Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 03/20/2019 with Rebecca Li

Episode Date: March 22, 2019

The Rubin Museum of Art presents a weekly meditation session led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area, with each session focusing on a specific work of art. This podcast is recorded in front of a live audience, and includes an opening talk, a 20-minute sitting session, and a closing discussion. The guided meditation begins at 27:00. If you would like to attend Mindfulness Meditation sessions in person or learn more, please visit our website at RubinMuseum.org/meditation. This program is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. Rebecca Li led this meditation session on March 20, 2019. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/rebecca-li-03-20-2019

Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Eshelman. Every Wednesday at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea, we present a meditation session led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area. This podcast is a recording of our weekly practice. If you would like to join us in person, please visit our website at rubinmuseum.org meditation. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center. In the description for each episode, you will find information about the theme for that week's session,

including an image of a related artwork chosen from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Hi everyone, good afternoon. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art and to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice. My name is Dawn Eshelman. It's great to be here with you. Thanks for joining us. We're talking this month about reflection or reflective practice because we've been talking a lot about intention setting and looking ahead, making commitments for what's to come. But the other side of that coin is looking back, taking account.

It's another aspect to creating a full awareness. to creating a full awareness. And it's something that we utilize in our meditative practice as well, kind of checking in. How are things going? Present moment, but also just taking account. And it's different than grasping, right? Than looking back and trying to rewrite the past or wishing something would

have gone differently. It's more of a wider look and an aspect of awareness. So today we're looking at a map. And it's an interesting tool, I think, to use to consider this concept because, I don't know, do we look at maps very much anymore? I feel like GPS has taken over. But looking at a map, a physical map that you spread out on a table is a really different experience, I think. You, as the viewer, can kind of zoom in and zoom out yourself with your own eyes. And you can look not only at where you're going, but where you've been. And so it's with that in mind that we are considering this artwork together here today. This is not just any map. It's a pilgrimage map.

This is Wutai Shan, the Five Terrace Mountains, and it is a group of mountains in northern China that are believed to be the abode of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Manjushri. And this is a very important Buddhist pilgrimage site, and it has been for more than 1,500 years. So since the 6th century, there have been more than 200 temples, shrines, stupas on the slopes of these mountains. And there are winding paths with tiny travelers as they link to one another, suggesting different possible itineraries for one's trip here illustrated on this map. This is 19th century. This is ink on cotton.

And at the center, you will see the most prominent monastery, which appears much larger than the others. It's right in the center here, the big white stupa. And this is Poseidon. This is Bodhisattva Peak. And a masked dance procession is the focal point of the ritual activity on the mountain. It's leading down from the monastery down the center of the map. So we'll talk more about this idea of reflection, reflective practice, and how that might relate to

a map and a pilgrimage, in fact, with our teacher today, Rebecca Lee. So nice to have you back, Rebecca. Rebecca is a Dharma heir in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen. She started practicing meditation in 1995 and completed her teacher's training with Master Sheng Yen in 99 to become a Dharma and meditation instructor. She trained with Simon Child to lead intensive retreats and received full Dharma transmission in 2016. And Rebecca's writings can be found at RebeccaLee.org. She's the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community and a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey,

where she also serves as the faculty director of the Alan Daly Center for the Study of Social Justice. Please welcome her back, Rebecca Lee. Thank you, Don. It's lovely to be back and practicing with you on this month's theme on reflection. I was telling Don why I chose today's artwork. She talked about this pilgrimage map of one of several holy mountains in Buddhism in China,

Wu Taishan. And this is actually the only mountain that I have been to on a pilgrimage with my current teacher, Simon Chow, and also another teacher who had passed away, John Crook. Actually, he asked me to help organize that pilgrimage. And so when I look at this map, it brought back memory from that pilgrimage. And so when I look at this map, it brought back memory from that pilgrimage,

and in particular, something incredibly valuable that I learned from a very old Chinese master I met on that pilgrimage trip. So I thought I would share that with you. One of the monasteries that we visited was the most active Chan monastery in China, not in Wutai Shan, but somewhere along the route of our pilgrimage. And this very old master, who was in his 90s at that time, over 10 years ago,

asked a very intriguing question. Are we a good person when we do not do bad things? Hmm. Are you a good person if you do not do bad things? We are compelled to say, yeah, I don't do bad things. But we kind of felt it was a trick question. It was a trick question intended to get us reflecting, get us reflecting on our practice. And this can be done at many levels because he was speaking to the group of us who were all teaching the Dharma in some way.

I felt at one level he wanted to get us to be reflecting, to see if we are being complacent in our practice. Are we thinking that, oh, I'm pretty good, you know, I'm not doing any bad things. And when Don was talking about the map, it reminds me of many teachings in the Dharma that really serves as a map for our path, for our path of cultivation.

One set concept actually is the teaching of the Ten Virtues, which is an elaboration of the five precepts. Many people think of precepts as restrictions for our behavior, but it's really a map, a map for how we can live our life in accordance to wisdom and compassion. So this map can actually be divided into three parts, how to conduct ourselves in our action, in interaction with others, our speech, and also our mind. Some of you might have heard of these practices, such as refraining from killing or stealing or sexual misconduct or taking intoxicants that dull our mind

that cause us to make all kinds of mistakes. So many of you here, chances are you're not out killing people or stealing. And so we think, like, I'm good. You know, I'm pretty good. I'm not doing all these bad things. But, of course, refraining from hurting others wouldn't be enough. That's at one level what this master was talking about. Are you a good person when we don't do bad things? Yeah, like we are not hurting others,

but we also cultivate in compassion. We bring in joy to others. So the cultivation of ten virtues, which is more than refraining from hurting others in our action, more than refraining from hurting others in our action, is to also find ways to bring love and protection to others in the way that is allowed by causes and conditions. And the other part of this cultivation of ten virtues is the speech. In Five Precepts, we talk about not lying, refraining from lying, which in itself is

tricky at times. It's not that straightforward, right? But in the cultivation of turn virtues, it was elaborated into refraining from not just not lying, refraining from engaging in divisive speech, refraining from harsh speech, refraining from frivolous speech, frivolous chatter, frivolous chatter that, I don't know, maybe you have experienced that when we are being talked at by someone's frivolous chatter. Is that enjoyable? We might, without meaning, without knowing that we might actually be causing suffering to others and also kind of scatter our mind. So just thinking about when we are talking with each other, these four virtues

can serve as a map to help us think about, huh, am I using speech in a way that is in accordance with wisdom and compassion? Am I talking about something that is very harsh, that's just so critical, and it's kind of inciting hatred in my mind, anger in someone's mind. Is it being compassionate? Is it in accordance with wisdom? Am I perpetuating these hateful, angry thoughts in my mind? Is it that is unhelpful? thoughts in my mind. Is it that is unhelpful? So this set of practice can help us as a map in our practice. And divisive speech, are we even aware of engaging in that? Sometimes when we start talking, we just get carried away. We start talking, talking, talking, and then get more and more excited. And then it's just them, and then that awful them. And then in our mind, we begin to create this idea of exaggerated idea

of some very bad, bad, evil them versus us. And are we aware of that? And so in our meditative practice, as we engage in the practice of settling the mind, in allowing the mind to have more clear awareness. This is when we can see, catch ourselves falling into that habit, because it's very enticing.

It feels good to feel that energy, talking about something sometimes, or being very critical being very harsh and we might not be clear that we are engaging in harsh or divisive speech and that fills our mind with hatred but also fill other people's heart with hatred and also maybe fear. It makes them feel anxious that maybe you might be talking about them that same way with someone else. So the practice of ten virtues can serve as a map for us to reflect on our action and on speech.

reflect on our action and our speech. And of course, it's not just about refraining from frivolous or harsh or divisive speech. How do we make use of our speech to cultivate compassion and wisdom, to bring joy to others? Do we remember to do that? Do we even think of doing that? Well, you might think, well, what do I do?

Well, do we engage in the practice of seeing encouraging things to others, which is an act of generosity, which is, it is in accordance with compassion. Or very often we just don't think of that. Something, someone did something, and then we might only remember to think about what they can do better. But can we also remember to encourage them, at least trying,

or recognize what someone has done. Recognizing that someone has done something is a very useful practice for us to cultivate this clear awareness because we usually take what other people do for granted. because we usually take what other people do for granted. And we're practicing to remember to say something that acknowledge and recognize and think what they do. It's in the self-practice of cultivating this clear awareness. We have to be aware of what others are doing to help us

that they might not have otherwise done, and not take that for granted. Not only the habit of taking things for granted. And then the mind. The three of the ten virtues of the mind is cultivating the virtue of refraining from giving rise to craving and aversion and delusion. That tends to be the one that is invisible or not the part of our practice that's obvious to us. And when we are setting our intention, I was walking through the exhibit out there over

a week ago, that thing that tells you to type in your intention and move the wheel in a clockwise direction. You should go try that if you haven't. It's fun. And I was watching the projection of the intention that got typed into this computer. And a lot of people have wonderful intention. One of the common ones is some version of to be more loving and to be more giving. So there's a lot of wonderful, good intention in our mind. And one thing we can do in cultivating this clear awareness

is to reflect on, to see if we are aware of all the aspects of our intention. So because when we say, I want to be more loving or I want to be more generous, more helpful, want to be a better person, that tend to, very often there are various subtle aspects of it

that we might not be aware of. So with a mind that is more subtle from meditative practice, it allows us to see the obvious, the acknowledged aspects of our intention, aspects of our intention. And also maybe the much more subtle underlying mentality or attitude or more subtle level or unacknowledged intention. Underlying our intention. Or we might discover that the mentality

of having this intention as a means to an end, as a habit. It's like, hmm, I want to do that. I want to be more like this. But actually, the unsaid part was, I want to be more like that in order to be liked, in order to be recognized as a good person, in order to be recognized or seen as a compassionate person, a generous person, whatever it is.

That is the second part of our intention. Why is it important for us to do that? You might have heard this phrase, that the road to hell is paved with good intention. Have you heard of that? So many people take the lesson from that. It's like, just don't bother with good intention. So another common phrase I hear is, good deeds don't go unpunished. Another common phrase I hear is, good deeds don't go unpunished. There was a very cynical way to think about it.

But indeed, what is warning us is that if we are not clearly aware of the totality of our intention, we may inadvertently be engaging in some intended action that causes us and other people a lot of suffering. So let me share an example with you. I know someone who's finally got her grandchildren. Very happy. And so she wanted to be this loving grandmother. She always felt love herself as someone who's kind of selfish. She decided she wanted to be this good, generous grandmother

who would sacrifice her time and go help her daughter with the grandchildren. And so that's her intention, to be loving and generous. And over the years, she had experienced a lot of unhappiness, disappointment, frustration, anger from the experience. Hmm. Why is that? Maybe we all had something similar to that, right? That we may want to be loving and be generous

and be willing to sacrifice ourselves. And are we aware of the underlying intention of our intended actions? Is it possible that we want to be loving so that we will be appreciated? That means to an end. Or we want to be loving so that we will be loved back or we want to be loving so that we will be happy, especially all the time. What I'm talking about here is we are aware of this sort of idea or image that we create in our mind that will come of our intention.

It's like, oh, I'm going to do this. And then we have sort of created this idea of this is how it's going to all turn out, how everyone's going to respond, and how my life is going to be all perfect and happy all the time. And we have that idea in our mind. Because if we do that and we are not aware of ourselves doing that, we likely find that when we are actually engaging in the action of, let's say, being loving, sacrificing our time in helping someone,

be comparing our actual present moment experience with our idea of how it's going to be that we had created in the moment of setting this intention. And we'll find the real, the present moment experience falling short and we're disappointed or even angry and feel that someone didn't do what they're supposed to do to make us happy all the time whatever it is that we had expected and some of you will say that well that I know I know just don't expect anything well our mind is not a button we can just press and all the expectation goes away. That's not what we're talking about. What I'm talking about is to engage in this practice of cultivating this clear awareness to see, to know that, yeah, I have these ideas and see if we can let go of them in some degree.

If we can let go of these ideas, these images of how it's all going to be wonderful, everyone will love me and I'll be so appreciated. Like every second of the day I'm there to help my daughter. We sort of realized that, oh, that is kind of a deluded expectation. So because we cannot do it ourselves when someone help us, we cannot be appreciative every second of the day. And however wonderful the situation, we may not feel happy every moment of the day. There might be time that is difficult and challenging and maybe boring.

So we might realize that we have unrealistic expectation. And realizing that allows us to see that more clearly. And maybe rather than having certain expectation, we see the importance of just being there and opening our hearts and allow whatever happens to happen and trusting our ability to respond with our wisdom. trusting our ability to respond with our wisdom. So when we cultivate this clear awareness, it allows us to see the way we lay traps for ourselves when we set intention to be loving

or to be a better person or to be helpful. So for example, when we want to be a better person or to be helpful. So for example, when we want to be helpful, without seeing our subtle intention underlying our intention to be helpful, we may inadvertently be causing a lot of grief or anxiety for others. We might be imposing our idea on others, wanting to be helpful. Maybe experienced as if we are thinking that I am helping you. Underlying it is the idea that something's wrong with you, that you need my help, without knowing that we are putting ourselves as superior to others, that I am in the position to be helping you.

And so we can still be helping others without that idea of us being better. others without that idea of us being better. So do we know that these elements of our view is operating in our intention and action when we are interacting with others? These are all different ways we can make use of our practice to reflect, to investigate our mind, so that we can live our life in our thoughts, in our intention, in our speech, and in our action more in accordance with wisdom and compassion. So I hope this map of the virtues will be useful for you

to engage in your reflection of this month's practice. So let's do our meditation together with this in mind. You might find it helpful to take anything that is tight on you, take them off, glasses, you find it easier to relax your face. Take you through the whole body relaxation. Feel the relaxation at the top of our head. Feel the relaxation spread to the forehead. Check to see if we're holding tension there by habit, maybe from worry, and allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the eyeballs and eye muscles,

and eye muscles, allowing the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the facial muscles. Check to see if we're holding tension in these muscles by habit. Maybe from holding a facial expression for the world to see. Right here, right now, in this meditation, you can give these muscles a vacation, and allow the tension to melt away. Feel the relaxation spread to the entire head. Feel the relaxation spread to the neck muscles.

Directly experience these muscles softening like melting butter as we allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the shoulder muscles, allowing the tension we habitually hold here to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the arms, from the upper arms to the forearms, all the way to the fingertips.

Feel the relaxation spread to the chest area. Check to see if we're holding tension in this area. Maybe from habits of anxiety, fear, worries. Right now, we can give this anxiety a rest. And allow the tension to melt away. Feel the relaxation spread down the torso to the lower abdomen. to the lower abdomen. Trust that the skeletal structure can hold up the body and we can give these muscles a vacation,

allowing the tension to melt away. Feel the relaxation spread to the upper back, between the shoulder blades, allowing the tension to melt away, like melting butter, feeling those muscles softening, and feel the relaxation spread down the back, to the lower back, and all the way down to the buttocks, to the buttocks where we can feel the sensations of the body

sitting in this chair. And feel the relaxation spread down the thigh muscles and all the way down to the toes. body sitting right here, right now. Allow ourselves to relax into the present moment, moment after moment. The body and mind are relaxed,

yet wakeful and clear. If you find yourself falling asleep, you might like to open your eyes a little bit to bring up this clear awareness, this clarity based on relaxation. Awareness of the body moment to be there. And then allow it to be different. Allow ourselves to relax into this present moment, being alive with this breathing body. With our friends practicing with us, what blessing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.. Thank you for your practice. Thank you. That concludes this week's practice. If you'd like to attend in person,

please check out our website, rubinmuseum.org slash meditation to learn more. Sessions are free to Rubin Museum members. Just one of the many benefits of membership. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.