Before you react to the title, note that I’m not converting.  Alright.  I have a friend that I met at the gym; a Hong Kong guy who is now retired living in Shenzhen with his wife, who is a mainland Chinese.  He’s a nice guy, a successful businessman, and I respect him quite a bit.  We have lunch from time to time.  Over our last meal, a delicious Cantonese “dim sum” meal ($4 for the two of us), we revisited the topic of religion, an enjoyable topic for him since he converted to Buddhism just a few of years ago.  He asked me if I’d like to try meditiation, that there was a class being held in his apartment by a Buddhist monk from Hong Kong.  I thought this would be interested so I decided to attend.

The format of the class was to be two hours long, opening with a long meditation, followed by a lesson, and then wrapped up with a final meditation on the lesson.  The class was to be taught in Mandarin, which would likely mean that I wouldn’t understand what was going on during the lesson.  What the heck, this is a great opportunity.

I showed up fifteen minutes early.  My friend’s apartment was the nicest I’ve seen in Shenzhen yet.  Very comfortable and stylishly decorated.  There were several other people already there.  Many said hello to me and I could hear them asking each other in Mandarin if I’d be able to understand the lesson, to which I replied, “Maybe a little!”.  A woman, dressed in robes, then began talking to me in excellent English – another resident of Hong Kong, naturally.  She explained some more about what to expect and the various programs they had in Hong Kong.

Before the monk giving the lesson appeared, we all stood up to show our respect I suppose, much like when standing up before a judge.  As the meditation began, I was thankful for the various yoga classes I attended in Mandarin as well.  I was able to recognize several of the commands for relaxing different parts of the body, focusing on breathing, etc.  When the lesson began, I was initially lost.  However, the monk was indeed speaking very slowly and repeated many ideas.  This gave me ample opportunity to put it all together and by the time we were about halfway through the lesson, I knew what was going on.  And, by the end, I could pretty much get the gist of it.  A good lesson for everyone to be reminded of, regardless of religion – basically, when someone does you harm, looking past the person doing that to the root causes and seeing that as the impetus for whatever damage may have been caused as opposed to the person.  I’m simplifying quite a bit, but that was it.  We followed up with another long meditation on the lesson.

So, all in all, it was a fun experience and I’d gladly do it again.  Unfortunately, these lessons aren’t so common in Shenzhen, maybe once every couple of months.

This was also a great Mandarin lesson too.  Oh, I also remember the monk stumbling on some words he was not sure about, to which the audience always helped him.  That in turn helped me.

Thanks again, Raymond, for the invitation.