Back in the late 80s, I was a stand-up comic. And one weekend I opened for Jerry Seinfeld at a club in New Jersey.  Now, at the time, Jerry had been commenting in the press that he was really into Zen meditation (this is after he previously commented about how he was in Scientology).

Anyway, during the course of the shows we did together we talked a lot about meditation Zen and Buddhism.

In fact, Jerry found it a bit disconcerting that we spent all of our time between the shows discussing Zen meditation and not comedy.

At one point, I asked him if he had been on a Zen Buddhist meditation retreat, a 7-day sesshin.

He said he hadn't.

I said, "You can read as many Zen books and go to Zen temples and sleep on a Zen bed — whatever that might be –  but to really understand Zen you need to actually practice Zen meditation. And doing a meditation retreat gives you a real condensed taste of meditation practice.  It's like you go through a year's worth of ups and downs and problems and breakthroughs in seven days. And the phenomenon of having all of that happen in a relatively short period of time, along with some instructions about how to deal with what's happening during your meditation practice, is a powerful immersion. And this gives you different kind of understanding than you can ever get by reading a meditation book or by sitting in your Zen meditation garden for 20 minutes a day."

I could see that he was considering this idea. Then he said, "I can't afford to take seven days off from work."

I turned back to him and said, "Jerry, you made $15,000 tonight.  You can afford to do whatever you want."

Remember this was in the late 80s.  I don't know if Jerry still has any interest in Zen, but if he couldn't afford to do a zen meditation retreat then, I'm sure he can now.

Next Category: Transcendental Meditation

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