Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 4/13/16 with Kate Johnson

Episode Date: April 14, 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 Kate Johnson focusing on the theme of Darkness into Light. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/xy

Thank you. If you'd like to join us in person, please visit our website at rubemuseum.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 Ruben Museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. So today's teacher is Kate Johnson. Welcome back. Thank you.

Kate currently teaches mindful yoga in New York City public schools and Buddhist meditation at the Interdependence Project. Kate holds a BFA in dance from the Alvin Ailey School, Fordham University, MA in performance studies from NYU. She has trained at Spirit Rock Meditation Center,

the Interdependence Project, amongst many other great meditation schools. Please help me welcome Kate. Hi there. Good afternoon. Hi. It's fun when your friends show up places. And certainly being here at Ruben,

it kind of feels like being among friends. Anyway, so welcome. So as Tashi said in her awesome introduction, the theme that we talked about working with today in the practice is the theme of moving from darkness into light, which seems particularly appropriate right now, given this time of year. I was just taking a run yesterday in Prospect Park and noticing the buds starting to appear on the trees and just the feeling of being able to go outside and not worry about my basic survival. Like a pretty nice thing.

Like a pretty nice thing. And so thinking about how to work with this in meditation practice, as someone who's trained primarily in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, I was thinking about this transition from darkness to light as a metaphor for the arising of insight. And so I'll talk a little bit about this and then work with a practice together. So that kind of sudden arising of spring, sometimes that's just how it feels in meditation practice. I know that some of you are probably very seasoned practitioners and some are just beginning, but there's often this sense of, for me at least, practicing mindfulness,

feeling the body, feeling the breath in a moment-to-moment way. And it almost has this quality of moving about in a dark room and kind of feeling the different forms, and I'm not exactly sure what I'm working with. And then suddenly, almost like magic, it's like a moment of clarity can arise where, you know, we can understand more deeply an aspect of reality, something about ourselves or the world. And it's amazing because it's not an act of will,

just like the rising of spring is not an act of will we can't um you know certainly we would have willed it to come maybe a month or two earlier than it did if we if we could um similarly in the meditation practice you know if we could um just instantly have complete understanding maybe that's something that we choose but um there's a quality of kind of surrendering into the um of warmth and spaciousness and stillness and quiet of the darker moments and waiting for the dawn. I love this picture. I think Marie, she looks beautiful and also well-balanced and almost like she's doing a chair dance, like an elegant chair dance or something.

And I think that that posture, for me, communicates a relationship to both the darkness and the light that I'd like to unpack a little bit. So often in meditation practice, we can become just kind of enamored and even intoxicated with this idea of clarity and brightness and form and lightness, right? And that we'd much prefer that we'd have less of the darkness, right? So less of the times where practice seems murky

or we don't exactly know what's going on or something's coming, but it hasn't quite been born yet, right? And it's okay to have preferences, but one of the things that it can do in practice is create a situation where when things aren't totally clear, we have this kind of attitude of non-acceptance is create a situation where when things aren't totally clear,

we have this kind of attitude of non-acceptance or even aversion to our experience, right? And that when things seem totally clear and we have those moments of aha, we want to hold on to them. And really, I think the point is to be able to kind of move gracefully, do an elegant chair dance with whatever happens to be arising on the cushion. Yeah. So let me look at my notebook and see if I forgot anything

that I wanted to say. No, I think we'll just go ahead and start to practice with this idea of moments of kind of diving deep into the internal dark places as a condition for the arising of moments of clarity and awareness. So I'll just invite you to go ahead and find your comfortable seat. You can let your feet rest on the floor

and kind of get a sense of the feet really planted as much as you can. And eyes can be closed or they can be softly focused at the space in front of you. You can let the hands rest on the lap with palms down or hands folded somewhere where it feels like the hands can relax. somewhere where it feels like the hands can relax. Whether the eyes are closed or open, just letting the eyes kind of soften inside the head. So there's a sense that we're moving away from the visual sense and into the felt sense of the body.

I'm just taking a moment to receive what it feels like to be sitting in this body at this moment. Noticing what's present in the mind. Noticing how the heart feels right now. And then allowing the awareness to settle on the sensation of breathing. So just noticing first how you know that you're breathing or where you notice the feeling of breathing in your body right now. Sometimes it's easy to notice the shift in temperature at the nostrils or the movement in the chest or the belly. And allowing your awareness to kind of rest on and stay in contact with the feeling of breathing as your breath enters and leaves the body.

So we actually don't have to go so far to look for change. You know, there's transformation happening in every breath. So letting the awareness be having a quality of graceful receptivity as the sensations of breath change. And if you'd like, as you breathe in, you can silently say to yourself, breathing in. And as you breathe out, silently breathing out. silently breathing out. Just as a way to help the mind notice what's happening right now. Thank you. There can even be a sense that the awareness is dancing with the breath, following it in, following it out.

Welcoming each new breath and letting the old breath go with ease. Thank you. And every few minutes, just noticing where the awareness is and recommitting to feeling the breath come in and feeling the breath leave. Letting the awareness stay right in the middle of that dance. The in and the out, the natural flow of life. Thank you. Thank you. You'll also probably notice as you start to settle into the breath and become familiar with the breath as an object of meditation that you notice more things about it. So you might be able to really feel in a very nuanced way the out of the out breath.

And that maybe there's even a pause at the end of the out breath before the next breath comes in. It's just inviting you to notice especially that transition. Staying awake for the out, the pause, and again. Thank you. As you notice that transition, you might also start to notice your relationship to the ending and the beginning of the breath. So noticing if we're holding on to the last of the out-breath or scurrying forward to the next in-breath.

Seeing if it's possible to kind of relax into the middle of that, a sense of grace and ease with the coming and the going. noticing that really it happens on its own. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So from time to time, I'm just noticing the feeling of the breath changing. Changing. Noticing the relationship of the mind to change. And just encouraging the mind to keep calmly knowing change. Takk for ating mediet. As much as we can, not reaching forward for the next breath or clinging to the last button, but allowing them to come and go on their own. They will anyway. Thank you. And so in these last few moments of the practice,

allowing the awareness to kind of broaden beyond the breath into feeling the whole kind of sensations of the whole body again. Feeling the sounds in the room. Space above your head and below your feet. To each side. Kind of this broader, more expansive global awareness. And I'll just offer two contemplations

kind of in honor of spring, in honor of this transition from darkness to light. And there are questions that you can just drop into the mind as if you were dropping a pelpel into the pool and then seeing what ripples, if anything. So the first question I'll offer for your contemplation now. Having settled the mind and studied it with knowing change. What in your life is

ending or dying at this moment? What is ending? What's dying? What's fading away? Not what you need to get rid of or what you need to stop, but what's already kind of letting go of you. and then the second question what in your life right now is wanting to be born what shoots are pushing up

through the soil of your life at this moment what's emerging? Calmly knowing and receiving whatever comes and then go ahead and relax around that contemplation and just we'll maintain the meditation posture but just stop meditating for a moment so just regular old

sitting posture, but just stop meditating for a moment. So just regular old sitting. Breathing. And then I'll ring the bell to bring this formal practice period to a close. When you hear it, you can float your eyes open. Cool. I sincerely thank you for your practice today. It's been wonderful to be here. 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 Ruben Museum members, just one of the many benefits of membership. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.