The Tropicana orange juice carton holds the secret to meditative wisdom, with its quote of "Nothing added, nothing taken away, not from concentrate," according to experienced meditation practitioner Dean Sluyter.
Sluyter welcomed 30 students to Tuesday evening's presentation of "Just Being: The Way of Natural Meditation."
He noted, however, that the event's heading as a meditation workshop was a little misleading. "I prefer to call it a play shop," Sluyter said.
Sluyter began his "play shop" by debunking popular misconceptions about meditation.
Unlike the widespread notion of meditation as a practice that requires intense concentration, he stresses that mediation is "not complicated."
He also stripped away its "spiritual" connotations, which many associate with "seeing stained glass and hearing organ music."
Sluyter, instead, defined mediation's goal as finding a "common core" that transcends cultural stereotypes.
Sluyter noted meditation's practical benefits, such as lowered blood pressure, increased humor, higher GPAs and decreased anxiety.
He then initiated simple stretching and breathing exercises as students meditated silently, focusing on what Sluyter called a state of "just being."
After the brief meditation session, Sluyter explained how to handle the thoughts that bombard the beginner's mind in its meditative state.
He recognized that "as students, you are trained to pursue and follow thoughts. Now, it's time to meditate."
To meditate properly, he advised not to push thoughts away, defining "pushing away as another way of holding on." Instead, he urged students to "relax [their] grip" on persistent thoughts, which will eventually slip away "like small puffs of smoke in the sky."
Sluyter told students to focus on the "raw, unprocessed, uncooked experience" of the present moment, as opposed to concentrating on thoughts of the past or future.
Sluyter not only highlighted meditation's practical purposes, but also related it to students' everyday lives. He observed that for all people, their space, their money and their time are limited, and that they attempt to resolve their predicaments by pursuing "that MBA from Wharton" or "working out at the gym."
Sluyter recognized the importance of such activities in daily life, but noted that seeking human comforts fails to "solve the basic problem of human life -- that we are limited."
To breach limitations, he urged the present students to realize that fulfillment comes from "within."
"I thought he presented an interesting angle of fulfillment, that the goals you set aren't necessarily your only means of happiness," College freshman Susan McIlvaine said, praising the presentation.
Sluyter recently published a book called The Zen Commandments: Ten Suggestions for a Life of Inner Freedom.
