Pamela Weiss attempts to turn on her tape recorder but becomes distracted by the tangle of cords that connect the microphone, the recorder, and the speaker. When she plugs one in, the other doesn’t work. “Just one more minute,” she repeats, her voice high and concerned. She finally gives it up, slightly miffed, after five minutes of plugging and unplugging gadgets. Her plan to record the dharma talk—Buddhist teachings—for her website will have to wait, she says.

Alex Goldstein has settled on a black zafu—meditation cushion—on the Persian rug in front of Weiss, his tattooed neck exposed as he lifts the crown of his head gently toward the lofty ceiling. After the meditation, he offers to help Weiss fix her microphone problems. He has been in a band since he was very young, and understands P.A. systems well. Although Weiss and Goldstein are from two distinctly different generations—Weiss is a Baby-Boomer meditation teacher and Goldstein is a Generation-X tattoo artist—the two have gathered together to perform the same practice.

This month marks forty years since the Summer of Love, and meditation practice is back in vogue with the kids again. Spirit Rock and Green Gulch Zen Center, both Bay-Area meditation centers, have reported a noticeable rise in visits from younger generations, as well as an increase of people of all ages, over the past few years. Additional meditation groups are sprouting up and young adults are mingling there with their parents’ generation in bulky numbers. At such a time when technology drives everyday American lives, it’s certainly easy to see why a moment of peace could be sweet. Blackberries, iPhones, and Myspace are insistent, and meditation is able to balance their demands. It is an echo to the Baby-Boomers, who came out of the deep drug haze of the 1960s and 1970s looking for peace of mind.

Chinese immigrants came to the United States to work during the Gold Rush in the mid-19th century and brought Buddhism into early American awareness. It quietly integrated itself into U.S. culture as immigrants came west, but it never really caught the society’s attention. It may have lingered in the minds of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, writers of the Transcendentalist period, who were both known to study Buddhism and Hinduism. Monasteries popped up in several U.S. cities early on, but the practice remained asleep until The Beat Generation picked up on it in the late 1940s. “They were the first Americans to really start investigating Buddhism and meditation,” said Wes Nisker, meditation teacher and writer of The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom. “They were my mentors who lured me to California and turned me on to meditating.”

As the Beats—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others—began to write prolifically about jazz, meditation, and the dharma, Americans slowly caught on. By the 1960s, meditation and Buddhism was something new that was exotic and hip. “It was the spiritual revolution,” said Nisker. “We were an adventuresome group and we were looking for an alternative to the consumer culture.” Meditation became an important element of the hippie movement, but by the 1980s, its popularity dwindled. Nisker said that the economic circumstances at the time might have played a part in its waning interest. “People became much more fearful about whether they had a place in the economic system,” he said. In the 1990s, yoga became popular and more available, but meditation groups and centers dwindled. It wasn’t until recently, Nisker agreed, that more Americans—including a younger generation—have reexamined meditation as an everyday practice.

Meditation can take a variety of different forms, with the goal of mindfulness underscoring the technique. The popular practice of Vipassana—Insight Meditation—is a universal method with the objective to still the mind in order to receive direct experience. Many early students begin the practice with a simple focus upon the experience of breathing. As the mind floats in and out of memory, creates future stories, and makes to-do lists, the practitioner is able to gently come back to the breath as a lighthouse. This allows the mind to somewhat still itself, which is the ultimate objective of the practice. Meditation can be done using a variety of other different focus points. Some use concentration meditation, where the practitioner brings attention back to a chosen object. Others do walking or eating meditations, where one is consumed with the experience of performing these everyday tasks with mindfulness.

Many young people have found other, more dynamic ways to practice meditation that compliments their sitting practice. They find that they desire more extroverted means in order to still the mind. Some do movement meditation, such as yoga or Kung Fu. Justin Hughes, 23, is a Taiko drummer who practices meditation in this ritualistic Japanese-style of drumming. Before they drum, the group does a half an hour of movement meditation that includes stretching and breathing exercises. “Then you put all of your energy into the drum and you’re shouting at the top of your lungs like you mean it,” he said. “It feels very healthy and cleansing, just like sitting does.” The experience of mindfully drumming encourages a deep focus in order to still and empty out the mind.

This sudden new interest in these different meditation practices may be that young people are tapping into recent scientific revelations that it has the potential to transform their lives. The benefits of meditation are vast. The physiological effects have been shown to reduce blood pressure and drop cholesterol levels. People who meditate sleep and breathe better. And the best part is that it decreases the aging process. But there are also profound psychological effects. In a University of Massachusetts Medical School study, neuroscientists found that those who meditate shift their brain waves from the right frontal cortex to their left frontal cortex. This lowers stress levels significantly, as well as depression and anxiety. Practitioners also experience less fear and decreased irritability. “It has this entering effect to where it reaches out to the rest of your day, even when you’re sitting for just 20 minutes,” said meditation teacher and author of Hardcore Zen, Brad Warner. “Things don’t affect you quite as strongly emotionally, and you experience a sense of calmness and balance.”

Many of the younger generation come to meditation through 12-step programs looking for peace of mind. Jeremy Mills is a punk rocker and a recovering alcoholic, who was addicted to drinking for over ten years. He is a tall man in his early thirties, with a gown out Mohawk and a nose ring. “PUNK ROCK” is tattooed on his knuckles, and he wears blue Dickies trousers and beaten dark blue Vans shoes on most days. Before he stopped drinking three years ago—and when he was still living in his car—one of his friends gave him a book about Buddhism. An avid reader, he soaked in the material, and used it years later to aid with his recovery. He said that meditation has helped him enjoy the present. “So much of my life has been killing time between things I want to do and I noticed that I was missing my life,” he said, sipping a can of Coke at a busy coffee shop. Meditation allowed him to slow down and enjoy the still moments, without the help of alcohol.

Mills also uses meditation to prepare himself for shows before his band plays. He’s the singer for San Francisco punk band, Officer Down. Before his performance, he experiences a great deal of anxiety that he’s unable to drink away. “Every other guy in the band can have a beer or a shot of whiskey,” he said. “But I have to sit through that feeling. Sometimes it can get uncomfortable.” During those hard places, he will sit at the bar with his head down and pay attention to his breath. “It empties out the bullshit in my head,” said Mills. Meditation is attractive to this demographic because it allows addicts to examine the root of their suffering. “We’re addicted to our minds and we never get anything done because of it,” he said. “You can’t use your mind to solve the problems of the mind.”’

Mills also had a problem with the second step in his recovery program—believing in a power greater than himself. He grew up a strict Catholic and chucked the whole idea of religion as he grew older. Buddhism was able to provide a spiritual base for him where he could turn inward to alleviate his suffering and feel connected to others at the same time. In Buddhist practice, there is no worshipping of gods, yet there is still an air of spirituality to the practice. It is that unique balance that allows people to have a more realistic view of the concept a higher power. Many who are coming from 12-step recovery programs say that Buddhism appealed to them because of this philosophy.

Some young people reported growing up with meditation because their parents were interested in the practice. Many of them rebelled for a while and left Buddhism. But they always circled back somehow. Clay Vorheis, 20, grew up in a household where mediation was as much of a staple as his breakfast cereal was. His parents were Buddhist and raised him that way, but he renounced his practice in the name of independence. When he was in middle school, a well-known youth outreach counselor from the Zen Center in San Francisco, Ethan Patchell, called him. “It appealed to me because Ethan was hip-hop and I thought he was cool,” said Vorheis. He quickly changed his mind about meditation and started to attend retreats with a youth group that Ethan led along with Noah Levine, who wrote Dharma Punx. “Ethan was hip-hop and Noah was punk and they were hanging out together,” he said. “It really showed me how stupid cliques were.”

When Noah Levine wrote his memoir, Dharma Punx, in 2003 it encouraged young people to meditate together in numbers. The Urban Dharma meditation group sprouted up around different metropolitan areas in the United States, and slowly kids heard about it and began showing up. San Francisco’s sangha—meditation community—meets each Friday night at the Cultural Integration Fellowship on Fulton Street. The building is a quiet brick ashram with steps that lead up to a glass and wrought iron door. Inside, shoes are scattered everywhere, and it smells as old as a grandfather’s house. To the left is the meeting room and it’s silent. Over fifty people sit in chairs and on zafus on the floor, breathing quietly with eyes closed. White curtains are blowing in the wind. The room feels chilly but refreshing.

Gene Lushtak is leading the group this August evening. He’s a handsome man with dark hair and a 5 o’clock salt-and-pepper shadow. He sits cross-legged in a tall chair, his gray shirt crumpled with the crunch of his stomach. He’s explaining a new text-message game that he invented to inspire people to meditate every day. “It sprouted out of a deep confession with some other teachers,” he says. “We admitted that we skipped days of meditating—and we were teaching it. It wasn’t fair to our students.”

The game is to form a small sangha of three or four people and to commit to meditate every day for two weeks. After each person in the group sits for at least 15 minutes, that person sends a text message to the rest. Each group member can only miss one day of sitting during the two weeks. If someone misses more than one day, the entire group disbands. “The whole point of this game is to experience the support of the sangha,” says Lushtak. It is also the opportunity for the group to use modern tools to practice old methods. “It’s a way to use the same technology that alienates us,” he says. “So that we can feel more connected.”

The younger generation is so plugged in that it’s difficult for people to take a break sometimes. There are millions of users on Myspace and virtually everyone owns a cell phone. The practice of meditating can reveal those ways in which most people are longing to stay connected. At such a time when Americans are profoundly estranged from each other through technology, meditation is literally like emptying out the inbox and deleting the trash. But living via email is not a valid way to stay joined with the human race, said Rachel Beals, 30, a massage therapist who teaches meditation. At those times when she notices that she’s overextended through the virtual world, she sees it as an opportunity for her to fly back to herself. “I have to stay connected to myself first through my meditation practice,” she said. “I’ve got to get centered in the present moment at those times.” Then the connection to others happens organically.

Advertising has also brought meditation to the forefront of young American minds. Lately, marketers have tapped into the “green” movement, and capitalized on it. Magazines and advertisements constantly emphasize simplicity and mindfulness. A recent Pier-1 Imports television commercial pictured a woman in the lotus position with eyes closed, meditating. The scene looked calm—with candles lit and pillows stacked all around her—and it looked as though it smelled nice. Ads like these tap into the human desire to be free from suffering, and to be at peace. It may not matter how exposure to meditation happens. Just as AIDS-awareness made our culture talk about sex, promoting meditation could be for the greater good. In the end, meditating also brings with it a sense of mindfulness that may counter the American desire to consume products.

Meditation teachers have differing opinions about the present re-interest in the practice since the trough that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Some teachers said that it has something to do with the anti-war movement. Young people can’t read the news without seeing profound problems and it felt the same way in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Other teachers said that meditation teachers have matured by 20 years, bringing a much wiser perspective to their students. There also seems to be a rise in access to teachers. Walt Opie of Spirit Rock Retreat Center said, “We are at a point in time where there are a lot of great dharma teachers located right here in the West that we can now take advantage of. You don’t have to go to Asia to practice any more.”

Pamela Weiss is one of these good dharma teachers who has been deepening her own practice and sharing what she’s learned. She trained for many years at Tassajara monastery and studied with Jack Kornfield—a big deal in the Vipassana world who also founded Spirit Rock Retreat Center. Weiss began the Wednesday night meditation group this summer as a compliment to another, bigger, existing group. She saw the need in the community for a more intimate setting that would build up the sangha, as more and more people find the practice. “We wanted to make the teachings personal and accessible, and to integrate the teaching into the fabric of daily life,” she said.

Tonight is the seventh meeting and this time Weiss’ microphone is fixed, as well as her tape recorder. She has embodied an empowered manner of working with her technology, a stark contrast to last week’s disaster. She even knows how to turn the lights on this time. After sitting in meditation for 40 minutes, she tells the story of a man locked up on San Quentin’s death row who found the dharma. “He found freedom, even though he was incarcerated,” she says, her face lit up by the warm glow of the lamps.

This man took a vow to end the suffering of all beings, if he was in the position to do so. One day, another inmate picked up a rock to throw at a seagull that landed in the prison yard, but the committed bodhisattva—the man who was dedicated to the practice—stopped him from throwing it. “Why should I,” asked the inmate, getting angry. “Because that bird has my wings,” he replied. “It didn’t really make sense,” said Weiss. “But everyone understood what he meant.”

According to Buddhist teachings, everyone is incarcerated. Whether imprisoned through technology, addiction, or simply being a slave to the mind, meditation can be a way to free up some of the suffering that accompanies this confinement. Americans began to explore this 2,500-year-old practice in the 1960s, and it is being reexamined again now, perhaps more seriously. Meditation allows us to take a breath and remember that we are living in present time. It helps to mature our minds and preserve our bodies. In time, it may be just the antidote to economic and global hardship.