Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 8/26/15 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: September 2, 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 Sharon Salzberg. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: http://rma.cm/ds

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 Sharon Salzberg. 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. It's nice to be back here. Welcome. I was standing there. First of all, I love that piece of art. I chose it for today, which I felt incredibly honored to have the chance to do, because the whole point is a path, right? That's why the footprints were utilized. Not a belief system, not a dogma, not a philosophy, but a path. Which is an offering for those who are moved to try it. It's all about oneself and one's own effort. And as I was staying there, I was thinking,

ooh, we could do one on insight. We can do one on effort. And probably we will. But that's the whole point, that the Buddha did not seek converts. He didn't seek believers. He sought those who might follow a path to see for themselves whether they felt it was useful or not useful. And so in the end, it's completely up to us. So the heart of the path is considered to be this quality called mindfulness. The classical meaning of mindfulness is a quality of awareness where our perception of what's happening in the present moment is not so distorted by bias. All kinds of things may arise just through the force of habit or conditioning,

interpretations, judgments, reactions. And it's not that they are bad or necessarily wrong. Sometimes those stories, those narratives are quite onward leading. Sometimes, very often, too, they're old, they're damaging, they're holding us back, they're misguiding us. But we don't often take the time, first of all, to know the difference between what's actually happening and what we may be adding on to it, and then to take a look at that add-on and decide for ourselves, is that something we want to pursue? Is that something well worth letting go of? One of the examples I use these days to try to describe mindfulness is I say, let's say you're on your way to a party, and you run into a friend, and the friend says, you know who I just met today? I met that new

person we're going to be working with, our new colleague, and they are so boring. And then you go to the party and who do you end up stuck talking to but that very person you have just been told is so boring. So how likely is it that you really listened? That you take them in, that you even really see them? It's not that likely, is it? More commonly, we're thinking about the 50 emails we need to write. Or we're looking around the room thinking, who would be more interesting to talk to, like anybody? And maybe we realize that and we say to ourselves, you know what?

I don't even know for myself, from my own experience, that I find this person really boring. That was someone else's impression, which I just took on unthinkingly. So how about if I drop that for now and I really listen, I really get here, I really look at I really get here. I really look at them. With an open mind and open heart, I try to take them in. So maybe we do that, and maybe at the end of the evening,

we walk out of the party and we think, oh, that new person I'm going to be working with, they are so boring. But maybe not, because life is full of surprises when we pay attention. So it's not that we never interpret, we never take action, we never have a feeling about something or a response. Of course we do, but what we want is a little bit of space so that it is our own response, and it's not just the force of habit dragging us around. That opens up our world. So mindfulness is the quality of awareness,

another way of saying it, is it's a quality of awareness where we are not adding to our experience by holding on, pushing away, or getting confused. That's delusion. Delusion in that context means something like, I'm an angry person and I always will be. Right? Or I am the only one who has ever, ever felt this kind of sadness. Or, I should have been able to stop this. This is all my fault.

No one else in the room is thinking. They're all sitting here in bliss. I'm the only one who can't control my mind and make thoughts go away. That's all delusion, right? So mindfulness is a quality of awareness where we are not adding, holding on, pushing away, or getting deluded, getting confused about the nature of things. And that just opens up space.

And in that space, we can act. So I'll just tell you what used to be my most favorite way of describing mindfulness. Then we'll sit together a little bit. And then we'll have a little bit of time for questions. This is like a mini retreat. So this came from an article in the New York Times some years ago, it's quite a few years ago now, where there was a pilot program. Now there are so many and it's very exciting.

This was one of the very early programs trying to bring mindfulness into a school system, which was in Oakland, California. It was a fourth grade classroom. which was in Oakland, California. It was a fourth-grade classroom. So there were two quotations I especially liked in the article. One was one of the researchers who said, all day long we tell kids to pay attention, but we never teach them how.

And the other quotation was from one of the kids, so he's in fourth grade let's say he's nine or ten years old and they say to him what is mindfulness what is mindfulness and he responds with mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth. That's what mindfulness means. And I thought that is a great definition of mindfulness. Mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth. Because what does it imply? It implies knowing you're starting to feel angry when you start to feel angry. Not 15 consequential actions later. Not after you've sent that email. Not after you've hit someone in the mouth. But as it's beginning, you're that tuned in. And it implies you have a

certain balanced relationship with that anger. If every time you feel anger, you fall into it, you lose a sense of centeredness, then you're likely to hit a lot of people in the mouth, right? Life can be really annoying. And at the same time, if you hate that feeling and you fear it and you try to repress it and you try to deny it and you get tighter and tighter and tighter, then you'll explode someday. It's just not going to work. So mindfulness also implies kind of a place in the middle between falling into whatever is coming up and getting overwhelmed by it on the one hand

or trying to push it away and disliking it on the other hand. It's a space of open acknowledgement. This is what's happening right now. And in that space, we can take an interest in our experience. We can see more deeply into it. Maybe in that rush of anger, we also see sadness. We see fear. We see helplessness. That's interesting. And we have some space. We have some space to make some choices. Maybe we consider, you know what, hit someone in the mouth last week. Didn't work out that well. Let me try this. Doesn't mean you hate what you're feeling, but you have some space. That's a different kind of life. So mindfulness is to be with what's happening in the moment in a different way.

It doesn't govern what's happening in the moment. It's about our relationship to what's happening. So let's sit together and I'll guide you through a mindfulness exercise. See if you can sit comfortably, you can close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. And if you like, you can start just by listening to sound, whether it's the sound of my voice or other sounds. And within that kind of relaxed and open awareness, you can settle your attention on the feeling of your breath. just the normal, natural breath, wherever it's clearest for you or strongest for you. At the chest, at the abdomen, at the nostrils, wherever it might be.

Find that place, bring your attention there, and just rest. Thank you. And if something arises that is strong enough to take your attention away from the breath, not a little whippy thing, but strong emotion, strong sensation, powerful thought. When you realize that, see if you can spend a few moments just acknowledging this is what's happening right now. There's thinking, there's joy, there's sorrow, whatever it might be. You don't have to use those words or any words, even though you can. you don't have to use those words or any words, although you can,

but it's a felt sense. This is the truth of the present moment. This is what's happening right now. See if you can recognize that experience without judging it. Just acknowledging this is the truth of the present moment. And see if you can gently let go. Bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath, which is like the home base. Thank you. And if there are times you just slip away, you get lost in thought, spun out in a fantasy or you fall asleep.

It just isn't the time or the space to acknowledge what's happening until after you're emerging. That's okay. We say in many ways those are the most critical moments after you've been distracted, after you've been lost. We realize that that's the moment of mindfulness. You realize without judgment, without blame, you've been gone, you've been lost. You gently let go and begin again, bringing your attention back to the feeling of the breath. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's a nice afternoon interlude.

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.