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Please welcome James Kershner, a new ALL coordinator who just completed offering a six week course in mindfulness.
Kershner has a long relationship with Cape Cod and with mindfulness. For many years he composed a column and was the Sunday Editor at the Cape Cod Times. After leaving that position, he spent an equal number of years teaching writing courses at the Cape Cod Community College where he is a professor emeritus. He became aware of ALL through the Community College connection and in the fall of 2023 he coordinated a course on the history, background and benefits of mindfulness meditation.
This highly successful course introduced a variety of meditation techniques and explored the benefits of mediation practice for health and stress management. The course also introduced guided and advanced meditation techniques. Students were encouraged to meditate between classes.
Kershner first learned about meditation as a college freshman in 1966 when he says he may have been a “hippie.” Meditation was sweeping many campuses and he subsequently took a workshop with teachers from the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. This exploration was followed by a gap in his practice when he found himself managing stress with alcohol and drugs. By 1990 he was clean and superb. Meditation was recommended to him as something to help manage stress and contribute to his health.
In 1997 he attended a retreat with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck New York. Participants were given the opportunity to follow the Four Noble Truths and accept the precepts of mindfulness training. This included replacing drugs and alcohol with a sangha and personal practice. The directive given was that if you don't have such a community available to you, then you should start one.
Kershner pondered this message while practicing walking meditation in the woods on the outskirts of the Omega retreat center. The problem he pondered was that there was no sangha on Cape Cod. At that moment Thich Nhat Hanh unexpectedly came along. Kershner's insight, after seeing Thich Nhat Hanh, was that the directive to establish a sangha was meant for him as well as others. Kershner returned to Cape Cod, and put flyers up in coffee shops, libraries and churches.
That was one of several watershed moments. The Cape Cod Sangha, formed in 1997, continues to meet for meditation every Sunday at Unity on Cape Cod in Hyannis 4:30 – 6:00 pm. In 2002 Kerschner was ordained by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. He recently published a memoir on his journey titled “Becoming Peacemaker: A Spritual Memoir.”
If this topic is of interest to you, you are in luck! James Kershner plans to offer another six-week mindfulness course in the Spring of 2024. He wants everyone to know that “Mindfulness is paying attention without judgment in the present moment. It is simpler than you think. And if you learn the practice of mindfulness, anything is possible.”
Please click the following button for a link to James Kershner's memoir “Becoming Peacemaker:A Spiritual Memoir” and his other highly rated publication "Elements of News Writing".
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