Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 2/08/2017 with Kate Johnson

Episode Date: February 9, 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. Kate Johnson led this meditation session on February 8, 2017. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://bit.ly/2mRooVq

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 Interdependence Project. 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 Kate is our teacher today, and it's great to have her back. She teaches mindful yoga in New York City public schools and Buddhist meditation at the Interdependence Project. She holds a BFA in dance from the Alvin Ailey School at Fordham University and an MA in performance studies from NYU. She's trained at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project,

Laughing Lotus, and the Presencing Institute. And she's working on a book right now about waking up to power and oppression as a spiritual practice, which will be published in the fall of 2017 by Parallax Press. Please welcome her back, Kate Johnson. Don't just welcome me back, and I feel like welcoming you back hello um is there anyone here who's here for their first time at the Ruben for a meditation oh welcome welcome and um people who have been here um who are regulars say this is the place where you come to sit often look at all those hands wow um

yeah I um it's nice to be back and to feel like um Look at all those hands, wow. Yeah, I... It's nice to be back and to feel like we're coming back to being community. So I was really excited to be here with Mahakala today, my co-host for this meditation. Because Mahakala is, among other things, a protector deity. So often in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism, there will be chants during evening practices to Mahakala for protection.

There's also, as Don mentioned, just the wrathfulness of the deity doesn't mean that the deity is bad, that actually this is a deity that can help us to, you know, I've read that the five kind of head crowns represent the five hindrances, classical hindrances that are taught in Buddhist meditation. So the clinging, the aversion, the sleepiness, the doubt, attachment, aversion, doubt, restlessness. Thank you, of course, my favorite. And sleepiness. So that these hindrances to our spiritual practice are actually transformed in the darkness that Mahakala represents. And I thought, wow, what an opportunity to actually reframe and shift our perception of how we relate with

darkness in our meditation practice, in imagery. Certainly we know that throughout history, the kind of duality, the dichotomy of light, good, dark, bad has been used to justify oppression of dark-skinned people and violence and domination. So that's worth shifting, right? And then, you know, in terms of our own spiritual practice, I, we have a bit of a bent towards the light, you know? There's a lot of rhetoric around, like, going to the light, like, bring in the light, you know, and's a lot of rhetoric around like going to the light, like bringing in the light, you know, and moving towards the light. And light is wonderful. It's vital.

It's inspiring. It's uplifting. It's outward moving. And so is the darkness, which is kind of inward moving and restful. It's the more yin energy of our meditation practice. and restful. It's the more yin energy of our meditation practice. And so I was really interested and curious today as we move into the meditation to explore a little bit about more of what can be known in the darkness of our own experience, you know, in this place of restfulness, of receptivity. I used to help my mother in the garden when I was a child, and she taught me that the darkest soil is the most fertile. So to think about this space of our meditation practice as a fertile ground for transformation,

for planting seeds that will later blossom in our minds and hearts. in our minds and hearts. So let's go ahead and practice. If you wouldn't mind just shifting into a seat that feels comfortable to you. You can let the feet feel firmly planted on the ground if possible. Hands can rest on the thighs.

They can be palms down or palms up or clasped in the lap, just somewhere where the hands can rest. And if you're willing, go ahead and close your eyes. And just notice when we lightly bring the lids together, the kind of restfulness, the seeing of the dark side of the lid. Imagining this as a warm, healing, soft darkness. healing soft darkness. And allowing the eyeballs to kind of rest back into their sockets.

Before we start working with any particular technique, just really feeling the soles of the feet as they're touching the floor, feeling your seat where it's connecting with the chair. The hands touching each other, perhaps touching the legs. legs, lips touching, eyelids touching, kind of deepening your awareness of these points of contact, using the sensation, the deepening sensation of contact as a way to ground and settle the energy of the body. And as you sit here, also remembering, and to the extent that it's possible, feeling

that we're resting on the earth. That below this building, below the sidewalks, and connect with a dark, rich soil that is there that supports all of life, connects us with all of life, makes life possible. connects us with all of life, makes life possible. Seeing if you can invite the body to rest into that, the goodness and the darkness of the earth. Thank you. And then turning your attention towards your breathing, start to really feel the sensations that happen when you breathe in and when you breathe out. So we're not observing it as if we're seeing it, as if the lights are on and we're kind of outside of the experience looking in, but we're actually

right in the middle of it, feeling our way as if we're in a a dark room. Thank you. And as we sit, you might hear sounds, the rumble of the subway or of your belly if you haven't eaten lunch yet. Thoughts may come and go, plans or memories. And all that's fine, just let that happen. I keep training our attention on feeling our breath, bringing the sensation of breath into the foreground of our experience. And to support that, as you breathe in, you notice the sensations of breathing in.

You might silently say to yourself, breathing in. And as you breathe out, you might silently say, breathing out. Thank you. And as you notice, your mind and heart start to settle. If there's a pause that's available at the end of the out breath, before the next in breath comes in, you can use that pause for resting so that the inner note might be something like breathing in, breathing out, resting. Again. So that we use that pause to rest into the support, the warm darkness, solidity of the earth. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And time to time you might notice if there's any tension that's crept into the body and invite that to dissolve into the warm darkness, softening the eyes, just this one breath that we're on.

Just this one breath that we're on. It's not like in the light of day when we can see far ahead, resting in the darkness of our experience, where it's just this moment. What does it feel like now? now. Thank you. Thank you. Breathing in. Breathing in, breathing out, resting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Breathing in. Breathing out. R resting back into the darkness of this moment. grounding, full of potential. Thank you. Thank you. Now, having rested for a while in this womb of awareness, this container of awareness, I'll just offer two questions for contemplation. For this, you can just drop the question into the mind and watch how it resonates. Perhaps something is revealed or pops up, perhaps not. In the first, in the spirit of Mahakala, dropping in the question, is there any confusion or doubt that is being transformed right now?

What is being transformed in me? Thank you. And then the second question, what or who am I willing to protect? What or who am I willing to protect? And as you contemplate this question, perhaps feeling this fierce protector energy of Mahakala I'm rising in you. And then letting that contemplation dissolve and taking a moment to just settle back into the felt sense of the body for these last precious moments of meditation, formal meditation. Body breathing. Resting on the earth. Thank you for your practice, for your willingness to enter that warm, dark, fertile space. 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. you