Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 4/27/16 with Tracy Cochran

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 NY Insight Meditation Center. This week’s session is led by Tracy Cochran focusing on the theme of Impermanence. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/-k

Thank you. join us in person, please visit our website at rubemuseum.org meditation. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the teachers from 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 permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. And now, please enjoy your practice. Tracy Cochran is the editorial director of Parabola, a quarterly magazine that for 40 years has focused on the world's wisdom and cultural traditions. She's been a student of meditation and spiritual practices for decades, teaching mindfulness meditation and mindful writing at the New York Insight Meditation Center. And her writing has appeared in, in addition to Parabola, in the New York Times, Psychology Today, O Magazine, and many other publications and anthologies.

Please welcome back Tracy Cochran. It's hard to compete with this image. It really is. And so I was contemplating that, and I want to offer you two quotes, one by the American poet Robert Frost, who said, everything I've learned about life can be summed up in three words.

It goes on. It goes on. It's relentless, even. It goes on. And this season, it's spring, and these trees are bursting into bloom. Sometimes it seems astonishing when you look at these poor old things and you think of what they've been through. And they bloom. Sometimes it seems astonishing when you look at these poor old things and you think of what they've been through. And they bloom, they bloom, they bloom. So the second quote is a line from a great poem by Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet. The force that through the green fuse

drives the flower, drives my green age, that blasts the roots of trees, is my destroyer. That there's a force in us, and this isn't a misty, mystical concept or something that just exists in another culture. It's a force in us that we'll feel when we close our eyes to sit. It's the force of life.

It's a force of life. And it's in us and it overflows the banks of what we think we are and it carries us along and as frightening and relentless as it can seem to be it's also a way to open

and to be with life so I want to just tell you a tiny little story A way to open and to be with life. So I want to just tell you a tiny little story, a true life story. Last week, I was walking down 6th. Last week, I'm speaking to the back. I was walking. I have a naturally soft voice. It's good for meditation, sometimes not so good for a story. I was walking down Sixth

Avenue, and there was an attractive middle-aged woman in front of me, flanked by two teenage children. And I guess they were her children, because they were completely indifferent to everything she was saying. And so they stopped at a light. I stopped at a light. And she said, oh, do you see that sign for the David Barton gym? What a sacrilege. And she was looking at this old stone church on the corner of 20th Street. And she immediately said, not that it was a church, a former house of prayer and stillness, but that used to be the limelight nightclub. And she said, I spent so many nights there. And the kids are completely indifferent.

They were so bored. They didn't want to hear about mommy's stories from when she was once young and cool. So the light changed and they surged on. And I remembered my own memories of the limelight. And one night in particular, I was invited to this lavish party by a then notorious publisher, Bob Guccione. Yeah, right? And I was like a little girl from a small town, and I was in New York, and I was walking through these vaulted rooms full of dry ice fog and music, and I had practically the sulfurous sense of hell. And I was thinking, I've finally gotten somewhere. You know?

Here I am in the big city. And there was Bob Guccione wearing a black tuxedo. And everything about him was oily and dark. And I was thinking, he's like a contemporary New York Caligula. It's like, really something. So there I was and then I was looking at the building the gym and now it's Grimaldi's pizza and it's David Barton gym and this little warrant of shops and this upscale Chinese restaurant impermanence imperence. And even all those feelings I had, both of am I getting somewhere and that scent of hell, that this was decadent New York, all gone. All gone.

All gone. Impermanence is everywhere, but it's very easy to observe in New York City. And then I remembered that I'm sitting in a place today where we can be still together. And once upon a time, this was a department's tour. And it wasn't just any department's tour. And there's still a vestige of it in that gorgeous spiral staircase. It was an incredibly intimidating department store. Barney's. I'm quite sure it's highly possible that Bob Guccione bought his tuxedo at Barney's. And the woman who was walking in front of me got the little black dress

that caused that special memory in Barney's. And now we're sitting here. It's a place to be still and to be around this extraordinary sacred art. Impermanence. Impermanence. It's relentless. And once upon a time,

I had the opportunity to personally ask the great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, why do people cling to suffering when it's so painful? Painful ideas or problems or painful experiences. And he said they cling to what they feel is strongest in them. And I've realized over the decades in my practice,

we want something to stay. We want something to last. And the art and the promise of this practice is that we can have these moments of returning to being present in the body, to be still in the midst of relentless change. And very, very slowly, those moments grow. Not in duration necessarily, but we invite ourselves to have more of them.

And they become as strong in us as those ideas and memories that we cling to about who we used to be. The little black dress or the painful memories or whatever it is. So stillness isn't silence. And it's not static. It's not boring. static. It's not boring. Stillness is a way of opening up to the force of life and being with it. And it brings a vibrancy into your life. You're being with change. And you can begin to remember. Spring is an interesting time because there's

a tinge of sadness in it often because we remember other springs and people sometimes who aren't here anymore. Relationships that aren't here anymore. Youth that aren't here any more. A youth

that isn't here any more. But at the same time, it's the same force that brings us to a place like this. And find it pretty cool to sit here and be open to life. We discover, I used to love to walk in New York, as I'm sure many of you do, because it's the way I imagine the Ganges is for other people in other times, because you see everything.

Joy, sorrow, wealth, poverty, fame, obscurity. And sometimes you can be still with it. You can just still with it. You can just be with it. And realize that even though we're limited, we don't have to feel limited. Even by death. So this is, we're on a tight schedule here so this but I say that with a smile

because we really are not we really are not there is no rush there is no hurry there is no deadline that we're going to slowly become comfortable. And the invitation is to be with our vulnerability, our experience, exactly as it is. Maybe you don't feel well today. So here's a space and a time for us to pool our intention and our energy and be together as we are in the flow. So we're going to shut our eyes and have our feet firmly on the floor.

We're granting ourselves permission to be exactly as we are, not as we were, not as we hope we will be exactly as we are right now without judgment without pushing or straining with kindness we find ourselves here. And we bring our attention to rest on the breathing without without changing it or asking anything of it. We simply follow the rise and the fall of the breath,

either at the chest or at the nostrils, choosing one focus for today. And as the body begins to relax, notice sensation. Without thinking about it, just notice a kind of tingling or vibration. This is the force of life in you. Just allowing it to be. Allowing ourselves to receive sounds from outside, thinking, whatever arises. Receiving it, letting be, letting go. Letting life flow.

And when we notice we're taken, we gently and with kindness bring the attention home again to the breath, into the sensation of being here in this body right now. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Thank you. When we drift away, we simply note that and gently return. This is the way it goes. Meditation is a movement of return, of remembering to be present and also a movement of allowing ourselves

to be and life to be. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Thank you. As we relax more deeply, we begin to glimpse a knowing in us that doesn't depend on thinking, an awareness that receives. we glimpse a resilience in us, a capacity to allow and hold that doesn't depend on feeling good or sharp or any particular state. It appears as we let go. Let go. Takk for ating med. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.... welcoming the whole of our experience, even if we've been sleeping or worrying or feeling not so good. This whole time, we welcome it,

cultivating our capacity to hold the whole of our experience with kind awareness and gently guide ourselves home to the breath, to this moment, to our intention to be present now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sensing as we prepare to end that there's a force in us, in the body animating us a light of awareness, a part of life. we cannot be separate from it. Thank you. Thank you.