Meditation

I haven't posted in a while. Things have gotten a bit crazy, in a good way, and this is also final's week. In the future I'd like to learn how to maintain daily blog habits even in turbulent weather. 

I took a trip to New York recently to visit an old friend of mine. He is a monk who I met in Argentina when I WWOOFed way back when. We both planned on attending a conference together, and he told me that he also wanted to visit the UN meditation room. I had no idea that such a thing even existed. But it does indeed, and this is what it looks like. 

I was struck by the design of the whole place. No windows, dim, reminiscent almost of Egyptian tombs with a large sarcophagus in the middle. Not to mention that it's triangular like a pyramid. 

I was surprised by the look of this room, and I was also surprised that we were able to get in. One of the attendees of the conference, who works for the UN, told us that only a few visitors get to see the room, and that those who do get to see it must have a one day pass. But my friend and I decided to just try it on Sunday morning. 

Every step of the way, we had barriers, but we ended up getting past them. My friend has his luggage with him, a rolling carry on, as he was moving out of his hotel then. We managed to get a visitors pass for the both of us, and when we arrived at the gates, the guards, who initially did not want to let us in with that luggage, decided to make an exemption for us. Once inside, the meditation room was locked, but another guard swiped us in. 

Inside was all silence. Not even the light could penetrate the stillness of the room. The giant stone block of iron sat, inert, like the earth, human minds being lit on by a single light of divinity, enlightenment. We settled on the benches and mediated for half an hour, and it was the deepest meditation I had entered yet. 

Once we left the room, we continued our tour of the UN complex, and I was able to run into some fellow Vietnamese people. For some reason there were loads of Vietnamese people there, which seemed like such a funny coincidence because I want to do work in Vietnam when I am older and have more capacities to help. 

I am not sure what conclusions to make about this whole experience--only that it was unexpected, filled with luck, surreal, and just lovely.