Field Trip to a Buddhist Meditation Center

To get the MDiv degree, Wesley Seminary requires a World Religions class.  In theory, I approve.  In practice, many of the options haven't appealed to me.  I want the knowledge that might come after spending a term studying another religion, but I don't really want to immerse myself that way.  So when I heard about the World Religions as Resource for Theology and Mission class, I thought this approach would be my best option.  Even though it would mean a heavy load, I decided that I had time and money, and so I signed up.

I'm glad that I did.  It's been a remarkable experience.  The field trips were the most attractive part of the class, when I heard about it in advance.  It's probably the main reason I signed up; I knew that we would have this opportunity primarily because the professors had connections to area religious leaders, and that if someone else taught the class, we might not have the same opportunities.

On Saturday, we went to the last of the experiential parts of the class.  On Saturday, we went to a Buddhist meditation center in Silver Spring, Maryland.

We had an initial talk about Buddhism, as we sat in one of the meditation spaces.  Then, because that space was booked for a different group, we walked to the house across the street to do our meditation together.

I wish I could report that doing meditation led by a Buddhist was easier than the meditation that I do at the end of yoga classes, but this is not the case.  Still, it was a valuable experience.  

I was impressed by all the flowers--and these flowers are brought as offerings by local Buddhists.  They also bring food, so much food that the monks who live in the meditation center never have to cook.  We also got to see a tree that is the kind of tree that the Buddha sat under centuries ago when he had his first revelations:

To close our day, we did a meditation with a woven cord that connected us all.  And at the end, if we wanted a blessing, we came forward to receive it, along with strings from the cord tied around our wrist by the monk.

My wrist, in front of my seminary apartment window sill

This trip to the Buddhist meditation center was a great way to end our time together as a class.  If I'm ever lucky enough to get to lead this kind of class, I hope that I can orchestrate some similar experiential trips.  I learned much more from them than I ever can from a book.