I went to a Buddhist lecture last night, not because I'm a Buddhist, but just because I'm interested in many of the ideas of Buddhism, and because I like listening to people who are good speakers talk. I've never been to a Buddhist lecture before, but I know that, generally, people who are priests or ministers or rabbis are pretty good speakers, mostly because they have to do it so much.
Anyway, I arrived late, and left early. What struck me, upon entering, was the immense sense of stillness and peace that had been created in the room. The room, in itself, was nothing special. It was a congregation room in the Community Church of New York, where I had never been before. The room had been decorated with some Buddhist tapestries and posters. But basically it was the inside of a basic, mid-20th century, boxy, brick church. But the room was totally serene. There was so little movement. I sat in the very back, right by the door, and dropped both the bags I was carrying. The usher, a pleasant and earthy woman, said to me, "You can move up." I replied, "I'll move in a moment." And she was fine with that. But I didn't move. I got kind of stuck in the back, watching people come in late, and sit down around me, and then move up into the congregation.
A young couple came, with a baby, and sat down next to me. I thought, "A baby! That's totally going to ruin the serenity in here." It didn't. The baby slept, silently, almost motionlessly, and the couple held hands. I watched another man come in, sort of agitated. He sat next to me, moving his hands together compulsively. Gradually, over the course of two or three minutes, the movement stopped, and he shared in the stillness of the room.
When the speaker, Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong, began to talk, she spoke in a highly modulated pattern, with what I thought was a slight Irish accent. She stressed every word she said, and only tossed out two or three at a time, like this: "following... in the footsteps... of Buddha..." I enjoyed listening to her, but the substance of the talk didn't hold new information for me, particularly. I mean, it's not really about new information, is it? It's about learning to silence your own internal chatter so you can just be. Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong's talk was about providing points of reference that people could latch on to in order to find out how to silence their own internal chatter. And it was delivered in a manner that was also devoid of any distractions. It was, in a sense, perfect.
I dozed off twice. Or, at least, I achieved a highly restful state there in that serene room. It didn't matter. It was not a "sleepy room" like you find in a boring lecture. It wasn't boring. It was highly concentrated and minimal in the extreme.
After about an hour and a half or so, I broke my own serenity and left. It wasn't that I was bored, or that I needed to go. I just felt that I had seen what I had come to see, and heard what I had come to hear. The talk, in particular, as I've said, didn't hold any new information that I hadn't read or heard before. But the room was fascinating, and the people who came were really interesting, how they plugged into the serenity. I think I could have been the first person to leave. People just kept coming, and nobody seemed to leave.
What strikes me, upon reflecting on the experience of the lecture, is that it was such a different kind of space than most of us typically find ourselves in. It was a unique, highly attenuated moment of intense serenity and peace. So thick you could cut it with a knife. It was an addictive stillness.
I think most of us find our lives as a frantic concatenation of somewhat random activity. We move faster and faster, doing more and more, and never quite achieve peace. But I think that, in order to be happy, we have to achieve some harmony with the frenzy. We have to find a balance between stillness and motion. Maybe it's a stillness within to mirror the velocity of our bodies. Or something like that. Is it possible to be at peace and in constant motion?
I left the lecture feeling like I got something out of it, but I didn't need more. I saw, in that room, one way to achieve peace and, if Gen-la Kelsang Dekyong is to be believed, joy. But, personally, I don't believe that I can find joy in stillness. I need to be moving, as quickly as possible, with some kind of balance inside. That's what I'm striving for: peace inside while moving at infinite speed.
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