On Wednesday, Abbott Jian Ying from the Zen Center of Sunnyvale visited the senior class to present at a LIFE wellness assembly about methods of relaxation.

As a Zen Buddhist, he shared his own experiences with meditation, or as he called it, “mindful relaxation.”

Abbot Ying earned a doctoral degree in electrical engineering in 1996 from Ohio State University. Dissatisfied with his life and his inability to control his own mind and emotions, he decided to fully devote himself to Zen Buddhism in an effort to find a more meaningful existence. He was ordained as a monk in 1998 at the Chung Tai Chan Monastery.

Throughout Abbot Ying’s presentation, he referred to three primary analogies: the “home” button, a sponge, and a cup filled with muddy water.

Abbott Ying said that mindful relaxation is equivalent to pressing the “home” button on an iPhone.

“Remember when you are stressed, all you have to do is hit the home button,” he said.

Additionally, he expressed his belief that when someone is stressed, like a squeezed sponge, and think they cannot muster any more strength, “you can relax the sponge through meditation, it can absorb more, and you can regain your strength,” he said.

Finally, he paralleled mindful relaxation to a cup filled with muddy water.

“You would let the cup set so all the dirt will go to the bottom, leaving the water clear,” he said. “Meditation can do that for you.”

Many students found the presentation to be calming and relaxing. “It was nice to know that I could relate to most of the things he said in terms of stress and constantly thinking,” Kathryn Wolfson (12) said.

“[The talk] was really insightful and informative, and I thought that his techniques [for teaching] were really interesting, especially since he used the home button,” Dylan Qian (12) said.

After this presentation, the seniors broke off into smaller groups to practice various types of relaxation, including yoga, music and poetry, walking, and observing fish.