Finding Stillness in the City: A Glimpse into Zen Practice in New York
NEW YORK — Nestled in a nondescript charcoal building at 400 E. 14th St., the Chogye International Zen Center of New York welcomes its members as early as 5:30 a.m. for the Buddhist practices of bowing, meditation and chanting. Upon entrance, members slide off their shoes, place their belongings in white wooden cubbies and trade their winter coats for lavender and gray robes of varying lengths. A dozen people showed up on a recent Saturday.
The morning practice commences in the bowing room. Some members wear socks; others let their naked toes graze the floor. Then, with pristine synchronicity, the bows begin: right knee to the floor, left knee to the floor, right palm, left palm, forehead, palms together, feet to standing, repeat — 107 more times. A latecomer arrives; before stepping through the door’s threshold, he raises his hands to his heart and bends toward the altar before scurrying to an open cushion. There is a name for this gesture: gassho.
According to Manu, a Zen teacher from France, gassho has many meanings: hello, how are you, pardon me, thank you, goodbye. Manu has a beauty mark above her lip, hair cropped to her ears and a slight gap between her teeth. “It means everything!” she says with a congenial smile. When entering or exiting a prayer space, Zen Buddhists put their palms together into gassho to show courtesy, respect and gratitude.
The bowing ends. Members file into the meditation room across the hall. Save for three Korean scrolls that hang above the Buddha’s altar, the meditation room’s walls are unadorned. Strewn about the burgundy-brown wooden planked floor: square, circle and diamond-shaped pillows intended to make the seated meditation more comfortable. Members opt for various seating positions. Some kneel, supporting their posterior with a small pillow, creating a tripod with their bodies. Others assume cross-legged, lotus, or half-lotus positions. According to Manu, the best position is simply the one you feel most comfortable in.
“This,” she says, motioning to her full lotus stance, “is just to support the work you’re doing up here,” raising her hand to her head.
For 40 minutes, the gentle hum of deep breathing washes over the room, punctuated every so often by the wayward cough, sniffle or grunt. For at least half that time, one bald bespectacled man’s eyes flutter in the back of his head. Several assume the elusive halfway-open eye — a technique employed to keep the meditator grounded in reality while exploring the contours of their mind. Others keep their eyes fully open but cast their gaze downward. A few minutes before the seated meditation concludes, the bespectacled man takes a bathroom break; before he departs, he brings his palms together in gassho, briefly nodding at the altar before exiting the room.
The meditation flows immediately into the chanting practice. Teachers jaunt around the room to hand first-timers chant books that include full lyrical texts, both in Korean transliteration and standard English. What once was a dull hum — meditative breathing — has crescendoed into a resonant swell of voices from baritone to soprano. All chants are delivered in Korean; only The Heart Sutra — famous for its assertion that “form is emptiness; emptiness is form” — gets a double feature, chanted first in Korean, then in English.
Before the final chant, Alan, a Korean-American Zen Buddhist from Flushing, gently corrects a newcomer’s hand placement. She had been holding the book with arms outstretched, gripping each page like an analog map. With soft eyes and an avuncular smile, he guides her hands towards the center of the book’s spine, thumbs touching, palms facing. Gassho.
Hearing the Shema Prayer in a New Way
NEW YORK — “Hear” as a command conveys one meaning.
“Pay attention” signifies yet another idea, one that goes beyond the ear canal.
Especially to a Deaf person.
During a recent “ReSoul” Saturday morning Shabbat service at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, most of the song and prayer lyrics were projected on a wall of the Reform synagogue’s sixth-floor chapel in three forms. Congregants could follow along in Hebrew, transliterated Hebrew and English.
Halfway through the service, one Hebrew prayer didn’t need a projected translation because the congregants knew it by heart: the Shema. This prayer, which many Jews learn as children, begins with the line “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad,” which means, according to most translations, “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
Cantor Shayna De Lowe and Rabbi Ben Spratt, who led the service, at times swayed to the music, accompanied by piano, drums and guitar. But as they began to sing the Shema, they moved their arms in a more deliberate, dramatic way: They used American Sign Language.
Nearly everyone in the congregation knew the ASL signs, too, although a few stumbled over the finer gestural details. No matter. All who attempted the ASL smiled as they signed.
The full Shema prayer is actually in three parts. At Congregation Rodeph Sholom (7 W. 83rd St.), only the line mentioned above and the one that follows are signed. The words to the entire Shema come from three different Torah verses in Deuteronomy and Numbers. The first line, from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, in just a few words distills ideas that are key to Jewish beliefs.
The Shema, “one of our central prayers, is our statement of monotheism, that we believe in one God,” De Lowe said. “We say it at every service, and any time we gather,” and many Jews say it twice a day, in the morning and evening, whether at a service or at home. Using sign language to express the prayer is an innovation, something not found in most congregations.
“What it’s really saying,” De Low said, is “‘Pay attention, Israel: This is our God, and it’s one God, and that’s our God.’” The opening word “Shema,” she said, is often translated as “Hear.” “But members of our Deaf community told us that’s very excluding for them.” Even the ASL sign for “hear” — holding a cupped hand up to one’s ear — can leave out Deaf people. So to be more inclusive, “instead we do this,” De Lowe said, and she held up both hands to either side of her head, palms facing each other, the ASL sign for “Pay attention.”
De Lowe, who has a Deaf son, echoed the words of Rabbi Darby Leigh of Congregation Kerem Shalom in Concord, Massachusetts, a Deaf man who describes in a YouTube video how he translates the Shema using ASL — and in turn interprets the meaning of the prayer at a deeper level.
Leigh says he doesn’t translate “Shema” as “Hear,” “because as a Deaf person I don't feel comfortable. It doesn’t make sense to sign Shema as related to the ear, and the real meaning of the prayer, in my opinion, is to pay attention.”
ASL also brings out the deeper meaning of other words in the first line.
Leigh explains his sign for the second word, “Israel.” First, he shows how to sign “Israel” in ASL: He puts his little finger on one side of his chin and moves it down, then repeats the motion on the other side of his chin.
“But this sign alone isn’t enough because this is the sign for Israel the place, and the Shema is talking to Israel the people,” he says, “so I've added to ‘Israel’ ‘the gathering’ of all the people before me.” Leigh holds up his arms horizontally to the sides of his body, then scoops his hands together in a forward collective motion.
At the Congregation Rodeph Sholom service, the Shema ASL signs for “the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” were particularly eloquent.
The ASL sign for “one” is simple: Point the index finger upward with the other fingers folded down. “For a more spiritual interpretation I like to show ‘many’ and then change it into ‘one,’” Leigh says. In one fluid motion, he wiggles his fingers open on one hand, palm down, then sweeps his index finger up in the sign for one.
That ASL sequence, so vivid at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, was packed with meaning, pulling together the many under one God.
Naomi B. Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew at Washington University, wrote in an essay, “Reading the Shema,” that those who are not Deaf can learn from ASL how to reread or rehear the phrase “Shema Yisrael”: “As the Shema calls on Jews to recognize and acknowledge the diverse manifestations of one God, ASL renditions of the Shema serve as a pointed reminder to honor diversity.”
At the Saturday service at Rodeph Sholom, a vision-impaired woman with a tiny dog — the pup wore a red vest embroidered with “Vision Service Dog — Full Access,” joined in on signing the ASL prayer.
Pay attention, the congregation seemed to be saying loud and clear: All eyes and ears are welcome.
Photo courtesy of Congregation Rodeph Sholom
God Works Through Generations in the Anglican Church
NEW YORK — The wooden pews at Emmanuel Anglican Church in Manhattan’s West Village are filled with people of all ages on a recent Sunday morning. But once the worship service begins, some of the youngest congregants, too small to sit still, are carried to the aisles and the back of the sanctuary by their mothers and fathers.
They cradle their children tightly in their arms; some newborns are placed in baby carriers on their chests. Others use one hand to hold a program and another to hold the hand of a tiny toddler who wants to dance to the worship music.
Jesus, the Name above every other name
Jesus, the only One who could ever save
Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe
We live for You, we live for You
As congregants sing "Build My Life" together in perfect harmony, cries from the babies echo in response. The music at Emmanuel Anglican ranges from the traditional to the contemporary. Parents sing and sway as morning light softly shines down through the colorful stained-glass windows illustrating scenes from the Bible.
Emmanuel Anglican, at 232 W. 11th St., puts a premium on young families. Parents know that their children, between 6 months old through the fifth grade, can foster a relationship with Jesus from an early age. The first 20 minutes of services, before the children are escorted out of the sanctuary and into classrooms for Sunday School, allow them the opportunity to experience the Word of God through prayers and songs, even if they don’t understand the meaning of it all just yet.
Amber Salladin, the church’s music director, explains that God works through generations. “We don’t ever want to segment people by age or race or gender,” she said. “At the same time, we really think that the kids should be able to learn in a way that works for them and is age-appropriate for them, so that's why they go downstairs for their own thing. But we wait 20 minutes, so that they get used to what it's like to be upstairs.”
Before the children are excused, they are invited to the front of the entire congregation. Children break free from the grasp of their parents, who eventually follow, and run onto the altar like it’s a playground; they laugh, dance and play together on the main stage directly below the massive organ, the centerpiece of the sanctuary.
Then those children, who continue to play innocently, are prayed for; they are blessed for choosing to gather together and worship the Lord this morning.
Help them to lay the firm foundation for you and your scripture this morning.
The behavior of these children is not seen as disruptive to this congregation, who warmly embrace the younger generations who are starting their journey to nurture a relationship with Jesus. Once the children are ushered out of the room and led downstairs to Sunday School, there’s a moment of calm and quiet; no more crying babies or screaming toddlers.
And the service continues.