Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 7/25/2018 with Rebecca Li

Episode Date: July 26, 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. Rebecca Li led this meditation session on July 25, 2018. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/rebecca-li-07-25-2018

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. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Rubin Museum and to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice. My name is Dawn Eshelman. Great to have you all here. Great to have Rebecca Lee back as our teacher today.

Dr. Rebecca Lee is a Dharma heir in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen and started practicing meditation in 1995. She began her teacher's training with Master Sheng Yen in 1999 to become a Dharma and meditation instructor. And later on, she trained with Simon Child. And she currently teaches meditation and Dharma classes and give lectures and retreats in North America and the UK. She's the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community and a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey where she also serves as faculty director of the Alan Daly Center for the Study of Social Justice.

And her talks and writings can be found online at rebeccalee.org. Please welcome her back. It's nice to be back. And thank you, Dawn, for this lovely introduction of the art pieces for today. And the topic of emptiness is indeed rather commonly misunderstood. I would like to say that it's the most misunderstood concept in the Dharma. But it's incredibly important because what Shakyamuni Buddha realized is emptiness, the true nature of reality. Unfortunately, the English word used to translate this idea,

emptiness, also had the connotation of non-existence. And that is definitely not what it means. That's not what this concept, sunyata, in Sanskrit, that's not what it means. That's not what this concept sunyata in Sanskrit, that's not what it means. But it's very commonly understood as that and think that the whole many people think that the practice is about realizing that I don't actually exist or the world actually doesn't exist. And it can really take us down some very problematic path. So I want to talk about this right off the bat to get this established in our mind. So what does it actually mean?

What it means is that actually everything exists. Everything. Every single one of us sitting here exists. Right here, right now, the way we are right now. Everything exists, but temporarily. So you are a different person now than when you came to the museum building, when you were waiting outside. The way you feel right now is different from just

a few moments ago. And the reason is that everything that exists in this moment is the coming together of many, many, many different causes and conditions. You're not standing anymore. You're sitting on this comfortable chair. You're inside this hall. You're not standing anymore, you're sitting on this comfortable chair, you're inside this hall, you're not outside, where you are surrounded by people chatting. And so our environment and us are completely connected, and all these sensory inputs are part of our present moment existence. But we usually don't have any sense of that. We don't have any sense of that. We don't have any sense of that.

We are too preoccupied with all kinds of things in our mind. And Shakyamuni talked about liberation. Liberation from what? What the most important thing that we need to be liberated from actually is our misunderstanding of the true nature of our being. Instead of truly understanding that everything that we experience

is empty in the sense that everything existing, but temporarily, moment after moment after moment, we have a very strong tendency to believe that there's some permanence in something, and we want to hold onto that. And you might say that, no, I know, I know everything is impermanent, I know that.

We know that intellectually, but at the emotive level, we believe something is permanent. And we are either constantly looking for that or we are holding on to that without our realizing. And so the process of the practice is to help us realize what it is that we are holding on to. And when we really see that, it would be quite easy for us to see the fatality of holding on to it when we see that what we are holding on to is really not what we thought we are. So the process of practice is actually really understanding

the true nature of our being, of our experience, of our self, that moment after moment after moment, that is all coming together of many things, and all these things are constantly changing. But in our mind, we believe that some of it is permanent. And so what are we not free from? Or what are we trapped by? We are trapped by our idea of ourself,

our idea of who we are that we may have created from some time ago, or our idea of who we ought to be sometime in our life, and we're trapped by that. So the process of practice towards liberation is to realize all this, the emptiness of it, and starting with understanding what exists and the nature of existence. So that is, that's why the teaching of emptiness is such an important part of Mahayana Buddhism, not just in Tibetan Buddhism, in Chan Buddhism,

it's a very central teaching in the practice of Chan. And it is not a philosophical endeavor. It is very much connected to our daily life. Let me share a personal example with you. It just happened to me. Don was mentioning I just returned from Hong Kong. I just touched down from a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong on Monday. And before, less than 12 hours before I had to board the flight, I really injured my back. I couldn't really get up from a lying down position without, you know, missing out on the pain. And my

husband at home in New Jersey wasn't sure if I should get on the plane or listening to how much pain I was in. And because I was reporting to him how, because he had a lot of lower back pain problems, so I was getting advice from him what I should and should not do. And he was like, well, I'm not sure you should get on the plane with all this pain. And I said, well, I could feel that it's less painful than five minutes ago. And then as I was talking to him on the phone,

I could feel that I was sitting there and I was okay. My back was sore, but it wasn't enormously painful. And I told him, well, you know, I'm going to be on the plane for 15 hours. All I need to do is to sit. I think I'm going to be okay. So where else can I just sit for 15 hours without having to move around? And I want to share this example,

is that we encounter this all the time, right? We get up feeling really lousy, either physically or emotionally. And our tendency is to believe that that's me, that I'm this, I'm this pain, or I'm this sadness, or I'm this anger. And we fix it in our mind and made it permanent and allow ourselves to be trapped by it

for the rest of the day, or week, or month, or years. That's what I meant by we create our idea of who we are, or our world, and then get trapped by it. But the practice allow us to be free from it by seeing that actually our experience of ourselves changes from moment to moment if we only bother to pay attention. Next moment, slightly less painful.

Next moment, different pain. Even though it's maybe not less painful, but different. It has changed. And it allows us to see that that permanence we have set up in our mind cannot be held up. And before we know it, we feel different. Maybe that sadness that we woke up with, or that anger we woke up with, oh, not there anymore.

We don't need to try to get rid of it. We don't need to get rid of it. All we need to do is to stay with our present moment experience, moment after moment after moment. The reason why it's so difficult is that we haven't trained our mind to stay with the present moment. We get distracted, and then we say, oh, I feel horrible, I feel horrible,

and then our mind went somewhere else. We come back, I still feel horrible, because we are mainly going back to our belief of how we feel, not how we actually feel. The practice of meditation allows us to train our mind to be connected with our body and mind at all times, moment after moment after moment, which then affords us the opportunity to really see that,

the opportunity to really see that, yes, it is really true that this body and mind is impermanent, but not in the sense that it's bad. It's like a flow, constant flow, and this allows us to truly appreciate everything that happens in our life. Like right now. Right now. This moment of all of us being here, practicing together, is a miracle. All the causes and conditions that makes it possible for you to come, and for me to come, for me to be back here in the U.S. at all.

And then a few moments later, you will be back to the rest of your day. But right now is this wonderful, precious moment. And so will the next moment. And this is something we can practice with, making use of the concept and the teaching and the practice of emptiness as well. So it's not about things not existing, that I don't exist, that nothing matters.

All those are erroneous understandings of the Dharma. So we will make use of this to set our mind for our period of meditation. We will make a commitment to stay with the practice. What we do is we set up our body to a position that allows the body to be relaxed. You might find that if you have anything tight-fitting on you, glasses on your face, it will help you to take them off,

to facilitate relaxation of the body. Start off with feeling the body sitting here, feeling, being aware of you sitting in this space with everyone around you, being supported by everyone practicing with you. And we practice staying with the body and mind in this moment. And we notice the mind drifting off, no problem. This gentle, gentle attitude is the compassion,

the compassion that accompanies the cultivation of wisdom. They go hand in hand. So we begin. We feel the relaxation at the top of the head, like melting butter. like melting butter. And feel the relaxation spread to the forehead. And check to see if we're holding tension in these muscles,

maybe between the eyebrows. Allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the eyeballs and eye muscles. Check to see if we are holding tension in our face by habit. and now face by habit. Maybe to hold a facial expression for the world to see. Right now, you don't need to do that.

And truly allow your face to relax. And feel the relaxation spread to the entire head. Feel the relaxation spread down the neck like melting butter. like melting butter. And feel the relaxation spread to the shoulder muscles, allowing the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the arms, down to the forearms,

and all the way down to the fingertips. And feel the relaxation spread to the chest area. and feel the relaxation spread to the chest area. Check to see if we're holding tension in this area, maybe from anxiety or worries. And give this anxiety a rest. Allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the torso

to the lower abdomen. We hold a lot of tension in this area by habit. Allow the tension to melt away. and feel the relaxation spread to the upper back area between the shoulder blades. Allowing the tension to melt away and feel the relaxation spread down the back all the way down to the buttocks and all the way down to the toes. and feel the relaxation of the entire body sitting right here right now moment after moment

we're aware of the subtle changes and sensations of the subtle changes and sensations of the body. As the body breathes, we feel the subtle movements, the subtle movements of this living, breathing body, the versatile movements of this living, breathing body.

Allowing ourselves to fully experience this miracle. All the cells working the way they are to allow this present moment. Make use of our bodily sensations as an anchor of our attention. Rest. Rest our attention gently on the moment-to-moment changes of the body's experience. If we notice the mind falling asleep or drifting off,

no problem. falling asleep or drifting off, no problem. The moment you notice that you're here, no need to be harsh with ourselves. Compassion. compassion, unconditional, gentle, loving-kindness for ourselves. moment after moment, whatever the body and mind mind, is experiencing.

We are here. No need to judge. All we need to do is to be clearly aware. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. GONG 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.