The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality. The reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality – because they confuse the world as it is, with the world as they think about it, talk about it, and describe it.
-Alan Watts
So you’ve decided to try out meditation. Perhaps you’ve just suffered a personal crisis and you need to find some calm. Perhaps you’ve heard about the health benefits. Or maybe you’re just plain curious – for whatever reason, you heard about the inner peace and you want to experience it for yourself.
Two-fold good news! First, there is a surprising number and variety of meditation workshops held by various groups/schools which operate in and around Ottawa’s downtown core. These workshops range from FREE – $35. Second, you’re not alone. Judging by the sheer number of people who came out to these workshops, it seems that Ottawans are thirsty for enlightenment.
So here’s the rundown of the meditation workshops around town:
What’s offered: 3 hour intro workshop with the option of signing up for a five-week meditation course
Location: Carleton U (workshop)/Ottawa U (weekly classes)
Price: Free of charge! (Plus yummy free samosas!)
The Ottawa Meditation Group is centred on the teachings of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007), an influential Indian guru who taught meditation after emigrating to the West. You may know the Ottawa Meditation Group from such places as Perfection-Satisfaction-Promise (veggie curry restaurant on Laurier) or the Peace Garden (coffee shop in the Market), where everyone who works there has a certain serene glow about them. That glow – which can be unnerving to the uninitiated – is due to meditation.
The meditation workshop itself is a three hour multi-media introduction to the world of Sri Chimnoy, who emphasized meditation for “self-transcendence”. Meditative practices introduced included: concentration (“stare at the centre of a candle”), visualization (“imagine a flame inside you”), chanting mantras in English and Sanskrit (“Aummm”), heart-chakra meditation, use of singing bowls, and meditation to sacred music composed by Sri Chinmoy. Instructors made clear that music, visualization or concentration were just techniques to quiet the mind, but that true meditation was a deep inner experience of listening to one’s inner voice. Meditation was directly related to the spontaneous joy in one’s heart after sustained and regular meditating was also something emphasized.
The workshop also provides the opportunity to sign up for a follow-up, free-of-charge, five week meditation course that elaborates on each of these techniques (which I attended). At the end of this, there is the no-pressure opportunity to sign up for more rigorous training.
What’s offered: 1 hour intro workshop (held monthly); weekly Sunday meditation sessions
Location: Ottawa Public Library (workshop)/Planet Botanix at Bank & Somerset (weekly sessions)
Price: by donation (And delicious free vegetarian dinner!)
Like its website says, “Mantra meditation is very simple. You can just sit there and relax and enjoy the vibe and join in when you feel like it.” The weekly musical mantra meditation run by Simply Meditation is a long session of jamming to mantras with the guitar. To get an idea of the music, watch George Harrison’s talk about singing mantras.
In the workshop, it was explained that the mantras (such as Gauranga, Nitai-Gaur, Hare Krishna) are, in themselves, sacred words containing sacred energy which access higher planes of existence. According to the meditation instructors, chanting the mantras contained the power to increase one’s love for God (the ultimate goal of meditation). This has the added benefit of taking personal problems away, including unwanted desires and making life better.
Lastly, while not much is said about the origin of their belief system, after some persistent questioning the instructor revealed their lineage as derived from Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a 20th Century Indian guru and founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. (However, Simply Meditation emphasizes their non-affiliation with the Hare Krishnas.)
Ottawa Shambhala Meditation Centre
What’s offered: 1 hour intro workshop (monthly); weekly Sunday meditation; various classes, lectures and activities
Location: Wellington West (Hintonburg)
Price: intro workshop + Sunday meditation = free; other classes cost up to $70
Shambhala refers to a mystical community of enlightenment. The name “Shangri La” of the classic novel was named after Shambhala, which some believe was an actual location in the Himalayas. Others think its a place that exists everywhere, in the here and now.
How do you achieve Shambhala then? I asked. “That’s a topic of many meditation courses we offer,” the meditation instructor explained. Short answer then. “Short answer? The short answer is seeing the goodness is everything.”
More specifically, the organization that is known as the Shambhala International is the secular articulation of three Tibetan Buddhist traditions that was introduced to the West by Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan monk who fled Tibet following the uprising against Chinese occupation in 1959.
The meditation introduced in the workshop was seated, silent and still – except with the hitting on the singing bowl that announced the beginning and end of each session. Shambhala meditation emphasized keeping the back straight, focusing on the breath, and watching thoughts as they come and go. The analogy for dealing with thoughts during meditation: “thoughts are like strangers knocking on the door of your house. Let them in, and soon they go. But don’t invite them in for tea.” Walking meditation – in which one focuses on the tactile sensations of walking – is also practiced during the Sunday meditation sessions.
Photo from the wwzc.org.
What’s offered: 2 hour intro workshop (monthly); various classes, lectures and activities
Location: Sandy Hill
Price: intro workshop is $35 (suggested donation)
Nestled amidst the discarded red plastic beer cups of the Sandy Hill student ghetto, is a little known sanctuary known as the White Wind Zen Community. The property itself is a beautiful heritage home, whose grounds are a well-kept Zen garden. The introductory workshop outlines the practice of zazan (silent meditation) and walking meditation. Compared to the other meditation schools in Ottawa, the atmosphere at the Zen school is more stoic and formal. Even the simple act of sitting on a pillow includes quite an elaborate ceremony for proper sitting and pillow arrangement. This seeming emphasis on ceremony was explained by the Zen practice of mindfulness – by going through all the motions, you are helping yourself be completely present and aware of what you are doing at any given moment.
Joyful Land Kadampa Buddhist Center
What’s offered: various other classes, lectures and activities
Location: Chinatown
Price: each class is $10 (plus free tea and cookies!)
Started by a Tibetan monk named Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, this Tibetan Buddhist meditation group features guided meditation, meditation to music, and use of concentration and visualization.
The point of meditation, as described by the instructor, is so that one can be more centered in your daily life. Another great benefit is the little common room in the back, where the meditation group retires to after a session and has an open discussion about spirituality and life.
Which one to choose?
With so many schools to choose from, it’s hard to know which one is right for you – besides geographical distance from your house, of course. Hopefully the following observations can help inform your choice.
Overlap in Techniques. The different practices had a lot of overlap in techniques such as: mantra meditation, silent meditation, music/sound meditation, walking meditation, and visualization. However, the combination and environment used by these schools gave each practice a distinctive feel and character.
Differences in Belief Systems. The groups based on Vedic beliefs (Sri Chinmoy, Simply Meditation) implicitly require some degree of belief in their cosmology (higher beings, higher spiritual planes, etc). That said, they don’t believe their system is incompatible with Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) – but you can judge that for yourself. The groups based on Buddhist traditions on the other hand (Joyful Land, Shambhala, White Wind) do not require you to “believe” in anything per se, other than what you can immediately observe and experience. That said, the two sets of practices are not entirely unrelated. As Alan Watts once said, “Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export.”
Choosing what Makes Sense(?) I’m tempted to say that if you’re an atheist, choose a school that doesn’t require belief in higher spiritual beings. But I won’t, because I think you won’t know what works for you until you try. Here’s an example:
The mantra-centric approach taken by Simply Meditation didn’t make any intuitive sense to me. I was skeptical that mantras contained sacred energy that magically manifests itself in your day-to-day life. Personally, I need a more rational explanation i.e.: meditation makes you more relaxed, thereby making you more relaxed in day-to-day situations, thereby you are able to see better choices, etc.
I brought this up with the Simply Meditation instructor during the dinner break on Sunday at Planet Botanix. He understood where I was coming from, and he told me of his similar experiences with Zen Buddhism – toward which he had a similar experience, it just didn’t make intuitive sense to him. He said that the approach taken by the mantra-centric group just clicked with him. And more importantly, it worked. About my hesitation with mantra-meditation, he said “just give it a try. If you don’t like it, if you don’t mind it helpful, don’t do it.”
I thought about this and I realized the whole reason I sought out meditation was that rational thinking didn’t quite get me where I wanted to be. (To the contrary, relying so much on logic and thinking is what led me seek other forms of wisdom in the first place!)
All the meditative practices I reviewed differed – some slightly, some widely. However, the thing common to all of them is that they agree the “clicking” of the heart is what matters more than the clicking of the mind. Meditation is about connecting to your inner, authentic self, and your choice of meditation practice should be the same.
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