Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 06/21/2017 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: June 23, 2017

Every Wednesday, the Rubin Museum of Art presents a meditation session led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area. This podcast is a recording of the weekly practice. If you would like to attend in person, please visit our website at RubinMuseum.org/meditation to learn more. Presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and the New York Insight Meditation Center. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on June 21, 2017. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/tracy-cochran-06-21-2017

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. The series is supported in part by the Hemera Foundation.

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, everybody. Welcome to Mindfulness Meditation. And happy summer solstice! Summer is here, and today is the lightest day of the year. The day that we experience the most sunlight here in this hemisphere.

And so it's a great day to talk about love. That's what we're talking about all month. And certainly is a kind of light to bask in. We are looking at a beautiful and kind of exceptional example of Northeastern Indian Buddhist sculpture. This is from the 12th century, brass. And this is Maitreya. Maitreya is the Buddha of the future. Maitreya also represents loving kindness, which is part of the reason that he is here with us today. And the story goes that Maitreya is a Buddha who is for the time being residing in a kind of heaven, awaiting the time that the Buddha's

teachings are forgotten here on earth. And then he will descend and share the love, once again, the Buddhist teachings. And he's, I think, a really just beloved kind of figure as well. So love all around there. Tracy Cochran is our teacher today. And I was just remembering remembering she was here with us on the winter solstice too. So nice to come full circle. That just doesn't seem like that was that long ago, actually. Tracy is a writer and the editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, which can be found online or also upstairs in the shop. It's a beautiful quarterly magazine.

And she's been a student of meditation and other spiritual practices for decades. In addition to teaching at the Rubin, she teaches at the New York Insight Meditation Center, which is a partner organization in this program, so many thanks to them, and also to the Hemera Foundation. And she teaches every Thursday and Sunday night at Tarrytown Insight at Tarrytown, New York. Still? Yes. I just want to make sure I'm telling everybody the right days of the week.

Thursday and Sunday. Her writings and teaching schedule can be found online at Parabola or on Facebook and Twitter and TracyCochran.org. Please welcome her back, Tracy Cochran. I'm very happy to be back basking in your presence. And I was here on winter solstice and talked about a place called Newgrange where the light of dawn strikes a back altar.

And today it's delightful to think that while we were sleeping, while we were all still fast asleep, there is a huge group of hippies and pagans and kindly people wearing flower garlands all gathered at Stonehenge, where the first light of dawn on the solstice strikes the altar, on the summer solstice. And there's something quite lovely about that, because I looked into it a little, being the editor of Parabola, and we have an issue called Sun and Moon

that collects stories and myths from every culture about the sun and in virtually every culture she first of all is regarded as a she as as a mother, a loving presence when she's gendered. And I looked at a little aboriginal tale from Australia in which the mother, son, who lives inside the earth like the molten core, creates a daughter of light and sends this little girl up into the sky every day in the east to light up her family all the people and all the beings

and all the animals and all the plants and lets the little girl stay all day and come home in the west to be with her so there's this lovely maternal feeling. And I love sitting under this bodhisattva who doesn't happen to be female. And one of the things I was talking with someone before that I love is that this quality of loving care doesn't happen to have to be bound by a gender. But in our culture, I just want to share with you a sacred text in our culture that I think of very often,

when I need this particular quality of love and attention. And I have a feeling you know the words. When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me there will be an answer let it be and I can see mouths moving in here it really is part of our canon and as many of you probably know Paul McCartney wasn't writing about the Virgin Mary, but his own mother, who died when he was 14. So he had a dream one night where she came to him and was with him. And it brings to mind the fact, I was thinking that in my hour of darkness, in my times of trouble,

and think about it for yourself, what do you most need? Usually it's not a good PowerPoint presentation. It's not a good lecture, fatherly lecture. lecture, fatherly lecture. It is even kind advice. What you secretly wish for and long for and know is possible is a quality of presence. A presence that lets you be. Let's you be, lets you be exactly as you are. Thich Nhat Hanh always describes love as acceptance. And understanding is acceptance. And we all know that quality, even if it's just for a moment. And I think I mentioned in here one time

in Tarrytown someone brought a support dog in training to be my co-teacher and it was this beautiful half golden retriever half Labrador puppy can you imagine how cute that must have been and And not only was, her name was Swiss and because all the puppies in this litter were named after cheeses.

So there were like little Cheddars and a little Brie and a little Munster, I'm sure. But sitting with this beautiful, smiling dog, it was so easy to feel completely accepted. This dog didn't care what state you came in in. It didn't care what you were wearing. It didn't care. It just wanted to sit with us. And we could relax in that presence. And a lot of times, and I think today too, I encourage people to think of their own body as a kind of support dog.

An accepting, loyal presence in your life of life alright, so I really do feel compelled to mention this too so we know the taste of this ambient caring this love so I can't get out of my mind a cartoon in the New Yorker from a couple of weeks ago.

A young man and woman are sitting at a table clearly in love and the young woman says, before this goes any further, I must mention to you that I have parents. I had to break that news to you. And I would add, I would add, if they were a little bit older, they might also have said, I have children.

I have children. Adult children, teenage children, even young children. I'm not asking for a show of hands, but I'm wondering if anybody here has ever felt misunderstood by their parents. Not seen, just not gotten, unappreciated. And I'm wondering if there's anybody here who's ever lost sleep over a child. Ever. Ever. Has ever felt any kind of pain or anguish connected with a child.

So it seems like there's a gap between Mother Mary and that taste that we know and our actual lives. It can sometimes feel like love is an energy and we're like faulty wiring. We just can't let it pass correctly. And these little creatures of resentment will bubble up. And what I have found and what bears repeating again and again, and I'm sure I have, so thank you for all of you who still come when I teach. The secret of this practice are small moments. Small moments many times.

One example that touched me very much, I was looking at a book by Thich Nhat Hanh on love, is that he adds in addition to joy and loving kindness and equanimity and the canon, he adds trust and respect to the qualities of love. Now, most of us in this room, certainly speaking for myself, know what it feels like to have had our trust broken, what it feels like to have had our trust broken, to have been betrayed somehow by a friend or a loved one. We know that deep pain to have felt injustice, oppression, cruelty. So here is something that I trust, that when we sit together, which we are going to do in a minute, and the body begins to soften, that beautiful golden retriever-like presence comes back to you. You can begin to remember that you can trust this life, your life, this body that came to you from the ancestors, from the stars really, made

of star stuff, and from ancestors that could conceive beautiful things like that little mini story I told you about the daughter and mother, son. You can turn back and trust this body, this life, and you can have confidence in your right to be here. That you're made of all the elements of life. All that wisdom and compassion. Paul McCartney, it was there, this knowledge of a loving presence that could say, let it be, there will be an answer. That presence is the answer. And it's in each of us. And it can be so extraordinarily liberating to remember, to remember that when we sit

down and be still, the body, the heart and the mind just naturally opens to love, to this responsiveness, all by itself. It's soul stuff. There's something about that that's so magical because this is supposed to be, to the ancient Celts, one of the times of the year when the boundary between the worlds is very, very thin. So we can sit and be still and open to that vastness that's your birthright, pure, unalloyed love and wisdom. There's no separation. So why don't we see for ourselves? So we take our seat, and it's a very special day because it's solstice, to plant our feet firmly on the earth and stretch

up tall towards the heavens. Because this is a day when we can really feel that together. That we belong to heaven and earth, both. Both. And we allow the eyes to close if we can. Some people practice with eyes body and this moment. So we open to everything in the room, new life and stillness. and stillness. And notice how it feels to be in this body. You notice all by itself there is a vibrancy and a responsiveness in it. And we let everything just roll through us. Noticing how it feels to be with life. And we notice that there is, sounds in the room, sensations, memories, feelings of tension. We let everything be exactly as it is. And when we notice we are being caught up, taken away, we gently bring the attention home again to the sensation of breathing and being in this body in this moment. Without thinking about it or striving we just allow it to appear.

Noticing how it feels to be completely accepted and acceptable exactly as you are right this moment. No judgments, no comments. And notice as we begin to give ourselves to the space of letting be, that there is a light of awareness in us and that we share, that and letting be. Thank you. When you wander off, you gently come home again to the sunlight of this awareness that doesn't judge or comment. Vindicatio When we get taken, come back and notice that there is a finer sensation in the body, a Thank you. Takk for ating med. Sati, the Pali word for mindfulness means to remember, to remember the present moment. This also means to remember our basic goodness, our responsiveness. To be part of it. Thank you. Rekord. Thank you. Noticing as we continue to relax, to make this movement of remembering or return that we can be present yet open. We can remember the vibrancy in this body and yet be open to the life outside, noticing that the boundary is not so thick, it is permeable. Life flows in and flows out. Takk for watching! Takk for ating med. Thank you for watching! Takk for ating med. Noticing that even if we go away a long, long time, we can come back again and feel welcomed welcomed without any judgment or comment. Completely accepted. Takk for watching. Notice that it feels as if we are sharing something, basking in sunlight together. present that is shared. An awareness shared. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Thank you. Takk for ating med. For the last minute we share offering yourself the word forgiven, noticing how it feels to be completely forgiven, acceptable, loved. Loved. Vindicatio Thank you. 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.