Aventurina King

The first of my 4-week meditation classes unfolded in a high-ceilinged, baby-blue carpeted suite in downtown Manhattan. It was lead by two small and smiling women who work together at the UN in international development. On an altar near the window, there was a clear vase with a few pink roses, and three white candles in front of 2 pictures of the late master Sri Chinmoy both taken when he was in deep meditation.

The first 30 minutes of meditation were quite painful. I was constantly shifting in my seat. The electricity went out with a bang of the air-conditioner, then it came back on. “If there are any disturbances, please just bring back your focus to the candle,” mused Pragathi’s colleague during the blackout. Then the flame of the candle was supposed to be visualized within our heart center, expanding, until finally we were calmly sitting within it.

We chanted four mantras:

“Aum Govindaya Nama” (Mantra for Protection)
“Aum Rudraya Nama” (Mantra for Transformation)
“Aum Aparajitaya Nama” (Mantra for Divine Victory) (I wonder what this means, victory of the divine over our modern undivine lives? or victory of God against Satan, Good against Evil?)
“Aum Amritaya Nama” (Mantra for Delight)

And just before that, one of the leaders, then cross-legged before a mini reed-organ, told us to “turn around and tell the person next to you that they have a beautiful voice.”

The class ended with a 7 minute video speech of a serene Sri Chinmoy with flowers around his neck, about the necessity of daily practice, and within this daily practice, of an inspirational object. It could be a beautiful flower, or the smile of a child which is all “purity and light.”

My favorite part of the evening was the post-class hanging-out with Sri Chinmoy’s students, one of whom had swum the English channel and joked about how his tongue got swollen because of the salt water. The man next to him suggested he speak about fending off the infamous channel jelly fish when he next lead the meditation.

I always take flyers handed out by people. It’s a small gesture that brings them a second’s relief from hours of standing and being ignored: a smile, a grasp, and then a trashcan down the road far enough so they can’t see.
This time the flyer was for a free eight-hour meditation workshop sponsored by the Sri Chinmoy community. And for some reason it made sense. Now I needed to learn how to meditate.

So I kept the flyer and two weeks later, I was sitting on a grey plastic chair among a hundred others, crowded in a primary school theatre just below Union Square. There was Chai tea, and a beautiful old woman clad in bright green sports attire sitting in the front row. (Ahhhh! I love natural women who have aged with a sense of dignity, unabashed by their white hair and netted skin.) Farther to my left was a boy touting a mohawk and an earing.

Four hours of lecturing and meditating on Saturday, then another four on Sunday. And it was really really fun. Saturday’s main highlight was Ashrita. Ashrita the 52 year old owner of a health food store in Jamaica Queens who has broken 69 Guiness world records, including the record of the most held records. It was hard for me to imagine Ashrita meditating. His voice was down down Brooklyn (kawwwwwfeeeee). And he talked about his failed high school gym classes with an excitement that made him sound slightly ADD. And he made us laugh and laugh.

One story which almost had me rolling on the floor: “I was up in the mountains trying to break the record of fastest running in a sack against a yak” Ashrita was being interviewed on TV, so above the primary theatre stage, there was footage of him bouncing kangaroo-like in a potato sack, flanked by a huge and reluctant yak prodded along by a local. “And I was getting really tired, but apparently the yak had it worse than me, I heard him huffing and puffing, and at one point, he just dropped out, and they had to get another yak.”

There were other funny records such as the fastest nose-orange punt, pogo-jumping in a swimming pool or up Mount Fuji. But the whole point was that Ashrita, who had been a nerd in high-school with no gym training (in his high school pictures, Ashrita has thick glasses, and there is his irresistible beady-eyed canari in the foreground), achieved all these records with the help of meditation. Of the first time he rode a bike competitively he said: “When my legs started hurting I just meditated and imagined God was massaging my muscles.”

There were plenty of other speakers, including Sujantra, the host of the workshop. Sujantra means “instrument” in sanskrit; a bit culty, all the Sri Chinmoy American-born gang had sanskrit names, and the first day, all the women wore bright-colored saharis. He walked us through the first meditation: 7 minutes of conscious relaxation, 7 minutes of relaxing the senses (which involved open eyes staring at a candle), 7 minutes of meditation on positive emotions (forgiveness * love * joy * gratitude).

I could go on. The workshop had a graphic designer who swam across the channel (“the main problem with swimming the channel isn’t that it’s cold and that there’s shit in the water, it’s that it’s boring, for 13 hours all you hear is “glug glug,” so meditation really helped me keep focused”), a lecture on the importance of a vegetarian diet for meditative practice, chanting, live music all composed by the late master Sri Chinmoy, and free free free cookies and fruit and sushi handed out by women constantly smiling (think Stepford wives in saharis, only the smiling was actually genuine).
But I have to stop here. In a bit I want to go out and do some drawing at the Metropolitan. But the benefits of the workshop?

For one I felt in a much better mood, maybe most significantly because I had shared a whole week-end with people who were real, and simple, and simply happy. (Or at least this is my first impression, as an aspiring writer, I have to keep some degree of skepticism anchoring my enthusiasm.) I will be taking their free follow up four-week meditation workshop and keep this blog updated on the effects, if any, of my daily meditation.

(see the latest NYTimes article about the Sri Chinmoy community)