Zahra Gor­don

On No­vem­ber 20, The School of Phi­los­o­phy, Trinidad will be host­ing the lo­cal leg of Just This Day–an in­ter­na­tion­al day ded­i­cat­ed to si­lence and still­ness. Just This Day is in its sev­enth year and was first or­gan­ised by St Mar­tin-in-the-fields Church in Lon­don, Eng­land.

In T&T, the day will be recog­nised with var­i­ous silent ob­ser­va­tions and med­i­ta­tions. The event is just one ex­am­ple of a grow­ing trend both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to­wards us­ing med­i­ta­tion as a tool for well-be­ing.

An ar­ti­cle in the Rich­mond Times-Dis­patch news­pa­per last month said med­i­ta­tion was in­creas­ing­ly be­ing stud­ied and dis­cussed in med­ical cir­cles. The ar­ti­cle said some re­search has linked med­i­ta­tion to height­en­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of vac­cines to health­i­er brain ac­tiv­i­ty. The find­ings of a re­cent study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Al­ter­na­tive & Com­ple­men­tary Med­i­cine found tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion to be a more ef­fec­tive treat­ment of anx­i­ety.

Last month, yo­ga and med­i­ta­tion class­es were of­fered free of charge to Aus­tralian Com­mon­wealth pub­lic ser­vants as part of a new health and well­ness pro­gramme. Ho­tels like the Ritz-Carl­ton Re­serve in Thai­land of­fer pack­ages like Par­adise in Bal­ance, which in­cludes dai­ly, pri­vate med­i­ta­tion with a Bud­dhist monk as well as yo­ga class­es.

Med­i­ta­tion is tra­di­tion­al­ly linked to re­li­gious prac­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly Bud­dhism and Hin­duism. How­ev­er, there are many faiths in which med­i­ta­tion is en­cour­aged and prac­ticed. Yet, as med­i­ta­tion be­comes more main­stream, those who are not in­ter­est­ed in the re­li­gios­i­ty of the prac­tice have coined oth­er la­bels for it such as mind­ful­ness.

Joanne John­son of the School of Phi­los­o­phy Trinidad said the fo­cus of Just This Day was not re­li­gion, but the "in­nate qual­i­ty of si­lence and still­ness which all philoso­phers have spo­ken about for eons." The Just This Day events will be held at church­es/spaces of var­i­ous de­nom­i­na­tions.

Monk Rinchen Blake will be lead­ing one of the Just This Day ses­sions on No­vem­ber 20. He has been prac­tic­ing med­i­ta­tion since the 1970s and trained to be a monk in the late 1980s. Blake, who is orig­i­nal­ly from Eng­land, said he has no­ticed the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of med­i­ta­tion both in the UK and in T&T. Blake has been work­ing with pris­on­ers and re­cov­er­ing drug ad­dicts in the Caribbean for over 20 years. He be­lieves med­i­ta­tion is a very im­por­tant tool in his work. "If you've com­mit­ted a crime, you nor­mal­ly do that be­cause you feel emo­tion­al­ly an­gry or your mind is a lit­tle dis­tressed," he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

"If you train the mind to be con­tent, you just don't feel like it. There was a guy I was teach­ing at a half-way house in An­tigua who said, "When you're in this med­i­ta­tion, you can't do vi­o­lence can you?" And he was so right. Harm­ing oth­ers be­comes of no in­ter­est to you."

Blake al­so op­er­ates a med­i­ta­tion cen­tre in Cas­cade, Port-of-Spain. He be­lieves that mind­ful­ness can help peo­ple get through stress­ful sit­u­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in busy cities like Port-of-Spain.

"When you bring me­di­a­tion, which is train­ing the mind, in­to dai­ly life its called mind­ful­ness. It might sound about bit pedes­tri­an in one way or an­oth­er, but in­stead of be­ing caught up in your thoughts or feel­ings or wor­ries or anx­i­eties, you give your­self a hol­i­day from and fo­cus on the ac­tiv­i­ty at hand. You feel more con­tent af­ter­wards," he said.

As much as med­i­ta­tion is part of the Bud­dhist and Hin­du tra­di­tions, it is al­so part of the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the Rev John Pere­ria, the Ab­bot of Mount St Bene­dict, med­i­ta­tion is a "way of al­low­ing the word of God to gel with­in you." In a tele­phone in­ter­view, he said that med­i­ta­tion is prac­ticed in par­tic­u­lar by the Bene­dic­tine monks, but parish­ioners are al­so en­cour­aged to use this tool. "Ac­tu­al­ly, the first word in the rule of St Bene­dict is lis­ten and that is an es­sen­tial part of the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of the Bene­dic­tion monk. In or­der to lis­ten you must have a cer­tain am­biance. Si­lence is an es­sen­tial part of the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of the Chris­t­ian monk and it helps to cre­ate a cli­mate where­by the word of God can be ab­sorbed."

The or­gan­is­ers of the lo­cal Just This Day are em­pha­sis­ing the pow­er of si­lence on its own, how­ev­er, as op­posed to a spe­cif­ic re­li­gious ben­e­fit. Ac­cord­ing to John­son, "The pow­er or si­lence tran­scends dif­fer­ences, be­longs to no one and is ac­ces­si­ble to every­one. It can heal, nur­ture and uni­fy." She added, "What if we prac­ticed this col­lec­tive­ly for one day, in our own times and ways? Let­ting go all our de­bates, and talk, for­go­ing all our ideas of dif­fer­ences, and find­ing our­selves sim­ply present to the re­al­i­ty of the mo­ment - we would find our­selves in com­mu­ni­ty, com­mu­ni­cat­ing in uni­ty, in the com­mu­ni­ty that is silent, yet com­mu­ni­cat­ing what is tru­ly vi­tal in life."

To find out more about Just This Day, Trinidad find them on Face­book un­der: Just This Day, Trinidad. Or vis­it the host Web site: www.schoolof­phi­los­o­phy.org.tt Or by phone at: 652-5340

Be­low is a list of the events on 20 No­vem­ber. The School of Phi­los­o­phy is al­so invit­ing peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in mo­ments of si­lence through­out the day in their work places, schools and homes.

Events planned for Just This Day

8 to 9 am - Walk­ing in­to Still­ness with Monk Rinchen Blake at the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain

Noon to 1 pm - Guid­ed in­to Si­lence at the Raj Yo­ga Cen­tre Sackville St, Port-of-Spain

5 pm to 6.30 pm - Jour­ney in­to Si­lence and Still­ness with labyrinth walk­ing at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain