Getting around...

...the Buddhist centres, that is.

In January this year, in Poland, I met two meditators who run an FWBO (Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) centre in Krakow. I went there regularly until June, when I left Krakow. During the 6 months I went on a weekend retreat. The types of meditation taught at the Krakow centre are mindfulness of breathing and metta bhavana (development of loving kindness).

This summer I meditated a little bit on my own at home, and went on a weekend retreat with the NKT (New Kadampa Trust) in September. The meditations we practised there were mindfulness of breathing, metta bhavana and some visualisations to encourage positive states of mind and eliminate negative ones.

In Paris I've tried out a few different groups. I started off going to an FWBO group then changed to a Zen centre, which I've found very interesting. The meditation is unguided but I spoke to the teacher there who suggested I do mindfulness of breathing and some loving kindness meditation. This was after I went to him when I was upset.

Last week I tried out a new centre: Shambhala. It was a slightly mixed experience. I'll write about it in my next post. I'm going to go there again tonight to see if last week was a typical experience or not.

I want to try out lots of different groups and different methods of meditation and see what works best for me, and where I most click with the people who go there. I think that's almost more important than the school of Buddhism or the lineage or the particular traditions they conform to.