Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 3/23/16 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: April 7, 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 Insight Meditation Center. This week’s session is be led by Tracy Cochran focusing on the theme of The Path. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/ok

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. in person, please visit our website at rubellmuseum.org. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the teachers from the Interdependence Project and 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 museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Tracy Cochran is joining us today, and she is the editorial director of Parabola magazine, which is a quarterly magazine focusing on wisdom traditions from around the world. And it's been in publication for 40 years. She is a student of meditation and spiritual practices

for decades, has been for decades, and has been teaching mindfulness meditation and mindful writing at the New York Insight Meditation Center, with whom we partner to bring you this series. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Psychology Today, O Magazine, and many other publications and anthologies.

Please welcome back Tracy Cochran. I have to say when I first proposed to a couple of people that I wanted to talk about the path, they were bored by the idea, not Dawn of course,. And one person said, you know, at my age, I just don't want to deal with one more path, one more project of self-improvement. And what they loved about mindfulness is that we can come to a beautiful space like this and just sit and have a moment of mindfulness. So I hit on the idea of describing this as mindfulness plus. I don't mean to give you a lecture on a project of self-transformation. But just to suggest this, there's a wonderful

American writer named Annie Dillard. And here is a quote from her. She said, all my life I had been a bell, and I didn't know it until I was lifted and struck. Isn't that beautiful? You know there's a beautiful sound of this bell. And that moment that she describes is a moment of being really present and more, really present, really mindful, but also really moved to be present and awake and hear. It's a moment where you're mindful, it's a moment where you're mindful but you also make a deeper connection that it's really good to be alive and to be a human being

so the steps on the path are meant to remind you of your deeper humanity and remind you that even when you're in life, you have a connection to what you can feel when you're on the cushion. But as Don said when we talked, there was a great Zen sage from the 13th century, Dogen, who said, the path is a circle. Every single time you sit down, you sit down with the Buddhas and with every ancient one

from every tradition who sought to wake up. No difference if it's the first time or if it's the middle of your busy day or if it was the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. You sit in company, in good company. So the mandala you see is a circle. And also, there's a teaching of the Buddha where he says he takes his seat in the center of the city, the center of the self. And it captures that flavor that we'll feel in a few minutes when you sit. You stop what you're doing, and you drop out of your thinking into the center of yourself.

And when you're seated in the center, just like in the mantra, you see it looks like a city with different gates. When you're in that alignment, that noble posture they talk about, you're less likely, at least for a moment, of being knocked off balance. You can kind of see things coming.

I don't know how many of you have had the pleasure of using the restroom downstairs, but on the mirror it says, do your emotions control you? Or do you have control over your emotions? That's a paraphrase. I didn't memorize it. The feeling is when we're in alignment, we have a space. So the idea of the path, and that's all I wanted to introduce, just the idea. Because mindfulness is so huge and more power to it. But there's something deeply comforting and supporting

about remembering that it's part of an ancient path. It means you have a lot of company, a lot of help, a lot of support. And it means that there's wisdom so that the way you live and the way you speak and the way you move and the way you eat can begin to be a way that will help you

and support you in coming back to this state of alignment. And there's more good news. I love this staircase. It's not just hypnotically beautiful. But another delightful quote I found from a French writer, René Dommel, who is a follower of a path,

said, you cannot stay on the summits. So what's the point? Just this, that when you're below, you can't know what's above. But when you're above, you can remember what's below. You can take note of the difficulties. You can take note of the conditions that support you and the conditions that tear you away. So that when you go down again, and I promise you, you will, you remember. You remember what's above. And sati, the ancient word for mindfulness, in Pali, which is a dialect of Sanskrit,

and scholars think it's close to the language the Buddha spoke. Sati means to remember. To remember what it's like to be in the center, to be in alignment, to be open. It means to remember what it's like when you're up, and to bring that when you're down. So the idea, and I just am gently suggesting the idea that mindfulness came to us as part of a path, is just a gentle reminder that we can be present, we can be mindful in a moment, but we can also take deep root in the present.

Like Annie Dillard, when she said, my whole life I'd been a bell, and I didn't know it until I was lifted and struck. That's deeply present, where you're being played like an instrument, breathed instead of breathing. So that is something that's always possible. And that's always possible. And that's the promise. And remember, as we flow into sitting,

that Dogon said, when you sit down, when you sit down today, when we sit down together, we sit down not just with each other, but with everyone who ever sat down to remember what it's like to come out of the isolation of our thinking, the isolation of our solitary, cut-off lives, on the hunch that we can live a more embodied and more complete life, on the hunt that we can

be something more as human beings, that we can wake up. So I guess that's enough for now. So please take a comfortable seat. Because everything I've said is something that you can know in a far more penetrating way in your own experience. own experience. So the first instruction always is to sit straight with your back straight. That's a noble posture.

And it's the first step in remembering who we really are as human beings. We're upright, so we're stretching upward to the heavens and we're also rooted deep into the earth and into our history as a human being connected to all human beings. Same heart, same mind, same body as the Buddha. So we let the body really arrive here, knowing it's safe it doesn't have to perform it can unfold safe yet awake and as it feels ready

don't push it with your thinking. As the body opens, bring the attention to rest on your breath. Without changing the breathing in any way, simply notice it. Allowing the attention to be carried by breathing. Allowing this to be the center of ourselves. The rhythmic movement of the chest or the sensation of air flowing into the nostrils. Pick just one focus for this sitting. Noticing, as you begin to make this movement of return, that there will be plenty of sensations

and thoughts, sounds. Allow everything to be there. No judgment. And when you notice that the thoughts are sweeping you away, gently bring the attention home again to the breath, to the center, to the moment. Thank you.... When you get taken, you gently return. Thank you.. Knowing that this practice is also allowing, bringing a kind, welcoming attention to everything that arises and welcoming it home.. Exclude nothing, no thought, no feeling. and gently welcome yourself home to the breath and the present moment. Thank you. Thank you. When you drift off, you simply notice that and return, allowing yourself to be soft, welcoming, kind. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Noticing that we can begin again at any moment, even if you to be sound asleep. You notice and come home to the present, to the breath, allowing the body to be soft and Thank you.. Thank you. As the body relaxes, as we continue practicing this movement of return, when we remember to, we notice that we feel more present, more open

to the perceptions and impressions that are always coming in, more related to the world, part of it. Without striving. Without fear. Just receiving. The way we take in breath and let it go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.