Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 6/13/2018 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

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. This program is supported in part by the Hemera Foundation with thanks to our presenting partners Sharon Salzberg, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on June 13, 2018. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/tracy-cochran-06-13-2018

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 meditation. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center. The series is supported in part by the Hemera Foundation.

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. Hello, good afternoon. Tashi Delek. So welcome. Welcome to the weekly mindfulness meditation here at the Rubin Museum in partnership with Humira Foundation, presenting partners Sharon Salzberg,

the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. My name is Tashi Chodron, and today's theme is storytelling. And the special thing about this mindful meditation here is we connect you to a wonderful piece of art from our gallery. So we bring the gallery to you. And so for today, we have Guru Dorje Chang, or they think it might be Guru Tsoke Dorje. So Tsoke Dorje means lotus born in Tibetan. He's identified because of his ritual object that he's holding called Vajra or Dorje.

And the story that I like to share about Soke Dorje is, you know, growing up in the Tibetan refugee camps in India, one of the first thing that I hear from the elders is going for pilgrimage. And that is like here in the West, I've seen people going to beaches. They work so hard, and then with that earning, they go to the beaches or they go to some touring around, right? But I've seen our Tibetan elders, they work so hard, and then they take the money and go to pilgrimage. And so before I was even one, I heard my mother and many elders who went in that big group traveling around India to holy sites, whether it's the birth of Buddha in Bodh Gaya or

Sopema, which is where the Padmasambhava is believed to be born. And some of the elders, even much later, you know, they tell me that when they went to this pilgrimage, it seems every train station in India, when they get off for a little break, the elders used to fight to carry me. There were many kids, I believe, but one newborn was, I wasn't even one at that time. And I believe because, you know, whoever carried me and they would go asking for money. ever carried me and they would go asking for money. And that person got the most money or whatever, I don't know. And I believe I was very like, you know, fair or white.

And that's why many elders, as I was growing up, they used to call me Pokadolu, which means the white rolling chubby one. Or they call Pomokaka, which means that little fairy one or something. So that's my story to connect you. And so Padmasambhava is believed to have been born, there are many versions of stories. He's born in a lake, which they believe it's in Swat Valley, Pakistan present day, which is where my mom and some of the elders recently, you know, went for pilgrimage. But the other place that is in Himachal Pradesh in India, if any of you are familiar with India, that's where we also believe that there is a town called Mandi, which is where Padma Sambhava is believed to have been born in a lotus.

Mandi, which is where Padmasambhava is believed to have been born in a lotus. So basically, Padmasambhava, which is an ancient Sanskrit language, means Padma means lotus, Sambhava is born in lotus. And in Tibetan, he's often addressed as Guru Rinpoche, which means precious teacher. So this large applique, it's hung on tall walls. Present day in one of the biggest Tibetan exile monasteries in India, in South India, called Namroling Monastery, which is where they have the unfurling of the thangka made out of applique. It's, I think, about 12-story. One piece covers 12-story, and it's that high. In fact, it might be higher.

So if you, you know, I'm not trying to advertise Google, but if you Google Namdroling Monastery or Thangka Unfurling, I'm sure you can pull up a lot of images. And I also like to refer, you know, and make a connection that seeing a Padmasambhava image, I've heard from the elders, something they call tong dro, which means liberation upon seeing. If you are a practitioner, of course, you visualize Padmasambhava, you know, it's himself coming down. And even if you are not a practitioner, just by, you know, it's himself coming down. And even if you are not a practitioner, just by, you know, viewing something like this, it's believed that it purifies a lot of negative

energy and brings forth good luck and good health. So I'd like to introduce our teacher for today is Tracy Cochran. Wonderful to have Tracy back again. Tracy is a writer and an editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, which can be found online at parabola.org and in the Rubin Museum gift shop upstairs. She's been a student of meditation and other spiritual practices for decades. In addition to Ruben, Tracy currently teaches at New York Insight every Sunday at Hudson River Sangha in Tarrytown, New York. Tracy's writings and teaching schedule can be found online via Parabola on Facebook and Twitter and on TracyCochran.org. So please help me welcome Tracy back again.

on TracyCochran.org. So please help me welcome Tracy back again. Well, I'm very happy to be back. I feel at home here. And I think many of you do too, in a way, and not to speak for you. But also also when I hear Tashi give a description of going on pilgrimage, I'll feel a little bit wistful,

like I always got to go on vacation, and, you know, in the root of the word, I think it has to do with vacating yourself, you know, going to the beach, and that there, what would it be like to connect a little bit more to another way? And of course, a few weeks ago, I was in England where my daughter lives, where people go on holiday, which is related to the word holy, or to become part of a greater wholeness, if you prefer. So I've slowly started slipping in the word holiday instead of vacation.

But very few of us think, I've been thinking about these great figures and how they're really part of a great system of myth. And very few of us think of our own lives that way. We don't think of our lives as a journey, let alone a hero's journey. For most of us, to be honest, our lives are one damn thing after another. Right? Am I right? It's one damn thing after another. And you're happy, and then you're sad, and then you're happy again, and then you're sad and then you're happy again and then some weird unexpected and unpleasant event happens and you're guilty and you're innocent or you can't decide. You're some mix of the two. But this is the way your life can feel. Not like some shapely arc, not a hero's journey. And you don't feel, if you're anything like me, like much of a hero.

Except when you look at the word, there's a word virya in Sanskrit, and I may not be pronouncing it correctly, but it comes from the same root as the word viril in English, a strong man, or let's add a strong woman. It means to be strong. But then the Buddha came along and gave this word a new spin so that it meant energy and just enough energy to show up, I might add, to keep going. So I discovered not just in preparation for today, but over the course of recent years, that a hero's journey can happen in a moment. There's such a thing as a micro-journey. A micro-hero's journey.

And that happens in a moment when we sit down together, we show up on a rainy day, we stop our work or we peel ourselves out of our apartments, and that in itself can be a heroic act. You know it. We sit down together and we soften. We don't even have to relax, just a little bit of attention coming back to this moment. And I don't think it gets enough appreciated that this in itself is a little bit of daring. You're daring to bring your attention to this present moment. You're not staying locked up in bit daring to be a different way,

to show up and see what happens. And you can be prepared to be bored or disappointed and have all the usual reactions that we have, but there's also this little bit of willingness inside that's heroic. So anyway, as Tashi announced, I'm the editor of a quarterly magazine called Parabola, and it happened to be founded about 43 years ago by, among other people, P.L. Travers, who wrote Mary Poppins. And I remember in the first issue, called The Hero, she wrote, everybody has to be the hero of one story, their own.

And I remember thinking, do I really? I felt kind of chastised as though this magical British nanny was accusing me of having a bad attitude. And Joseph Campbell, who popularized the whole idea of the hero's journey, used to read parabola. So I really felt secretly like I had this bad attitude because I wasn't quite sure that we could all be heroic but slowly slowly and with the help of this practice and with great stories like the one represented on the work of art behind me, or that was initially behind me, and by the story of the Buddha, I begin to pick up clues and reassurance that I'm invited to participate in a story that's greater than I think I am.

And that's an extraordinary relief. To begin to realize that the Buddha's act of heroism consisted in sitting down and touching the earth. Remember that gesture? Asking the earth to bear witness to his right to sit there, just like we're sitting here right now, to let his attention to come home to himself, to his experience in the present moment, to his breathing, who was offering him power,

all the power in the world. And he said, no, no thank you. I don't think he even said thank you. I don't think he even bothered saying no. He just reached down and touched the earth, indicating that he was going to make a different kind of movement. He was going to come home. He was going to be here. He was going to participate in the life around him. It's interesting to think that this might be our greatest contribution, our ability to be present in this moment and the next. And it's interesting, we think of a hero's journey or the story of a great Buddhist saint,

like the one that has been celebrated recently, the myth of him. And they would tell the story of his great insights and discoveries. That when we bring this home to the scale of our own lives, think about those moments that have really mattered to you. And chances are there were moments when you were present. There were moments when you were all there. And at the end of the day in the same piece written by P.L. Travers, creator of Mary Poppins, she said, in the end what we are seeking, what every hero is seeking, whether it's the Buddha or any Western hero, they're seeking meaning. And at the end of the day I've discovered that this slippery thing called Meaning isn't anything you can put in words. It's no solution.

I haven't found a solution to a single thing in a way. Except this, at any given moment I can sit down and touch the earth and engage in this invisible and tiny moment of daring, of heroism, of being here. So that's what I think of as a micro journey. And I think there are no accidents, as we know, because I looked at The New Yorker this week, and I always take counsel from the cartoons in The New Yorker, and they guide me.

And there was a cartoon this week that had this classical Greek woman looking at a goblet on the floor and the caption was, oh no, I spilled my goblet. And the heading was a very, very, very short Greek tragedy. So my advice to you as we prepare to sit is that we break this down into tiny, tiny, tiny

moments. Moments of being present, of turning towards whatever arises, whether it's the spilled goblet or the next breath. So we put our feet on the floor and we let our backs be straight. And we notice the head and the neck. Let it be free. And just notice how it feels to land in this body. Without thinking about it, without stressing about it, just notice how it feels to be in this body right now.

Noticing the life that's here with no judgment. And as the body begins to soften under the gaze of this non-judgmental attention, we bring it to rest on the breathing. change it in any way, we just notice the in-breath and the out-breath. And we notice buzzing in the room and inside the body, and we notice sensations of all kinds. And we have thoughts. And with the thoughts there may be edges of feelings, reactions to my voice and the words. And we allow everything to be present with no judgment, no pushing away. And when we notice we're taken, we gently bring the attention back to the breath and the body

and the sensation of life that meets us when we turn our attention back. And we notice that there is a sensation that is not separate from willingness. We are willing to participate in this life, in the next breath, in the sensations that come in. Thank you. Sati, the word for mindfulness means to remember, to remember the present. Notice how it feels to be welcomed home to the present, to return without judgment. Thank you. When we get lost in thought we notice this without judgment, knowing it is natural and Noting how it feels to be allowed to begin again without comment. Thank you. Thank you. You may notice as you relax, you open. There is no need of awareness inside you that isn't thinking, that's closer to sensation, to the sense of being here. Thank you. You may notice as you relax that you are able to be with what arises, to meet it with kind attention and no judgment. Thank you. Allowing ourselves to know that meditation is a movement of returning, coming home, and also opening, accepting. Accepting. Thank you. When we find ourselves drifting off we gently come home. And at home we begin again, basking in an attention that doesn't judge, that sees. Thank you. Noticing how it feels to be soft, to allow ourselves to receive life, to breathe in and breathe out and just We begin to glimpse that we are part of a greater life. Just breathing, just being here. Thank you. Thank you. As we prepare to close, noticing the stillness that we share as a presence, something alive, intelligent, receptive. May all beings be safe from inner and outer harm and danger. May all beings feel accompanied by wisdom and compassion and awareness. May all beings be well, as well as they can be. May they live with ease, and may they be free.

Thank you. 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.