Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 3/30/16 with Ethan Nichtern

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 Interdependence Project. This week’s session is led by Ethan Nichtern focusing on the theme of Emptiness. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/ol

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 regular practice. If you would like to join us in person, please visit our website at rubinmuseum.org. person, please visit our website at rubinmuseum.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 artwork chosen from the museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Ethan Nickturn is here with us today. He's a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, and he has taught meditation and Buddhist psychology classes and workshops for over 14 years. He is the founder, as I mentioned, of the Interdependence Project, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to secular Buddhist

practice and transformational activism. Ethan is also an author. He's writing right now, and his most recent book is The Road Home, a Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path. The Road Home was recently selected as one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2015 and one of Tech Insider's Nine Books That Define 2015. Please welcome back Ethan Nickturn. Thank you so much, Dawn, and thank you to the Rubin and a few folks I know here. So thank you all for cultivating mindfulness during lunch in New York City. I'm going to just talk a little bit about this concept of emptiness,

shunyata, in the Sanskrit core Buddhist language. And I think the first misconception with this symbolic representation of emptiness is to equate it with some kind of nihilism. In early translation, sometimes this word was translated as voidness, almost like a black hole that sucks all experience up and from which nothing can escape, including light.

And the best simple way I've heard to think of emptiness, and it's a very, to talk about this in 10 minutes, as I'm about to do, is let's just say it's the Cliff Notes version from any classical Buddhist tradition. But the best way to talk about this unifying concept of emptiness is to think of it more, instead of emptiness, as empty of. So emptiness, whenever you see this concept in Buddhist philosophy, it's not a negation of experience. It's a way of qualifying a mistaken perception of experience.

And that's a really important distinction because a lot of times people see teachings like this in Buddhism and say that it's basically a nihilistic tradition. So have people had conversations with friends where there's just like, oh yeah, that Buddhism thing, you guys do nothing, believe in nothing, sit and do nothing, then you get up and there's even more nothing. It's a sort of quality of a, there's a misperception that it implies some kind of lack of involvement or kind of

existential apathy. And instead, empty of, which is a probably a better way to translate sunyata, is saying that our experiences are definitely happening. That's why we're all here. Anybody who would critique that we are all experiencing something, you'd be like, well, here's how I'm going to prove I'm experiencing something. I'm experiencing something. It's sort of so obvious. The critique, though, is that we often add conceptual confusion to experience.

One way I've heard this said is, like what would this be? Anybody? Not a trick question. A glass, glass of water, right? So from our perspective, it's a glass of water, and it has a certain functionality, and there's a certain chemical structure to it, but it doesn't know it's a glass of water.

It's not hanging out with its friends and saying, I'm a glass of water, you're a green juice, you're a cup of coffee. So one way empty of is thought of is that experiences are projected onto by the mind conceptually and from their own side. This is the way in some Tibetan systems you hear it said they don't know about your conceptual projections. Nothing intrinsically exists from its own side the way we perceive the experience. So it raises this question, which is a constant ongoing question, and this isn't just meant to be philosophical.

This is actually a useful question to our moment-by-moment experience of what is the purpose of conceptually projecting on to experience. It is very purposeful to know this is a glass of water. If you were thirsty and feeling dehydrated, it would be nice to be able to say something. Could you please bring me a glass of water rather than a glass of sand? It's a helpful concept.

But the other problem is that not only are our concepts kind of a step away from the direct experience, they are a projection onto experience. The other problem is a lot of times our concepts are wrong. There's a lot of this going on in the world right now. Coffee. No. Has anybody had any Facebook conversations recently where you were trying to convince someone that a glass of water was indeed a glass of water? You weren't trying to get them to see anything other than whether they should like water or dislike water,

just like they're arguing that a cup of coffee is a glass of water. So a lot of times this notion brings to mind that there's kind of three things going on in any Buddhist philosophy that are helpful to this discussion. There's the fact that we actually have direct experiences before we conceptually label or project onto them. before we conceptually label or project onto them. There's actually a moment sensorily where you just touch the glass or sip the water

or feel it going down your digestive passageways. There's an actual moment there that's before or deeper than or more embodied than, oh, I drank a glass of water today. So there's non-conceptual, sometimes called direct experience, and then there's concept. There's ideas or labels that are helpful in terms of how we communicate and lead towards direct experience.

And then there are confused ideas, concepts that are not related to any direct experience. They've been missed. They've been skewed. So a very classic story that you may have heard of. How many people here have ever heard the story of the finger pointing at the moon in any Buddhist context? Few people.

So there's a classic story that ultimate reality, which is the experience of sort of wisdom. So it's a thing, right? If emptiness wasn't an experience, we wouldn't have a symbol for it. It wouldn't be, oh, we decided this non-thing

is going to be described by this very ornate, precise bell. There's an embodied experience, and does anybody here remember the experience the first time you actually saw a full moon? That sort of, to use cinema, moon-struck moment? You just kind of saw the moon. So this classic story is that a let's say, a grandmother is

taking their grandchild out into the field. And their grandchild is maybe two or three years old, about that age where labels start to apply to experiences very clearly. And it's a full moon. And the grandmother wants to get the grandchild to have a direct experience of the full moon and the grandmother goes moon right so those of you maybe who have children

or grandchildren or just hang out what do you think the first thing that the toddler starts to say is the moon is the finger right the. Which is good because if the grandchild starts looking at a tree over there and saying, moon, moon, you'd want to bring them back, no honey, moon. And eventually, eventually there is a moment, it's said, that the grandparent can't make happen, can only skillfully point to where the grandchild begins to trace up the finger, and then there is a moment of, because it's a full moon, you could say that the synonym for emptiness in Buddhism, the best synonym is fullness or luminosity. But that fullness and that luminosity is some level of experience,

which we're working on returning to a little bit at a time in our meditation practice, some level of experience that's not encapsulated by a label, and it's definitely not encapsulated by a storyline. There's a lot of storylines about the moon right now. If this person gets elected, they're going to take the moon away. Okay, maybe, but let's just have a moment. If we're going to start that conversation, let's at least make sure that we stay in touch with the moon. If we're so worried about whether or not the moon is going to be here or not for us, let's at least make sure that we keep returning to the moon as some core embodied

experience that we actually can connect with. So the notion is that a meditation on emptiness is really a meditation where we are starting to notice, and many Buddhist meditations have this quality, starting to notice how our mind kind of wavers back and forth between a direct sensory experience, kind of an embodied experience, or often you hear non-dualistic or non-conceptual experience. How it wavers between that and then a clear conceptual experience like, oh, that was a self-aggressive thought. Or, oh, I'm thinking about person X right now. Right? Clear conceptual experience, which is really good.

And then just completely off concepts. One more illustration of this before we begin our meditation practice is a story that Sharon Salzberg likes to tell of somebody on meditation retreat, and I think it's her colleague and friend and co-teacher Joseph Goldstein who this story initiates with so there's a story that they were on a silent retreat and each night there's a Dharma talk and discussion and that's the time you get to ask questions etc and this Dharma talk was about letting go and there was one gentleman in the audience who raised his hand, I believe for Joseph Goldstein, and said,

yeah, when you were talking about letting go, you know, I realized during the last sit that I had all of this tension in my jaw, and I was just completely fixated on my jaw, and I just couldn't let go of the tension. I just couldn't let go of it. And I started to realize, like, I can't let go of anything. Like, I hold on to things so much.

And he kept going and going and going. And he's like, and I don't think I'm going to be able to have a successful relationship until I figure this out. And Joseph Goldstein listens to the whole story and goes, so you noticed some tension in your jaw? And he goes, yeah, yeah, totally. I noticed some tension in my jaw? And he goes, yeah, yeah, totally. I notice some tension in my jaw.

And I had all these thoughts, and I had these major insights into it, and I really think this is really what's blocking me from genuine human connection. And Joseph Goldstein goes, so you notice some tension in your jaw? So in a sense, every time we return to the breath, if that's your practice, you could say it's a meditation on emptiness. Just because the way we would say it in Shambhala is it's a way of

dropping the storyline. That's often the way we talk about the Western psychologists and Western literature experts might call this the narrative. It's that way that we get caught up in a concept and we come back to a direct embodied experience. And in that case, it's very clear how a person might torture themselves by just forgetting to look at the moon and telling lots of stories, mostly negative stories about

the moon. So we're going to do a 15 or 20 minute meditation now. And we're going to work with this exploration, which it's good to get lost in concepts to do this exploration, as well as it's good to have a direct experience to do this exploration. But we're going to do a little exploration of a direct embodied experience, which you could say is an experience of fullness or emptiness, luminosity, and how that sometimes goes into an experience of concept, labels, and how that goes into storyline. And we'll use different sensory explorations to do that. So whatever is comfortable for you to work with your mindfulness of body practice, we'll use that as our home base.

Please settle in and get comfortable. In some traditions, as some of you know, in mindfulness of body meditation, the eyes are left open. In many traditions that focus on meditation on emptiness, such as the Japanese Zen tradition, Tibetan, and Chambala traditions, when you're doing a formless meditation or a meditation on emptiness, the gaze stays straight ahead, but we won't work with that unless you feel super comfortable

exploring that. So you could either let your gaze softly come down about four to six feet in front of you, tracing that line of soft, receptive vision. Or you could let your eyes gently close. Let's just take a few minutes to just feel the sensations of the body, which the breath can be one of, but it's not the primary object right now. The sensations of your body, and you may have immediate labels, And you may have immediate labels, such as I feel tired, over-caffeinated, chronic pain here, itch there.

Just see if when you notice a sensation arising, if you can look at the direct experience of that sensation alongside the noting or labeling of what that sensation is. And then just notice when you get lost in a story about the sensation or anything else. Thank you. And you can begin to gather to your body breathing as just this anchoring sensation. So there are concepts to why we use the breath as a primary anchor in mindfulness meditation what gathering attention to the breath does for your parasympathetic nervous system

etc but one of the reasons we work with the breath sympathetic nervous system, et cetera. But one of the reasons we work with the breath is it's so intimate, so physical, so close to our sense of just appreciating our life being alive in the present moment, that the breath is a beautiful object for a non-conceptual experience. So let's just see if we can really feel the breath just once or twice in the next five

or six minutes. And if you wobble or wander into concept or story, you could just come back to labeling the breath and then try to come back to actually seeing the moon, which here means feeling the breath simply and directly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So remaining in our practice, we'll just shift the anchoring of our perception. So I'd invite you to now become mindful of sound. With the same frame of exploration, what is it like to have a direct experience of sound? What is it like to have a direct experience of sound? What is it like when sound is labeled something by the mind?

And what is it like when my mind just gets lost, lost in a story or a narrative. And then we could gather back to sound.. ...... Finally, I'll invite you to explore the same principle with sight. So I'd invite you to open your eyes and lift your gaze to the horizon. So we're still meditating here, meditating on mindfulness of sight. meditating here, meditating on mindfulness of sight. And you can shift your gaze so you don't have to look straight ahead, but find one visual experience that your mind lands upon, choosing one, and just rest your gaze there. Explore the object or the experience,

noticing the mind labeling, noticing the mind getting lost, noticing what the direct experience, even if it's just a fleeting moment, feels like. I invite you to shift your gaze again. I invite you to shift your gaze again. Just do this one more time until you find another object or visual experience. You can look up or down or left or right if you need to.

And let your eyes rest on something. Exploring direct experience. Labels or concept. And getting lost. Thank you. You can return your gaze to its initial position for your meditation and we'll just take three or four breaths together to come back to our body, reground to close our meditation practice. And as we draw our practice to a close with the gong, if there's some way you'd like to acknowledge your own practice, your efforts to make it here, to work with your mind, such as a bow or just a little

thank you to yourself internally. I think it's important to offer ourselves appreciation at the close of a meditation session, given how much effort it takes to show up to our practice. So whatever feels organic, please do that. Okay. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. 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.