Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 3/2/16 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: March 10, 2016

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 Interdependence Project and the New York Insight Meditation Center. This week’s session is be led by Sharon Salzberg focusing on the theme of the Wisdom. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/og

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 teacheruseum.org. 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 art room chosen from the museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Sharon Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts, has been teaching and practicing for many years, and is the author of many fabulous books, which you can find from the bookshop including real

happiness at work please welcome back Sharon Salzberg I'm just so curious how many of you here for the first time for this welcome it's Welcome. It's a great offering in the middle of the day. So before I talk about wisdom, I just have to go back and talk about ignorance. Sorry. I think I may even have said it here on the stage when this is my Buddhist training in a way. Start with the problem. Let's look at the problem because this is what most people are experiencing. Then we talk about the antidote or the path. When I was meeting with my editor for the first time for my book, Real Happiness at Work, she said, what would you like the chapters to be? What do you want the chapter headings to be?

work. She said, what would you like the chapters to be? What do you want the chapter headings to be? So I said, how about like burnout, exhaustion, moral dilemmas, bad communication, you know, and I just went down the list and she looked absolutely horrified and she said how about like balance and integrity and you know all these wholesome things so I said yeah that's like what I said you know that's the same thing it's just another way of seeing it so ignorance There are two kinds of ignorance that are predominantly spoken about. One is what we might call delusion. And delusion is sort of like being spaced out. It's being disconnected, not really knowing what's going on,

maybe having a kind of cocoon of not knowing. Sometimes it's very self-protective. And the literal translation is like befuddlement, bewilderment. The example is given of you're driving down a certain road and you make a turn and you think, am I on 122 or, you know, route this or that? You just suddenly don't know where you are. So that kind of state, of course, we experience many times. We tend to experience that when things are kind of basically neutral, right? They're not very riveting, it's not very pleasant,

it's not very unpleasant, it's just sort of a neutral state we just space out. Or some of us do have that kind of self-protective mechanism when we're afraid. That we just, I'll just take a nap now, even though I'm sitting here looking like I'm awake. There are all kinds of reasons why we get into that sort of diluted state. The other meaning of ignorance has to do not so much with not knowing,

with not connecting, but with knowing wrongly. And we assert, you know, like, yes, the sun goes around the earth or whatever it is we can be convinced but wrongly and because of that

lack of harmony with how things actually are we really suffer and we often cause suffering because one of the most fundamental kinds of ignorance comes in the form of what will actually make us happy. What will free us? Where does strength lie? Is that a habit, you know, vengefulness as an example, Is that a habit we actually do want to perpetrate to the betterment of our lives?

What happens when we take a look? Like, whoa, that doesn't feel that good maybe. Or the isolation, the loneliness we get into or the constant comparing or whatever it might be that's just a habit, it's only through the power of mindful awareness that we can see, oh, maybe this has a different nature than I've been taught all my life, where I've just taken for granted for these years, whatever it might be.

So we look at things like permanence and impermanence. There's so much belief, I think, that gets engendered in this society that there is something we can hold on to. And of course, we'll go into this more in the next two weeks as well. You know, there is something, there's some totem we can acquire against change or death.

And if we get it, we're safe. And we try and try and try and everything seems to dissolve or move or change or be outside of our control. So the more we try to hold on, the more we suffer. The more we can be with harmony with how things are, the more we can to hold on, the more we suffer. The more we can be with harmony with how things are, the more we can actually enjoy ourselves. Right? And also feel connected to one another.

We look at things that have been held out as in our control. And when we really look, we see, well, actually, that doesn't seem to be so. It's more like conditions coming together for something to arise and then passing away. That doesn't mean we have no influence on anything or we need to feel victimized by our lives but actually we suffer quite a lot from the feeling that I should have been able to control it and therefore I'm to blame so I'll never get afraid again there's one example of that I've grieved long enough or I'll never fall asleep meditating again,

since we're about to meditate. You know, we can affect the conditions for sure, but you can't insist, like, I've decided, never falling asleep meditating again. Maybe, you know, it's really, really hot in the room or it's just a sleepy moment for you or things are very neutral. Sleepiness that way is actually a form of delusion, right? It's not that exciting. So there's a signal almost in our brain that says nap time, right? So we can affect and influence

and change the conditions, but it's not ultimately something we can insist on or demand. It's going to be this way. And when we kind of secretly feel it is, we suffer. Because we blame ourselves. We want something that we'll actually

never be able to have. So the more we look, the more we see, oh, look at that. Look at the conditional nature of everything, like the contingency. Everything is like all these conditions coming together and coming apart. That's reality. It's quite fluid. It's changing. It's insubstantial in a way. You know, so there's some very profound truths about life that are part of the generation of wisdom. We get personal wisdom through paying attention, like we might actually know what we're feeling when we're feeling it. might actually know what we're feeling when we're feeling it. We might see certain things arising and remember due to that wisdom, like been down that path, that didn't help that

much. This is something worth letting go of. And we get access to this kind of universal wisdom, just the nature of things, the nature of life, so that we can step back from the force of all of that, kind of the persuasion campaign, you know, around control and what our lives should look like and what we need to have in order to be happy and how we have to fight one another instead of having a sense of the interconnection of all beings.

And so there's such tremendous kind of power and freedom in really having a sense of what our lives are about. That's wisdom. And it's right near at hand. Everything rests on how we pay attention because we're not trying to contrive a truth. We're just trying to see more how things actually are. So let's sit together. See if you can sit comfortably. You can close your eyes or not.

If you want, you can start by listening to sound. Pleasant sounds, unpleasant sounds, whatever it might be. You can just let the sounds wash through 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 to the world of direct sensation. Picking up pulsing, throbbing, pressure, whatever it might be.

or whatever it might be. You don't have to name these things, but feel them. Thank you.... and bring your attention to the feeling of your breath. Just the normal, natural breath. Wherever you feel it most distinctly. The nostrils, the chest, or the abdomen. You can find that place. Bring your attention there and just rest. See if you can, 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 you can just feel the breath one breath at a time. This is just the normal breath. You don't have to try to make it deeper or different. Images or sounds or sensations or emotions should arise, but they're not all that strong.

If you can stay connected to the feeling of the breath, just let them flow on by. You're breathing. If they are strong and you get pulled away, you can notice for a moment. It's thinking, it's joy, it's sorrow, whatever it might be. Certain sensation. Without judgment.

Simply notice. And see if you can let go. Bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. Thank you. And if you find yourself just gone, you've fallen asleep, gotten spaced out, lost in thought, sped out in a fantasy, truly don't worry about it. You can notice you've been gone. See if you can gently let go of whatever's distracted you.

And with some kindness towards yourself, return your attention to the feeling of the breath. It's not a sign of failure. That's actually the training moment, letting go and beginning again. Thank you. Diolch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Be happy. Thank you. Be happy. 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.