It may not be a religion, but it can certainly change the way you perceive the world around you.
Local teacher Algernon D’Ammassa, 39, has spent most of his adult life pursuing the fruitions and challenges of Zen meditation.
He has recently begun his second year of helping locals mediate and reflect on life as part of his Deming Zen Group. He is the groups Senior Dharma Teacher.
“We’re not trying to make people Buddhist or anything,” he said. “I’ve sat with Christians, Muslims and Jews and people who don’t have any use for religions at all.
It doesn’t really get into anybody’s religious beliefs; it’s about how you live your life right now as a Christian or as a hedonist.”
He later added: “It’s not about accepting a cosmology, it’s about how do you live your life.”
He began his journey in 1992, at the age of 21. He was an actor in New York under “tremendous personal distress,” he says.
“I was looking for alternatives to psychotherapy,” he explained. “I knew about Zen because I studied with a Kabuki actor in New York.
I started sitting and started looking for a teacher. I ended up meeting my teacher in Rhode Island, which is actually where I grew up; it was kind of a coincidence.”
He found his teacher in 1994 and began studying more seriously. With his immersion in Zen came newfound understandings and realizations.
“I was someone who always sort of lived my life cut off,” he said.
“Meditations helped me live my life with more intimacy.”
There are physical benefits to meditation, he says, but he does not emphasize those results because he does not want to turn sitting into a “goal-oriented” task.
Sitting is one’s own journey to rediscovering the world and one’s self, not a path for those with only physical benefits in mind.
“The kind of meditation we do is looking at whatever comes into your consciousness when you’re sitting,” he explained.
“Sometimes that isn’t very peaceful. We’re working on lettings those things come to the surface and letting those things go. When you do let it go, it’s a huge relief.”
He is joined on a weekly basis by a small group of locals and folks from Silver City. He also holds retreats about every three months.
“People in Deming aren’t interested in Buddhism, which is great,” he said. “People in Deming are interested in the actual practice and what it might give to their lives, which is better than people wanting to becoming Buddhists.”
The meetings are open to folks of any religious belief – or lack thereof – and are free, though he does accept donations to cover costs and provide materials.
For more information, visit www.demingzen.webs.com.
Matt Robinson can be reached at mrobinson@demingheadlight.com
Source : http://www.demingheadlight.com
