“I’m just walking around Denver, thinking, wow, I didn’t know you could do that with an American flag.” Sharon Saltzberg, a Buddhist teacher and author, is wrapping up a Lovingkindness—or Metta—meditation in a park behind the Pepsi Center. A local psychiatrist put his name into the lottery for use of a public park during the DNC, along with a gazillion other people. Stunned by the news that his name had been picked, he turned to his sangha, or spiritual community, to ask what he should do with this prime spot: a softly lawned park near the river, steps from the Pepsi Center. A group formed to create this six-day meditation retreat, Meditate 08, hosting 40 teachers from Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Native American traditions. On opening day, an Imam unrolled his prayer rug, consulted the large compass stitched into it, then led a small group in prayer. More than 300 people gathered for an invocation. Today there are about 150 present, some wearing credentials, all of them rapt. Faith in the Buddhist tradition, Saltzberg says, is an unfolding process, not a commodity, not an attached hope. Now Saltzberg is describing her trip to the Springsteen exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the letter in which Springsteen describes the first time he heard Bob Dylan. He was a kid, driving in the car with his mom, when Dylan came over the radio. It was like a giant boot came down and kicked open the door of his mind, he wrote. Then his mom said, “That man can’t sing.” Things can be like that, Saltzberg summarizes. We can suddenly see things differently.
One of the main organizers wears a t-shirt emblazoned Big Kahuna. Everyone does, indeed, radiate lovingkindness. A chocolate lab named Jack bobs about, spreading more of it. It’s a welcome respite. In LoDo I heard a woman hollering into a cell phone to book her flight home RIGHT NOW. “Why do you say you understand? I haven’t even told you the story yet. You don’t know the day I’ve had. Don’t tell me you understand. They’re saying it’s $500 for a ticket just to go to the stadium. I’m spending $500 a night on a hotel. I should have stayed home.” There’s a lot of that roiling around town, buyers’ remorse. But here in Fishback Landing Park, a woman sweetly asks me if I need anything. Do I have everything I need? Okay, good, she just wanted to be sure. The night the Imam prayed, it turned cold and rainy suddenly and a stranger draped a warm shawl over my shoulders. The man next to me offers a pen as I dig for one. Another thoughtfully repositions us to a shadier spot. Kindness. I have a swelling need to binge on it.
Before closing, Saltzberg breaks the no-politics rule to tell a quick story about volunteering for the Obama campaign in New York. They asked her to stand at the mouth of a subway with an Obama sign. The first man to emerge glances at her sign, then at her, says, “You suck.” She laughs. “I thought, Oh man, not even ‘The candidate sucks’? It’s me who does?” Then the next person to emerge recognizes her, having read her books, and says, “I adore you.”
—Carol Keeley
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