Harvard Zen

Wisdom Quarterly visits Harvard University and the Cambridge Zen Center

The way to Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center is as colorful as it offerings.

We went to see the scene at the Cambridge Zen Center, where Harvard elites can gather in silence. Until the questions start and life advice is sought.

Cambridge is the penultimate college town. And Harvard Square is its epicenter. MIT geniuses walk by remembering to chew, step, chew, step -- caught up in daydreams of ultimate reality and material sciences.

Garden Buddha at the Cambridge Zen Center (cambridgezen.com)

Modica Way in on the path to Cambridge Zen (Kwan Um school). And its array of heady graffiti is good preparation for the blank wall one will soon be staring at in zazen: Daydreams are as vivid as the imaginations of street artists.

The subway underground, art, Harvard Square, nascent nerd overlords... Mass. is an amazing place. But the jewel in the center of the lotus is surely the Mahindra Humanities Center. Its offering are potent and academic, rivaling UCLA's Mindfulness Awareness Research Center and Berkeley's Buddhist Institute, Dept. of Buddhist Studies, and Buddhist monastery.

Ah, to be bicoastal! Flying east and west, merging cultures, and watching Woody Allen movies in between would be the best of both worlds. The Midwest is the great divide, as most of Wisdom Quarterly's American readers hail from east of the Mississippi as our editors sit staring at the Pacific from under the Hollywood sign.

• The Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum provides an opportunity for faculty, students, and participants to discuss approaches to Buddhist studies that are as diverse as philology, intellectual history, anthropology, art history, literary studies, and religious studies. In addition to being interdisciplinary, lectures discuss Buddhism within a variety of geographic contexts, including South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. More