Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 11/18/2015 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: November 16, 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/i3

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.

In Hinduism, there is this concept called Atman, which is like the soul. It's something that gets transmitted from life to life. As many of you know, I just moved into a new sublet, and one of the doormen introduced himself to me, said, my name is Atman. It's like Batman without the B. And I said, no, no, I know what it is.

I've lived in India for a long time. But in Buddhist teaching, that concept of self is described as not solid, not sealed off, not something that is permanent, but bless you, like everything else in existence, something that is contingent, that is interdependent, that is constantly changing. So in Buddhist teaching, they talk about no self. It doesn't mean like blankness or nihilism or everything is going to disappear

or you're going to annihilate something that has been with you and helping you and taking care of you. And many kind of spiritual traditions describe spiritual evolution as a kind of ego death. And that is not something I ever found appealing. I found it very frightening. But really, within the Buddhist tradition, they're not talking about there being something

that you are going to destroy, something within you're going to destroy. They're saying that, generally speaking, there has been a misconception all along. There's been, generally speaking, a wrong way of viewing things, ourselves, our relationship to the world. And when we are in ignorance in some way,

then that's the rub we talked about last week. That's the source of suffering because things are askew. We're misaligned. We're not in harmony with how things are. And so it's like the proverbial banging your head against the wall, insisting things be other than they are. So within the Buddhist context, it's not that there's no self, but there's no self

as we normally think of it, generally speaking, that is independent, not contingent, permanent, solid, in control. One of the early ways one begins to assess no self is looking at the issue of control. Is there really some all-powerful little being within that can successfully say, I've grieved long enough, or I'm never going to fall asleep meditating again, or whatever it is. I mean, no, because it said everything arises due to causes and conditions. And it's not that we cannot affect those causes and conditions.

We can, but we can't dominate. We can't insist. It's like saying, I thought about it really carefully and I've decided never to die. Well, good luck. There are lots of things we can't do, but we'll never be in final control. There doesn't seem to be that ego inside that's pulling strings and making it all happen. So that's one avenue to understand the self. Everything arises due to causes and conditions. What we see as the self, the other side of that, when we realize it's not so solid, not so congealed, not so cut off.

In Tibetan Buddhism, they say, nothing exists from its own side. Nothing exists independent of causes and conditions. Everything is interdependent, including who we are. So every moment is really this confluence of relationships and experiences and things coming together. Every object we look at, and usually the classic description of this

is something like looking at a tree. At the center I co-founded, the Insight Meditation Society, where we're going to have our 40th anniversary very soon, amazingly enough, when we had, I think it was our 20th anniversary, we planted a tree in the garden. And so that's the example we often use. You can go down to that garden and look at the tree and it can be, and it is on one level, just a singular object in its own existence.

It's a tree. And that level is true, but it's not the only level. There's also a way of looking at that tree and sensing the soil which is affecting the growth of that tree and everything that affects the quality of that soil, which means rainfall, and everything that affects the quality of the rainfall, which we now know extends a lot further than Bering,

Massachusetts and Pleasant Street, right? So you can look at the tree and get a sense of it as itself. It's a network. It's all these influences and relationships and conditions coming together. That's also the tree. It's constantly moving. It's changing. It's all those things coming together. It exists, but it's not solid. It's not separate. Many times we hear a concept like not self,

and we go to it doesn't exist. Everything is like blank or kind of awful, disappeared. But it's not really like that. First of all, these descriptions are invitations to see, is this the way it's been all along? So then there's really no problem, because all that's happening is that we're seeing more accurately. Very commonly questions in a presentation like this or talk like this, questions come like,

well, if there's no self, how am I going to get out of this room? But the point is, if there has not been a solid, congealed, separate, in control self anyway all along, you managed to get into the room, and you'll get out the same way you got in. Because it doesn't mean things disappear. It's just that misalignment, that misinterpretation can go away.

And we see the process of conditionality, things coming together, coming apart. The wheel of dependent origination, which Don began to talk about, ignorance leads to karmic formations, leads to this, leads to that, is one description of how can it all be here? Because here's this universe.

How can it all arise and not be solid, not be substantial? How can everything happen without a being that is untouched by conditionality? that is untouched by conditionality. And so in the Buddhist tradition, they often use images to somehow try to convey the sense that everything arises. It's like the glory of the universe. And there is no solidity, substantiality there is no separate being that is somehow

experiencing it Buddha talked about life being like a rainbow, like an echo like a drop of dew on a blade of grass life being like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud a dream and isn't it really when you have to say something like we're about to celebrate our 40th anniversary there's something like that, it's so dreamlike. It all happens. But where's the solidity and where's the control? When we look carefully, there is none.

And so that's very much the message of no self. We realize that the other side of no self is interconnection. Everything, every moment is the coming together of so many conditions. And that means we have to pay attention to one another differently. Because what happens over there doesn't actually nicely stay over there. It is part of what happens over here in time. And what we do, where we put our energy, what we devote ourselves to, it matters.

Because those actions too ripple out as we live in this interdependent universe. It's not a romantic notion. It's not a sentimental notion. I think these days we can see it expressed in so many different places, environmental consciousness, economics. Even epidemiology shows us this, just the confluence of conditions coming together and coming apart.

And so the teaching is not really meant to be theoretical or abstract, but it's really a call to look at what is real in terms of connection in our lives, and to understand that we can come in closer and closer to the truth, we can be responsive to that. Okay, so let's sit together. See if you can sit comfortably. You can close your eyes or not, whatever you feel most at ease.

We can start by listening to sound. Here's an example of not being in control. Sounds come and go. Some we like, some we don't like. But we don't have to follow after them to hold on or push away. Just let them come, let them go. 1.5 kg of pork belly And bring your attention to the feeling of your body sitting, whatever sensations you Silence. Bring your attention to the feeling of your breath. Just the normal, natural breath, wherever you feel it most strongly, the nostrils, the chest, or the abdomen. You can find that place. bring your attention there and rest. 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 let most of your attention really go to feeling the breath, one breath at a time. And if images or emotions or sensations or thoughts should arise, if they're not very strong, then just let them go by. Just stay centered on the feeling of the breath. If they do come up in a powerful way, they pull you away from the breath, you might spend a moment just recognizing an incumbent, your invitation.

Things arise due to causes and conditions. It's OK. And then you realize maybe it's been quite some time since you've last been with a breath. See if you can gently let go and shepherd your attention back. So if you have to let go and begin again like a few billion times in the next few minutes, that's okay. Gull. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Thank you. 1.5 tbsps of butter 1 tbsps of sugar 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of salt 1 tbsps of flour

1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour 1 tbsps of flour Takk for watching! Thank you.. Thank you for watching! Takk for ating med. Thank you. Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gå inn på min kanal. Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gulland, Gullu Gulland Thank you for watching..

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.