MADI- ZEN SQUARE GARDEN
Celebrate a collective calm with group meditation at MSG
IT’S rare that you can hear a pin drop in Madison Square Garden, but Sunday might just be the day for it. The Big Quiet, a mass meditation, will bring together thousands of Zen-seekers, sitting silently. Sure, it’ll have far less action than the typical NBA showdown. But its creator says it won’t be any less powerful. “The effect of meditating is just greater when more people are involved,” Jesse Israel, 32, tells The Post. “There’s just a feeling, a depth and a pull to it, when there’s a big group.” Israel, who co-founded music label Cantora Records in his NYU dorm room, started a monthly meditation group, Medi Club, in a buddy’s Soho living room in 2014. The following year, they expanded to iconic destinations throughout the city, including Lincoln Center, One World Observatory and a boat near the Statue of Liberty. Medi Club draws as many as 300 people to its gatherings, which are often held at North Williamsburg event space Dobbin St on the first Wednesday of every month. Israel expects that the Big Quiet at MSG, which seats about 19,500, will attract even more.
It will start at 10 a.m. with some socializing and a short lesson in the nondenominational meditation style Medi Club practices for anyone new to the group. The hourlong meditation will have a “sound bath” orchestrated by artist Sara Auster. After the meditation, there will be a performance from an all-female acoustic group, the Resistance Revival Chorus. Tickets to the 3 p.m. WNBA game between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx are included in the $40 Big Quiet admission fee (so after a day of quiet introspection, you can start cheering and booing).
And as solitary a practice as meditation can be, Israel says, expect to get to know your neighbor before and after the session.
“It’s not just a moment of quiet,” says the Williamsburg resident. “A big part of it is allowing people to socialize, and there’s a shared sense of accomplishment through [meditating] with other people.”