If you find yourself in need of an hour’s meditation – and a friendly space in which to do it – head on over to the Catskill Zen Circle, located on Main just past the intersection with Bridge Street.
Operated by Rodney Greenblat, the Zen Circle is a low-maintenance, hour-long meditation that’s held three times a week: Monday evenings, and Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
Each session is free, with an emphasis on community and accessibility. According to Rodney, traditional Zen meditation is more ritualized, involving little interaction between participants.
“It’s beautiful, but it’s very formalized,” he says. “Here, I just wanted to get to know everybody.”
Rodney’s personal path to Zen meditation has been a synchronistic one. Originally from the south, and trained at New York’s School of Visual Arts, he was initially hired by a licensing company at Sony to design “cute characters” that could be applied to a wide variety of products. This ultimately led to his involvement in video game production at PlayStation.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” he confesses. “I’m not a game type of person.” Nonetheless, Rodney found himself part of the creative team that created PaRappa the Rapper – an immensely successful video game often ranked as one of the best ever made.
“I always wondered what it was like to be involved in a hit,” he says, modesty tugging at the corners of his smile. “And it was great.”
It was during these professional trips to Japan that Rodney first encountered the presence of Buddhist temples. “I’d always been curious about Zen, actually, since I was a teenager. I wondered: ‘What are they doing in there?’ And none of my Japanese friends knew!”
He laughs at the memory. “It would be like saying to someone, ‘What do they do in a Catholic Church?’ If you didn’t know much about that tradition, you would just be like, ‘They… pray?’ So I never got a straight answer.”
This all changed when Rodney moved back to New York. Re-settled, he decided to search in earnest for a Zen temple he could visit. “And it was right around the corner!” His face lights up at the memory of this discovery. “From where I lived! It was, like, right there. So I really got into it right away.”
The temple in question is called Village Zendo, located on the Lower West Side off West Broadway and St. Johns Lane. “It’s a big operation,” he says. “I mean, the space isn’t big, but they have a lot of members.”
Beginning as a student in 2006, Rodney’s involvement eventually extended to facilitating outreach projects like musical events and poetry readings. In time, he became Zendo’s executive director, a position he held for two years. “I got to know the administrative side really well. And that gave me a lot of confidence to do this, to open the Catskill circle.
“Their training has opened my mind in so many ways. And they’ve allowed me to express my years of training in my own way. That is what I’m doing here at the Catskill Zen Circle.”
Rodney and his wife, artist Deena Lebo, moved upstate to live in the village full-time seven years ago. The local ties they’ve formed since then are reflected in the quiet, unassuming atmosphere of the Circle itself: attendance is typically four to eight people, and at the end of each session, Rodney quietly invites participants to share their thoughts.
I ask him if he sees any parallels between his career as an artist and his work with Zen. “There are no answers on how to be an artist,” Rodney replies. “Just like there isn’t one to be a Zen student. It’s a matter of practice.
“All the problems and suffering you can see in yourself and in your town and in the country and in the world – it comes from people. There is no separation between you and what’s happening. This practice is a way of kind of pointing that out.”
And to those who are a little reluctant, or skeptical about embracing meditation, Rodney simply says: “Come and try it! You don’t have to be into self-help or spirituality or religion. Just come and sit down… and hear your own thoughts for a while.”
Catskill Zen Circle meditations are held at 346 Main Street in Catskill every Monday evening from 6 to 7 PM, and every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 9:30 to 10:30 AM. Learn more by visiting Rodney’s website here.
Ben Rendich is a filmmaker and writer. He’s in pre-production on his first feature, Sweet Confusion, and has a blog where he writes movie reviews and essays called Reflections on a Silver Screen. He lives in Catskill.