Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 6/29/16 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: June 30, 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 on the theme of Beginning Again. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: rma.cm/14m

Thank you. join us in person, please visit our website at ribbonmuseum.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 ribbon 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.

I remember Joseph Campbell once said that the purpose of myth, and I would add the purpose of sacred art, is to connect mind and body. And that means that this little detail that I'll share from the life of the Buddha is something that you can relate to right here and right now in your body as I can. The Buddha failed. The Buddha's great journey of enlightenment

began at a moment when he thought he had come to the end. He was lying on a riverbank, just a pile of bone and rag. He'd split off from his yogi brothers because after starving himself and accomplishing all kinds of punishing austerities, he had achieved states of meditative absorption, as they were called, but he hadn't found the ease and the peace that he was looking for. Imagine how he must have felt. He left his

wife, he left his baby, he left his life. And by imagine, I don't just mean picture something in your head, but recall how it felt in your body those times when you felt you lost, when you absolutely couldn't go on, when things were not working. So at just that very moment, when he thought it was game over, a young woman came by and offered him food, just a spontaneous act of compassion.

He wasn't supposed to touch a woman. He wasn't supposed to touch food. But he had nothing left to lose. So he ate this delicious food that I think of as rice pudding. Seriously, in Indian restaurants, they have just a little bit of cardamom. And when he took that food, he felt relief from pain, first of all. Relief from isolation, the way you would feel if you were starving. And he had a memory from childhood, a very simple memory of sitting under a

rose apple tree watching his father and other men from the village plow the fields. He pretended he was sleeping, so his nannies left. He was royalty in his village, so he had multiple nannies. And he sent them away by pretending to sleep. And then he sat up and just enjoyed how it felt to be a little boy all alone. And according to the tradition, the way they passed it down, this is a way of conveying how it feels to experience joy in solitude. But I have been reflecting on this for years now.

And I think the Buddha was recovering in a fuller sense how it felt to be a child. Body and mind and heart all together. A student of mine up in Westchester has been going through a period of extreme grief and loss. And she told me this week that at one moment she watched a little girl try to fill a pail with a sprinkler, which takes a long time and a lot of patience and dedication. And as the little girl did this,

dedication. And as the little girl did this, a dog sat watching the little girl with boundless patience and love. And my friend and student said in that moment, something opened in her. Something opened up. And in that moment, in the great myth of the Buddha's awakening, what awakened in him is the idea that it's possible to be in this world with a different kind of ease and openness. He was alone, he was with himself, but he was also at ease and open. He could begin again in a new way. So he took this memory of childhood to the Bodhi tree, where he sat. It varies. It's usually 40 days. It's something. 40 in ancient times meant a long time. It didn't specifically mean 40, 40 days in the desert, 40 days under the tree or 40 hours. It meant he sat.

But he sat nourished and informed by remembering how it felt to be whole, to not be worried about who he was, to have the body be present, the feelings be present, the attention present. And by the light of the morning star, he achieved that state they call enlightenment. achieve that state they call enlightenment. But isn't it valuable to know that it began with a feeling of failure,

of ending, of loss? And I was thinking about it. It's not so far out of reach. If you think about how it feels to lose something small, an earring, there comes a tiny moment where you let it be. There you are in the world with just one earring, right? And you let go of this incessant striving to control reality. And when we do, we find we're supported.

Reality comes to us, comes in. Creation comes to us. Because we're part of creation. to us, because we're part of creation. And at any given moment, with the next breath, I think by coming here, frankly, we're doing something very quietly radical together. We're being still together. We're stopping.

Just like the Buddha on the riverbank when he gave up so fruitfully. He gave up and he opened to something he didn't yet know. So why don't we try that for the next 20 minutes or so, and then we can talk a little bit more. So the important thing is to take a comfortable seat, putting your feet firmly on the floor in front of you, and stretching your spine up as straight as you comfortably can.

Feeling what it's like to be completely here in the body, just exactly as you are, just exactly as you are letting go of all striving to be better and different and other here you are as you are and just allow yourself to notice that

in the most gentle way with the attention, noticing how it feels to be in the body, and welcoming everything that might be present right now. There might still be momentum from the street, from getting here. Whatever it is, meeting it with kind attention. Welcome. and as the body begins to unfold as it relaxes and takes up space allow the attention to come to rest

on the breath without making a change or wishing a change, just finding the breath and allowing the attention to be carried by it. Noticing the in-breath and the out-breath. So we allow everything else that's here, every impression, thought, let it pass through. And when you notice that you're taken, gently and without judgment, bring the attention home again to the breathing. Thank you. And as we begin to relax,

notice that the body is alive with sensation, with perception. There's a vibrancy inside that doesn't depend on the thinking. Thank you. As we begin to relax, we begin to relax, we begin to remember that we're part of life. The body is open. We receive impressions, sensations, breath. Thank you.... When the mind wanders off, and it will, because that's what minds do, we simply notice that without judgment and gently bring the attention back to the body and the breath and this moment. Thank you. Sati, the ancient word for mindfulness, means to remember. It means to remember to come back to the body, to sensation, to feeling, to life. Thank you. Thank you. Noticing that as we allow ourselves to come home without judgment, without comment. That vibrancy in the body,

that energy of presence can get a bit stronger, a bit more vivid. We remember we're here. Thank you.... Noticing how it feels to be a bit softer than when we came in the room, a bit safer, more more part of life. Thank you. Thank you. As we relax, we can begin to sense that this movement of remembering, of return, is creative in the sense that we're open to life, being with it, sensing, glimpsing, breathing. Thank you.... Noticing that even if you've been lost this entire time or sleeping, you can begin again Thank you. Thank you.... Noticing that there's a stillness that we can still have with others. and give back just by being present. Thank you. Thank you. 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.