interfaith

Steve Kent: Religious and non-religious people alike can benefit from Buddhism, according to a presenter Saturday at the Museum of Anthropology’s new exhibit honoring Buddhism in the Cache Valley.

In his experience as a teacher at the Cache Valley Buddhist Sangha, associate English Professor Michael Sowder said he has worked with people of all religious backgrounds who practice meditation and study Buddhist teachings.

People with such a wide range of religious inclination can practice Buddhism because its teachings neither endorse nor reject any particular beliefs, Sowder said.

“You can have a religious belief and practice Buddhism at the same time,” he said. “Buddhism will …

Click to read more »

Meditation chapel remodeled to embrace all faiths

March 14, 2011

Read the rest of this article…

Banner Boswell Medical Center [in Sun City, Arizona] reopened its chapel this week, just in time for Ash Wednesday.

The newly remodeled space, now a non-denominational meditation chapel, offers both patients and their families a quiet space to think and escape the busy hospital atmosphere.

Chaplain Larry Weidner, the director of Spiritual Care, said that the remodel is more inclusive to all religions. Instead of pews, the room now contains individual chairs, and the art is not specific to one religion, but a trio of paintings on one wall incorporates symbols from all faiths.

“As a hospital, we minister to anyone that comes here,” Weidner said.

Weidner pointed out that when the remodel was first proposed, he heard some complaints from people about…

Meditation chapel reflects diversity of spiritual culture

March 9, 2011

Read the rest of this article…

After several months of remodeling, Banner Boswell Medical Center in Sun City has reopened its Meditation Chapel inside the hospital’s main entrance.

The remodeling project was done to reflect the diversity of the spiritual culture of patients, visitors and staff.
The chapel has a new water feature, an original triptych painting representing the 10 major world religions. The remodeling project also included the replacement of pews with individual chairs to create an atmosphere for individual meditation and reflection.

The chapel features a library of more than…

Meditation and modern art meet in Rothko Chapel

March 3, 2011

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Michele Norris.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

And I’m Melissa Block.

The Rothko Chapel in Houston is more than an interfaith chapel. It’s also a center for human rights – and a one-man art museum devoted to 14 gigantic paintings by the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. The chapel opened its doors 40 years ago.

And as Pat Dowell found, it continues to make an impression on all who enter.

PAT DOWELL: Walk up to the chapel from the south and the first thing you see is a small pool with Barnett Newman’s steel sculpture, “Broken Obelisk,” apparently floating on the water. The chapel itself is an octagonal brick building, windowless. Solid black doors open on a tiny glass-walled foyer.

Beyond the room, gray stucco walls, each filled by massive paintings. A baffled skylight subdues the bright Houston sun, and the surfaces of the paintings dramatically change as unseen clouds pass outside. There are eight austere wooden benches, and today, a few meditation mats.

(Soundbite of bell)

DOWELL: Concerts, lectures, weddings, memorial services all take place in here, but on most days, it’s just visitors, about 55,000 a year. And there’s always an attendant. Today, it’s Suna Umari. She’s worked at the chapel in various jobs for 30 years, most recently as historian. She also takes a turn as attendant, and her eight-hour shifts have given her, she says, a new sense of what the chapel means to visitors.

Ms. SUNA UMARI: People feel it’s their place. You know, they come, and they have a problem, and they cry in this space. If you look at the comment books, they make comments to each other as though this was their personal little diary.

DOWELL: There’s one couple who comes every six months.

Ms. UMARI: The first time I saw them, they must have had a fight, because she came in and sat down, then he followed. And he sat next to her, and she ignored him. Anyway, they whispered to each other, and pretty soon, they made up. And then they came out here to the foyer, and he wrote something in the comment book. He used the whole page, a declaration of his love for her. And then she wrote that she loved him also. And they seem to come, you know, at the beginning of the month, usually it’s the first or second of the month, and they sit in the chapel for a while, and then they declare their love for each other and go off.

DOWELL: For at least one visitor, the chapel was unnerving.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER ROTHKO: I wasn’t prepared for that when I walked in the door.

DOWELL: Christopher Rothko is the painter’s son.

Mr. ROTHKO: I almost left with nothing, but, in fact, I sort of sat through it for a few minutes and ended up spending an hour and 15 minutes, something like that, there. The time just sort of stopped running. And I can’t even tell you where I went at that point. I just -I know that it was a Rothko experience unlike one I’ve had before.

DOWELL: These are not the luminous color fields that made Mark Rothko famous. The paintings here are dark, in purplish or black hues. And there’s a reason for that, says Suna Umari.

Ms. UMARI: The paintings, they’re sort of a window to beyond. He said the bright colors sort of stop your vision at the canvas, where dark colors go beyond. And definitely, you’re looking at the beyond. You’re looking at the infinite.

DOWELL: The canvases are huge. The largest is about 15-by-11 feet. Susan Barnes was here the day they were installed.

Ms. SUSAN BARNES (Author, “The Rothko Chapel: An Act of Faith”): What I remember most of all was these large paintings, one at a time, being put in a sling and lowered through the skylight. The largest of these barely cleared.

DOWELL: In fact, the first day, the truck and the crane had to be sent back because it was too windy.

Ms. BARNES: Take a look at that big painting and think about it as a sail.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. BARNES: It was too dangerous.

DOWELL: Barnes has written a book about the project, but back then, she was fresh out of college and working for John and Dominique de Menil. They were the philanthropists and collectors who commissioned the chapel and the paintings. They hired Philip Johnson to design the building and Rothko to fill it. But the painter had such specific ideas about the space that Johnson bowed out.

It was always intended to be more than an art gallery, though. In a 1972 interview, Dominique de Menil said she saw it as a meeting place.

Ms. DOMINIQUE DE MENIL (Art Collector): But meetings of people who are not just going to debate and discuss theological problems, but who are going to meet because they want to find and contact with other people. They are searching for this brotherhood of humanity.

DOWELL: The chapel’s creator never lived to see it finished. Mark Rothko committed suicide in 1970, but his son, Christopher, says his father knew what it should be.

Mr. ROTHKO: It took me a while to realize it, but my father’s gift, in a sense, to somebody who comes to the chapel. It’s a place that will really not just invite, but almost demand a kind of journey.

DOWELL: The journey for onetime art history student Susan Barnes led to a ministry in the Episcopal Church. She says the chapel, too, has become a sacred place.

Ms. BARNES: This was a little neighborhood location. There was a house here. But you walk into this chapel and you know, now, that it has been sanctified by the prayers of the people. There is something you feel in the chapel that tells you it is a holy space.

DOWELL: For NPR News, this is Pat Dowell in Houston.

Labyrinth experience provides outlet for meditation

February 18, 2011

Original article not available

Sara F. Neumann, The Etownian: Although Elizabethtown [Pennsylvania] College is a Brethren-affiliated college, the religious identity of students and faculty has become more diverse in recent years; the religions on campus vary from Christian faiths to Jewish to Muslim and everything in between. In light of this diversity, there have been more attempts by student organizations to reach out and invite people of various faiths through different activities.

The Labyrinth, hosted by the Chaplain’s Office, is one of these new interfaith activities. Most students are unaware of what a labyrinth is and what the experience at Etown offers them. “Labyrinths are a kind of walking meditation and they are like mazes, but there is only one path in and one path out. It’s a guided path that allows walkers to get closer to God or just to themselves,” explained Assistant Chaplain Amy Shorner-Johnson.

The Labyrinth began last semester and is held on Sunday nights, but this semester it was switched to Thursday afternoons.”We wanted it to be more interfaith,” Shorner-Johnson said. “Having it during the week makes it more inviting toward everyone.”

Labyrinths date back to Roman times, when Romans carved the circular paths onto rocks. They were then adopted by various faiths, including Christian sects, who often placed them on church floors. Depending on the faith, labyrinths could be walked on the knees for penance or walked as a substitute for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. One of the most famous labyrinths is in the Chartres Cathedral in Paris, France; the labyrinth is a circular maze, which leads into a patterned center and then leads the walker back out.

Etown’s own labyrinth is modeled after the Chartres labyrinth. It is a large canvas piece that, when rolled out, reveals a winding path defined in purple. “The Chaplain’s husband picked the color, actually, and the company liked it so much they picked it up for their other labyrinths,” Senior Marshal Fettro said, the student leader in charge of the Labyrinth.

While Chartres labyrinth is a Catholic labyrinth, the assistant chaplain is eager to emphasize that Etown’s is multifaith and open to all. While labyrinths can be religious for some, walking one does not have to be a path to a personal God. It can just be a way to relax.

“It provides a sacred space or just a getaway for students. You can practice mindfulness while walking it. Sometimes if I try to meditate or relax while just sitting, I worry about sleeping. I tend to be able to focus when I’m doing something,” Shorner-Johnson shared.

Senior Laura Miller explained that she goes to the Labyrinth as an escape. “I’ve been coming since last semester. It’s just a break from everyday life,” she said.

Senior Amanda McGeary, a first time attendee, came to earn Called to Lead points. “It was calming and quiet. It was just nice,” she said.

Another first time Labyrinth walker was impressed with the fulfillment of the slogan that drew him in. “I saw the poster in the BSC that said, ‘Walk your worries away,’ and I thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ Well, it worked—I don’t have any worries anymore,” he explained.

The Labyrinth experience offers a few quiet hours for students to focus simply on themselves or on getting close to the God in which they personally believe. Music is played during the experience, but it is non-denominational; the CDs vary from Native American chants to simple nature sounds. The music changes from week to week. The walk can take as long or as short as the walker desires, depending on what they are contemplating.

“Just setting some time, whether to meditate, pray or think, can turn the profane into the sacred,” Fettro said, referencing Emile Durkheim’s dichotomy of the sacred and profane.

The Labyrinth is held every Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m. in the M&M Mars room in Leffler Chapel. It is open to all who wish to attend.

Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.

Kaiser’s new meditation room reflects shift away from chapels in U.S. hospitals

February 7, 2011

Roseville Press-Tribune: Books on Buddha, prayers printed in different languages, moveable chairs, kneeling stools, a glass prayer bowl, space for Muslim prayer rugs and a stained glass installation with a nature design fill the 180-square-foot room.

As intended, it’s a hodgepodge scene.

But for patients, visitors and staff of the hospital at Kaiser Roseville Medical Center, the room represents a quiet, sacred space where people of all religious backgrounds and spiritual beliefs are welcome. This meditation room also illustrates a growing recognition by health care providers throughout the United States that mind, body and spirit go hand in hand.

“Healing comes in many ways and we do a great job with the physical healing, but there’s the emotional and spiritual wounds, as well,” said Kaiser Chaplain Alice Anderson.

Gylnda Hardin happened upon the meditation room during its public unveiling Jan. 19. She traveled from Oakland to visit a family member receiving treatment in the hospital. As she tried reading her Bible in the patient’s room, she grew distracted by other family members conversing and noise from the television.

“I love it,” Hardin said of the meditation room. “It’s beautiful and it’s very much needed.”

Although Kaiser Permanente opened for public enrollment in 1945, their hospitals did not include chapels until about a decade ago. Now they have about 30 chaplains serving the northern California region. When Kaiser built the local medical center in 1998, they set aside a meditation room, tacking a sign on the door.

But no one oversaw the space and the room devolved into a waiting lounge.

“It felt like a conference room and wasn’t really meeting the needs of our patients,” said Keith Hoerman, director of continuity of care, during the opening ceremony.

In June 2009, Connie Johnstone, former spiritual care manager for Kaiser Roseville Medical Center, grew frustrated telling people there was no spiritual sanctuary on hospital grounds.

A particular family had struck Johnstone as one that could really benefit from the presence of a meditation room. She talked to her boss and got the ball rolling.

“There was a pastor and a retired pastor who had a loved one in the hospital,” she said. “They had huge spiritual resources available to them. They didn’t need me to gather at the bedside with them. They needed a place to go draw on their own strength.”

Everything about the meditation room is intentional. The stained glass gives people a visual object to observe. Chairs are arranged so visitors don’t sit looking at one another. The furniture is comfortable but doesn’t enable people to curl up and read a novel.

The prayer bowl gives visitors something to interact with — they can leave prayer requests and spiritual care volunteers will keep these in their reflections, Johnstone said. The room feels set apart from the rest of the hospital.

Most importantly, elements in the room don’t privilege one religious tradition over another.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Catholic, Baptist and Methodist churches built many hospitals, which typically incorporated chapels with crosses and pews.

“It’s just not like that anymore,” Johnstone said, adding that Roseville has a big Sikh population and many Buddhist practitioners.

Not to mention Muslims, including medical personnel, need a place to pray five times a day.

“The person brings their own resources, their own spirituality (to the room),” Johnstone said. “We understand this is a diverse world and we don’t want to diminish any one practice or put focus on any one.”

UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento made the transition to a nondenominational room recently with an “all-faith chapel.” Sutter Health’s Women’s and Children’s Center plans to open a 40-seat meditation room in 2013.

Closer to home, Sutter Roseville Medical Center has boasted a meditation room since 1996 when the hospital opened, although they call it a chapel. The interfaith space has a stained glass piece and nature motif, but Sutter uses “chapel” because people recognize the term’s meaning, said Chaplain Gerald Jones.

“It’s a place where anybody can come — religious or not — to feel connected with their sense of the divine,” Jones said.

Even people who don’t follow an organized religion may need spiritual renewal and reprieve from the surrounding stressful situation.

Prior to Kaiser’s meditation room, Anderson said intensive-care unit nurses came to her asking for a quiet place to recover from the illness and death they experience daily. Spending time in a hospital whether as a nurse, patient or visitor takes a toll.

“People are facing death and serious illnesses,” Anderson said. “There are many loses every day, so they’re dealing with these great emotional stresses, as well as spiritual stress, like, ‘Can I go on? Did I deserve this?’ They’re really wrestling with God during this time.”

The meditation room, she said, provides a place to seek wisdom, express fears, ask for mercy, grieve and find the strength to carry on.

Original article no longer available. Not archived on archive.org

Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.

Yoga has avatars in America (Times of India)

January 10, 2011

Read the rest of this article…

Yoga seems to have been “reincarnated” in America and some other parts of the world.

Various organizations are promoting “Christian Yoga”, claiming to provide a Christian approach to yoga. There are DVDs like “Christoga: Yoga Filled Body – Christ Filled Soul” (60 minutes of Yoga with bible scriptures recited by Janine. Yoga with Christ as the meditation focus!). There is a “Christian Yoga Magazine”. There are books like “Yoga for Christians: A Christ-Centered Approach to Physical and Spiritual Health through Yoga”,” Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul”, etc.

Welcoming the widespread interest in yoga, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, yoga was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. One could still practice one”s respective faith and do yoga. Yoga would rather help one in achieving one”s spiritual goals in whatever religion one believed in.

“Yoga DVD” search on January nine at amazon yielded 4,828 results.

Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago ( Illinois) is teaching “Catholic Yoga” whose announcement says…

: “explore the multiple spiritual and physical benefits of yoga practice while explicitly integrating prayers and spiritual themes of our Catholic faith”. At the First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue (Washington), “Traditional yoga postures and Biblical meditations are accompanied by Christian music”. Morristown United Methodist Church in New Jersey conducts “Christian Yoga” classes.

Talking about “Yoga and Meditation”, “The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod” says: “from our theological perspective, techniques of relaxation and/or exercise (mental as well as physical) are not, of course, problematic in and of themselves. But it is the religious aspects of a practice such as Yoga that raises concerns for Christians.”

There is “Gentle Jewish Yoga”, while “Torah Yoga” “offers an experience of Jewish Wisdom through Iyengar yoga instruction together with the study of traditional and mystical Jewish texts.”

“Yoga Buddhist pursues an interdisciplinary approach that merges the insights and practices of yoga with Buddhist mindfulness and meditation”. A paperback is available on “Yantra Yoga: The Tibetan Yoga of Movement”. And then there is “Shinto Yoga”, which “incorporates Hatha Yoga practices as well as the various exercises of Japanese Shinto”, besides a paperback on “Shinto Bouddhisme Yoga”. Of course, there is “Zen Yoga”.

“Tao Yoga” in New York teaches Taoist Yoga. Yogi Bhajan taught Kundalini Yoga and “3HO Foundation” founded by him calls itself “A Global Community of Living Yoga”. A blog on Zarathushtrian Mysticism talks about Zoroastrian Yoga and states: “The essence of Zoroastrian yoga is the purification of the Aipi”. There is “Ageless Yoga” in Australia.

Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, further said that yoga, referred as “a living fossil” whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, was a mental and physical discipline handed down from one guru to next, for everybody to share and benefit from. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical. Yoga was based on an eightfold path to direct the practitioner from awareness of the external world to a focus on the inner, Zed added.

Zed argued that yoga, which never had any formal organization, was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche.

According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. Swami Vivekananda reportedly brought yoga to USA in 1893. According to an estimate, about 16 million Americans, including many celebrities, now practice yoga.

Curious Indonesian Muslims join peaceful but controversial Falun Gong

January 9, 2011