, though I've lately been feeling like I need to open myself up the spiritual realm a bit more. Part of that comes from hitting my mid-thirties, I'd imagine, when I'm not feeling quite as invulnerable as I did when I was younger. But past that, I've been wanting to start to develop that connection with whatever version of "the divine" it is I believe in.
To that end, we've recently stated attending a Unitarian Universalist church. It's only been three weeks so far, and while I've certainly enjoyed going to this new church (more than I thought I would, honestly) and have happily agreed with most everything I've heard from the church's pulpit (I'm so, so relieved to have found a liberal church where I feel like my views are accepted), it hadn't yet led to any sort of "spiritual awakening" or anything of the sort.
Until Sunday.
Maybe "spiritual awakening" is a bit strong (and perhaps a bit hokey) for what actually happened, but I can't deny that something happened to me that I'd never felt before, and it made me feel like some sort of path has been revealed to me...or at least had been suggested to me.
First, a little background: I've long been interested in Zen Buddhism--about ten years or so. I was first introduced to the concepts during an Eastern Philosophy class in college, and both Buddhism and Taoism seemed to fit the vague cloud of notion I had in my head concerning how to treat other people and how the world worked. I've done some reading here and there over the years, but I never pursued studying either one all that seriously--my aversion to organized religion trumped my interest in these philosophies.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago: We discover Unitarian Universalism. One of the things that excited me so much about discovering Unitarianism was the acceptance of Buddhism as a valid part of the religion--and even the Religous Education classes. Knowing that I could be Unitarian and still actively study Buddhism--could be encourgaed to study it--helped re-pique my interest in it.
After church this last Sunday, we went to the RISD Museum (free admission between 10 and 1 on Sundays!) to check it out and, hopefully maybe, inspire my niece to want to attend RISD. The top floor of the museum contains their Asian and Egyptian Art exhibits as well as their Contemporary Art exhibit.
And it has the Buddha Room.
I'd seen the signs pointing the way to the Buddha Room while we were wandering around the Egyptian artifacts; I assumed it would be a room that would have a number of paintings or statues or ceramic pieces or what have you featuring images of the Buddha. (In fact, I wasn't sure it would have that--it might have just been a catchy name for one of the rooms, for all I knew.)
Uh uh.
Centered in the dark along the back wall of the Buddha Room, low lighting pointing upward at his beatific face, sits a ten-foot wooden sculpture of the Buddha. The thing's big. I was following quite a bit behind my family, having spent too long looking at the architectural plans and drawings for the new RISD Center, so I found myself alone in the dim room with the Big-Ass Buddha.
I've tried meditating any number of times over the last ten years or so. I'm not yet particularly good at it--my "monkey mind" tends to chatter on and on and on and resists my attempts to still it. Most of my attempts at meditation have consisted of my sitting and trying not to focus on anything, even what was directly in front of me, and it hasn't usually worked all that well.
But man, something happened to me when I looked at that big wooden statue.
I started off by just casually looking at the statue and admiring the size of the thing and the craftsmanship that must have gone into building it. I hadn't intended to look at it much more closely--but when I looked at the statue's face, when those docile, blank wooden eyes locked with mine, I felt like I went into an immediate trancelike state. I knew what was happening but couldn't seem to tear my eyes away from that face--I could barely seem to blink. I stared for so long and so hard at the statue that its face began to seem real to me, to seem human. Had the eyes blinked and the gentle smile turned toward me, I don't think I'd have felt surprised.
During most of the times I've tried meditating previously, I could sit in stillness (or as close as I could get to stillness, anyway) for half an hour or more and never truly have my mind reach the point where the outside world fell away. I have had that experience a few times, but never during a meditation practice. Something about that Buddha statue, though--my mind drilled down to focusing on the statue in a matter of seconds, everything else was distant, and the process both excited me and scared the hell out of me.
Like I said before, this kind of thing doesn't happen to me. I've always been a very pragmatic, feet-firmly-glued-to-the-ground kind of guy. It's one of the many reasons I actively resisted all forms of organized religion for as long as I did. So when something like this happens, I have to take it as meaning something for me.
When I told the wife about what happened, she asked if I'm a particularly suggestible person--the kind of person easy to hypnotize. I don't honestly know. But I think now that I'm more open to working on the spiritual aspect of myself, my mind was open to being suggestible to this philosophy thatI've already had an interest in. I feel like something inside of me was trying to post a signpost indicating the path I should be walking.
Does that mean I consider myself a Buddhist now? No, I don't--not yet, anyway. I have an amazing amount of reading and studying ahead of me before I could possibly honestly call myself a Buddhist... if I ever can.
But I've talked before about wanting a framework of morality and beliefs in which I could raise my kids. And I've come to realize that maybe I need a framework, too. If I want to touch the divine in myself, maybe I've found the route I need to take to get there.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-01 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-01 01:36 pm (UTC)And thanks for the link. That looks to be a GREAT resource, from what I can tell...or a well-designed one, at the very least. :)