Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 11/16/16 With Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: January 3, 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 Interdependence Project. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on November 16, 2016. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://bit.ly/2mXTMUc

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. 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. So I'm asking you to think about someone that you'd like to protect, someone that is close to you, someone that maybe you see or are in touch with on a regular basis. So just hold an image of that person in your mind. And now maybe think of someone that is really different than you and that might have different challenges in their life. Someone you know or someone that you don't know. Maybe someone that you interact with but just don't know that well.

Or someone that you imagine. Someone that you'd like to protect. And hold the image of that person in your mind. And hold the image of that person in your mind. And I'd also like you to think about something that you'd like to protect. There are a lot of things to choose from. But just for the purposes of this moment, something you'd like to protect. And hold an image of that in your mind.

So, we're talking about protection today. And the image that you see behind me is that of a protector. This is... Oh! Bring me back my image. Thank you. There we go. Thank you. This is a universal white parasol whose name is Cetatapatra.

Cetatapatra. whose name is Sita Tapatra. Sita Tapatra. And Sita Tapatra not only represents, symbolizes a parasol, but is holding a parasol there in her left hand. Can you see that? So I'd like you to imagine for a moment that you are trekking across a high, vast Tibetan plain. It's the middle of the summer. The sun is beating down. It's high noon, of course. You're almost out of your water. You're really feeling it. And someone gives you a beautiful, elegant, and very effective parasol. So not only does that help you with your situation, but it can lift you, too. And that is exactly what this figure is doing. So she's got her parasol there in her hands. She also has thousands of

heads. Can you see that? In the different colors there that are stacked on top of her main face there. She has thousands of arms that arc out behind her in a kind of halo. And you can maybe better see the gold bangles on each arm that kind of mark each arm there. And then on each of those arms, she has eyes, eyes with which to see all the suffering of the world. And so this is what helps her protect. She also happens to be standing on a kind of pool. I'm going to click back a little bit here just so we can see the details that I'm talking about.

So she's standing on a pool of figures, and this is a kind of very visceral way of depicting her ability to overcome obstacles. And there we get a little bit of a better look at the heads and these arms that are fanned out, and you can see the little black dots all over her arms actually. Those are those are the eyes, right? So I'll get us back to where we need to be here. So we are using her as our metaphor today, thinking about not only protection, but the gift that it is to give protection and the kind of generous spirit that is really a pleasure to experience as a giver. Also just want to note that if you were here last week, you will remember that we took a look at Avalokiteshvara.

Avalokiteshvara has very similar iconography, and so it's interesting to be able to see these different figures that are depicted with these multitude of heads, multitude of arms, multitude of eyes, and that is a common theme in Himalayan art that really, this is a way of depicting the skill and power of the particular being that we're looking at. So we'll talk a little bit more about protection with Tracy Cochran. Tracy is the editorial director of Parabola, which is a magazine and online that has, for over 40 years, explored the world's wisdom traditions. She is a teacher of mindfulness meditation and mindful writing at the New York Insight Meditation Center. And she is a writer. In addition to writing in parabola,

her writing has been published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and many other publications and anthologies. Please welcome her back to the Rubin, Tracy Cochran. I'm very happy to be back and to be with you today. And I'm very touched and grateful for Don's description of protection. When I originally thought I would be talking today, before the great shock of last week, which we all felt, I thought I would talk about generosity. And it's interesting to notice that the two are not separate. They're not separate. This beautiful Bodhisattva who offers us protection, her nature is to be generous.

So what does that mean for us? I want to share that after the news last week after the election, a friend of mine said, the first thing I thought is this is a call to arms. The first thing I thought is, this is a call to arms. But I thought of arms like embracing arms, hugging arms. And I remembered reading long ago that attention is the purest form of generosity. It's our first way of embracing others and ourselves. And that before we do anything, we need to embrace ourselves,

all our feelings, everything that's arising, embracing all of that. We hear that when we meditate, at least when I'm leading meditation. But another metaphor I came across is not as elegant as this beautiful bodhisattva, but something we can all relate to, a firefighter. A firefighter has a wonderful, generous spirit. But before he goes into a fire, he puts on his mask, his helmet, his boots, his big fireproof gloves, and his coat. He takes care of himself. And that's what we have a chance to do here together in this beautiful space. This is a refuge for us to be together and to put on our suits, to raise our parasol, to give ourselves the gift of our own embracing attention.

So what does that mean out in the world? In times of great shock, we notice tiny moments of beauty and goodness. We go outside and we look at the sky. A friend of mine in Western Massachusetts wrote me on Facebook and sharing the pictures naturally that he'd seen all these geese landing in a field on their way on their migratory path and some fool thought it would be fun to ride through them with a motorcycle and scare them all. So there was chaos.

But then, Tracy, he said, they settled down. And they rose as one. And took off in this beautiful V formation, which reminded him that there's an instinctive beauty, an instinctive knowing about what's good, an instinctive truth. And we have this too. And so all last week I was noticing whenever I could, when I responded to beauty, notice how your own heart opens, how your own body feels glad. Notice when it rains or when you're confronted with somebody else's pain or fear, how sadness comes. That's also you being responsive.

That's also you remembering your basic goodness. In Tibetan Buddhism, Trungpa Rinpoche and others speak about basic goodness. But that's what they mean. It's that elemental. It's that elemental. And we could find it sometimes doing simple things. I was telling Don and I told some other friends here, I've been baking, which is unheard of.

I can't remember the last time I baked, but I've been baking. Simple, simple, rudimentary things, mind you, but still baking, because it's a way to come in touch with something basic and good, something that I can share. And Walt Whitman said, this is what you shall do. Be with the sun and the animals, and now I'm paraphrasing, and share with other people. Share. Share your attention. It can seem so small. It can seem like nothing at all until times are really difficult. And then we suddenly know what Rilke meant when he said, When you live from soul, you flow like a river.

By soul, he didn't mean something abstract. I know we don't talk about soul often in Buddhism, but he meant living close to the body, noticing how the muffins smell when they're baking or how the sky looks or how these trees have been standing here for 200 years through all kinds of presidents and administrations giving shade creating oxygen and that then you remember that this is also you. This goodness is in you. This steadfastness is in you.

Once upon a time, people went to Gandhi and they said, how do you think you can make a stand against the British Empire? It's ridiculous. They're too powerful. They have all the power." And he said, he told the person who asked him that, that he was placing his trust and his heart on millions of acts of generosity and cooperation and kindness. It's powerful. It's strong. In fact, I'm wearing it around my neck. Anyone can come up and see it. A friend connected to the Gandhi Organization gave me a leaf from a Bodhi tree in India. That's the child of the tree that Gandhi sat under. You can come and see it for yourself if you want. It's too far. And it was made by women who had no work and no hope. And then they were given a job to make these necklaces. We work together. We work together first and foremost by coming into this beautiful space and sitting down together and pooling our light. I'm not being sentimental and I'm not being simple.

They're my beautiful, I always quote Roko, so I may as well quote two more lines. Roko Soem is, well, quote two more lines. In one of his gorgeous sonnets to Orpheus, he said, quiet friend who has come so far, that's you and that's me. Feel how your breathing makes space around you. Just breathing and giving yourself the gift of your own kind attention. And make this darkness a bell tower. And you ring the bell.

And that doesn't just mean making noise, which may well be necessary. It will be necessary for me. But even before that, it means sit together with your friends here and feel how you resonate. Feel how good you are, how good it is to be sitting down here, being safe under the parasol of our collective attention and our kind intentions. Feel that and be with that in the moments to come. And let everything arise as it will. And begin to remember how powerful it is to be part of life as it flows.

The current issue of Pravala is called Generosity and Service, and it opens all the animals, the waters, and all the people every day. It wasn't just a once a year miserable holiday with your relatives who may differ from you in fatal ways. It was something that they did all the time, like breathing. And one thing I've learned in my longish life is that when things seem darkest, is that when things seem darkest, that's when I notice blessings, like the sky and the earth that supports me. When it's curtains for my plans, when my ideas about how things are going to turn out have been shown to be utter delusion, total foolishness. What was I thinking? And I'm lying there in the ruins of my dreams about how life should go. It's just then

that I noticed the sky and the trees and the earth and how sweet the air smells and how good it is to be with others and maybe bake something and eat something, simple things and sit down together. And I realized that this is a kind of miracle that we have this together and that we have this with us.

There's nothing we can't do. And I could go on and on but I think maybe it would be nice if we got to sit and then we can talk a little bit more after we sit so take a comfortable seat a noble seat so you have your feet planted firmly on the earth which is here to support you

and your back is straight as straight as it can comfortably be and we bring our attention home again to this body that's carried us so far, carried us here today. This body that came to us from our ancestors who themselves have been through so much so that we could be sitting here today. So we rest in these bodies, welcoming them and granting them the protection of this room and our pooled attention. Welcome. Welcome. And as the body begins to soften, as it relaxes just a bit, we allow the attention to come to rest on the breathing. Without seeking to change it in any way, we let ourselves be carried by the breath.

ourselves be carried by the breath. Picking one point of focus, the nostrils or the rise Allowing ourselves to notice the ancientness of this rhythm. It comes to happen to us. The sensations we're having, the thinking, feelings, tensions. We bring a gentle welcome to everything that arises. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is wrong. And when we notice we're taken, we gently bring the attention home again to the breathing and to the experience of being in this body, in this moment, alive. Thank you. Sati, the word for mindfulness in Pali means to remember. we remember the body and the life in it we remember we are

welcome here we are part of life. Thank you. Noticing as we soften and settle down that there are impressions of all kinds that flicker and pass, that we are open to life, that we know without thinking. Thank you.... When we get taken, when we drift off, we come home again without judgment or comment. Thank you. Thank you. Noticing when we come home, we come home to a light of awareness and a vibrancy of life. We remember that we're open. We receive from life. We're supported by return and open. Thank you. Thank you. For the last portion of our sitting together, we will offer ourselves and other beings some phrases of protection or metta starting first with ourselves. You may wish to picture yourself as a little kid or some other time and offer yourself the wish, may I be safe. May I be safe.

May I be safe from all inner and outer harm and danger. May I be well. May all my good purposes be fulfilled. May I speak truthfully and act with care and compassion. May I live with ease and be free. May I be free. Just noticing how it feels to wish yourself well in this way. May I be safe. May I be well. May my good purposes be fulfilled.

May I speak truthfully and act with care and compassion. May I live with ease and be free. And you may stay with yourself or if you wish you may open up the field of your attention to all beings. Those people in this room and all beings everywhere without exception. May you be safe and free from inner and outer harm and danger. May you be as well as you can possibly be. May your good purposes come to fruition. May you speak truth ease and be safe. May you be well.

May your good purposes be fulfilled. May you speak truthfully and act with care and compassion. May you live with ease and be free. Returning again to the sensation of being in a body breathing, to the sensation of your feet on the floor, to the remembering of this light 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. Thank you.