z2: Why I didn't want to bow or meditate

Just, really briefly, I want to describe my history with religion and meditation because I think I share the same history as a bunch of people and because I think it'll help explain some of my initial reluctance to get in to the whole “zen” thing.

#1 Religion: Raised Catholic and attended church every Sunday until I was 18. Basically, I wasn't that into my church and only went because it was what we did on Sunday. Once I went to college, it was gone from my life completely. However, in college, I had some experiences that confused me. There seemed to be a duality between a belief that everyone was equal (Love your neighbor as yourself) and a hierarchy (some people go to heaven and some go to hell). It felt hypocritical and exclusive: two things that rubbed me the wrong way. I think I over-generalized that feeling to all churches and just kind of stepped away from religion in general. If you had asked me back then what my religious beliefs were, I would have had to say something between atheist and agnostic with maybe some sort of paganism in there? Nothing really fit. I believed in humanity: that there was some sort of goodness/ basic human kindness in all of us and that that was what propelled the universe.

#2 Meditation: A friend of mine from high school once gave me a tour of Green Gulch (it's kind of like the Marin version of the San Francisco Zen center, but probably really different- sorry, don't know much about it). My friend was smiling the entire time he was showing me around and I could see how happy he was with his practice there. I, on the other hand, was mortified. When he showed me the tea room and told me all about the ceremony for drinking tea I thought, “How ridiculous! Why all these rules? Can't two people just sit together and drink tea?” Then he showed me the meditation hall and I was just sad. I knew nothing about meditation but when he explained to me that everyone comes in and faces the wall and sits in silence I just thought it was a total waste. I pictured all of these beautiful happy people (like my friend) turning away from each other instead of being together and sitting in silence instead of sharing their thoughts and laughter and individual selves with each other. I had a lot of respect for my friend and figured there was something good there but was very aware that it was definitely not for me.