Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 05/01/2019 with Lama Aria Drolma

Episode Date: May 2, 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 24:00. 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. Lama Aria Drolma led this meditation session on May 1, 2019. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: https://rubinmuseum.org/mediacenter/lama-aria-drolma-05-01-2019-podcast

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. Happy May. Great to have you all here. And welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art and to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice. My name is Dawn Eshelman. Anybody here for the first time? Welcome. Great. Who tries to come every

week if they can? Great. And in between. Hello back there. Cool. Welcome everybody. And welcome to those who are listening on our podcast. We podcast this as well if you ever miss it and you want to check it out for free on our website or iTunes. And each month we choose a theme to study together. And this month our theme is compassion. And it's one that we've looked at before. It's one that often comes up in this work, right, in any type of meditative practice. And it certainly comes up in the galleries, in much of the art that is at the heart of our collection here at the Rubin Museum of Art, Tibetan Buddhist art and other types of art as well from the region, from Buddhism and other religions,

and compassion. It's, I think, helpful to think about within the context of also this year-long discussion we're having all about power. And as I've mentioned to you before, you know, sometimes when I'm telling a friend or someone that we, the Rubin Museum, have chosen to talk for a year about power, they kind of think, what? It's supposed to be all peace, love, and happiness over there. Well, when you really think about the essence of true power, about what it is, I think compassion can be found amongst other things, but compassion can be found at the root of that there. And I'm reminded of the Bodhisattva. So we're looking at a Bodhisattva here today, and this is not just any Bodhisattva. This is Avalokiteshvara, who is the Bodhisattva of

compassion. But any Bodhisattva is an enlightened being who has chosen to remain on earth and not just head on up there to nirvana, but to stick around and to help until everyone has reached nirvana. And that kind of compassion, that kind of interconnectedness, I think is really what power is all about. interconnectedness, I think, is really what power is all about. So this Avalokiteshvara is the name, Avalokiteshvara, means the Lord who looks down with compassion. And Avalokiteshvara is the patron bodhisattva of Tibet in particular, but known also as related to Shiva in the Hindu tradition. And here we see this emanation of Avlokiteshvara is quite sort of peaceful and at ease. He's seated on his lotus throne there, and which always reminds us the lotus symbolism of that path to nirvana rooted in the mak and reaching towards this pure bloom up at the top and seated also in this kind of half meditative pose but half sort of ready to step out and help

as a good bodhisattva is and then a beautiful hair piled very very high on top of his head there and also holding the lotus, so often associated with the lotus, very important. So we're going to hear a little bit more about this idea of compassion and what it has to do with our practice here today from our wonderful teacher, Lama Arya Droma, who is back with us. Thank you, and it's so lovely to have you here as always. She has been studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism for over 10 years and was trained in the Dharma Path program of progressive stages of meditation and contemplation for serious practitioners offered by Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery.

She is a graduate of traditional Tibetan Buddhist retreats spanning three years and three months. She attended Mumbai University in India and graduated with a BA in sociology and is trained in computer programming from NIT in India. And she also actively volunteers as a fundraiser for breast cancer research and supports several nonprofit organizations. Please welcome her back. Lama Arya Drolma. Thank you, Dawn, for the lovely introduction. And hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you all for coming in today. I'm absolutely delighted to be here with you all. So today the image and artwork is of Avalokiteshvara. Very appropriate because the theme for this month is compassion as Don mentioned and Avalokiteshvara is known as the lord of compassion who embodies the compassion of all the Buddhas. So the Lord Avalokiteshvara

is also known as Chandresi in the Tibetan tradition and is portrayed in different forms in different cultures. In the Chinese tradition, she is a female form known as Kuan Yin, and in the Tibetan tradition, the deity Chenrezig is a symbolic expression of the nature of our own mind, which is compassion and loving-kindness. That's our true nature. He's the loving-kindness and compassion primordially present in the enlightened nature of one's own mind. Since loving-kindness and compassion are intrinsic to our enlightened nature, it's not something we need to add on to our minds. We can confidently say that our Lokiteshwara is within us. However, this quality of loving-kindness and compassion which is within us remains mostly obscured.

Even if loving-kindness and compassion are not fully developed at the present moment, they certainly exist within us as a potential. And for this reason, all you have to do is just to tap into that potential that we all sentient beings possess within us. So in our monastery, we do a practice of Chandrasheep every day because it's the most important practice and the practice we do is out of devotion to Chenresi because when we do this practice with sincere devotion this dynamic expression of compassion and loving-kindness expresses itself within us so among all the major practices we have and the most highest tantric practice that we practice as monastics, the most important practice is

developing compassion and loving-kindness. Without this quality one can never reach enlightenment. And the most wonderful thing is that it is within us so every day we practice the sadhana of Chenrezig and even when I started to meditate I used to go to the meditation center and it would start with mindfulness meditation and then we did a little bit of discourse for the day and then we ended it with a sadhana or a practice, chanting practice of Chandresi. And this was my biggest transformation and I had this deep conviction that I was, you know, following the right path and that's how my spiritual path began

And that's how my spiritual path began, with the prayers to Chandrashe, you know, with devotion. So this is a compassion and loving kindness to develop that as monastics. We constantly do a lot of practices because it's, you know, even we as monastics, that is one of the highest qualities we have to develop for us to be in the spiritual path and attain, you know, the goal to attain enlightenment. And His Holiness Dalai Lama goes on to say, the best way to have inner calm, inner calmness, inner peace, inner happiness, is to be warm-hearted and to have a compassionate heart for a meaningful life. For one's own inner happiness and inner calmness, all you have to and for day-to-day happiness, developing a compassionate heart is the key, the main factor. Our basic nature is a compassionate nature but our society

from a young age has taught us to be competitive and we have that nature of competitiveness on autoplay and which brings all these emotions of anger, jealousy, hatred and depression. You know you can see yourself how competitive you are when you walk in you would want to have the best seat you know. You don't mind elbowing someone a little bit rushing to the spot and we all by nature do that but this is that competitiveness edge we have. We only learn to develop that but if we have a compassionate heart and we can let our friend or neighbor or, you know, go by, go before you, and I think you'll feel something, you'll feel good about yourself, like I did something good for that moment. And this is

something we cultivate every day. One of the things I did was when I started to practice the sadhana of chandresi and I would walk to work or I would be rushing in the morning to work and I thought to myself I have two choices. I can rush and you know elbow everybody into the subway and rush and you know go into the office or I could just this, and I would practice sending love and compassion to everybody around me. And that kept, even throughout the day, that mindset or that mind stream was more prominent than to have this anger and jealousy

and those qualities to come up. So how can we cultivate compassion and loving-kindness? We just need to train ourselves to shift our attention from negative thoughts to thoughts of loving kinds and compassion. And it's that easy and it's a learned skill because right now you know we have this competitive edge with us but we shift that and in psychology it is called shifting attention there's a term for it so all we have to do is shift that now from that negative emotions to loving kindness and to compassion. Example, I'll show you a small exercise and you can do this yourself. Just bring two hands in front of your face and you

know just say me, myself, I, my sickness, my disappointments and then what you do just put your hands out like this happiness and peace and love to everybody and you can just see your mind opening up you know when you put your hands together it's me myself I ego it's so closed but then when you put your heart and open your heart out and feel love and kindness and peace and wellness to everybody, your heart opens up. And this is a small little example that you know you can do this. So that's a little exercise I wanted to do with you all just to show you how easy it

is to open your heart. So again, how do we cultivate compassion? And it's really quite easy and quite simple. You can even see it in animals, you know, they spontaneously show compassion. And I have a wonderful story for you today. And this is a true story. And it just happened about 15 days ago and the story's gone viral. The story happened in South India. Now India is, you know, it's modern India, it's rural India, it's urban India and sometimes they all mix together.

And apparently this happened in a small town in South India. The story is there was an 80 year old man who had passed away and the family and friends had gathered inside the house to grieve for the family and like in India when you have a wedding they all sing and dance and when there is death they wail and cry loudly in a form of you know showing respect for the dead and so this was in a house and all the families had gathered together and what happened was a wild monkey walked inside the house and this monkey has to be really courageous because there's a lot of people standing there and there's a lot

of people you know wailing and crying loudly and then there's a lot of people standing there, and there's a lot of people, you know, wailing and crying loudly, and then there's the dead body there. So the monkey walks in, and it's a beautiful langur monkey. It has this silver hair, and it walks in, and it has to navigate between all these people, and it walks in straight to the lady. There are many ladies sitting there and crying loudly, and it goes to this one particular lady and literally hugs her,

puts its head near the lady's head and comforts her. And then apparently the monkey did not leave until she was comforted and she had stopped crying. And then it left and it sat for a while and looking at everybody until they took the body away. And so this was captured on a video, and it's gone viral. And I think everybody can see, you know, a monkey comforting a grieving woman. And I was so touched by this. And it's not a pet. It's a monkey that's in the wild, had wandered to the house.

Apparently, it heard the wailing and this is also the story goes this monkey has been doing this for the past year it goes to people's house who are grieving and and then it goes in comforts and it and apparently it also knows kind of it senses who the relatives are you know and it goes and does. And all of you can see it's on YouTube. And yes, and I was like so, I was so stunned by this beautiful, compassionate kindness of this monkey, which is so spontaneous. And imagine the courage for it to go into somebody's house

and comfort somebody and put its head against somebody. And now, in that little town, it's like they feel it's only good omen if the monkey goes into somebody's house and they're grieving. So here the monkey has become the hero. I thought I wanted to share the story because I wanted to tell you how spontaneous it is and how courageous one has to be sometimes to show this compassion and love against all odds you know and apparently the monkey doesn't go for any other celebrations so there's a monkey story for you so how do we cultivate compassion you know it's quite easy and simple. All of us at some point or the other have experienced unconditional

love towards someone. It could have been your child, your mother, your father, your spouse, a friend and at that moment you wanted absolute love for them or happiness for them. And so all you have to do is bring that feeling of deep love and kindness into your mind stream when you meditate. So to start, this feeling most often, you know, this feeling of compassion and love and joy, apparently it kind of goes away, you know, it of compassion and love and joy apparently it kind of goes away you know it comes and goes away but what we need to do is cultivate it and how do we cultivate it to that emotion what you feel just bring it up again you know think about it bring it out again and wish everyone happiness

and that's the way you cultivate it moment by moment. You know after you do this meditation when you walk out and you see any stranger in your heart you can just wish them happiness and this is one of the way. And to start you can generate this love to your best friend, to your parents, to your grandchildren and then to strangers and then you'll see how easy it is and this is one of the way to cultivate it. And on that note at Ruben today, the evening series of talks are going to be on compassionate action, a very interesting topics and some wonderful teachers and artists and healers

will be presenting this topic so from this afternoon session you can probably go into the evening sessions and I have full day of compassion compassionate action so our mindfulness meditation today will be on loving-kindness and compassion so we will start a mindful meditation session now and when we actually, when we start the actual meditation session, there are two essential points. The essential points of your body and the essential points of your mind. So the essential point of your body is the posture in the tradition that I have learned we give a lot of importance to the posture and then it's also the mind so I will go over very quickly about the posture what your body posture is so however please

note we all have different bodies and capabilities it is important to have a comfortable posture and if you are uncomfortable or have any injuries do not struggle but just adjust to keep a good body posture what is most important is to keep your back and spine straight and remain comfortable so the seven key postures are in our tradition sit on the chair with your feet firmly placed on the floor and it's better not to have crossed leg, hands on your lap you know you can put your hands out like this palms down and just put it on your lap or you can put one hand on top of the other and place it on your lap like this.

Have a straight back, shoulders are squared, they're not slumped. We love to sit like this comfortably but keep your shoulders square. Slightly tuck your chin and you can watch me. It's just bend your tilt your chin slightly like this your lips are touching gently and your tongue resting on the roof of your mouth your eyes are open and gazing downward and you can look at me now it's all it's like put four fingers on the tip of your nose and wherever the gaze falls so you can gently just put your gaze down and so these are like the seven postures from our tradition and whatever you pick you can you can keep your spine straight

which is always good and the reason we keep our eyes slightly open in this meditation is we do not want to close down any of our senses. We don't want to suppress any of our senses. Our eyesight, our hearing, sense of touch, tactile, taste, smell, all these sense organs are open. Yet they're not engaged, they're resting. Now the essential points of the mind. We turn our attention from our body to the mind because it's the mind that actually does the meditation. Your mind should be relaxed and in the present moment of awareness, what it means is right now you may be in the office, you may be somewhere else doing a list or having some thoughts. So all you have to do is bring your mind's attention back to your body. When we start the meditation session, the important thing is the mind needs a focus or an anchor.

a focus or an anchor. The reason the mind needs a focus or an anchor is so the mind does not keep wandering away, jumping from one thought to the other. When the mind has something to focus on, the mind can gradually become still. So for today's meditation session, we will focus our mind's attention on a breath combined with the feeling of unconditional loving kindness and compassion. So bring forth this feeling of whoever you feel that great love and unconditional love and compassion, bring forth that emotion and pay attention to your breath. compassion, bring forth that emotion and pay attention to your breath. So let's put our mind's attention on our breath, feeling each breath as it comes in and goes out. Breathe normally, letting the breath be just as it is without trying to change or regulate it in any way, allowing it to flow easily and naturally with its own

rhythm. Now bring to mind's attention that feeling of unconditional love, kindness and compassion into your mind stream. Then as you breathe out, just imagine you're sending out pure love, kindness and compassion in the form of a brilliant light goes out in all direction and all beings are filled with happiness and joy. So today we'll have two sessions, a few minutes guided meditation. I will hit the gong and let's start the meditation. Inhale and exhale, breathe normally and as you inhale see the breath going all the way to your abdomen and as you breathe out just imagine sending out pure loving kindness and compassion in the form of a brilliant light that

goes out in all directions and all beings are filled with happiness and joy. And just rest your mind in that moment of awareness. Inhale and exhale, breathe you're sending out unconditional love and happiness to all the beings, and they're all filled with happiness and joy. And just rest your mind in that present moment of awareness. Anytime your mind wanders off and you start thinking any thoughts, just acknowledge it. Say thinking, then drop it, let it go, don't follow, don't engage in those thoughts and just return back to your breath. It doesn't matter how many times your mind wanders off, all it matters is when you catch yourself thinking, just acknowledge it, say thinking, and come back, come bring your attention back to your breath. Thank you for watching. Do not follow the past, the past is finished. Do not think of the future that I must do this or I have to do that. Just rest with the present moment of awareness without any

distraction. Thank you. Okay, just relax a little bit and then you stretch a little bit. It's good to do short, short moments of meditation and this is how you practice. And one of the reasons you do short minutes of practice is for your mind to be sharp and then you can continue doing for a few more minutes. When you meditate, like when I mentioned that your thoughts are going to come and go, this is what the nature of the mind is the thoughts will keep coming and going and when you catch yourself thinking you just say thinking acknowledge it and then let it go it's not about blocking your thoughts and

once you acknowledge your thoughts and let it go this is what you're going to be doing in the practice form and after your meditation when you're doing your daily work or doing your day-to-day things when you have a lot of stress when and you know when you have a lot of emotions of anger and depression or distress what you can do then is catch yourself and think thinking because everything is thoughts you know from thoughts your anger comes out from thoughts everything comes out and then you can use this practice as like oh thinking I can let go you don't have to hold on to that anger and be angry for

so long you can say it doesn matter, I can let it go. And this is how the practice is going to be important when that happens, when these strong emotions arise. So we'll do a little more minutes of meditation. Meditation, sit up in your posture. Meditation, set up in your posture. Inhale and exhale, breathe normally. And as you inhale, see the breath going in all the way to the abdomen and as you breathe out just imagine you're sending out pure loving kindness and compassion in the form of a brilliant light that goes out

in all direction and all the beings are filled with happiness and joy. And just rest your mind in that present moment of awareness. The minute you catch yourself thinking, just acknowledge it, say thinking and gently let go of your thoughts and bring your attention back to your breath, breathing in and breathing out and as you breathe out send out the feeling of absolute love and compassion and just rest in that present moment of awareness. When a thought or an emotion or a sensation arise, as soon as you recognize it, simply say that is a thought, that is an emotion. Do not follow after the content or engage in them, just let go and rest in this present moment of awareness, bringing your attention back to your breath and keeping a one-pointed attention on your breath, breathing gently, breathing normally. Your thoughts are like clouds in the sky, they come and go and you don't have to engage in it.

And when you don't engage in your thoughts you simply let go and bring your attention back to your breath they are like birds flying in the sky they don't leave any trace that's how your thoughts are Inhale and exhale, breathe gently and as you exhale, just imagine filling the world with and compassion and see all the beings being happy and at peace and just rest in that present moment of awareness. Thank you. Inhale and exhale, breathe normally, breathe gently and keep that one pointed attention on your breath. Again and again when you're distracted bring your mind's attention back to your breath and just rest in that present moment of awareness. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Relax and you can stretch a little bit.

Have a wonderful day. 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.