Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 8/1/2018 with Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche

Episode Date: August 2, 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. Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche led this meditation session on August 1, 2018. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/kyabgoen-phakchok-rinpoche-meditation-08-01-2018

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. Hi. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art. My name is Dawn Eshelman. I'm head of programs here, and it's great to have you at our weekly mindfulness meditation practice.

And today is quite a special practice that we get to do together because we have an incredible teacher here with us. Kapgun Pakchuk Rinpoche is here, and he's a teacher with an amazing lineage and a deep connection to a figure that we have been talking about all year long, and that is Padmasambhava. There he is. And I'll tell you a little bit more about our teacher in just a moment. But I just wanted to mention that I really appreciate his willingness to do this here with us today, because it's quite an unusual thing to ask a Rinpoche to speak briefly and lead a brief meditation. Often they are speaking with their students for hours or days or weeks. And today we're going to have this rare opportunity to just get a little taste. And I just want to express my deep appreciation to Rinpoche for his

willingness to do that. And if you would like to hear more, hopefully we'll see some of you tonight. You've already purchased your tickets, but Rinpoche will be here tonight as well at 7 p.m. giving a talk. And this will be on the stories of Padmasambhava. And he will not only tell some of those stories, and we'll get to hear them, but he'll talk a little bit about why this tradition of storytelling is so important in Tibetan Buddhism. So I hope you can join us. We may be on the brink of sold out there, so if you're interested in joining, I hope that you'll grab your ticket right away.

And also be sure to take the pre-programmed gallery tour with the curator of the exhibition up on the sixth floor, which is called the Second Buddha Master of Time, and that is with Elena Pakhatova. So that's a really special opportunity as well. So each month in this program, we select a different theme to explore. And then based on that theme, we select with our teachers some art objects from our exhibitions and collection that speak to that theme. And this month we're talking about intention and intentionality. And often in meditation,

especially in a secular practice, the students are invited to set an intention for their practice and also think about the intentions that they set throughout their days. So unless you stumbled in here accidentally, you had an intention to be here today and just want to honor that. And I think that it brings us to think about how small intentions lead up to these larger actions. And indeed, Padmasambhava was known for an incredible effect that he had when, in the 8th century, he brought Buddhism to Tibet. And that is what he is most known for. So let's take a look at this beautiful thangka, this scroll painting. This is Padmasambhava painted in the 1700s Bhutan.

And we are seeing him in a form that we don't always see him in. He has an interesting hat on, if you noticed. And it is a kind of peak shape at the top. And if you can take a look at the detail, either when you were walking in, if you saw a detail, or you can head to the galleries after the program and take a look, you will see that there is some beautiful gold kind of detail embroidered into this hat. And this hat represents his role as a scholar, as a learner. And in fact, he is wearing the robes of a monk here as well. And the gold detailing in his hat represents the top level of knowledge that he has been able to acquire. In his right hand, he holds a small blue container, which represents terma and if you've been here with us

throughout the year you know that the terma were these treasures these teachings that Padmasambhava was able to plant for future treasure revealers to uncover even hundreds and hundreds of years after he had gone. And this made it possible for his teachings to live on. And it is really incredible to think about also when you think of the landscape that all of these treasures were buried in, in the sky, in the earth, in the rocks. You can also look back at the painting and remember that this painting was painted with mineral paint that was created from the rocks. And also think about the intentionality of the artist, the hand that created this work, and the very clear intention, very clear vision that this artist had in mind. mind.

Khadgen Pakchuk Rinpoche is a lineage holder of the profound treasures of Chakyur Lingpa from the Nyingma school of the early translations. He is one of the throne holders of the Riwoche-Tolk'un Kagyu lineage, which is a lineage of great masters. And his primary root gurus are his grandfather, the late Khadge Tolkgun Rinpoche and the late Kabje Nolshul Ken Rinpoche. He received a traditional education from the Zonsa Shedra in India and has been really instrumental in helping Nepali villages rebuild after the 2015 earthquake. rebuild after the 2015 earthquake. As a yogi practitioner with a family and the responsibility of monastic institutions, indeed he travels all around the world to do his work, Rinpoche is deeply familiar with both ways of life and practice, and we're so excited to have him here with us today.

Please welcome Pakchuk Rinpoche. So how are you? Welcome. I'm already here two times, many, many years back. And today I have ten minutes to talk. So I'm going to make a very, very short, easy. I think many of you already doing meditation. Can be some of you not doing much meditation,

but do time to time. And some of you completely knew. So for that reason, what I did is I put a template. So after you go back, you can actually carry back what I actually talk about. So because of today, this month is focused towards intention. For me, intention is the light, the begin. For me, meditation is sometimes blind.

Without intention, meditation is blind. In the traditional Buddhism meditation they always teach you two things to guide you. One is intention, one is the view. So today I'm not going to talk about the view because that is not my topic. My topic is intention. So when I'm waiting for you, my name is going to be called, I'm sitting there, actually I try to put my intention. That I'm doing the intention build called Tonglen practice.

So today I want to talk a little bit simple one. When you breathe out, exhale, you think I wish everybody to be happy. That's it. No need to do any extra. When you inhale, when you breathe in, you say I wish everybody free from suffering. That's it. No extra. When you do that, you actually build intention. And the intention actually is human nature. It's not actually religious. That is actually not philosophical. That is actually human nature. But we forgot our busy life we forgot of our intention why we working so hard

why we do so many things to actually be happy to see somebody happy we doing this for but on the way we doing so busy the whole intention forgot that's why in meditation traditional this is the always intention forgot. That's why in meditation, traditional, this is always intention go first,

because that creates your beacon, light. So what kind of intention do you want to build? It's very simple. When you exhale, I wish everybody be happy you inhale I wish everybody free from suffering that's it exhale I wish everybody to be happy inhale I wish everybody free from suffering exhale I wish everybody happy. Inhale, I wish everybody... For us, breath is life. Breath. Without breath, we call death.

So without intention, meditation actually is death. It's not life. So that's why I want to bring back the topic of this month, it's intention. So the intention is actually that. So, I like to give some tips of meditation. Of course, I put here quality of mindfulness because you all heard about mindfulness so much. They have many unimaginable teachers in America who put so much effort to bring mindfulness into your life and a secular life. I think it's a very terrific thing they did.

Because meditation actually to benefit the people. The whole intention to do with the meditation is to benefit, there's nothing else than that. So that's why I just give a few tips here. First in meditation is two things please do meditation every day very short don't do completely stop just do two minutes you cannot make it and you're really so busy you cannot do it in the office and whatever you feel difficult go in the toilet and meditate for three minutes you know is number one. Don't stop.

Second, don't attach to the result, the results. When I saw a Time magazine, mindfulness or meditation makes you stress release, look younger, you know wrinkles goes away, all that. I don't know, it's very nice. I think so, I agree, a little bit. But I don't think so meditate with people who have no wrinkles. I've never seen that. I'm being very truthful.

But when I saw that, it's very nice nice because it's encouraging the people to meditate and mindfulness but the when you don't tell them don't attach to the result what happened is they go into the similar emotion issue that goes up, excitement, doing every day and falls down not doing nothing and you forgot about it completely and traditional meditation masters they really concern about that sharp edge up going up and falling down that's what they always teaches don't attach to the result so I have one word for that. I say great master attitude. This is how I go. Great master attitude. What does it mean? You meditate. You see great experiences. You just bow. That's it. Then you meditate next day. Bad experiences. Again, bow. The key is you you know react with the experiences you just keep doing keep going on

that is my tip for you the first tip don't stop second tip great great master attitude don't attach to experience. Don't stop, don't attach. That's it. That is my tip. So now I have four minutes. Mindfulness. And my mindfulness teacher is here. She told me, start, stop, 20 minutes, 120. My mindfulness teacher is here.

She told me, start, stop, 20 minutes, 120, meditate until 40. Two questions, finish. So now I have 30 minutes. I put here something that you can carry back. I put here something that you can carry back that is mindfulness, keeping the key points in the mind through the gentle reminding. So mindfulness in the Tibetan word, I did not put here because it's going to be confusing for you, but basically reminding.

Mindfulness actually means reminding. Don't forget. reminding. Mindfulness actually means reminding. Don't forget. Then they call seeing clearly without being over emotional. Meaning you see things, you do things, you behave, but don't react too much, too fast. Preparing yourself to be more stable. So you know that you're not going to be stable in that situation. You remind yourself, okay, that lousy man or lousy situation is going to come. I should prepare. Imagine you need to go to see a doctor. Then, like me, I go to see a doctor.

I have blood pressure. Do you really believe that? Because I'm fat. Now I lose weight. I don't eat food much, so put down weight. So I prepare whenever I go see a doctor. Sekarang saya kehilangan berat. Saya tidak makan banyak makanan, jadi saya menurunkan berat. Jadi saya bersiap-siap apabila saya pergi jumpa doktor. Ya, saya tahu apa yang dia akan katakan. Dia akan mengancam saya. Anda mempunyai tekanan perut, anda akan mempunyai strok segera dan anda akan mempunyai

serangan jantung segera, anda akan mati sekarang. Jadi saya bersiap-siap. Jadi apabila saya berjumpa dengan dora, saya tidak rasa terkejut. Mempersiapkan adalah kunci untuk menjadi kekuatan. Bukan mempersiapkan, itu adalah kelemahan. Sebab itulah saya menekannya di bawah. Kedengaran memikirkan boleh digunakan untuk kebahagiaan. Kita semua mahukan kebahagiaan. Apa maksudnya kebahagiaan?

Maksudnya tidak membandingkan. Jangan membandingkan terlalu banyak. Oh, hari ini adalah waktu yang baik, tapi bukan hari ini. Jangan membandingkan, anda gembira. What does it mean happiness? Meaning not comparing. Don't compare too much. Oh, yesterday is a good time, not today. Don't do comparing, you're happy. Compassion. Meaning not judging others. You really want to have compassion? Don't judge others, just have compassion.

Don't count too many things. Dignity. Now for the dignity is very important for me. So now when you look at Guru Rinpoche Guru Padmasambhava what he really brought to Tibet you tell me you ask me the question I'm going to say dignity the Vajrayana actually means a dignity okay that's why I say dignity what does it meaning meaning not judging yourself so this is the something that you can carry back. This one. So what are my tips is

very simple. Don't stop. Don't attach to your experience. What is meditation today? Exhale. I wish everybody happy. Inhale. I wish everybody free from suffering. That is the meditation for today. We do this for 10 minutes. Okay? So my time is up. Anybody like to hear from me more, then you can

do. So I'm going to bang. I'm not going to talk much. I'm going to talk three times. Exhale, inhale. Then we could do for 10 minutes. Then I'm not going to talk much, I'm going to talk three times. Exhale, inhale, then we could do for ten minutes, then I'm going to bang again, then I talk something else, little bit, not so much. exhale thinking I wish everybody happy inhale I wish everybody free from suffering exhale wish happiness inhale free from suffering. Exhale, wishing happiness. Inhale, free from suffering. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Exhale.

I wish everybody happy. I wish everybody free from suffering. I wish everybody happy. I wish everybody free from suffering. I wish everybody happy. Inhale, I wish everybody beautiful suffering. Thank you. I'm going to take a picture of the Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Terima kasih. Thank you. Bye-bye. See you. Take care. Wish you happiness.

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.