Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 05/15/2019 with Rebecca Li

Episode Date: May 17, 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 23:30. 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 May 15, 2019. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: https://rubinmuseum.org/mediacenter/rebecca-li-05-15-2019-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. Hello, good afternoon. Tashi Delek. Welcome. Welcome to our weekly mindfulness meditation here at the Rubin Museum, presenting partners Sharon Solsberg, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine.

My name is Tashi Chodron. I'm the assistant manager to Himalayan cultural programs and partnership. I host a monthly program called Himalayan Heritage. Some of you nodding head, thank you. You've been coming for so long, and some of you have been attending the Himalayan Heritage. It's always first Wednesday of each month, and so that being said, the next one is June 5th. And I have a really great master incarnate of emanation of a treasure revealer, in fact, who will be coming to

lead guided meditation as well as speaking on the meaning of Om Mani Padme Hum, the Buddha of Compassion, our Lokateshwaras, and connecting to the symbolic of June month connects to Sakadava, which is the Tibetan holy month, Tibetan Buddhist holy month, in fact all Buddhists, and you will hear all about that if you have a chance to attend but I'm also allowed to give the secret discount code it's a $5 discount code on each ticket and the code is holy month easy to remember right so our weekly meditation we have a theme and we're still you know following the same theme as compassion. And the artwork that you see here is, I think my colleague is going to bring us, she's testing on our patience. There it is. It's a beautiful, as you see, bodhisattva of compassion in sanskrit he's known as our local teshvara and in tibetan he's called

gen reik zik he also seems to come in different forms in you know other parts of the world for instance in china he comes in a female form uh guanyin and you know one of the most compassionate action to do today is to turn all your cell phones off. First thing first, right? So this is a beautiful sculpture. As you see, Avalokiteshvara is in two arms, two legs. And some of you probably know that Avalokiteshvara comes also in multiple arms, four arms, six arms, and 1,000 arms and multiple head as well. And holding a lotus flower on the left and right hand, a palm giving the touching the earth or

supreme generosity. There's different symbolic meaning in that as well. Now to connect to a compassion story, I wanted to share this one minute story that great masters often, you know, share this story, including my root teacher, and I've shared this at my Selected Saturday Meditation Awakening practice. But to cut it into very short, the story is, there is this great Indian scholar, Asanga, spent 12 years in retreat practicing Maitreya Buddha, which is the future Buddha. But after 12 years, he still hadn't had a single sign or dream about Maitreya.

So he gave up his retreat. On the way to town he saw an injured dog lying on the side of the road with maggots writhing in its festering wounds. He immediately felt intense compassion for the dog and wanting to save its life but not kill the maggots. So he knelt down, closed his eyes, and started to remove the maggots with his tongue. Okay, that is the compassion, right? So when he opened his eyes, he in fact, when he bent his down with his eyes closed,

because he couldn't bear to open the eyes, because he smelled and it was looking so you know bad but with so much compassion he knelt down to you know pull the maggot out with his tongue and suddenly he touched the earth and when he opened his eyes however he didn't see the dog but Maitreya in front of him in his shock shock, he said, How is it possible that after I spent 12 years devoting practice to you and going through all those hardships, you never appeared or gave me a single sign? You have no compassion.

But Maitreya answered, It was due to your dense karmic obscurations that you couldn't see me. But I've been with you from the moment you started the practice. Now through the intense strength of your genuine compassion for the dog and the maggots, what was left of your obscurations was intensely purified so that you can see, you can now see me. So one of the main, most important action to reach enlightenment is compassion. Now I'd like to introduce our today's teacher. Thank you for your compassion and sharing your precious time with us again and again.

And our teacher is Rebecca Lee, a Dharma hair in the lineage of Chan Master Shen Yen. Rebecca Lee started practicing meditation in 1995. She began her teacher's training with Master Shen Yen in 1999 to become a Dharma and meditation instructor. in 1999 to become a Dharma and meditation instructor. She trained with Simon Child to lead intensive retreats and received full Dharma transmission in 2016. Dr. Lee currently teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures and lead retreats in North America and in the UK. Dr. Rebecca Lee talks and writings can be found at www.rebeccalee.org.

She's also the founder of Chan Dharma Community and a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey, where she also serves as faculty director of the Ellen Dolly Center for the Center of Social Justice. So please help me in welcoming Dr. Rebecca Lee. Hello, hello. Thank you, Tashi, for the wonderful introduction. We're so lucky we get to practice

with the theme of compassion this month. And I don't know about you, when you were listening to this story about cultivating compassion involving licking maggot off of a dog, how many of you thought, oh yeah, sure, I can do it, no problem. Or were you counting how many do I have to lick before I can see Maitreya? Listening to these stories of these truly sincere, dedicated, committed practitioners, very inspirational. And sometimes we're like, I don't know, but I don't see I can do that

and it may cause us to feel maybe discouraged. I would like to encourage you to allow yourself to see all these ranges of emotion coming up when we listen to these stories. One of the important messages from this story is that, yeah, it takes work. It takes hard work. It's not just I sit here, oh, I want to be compassionate. Ding, done. It's not like that.

Being truly compassionate involves really everyone, even the maggot. We truly believe that they deserve our love. Now, let's not go to maggots. Think about people. Many of us maybe have heard or maybe actually practiced the cultivation of metta. Maybe some of you have done metta meditation, practicing to send loving kindness to different kind of people.

I have led this practice a number of times in retreats, and almost every time someone would tell me that, well, I can send loving kindness to people I love, even to the neutral person, but people I dislike or my enemy, that's really hard. Or people who have hurt me, that's really hard, really, really hard. And if you are discouraged, it's like, am I bad? Am I being a bad practitioner? I think it is important for us to acknowledge that

rather than try to convince ourselves that I actually love them. Because we may actually be doing some kind of damage to ourselves or actually cultivating some kind of habit of pretending to ourselves, lying to ourselves. Fortunately, there's a lot of tools to cultivate compassion in Dharma. And I want to share something that I've been working with recently with you. Some of you might have heard the teaching of the Four Immeasurables, where the cultivation of loving-kindness, metta, the teaching of the Four Immeasurables, where the cultivation of loving-kindness, metta, is one of the four.

And another one of the Four Immeasurables is the cultivation of rejoicing in the merits of others. Rejoicing in the merits of others. Over the years, this is one of the 10 great vows of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, and it's one of the vows that I have always been the most intrigued by. It's like rejoicing in the merit of others,

how does it work? So, this reminds me of this teaching by my master rejoicing in the merit of others, how does it work? This reminds me of this teaching by my master, Master Shen Yan, who said these two sentences that I remember all the time. With wisdom, we are not vexed. With compassion, there is no enemy. And they are the same, actually. They sound like two different practices.

When we give rise to vexations, we are not being compassionate to ourselves. We are causing ourselves suffering by giving rise to vexations. And when we allow our heart to be filled with vexation, it will be quite difficult for us to be compassionate to others. And everyone we see, that's my enemy. I don't like you. I dislike you. And so they are the same practice, two sides of the same coin. I want to talk a little bit about how we can cultivate this practice

of rejoicing in the merits of others in our daily life. So there are many ways to think about this, but there are a couple kind of situations that can offer us the opportunity to cultivate this practice of rejoicing in the merits of others. this practice of rejoicing in the merits of others. One is to use this as an antidote for maybe bitterness or resentment or jealousy that might arise in our heart when we see others who are more fortunate. Maybe they're born in fortunate circumstances. They may be born with this personality that everybody's drawn to them.

They have lots of friends. Do you know those people? Or they're born being very good-looking, very tall, not like me, or in bodies that the society deem attractive, or born into wealth that give them a lot of resources, I think you know what I'm talking about. And these people, we consider, we see them, they have a lot of advantage, a lot of privilege, with a lot of fortunate circumstances, many things working for them. And are we able to not respond by giving rise to this sense of bitterness

in response to this unfairness of our world. By this time, we probably know that the world we live in is not fair. Referring to the fact that we do live in a society with a social structure that gives advantage to some group over others, that individuals very often don't have very much control over them. So the individuals who are in the advantageous position feel they enjoy it and they might be the, we consider them the lucky, the fortunate one. And others would be often unfairly be seen as the one

who are not working hard enough, but maybe they are in situations that are disadvantageous and they receive less recognition, less share of the resources, and so on and so forth. Thinking about this kind of situation can lead us to feel bitter and jealous or resentful about these people, making it difficult for us to truly open our hearts and feel like, yes, like, you know, you too, you too.

I can feel the loving kindness towards you. And this practice of cultivating the ability to rejoice in the merit of others will be a great tool in our practice to see that, yes, the social structure that allow our society to give advantage to some, without them having to earn it, is unfair. We don't have to say that this structure is right. That means, it doesn't mean that we don't do things to change it or improve it.

But it does not mean that we have to feel resentful to the individuals. Because when we do, we are creating, we're giving rise to vexations in our heart. We are not being compassionate to ourselves first. This is already not a great situation, and we are adding to our suffering by adding hatred and resentment and bitterness in our heart. So that's why Master Shunyuan said, giving wisdom is not being vexed.

When we give rise to vexation, that is, in that moment, not wisdom. This sort of leads me to this memory of a story I'd like to share with you. I have this nephew who is truly a very lucky guy because he had my sister as his mother. And he has a great mom. And a few years ago, he entered a raffle for, I don't know about, you know how kids like Lego? And then he loved Legos.

And so he entered a raffle where the winner would get to go into the toy store and grab as many Lego games as he wanted in one minute. A dream, right? Anyone would want to have that dream? Think of anything that you would like to be able to grab as many of as you want in one minute. Free. So he was lucky because the company, you send an email to my sister and you have to respond within like an hour. And so a lot of people didn't even enter the last round because their mother did not have time to answer email right away. So not only was he lucky that his mother is a great person, but also she has the privilege or the advantage of having that free time

to be able to do that. And so he got to enjoy this wonderful experience of being able to run around the toy store and grab as many Lego as he wanted. Now, this is a truly lucky guy, and his situation was a result of a lot of privilege and advantage. And I have no trouble rejoicing for him. I'm so happy.

We're like so happy for him to be able to go and have this wonderful experience. Good for you. We have no trouble. I had no trouble rejoicing him, probably because he's my nephew. Now, why would it be different for someone else who's not our family member? Someone we don't know. It's like they're in a situation where they enjoy a lot of advantage and privilege. It's truly lucky person. That's their merit. And if we are able to think about it that way, maybe we can also rejoice in the merit of others.

Maybe think about people in our life, people we work with. Like, awesome, they just somehow boss just like her more. And, you know, she gets the best project. And she gets promotion. And we feel it's not fair. Maybe it's not fair. Maybe it's not, but we can, instead of giving rise to this bitterness in our heart that is not wisdom, we can practice rejoicing in the merit of this person that he or she is enjoying.

he or she is enjoying. And when we can do that, we can actually, in the process, cultivate this open heart, being able to see that, okay, even though the situation may not be fair, but I do not think of you as an enemy. I view you with bitterness, but rejoicing in your good fortune. Happy for you. And we can

think about it similarly when we are working with people who are very successful doing things that we disagree with. Do we know that, those people in our life? So we also feel like that's not fair or like we really just hate it that they are so successful. They get so much recognition for doing things that we totally think is wrong. We don't agree with their value. So what do we choose to do? Do we choose to give rise to anger, resentment, bitterness in our heart to poison our mind? It's already bad enough, but we are adding to our suffering. Is that wisdom? Or do we choose to cultivate compassion,

using this as an opportunity to practice rejoicing in the merit of others. Meaning, yeah, I don't agree with your method. I don't agree with your value. I don't agree with your philosophy. Happy for you that you are successful. Happy for you. you are successful. Happy for you. So I hope this can help us see that in practice there are many ways to engage in the practice. It's not necessary for us to feel that if I cannot cultivate compassion in this way, there's no other way. There are many different ways, and we learn to work with ourselves in the practice.

And this is what we can do in our meditation practice. When we engage in the meditation practice, we practice staying on the method, but when the mind drifts off the method, that is not a problem. We see this as an opportunity to practice finding our way to come back to the method. And that way, every moment, whatever we are dealing with, that will be an opportunity to engage in the practice. So let's do some meditation together. So we try to set up our body in a comfortable posture. Anything that's putting pressure on our body, even like glasses,

we may find it helpful to take off our glasses. They allow our facial muscles to relax. Sitting in a chair, it's helpful to sit in the front half of the chair with our two feet flat on the floor. and a chair, it's helpful to sit in the front half of the chair with our two feet flat on the floor. And we begin with the whole body relaxation. Feel the relaxation of the top of the head. Directly experience our scalp being relaxed

and feel the relaxation spread to our forehead. Check to see if we're holding tension in this area by habit, maybe from worry or judging, and allow the tension to melt away. to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the eyeballs and eye muscles. We tend to hold a lot of tension in this area from our comparing, judging, analyzing.

Right here, right now, we can give these muscles a rest. And allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the facial muscles. Check to see if we are holding tension in these muscles by habit, maybe from holding a facial expression for the world to see. And right here, right now, there is no need to do that. We can give these muscles a vacation, allowing the tension to melt away.

And feel the relaxation spread to the entire head. And feel the relaxation spread down the neck muscles. Directly experience the subtle sensations of these muscles softening like melting butter, as we allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the shoulder muscles. Feel the relaxation spread down the arms, from the upper arms to the forearms, and all Feel the fingertips. And feel the relaxation spread to the chest area.

Check to see if we're holding tension in this area by habit. Maybe from fear or anxiety. Right here, right now, we can give this anxiety a rest. Allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the torso to the lower abdomen. We hold a lot of tension in these muscles in our daily life by habit. Trust that the skeletal structure can hold up the body, can give these muscles a vacation and allow the tension to melt away

and feel the relaxation allow the tension we hold there by habit to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the back, all the way down to the lower back, into the buttocks where we feel the sensation of the body sitting. I feel the relaxation spread down the legs, the thigh muscles, softening down to the calf muscles and all the way down to the toes. And feel the relaxation of the entire body sitting right here, right now. Allow ourselves to relax into this unfolding present moment, moment after moment. that's arising in our body and mind or around us that's part of the present moment

and our heart is big enough to embrace it all. There's no need to get rid of anything. Allow, allow whatever that's arisen in the present to be here. Thoughts or emotions, bodily sensations, no problem. And allow them to go away on their own time.

time. We can make use of our breathing body to help us maintain contact with the present And notice the subtle movements of the body as the body breathes. We are here right now. Because we can only be breathing right here, right now. It doesn't matter how the breathing is, we allow the body to breathe on its own. And you will notice the mind drifting, not a problem. If the mind feels drowsy, not a problem. Because when we notice that, that's an opportunity to practice finding our way back to the direct experience of the body sitting right here, right now.

We practice remembering what we have learned. If we're drowsy, we can practice remembering to open our eyes, straighten our body, bring up this wakefulness, that too is part of our practice. Practice remembering. Practice working with ourselves in this moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your practice. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.