Starting in the 1980s, fashion magazines began emphasizing yoga, tai chi, nature walks (what we now call “forest bathing”) – the idea that true beauty comes from within. But what about a house? Can’t a dwelling have “inner beauty”? The more you commune with your divine nature, the happier your house becomes.
Meditation is hard. I’ve been doing it for 49 years, and I’m still mostly daydreaming.
There are a few ways to improve one’s practice. One is to set regular times to sit (which I can’t manage to do). Another is to have a room dedicated to this purpose (That I have, which is why I’m writing this essay).
The first meditation room I ever encountered was in Marvel Comics. Doctor Strange had a Sanctum Sanctorum in his Greenwich Village mansion, where he prepared to battle the evil Baron Mordo and other metaphysical foes. The room was dark, layered with richly brocaded Asian tapestries.
How did Stephen Strange fortify himself? By sitting crosslegged and entering a deep trance, often aided by the Eye of Agamotto, a golden amulet affixed to his chest.
My friend Omkar Lewis meditated daily for 15 years: “My meditation practice was open-eyed, and I would walk into a room and look at the view, and then I would say, ’Oh, I can sit in this room.’ Once I spent two years in Thailand because I didn’t like looking at a wall. In Oakland, someone built a wall in front of my meditation room.”
Even when I’ve been poor (which is essentially my entire life) I’ve often had a chamber devoted to stillness. In two different homes – one in Gainesville, Florida, the other on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – the living room was used for group sittings. In another apartment (in Washington Heights), a spare bedroom sufficed as a destination for meditation.
My wife and I are blessed with a doublewide trailer, with three bedrooms: our “master“ bedroom (I believe this term is out of date, replaced by “primary“), my wife’s office, and a room for mystic self-reflection.
My meditation room has several purposes: yoga, mind-cleansing, physical therapy exercises, and kiirtan (a type of chanting, often accompanied by dancing, used in yoga to prepare the mind for concentrated silence). My meditation group, the Ananda Marga Society, employs the mantra “Baba Nam Kevalam,” which they translate as “Love Is All There Is.” Try chanting it sometime, you may find that it elicits a happy sensation.
Most meditation rooms have altars, but I dislike all forms of worship, so mine is empty except for numerous rubber mats and pillows – plus a blanket – for “senior-citizen yoga.” A guitar stands in one corner of the room, as an aid to chanting (It’s a seven-string guitar my wife bought in Russia in 1971, and it’s totally out of tune – but luckily, I am an “experimental guitarist,” inspired by non-Western modal tunings).
The only decoration, actually, is on the door knob: a string of sandalwood beads and a sash with a rusted bell.
My room has one window, and I like to keep the window at least slightly open, even in winter. Meditation is largely about breathing, and the Catskills region has extremely high-class air. Monks come to live at the Zen
Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper and Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in Woodstock partly to breathe the quiet yet tasty air.
There are various rules, or perhaps I should say “traditions,” about meditational refuges. One is to forbid pets. My wife and I don’t own a cat or dog, but once in a while we dog-sit, and we aren’t strict about forbidding the creature to enter our Room of Emptiness. Also, sleeping is usually forbidden, but if we have a large number of guests we sometimes lay a mattress in the room.
My point is, our house is a home, not a temple. We have to be flexible.
But it’s nice to keep electronic devices out of your mystic chamber. We have no clock in ours. I would never play a radio in a meditation room. I want a refuge that could exist in the sixth century B.C.
Probably I have never walked in that room wearing shoes.
What about incense? You must make your own decision. I burned so many aromatic sticks in my adolescence – many of which I bought at Woolworth’s – that I still have an antipathy to that saccharine smell.
Incidentally, if someone asks to meditate in your quietism room, you must allow them. There are strict rules of meditational hospitality.
The increasing price of real estate, and of rent, has made a meditation room a bit of a luxury – unless you buy one of those Amish-built outbuildings (if you own a house), or work out a barter deal with a rich
meditating friend. You water her plants while she’s in the Bahamas in return for sitting crosslegged on her Tibetan cushion twice a day.
Another option: an outdoor meditation spot. Behind my house is a niche where the root of an oak tree forms a natural seat. In warm weather I meditate there, leaning against that tree.
Sometimes an angry squirrel will screech at me for 20 minutes – but I refuse to be intimidated. It’s the price one must pay for reciting one’s mantra in the bosom of nature. Of course, a devoted practitioner can meditate outdoors even in bitter cold, as many yogis and yoginis have proven over the millennia.
Incidentally, there are some magnificent meditation halls in the Hudson Valley. One of my favorites is the room Vivekananda used at Ridgely Manor in Stone Ridge. (Vivekananda was the first swami to visit the USA, in 1893.) When you enter this chapel-like room, the meditational aura hits your forehead like a frisbee.
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