Two weeks into the quarter and already I’m stressed out. I’ve got 50 pages to read for history and three French exercises to do. And an article to write. My mind is shot and so is my body.
One look around tells me everyone else at this meeting is feeling the same way. The temperature outside is below zero and the hardwood pews we’re sitting in aren’t too comfy. After a few minutes of awkward silence, a man in his late 20s strolls down the aisle to the front. He has bushy eyebrows and wears a ribbed turtleneck. He smells like stale incense.
“Everybody take a deep breath and try to relax,” he says. We do. And just like that we’re participating in a religious practice that’s more than 2,000 years old.
Matt McCallum, a McCormick graduate student in the Applied Mathematics program, leads the meditation. Slowly and methodically he tells us to relax our muscles and let the tension out of our bodies, leaving us with only our thoughts.
McCallum leads the Vajrayana Buddhist meditation group that meets each Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Quaker Meeting House, at 1010 Greenleaf St. in Evanston.
Though the group has some regulars, McCallum says he likes to see new faces.
I am one of those new faces. I’ve never seriously meditated before, and everything I’ve learned about Siddhartha Gautama came from a Global Studies course in the ninth grade.
But McCallum’s enthusiasm for the subject is enough to turn the head of even the most ardent cynic. “Buddhism is very much about being consistent and logical. It never flies in the face of understanding,” he says in a steady, patient tone. He explains later that the emphasis on logic and order in Buddhism especially appeals to the math major in him.
Another one of the main tenets of Buddhism is that no external factor can alleviate human desire and frustration, so people must turn inward to find the answers to their problems. McCallum explains that meditation is one of the ways Buddhists strengthen themselves mentally.
“We need a heart as well as a head, a sharp mind and a giving heart,” McCallum says. “Wherever we go, we take our minds with us. The Dalai Lama himself once said, ‘Without inner peace, there would be no outer peace.'”
With his mellow tenor, McCallum leads us to reflect on ourselves and where life is taking us. To the average college student, these kinds of questions are murder, but from the laid-back sound of his voice, McCallum makes the answers seem attainable. And he isn’t the only one.
The Vajrayana Buddhists in Evanston don’t number in the thousands or even hundreds, but they have close company . The group is organized by the larger Vajrayana Buddhist Center, which provides teaching and guided meditation in Oak Park and Lakeview, Ill., as well as Evanston.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, the group’s spiritual director and a Tibetan monk, founded the organization in Ulverston, England, after an 18-year meditation retreat. The VajrayanaBuddhist Center’s workshops and retreats focus on incorporating Buddha’s practical advice and wisdom.
“We try to integrate all of the practices of Buddhism into our daily lives,” says Hillary Jordan, a professional social worker attending the group. Jordan says Buddhists try to do this by showing compassion for those around them.
Buddhism, like many other religions, has different sects worldwide. McCallum and other members of the Vajrayana group practice Kadampa Buddhism, which focuses on Buddha’s teachings in a modern life. Other Buddhist sects like the Nyingmas or the Sakyas, stress more traditional aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. Kadampa Buddhists have more than 600 outposts worldwide, including Iceland and South Africa.
Members of the Evanston group have been gathering at the Quaker Meeting House for more than two years. The group meets weekly and discusses topics such as finding happiness from different sources and meditating as a way of life.
In this respect all Buddhists are united in their cause. The religious practices are rooted in destroying negative emotions, but they also focus on being wary of one’s deemed positive.
With this in mind, the Vajrayana Buddhist Center’s upcoming events feature a lecture titled, “Love vs. Attachment.”
The lecture , which confronts the notion that most relationships are based on a mixture of love and attachment, will be held at the Vajrayana Buddhist Center in Oak Park. It’s an idea that many college students can relate to.
Buddhists believe it is necessary to remove attachment from our minds, but this does not mean that we have to abandon our relationships.
“True love is without greed and without expectation,” Jordan says.
But there’s still hope. Despite all these misgivings, Buddhists believe people aren’t all that bad. Buddha said, “The only creator is mind.” In other words, our minds exaggerate qualities of people and situations.
The important thing, according to the Vajrayana Buddhists, is that we learn to distinguish attachment from love and gradually try to remove all traces of attachment from our relationships and purify the emotions we have.
If we don’t, this sort of distorted thinking will eventually create a negative cycle of human behavior. We hurt others and ourselves because we are not enlightened, and the only way to be enlightened is to turn inward. Hence meditation, and hence the desire for inner peace.
“We practice Buddhism to keep our minds strong enough to weather any challenge,” McCallum said. nyou
Medill junior Dan Eder is an nyou writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
