Life of Carmen, Zen & Dharma

Finding my religion

One time the wise PattiPow caught me on my way out the door, and asked me where I was going. I told her I was off to an all-night dance party. She smiled and nodded. Ah, she said, you’re going to church.

Today I went to church at the Mountain Rain Zen Centre. The Centre lives in a small rented apartment above a Subway sandwich shop, between a saree store and a Chinese grocery on the corner of Fraser and 46th Ave. TV babble seeps through the floorboards and the traffic makes the windows rattle. What would have been the living room is the meditation hall, jammed with zafus and zabutons and a small altar decorated with a vase of tulips and a reclining buddha. It isn’t Upaya’s intimate grandeur, and there is no dj warming up the dancefloor. But when I walk in the door I know exactly what to do.

I enter and bow and sit facing the wall. Ready for God to grab me.

3 Comments on “Finding my religion

  1. Ah, the urban sounds of “nature”. I love it when they sound so foreign that my mind stops trying to translate.

  2. I love that you’ve found this place, and I love that I’m now immortalized as “the wise Pattipow”. Love you, will be around for breakfast Tuesday or Wednesday.

  3. i had a dream last night where i confessed to my grade 1 best friend how lonely it has been since i stepped onto the path or the path took me or I invited god to grab me. something about being saturated in dance culture for so many years, then somehow ending up sitting quietly instead.

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