Northwestern’s new Zen Club is offering students stressed by midterms a chance to take time out, relax, meditate and learn.
The Zen Club meets at 7 p.m. every Thursday in the Oratory Room in Parkes Hall. Tonight the club will hold its second meeting since its inception.
Though the Zen Club was set up with the help of the Buddhist Study Group, its focus is on meditation, not religious theory.
“This is not a religious club,” said Keith Moore, a Buddhist monk and Aikido instructor who leads the meetings. “The purpose is not to convert anyone to a Buddhist. But what you might get from it is some sort of practice of training that might help you in your life.”
At the first meeting, members sat barefoot on pillows and practiced various meditation techniques. The inaugural event began with a discussion of goals and expectations for the club.
Moore then asked everyone to try meditating by focusing on their breathing while maintaining an awareness of the room around them.
After a few minutes of practice, the group members discussed their experience.
Moore told participants not to judge their thoughts, and people shared the everyday concerns that flooded their minds when they tried to relax, ranging from jaw pains to dinner plans.
Dressed in one of the robes he had collected from travels in China, Japan and India, Moore described the inherent problem of meditation as controlling your naturally unruly thoughts.
“Your mind is like a wild bronco horse,” Moore said. “It’s never been ridden. To do meditation is to try to throw a rope around it and control it.”
The group members spent the rest of the meeting in a longer exercise, attempting to clear their minds of thoughts by focusing on consciously counting their breaths.
Moore had everyone in the group line up in two rows facing the wall and dimmed the lights, signaling the beginning and end of the exercise by ringing a bell.
The group once again described how they had felt during the exercise, battling to keep their thoughts from reaching the surface and losing count of their breaths.
Moore stressed the importance of these practical exercises in gaining experience and forging a better understanding of Zen meditation.
“If you read Zen books or Buddhist books you hear about enlightenment,” Moore said. “It’s entertaining to read about that stuff but to actually experience that — that’s what I’d like this to be.”
The leader described enlightenment through meditation as a pool of water. Moore said that as the water settles, one is able to see deeper and deeper until eventually the water is clear and everything comes into sharp focus.
The first meeting attracted 14 people.
