Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 09/14/16 with Kate Johnson

Episode Date: September 23, 2016

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. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the teachers from the Interdependence Project. This week’s session is led by Kate Johnson focusing on the theme of Patience. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/1ed

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. please visit our website at rubenmuseum.org. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the teachers from the Interdependence Project. 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 Ruben Museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice.

Kate Johnson is our teacher today, and she's going to talk to us a little bit more about that and about patience. Kate teaches mindful yoga in New York City public schools and Buddhist meditation at the Interdependence Project, one of our partners for this program. She holds a BFA in dance from the Alvin Ailey School at Fordham University and an MA in performance studies from NYU. She has trained at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, Laughing Lotus, and the Presencing Institute.

And she's currently writing a book about waking up to power and oppression as a spiritual practice, which will be published by Parallax Press in the fall of 2017. Please welcome back Kate Johnson. Good afternoon. I was heartened to hear the giggles about the patients topic. Seems like we'll have a lot to talk about. And yeah, I was really inspired by this artwork and this figure of the bridge builder, which is such an incredible, I think, cultural archetype, right? The one who makes connections between two disparate places

or times or people, you know, and creates a structure for bringing that divide a little closer. And so today I wanted to talk a little bit about this kind of the necessary and joyful work of bridge building in our culture and a little bit about how mindfulness training can help us to be better bridge builders. And specifically, as Don talked about, through this quality of patience, which we have so many opportunities to develop in just 20 minutes of mindfulness meditation. So I was thinking about this. Every once in a while I like to remind myself,

what is mindfulness? What are we actually talking about here? And thinking of this quality of mindfulness that we are hoping to train in through mindfulness meditation, that one way it can be described as a state of wholeness and of a sense of being connected connected both to oneself connected to each other connected to our environment and perhaps even whatever concept we have with the divine so there's a sense of wholeness and unity that is a part of the felt

sense of mindfulness. That it's not just this kind of clinical knowing what's happening kind of moment to moment from a distance, but actually there's a sense of being a part of everything. And that one reason why we might be seeking a state of mindfulness is because we're experiencing a kind of divide. And these divides can be a sense of a kind of divide in the sense of self, right? That there might be a gap between where we perceive ourselves to be right now and our aspiration for who we want to be or who we feel we really are and so there's this little bit of space in between and we're

attempting to bring those things closer. Certainly many of us are aware of the kinds of social divides that are present in our world today across religion, across race, across class, and that there are even an ecological divide, right, that so many of us feel separate from our environment. I tell, I've been doing a little bit more work in climate justice as a Buddhist and in some multi-faith spaces and I realized doing some of this work that I grew up in Chicago and I didn't, as a kid, I thought the environment was in the Amazon. I was like, someday I really want to go to the environment, you know, and I didn't know

that like, oh, I live in the city, but I actually am a part of the environment, right? And so this quality of mindfulness can help us to realize, oh, I'm actually not separate from the natural world. It's here. It's here in between the cracks in the built environment. It's here above us in the sky. So mindfulness can help remind us of this. And where patience comes in with mindfulness practice, I think, can be fairly

apparent when it comes to just our moment-to-moment experience. But in a session of mindfulness practice, and today we'll be working with mindfulness of breathing, which is a very common practice across different mindfulness traditions. There's this kind of aim to connect with the sense of breathing, the felt sense of the breath coming in and coming out, the sense of the body sitting, and that we've kind of placed the awareness on this sensation and kind of try to stay connected, but it just won't stay.

It comes and stays for a while, and then without our permission goes somewhere else, something that's happening several breaths from now or something that happened several breaths ago. And so one thing that can be helpful to notice, too, in this activity of building a bridge between kind of where we are and our aspiration, where we'd like to be, is the quality of how. And so often with practice, there can be this sense of impatience and this kind of demand

on our poor little minds and hearts, like, stay, you know. I have a, I was teaching a meditation class recently, and someone approached me and was talking about how difficult it was for her, just the frustration of, you know, how long does it take to be able to stay and not have any thoughts? And I said, well, how long have you been practicing? And she said, like, a whole week. So I think one of the things that mindfulness can do is to teach us to take a little bit of a longer view and to really see how change happens,

that it happens not in this huge sweep because we demand it to be so, but it happens in these micro-moments of choicefulness where we not only decide to come back, but decide to come back with love. And I was reminded, talking with Don a little bit earlier, about the Sarvodaya Peace Movement in Sri Lanka. Their peace plan was a 500 year plan. They said it took us about 500 years to get into this mess and it's gonna take us about 500

years to get out. And so you know this this I say it takes time not because we should wait forever to start. Like I think we should start now. And we will start in about two minutes. But that we start to develop this patience, this quality of heart that is able to accept the current situation in a way that says, I'm not going to add to the suffering here with my demand or with my harsh expectations or with kind of pushing and pulling the mind, our own or anyone else's.

And that we're also not going to fall into denial and pretend it's not happening, but that to be able to kind of develop this quality of working steadily, moment to moment, with a sense that we're going to be in it for the long haul. So with the quality of effort that we could work towards change for 500 years, with the confidence that with these small actions, we will eventually get there. with these small actions we will eventually get there. So I thought we could just practice a little bit together on this micro level of just me and my breath. And that the kinds of qualities that will develop in this practice are indeed applicable to other life

situations. Hopefully to one that you can use even today. So I'll guide the practice, but just to give you a sense of an overview, we'll be working with mindfulness of breathing, connecting with a sense of the breath. And I'll just suggest for today, if you'd like to make a gentle mental note of what's happening when it's happening.

So as you breathe in, you might silently say to yourself, breathing in. As you breathe out, silently saying, breathing out. And then if there's a moment of pause in between that out breath and the next in breath, you can silently say to yourself, touching. And that would remind you to drop into the sense of the body touching the chair, the feet touching the floor, and really energetically or symbolically touching the earth and the body.

The earth is so patient with us. Yeah. So I hope that sounds OK. And I'll go ahead and guide you through and then we'll have a chance to talk a little after if you like. So go ahead and find a seat that feels comfortable for you, as comfortable as possible. These chairs aren't bad as far as chairs go. And finding a place where your feet can rest on the floor. You can close the eyes, or you can softly focus them down

at the space in front of you. And hands can be resting. The hands do so much all day, but for now they can rest. So I'll embody a posture that's both alert and relaxed. The relaxation comes from this sense that we can really rely on the chair to hold us, the floor to hold the chair, the earth to hold all of this. So we can rest in that support, earth element. And from that support, the spine can rise. The heart can fall open a bit.

The belly can relax. the heart can fall open a bit, the belly can relax. Maybe a little sense of space at the top of the head. Take a moment to acknowledge the patience of this very human body. Not always perfect, but it's just doing the best it can, wants to be healthy, as strong And then taking a moment before we dive into the mindfulness of breathing to just check in with your mind and your heart and notice how you are right now. This quality of patience, not needing to add to anything, not needing to be in denial, but just taking the attitude that this is a workable situation. It's a perfectly good mind and heart and body to practice meditation. And then finally turning your awareness towards the feeling of breathing. Finally turning your awareness towards the feeling of breathing. We'll use this anchor as a place to rest the awareness, a kind of home base for our attention. Noticing what it feels like to breathe in and out.

And as you feel yourself breathing in, silently saying to yourself, inhaling. As you feel yourself breathing out, silently say, exhaling. And then just at the end of that exhale, that small gap, touching. Thank you for watching! I'm noticing that it actually doesn't take so much effort to feel the breath. Thank you. And noticing that when the mind wanders, it actually doesn't take very much effort to bring it back. Vindicatio Thank you for watching. Thank you. And Every once in a while, just noticing if the mind and the body have gotten separated, if the mind is far away from the breath. And if it is, just patiently bring them together again, building a bridge. Knowing that we might build many bridges in this practice. Thank you. Stammering Thank you for watching! I'm sorry. Inhaling, exhaling, touching, exhaling, drawing on the patience of the earth. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Breathing in, knowing that we're breathing in. And breathing out, knowing that we're breathing out. And letting the body touch the earth.

Enduring patience. knowing that we're breathing out and letting the body touch the earth enduring patience kind sustained attention for the long haul Thank you for watching. So I'm maintaining the meditative posture, we'll just start to move towards the close of the practice. I'll offer you a contemplation that comes from the commentary on the metta practice, the loving-kindness practice. And in it, Buddhaghosa encourages us to first contemplate the dangers of hatred, the consciousness that divides,

and then to contemplate the benefits of patience considering patience as a prerequisite for love and a good environment for love to blossom. So as we close, considering the benefits of patience for your relationship with yourself. And your relationship with others, and your relationship with the larger environment and all its people. And then I'll go ahead and ring the bell to close the practice and when you hear the bell sound feel free to just float your eyes open and stretch your body close in any way that feels appropriate for you So, thank you for your practice, for being willing to spend 20 minutes in the patient's gym.

See you soon. 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.