By Jennifer Carnig
THE only movement in the blueberry-colored room is the smoke wafting up from a single stick of incense.
The only sound is the soft motorized hum of a prayer wheel spinning, sending out thousands of invocations for peace and good wishes with each turn. This is a classroom, but the lessons are internal. That’s the point of Tibetan Buddhist meditation – to hear your inner voice. And at Berkeley’s Nyingma Institute, meditation is the lesson plan and curriculum.
The wisdom tradition here is every bit as profound as a Western education, meditation instructor Abbe Blum says. But it doesn’t have the endpoints. There are no limits to where the lessons here can take you.
Blum takes that idea to heart. A former English professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Blum gave up a salaried job teaching Shakespeare so she could teach meditation for free.
“I loved being at Swarthmore, but I couldn’t help asking myself all of the time if that was the best thing I could be doing with my life,” the 50-year-old says, her head bobbing as she speaks. “What is the most effective thing I can teach? I believe it’s meditation.”
So after 16 years as a professor, Blum quit her job and came to Nyingma in 2000. She is one of 30 full-time volunteers who run the institute, a mustard-colored castle of tranquility in the Berkeley hills that sits in stark contrast to the hectic college campus it borders. It lies directly below the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
A former fraternity house, the 30-year-old Nyingma Institute is one of the oldest Tibetan Buddhist centers in the United States. More than 100,000 students have passed through its doors since it was founded in 1973 by Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan lama.
“He came here because he wanted to bring meditation to people in the West,” says Sylvia Gretchen, Nyingma’s dean. “Meditation is not hypothetical. It should be used every day as an integral part of a healthy life, and he wanted to show people how to do this, how to look at themselves in a new way.”
Nineteen meditation and Buddhist education classes are offered per quarter at Nyingma, with four quarters of instruction a year. Classes are held day and night over 12-week periods, bolstered by special one-day workshops on weekends.
Almost two dozen students crowd into a meditation room perched on large crimson cushions, their knees to the ground and their spines straight. They’re in their 20s through their 70s, and they’re an ethnic amalgamation. Everyone’s eyes are closed or half-closed and their faces quickly slip into blankness.
Blum, her voice soft but audible, instructs them.
“Feel how you are right now. Naturally settle into a place of stability,” she says, guiding them into their meditation. “Your eyes are as soft as a mother or father looking at their child, or a lover looking at their beloved.”
The students come from all faith backgrounds. Some are Buddhist and meditating to try to reach enlightenment, as the Buddha did, but many more are Catholic or Protestant, Jewish or atheist. Blum often gives basic meditation classes to groups of lawyers, nurses and social workers — people who often deal with high amounts of stress.
“You do not have to be a Buddhist to meditate,” Gretchen says. “What you’re doing (when you meditate) is being alone with your closest companion and adviser — your own mind. Meditation allows you to get to know your own mind and to balance.”
Some interpret that inner voice in a spiritual way, while others interpret it as the “voice of harmony,” Gretchen says. “If you get to know yourself, you strengthen your values of compassion and non-harming.
“But the spiritual side comes naturally when the mind quiets down. It’s not mysterious. Your mind is like water in a pond — most of the time things are all stirred up and muddy. But if you quiet things, suddenly the water’s clear and there are all these treasures at the bottom of the pond and you can see them now. The treasures are there already. You just need some clarity to see them.”
The Nyingma Institute offers several introduction to meditation classes, including a “How to Meditate” workshop from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb. 1. Cost is $45. Call (510) 843-6812 or visit www.nyingmainstitute.com
You can e-mail Jennifer Carnig at jcarnig@angnewspapers.com or call
(925) 416-4842.
