Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 1/02/2019 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: January 3, 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 16:00. If you would like to attend Mindfulness Meditation sessions in person or learn more, please visit our website at RubinMuseum.org/meditation. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/tracy-cochran-01-02-2019

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. Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Great to be here with you. Welcome and welcome back to many of you. Welcome to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice. And the New Year is always such a great feeling of just a fresh start getting to begin again and start over and of course that's what we practice many many times during our sitting as we meditate with mindfulness practice and other types of meditation practices as well. This opportunity to begin again whenever

we become aware that that would be a good idea. And so I know sometimes that in the process of doing that, there can be feelings of frustration or failure or, you know, why am I still thinking? Or there's that thought again. But I invite you to just experiment with this idea of programming a different kind of thinking in that transition during meditation. Maybe just saying to yourself, happy new year. Starting over with that fresh perspective. Happy New Year. Starting over with that fresh perspective. So it being the new year is a great time to reflect on the year that has passed. And it's been such a meaningful and juicy one here with you all at the Rubin Museum. We've taken this last year as an opportunity to talk all about the future. And in doing so, we have brought to you today here

some elements from an exhibition that we have had throughout the course of the year up in the Spiral Lobby. It's called Monument to the Anxious and the Hopeful by Candy Chang and James S. Reeves. And this is the last week that this will be up here in the museum. So we just thought it would be a great opportunity to look back at all the contributions that have been made by visitors who have scribbled their deepest anxieties and greatest hopes on these little cards and hung them on the wall for all to see. And I think it's sold out, but tonight we'll have a program

that will kind of link this with the Tibetan prayer flag and will invite people to create intentions for the future. And so with that, we pivot to looking at 2019 here at the Rubin Museum. It's going to be a conversation all about power. And sometimes when I tell people this, they'll say, huh, why is the Rubin Museum doing a year-long about power? But we're really talking about power within the context of power as something that is within us and between us

and thinking about the essence of empowerment. and thinking about the essence of empowerment. So as we do that, we will be talking this month about intention and intentionality as something that really propels our own power, our own ability to create action and change in the world around us. And it's interesting to look at the monument as a sort of platform, like a precursor to intentionality. Just taking account of our hopes and anxieties and how that can inform our intentions for what's to come. So we get to begin again today here with Tracy Cochran. So nice to have you back, Tracy.

with Tracy Cochran. So nice to have you back, Tracy. And Tracy is a writer and the editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, which can be found online at parabola.org and in the Rubin gift shop if you need a little New Year's gift for yourself. She's been a student of meditation and other spiritual practices for decades. And in addition to the Rubin, she currently teaches at New York Insight and every Sunday at Hudson River Sangha in Tarrytown New York her writings and teaching schedule can be found online parabola Facebook and Twitter and Tracy Cochran org please welcome her back Tracy Cochran I'm delighted to be here with you on this first day of 2019. And I told Don I already kicked off yesterday, the first day, with a big mistake. So that lets me off the hook.

I want to begin by inviting you to reflect on the image so many people saw, especially here in New York, of all those people standing in the driving cold rain on Times Square. It was really a sight to behold because many of us didn't go out, period, because of the weather and the spectacle of so many people from so far away, standing. I looked up the requirements, and you weren't allowed to bring umbrellas for security purposes. And you could see these people with these giveaway hats, these really silly hats, and they had plastic bags on their feet, and really no bathrooms, no trash cans.

Consider what drove them to do that. And I know I hear some laughter. I can hear some judgments going on without having you verbalize them. But remember, Joseph Campbell, who was an old friend of Prabala, once said that in all times people have sought the meaning of life, but what I think they really want is an experience of being alive. And I could certainly feel that in Times Square.

But there is something special about New Year's Eve. Because as John said, there is this feeling that something is going to begin anew. There is an opportunity for a new life where we're going to leave our old limitations behind and we can set new intentions or resolutions. And what's so touching about the collaborative artwork that is up on the wall, a monument to hopes and anxieties,

is that inevitably when we have a hope, our anxieties come up with it. And these were chosen to show that hope, our anxieties come up with it. And these were chosen to show that very clearly that there is an understanding that life goes on or existence continues but also this piercing sense of impermanence. I could feel that walking

down here from Grand Central the Christmas trees are all out on the street the windows are coming down the barricades are being collected from those poor people that were herded into Times Square the wet confetti is being swept up things pass and we can't make them stay. So with this intention that we set, inevitably comes fear.

So what's interesting to consider is, is there maybe a new or a different way to understand the setting of an intention? Or even a resolution. I love to remember that a resolution doesn't just mean determining to not make mistakes, which as I've confessed I've already blown. It hasn't even been 24 hours. But also resolution is seeing things in a clearer way. Like at the magazine Prabala, we like our illustrations in high resolution to see in more detail. Intention in English comes from a root, a Latin root that means to stretch,

to open ourselves to yearn towards something greater. So it was interesting for me to remember that in the Tibetan tradition and in other traditions to set an intention is questioning. It's opening to a deeper question. And ultimately, we are the question. So that when we come into this room, which is also a great collaborative work and a work in progress that we do together, we give ourselves a chance to sit down and be still, to be still and to be quiet, which is such a quietly radical act in itself,

especially in a big city. We sit down and we're still together. together. And we practice being with what comes up, with compassionate eyes. We see it. We meet it. And there's an attitude of questioning inside that's very general and not judgmental. And we ask ourselves, what do we really love? Or what do we really want? And we're conditioned, all of us, to be very self-critical.

So we'll seize on the idea that we want, we're very greedy or we're vain. And by we, I mean I, too. You know, that we're motivated by very shallow desires and fears. But when we get still, we begin to kind of thaw our first level of fears and yearnings, there's a deeper wish to be part of it, to be part of life, to heal. to heal. One of the artworks, one of the cards, affirmed the insight that healing is possible. And then this fear that they're always trying to keep control.

I could relate to that. I'm sure most of us can. But from the point of view of seeing things from a higher resolution with more compassionate eyes from stillness we see that even as we're gripped by that desire to control or to look good or whatever it is

there's a deeper wish to heal, which comes from a root in English that means to make whole. So setting an intention could be a way of allowing these hopes and anxieties that we see so movingly portrayed on the wall of the Rubin Museum. We could begin to see that those things can be together and that at the very same time we can open to an even deeper questioning or wish. And what begins to happen when we do that, which we will in just a moment, is that we go from one kind of attention, one kind of power, and we can be powerful. We can race up the mountain if we have to.

We can really collect ourselves to do for a certain time. But when we let this deeper questioning of intention occur, that first kind of attention can give way to a deeper attention, which I've heard described as a central attention. I love it. I've never heard that anywhere else, and I love sharing it because it suggests that it's in us, in our deeper heart or our deeper heart mind, our bodhi mind, and also outside.

We can relax into it. And we feel this when we sit that there's another kind of awareness or attention that despite us is present, that we can begin to open to and yield to and allow ourselves to be supported by. There are different kinds of power. There is a power that we try to marshal in separation. And there is a greater power that we can allow ourselves to be open to.

We can shift from will to willingness. To be willing to be part of this life, to be helped by it towards the good. So let's practice. So we sit with our feet on the floor and our back straight, as straight as they can be

and notice how it feels to land here to be in this room in this body exactly as you are today. Notice how it feels to be completely accepting of what you find.

A mix, always a mix, just an attitude of welcome, welcome. And notice that just by doing that, the body begins to warm a little bit. And as we begin to remember the life in it, that isn't something fixed, but an energy that's changing. changing. And as we begin to thaw, soften, we let the attention come to the breathing without seeking to change it in any way. Just notice the in-breath and the out-breath, wherever you happen to feel it, as a rhythm in the chest or a sensation of air. Just let it happen. And instantly we notice thinking, sensing, picturing, all kinds of things happening inside us, and notice how it feels to just come home

without any judgments about going away or coming back, welcoming everything into the light of compassionate attention. You can see without judging, no matter what you see, noticing that you can begin again at any moment. Thank you. Notice that when you come home, you come home to light and warmth, to an attention that doesn't judge. Thank you. As we soften, as we begin to relax,'s not just thinking in our heads, but an energy between us and also inside. Thank you.... Notice that the stillness open to this stillness, this energy, this power of attention that isn't ours alone. Thank you. When we get distracted, we notice no judgment and gently draw the attention back to the body and the breath. Noticing that despite everything there is a responsiveness inside us, something that to be here. Thank you.... Notice that there is a sensitivity inside you, inside us, just sensitivity, responsiveness, A willingness to be with what's unknown right now. Thank you. Notice how it feels to let your heart soften and open to an unknown. Thank you. When your thinking starts to pull you away with fears and plans and anxieties and hopes, notice how it feels to come back and find life here that isn't separate from feeling, from the sensation of being present and open and part of life. Thank you. Notice as you soften that there are powers of life, benevolent powers or forces that Just like you can float in water, you can open and be supported and nourished and held. Thank you. Thank you, and Happy New Year. 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.