Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 4/6/16 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: April 12, 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 and the Interdependence Project. This week’s session is be led by Sharon Salzberg focusing on the theme of No Mud, No Lotus. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/x0

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 slash meditation. 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 permanent collection.

And now, please enjoy your practice. Sharon Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts. Has been teaching and practicing for many years. And is the author of many fabulous books, which you can find from the bookshop including Real Happiness at Work. Please welcome back Sharon Salzberg. So welcome. We were speaking about Thich Nhat Hanh's pretty famous calligraphy, No Mud, No Lotus before And it was a very funny conversation because there's a little bit of that feeling of like,

damn, you know, my whole aspiration was to get rid of that mud. To cleanse, to rise above, to not have the muck, or my mind keeps saying schmutz. You know why. But isn't that an interesting thought that it's out of the turmoil, the distress, the conflict, the uncertainty,

everything we go through that we'd really rather not have, that the greatest of gifts can arise. Not inevitably. As we know, we can go through a really hard time and feeling bittered and enraged and afraid and especially perhaps feel very isolated like it's only me. We feel increasingly cut off. But there's also the potential for that enormous treasure, even in adversity, even in difficulty with all of that mud going,

to have a sense of connection, of community rather than isolation, to have a sense of connection, of community, rather than isolation, to have a sense of compassion for ourselves and ultimately for others, rather than all of that anger and bitterness, which only makes things worse. There's so much potential for that lotus, So isn't that one of the greatest gifts? Since no amount of exertion or determination or willpower seems to make a world of no mud at all. So I love the the symbol of the lotus of course, for that very reason. At one point at the retreat center I co-founded, the Insight Meditation Society, we were having to put in a whole new septic system, and we said to these engineers,

what we'd really like to see is some lotuses come out of it. Couldn't you make that happen for us? Didn't quite work, but it was a fantastic image. Okay. So here we are. From the Buddhist point of view, he spoke about the ways we know the world, and that can be seen in six ways. It's the five senses. We know the world, the universe through seeing or hearing or tasting, touching, smelling. And then the sixth sense, which is not something paranormal, but it's knowing through the mind,

through thought, cognition, ideation, and so on. So there's six ways that we can know the world. And each moment of experience, according to that psychology, each moment of that experience is felt by us to be pleasant, painful, or neutral. And this isn't necessarily inherent to the object, but it is also tied to interpretation

and past experience and so on. But nonetheless, for all kinds of different reasons, we'll hear a sound, we'll see a sight, we'll feel something in our bodies, we'll taste something, we will experience it as pleasant, painful, or neutral. And sometimes people think, well, if I really get into meditation, that'll flatten out. Everything will sort of dissolve into this gray blur. And there won't be any more highs, but that's okay, because there won't be any more lows.

And some people long for that, and other people dread it, but it kind of doesn't matter, because it's not what happens anyway. Right? We go up, we go down. It's just part of the flow of life. How we hold it, how we relate to it, what we make of it, that's the whole point. So that when there is struggle, when there's difficulty,

when there's something painful happening, it doesn't mean we've done wrong, we've lost control and failed. It's a part of life. And the overriding question is, how are we going to relate to it? What are we going to make of it? And it's not just painful things. There are so many pleasant, wonderful, really wonderful, wondrous, beautiful,

delightful, joyous things that happen, and we don't quite take them in, right? We either are too distracted to even notice, that happens a lot, or, and or, we have some idea about what should be happening and therefore we're very upset because our idea, our expectation is not being met. I often tell the story about going to Washington, D.C., which I do fairly often, to teach. And one year, a friend brought me

to see the cherry blossoms in bloom. You know, there's a concentrated area with a lot of cherry trees, which bloom. And it's an amazing thing. So we got down there, and it was this gorgeous day, and I just thought, wow, this is so amazing. Like, look at those beautiful, delicate pink blossoms. They're so amazing.

And then my friend said, oh, no, it's past the peak. And I thought, oh, no, I'm having a bad experience. It's past the peak. We do that too and so many other things as well. And we know with painful experience, there's so much conditioning. We have personal conditioning. We have cultural conditioning. Better hide it. It's not a good thing. You should have done better. Better hide them, you know. Whatever it might be.

And so to have, it's almost like a more authentic, open-hearted experience of what actually is without adding the shame and the isolation and the anger that is an opportunity that's available to us through being able to pay attention differently and then just to finish the model it's also said that there's a good amount of our experience that's just kind of neutral, right? It's not very pleasant, it's not very unpleasant, and that's when we tend to go to sleep. We numb out, we wait for something better to happen,

and we don't have to do that either. Most of us, in terms of our attention, we're not awfully trained to subtlety. We tend to count on intensity in order to feel alive, either intense pleasure or intense pain. And so what about waking up and connecting? That way we get lotuses out of our really pleasant experience and our unpleasant experience and even our neutral experience. There's creativity, there's renewal. So much can happen based on our relationship, based on our connection. So this is the prospect, this is the offering of meditation practice.

We can see meditation practice as just training attention. We train attention to be more stable, so that we're not so distracted, we're not flying all over the place. We train attention to be less cluttered. So many times, as soon as an experience arises, we have a judgment about it. I don't like it. Or, what a shame, this is going to last for the rest of my life.

Or, what's it going to feel like tomorrow? Or no one else has anything like this. Or I've been meditating for 45 years, for God's sake, this shouldn't be here. Or whatever it might be, right? And so we see those reactions, we learn to let them go. And come back to what our experience actually is. And we also have a much more awake and vital kind of attention. So all those neutral, ordinary, routine, repetitive times,

we're not so sleepy and disconnected. times we're not so sleepy and disconnected. So it's kind of an amazing thing with life going on as life goes on. Going up, going down, not always getting what we want, seeing things slip away, having time do its thing. All of that, we have the opportunity to create a different relationship to everything. So there is, in essence, the purpose of meditation practice. So why don't we sit together, and then we'll have time for a brief period of questions. said that one of the real important principles of meditation practice is a sense of balance. So, right away you can have a sense of balance in your posture.

You want some energy in your body. But unlike so much energy, you're really stiff and uptight. You also want to be relaxed and at ease. But not like so at ease that your waist is slumped over. So feel your way into what feels like a balanced posture for you. And you can close your eyes or not, however you feel most comfortable. If your eyes are open, they can also be like a little bit open.

You could find a spot to rest your gaze, let it go. And something to keep in mind is that you cannot fail at this. All kinds of experiences arise, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. And the key is in how we relate to them. That's more important than anything. Start by stabilizing your attention on the feeling of the breath. See if you can find the place where your breath, this is just the normal natural breath, is clearest for you. That might be at the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen. Find that spot.

Bring your attention there and just rest. 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. When I first started practice, I realized it's quite difficult for me to be with just one breath. It's almost as though as soon as this breath was starting, I'd find myself like mentally leaning forward to get ready for the next 50. So I used to say to myself, you're breathing anyway.

All you need to do is feel it. I had so much performance anxiety, it's like I'd never done it before. I'd say, settle back. Let the breath come to you. So settle back. Let the breath come to you. And if you like,

you can experiment with a quiet mental notation, like in, out, or rising, falling, to help support the awareness of the breath, but very quiet, so your attention is really going to feeling the breath, one breath at a time. Thank you. And the sounds or images or sensations or emotions arise. They're not very strong. If you can stay connected to the feeling of the breath, just let them flow on by.

You're breathing. It's just one breath. When something comes up and it is very strong, it pulls you away. You get lost in thought, spun out in a fantasy, or you fall asleep. Don't worry about it. We say the most important moment in the whole process is the next moment. After you've been gone, after you've been distracted, after you've been lost. That's the moment. Because that's the moment we have the chance to be really different.

So instead of blaming yourself and being down on yourself, you have the chance to let go gently. It's what one of my teachers called exercising the letting go gently. It's what one of my teachers called exercising the letting go muscle. You can let go and begin again. Just bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This process is really a process of resilience, of recovery. We say the healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with.

We practice letting go gently. It's what one of my teachers called exercising the letting go muscle. We let go gently. And we shepherd our attention back to the chosen object. In this case, the breath. If you have to do that a billion times in the next few minutes, that's fine. Thank you. Thank you. And when you feel ready, you can open your eyes. We'll end the session. Thank you.

Be happy. that concludes this week's practice if you'd like to attend in person please check out our website rubenmuseum.org 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