Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 8/19/15 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: August 17, 2015

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 New York Insight Meditation Center. This week’s session will be led by Tracy Cochran. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: http://rma.cm/cx

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 to learn more. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center. This week's session will be led by Tracy Cochran. 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. So we can take a comfortable seat. I invite you to sit so that your feet are resting firmly on the floor in front of you. So this is taking our noble posture, as the Buddha put it, so we can abide peacefully, as he also put it. So we have our feet firmly on the floor, and our backs are supported and upright, and our necks and heads are nice and free. And when you feel comfortable, allow your eyes to close. Allowing the body to assume its natural ease, its natural openness.

So give it all the time that it needs. And as you feel ready, bring the attention to rest on the the in-breath and thoughts begin to well up. It's like coming into a party, sometimes in full swing. There can be a feeling of awkwardness, thinking, let that be. Note it and gently bring the attention home to rest on the breath. Accepting everything just as it is, gently come home to the breath. Knowing that everything is welcome, nothing is to be clung to or pushed away. Okay. is to be clung to or pushed away.

Mindfulness meditation is a movement of return, sati. Mindfulness literally means to remember, to come home to the sensation of the present moment. And at the same time, it's a movement of allowing, of acceptance, meeting everything that arises with kind awareness, letting go, coming home. As the body relaxes, you may have an experience of a finer sensation, the sense of being open to receive, feeling the coolness of the air on your skin, the impressions that come in and pass away. Thank you.... When we find ourselves taken by thought or a picture in the mind or a sensation, we simply note that, accepting it without judgment, kindly bringing the attention home to the breath. Thank you. As we continue to relax and open, we begin to notice that it's our true nature to be open, not fixed and contracted, but open to life. Thank you.... We begin to notice that there's a light of awareness inside the body that's not thinking,

that sees and receives. It's not separate from sensation. It's opening to receiving what's here. Takk for ating med.... As we continue to return to quiet, to still, to open, we begin to be able to turn our attention to the question, why am I here? Why do I sit? Without rushing to answer it in words or thinking, just hold the question open. Hold the question open, allowing impressions or feelings to appear or not. Røde Røde Takk for ating med. Rengar If the mind drifts, even if it's been gone this whole time, gently bring it back to the sensation of being here, open, soft. Open to the possibility that under it all, under all the thinking and pulls and pushes there's a wish just to be here open body heart and mind with life

with life, unprotected, without fear. Takk for ating med. Røde Røde GONG GONG I heard a beautiful way of conceiving of wise intention from Rumi, a Sufi poet. And he described it as following the call of what you most deeply love. It points towards this beautiful way the practice can allow you to reconnect or rediscover your deepest intentions. It's not something you have to climb up to. It's something you melt down into. You remember.

Okay, so in the spirit of the bodhisattvas, who we put two hands together, connecting with those moments in us when we are melted and soft and open and when we most truly wish and aspire and intend to have goodwill towards life towards the whole of life and every being in it when we have a heart in mind that can let go of insisting on our own results, our own idea of how things should be. Just open, open to how things are and sending out a wish, an aspiration that all beings everywhere be safe and free from all harm and danger, that all beings be well in body and mind,

that all beings be happy in mind and body, and that all beings live with ease and be free, in every way free. We take all the energy from all the moments we've just had and we send them out in that spirit. 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.