Becoming a Meditation Teacher During the Pandemic in the Bronx

South Bronx, April 2020?

Ambulances and emergency vehicles sped past night and day, the frequency and screaming of sirens rising with the number of infected and dead. I’d lost nights of sleep for fear of a loved one getting sick and needing hospitalization, while trying to convince my mother and youngest brother to stay home when there were so many reasons why they needed to go out. I’d run out of work as a freelancer, my checking account balance shrinking by the minute.

Three weeks prior, I’d been working with undocumented students as part of DREAMing Out Loud, a creative writing program organized by PEN America. The hand sanitizer I set next to my laptop did little to calm them, since many of their relatives worked in hospitality and as restaurant staff. Unsure of what to do, I described what it was like growing up in The Bronx during its darkest years. That I never thought I’d survive it. That I did. And they would, too.

Randall’s Island was the nearest escape from Port Morris, where I spent much of the lockdown with my partner Urayoán. We’d walk the loop while catching glimpses of a city turned to stone, towers soaring skyward in silence. Then white trucks arrived at the stadium. Then there were 50 or more, a sea of white rectangles preserving corpses from across the city, each holding up to 100 bodies. It was hard not to feel rage over the outbursts of disillusioned Covid deniers.

In summer 2020 I organized COVID Stories, a series of online workshops for anyone who wanted to write about the challenges they were enduring during the bleakest days of lockdown. We’d been torn away from one another after all. Long stretches of solitude proved to be difficult for many, while others described losing loved ones, homes, and careers. Most participants expressed gratitude for the chance to connect with others and share experiences if only online.

The opportunity presented itself as I was scrolling through my social media feed around that time: to train to become a mindfulness meditation teacher. Tibet House in New York was offering a mindfulness teacher training course, which was being taught by senior Buddhist teacher David Nichtern online. Nichtern had studied with Tibetan master Ch?gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, whose books I’d started reading as a young man in my 20s while out West.

My West Coast mentor, the man who became my father in many ways, was a native Los Angeleno Buddhist. Never having been close to my biological dad, Cervenak surfaced shortly after I arrived in Portland, Oregon at barely 17 years old. Having since retired to Playas San Antonio in Tijuana, he encouraged me to take the course when I called him. He even promised that the teachings would guide me in his place, since his days on Earth were vanishing.

I’d explored different approaches to meditation by the time this happened. And although the visualization method I first learned wasn’t the path for me, I kept searching until finding transcendental meditation years later, which did work. My exploration of Buddhist teachings had started in my teens, and I always turned back to them. I worried over the expense of the course with such a doomed economic outlook but signed up anyway.

This is either the worst time to do this or the best time, I remember thinking, knowing I would have to isolate myself in my Pelham Parkway apartment to do it.

The pandemic forced many of us to think about what really mattered; family and health, access to food, water, and shelter amidst a blitz of uncertainty few of us were prepared for. The cruelty and incompetence of the Trump administration was felt strongest in frontline communities such as ours. I didn’t need the news to tell me how frightening life had become; I could open the front door and see it myself. Perhaps this facilitated the journey inward required.

There’s much more to mindfulness than the New Age “quick fix” for stress it’s touted to be (which isn’t entirely untrue, either). The act of placing one’s attention on the breath to cultivate “calm abiding” (shamatha) is thousands of years old. Training the mind to resist the urge of drifting away in conceptual thinking takes time, but the insight gained becomes the perfect incentive to commit to daily practice. Learning to observe the mind will teach you a lot.

The Covid holiday surge erupted as the course reached its midpoint. Then Cervenak died right before Thanksgiving. I struggled to keep it together, knowing what it meant to him. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to complete the 100 hours required for certification, which included considerable reading, daily practice, and three “3-hour” supervised meditation sessions. Nichtern and his staff were warm and encouraging throughout, but there would be no shortcuts.

I was reminded of so much during those months of solitary study; that we often have to push ahead in the face of opposition and insecurity. That training to help others requires the application of the same healing forces onto our selves first, that the most transcendent and meaningful aspirations can be the most difficult to attain. That the high road of working to serve others is often pitted with potholes; fear is often nothing more than thoughts gone wild...

I broke down several times while sitting alone in my kitchen, surrounded by my laptop, books, and meditation bell, stranded in the semidarkness of winter as ambulances and emergency vehicles continued to race by in a war zone. The crisis would pass if I was lucky enough to make it, I reminded myself many times. And I’d be entrusted to transmit what I’d turned to for peace once I was clear, to help others find calm and meaning in the turbulence of their own lives.

I did it after all.

I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned in collaboration with The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center in New York City starting this summer. We’re teaming up for a series called Cuentos, which will also be available online since many cannot join us in person. I’ll be teaching mindfulness meditation fundamentals as well as assigning writing prompts to encourage participants to reflect on the roads that have brought us here, to continue the healing.

You’re invited to join us.

For info go to:

https://www.charlievazquez.com/cuentos

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About Me?

Author and meditation teacher Charlie Vázquez is a founding member of Latino Rebels. A Bronx native, he’s designed and/or facilitated creative writing programs such as Bronx Memoir Project, DREAMing Out Loud, and #OurStoriesNYC, which have served low-income residents, undocumented students, and LGBTQI youth-of-color in collaboration with the Bronx Council on the Arts, PEN America, and the NYC Department of Health.

His latest project, Cuentos, was created in collaboration with The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center as a forum for contemplation, storytelling, and healing in the Age of Covid. Charlie consults with organizations on creative writing and wellness programs and is a member of the Sterling Network, a collective of cross-sector professionals collaborating on systems-level future-thinking in service to the low-income communities of New York City.

Contact: [email protected]