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When she was 24, Kelsang Lekma was toiling in marketing and television and not at all happ. “I was irritable, rude, frustrated: all those horrible traits that I could see developing in me were dependent on, it seemed, stress and pressure,” says the 36 year old Buddhist nun, now the director and principal teacher at the Khandakapala Buddhist Center in Silver Lake.
A traditional spiritual practice, a more obvious choice for many, was not an option for the British born Lekma, “I went to a Catholic convent when I was growing up and left there think, ‘No religion ever again,’” she says with a big laugh.
‘…there are an awful lot of people who are separated from the religion of their youth. And those people are looking for their own spirituality, and you can translate that into peace of mind and comfort of living.’
FRED MILLER
Yoga and meditation instructor
When she first joined a coworker at a Buddhist meditation class, it all made a lot of sense to her: It was logical, it was practical. “I wasn’t looking for it, but I knew that I needed it,” she says. Practitioners say that meditating equips them with the means to recognize their emotions and diminish their grip, and that’s what Lekma found. At the meditation center she runs, practitioners focus on a series of meditations that originated in Tibet, and are specifically designed to turn adversity in life into a positive experience.
“The beautiful thing about meditation is that it really helps you understand why you get upset, why you get unhappy,” she says. “We often think, ‘I shouldn’t be angry,’ but we don’t have any method of not being angry.”
The premise of meditation is careful observation of thoughts, feelings and behaviors outside a judgmental framework. The goal is often to bring to activity of your mind in perfect sync with your body, “being in the zone” in lay parlance.
“Meditation is meditation. It is paying attention to what you’re doing, whether it’s living your life or sitting quietly and praying in a church or out in the woods someplace. It’s connecting with whatever it is you’re focused on,” says Miller. “A friend of mine is a gymnast, and he says his gymnastic practice is a spiritual experience for him, because he is totally involved with it.”
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