I attended the Temple Buddhist Center in connection with Unity Temple on the Plaza to create this first person narrative on a Buddhist service. Unity Temple existed nearly 100 years before the Buddhist Center was founded at their current Plaza location in 1996.(Unity Temple) The director of the center Nima Janet Taylor added the Serenity Pause meditation to the center after founding Serenity Pause six years ago.(Temple Buddhist Center) Before going to the Buddhist center I watched Nima’s video Basics of Buddhism and was struck by the idea the the Buddha is not looked at as a deity of buddhism like revered people in other religions. Nima says in the video “Whenever I look at the statue of Buddha that inspires me, reminds me that I have that ability to be awake.” I include her quote here because it makes sense to me how a dead figure can be a teacher if they are seen as an inspiration. The buddha inspires generations of buddhists to meditate and practice his recorded teachings. The service I attended was a buddhist meditation and dharma talk led by minister Ronn Pawo McLane.
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I remember the teacher explaining we would be chanting “Lama Chenno” or the calling in of the teacher. The chanted phrase was repeated multiple times in unison by the group starting at a robust volume and fading out. Chanting was followed by what I in my Christian faith would call a sermon but they labeled as Dharma talk. The talk was fascinating focusing suffering in theme with the Temple Buddhist Center motto “More Happiness, Less Suffering, One breath at a time.” I really enjoyed the metaphors for anger and how anger can hide a problem such as when a baby is crying it's hard to find the problem till their calm, and looking at anger like white caps on the water and visualizing them calming to a sheet of smooth water that you can see beneath. His end conclusion being that happiness results from the times we are truly