Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 10/12/2016 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: November 15, 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 Insight Meditation Center and the Interdependence Project. This week’s session will be led by Sharon Salzberg focusing on forgiveness. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/1f2

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

She's the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts. And she's been studying and teaching for over 45 years. She is a wonderful author of really helpful and lovely to read meditation books, many of which are upstairs in the shop, including Real Happiness at Work. So let's give her a warm welcome back, Sharon Salzberg.

So today is Yom Kippur, as many of you know. It's a day that really centers around the concepts of It's a day that really centers around the concepts of atonement and forgiveness. So I wanted to talk about forgiveness in the loving arms of Maitreya, who's waiting for us. When we talk about qualities like loving kindness or compassion, forgiveness is usually a subtext. It's the question that probably is most often asked at some point. Well, what about loving kindness for myself, given that I have so much regret about some action I've done? Or what about forgiveness?

Or what about loving kindness for this person I find really difficult? And could you possibly have compassion for somebody and really fiercely disagree and draw a boundary and say no more or that's not right. In order to do that without holding a kind of bitterness and hatred in your heart, is there a kind of forgiveness that needs to happen, that must happen?

Really honestly, this is like, I'll take my opportunity to confess. I very rarely talk about forgiveness because it is so complicated a topic. I usually do if I have a whole lot more time than we have today. But given the day, I thought, okay, what else can you really talk about? Because I just find it so complex, in part, simply by the use of language. People use that word in so many different ways.

And to quote one of my colleagues, my friend Sylvia Borstein, who I think said it very aptly, she said, forgiveness is not amnesia, but we think it is. And so we struggled. I find that people struggle terribly with the concept because mostly of all the associations we may be adding on to the word. Within the Buddhist tradition, forgiveness often refers to an understanding of change, a belief in change. Not that someone has changed necessarily, but that the potential for change is always there

because life is change. And so rather than holding a kind of rigid, absolute, all-bad sense of ourselves or someone else, we hold in honesty the action, whatever it might have been or is, in a bigger context, which also admits the possibility of change, because that's just the nature of things.

It doesn't mean that what happened doesn't matter. It doesn't count. Actions are consequential. But it's that rigidity, that absolute notion that keeps us feeling very far apart, even from ourselves. So to begin with, in the Buddhist psychology, looking at ourselves, there is a difference that is sometimes made between the quality of remorse and the quality of guilt.

The Buddha said very beautifully, I think, if you truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another. If you truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another. And so many of the actions we do take that do cause harm, that sort of rip apart harmony, they are born from a lack of love for ourselves. And not only that, if you believe a human being, including yourself, is capable of actual greatness through goodness of heart, through generosity, through connection, through compassion,

and you see the kind of compromises we settle for, the little bit we think we're capable of, the vast, vast sense of limitation that we manufacture, that is a call for some sense of compassion. It's a kind of poignant state. If you truly loved yourself, you'd realize how much more you're capable of, and you'd never harm another. But of course, we are all human beings. We have lives.

We've had lives. And it's not uncommon, especially in the course of doing something like meditation, which is a kind of introspection, that you find yourself doing a sort of moral inventory. And these memories come of things you did and things you said, sometimes from long ago. And it's a kind of purification.

It's a cleansing process. It's not bad. It just can be painful. But the instruction is, the guidance is, feel the pain of it because that is genuine. Let go of it. Forgive yourself. Realize you're capable of change. Move on with a kind of energy, not to maybe fall into the same traps yet again, but move on. And that is the state of regret or remorse. That's in contrast to guilt, where we just stay stuck. And we can't see ourselves as bigger or more than that particular act.

And we just stay stuck. And we go over it and over it and over it to no avail. So that is considered unskillful, which means two things. Useless and painful. So that is useless pain. Therefore, something to be avoided, right? It's not wholesome. It's not onward leading. So that distinction is interesting to contemplate. We're not pretending everything we did or do is perfect is so great, but we don't have to kind of stay stuck there. There's some act of recognizing, okay, lessons learned. I'm going on. That is very important. And so, too, with forgiving someone else, it doesn't ever mean, it shouldn't

mean pretending that something didn't hurt or didn't matter. It's understanding more, I think, first of all, where our own sense of strength and wholeness and sufficiency will come from. I feel like I, for example, have heard several stories many times from people, and the stories, from my point of view, reveal a tremendous amount of forgiveness. You know, people have been harmed, and then they say, you know, the things I'll report in a second.

But very commonly, at the end of that whole depiction, the person telling the story will add, but I'll never forgive them. I'll think, huh. From my point of view, you just did. And you did it in an amazing, inspiring way. But that's not how you think of the word. So something else is going on there.

So one example is I was teaching, and somebody in the class was clearly, in the retreat, was clearly very physically uncomfortable, and he was moving a lot. And my colleague, the person I was teaching with, gave a talk on forgiveness, and he came up to complain to me about her use of the word forgiveness.

And he really didn't like that word. And he said that he had actually been in a terrorist attack and his body was... You know, he was still feeling the effects of that every day, which is why he was so uncomfortable sitting. And he said, you know, I will never be able to forgive. But what I've learned is absolutely essential is to stop hating. And I thought, I'll take that, you know.

I think that's pretty good. Every day you feel that pain, and you have committed yourself to a path of learning to stop hating. That's kind of amazing. You don't want to call that forgiveness? That's okay with me. Don't call it forgiveness. So it's tremendous, challenging, subtle terrain to explore, and well worth it.

You know, what does it mean to forgive ourselves? Does it really mean we're getting lazy and negligent, we don't care about anything? Or can it mean something else about a kind of confidence in our potential to change? What does it mean to forgive someone else? Not to pretend that whatever happened doesn't matter, but maybe to step away from just the sheer habitual, obsessive offering up of our own life's energy to someone else. Like, let me think about you for another 18 hours today,

because I only spent 18 hours yesterday thinking about you. What does it mean to recapture that energy, that life force, claim it for ourselves, and experience our own wholeness? That's really the kind of exploration that we do. I had an interesting example of forgiveness, not from some terrible grievance or anything, but I think it's a kind of template for understanding. When we invited this Burmese meditation teacher, Sayadaw Upandita, to our center in Barry, Mass

to teach this three-month retreat, which he did. He came. And we'd never met him before, but we heard he was a really great teacher. So we invited him. And he was a really great teacher. I sat that retreat, as did many of my friends and colleagues. And he also turned out, this was his first trip to the U.S., and he also turned out to be an extremely

fierce, intense, demanding, demanding teacher, as wonderful as he was. And it was a silent retreat, and he was really the only person you were talking to. And even though he and I had a great relationship and I felt my own practice really benefiting from his guidance, I could kind of tell around the edges that there were all sorts of problems going on. The rules surrounding

Buddhist monastic life are very strict, and where you sleep and being offered food, not taking that which isn't offered. I could just tell. I didn't know what was going on, but I could tell something was going on. Because for one thing, he was sleeping in five different places over the course of tell. I didn't know what was going on, but I could tell something was going on.

Because for one thing, he was sleeping in like five different places over the course of time. I thought, he moved. How weird. And the culture is very different. Questioning is always welcome, but there's such a culture of respect toward somebody like a teacher. You would never say, I don't think so, or, you know, the kinds of things we say.

And so I could just tell there was a lot going on. And to my amazement, at the end of three months, he got up to say goodbye. And this is how he said goodbye. If I have hurt or harmed you, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask your forgiveness. And if you have hurt or harmed me, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive you. And even though he and I personally had had a great relationship, I felt this huge wave of relief come over me because I thought, you know what? Were I to meet him again, I didn't have to sit

there and think, oh, what's he going to think of me? Like, you're the one who started a retreat center where they don't even know how to treat Buddhist monks. And were I to see him again, I didn't have to look at him and think, well, you're the one who came to the West totally unprepared for what you would find, you know, in terms of the culture. It's like, we could just start anew. Here we are. That's not to say conviction, everything would be great, but we could start anew and discover. And so it was a tremendous teaching for me. And that's just, it's like the way they say goodbye. You know, it's just built into the culture in that way. So I also believe we experience that kind of forgiveness,

especially toward ourselves, with any meditation practice that we do because everything involves beginning again. We're going to sit now and just do the very kind of foundational exercise of resting our attention on the feeling of the breath, and if perchance one of you does not have your mind wander at all, you don't have to listen to the rest of what I'm about to say, because you're there. But for most of us, dare I say all of us, really,

our attention's going to wander. You set your attention, you rest your attention on the feeling of the breath, and before you know it, you're thinking about Thanksgiving or, you know, last Thanksgiving or whatever it is. You realize it, what happens? We need to be able to gently let go, in effect, forgive ourselves,

bring our attention back to the feeling of the breath, and start again. Most of us will have to do that many, many, many times in the course of the sitting. So that's what we're strengthening, is the ability to do that. Okay, so let's sit together. You can see if your back can be straight

without being strained or overarched. You can close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. straight, without being strained or overarched. You can close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. Even before we get to the breath, you might start just by listening to sound. It's like the sounds just wash through you. and bring your attention to feeling your body sitting, whatever sensations you discover. Thank you. Bring your attention to the feeling of your breath, wherever you feel your breath most distinctly. Maybe

that's the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen. Find that place, bring your attention there and rest. See if you can, you can use a quiet mental notation like in, out, or rising, falling, to help support the awareness of the breath, but very quiet. So your attention is really going to feeling the breath, one breath at a time. and if you find your attention has wandered, you've gone to the past, to the future, to judgment, to speculation, whatever.

It's okay. The most important moment is the next moment once you realize you've been gone. See if you can let go gently. Forgive yourself. Return your attention to the feeling of the breath. Thank you. Thank you. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.... Thank you. May you be well and happy, and I'll see some of you next week. Great, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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.