Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 7/19/2017 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: July 21, 2017

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. Presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and the New York Insight Meditation Center. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on July 19, 2017. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/tracy-cochran-07-19-2017

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. Welcome to our weekly mindfulness meditation. We're here every Wednesday at the Rubin Museum. And this month, we've been exploring the theme of listening in connection to the World of Sound exhibition up on the sixth floor that is exploring how sound is connected in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

So we're looking at listening this month and particularly how it can be used as a tool during meditation. And behind me we have a couple artworks that are a mouthful, but they are the ritual empowerment text and illuminations of the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities of the Bardo. Ritual Empowerment Texts and Illuminations of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities of the Bardo. This 17th century piece is part of a series of ritual texts that include the 108 gods of the Bardo, better known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And the Bardo is really used as a tool. Gurus will read the Bardo to their students to empower them, and they will practice meditation using the text

from the bardo, hoping that they can take advantage of the state between death and rebirth, which is known as the bardo, and help them reach enlightenment. And in Tibetan Buddhist traditions, they also believe that hearing is the last sense to leave the body. So after a person is deceased, Tibetans will read the bardo to them, hoping that they will be hearing it in their state between death and rebirth, they can gain some illumination. But to talk to us a little bit more about listening and how it can be used as a tool in meditation, we have Tracy Cochran. Tracy is a writer and editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, which can be found online at parabola.org or upstairs in our bookshop. She has been a student of meditation and other spiritual practices for decades. And

other than the Rubin Museum, she also teaches at New York Insight and every Sunday at Taratown Insight in Taratown, New York. And you can find her writings and teaching schedules at TracyCochran.org or on Facebook and Twitter. So without any further ado and no more shaking, I welcome Tracy Cochran to the stage, everyone. stage everyone would like like Camilla it's wonderful to come here and see so many friends so many familiar faces and I every time I come here I come down and grandson through Grand Central on the train, and I walk down, which is why I always wear sneakers. Not that I want to point out my footwear, but then I get here and I see Camilla and John,

and they look so chic, and I'm in my sneakers. But it's important to me, because then my trip becomes a kind of pilgrimage. I once heard that there are three ways to travel. You can be an explorer. Very few people get to do that anymore. Even the Buddha was a pilgrim in a way. You could be a pilgrim.

An explorer sees something completely new. A pilgrim rediscovers or feels what other people have felt. When the Buddha reached enlightenment, he said he rediscovered an ancient road that other people walked. And you could be a tourist, and we know what that is. We go places. So when we come into this room, in a way, the wish and the hope, at least for me, is besides this wonderful air conditioning, isn't it wonderful, to be cool and be together and to be quiet

in a different way is also to touch something that we may have forgotten in ourselves. And we can think of this, a very good way to reach this is through listening. So I just want to sound the bell just for a minute and just invite you to listen to it. So what happens is that the attention turns back towards ourselves when we listen. And I looked up the word, just to make sure, being nervous like Camilla and it comes from a Sanskrit root that means to attend or to obey isn't that interesting it doesn't mean obey a command from outside it is. To open and receive what is right now. So I was observing myself while I walked down Fifth Avenue and all the other streets it took to get here and I can't

help but think of that great New Yorker, sometime New Yorker, Superman. Also Batman, Spider-Man, you name it. Our archetypal New York superheroes have a way of being in life where they kind of swoop in, and then they retreat. They show up and do something dazzling, and then they disappear. They recede. Superman had his fortress of solitude in some polar region. And walking through the heat of the streets today that sounded pretty darn good. We feel in a way like we have to put on a costume and a mask to show ourselves. And it's perfectly natural, there's nothing wrong with it. I once read that a Buddhist definition of the ego is a protection against pain. Isn't that interesting?

A protection against vulnerability, against a lack of control. We have identities and and we present with these identities so we know who we are and we know where to go, like in the bardo. So you're a mother or a boyfriend or a writer or an editor. You're someone. Because we all fear those moments when the mask comes off, and we're nobody, no one, or no one in particular.

I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker years and years and years ago, and it's always stayed with me. It has a family in a car, and they're in a national park or something somewhere and the mother figure in the car says, we all agree that we're lost. The important thing is who is to blame? And we all know that feeling, that inner scramble, that inner scramble to explain ourselves or to blame something, to get ourselves together.

So the wonderful and interesting thing about this invitation to just listen is that when we're at the end of our rope, when we're lost, or even when we're feeling full of ourselves, ourselves we can turn and discover a different world. The path is always talking about the cultivation of things like compassion and equanimity, sympathetic joy, but what we discover when we turn to ourselves is that it's already there to be found. So that this is a practice that's not really about banishing ego, it's quite unkillable, believe me, I've tried. It springs right back to life. But it's about being easier with our stories, with that tendency. A little bit more able to turn towards ourselves ourselves and remember. Listening is synonymous with remembering. You know the Sati word for mindfulness, to remember. It doesn't mean a memory of the past. It means remembering

the present. What's here. And what's here when we let ourselves quiet down, when we let ourselves listen, we remember the sensitivity in the body. It's part of life, that is part of life. And we can taste moment by moment an ability to be present. And this really is a practice of moments. To be all here, nothing hidden, belonging, discovering that just to breathe is significant in a way that we typically forget. It means that we are given life. We're meant to be here.

We're welcome. I've quoted this before, but since it's listening, it really is the perfect thing to quote again. The great American writer Annie Dillard was describing being in nature in some beautiful glen or something and just seeing something. And you don't have to be outside, it could be here. Just being relaxed and touched for a moment. And she said, all my life I had been a bell and I didn't know it until I was lifted and struck.

Isn't that beautiful? When we do this practice together, we turn towards ourselves and we give ourselves the immeasurable gift of our own kind attention. And what begins to unfold is that text, that deeper text of life. In the responsiveness of the body, even feeling how delightful it is to be in this cool room and to be able to be quiet with other people. In that sensitivity, that appreciation and the feeling of the heart, the wish under all the words to be present. The happiness of being alive. When we feel these things, that's what they mean.

It guides us. Listening is a superpower. When we turn and give our attention to ourselves, because that's a secret, we can't really listen without listening to yourself too. Do you find that? You do it right now. You can be like, I wish you would get on with it. Or I wish this was over and we could just sit already.

Whatever it is, you're seeing it. And you're embracing it. Whatever it is, you're seeing it and you're embracing it. And you begin to uncover a deeper, deeper truth, which is what they call the meaning of life. It isn't necessarily something that people are going to give you in a formula or even a feeling. It's that willingness to be open. To this moment. And the next moment.

And willingness when we forget to come back and to listen again. So I'll let you try it now. Instead of just talking about it. You take a very comfortable seat. It's feet flat on the floor, and it's quite interesting to treat the body with enormous care right from the start, start recognizing that it's a gift that it's made out of phosphorus and calcium and iron and all these things that literally come from stars so honor it it's alive and you let your eyes close. If you're comfortable, some people have eyes open and averted. I close my eyes. The better to be still.

And we bring our attention home to the sensation of being in this body in this moment. And immediately you're going to feel things and think things and we let Let everything happen to us exactly as it's happening Allowing ourselves to be completely acceptable right now and as you feel yourself beginning to soften beginning to relax let the attention come to rest on the breathing without seeking to change it in any way noticing the in-breath and the out-breath you might choose to notice the rise and fall of the chest or the passage of air in the nostrils. Choose one point of focus for this sitting. And when you find yourself taken by thinking, memories, sensations, tension, whatever it is, you gently bring

the attention back again to the breathing and to the experience of being in this body. And we begin to remember that this awareness is a light inside the body and mind waiting to be remembered.. Noticing as we begin to relax that the body and heart and mind respond open like a flower. There is a vibrancy in us and a wish to be present, to be here, to receive and to give. I'm going to take a break and go to the next place. Thank you for watching! And And when we stray, notice how it feels to be very, very gentle with yourself, welcoming everything into the light of your awareness, into this awareness that we share letting no feeling no thought be exiled Thank you for watching! I'm going to take a picture of the Thank you for watching! And as we soften further we begin to remember that there is a responsiveness in us that isn't thinking, that's wise and compassionate. It's the simple willingness to come home, back to the breath, back to the body, back to a stillness that isn't silence but a letting go, a non-resistance to what is. Thank you for watching! I'm going to take a picture of the Thank you for watching. Even if we are dead asleep or in torment we can gently come home with this breath and begin again to remember the present, to remember the moment, to remember deeper humanity, our deeper wish. Thank you for watching. I'm going to take a break and go to the next place. Thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. As we make this movement of attending, even if it's just a few times, we begin to remember all the life that's present here and supporting us. It's like finding water in the desert. Thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. Sati, the word for mindfulness means to remember. This isn't separate from listening, from attending. It's coming home Opening to receive. 1 minute rest Thank you for watching! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. It's a joy to be with 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.