Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 12/06/2017 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: December 7, 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 New York Insight Meditation Center. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on December 6, 2017. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/tracy-cochran-12-06-2017

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. The series is supported in part by the Hemera Foundation.

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. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art and to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice. My name is Dawn Eshelman. Great to have you all here. Each month, we select a theme to explore, and the theme we've selected for this month

is refuge, seeking refuge. And, you know, often here at the Rubin Museum, we have people coming through our doors for all kinds of reasons and with all kinds of motivations. One of them is often seeking refuge. And many of those folks will find themselves wandering the galleries and coming upon our shrine room and taking a seat there and enjoying the refuge that it offers. So this month, all of the objects that we'll be looking at come from the shrine room. And after each meditation session, you will be invited upstairs on a gallery tour of whatever object we're looking at.

And you'll end up in the shrine room every week. So I hope you enjoy that. This week, we are looking at Tara, and she is a goddess that is perhaps familiar to you if you have some experience with Himalayan and Tibetan Buddhism. And in this image here, we have Tara as a central figure, and she is sitting on, kind of surrounded by, a throne of lotus blossoms. Tara is often depicted with a foot, one of her feet angled outwards so that she can immediately jump up and help. She is known as a compassionate figure and one that practitioners turn to to seek refuge, to seek help and support, and is known to offer it in many ways.

These are two different paintings that are featured in the Shrine Room. They actually come from a set of, I believe, nine paintings that depict Tara in her many different actions. And Tara is known for offering refuge for travelers that are on their journey, and also for helping people face the eight great fears. And the eight great fears, I've got them here in a list in case you're curious. Drowning, thieves, lions, snakes, fire, spirits, and flesh-eating demons, captivity or imprisonment, and elephants. And of course, you know, these are real fears. They all are also symbolic. So I'm going to read

those two as well. And the one that is pictured here that Tara is helping to protect someone against is the fear of drowning. And that symbolizes craving. So that craving or clinging action. And what I think is so interesting is that the language here is telling us that Tara helps protect you from your fear of something. Not the thing itself, but your own fear of it. So it's actually very empowering, helping you release your fear and face something. So drowning is respectively craving. And then we have thieves that represent wrong or false views. Lions, pride. Snakes, pride. Snakes, envy.

Fire, hatred. Flesh-eating demons, doubt. That's an interesting one. Captivity or imprisonment. And then elephants, which is ignorance. So interesting just to think about that, and also that action of Tara to help you really defeat your own fear and encounter your own fear and to come to terms with it. So we'll hear a little bit more about this idea of refuge from our teacher today, Tracy Cochran, who's back with us. Always great to have you, Tracy. And before I introduce Tracy to you, I also just would want to

make sure you all know about a special workshop that Tracy is going to be offering here in January. And that's something that we do because you all have really asked for that. And this will be a writing and meditation workshop. You don't have to have any experience as a writer or, you know, have come to it with any experience. Everyone is welcome is what I'm trying to say. And I'll let Tracy, I would love it, Tracy, if you will talk a little bit about more specifically what people can expect. Tracy Cochran is a writer and the editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, which can be found in our shop, of course, and online at parabola.org.

She has been a student of meditation and other spiritual practices for decades. And in addition to teaching here at the Rubin, she teaches as part of the Hudson River Sangha, Tarrytown Insight in Tarrytown, New York. And you can find more about her and Parabola on Facebook, Twitter, and TracyCochran.org. Please welcome her back, Tracy Cochran. Well, I'm delighted to be back. And for those of you who haven't been here before, there's something very special that happens in this space,

which is that we all participate in it somehow. I feel very strongly sitting up here that it's not just me, it's us together. And in a certain way, what's so wonderful about this inspiration is that it restores these artworks, these objects, to their original purpose, which is that you would come into a space, a temple originally meant an empty space, a space like this, with nothing to do except remember, to let the object let you remember who you most deeply are. Remember who you most deeply are. So this is an image of Tara helping people in the midst of a storm.

That's the way I experienced it. And I thought of it, originally I was attracted to it because a couple of weeks ago I was first in Key West and then I sailed into Havana Harbor. And both of those places have endured hurricanes and damage. So I was reflecting on what helps us, what gives us shelter in a storm. What can we trust no matter what happens? Whether it's an external storm like the hurricanes

that swept through the Caribbean and across the Keys, or whether it's an internal storm, or whether it's the storm of life. And I talk to people even today, even when I came in, who feel overwhelmed by the way things are. And especially at this season. Do you find that? Yeah, I'm getting a lot of nodding heads. It's like, ho, ho, ho, not for me. It's a season that can make us feel particularly isolated. It can make people feel particularly lonely and apart from the merriment that they are supposed to be having

or other people in advertisements are having or that they once had. You can have an acute sense of time passing. And it's cold today. It's cold and gray. Finally it's cold. Tomorrow it could be 84 again, so we don't know. But there's something in us that naturally contracts often and pulls back.

So being a Dharma teacher, I couldn't help but think of that great Dharma story involving a figure called Ebenezer Scrooge. And Scrooge, I looked into it in my Dharma version, was described first and foremost as grasping, contracted, squeezing, and solitary as an oyster, which rings true for me. I never quite bought into this happy as a clam business. You know, how could a clam be happy? He was, Scrooge was completely isolated and alone on Christmas Eve. And he went home and he had some horrible thin gruel. Have you ever made dinner for yourself when you were

in a really bad mood? It was like kind of gruel. And he had, plus he had a cold. He had a bad cold and he was all by himself and he was completely contracted and he had this horrible dinner. contracted and he had this horrible dinner. Can you relate? And then he went to bed and he heard this horrible sound, clanking, chains dragging, and a moaning sound. And he tried to tell himself it was indigestion from this horrible dinner he had. But he got up and he saw a ghost. I know this is kind of a theme with me, but he saw a ghost of his former business partner, Marley, wrapped in chains. And he kept trying to tell himself it was just a nightmare.

But Marley said, listen to me, Scrooge, listen to me. And Scrooge said, but you're wrapped in, why are you fettered? That's the language from Dickens. You are fettered, tell me why. And Marley said, I wear the chains I forged in life. And the chains were made of cash boxes and ledgers and all the tools of their money trade. Today it would be the keys to offshore accounts, you know, or secret dealings with the Russians and all kinds of fetters that we pick up. And Marley's going, Scrooge, you have to remember you're more than than what you did in our money-grubbing little hole. He describes it as a hole.

And Scrooge is like, I don't understand. You were an excellent man of business. And Marley said, business. And he had this horrible moaning voice. Business, humanity was my real business. Being alive, caring for the earth and for life, that was my real business. And Scrooge isn't quite buying it. And Marley is saying, Scrooge, basically he's saying, remember, remember you're more than you think you are.

And even when we come into this room, all of us, on any individual day, just to get here. We have an identity. We cling to this idea of who we think we are and who we think we aren't. And what we think is possible for us and what is no longer possible for us. And what we're invited to do when we sit together here is to do nothing in particular. There's nothing that you have to do or gain or learn. You have to engage in something that I think of as a kind of thawing out, so that you begin to remember that there is a body sitting here, breathing. There is a heart beating inside the body. There's a way of listening and receiving and responding that's here all by itself.

So Scrooge, I'm sorry to say, didn't immediately grasp this. Marley took him over to the window before he left and showed him all these ghosts flying through the air, wrapped in chains, the chains of who they thought they were. And they were suffering, and they were crying

because it was too late for them, because they didn't have bodies and hearts and ability to come back to the breath and be present. Just be present. So Marley said, remember what I showed you. And Scrooge didn't get it. So Marley said, remember what I showed you. And Scrooge didn't get it. So he was visited by three spirits who showed him the past.

And the past was as simple as remembering what it's like to sit in the body and breathe and feel okay. You remember what that felt like when you were a little kid, just for a moment? And showed him his future if he was shown what he could do right then. And he woke up on Christmas morning and he started giving, giving, giving and rushed off to dinner with Tiny Tim. And so I just want to say that it might sound like just a story,

even though it's a classic story. But the important thing to remember is when you think, what do I have to give? What is this generosity that I could give? It's the generosity of allowing yourself to sit here right now, softening up, letting go of your worries, letting go of who you think you are. Because it turns out that a bodhisattva like Tara, her generosity is not just in some fixed notion, it's in her ability to let go and be with whatever is arising. Let go, let go.

arising. Let go. Let go. Just abandon who in Havana in Cuba a couple of weeks ago, and Havana's been through a lot, not just a hurricane, but new trade embargoes, the collapse of subsidies they once got from the Soviet Union. Things are physically difficult. So that even my tour guides, nobody has running water all day long, nobody. But in the midst of this, I was taken to this little neighborhood called Fusterlandia. It used to be a village, and now it's part of Havana. And there was a great artist, folk artist, named Fuster,

and forgive me if I'm mispronouncing it. And he had a little wooden house and not much else. No money, no prospects, no running water all day long, probably some excellent rum and a few superb cigars, but that was about it. So he started making this beautiful mosaic art and he covered his house. And then he asked his neighbors if he could cover their houses with art. Yes, yes, yes. Now it's 80 houses.

It's a whole village. It includes this wild, free, beautiful art. Like there is one house completely dedicated to Princess Diana. Why? Who knows? And it had this big, beautiful rooster on Diana. Why? Who knows? And it had this big beautiful rooster on it. Why? I don't know. But just to be in this neighborhood, remind you that beauty can happen with the next breath, the next little piece of glass that you find from a coke bottle or something. What there is to do is what's present.

To be present is beautiful no matter what. So we'll take our seats. I have to stop myself or I'll go on and on. We take our seats. Don't take my word for it. And the only requirement is that you be comfortable so your feet are firmly on the floor and your back is straight and your body is easy. And you allow your eyes to close. Some people are uncomfortable with closed eyes, in which case you can avert them. But it is best to close them. And notice how the body feels. Just take in a simple impression of how it feels right now.

And allow it to be exactly as it is. You might have pain. You might be cold. You might have tension. So you aren't going to direct it or prod it. You're going to give this body a feeling of welcome, feeling of welcome, of kind attention. You are welcome to be you, exactly like this. Noticing how the attention itself begins to relax us a little bit. And as we notice this, we allow the attention to come to the breathing without seeking to change it in any way. We just notice the in-breath and the out-breath. And the experience of sitting here in this body. And immediately we'll notice thinking, sensation, images of all kinds can pop into your head. And we notice this with no judgment. No comment, even about our judgments and our comments. And when we notice we are being taken away, we gently bring the attention home again to the breathing and the sensation of sitting here in this body.

Sati, the ancient Pali word for mindfulness literally means to remember, to remember the experience of the present moment, of this body breathing. And then we'll go back to the beginning. Noticing as we begin to relax that there is a vibrancy in the body, a responsiveness that That isn't separate from the sensation of being here. Thank you. Noticing that there is a kind of stillness that doesn't mean silence but non-resistance a softening to what is a willingness to come home to the breathing and the body and this moment. Thank you. Thank you. When we find ourselves lost in thought, we gently come home to the breath, the body, with no judgment. Thank you. Noticing that when we come home we are always welcome into the light of an awareness that doesn't judge, that sees, that let's be. Thank you. Thank you. Notice that no matter what is happening inside, we can have an attitude of kindness, of sniff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you fall asleep, if you get caught up in thinking, that doesn't judge. Thank you. Thank you. And And as we come towards the end, we notice that's very alive. Thank you. We notice that by being still we haven't shut down, we have opened to life. So we take our seats for one more moment, one more breath, and we dedicate our practice,

which is alive and flowing. We don't keep it to ourselves, we're generous, we reclaim our basic generosity and goodness and we offer it to all beings everywhere, with no exceptions, including ourselves. May all beings everywhere be safe from inner and outer harm and danger. May all beings everywhere find refuge from all storms. May all beings everywhere be well in body and mind and live with ease and be free. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.