Dzogchen Center

We met up with our liaison, Juliet, in Harvard Square at a little cafe called Veggie Planet. The serendipity started there. Veggie Planet is owned by the woman who wrote my favorite vegetarian cookbook of all times, Vegetarian Planet. So, first we got to sample a recipe and see how it was meant to taste, not the way it tastes after I get through with it. What fun. Then we walked through a ridiculously cold night over to the Quaker meeting house (oh the irony) for the service. (When I say ridiculously cold, I mean Mother Nature was just over the top. Why so cold? Why?) We sat right in the center of the meetinghouse on these burgundy pillows and I was a bit unsure what to do. Being in the center, naturally I suffered a little bit of performance anxiety - would I stand right? Would I hold my hands right, bow right, chant right? I just followed along and aside from being half a beat behind, and having strange foot cramps that I don't want to remember, I think I did okay. Luckily, no one was judging. As a matter of fact, Tibetan Buddhists don't really go for the whole judging/labeling thing which I find very soothing. If there's any place to perform ungainly acrobatics in order to shake the cramp from your foot, the center of a Buddhist service would probably be the place.