time, a statuesque Susannah York type, a participant in the “Healing the Light Body” shamanic workshop, rolls her eyes back into her head rapturously during our morning meal. “You know, yesterday I
prayed
for organic yogurt, and here it is. It’s a manifestation!” she says, her voice breathy and awestruck at the mysterious ways of the Breakfast Deity.
But if things are habitually attributed to higher causes, I am hard-pressed to see them redound to higher purposes. I hear a lot of talk about the good karma accrued by being good to oneself, but actual hands-on altruism gets almost no play the entire weekend. When I wonder aloud how, at a weekend devoted to the notion of
bodhicitta
(awakened compassion), it seems curious that there is no newspaper for us to monitor the suffering of the world at large, Meg tells me, “It’s karma.” Meaning, I suppose, that those pesky ethnic Albanians—who that very weekend were being slaughtered—were getting what they deserved. “Besides,” she continues, “you should take a break from all that.” I counter that the casualties of the globe’s misfortunes, the purported objects of our compassion, like the Kosovars, don’t have the luxury of taking a break. Meg immediately holds up her hands in a frightened Stop gesture. “I was told I just gotta say things, so I’ll say that this gives me agita? When things get heavy, I can’t eat? Can we talk about something else?”
Meg’s reaction turns out not to be all that aberrant. The word I most overhear, flying from mouths like spittle, is “intense.” But it usually seems to apply to a massage or a movement class. When I do chance to overhear of a true test of faith and character, one person telling another, “My father died last Christmas and it was fairly intense, so I went to a bereavement workshop, which helped a lot,” the response she gets is, “Yeah, when everyone in the room is facing the same direction and the energy is aligned, it can be a very powerful force.”
The subject of Tibet itself, origin of the weekend’s teachings, is dispensed with in three minutes. A man stands up at the mike and mentions that he heard that the “purpose” of the oppression by the Chinese is so that attention would be paid to Tibetan Buddhism by the world at large. A kind of genocidal PR campaign, ordained by karma: Hitler wore khakis. He relays this information as though he were passing on a handy stain-removal tip.
Even the political T-shirt, that ubiquitous (non-dairy) manifestation of principle, is completely absent, unless a teal garment with the words “Susan B. Anthony” scripted in glitter puff-paint counts. And it’s certainly not because of any text-free clothing policy at Omega. I see endorsements for blue-green algae (“food of champions”), Kiss My Face lotion, several polar bears, and an embarrassment of angels (how random, then again . . . maybe not). The only shirt concerned with others is focused on a demographic so remote as to be politically negligible: “U.F.O.ria.”
Physically, Omega resembles nothing so much as a kibbutz. Intensely green and lovely, its architecture utilitarian and simple, serving everyone. And if relentless navel gazing and self-obsession, practiced simultaneously by very large groups of people, somehow equaled communalism, then it
would
be a kibbutz. Aside from a rather involved busing procedure in the dining hall of having to separate our dishes, cutlery, and compostable and noncompostable trash, the heavy lifting is left up to the young, pierced, dewy, and eminently fuckable staff.
Reading further in my welcome booklet, I see that the Omega Garden is “[b]ased on the raised-bed French intensive method of gardening [and] is the source of many of the vegetables we serve in the Cafe.” This is probably true; it may be a “source,” but it’s doubtful that it’s the bulk, given the garden’s jewel-box size and its hypercosmetic rows of nascent lettuces. It’s like being
prayed
for organic yogurt, and here it is. It’s a manifestation!” she says, her voice breathy and awestruck at the mysterious ways of the Breakfast Deity.
But if things are habitually attributed to higher causes, I am hard-pressed to see them redound to higher purposes. I hear a lot of talk about the good karma accrued by being good to oneself, but actual hands-on altruism gets almost no play the entire weekend. When I wonder aloud how, at a weekend devoted to the notion of
bodhicitta
(awakened compassion), it seems curious that there is no newspaper for us to monitor the suffering of the world at large, Meg tells me, “It’s karma.” Meaning, I suppose, that those pesky ethnic Albanians—who that very weekend were being slaughtered—were getting what they deserved. “Besides,” she continues, “you should take a break from all that.” I counter that the casualties of the globe’s misfortunes, the purported objects of our compassion, like the Kosovars, don’t have the luxury of taking a break. Meg immediately holds up her hands in a frightened Stop gesture. “I was told I just gotta say things, so I’ll say that this gives me agita? When things get heavy, I can’t eat? Can we talk about something else?”
Meg’s reaction turns out not to be all that aberrant. The word I most overhear, flying from mouths like spittle, is “intense.” But it usually seems to apply to a massage or a movement class. When I do chance to overhear of a true test of faith and character, one person telling another, “My father died last Christmas and it was fairly intense, so I went to a bereavement workshop, which helped a lot,” the response she gets is, “Yeah, when everyone in the room is facing the same direction and the energy is aligned, it can be a very powerful force.”
The subject of Tibet itself, origin of the weekend’s teachings, is dispensed with in three minutes. A man stands up at the mike and mentions that he heard that the “purpose” of the oppression by the Chinese is so that attention would be paid to Tibetan Buddhism by the world at large. A kind of genocidal PR campaign, ordained by karma: Hitler wore khakis. He relays this information as though he were passing on a handy stain-removal tip.
Even the political T-shirt, that ubiquitous (non-dairy) manifestation of principle, is completely absent, unless a teal garment with the words “Susan B. Anthony” scripted in glitter puff-paint counts. And it’s certainly not because of any text-free clothing policy at Omega. I see endorsements for blue-green algae (“food of champions”), Kiss My Face lotion, several polar bears, and an embarrassment of angels (how random, then again . . . maybe not). The only shirt concerned with others is focused on a demographic so remote as to be politically negligible: “U.F.O.ria.”
Physically, Omega resembles nothing so much as a kibbutz. Intensely green and lovely, its architecture utilitarian and simple, serving everyone. And if relentless navel gazing and self-obsession, practiced simultaneously by very large groups of people, somehow equaled communalism, then it
would
be a kibbutz. Aside from a rather involved busing procedure in the dining hall of having to separate our dishes, cutlery, and compostable and noncompostable trash, the heavy lifting is left up to the young, pierced, dewy, and eminently fuckable staff.
Reading further in my welcome booklet, I see that the Omega Garden is “[b]ased on the raised-bed French intensive method of gardening [and] is the source of many of the vegetables we serve in the Cafe.” This is probably true; it may be a “source,” but it’s doubtful that it’s the bulk, given the garden’s jewel-box size and its hypercosmetic rows of nascent lettuces. It’s like being
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