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I went to meditate at the Buddhist center today. I’ve never been to this gompa. Yet I was warmly welcomed and in a few moments knew all of the people there and had a wonderful practice together.

There’s something amazing about the fact that you can walk into any meditation center in the world and immediately feel like part of one big family, as if you’d known them forever. Maybe it’s partly a matter of personality, but surely only in part.

Meditation brings people closer on many levels. At first it’s more the physical and rational aspects, but with time a bond is born that has a much deeper dimension.

For many years I practiced with a group of yogis, and in the periods when we spent many hours doing various practices together, an understanding would appear between us that goes beyond normal understanding and experiencing a relationship with another person. One of us could say how they felt during the practice and the other person was experiencing that same state at the same time.

Later, when we no longer practiced so much, it rarely happened to us.

Now, when I walked inside, I felt a trace of that understanding between all of us. Even though I didn’t know a single one of these people before, I felt that I partly understand them and have an understanding with them on that level on which we function during meditation.