SITTING

It's a special pleasure to sit with friends in meditation. TBD readers will know tat I have assembled a group of people in the neighborhood where I live to sit with me for an hour on Wednesday evenings. I send out a reminder via email every week and we gather at 6:30 prompt--these days not in person, of course, but online, via Zoom. It's not the same as sitting in one room together, but it's a handy substitute and it works reasonably well. It feels, to me at least, like we're "in touch."

It's an essentially lay practice. We share no religious pretensions, and I would not feel qualified to act as a teacher in any way other than teaching what I know through long years of daily practice: the art of sitting quietly with the breath and bringing the mind to rest in a state of restful attention. I feel confident in my ability to "guide" a meditation, and it brings me great pleasure to be able to help others find a path to a place that, today particularly, provides a much-needed respite from the fear and the pervasive sense of isolation in which we find ourselves.

What a blessing, to have stumbled into this practice all these years ago! I don't know where I'd be, without it--but certainly less able to cope with the strange, disorienting circumstance of a malignant virus whose ubiquitous, unseen presence affects the entire world.