To Meditate Takes More Than Just Sitting On Your Ass.
Mysteries are everywhere, but there is nothing more mysterious than leaving the earth unexpectedly.
It was late spring, a week or two before the May Vipassana meditation retreat at the Regina Cleri Center on East 22nd Street. Regina Cleri, a Catholic facility built in the 1950s as a prep school for aspiring priests, is now used for a variety of religious and community gatherings, Buddhist among them. Vipassana meditation is a part of the Buddhist tradition, but those attending the retreat came from a wide variety of backgrounds, and became instantly anonymous. In a setting where the participants do not speak, conventional labels disappear. Many of them not only practice silence, they also avoid any eye contact whatsoever.