http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/03/03/NB29183.DTLBuddhists say that when the clatter in your brain gets too loud and your mind is being pinged with info-bullets on dot.com this and dot.com that, on skyrocketing rents and the seesawing Dow, on 60-hour work weeks and torturous commutes, you can simply turn it off.
When you do, they say, you hear the lovely sound of silence. Not a ``Shhhh, hush-up'' silence, but, rather, a tender stillness that allows you to listen to yourself and to other people.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center in West Marin is an oasis of quiet, a place where people of all stripes and religious backgrounds come to unwind through yoga, meditation and other spiritual practices. They come, too, to slake their curiosity about Buddhism's new high profile in the United States. Buddhism has been featured in cover stories in Time and Newsweek, and exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama's ``The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living'' is riding high on bestseller lists.
In a recent New York Times article, Richard Hughes Seager, an associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., estimated the number of practicing Buddhists in the United States at 2 million -- nearly as many as there are Episcolpalians.
Most who come to Spirit Rock are like 10-year-old Max Mills and his family. They are from the town of Sonoma and don't think of Spirit Rock as one of the most famous meditation centers in America. They see it as a local community center.
On a drizzly Super Bowl Sunday, Max's family turned off the television and drove out to Spirit Rock to hike, to play games with other kids and adults, to meditate together, to participate in a American Indian sweat lodge ceremony and to wrap up the day with a potluck. The cost per family was between $35 and $60, depending on what each could afford.
For some families, it was their first visit to Spirit Rock. Others were new to meditation or knew little about Buddhism.
Along with 30 or so other families, Max, his mom, dad and uncle took off their shoes, sat curled on cushions on the floor and listened to adults talk to the children about having compassion for themselves and for others.
``You know when someone special does something not so nice to you? Maybe it's someone in your family, a friend, or your cat or dog or a special fish?'' Richard Shankman of Santa Cruz told the children. ``Maybe it hurt your feelings. But did you ever stop loving that person?''
Noooo, the children said, shaking their heads. ``Well, we want to find a way to love and accept ourselves in the same way you did that special friend.''
That's what they teach at Spirit Rock. Sometimes the words are more gussied up for adult audiences but the idea is the same: Learn to be aware of what is really going on, know yourself and embrace your crazy moods and mind because that's what it means to be human. Be loving and kind to yourself and to others. And don't forget to meditate, to be still.
There's much more to it, of course. Buddhism has been around for 2,500 years. There are as many different ways to practice as there are divergent schools of thought. And it's not as simple as it sounds. It's hard work to be kind or loving -- let alone both.
But children have a natural flair for it. And at family day at Spirit Rock they showed the adults how it's done.
``I light this candle for all the people who are sick in the world with the flu and leukemia and whatever,'' said Rachel Dalton, 12, of San Anselmo, as she sparked a gun- shaped lighter and lit a red candle.
``I hope a lot of animals don't go extinct,'' offered Max, lighting a candle. Later, he added another hope: ``I hope when I go into the sweat lodge I don't shrivel up like a raisin.''
Fred Wahpepah, a 70-year-old Kickapoo-Sac and Fox tribe elder, told the children how native people use sweat lodges to purify their hearts and minds and give thanks. ``It's not some New Agey thing. It's very ancient,'' he said.
He explained that, in a few minutes, all the families would tromp out into the rain, dressed in shorts or swimsuits. After a cleansing ritual involving wafting smoke from burning sage over their bodies, they'd duck into a rounded hut made from willow branches covered with tarps. Inside the hut (the sweat lodge), he said, they would all sit around a pit filled with red-hot burning stones, where they would sweat and sing and say prayers. The idea of seeing their parents half naked and squirming in the rain tickled the children, as did the lure of a way-hot fire and a magical ceremony.
``Mom, I don't want to leave. Can I stay here all day?'' asked 10-year-old Camille Permar of San Geronimo Valley.
Inside the lodge, it was the kind of hot where one's hair mats with sweat and one's pulse drops to amphibian levels to endure the simple effort of siting quietly. The only light was the red glow from the stones. Wahpepah sang and invited people to share a prayer or thanks.
``I am thankful for the earth, and life and that I was born instead of someone else,'' said Toby Newman, 9, of Sebastopol.
Meanwhile, across the Spirit Rock campus, a 10-day silent meditation retreat was just wrapping up. People like Lila Friedman, 65, of Palo Alto had come to study what's called metta: the practicing of loving kindness.
Friedman, a hospice volunteer for terminal patients at Laguna Honda hospital in Marin, said she wanted to bring more compassion to her work. ``When you are at the bedside of dying patients, it's not about you, it's about them -- even if it's just sitting there and doing nothing,'' she said. ``The retreat taught me how to be more with them, more present and not involved with myself.''
Friedman and about 100 others lived at Spirit Rock for the 10 days. They slept in private, sparsely rooms -- bed, small sink and closet -- in recently built retreat bungalows accented with tapestries and fresh-cut flowers.
They awoke to the sound of bells shortly before dawn and began their routine of eating, meditating, listening to Buddhist teachings, walking, eating, meditating -- over and over again, for 10 days, all in silence.
The visiting teacher, Sharon Salzberg, is an old friend of the founding members of Spirit Rock, and herself one of the founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass. -- Spirit Rock's East Coast sister. ``She's like the queen of metta in this country,'' said Hal Ross, a friend from Palo Alto who edited ``A Heart as Wide as the World,'' one of Salzberg's recent books.
There are waiting lists for her retreats; and tickets to this last session were doled out by lottery because so many people wanted to come. Many see her as the East Coast antidote to Marin: all self-effacing humor, gentleness and not a trace of the holier-than-thou attitude exuded by seekers whose mien seems to suggest, `I am an enlightened, happening spiritual woman. And you are...?'
She told how Spirit Rock got started. It was the early '70s, and Salzberg, Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, all household names if you run with the Buddhist crowd, were kids in their early 20s, studying Buddhism together in India.
``We came back and started traveling the country teaching what we learned,'' Salzberg said. ``We'd get a letter from someone who'd say they could get together a few friends and a cook and would we like to come and do a retreat at someone's house?
``So that's how we lived, sleeping on people's living room floors,'' she said. ``Then someone suggested we start a center of our own, a repository for people's energy, a sacred place.''
Along the way, Sylvia Boorstein, a cofounder of Spirit Rock, joined them, and together the four of them started drawing crowds, writing best sellers and continuing to study in India and Burma. ``Someone said Boorstein, Kornfield, Goldstein and Salzberg sounds more like a law firm than a group of Buddhist teachers,'' Salzberg said.
Salzberg and Goldstein stayed in Massachusetts and found the Insight Meditation Society, which this month celebrates its 25-year anniversary.
Jack Kornfield, who trained as a Buddhist monk in monasteries in Thailand, India and Burma, left the East Coast for California, started a family and began teaching classes in a Fairfax basement and then later in the local church.
In 1985, in the pouring rain, Kornfield took Salzberg and Goldstein to see a 412-acre site off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. Rolling hills, creeks, wild turkeys, oaks and cypresses graced the landscape. The crowing jewel: a magnificent oak tree sprouting out of the middle of a 40-foot rock, its roots making the journey down through the stone and into the ground.
With the help of an anonymous benefactor, they purchased the land from the Nature Conservancy, a non-profit organization dedicated to environmental preservation.
What started out as 14 portable trailers and group of young idealists now has an operating budget of a $1.2 million, a board of directors and hundreds of volunteers. Last year, Spirit Rock threw a rededication party to showcase a new mediation hall and the recently built living quarters for those who attend retreats.
``It's amazing that it happened. We were young and we didn't know any better. We didn't know that we weren't supposed to be able to just do it,'' Salzberg said of the success of Spirit Rock and the Insight Meditation Society. ``I guess ignorance is bliss.''
Now, when the meal gong sounds during a retreat, people slowly walk past the illuminated lanterns that dot the walkways. They stroll through the woods over little wooden bridges that arch over creeks, past the stone Buddha, the carved redwood benches to the dinning hall with its yellow and red Tibetan prayer flags, hardwood maple floors and pine cabinets.
They eat in silence, six to a table, slowly dishing up vegetarian lasagna, fresh organic broccoli, salad tossed in poppy seed vignette, corn muffins and chocolate chip cookies.
And they pay very little for it. Retreats cost less than a night at Motel 6 and a meal at Denny's -- $50 a day for a room, three meals and lots of tea and teachings. There are scholarships for people of color and people who need financial help.
Teachers, cooks and staff work for free and rely on donations to make a living. But people who go to retreats or take classes or attend lectures are very generous about dropping cash and checks into a basket at the end of a program to pay the teachers and others. Called dona (pronounced like the woman's name, ``Donna''), it's an Asian Buddhist tradition of sharing that seems to work well, even here in America. Actually, it seems the less people get hit up for money, the more grateful they are and the more happy they are to contribute.
Even the bookstore is on the honor system. There is no one in the small shop to take your money for cards, books and tapes, or even to buy a wall hanging or the $400-plus carved lava stone Buddha statue. To pay for something, you simply slide your money into a slot in wall and go on your way. If you forgot your checkbook, no problem. The sign on the wall instructs you to take home your purchases and mail in a check when you have a moment.
It's that optimistic view of human nature that attracts hundreds each Monday night to Jack Kornfield's lectures. The mood is relaxed, newcomers are welcome, everyone meditates for around 45 minutes (even the beginners get nothing but encouragement. ``Fake it, til you make it,'' as Sylvia Boorstein says).
Much of the evening is spent laughing with Kornfield as he peppers his speech on unruly moods like anger, desire, greed and sleepiness with quotes from such unlikely sources as the newspaper funny pages, Mae West, T.S. Eliot and Oscar Wilde.
It's a matter of perspective, Kornfield said one night. ``The optimist wakes up in the morning and says, `Good morning, God.' The pessimist wakes up and says, `Good God! It's morning.' ''
The question is not what the right state of mind is, Kornfield said. ``It's how do we relate to the way things really are,'' he said. ``Is there anyone who can control their mind? What are these moods, these longings, these fears? We have them because they make us interesting. They thicken the plot!''
In the words of T.S. Eliot, Kornfield said: The light is still at the still point of the turning world.
