Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 9/02/15 with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: September 1, 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/d-

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. The quality of loving kindness really is a quality of connection, and it's embedded in many ways in mindfulness. We talk about being mindful, being aware of our experience. It is aware in a certain way. So we're not condemning ourselves, we're not contemptuous, we're not as judgmental as we might ordinarily be habitually, but it's a kind of open-hearted presence. But that's more implicit. There are also ways of cultivating the strength of connection, of loving kindness toward ourselves and toward others. That's its own methodology. It's its own particular stream of meditation practice. And most people I know, including myself, tend to do some of each.

I have an awareness and mindfulness practice. I also have a loving kindness practice because it is its own method. And I went to Burma in 1985 to do an intensive three-month period of loving kindness practice. And I ended up doing it basically for four years. Not in Burma, and not always intensively, but for four years, loving kindness was my practice. Whether I was sitting formally each day, or I was on retreat, or walking down the streets of New York, and maybe just at the end, I'll talk about how one does that. And I have a resolve, a personal resolve now.

Even if I'm not doing loving kindness in the dedicated period I meditate each day, I have a resolve to do loving kindness practice every time I'm waiting. And I count every mode of transportation as waiting, because I'm kind of waiting to get to the other place. So subways, taxis, airplanes, walking down the street, waiting online somewhere. So it's really an interesting and profound technique. The word loving-kindness I know is kind of weird. The word in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist text, is metta, M-E-T-T-A.

Commonly translated as loving-kindness. The literal translation is friendship. And it's a sense, it's a sensibility of connection. We call it a feeling, but I'm not sure that's totally accurate either, because it doesn't, first of all, to have loving kindness for someone doesn't mean you like them. It doesn't mean you appreciate them. It doesn't mean you approve of them. It does mean that deep down you have a sense that your lives have something to do with one another,

that we live in an interconnected universe, that the constructs we can hold so rigidly of self and other and us and them with a great big other out there, those are constructs. with a great big other out there, those are constructs. And that when we really look at the nature of life, what we see is connection. So when you're talking to somebody and they ask you for something, loving kindness doesn't dictate that you say yes, right?

It's not going to formulate a particular answer. Be pleasing, smile, give them your money. Or as I always say in New York City, you should never give away your rent control department, no matter who asks you. Let me speak as someone who just lost an apartment. You know, so loving kindness doesn't mean taking a certain action. It means a heart space of inclusion, of connection, of wishing well, rather than feeling so alienated and apart. The first recipient, classically, of loving kindness, interestingly, is ourselves. And the unfolding of the practice of loving kindness is meant to be done in the easiest way possible. Isn't that interesting?

That from the point of view of those ancient teachings, we should be easiest of all. And we work outward from there. So in the classical unfolding, we won't have time to do every part of it in this one sitting, but just so you know the lay of the land, you start with offering loving kindness to yourself. And then we move to a benefactor. That's someone who's helped us. Maybe they've helped us directly.

They've helped pick us up when we've fallen down. Or maybe they've inspired us from afar. It's somebody who, when we just think about them we it's like our spirits lift some sometimes people use an adult they use a child they even use a pet the texts say this is the one whom when you think of them you smile so you think okay who who makes me smile? If someone, you know. It may not be every time that someone comes to mind, but that's the next category.

And then a friend. And there are different ways of offering loving kindness to friends, which we'll probably experiment some with here today. Bless you. Loving kindness toward a neutral person. This is someone we don't strongly like or dislike. We just feel kind of neutral toward them. And this is actually, frankly, my favorite part of the practice. Because first of all, I think it's so weird. You know, like like you don't know anything about this person you may not even know their name and what we usually suggest is that you try

to choose someone you will tend to run into now and then so maybe it's the dry cleaner that you you go to or a clerk in the grocery store, whatever it might be, someone you just tend to see now and then, that you more or less objectify. And what's really interesting, the reason it's my favorite part is that we get to see what happens because we do run into them now and then. We get to see what happens because we do run into them now and then. We get to see what happens over time as we are continuing to hold them in our hearts and wish them well. And all of a sudden, there's a connection that's based on not our normal means of connecting. It's so interesting. And then loving kindness toward a difficult person

which is a complex and intricate part of the practice that's why it doesn't tend to come right away and even when we begin offering loving kindness to a difficult person the suggestion is that we not start with the most unthinkably difficult person, like unimaginable, but start with somebody we feel a little bit annoyed with at work or something like that. Because what we're building is an embodied knowledge of what in the world it can mean to have loving kindness for someone else and for ourselves? What does it feel like to have compassion for someone and know it is wrong to just give in? What does it feel like and how do you get through having compassion for someone

and realizing I can't fix it. I'm not in control of the universe. So it's like muscle strength. You know, we're working our way toward that because loving kindness for someone who's difficult does not mean ignoring the difficulty or pretending it never happened or it doesn't matter or being conflict avoidant. It does mean some of the kind of rigid fixation we get. You know what it's like when you go through that list of someone else's faults and then you go through it again and you

go through it again and again. It's like you never even think of a new fault, but you've got to go through it again and again. And it's like half your day is spent captured by this other person that you can't control, right? So it's almost like recapturing that energy, that kind of vitality for yourself. And then we offer loving kindness to all beings everywhere, a much more kind of global, encompassing, inclusive space.

That's the classic overarching trajectory. And anyone sitting, like we're going to do one in just a couple of minutes, it's almost impossible. You'd feel really rushed and kind of jarred to try to do everything. So the basic bookends are starting with offering loving kindness to oneself and ending with all beings everywhere. And what you do in the middle might be different every day, assuming you sit every day. Maybe you have a friend who's getting an award and you really want to be sure to include them. Maybe you have a friend who's really in trouble. You want to be sure to include them. Maybe you're going to the dry cleaner today and that's your neutral person or whatever it might be that inspires you

or interests you that forms that middle portion we do loving kindness practice the way we pay attention differently is through the silent repetition of certain phrases the phrases aren't meant to be like gooey or phony or demand a certain kind of emotion. I honestly think the transformative value of the practice, and it's very strong, happens underneath the level of emotion. Sometimes there is a strong feeling, and of course that's very gratifying for us. And sometimes there's not, and that doesn't mean nothing is happening, truly. Often, mostly, something is happening, but it's not expressing itself in that particular way. So of course we get very frustrated, but that's not the point.

The point is that transfiguration of our worldview, our sense of safety with others, our ability to be different and kinder to ourselves, the way we meet a stranger. All those things change, but that doesn't mean that at 8.45 when you sat this morning you were, like, overcome by a wave of blissful feeling. Maybe it felt like nothing and that would be okay. We choose certain phrases that are channeling our attention differently. So

instead of going through that list of someone's faults, for example, we're wishing them well. Instead of looking right through that dry cleaner as though they were not a human being who wanted to be happy just as we do, in effect through the phrases we're looking at them and wishing them well. The phrases, this practice is considered a concentration practice, which means we have a chosen object. That's the repetition of the phrases. Our attention will wander 70 billion times. We see if we can gently let go and come back.

You don't have to figure out why you ended up where you ended up, or certainly you don't need to judge yourself for it. It's just letting go and coming back. We try to pick phrases that are general enough so that we can offer them to ourselves and to others, so that you're not like sitting here thinking, what about you? Let's see. If you could only find a new apartment, then you'd be perfectly happy forever. But how about just may you be happy, right? We gently repeat the phrases over and over again with enough space and enough silence so that it's a rhythm that is pleasing to us. This is like the song of the heart.

And when our attention wanders, as it will, don't worry about it. We'll see if we can just gently let go and come back. Okay, so I'll guide you through it. One version of the many possibilities for doing it. If you could just sit comfortably. Close your eyes or not. Again, classically, the first recipient of loving kindness is ourselves. See if your energy can just settle into your body.

And if there are three or four phrases that are like that gift you would like to offer to yourself and ultimately to others. You can just begin repeating them. Very common phrases are things like, may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, Live with ease. Live with ease means in the things of day-to-day life like livelihood or family, may it not be such a struggle. May I live with ease. May I be safe.

Be happy. Be healthy. Live with ease. You can use these or other phrases. Gather all your attention behind one phrase at a time. The feeling tone is one of gift giving. It's blessing. It's offering. Thank you. Thank you. And see if you can bring a friend to mind who's pretty happy right now. They may not be perfectly happy, but something good is going on for them.

They may not be perfectly happy, but something good is going on for them. So if someone like that comes to mind, bring them here. You can get an image of them, perhaps. Say their name to yourself. Get a feeling for their presence. And offer the phrases of loving kindness to them. Offering to them just what it is you offer to yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And a friend who's having some difficulty right now, bring them here if someone comes to mind like that and offer the phrases of loving kindness to them. Thank you. Thank you. And everybody here, which involves a whole variety of different relationships,

those whom you may know quite well, those whom you don't know at all, and yourself. So the phrases become something like, may we be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. Thank you. And all beings everywhere, all people, all creatures, all those in existence, near and far, known and unknown. May all things be healthy live with ease Thank you. Thank you. And when you feel ready, you can open your eyes as the lights come on and so on. I wanted to give some suggestions for walking meditation while doing loving kindness, because it will make for a better New York experience for everybody. make for a better New York experience for everybody.

So there are a few kind of obvious common sense things that you just have to keep in mind. One is eyes open. Second is it's a silent repetition of certain phrases. You're not really saying them out loud as you walk down the street. you're not really saying them out loud as you walk down the street. And there are many styles. Also, walk at a normal pace. This is not, like, really slow walking.

As we say sometimes at the Insight Meditation Society, we're orienting people to being there for an intensive retreat. If you run into a neighbor, act normal. Right? So act normal. But as you're walking at a normal pace, eyes open. There are many styles of doing this practice. My favorite, my personal favorite, is the one I'll suggest, where I maintain a light awareness. You're not trying to hunker down and block out what's going on around you,

but just a light awareness on phrases for myself. Usually four is too many in walking, so I usually am walking along silently, resting my attention on, may I be happy, be peaceful, be happy, be peaceful. And then when someone comes strongly into my consciousness, I hear a bird, I hear a dog, a person walks by, I just include them like, oh, be happy. And then go back to the phrases, that light awareness, the phrases for myself, and it's quite fun, you know,

because for so many reasons, like, there's a lot of life out there. One of the things I really enjoy is that all the same judgments may come up, but it's capped by a little loving kindness, like, that's the wrong jacket for this season. I'll be happy. You know, it's a really interesting way to commute, you know. So that was the example of walking. Of course, you can do the same thing on a subway or wherever. So I would really urge you to experiment with it. Thank you. May you be well and happy. Spread that energy to New York.

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.