Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 11/11/2015 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: November 30, 2015

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 New York Insight Meditation Center. This week’s session will be led by Sharon Salzberg. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: http://rma.cm/hq

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 slash meditation to learn more. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the 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. Hello. This is my day at the Rubin. So suffering is really my favorite thing to talk about, so let's just do it. Like that whole scene, the Buddhist cosmology, whether you think of it in terms of many lifetimes or you think about it in terms of lunchtime and all the mind states

we might go through in a very condensed period of time. The idea is that we're not looking at the forces arising in our own minds. We're not looking at others with a grid of good and bad, or right and wrong. The metric is that which leads to suffering, and that which leads to the end of suffering. So it's a very different sensibility.

In fact, the Buddha said once, I think very powerfully, he said, I teach one thing and one thing only that is suffering and the end of suffering. And one friend of mine who is kind of a wit said, why did he say that was one thing? Those are kind of two things, suffering and the end of suffering. So that's interesting too. But I think part of the answer to that is that sometimes the path to the end of suffering is through the open and open-hearted, fully aware acknowledgment of the suffering that is, not trying to cover it over or disguise it

or call it something else or whisper about it or whatever it might mean. So the word suffering, of course, is a very heavy word. It is a common translation of this word in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist text, which is dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A. And it doesn't only mean terrible pain. It can mean terrible pain, trauma, grievous injury, loss,

something like that. But it also can just refer to the insecurity, the instability of life. It can refer to that very kind of poignant sense. It's almost like a wistful sense that there's nothing we can hold on to. Every time I'm introduced and somebody says something like, she's been practicing meditation

since the early 70s, I think, that's more years than I usually think about. Where'd they go? Or the center I co-founded, the Insight Meditation Society, is having its 40th anniversary in February, which is unthinkably weird. You know, I don't even usually think of myself as 40 years old. And so it's just so strange, like the passage of time,

the movement of things. Nothing is static. Nothing's fixed, no matter what we want. So it's not like heavy pain. It's not like a terrible ordeal. But there's something that it just evokes a certain sense of like, wow, this is really like a dream. And then there's a certain understanding of dukkha

that in some ways is even more subtle that refers to the conditionality of things. Everything arises due to causes and conditions. Nothing arises from just will or willfulness or whatever wish we might have. So the example that's usually used is a very simple one like, we want lunch. So you can't just say, poof, there's lunch.

You need money to either buy the lunch or buy the ingredients for the lunch. If you buy the ingredients, you need to prepare the lunch. Maybe you need a job in order to have the money. You need a car, perhaps. Not here, but a lot of places in order to have the job and show up. And, you know, so there are all these conditions that have to come together for lunch to arise. And so that, of course, is a very innocuous example.

But what if we're looking at a friend who's really having a hard time, who's really struggling, and everything in us wants to just be able to say, poof, you're all better. But life isn't like that, because all these conditions have to come together for something to arise. So that doesn't mean we feel helpless or apathetic or we turn away. But it's just that certain tone to recognizing, yeah, I will do everything that I can, perhaps, to try to make a difference.

And I'm not in control of the unfolding of events. That's just not the nature of things. It's not the nature of events. That's just not the nature of things. It's not the nature of life. So dukkha can range from that extremely subtle sense of recognizing conditionality and all the way to, you know, some terrible kind of ordeal that that we find ourselves going through. So the word is derived in some ways from, there's so many images and illustrations in the Buddhist teaching that come from chariots.

You know, it's like a chariot with the axle kind of bent. So there's like this rub. It's a little disjointed. It's the rub of life. That's dukkha. And the path to the end of dukkha is through seeing, recognizing, and not adding to the dukkha that is.

I really believe, unlike some systems of thought, I really believe some things in life just really hurt. They do. They're very painful. So the question isn't in terms of that recognition, our attitude, our spirit, how we're receiving it. But what happens next really, in very strong strong ways does depend on those things. There's so many ways in which we can have a sense of difficulty, of things hurting, and feel very isolated.

It's just me. Rather than finding a kind of community, a commonality, a recognition that this is part of the human condition, this is part of the human condition, this is part of life. It's not just me. Life has not shunned me or abandoned me. And of course here we face a lot of personal conditioning, we face a lot of cultural conditioning. If you're having a hard time, it feels somehow you've lost control of things. You should be on top of things. It shouldn't hurt. And we may be adding to the suffering that is that sense of blaming ourselves.

I should have been able to stop this. We may be projecting into a seemingly unchanging future. This is the only thing I will ever feel. So one of the things we say in mindfulness practice is look for the add-ons. What might we be adding on to an experience, whether it's pleasant or painful or neutral, that actually leads to more suffering rather than to the end of suffering. So the possibility exists. It's not easy, of course, but it's possible. So what a miracle that is, that we can be recognizing suffering

and find one another there in a state of compassion for ourselves and compassion for the sense of the human predicament. We can experience suffering and in some way utilize it for greater understanding rather than just being lost in resentment or fear. It's not easy, but it's possible. as being lost in resentment or fear. It's not easy, but it's possible. And I just think it's extraordinary

that we're said to have that kind of capacity, no matter what is going on. So the corollary to that, of course, is that we're not just opening to suffering. We're opening. And when we have that ability to be with our experience in a more balanced way, then we find that we are opening to joy, to delight, to wonder, to fulfillment in a much stronger way. And we find that even with ordinary routine,

repetitive things that just are neutral, they're nothing much, we have the capacity to relate differently to these experiences as well. So suffering doesn't feel like a defeat and pleasure doesn't feel like something we don't deserve or we're too distracted to get into. And we can actually wake up and connect to the neutral, ordinary things that come our way. And then we have a life that is very different, even given the inevitable ups and downs and changes that will always happen. We're different. And so our lives really reflect that. So suffering and the end of suffering. Here we are. Okay, let's sit together.

You can just sit comfortably, close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. If you get really sleepy in the course of the sitting, you can open your eyes. You can start just by listening to sound, the sound of my voice or other sounds. It's a way of relaxing deep inside, allowing our experience to come and go.. Of course we like certain sounds and we don't like others. But we don't have to chase after them to hold on or push away. Just let them come, let them go. Thank you. And bring your attention to the feeling of your body sitting, whatever sensations you discover. Bring your attention to your hands. And see if you can make the shift

from the more conceptual level, like, oh, fingers, to the world of direct sensation, picking up, pulsing, throbbing, pressure, whatever it might be. You don't have to name these things, but feel them. And with that acute kind of sense of sensation, bring your attention to the feeling of the breath. Just the normal, or at the abdomen. Thank you. And if you like, 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. Thank you. And if something arises that's strong enough to take you away from the breath, notice its

quality for a moment. Is it pleasant? Is it painful? Is it just kind of neutral? You don't have to judge it or judge yourself. It's just recognition, whether it's a thought, an emotion, a sensation. See if you can gently let go.

Bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. And for all those perhaps many times you're just gone, floating away in a sea of thought, lost in a fantasy or you fall asleep, really don't worry about it. We say the most important moment is the next moment after you've been gone. When you realize that, see if you can let go and begin again. Thank you. Gå in. Takk for ating med. Gå in. Takk for ating med. Thank you. Okay. Takk for ating med. 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, 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, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. 1,5 kg of pork belly Thank you. I'm going to make a 1.5 tbsps of butter 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of baking powder 1 tbsps of baking soda

1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda

1 tbsps of baking soda 1 tbsps of baking soda Thank you. Thank you. GONG So, 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.