Las Vegas Zen center helps attendees clear their minds and focus on the present

As a man beats a Moktak, others follow the tempo of the traditional Korean wooden percussion instrument with a steady chant.

“Shin-myo jang-gu dae-da-ra-ni …”

Words from the work of The Great Dharani ring throughout the large room. The men, holding books, read the chant in Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism, instead of English to allow themselves to clear their minds.

“Instead of focusing on the chant, you’d be thinking, ‘Oh, what’s for dinner tonight? What are we going to read later? … But if you don’t know what you’re chanting, then you’re just chanting,” says 34-year-old Josh Milonas, a northwest valley resident and Zen Center of Las Vegas student.

Milonas has attended classes at the center — in the southwest valley near Rainbow Boulevard — for more than a year and recently began studying the five precepts of the Buddhist practice.

That’s the point of Zen: to cut off thinking and clear the mind. Chanting is one of the three techniques Zen practice uses to eliminate thinking; the others are bowing and meditation. None of the techniques is devotional, and Zen is not a religion; it is a practice and a lifestyle.

Zen involves focusing on the present mind by not getting distracted by the past or future, which are of the projected mind. Participants believe that the present mind is all humans ever own.

Milonas explains Zen as simplifying life and embracing each moment while it’s happening.

“Wherever I’m at, whatever I’m doing, I’m just 100 percent there,” Milonas says. “If we’re talking, it’s just you and I talking. That’s Zen right there.”

Milonas continues, “If you’re at home with your significant other, you’re just with them. You’re not at the office. You’re only talking to them.”

He is one of about 40 members who practice at the Zen Center of Las Vegas, founded in 1994 by Thom Pastor, now 70. Pastor, formally known as Zen Master Ji Haeng, is the center’s abbott and guiding teacher. He said he has been formally practicing Zen for more than 30 years.

The center’s physical location has bounced around Las Vegas, with a stop on Harmon Avenue in the east valley. It’s now at the Chaiya Meditation Monastery, 7925 S. Virtue Court. Pastor said he moved the center because of financial issues and hopes to secure a new location soon. It is free to attend practices, which are on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, but the center is funded by donations.

Before the center’s inception, there was no place with similar offerings in Las Vegas. Music brought Pastor, who is from New Jersey, to Las Vegas in the 1970s; he says he played saxophone for artists such as Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Sammy Davis Jr. He says he opened the facility after recognizing a need in the city.

“In Las Vegas we don’t just tolerate distraction; we celebrate it,” Pastor says. “If you practice here, you can practice anywhere.”

30 MINUTES OF SILENCE

On a recent Tuesday evening, about a dozen men sat on cushions — while older men sat in chairs — about a foot apart from one another. Pastor says there usually are more female students in practice.

Orange-textured walls and heavy gold-colored curtains surrounded them in the Dharma room. Flowers filled the front of the room, where three sets of Buddha statues peered peacefully into the distance.

After the chants were read, Pastor, in a long gray robe, sat with his legs crossed on a cushion facing the Buddhas and began the evening’s practice by meditating for 30 minutes. Then everyone turned toward the walls and got into a meditation position with their eyes slightly open.

The main purpose of Zen meditation is to focus on “mind sitting, not body sitting, so anyone of any age, any kind of physical infirmity, can meditate,” Pastor says.

After 30 minutes a Chugpi — another traditional Dharma percussion instrument — sounded to indicate that the meditation was complete.

Milonas says he initially went to the center to tackle anxiety issues. After attending, he says, he became aware of how much thinking was consuming him.

“My brain was busier than I thought, and I was kind of ignorant of my suffering,” Milonas says.

He says that as he continued practicing Zen, Pastor reminded him that there is nothing to attain in Zen practice.

“When I first got here I had an agenda,” Milonas says. “I wanted to get rid of my anxiety, get rid of depression or whatever, but Zen Master Ji Haeng (Pastor) reminded me that if you’re trying to attain something, you might even get farther and farther away from it.”

Visitors don’t have to be Buddhist to practice Zen, Milonas says. Anyone can come to learn the techniques, then use them in everyday life.

To reach View intern reporter Kailyn Brown, email kbrown@viewnews.com or call 702-387-5233. Find her on Twitter: @KailynHype.