Chapter 12: Let's get this party started

8/14/2019 Chapter 12: Let's get this party started.

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Chapter 12Let’s get this party started

When she who lives here with me came homelater that day, the first thing she asked when shewalked through the door before the usual request fora not too sweet Margarita or a glass of Edna ValleyChardonnay was not how my day went or how Kellyor the kidults were doing or what was for dinner. No,it was “how was the meditation today? Did it go

well?” And there went my plan, melting down likewarm butter on a stack of steaming hot pancakes.Boom. Gone. My subsequent response wassomething eminently forgettable along the lines of “uh, really great” and “made some realbreakthroughs on the job hunt” and the rest of theevening went like the rest with her passed out earlyupstairs and me cruising the far end of the cable

channels searching in vain for entertainment beforesettling into yet another cooking show to fill the timeuntil sleep somewhat naturally settled over me.

Throughout an uneventful next day (uneventful= job searching + another lousy attempt atmeditation + long dog walk + shredding uselesspaperwork) I swore to myself that the evening would

be different. I was determined that it would be. Iresolved not to let my guard down for the sake of afuture based on falsehoods and to tell her the truth.End this hopeless charade and move on.

So that evening, between bites of a first rate



lamb sausage pesto lasagna that I had prepared tokeep my mind off of my rapidly deteriorating mentalstate that afternoon and several glasses of our solidbut unspectacular house made Cabernet Sauvignon, I

explained my frustrations to her in rapid fire detail.My clear intention was to tell her that I would beending it all. She stopped eating and looked upacross the table as I tried to put a positive spin on itall. I put my best foot forward, explaining that I hadgiven this meditation thing a real shot. I focused onthe inability to concentrate during meditation,knowing that I might hit a sympathetic chord with

her and I guessed correctly. When I mentioned thisaspect of my difficulties it must have reallyresonated with her. She replied that everyone hasthose issues with meditation and that she did to andstill does.

She continued on, “Meditation is not somethingthat we do naturally or easily. You have to learn how

to do it. I mean I couldn’t do it myself, that was whyI joined my meditation group.” Uh oh, when I heardthe word group the first alarm bells went off I in myhead immediately as not only was this was not theanswer I was hoping for, it had a lot of potential tokeep this process alive. Here I was all set to go in forthe kill, put this journey out of its misery. Insteadshe effectively derailed me and I sat there looking

across the dinner table with a false smile on my facewhile my balloon slowly lost pressure.

She kept going, “I think that a big part of theproblems that you are having is that you are at hometoo much.” Well that was true. “I know that you



want to do everything yourself and that you believethat you can but this is different. This isn’t like usinga road map when you get lost. (Which I did by theway). You need to get out of the house, find yourself

a group to meditate with just like I did, and let itgrow over time. Just think about it, I have beenmeditating with the same group of women for over10 years.”

Well that did it. These comments set off a seriesof incredibly horrendous images in my head. I couldonly imagine the ‘ meditation groups’ that I would

find if I pursued her suggestion. For this was not justany American town that I lived in for god sake, thiswas Berkeley or Bezerkeley as it is lovingly (or morelikely not) called. A city which I can safely say after20 plus years of living more than lives up to itsreputation for attracting a population of highlyintelligent and very eclectic, often strange residents.

My imagination then took over, a glimpse of thefuture came into focus, I smelled the patchouliincense. I saw a room filled with pale old men withlong stringy dirty grey hair pony tales dancing in acircle, chanting dancing twirling praying to a goldenbhudda that had Jerry Garcia’s head on its shoulders,chanting Dark Star Dark Star, oh my god this wasperversion, when this personal nightmare vision was

broken by my wife’s voice. (I had seen this ghostonce before at Winterland on New Year's Eve in the1980's but at that time it put me to sleep).

“Honey, are you listening to me.”



I quickly came back to the room and her greeneyes. “Sorry dear, I was just was thinking about whatyou said.” I stalled for time until I could think of whatto say.

She carried on. “So what do you think, how areyou going to approach this?” Ever thebusinesswoman, she was right to the point. Whatwas my goal, my objective? What would be thetakeaways from our dinner chat? Did I have plan?

I went honest. “I have no idea”.

“Well,” she replied, “you rely on the Internet tofind everything else in your life, why not this?”

She was right (again! Damn it!) Over the pastyears the net had become my major research tooland I used it to find just about everything that Ipurchased, from restaurants to cars to cameras. The

net made sense to me, a source of virtually unlimitedknowledge and resource all organized into key wordsand bundles of facts. If I could find a monkey filledtin roofed rain soaked bungalow with crocodileswhen you walked outside (yes true) in Costa Rica fora family vacation, why not search for a coach ormeditation group in my own home town? I thankedher and promised to get on it the next day.

The next morning I warmed up the new Imacthat I purchased the week before (what a pleasureindeed quite fast, stylish and simple to operate) andopened up the browser. The first question wasalways the most basic, just what the hell was I



searching for? Um lets see. Inner peace. Too broad.Buddhism? I wasn’t converting. Let’s guess.Meditation? Yes. And keep it local. And maybe agroup to start. So I typed in: Eastern meditation

groups Berkeley Ca’.

I resolved to spend the next week tryingdifferent groups to see if they might help me. Iwanted to find a men’s meditation group, wherenormal guys that were trying to better themselvesand their homes could get together and not be afraidto go out for a burger or pizza and beer after without

dirty looks form the Vegans. Oh there were plenty of meditation groups for women, for gay men, gaywomen, for Buddhists, the LGBT community, for

Tibetan Buddhists, for Christians, Hindus and Jews.But none for guys. Something was wrong here.Why couldn’t we meditate and continue to lovepepperoni?

So I manned up and headed out of the houseand drove up the hills to the local spiritual relief center across from campus the next Monday morningat 8:30 for their morning meditation introductionprogram. It was held in a funky old school that hadbeen converted into a multi denominational churchpainted with faded rainbows and surrounded bytattered Tibetan prayer flags that had long since lost

their color.

There was no sign for the class and it was blindluck that I opened the front door and walked intoright room. Aren’t their directions on the road toNirvana?



The room was unheated and cold and only 4people were there. 3 women of unclear age (believeme it is not like I was there to hit on anyone,

seriously these women were just plain, amorphousand very ambiguous). One other guy, must havebeen 60, dressed in multi color sweats. Everyonestanding around no one saying a word and no eyecontact was being made much less smiling. Notpromising at all.

A few minutes later a bald almond skinned man

of unknown age and just about 5 feet tall quietlywalked into the room. He was clad in a brown andorange outfit somewhere between a high priest’srobe and a jumpsuit carrying a brightly multi coloredcushion. He smiled subtly at us and then sat down atthe end of the room. He moved quickly into a half lotus and spoke softly to us as we walked toward him“Does everyone have their cushuns?” He said it just

that way, cushuns.

I looked around. Everyone else did, not me.Worse yet they were already sitting down andbeginning to prepare for their coming relaxationmoments.

Cushions? I didn’t know we had to bring

cushions. I spoke up. “No”, I replied, “I didn’t bringone. Do you have any that I can use?”

At that point he went silent and looked at me. This lasted for more than just a moment, to be thepoint of being a bit strange. He seemed to be



considering his options. Was I imaging things or didhe actually furrow his brow and start to squint at me?

When he finally spoke it was even quieter, the

five of us were now hanging on his every word.“Cushun. Do you understand me? You can notmeditate if you can not sit properly and you can notsit properly without a cushun. Did you bring acushun?”

I answered again. “No, I replied for the secondtime, “I didn’t.”

He stared for another moment. Then he sighed.A deep and yes exasperated breath, the sort youhear from a disappointed middle level Marubeniexecutive, just not pulled backwards through histeeth, not meditative or Zen in the least.

His gaze had not left me. “Please understand

me. Please understand that without a cushun youcan not properly meditate. Please read the rulesthey are posted on our website. Please come backwith one tomorrow and we will meditate together. Ihope that you will join us then. You must rememberthat the path to enlightenment is long and takes bothwill and discipline. So please go now and come backtomorrow when you are completely ready to join us.”

And that was it. I was banished by a passiveaggressive monk.

I was flabbergasted. Stunned. Outraged. Whathad just happened! Where was that old mellow Zenspirit? I looked around at my fellow meditation mates



for support but I should have known better. Theywere fidgeting uncomfortably on their cushions,waiting for their instruction to begin and looking forme to leave because it was obvious that they were

not going to get started until I did. Collaborators.Administrators. Vichy sympathizers. And thus endedmy one, and maybe fortuitously so, foray into theworld of group meditation. A crash both sudden andswift.

Without looking back I walked out of the churchand almost, but didn’t after exercising considerable

personal restraint, slammed the large wooden door.

As I drove home I made an easy decision, I stillneeded help, but until I found a group of like-mindedpeople, I wasn’t meditating with anyone else. I meanwho needed to be pushed around by a kid in asaffron jumpsuit to learn what had been writtenabout for thousands of years. I needed a coach.

Someone who could help me to solve thesequestions that kept bothering me about meditation,Eastern thought and how it could mean somethingfor the modern American male.



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Chapter 12: Let's get this party started