Fireflies and Zazen : Japanese Meditation

Last Saturday was a day of peace and magical beauty.

Saturday was especially a nice day since I had quite a lousy week before...broke my glasses during a more aggressive than expected game of basketball, needing to spend a lot of money on getting new glasses, faced a roadblock in my research, punctured my bicycle tire causing me to miss an important class....like I said, not a great week.

With irritant factor raging through my reins, I badly needed some peace to cool down. So, I joined an event called zazen, which is Japanese style religious meditation.



We left the main road and the loud engines behind, and entered an old city with little traffic if none. We reached an old temple(not a shrine) which was smaller than I expected. But a nice and tranquil place as there was no crowd....plenty of greens around too.

We then were introduced to the head monk who taught us the basics of meditation..

Zazen stands for : za which means seat and zen...well, you all know what zen is. This seated meditation is actually a copy of Indian cross-legged meditation...but Japanese got a cooler name for it. The only difference is that you get a good whack with a stick in the back if you start to slouch or fall asleep..

After 5 minutes struggling to get my feet on my lap, we meditated for about 30 minutes....what surprised me was that it felt more like 5 minutes of silence rather than a torturing 30 minutes of cramped legs!!



Along with me was a bunch of Chinese guys, Koreans and a Spaniard called Pol. Pol didn't want to join this event at first as it sounded boring...well, when did meditation ever sounded fun, right? But I managed to convince him saying
"Religious meditation sure sounds boring...BUT we'll never know how boring it really is!! If you go back to Spain, and your friends asked you 'Hey Pol, do you know about that boring shit called zazen?' You can never answer them if you don't join this crap....and besides, we can laugh about it on the way back!!"

And he joined!!! Haha...it's good to have someone agreeing with my nonsense once in a while...but I gotta say I had a great time at the temple in the end.



Anyway, after the temple was a trip to see fireflies....have you guys ever seen fireflies? I know, you can see them at Kuala Selangor...but I've never seen them before in my 24 years of life.

From the temple, we walked about 20 minutes to a firefly reserve. We went into the forest in the evening, then out on a clearing devoid of artificial lighting...and as it got dark, one by one the fireflies started lighting up...and within minutes swarms of them started lighting on and off in unison. Almost....ghostly....

How can I ever live for 24 years and never experience something so hauntingly beautiful??!! Just like magical little tree fairies they float among trees, flirting with each other, and with our eyes....

Unfortunately, their beauty can't be captured on camera...well, either that or the camera I'm using isn't good enough. I guess this scene will be a special one to be remembered...beauty known only to me.

This one Saturday shall forever be remembered...