Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 4/20/16 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: April 29, 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 NY Insight Meditation Center. This week’s session is led by Sharon Salzberg focusing on the theme of Lovingkindness. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/-h

Thank you. 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 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 Ruben Museum's prominent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Sharon Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society. She has been studying and teaching for over 45 years, and she's the author of many fabulous books. So helpful if you want to dive a little bit deeper and, you know, take your practice to the next level. And one of those books, her most recent, is Real Happiness at Work,

which you can find upstairs in our shop or online. please give a warm welcome to Sharon Salzberg. Hi, it's great to be here. This really is live because I just changed what I plan to say in looking at the Tara. So it's live and spontaneous in a way. I love that image. It's like having a friend in this world to see something like the statue of Tara. And it's really a sense of welcoming, right? So it reminded me of loving kindness toward oneself. For some reason, that's what came up most predominantly in my mind. It's that sense of compassion and care toward oneself, and that means all aspects of oneself,

not just the things we really like and we proudly present to the world, but really everything. And this, in some ways, is the core of meditative understanding, that the most effective, efficient way to make a change or to reach excellence in something or to make progress in something may not be the kind of atmosphere we're more conditioned toward, which is very kind of hypercritical toward ourselves. We seem to believe that if we can only put ourselves down enough, or if we make a mistake, if we can only be brutal about it for like a year and a half, then things will be just fine, you know?

That's how we'll make progress. But a lot of things are on experience foremost, but also science shows us that that's not exactly the right internal atmosphere to be able to get something done or make a change in the best possible way. So I say all that because sometimes this idea of loving kindness, whether directed to ourselves or towards someone else, is equated with a kind of laziness or lack of discernment

or something sort of gooey or sentimental, something like that, rather than understanding it as the force, as the power it actually is. So there's an image from the Buddhist tradition I like a lot in which he said, the mind is naturally radiant and pure. That's your mind and my mind. The mind is naturally radiant and pure

the mind is shining it's because of visiting forces that we suffer forces like greed and jealousy and rage and so many things, fear may come and depending on how we relate to those visitors we may suffer mightily or not. So there are a couple of things in that way of describing it that have been meaningful for me. One is that these things are just visitors. They may visit a lot.

They may visit nearly incessantly, but still, they are just visiting. They're born out of conditions. They're not inherent to our being. They're not essentially who we are. They come and go as conditions arise to bring them forth, right? So they're more adventitious. They're not inherent. Even if they visit nearly all the time, still, they're just visitors. And then the other part of it that's always been meaningful for me is that the Buddha didn't seem to say it's because of visiting forces that you are a miserable person. You're like, so bad, right? It's because of visiting forces that we suffer,

which is an invitation to have a whole different relationship to our having gotten lost, overwhelmed by greed or fear or anger or whatever. Instead of saying, I'm bad, I'm terrible, I'm wrong, it's like, whoa, this really hurts. This is a state of suffering. And that kind of understanding becomes the basis for then being able to look at others in a different way and their actions in a different way.

So I really love this idea from the first time I heard it because right away I could imagine myself sitting happily at home minding my own business and there's a knock at the door. So I go to answer the door, I open it and there's greed or there's fear and either I say welcome home it's all yours, totally forgetting who actually lives there, or, very commonly, I'd be so ashamed and so freaked out and so upset at the arrival of that visitor that I'd desperately try to shut the door,

pretend I never heard the knock, only to find that that didn't work, that the visitor would then come in through the window or down the chimney or something. It would make its presence known. So to some degree we described skill in meditation as that moment. What happens when we've heard the knock, we open the door, there's a visitor that really I would rather not have seen on this fine afternoon, but there it is. How am I?

How present can I be in that moment? How balanced can I be in that moment? How much loving kindness, how much compassion can I have in that moment? That's the skills training. That's the actual training. And of course, some things are harder than others. There's no doubt about that. But it's the same process of developing that ability of greeting our experience and not falling into either of the two extremes. One extreme is like flinging open the door and saying, welcome home, it's all yours.

It's forgetting we can have a sense of centeredness and groundedness, and we can have some spaciousness, whoever's visiting. The other extreme is just hating what's happening and fearing it and trying to shut that door and pretend it didn't come up, which doesn't work. So to have that kind of balance and presence in the moment is going to rely on some amount of loving kindness, to rely on some amount of loving kindness, some amount of compassion, a lack of that kind of ferocious judgment about what's happening. We can remember who actually lives here. We can have a very different view of ourselves. We can develop those skills to greet these kind of unwelcome visitors.

Also from Tibetan Buddhism, because so many people have that reaction of shame and distress and trying to deny what's come up and pretend it's not there, they have a recommendation. This is an extremely oversimplified version of it, where they basically say if you open the door and it's like a an unwelcome visitor invite them in for a meal like keep an eye on them you know don't let them have the run of the house but you don't have to be so afraid it It's okay. You have the capacity to remember who actually lives there. You can have almost a kind of cordiality or

hospitality toward that anger, that fear, that greed, which is different than letting it take over, right? So invite them in for a meal. I was teaching once at the Insight Meditation Society, and I made that suggestion, and someone in the room didn't like it. They said, no way. So I said, how about a cup of tea? And they said to me, how about a cup of tea to go and I said okay maybe that's what's gonna work for you that's okay but that's also different than shutting the door right and being so freaked out about about this visitor

it's understanding that self compassion and that sense of like, ooh, this hurts, or I don't think I'll go down this road, but I'm not going to blame myself endlessly for the fact that this visitor came, is the way forward. That's what's embodied in something like Tara. It's toward every aspect of our experience. It's toward all of who we are. Because even though we may be strongly conditioned in this way to kind of spiral down into endless self-judgment, it doesn't work. So the example we often use, it's sort of like a joke but it's actually

true, is if you're sitting as we're about to do and you're doing a meditation which may be something like settling your attention on the feeling of the breath, which is a classic foundational exercise, it's usually not that long before your mind has wandered, right? And when I first learned this technique, and it was the first technique I learned like 1,000 years ago in India, it was 45 years ago in India, I thought, well, that's stupid. What does that mean, sit down and feel your breath? I thought, I came all the way to India. Where's the magical, esoteric, fantastic technique

that's going to wipe out all my suffering and make me totally happy? And then I thought, how hard can this be? And I was like, whoa, this is not that easy. I thought, okay, what will it be like? 8,000 breaths, 9,000 breaths before my mind wanders? And so my complete astonishment, it was like two breaths. Or sometimes one breath. And I'd be gone, and I'd be way gone. Now, what we're going to practice together is the understanding that that's okay.

That's natural. What matters is what happens next. We realize we've been gone. Can we practice some compassion for ourselves, gently let go, and bring our attention back to the feeling of the breath. Because more commonly, we realize we've been thinking, and we go into a tirade. I can't believe I'm thinking. No one else in the room is thinking. They're all sitting here in bliss. They're all sitting here, either they're already enlightened, or they're on the very, very, very verge of getting enlightened, or they're sitting here bathed in brilliant white light, or what color is that light? I forget the light. It's blue or it's golden or anyway. They have light. I don't have light. They're not thinking. I'm thinking. They're good. I'm bad. I'm terrible. I'm the worst meditator that ever lived. I shouldn't even call myself a meditator. I'm like so awful.

They're not thinking, oh, maybe they are thinking, but they're thinking beautiful thoughts. They're thinking spiritual thoughts. They're thinking thoughts of loving kindness. I'm the only one who's sitting here thinking this really stupid thought, and I don't know why I'm thinking that really stupid thought. I already thought that really stupid thought. And then it's just like, right?

So if that's what we do, which is pretty common, not only have we added sometimes an enormous amount of time to the length of the distraction, but we're so exhausted, we're so dispirited, demoralized, that it's not that easy to go on, to go forward. So it's not from being lazy that we say, oh, you know, I'll let go and begin again. That's actually the way to make progress. And I would suggest if we really look at our lives and real life situation, that's the way to make progress there too. So in doing this practice and cultivating that kind of self-compassion and the ability to begin again,

we're actually learning a pretty big life skill. Okay? So let's sit together. You can start, see if you can sit comfortably, with your back straight but not strained or overarched. You can close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. If your eyes are open, they can also be like a little bit open. You can find a spot to rest your gaze.

Let it go. If you like, we can start just by listening to sound, whether it's the sound of my voice or other sounds. Of course we like certain sounds and we don't like others. But we don't have to chase after them to hold on or push away. You can let them come, let them go. It's like the sounds wash through you. and bring your attention to your hands and see if you can make the shift from the more conceptual level, like go fingers,

to the world of direct sensation. Picking up pulsing, throbbing, pressure, whatever it might be. You don't have to name these things, but feel them.... And then bring your attention to the feeling of your breath. In this system, it's just the normal, natural breath. You don't have to try to make it deeper or different. You can find that place where the breath is strongest for you or clearest for you. Bring your attention there and just rest.

Maybe it's the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen, wherever. And see if you can feel one breath. Without concern for what's already gone by, without leaning forward for even the very next breath. Just this one. And if you like, 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 your attention's really going to feeling the breath, one breath at a time. And if images or sounds, 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. They can come and go. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If something comes that is strong enough to pull you away from the breath, you get lost in thought or spun out in a fantasy or you fall asleep,

truly don't worry about it. The most important moment in the process is the next moment, after you've been gone. How do you speak to yourself? moment after you've been gone? How do you speak to yourself? Can you work on more gently letting go and returning your attention to the feeling of the breath? So this is like resilience training. It's self-compassion training, it's loving-kindness training. Even if those words are never used... well there goes my microphone. That's resilience. Even if those words are never used, that's what we're practicing. And if you find

yourself being kind of harsh and judgmental, don't worry about that either, right? That's just habit. It's just conditioning. You can recognize that, know that it's a habit. It's visiting. Prepare a cup of tea to go, a nice cup of tea. Let it go, nice cup of tea. Let it go.

And then come back. If you have to let go and return your attention to the feeling of the breath over and over again, countless times, it's fine. That's the process. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.... Thank you. Thank you. You may be happy. Thank you. May you be happy. Well, thank you. That concludes

this week's practice. If you'd like to attend in person, please check out our website, rubenmuseum.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.