Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 5/18/2016 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: June 9, 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 Letting Go. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/-n

Thank you. join us in person, please visit our website at rubinmuseum.org. 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 Rubin Museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Tracy Cochran is our teacher today, and she is the editorial director of Parabola, which is a quarterly magazine that has focused on the wisdom and culture traditions of the world for the last 40 years. She's a student of meditation and spiritual practice and has been for decades and has

been teaching mindfulness meditation at the New York Insight Meditation Center. She's also a writer and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Psychology Today, O Magazine and many other publications and anthologies. Please welcome back Tracy Cochran. I'm delighted to be back and sitting under this magnificent work of art and a sacred work and I would like to tell you a story that might seem to be in stark contrast to the sacred beauty. It happened to me on the streets of New York last week. I was hurrying, as most of us often are in New York, and a Buddhist monk stopped me and offered me lifetime peace. Lifetime

offered me lifetime peace. Lifetime peace, lifetime peace. But I was in a rush and I was late. So I hurried on. I had no time for peace. And you know that feeling in New York. But he was very persistent. He kept going, lifetime peace, lifetime peace.

And I was rushing to go to the New York Insight Meditation Center. So finally, the irony of literally running away from a Buddhist monk stopped me. So I turned and faced him, and he showed me a picture of this glorious monastery or temple on a Himalayan peak. It indicated that my donation was needed to finish this glorious place, and he suggested $20 or $30. At which point I shook my head, no. We're both smiling broadly, but I wanted to pack my nodding and smiling with, I am a seasoned New Yorker, and I don't want to be scammed. But something interesting happened at that moment. He immediately dropped his demand for a donation and offered me these wrist beads and what looked like a golden ticket offering me lifetime peace. It sat right on the ticket, lifetime peace. It did. And worked smoothly. And on the other side it had a picture of Kwan Yin, the great bodhisattva of compassion

who hears the cries of the world. And in a very childlike way, he was like, you give. So I had change from a very expensive latte. And I gave it to him, realizing as I did that I had just invested more in a skinny latte than I had in lifetime peace, which is also something that we often do. So I'm here to tell you that it didn't quite work the way I thought. The rest of the week, things continued to happen to me, some of them peaceful and pleasant, some of them quite painful, including there was big rain one day. And after the rain, that lovely, cool feeling after the big rain. But I was floating up Fifth Avenue feeling that peace had come. When a cab hit, stepped on the gas, and drove through one of those enormous black puddles.

And this great big tidal wave of black water rose into the air and drenched me and there were like three lovely young women behind me going oh no as it happened as it happened so but nothing could happened? But nothing could stop it. And nothing could stop the fact the trains aren't running today because there was a fire on the tracks. Nothing could stop it. And I realized after all these events in the past week that the way we all often approach spiritual practice, or speaking for myself, is that we want the golden ticket. We imagine that we can learn a special practice that will give us immunity from the pain of life, from impermanence, from the fact that people and relationships and health is lost,

that things change, and that sometimes this hurts very, very much. And we imagine, or I imagine, I should just use I statements, that when we sit, I'm still in New York City, but I'm ascending to that temple on the mountaintop at the same time. And very, very, very slowly, we realize that there is no higher ground. That, in fact, the moments of peace that we have come in moments of letting go. And sometimes, this is quite traumatic, when we know it's going to rain

and we can't stop the rain and we don't want to stop the rain. Or when tremendous pain comes, grief, and we can't stop our tears. And we try, we strive, we try to outrun it. We try eating, we try internet But sooner or later, we stop. And we're still. And we're with it. And after the rain, that delightful ease, that freshness. So what this practice is that we're about to practice together in a few moments is practicing the art of letting go. And I was thinking as I prepared,

what is the simplest and most practical thing I can share that I know for sure about letting go? I know it comes down to letting be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be, just like the Paul McCartney song. That it's that quiet, almost imperceptible movement of letting it be the way it is. Relinquishing our attempts to control it.

And when the Buddha taught this practice, his first instructions for this mindfulness meditation was for his monks or anybody who wanted to try it to go and sit someplace. He advised the roots of a tree, and this is our equivalent, He advised the roots of a tree, and this is our equivalent, where we could abide peacefully inside and outside. He didn't say run away from everything. He said just abide peacefully inside and outside.

Let things arise. Let things happen outside. Let the clouds build up. Let it happen. Because it's going to happen anyway. You can see from that beautiful portrayal of these these Nagas, that there are forces greater than us creating conditions in the world. The fire on the tracks at Grand Central today, that fortunately didn't hurt anyone. Actually, it was last night that stopped the trains. That didn't happen to me. The first step in letting be is just softening. Maybe this isn't personal.

Maybe I can just be with this. So getting back to the golden ticket, I found out later that this ticket, and I brought it if anyone wants to see it, because you might be approached on the street. I know at least one person here knows someone who was. There are actually amulets that have been blessed in a ceremony called Opening to the Light, blast in a ceremony called opening to the light inviting the spirit of these deities to come down into these golden tickets as I inevitably think of that but the same is with these artworks

inviting this presence to come and be with you. So when we sit together and we're going to close our eyes and take a comfortable seat starting right now, before we do, bear in mind that you too are an opening to the light. You too are inviting the presence of your own kind attention to hold your experience, whatever it is, fear, pain, pleasant experiences, just to hold it. Just to be with you. So now we'll close our eyes and take our seats together. Making sure that we rest

so that our backs are straight and our feet are planted firmly on the floor. We're taking our seats. This is a noble posture. According to the Buddha, we're allowing ourselves to take up space and inhabit our humanity. so we bring the attention to the body allowing it to land here giving it all the time

it needs to unfold for sensation to appear. We're not asking it to perform, or we're not asking sensation to be complete. We're just making space. And as the body begins to relax and soften, we allow the attention to come to rest on the breathing. Without changing it or asking it to be a different way. We just let the attention be carried by the in-breath and the out-breath, choosing as a focus either the rise and fall of the diaphragm or the sensation of air leaving and entering the nostrils. Allowing the breathing to be our way of coming home to the present moment.

We're here. Open. When the attention drifts, and it will definitely drift into thinking and dreams, we gently notice that and bring it home again to the breath and to the sensation of being in a body in this moment, breathing open. Takk for at du så med. Thank you. And at the same time you remember sati, the word for mindfulness the Buddha used, means to remember. At the same time you remember to come home, you practice allowing a kind, Excluding nothing. Rejecting nothing. Just gently noticing when you're taken and coming home. Thank you.. Noticing as the body continues to relax that there is a kind of light of awareness inside of what comes without thinking, that can let be. Thank you. Thank you. Takk for at du så med. Thank you. When we get lost, when we get distracted, we gently notice that without judgment, without comment, and gently welcome ourselves home again to the breath and the present moment. Noticing that that moment of return is a moment of letting go, of release. Thank you. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you. Noticing as we continue to relax, even if you've been gone this whole time, just come back now. We glimpse that there is a light of awareness in us.

It's not thinking. That we're open. We're not closed and isolated. We're open to the outside and to the inside. Open to this light of awareness. And we find it in these moments of return, of release, of letting go. Thank you. Thank you. Noticing that there's a kind of stillness that doesn't depend on silence.

that doesn't depend on silence. A kind of peace that doesn't depend on separation.... A peace that comes from letting go, letting be, being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We close by putting two hands together in our heart space and really gathering up our practice here together. It's such an extraordinary thing to do in this beautiful space in New York City. And we don't keep it for ourselves, but we give it away freely to all beings everywhere without exception. May all beings everywhere feel safe. May all beings everywhere find a way to come home to their lives. May all beings everywhere take care of themselves joyfully and live with ease and be free, in all ways free. Thank you.

applause 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 Rubin Museum members, just one of the many benefits of membership. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.