While most of DePauw's students are cooped up in classrooms during Winter Term, Jason Fuller's meditation class meets at the Reï¬ection Center daily, allowing each student to connect with his or her core surrounded by a calming smell of incense and a pristine view of the quarry.
Fuller isolates his class at the Reï¬ection center providing the students the opportunity to utilize the space for reï¬ection and contemplation.
"This class introduces students to another way of knowing, an experiential way of knowing the self rather than an intellectual way to help students come to learn who they really are," Fuller said.
The class meets everyday from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. and
consists of two 25-minute meditation sessions separated by a 15 minute walking meditation. After the meditation, students relocate to the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics where they journal and conclude the day with a class discussion.
Because students are able to meet for two and a half to three hours, the class can be viewed as a mini retreat where the students can immerse themselves in the meditation process and become isolated from main campus.
This format of class is exactly what ï¬rst-year student Truc Le desired. Truc Le, who prefers to be called Bamboo, was thrilled to take the class. After an intense ï¬rst semester, a relaxing Winter Term was just what she needed.
Bamboo is from Vietnam where meditation and yoga hold great signiï¬cance. Unlike students in the West, she attends yoga and meditation for self-reï¬ection rather than ï¬tness purposes. Instead of focusing on the physical disciplines of yoga and meditation, Bamboo focuses on the seven energy Chakras. These Chakras connect to a person's mental and physical strength if regularly practiced.
Fuller said he had many goals in conducting the course, among them he hoped to generate an appreciation for the tradition of meditation.
"Pragmatically, I want to instill in them an appreciation of th meditative arts and an appreciation of the contemplative view of the world that spans on multiple traditions," Fuller said. "One of the goals of the class is to have students understand what a meditative life looks like and what it can do for them after experiencing a taste of meditation."
However, according to Fuller a more profound reason to meditate is the inkling of the depth dimension of life, dealing with the question of who we are at a deeper level; beyond social conditioning, beyond materialvbeing, and even beyond psychological conditioning. Fuller suggests that after removing these aspects of life individuals can really understand who they are by getting a sense of awareness or deep consciousness.