Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 9/21/16 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

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 focusing on Suffering/Ending Suffering. To view a related artwork from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection, please visit: http://rma.cm/1f0

Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Eshleman. 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. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and the teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center.

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 Ruben Museum's permanent collection. And now, please enjoy your practice. Tracy Cochran is here with us today and she is the editorial director of Parabola, which is a quarterly magazine that for 40 years has drawn on the world's cultural and wisdom traditions. She's been a student of meditation and spiritual practices for decades, teaching mindfulness meditation and mindful writing

at the New York Insight Meditation Center. And her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Psychology Today, O Magazine, and many other publications and anthologies. Please welcome her back, Tracy Cochran. I'm very happy to be back in this beautiful space and it's interesting for me to look at beautiful artworks like this

and just imagine how they make me feel that whole story aside this one makes me feel like I'm sitting down in the midst of it centered but open which we don't always feel in this life so when I was preparing to come here, I noticed something floating by on the internet that said, I never make the same mistake twice. I make it five or six times just to be sure. But I realized on reflection that there are certain mistakes I've made, dozens, hundreds, and even if you count every single potato chip

and cigarette and chocolate chip cookie and other substances I've used to calm myself, I've made the same mistake thousands of times. Thousands of times. Thousands of times. So the Buddha's penetrating insight about suffering came from noticing cause and effect. And then it deepened into a realization of how we all cause our own suffering. So, kind of boiling it down for our purposes today, one of them is that there is a life cycle to people and to things. Things change.

people and to things. Things change. And as I was preparing, I had this beautiful day on Saturday. It was beautiful weather, one of those blue sky, balmy days. And I went to this farmer's market in this beautiful setting. It looked like a Ralph Lauren commercial. It was one of the good things about living in northern Westchester. So I posed for this photograph. My husband took a picture of me to document this beautiful day, and I was feeling really good. But I had the strangest experience when he emailed the picture to me. I saw my mother looking back at me. It was maybe you had the experience. And it was like one of those, it was high noon to be fair. There were these dolls that people make out of apples where you carve them.

And you put them out in the sun and they get wrinkled. They're really, really, really cute, but in a very weaseled way. So the point is, we change. We change. We grow. We age. Things end. Yesterday, I was met by the shocking news that Brangelina is no more. And this morning in the midst of all the trauma in the world I saw a headline on the Huffington Post that said George Clooney visibly shaken by the news that Brad and Angelina are divorcing. And I was reflecting that his wife has found the courage to take on ISIS. And still, this news about a divorce shocks him. It's because there's something there, not that it isn't sad but you know we laugh because

you know it's funny until it's not so funny and we sit down and we realize that there's an ache in us even if I asked all of us

right now are we content are we content? Are we content? In a beautiful space like this, you can feel moments of contentment. But if I brought up your life, or your partner, or your children, or your work, or the world, the state of the world, up would pop this edge, this feeling of anxiety or unfinished feeling or dissatisfaction or I must do this. or I must do this. There is something in us that is always pushing to do something,

to resolve something. And there's something in us that always feels slightly out of balance with the onrushing flow of life. This isn't me being pessimistic. The Buddha said this is so. As long as we are ordinary human beings, which we are, we will experience what is translated as suffering. The word was dukkha, which is a big, roomy word that can mean everything from the tiniest little edge of unease to really heavy suffering.

So the invitation in this practice is to sit down in the center of it all, like that great Bodhisattva with a lasso. Can I be with my suffering? Can I be with that? So I looked up the word suffer in English to confirm what I was thinking, which is that the archaic use of suffer meant to abide or tolerate, to suffer something. It meant you held it or you lassoed it. It didn't mean to just blindly experience but to hold it. To hold it without pushing for things to come out a certain way.

Sitting down for a few moments or for the 20 minutes we'll have to be free of the stories we're incessantly telling ourselves see that no change is also a torment. Usually, when I'm experiencing great pain and suffering, part of the story or the fear is, it's always going to be this way. Right? It's always going to be this way. It's never going to change. And we might feverishly resolve to do what we can to fix things. I'll never again let myself be photographed at a high noon, for example. I want flattering lighting. But nonetheless, flattering lighting. So, but nonetheless there's another possibility. Another possibility. I saw this quote once, Carl Jung said, a neurotic is someone who refuses to suffer.

They expend tremendous energy finding something to do or say to distract themselves or calm themselves or fix things so they don't have to feel what they fear to feel. feel, what they fear to feel. And yet something happens when you sit down with it. As the poet Rilke said, let everything happen to you. He said this to his young poet friend in letters to a young poet. Let everything happen, beauty and terror, just keep going. Because no feeling is final. No feeling is final. Something happens when we sit down and we bring our head and our heart and our body all together. A grounded feeling.

And it's not fixed or frozen. It's a feeling of being part of the flow of life. So that feeling of loneliness or unease however you picture it being incomplete or overwhelmed by all you have to do dispels for a moment when you feel part of it I'm part of something really cool in this place and in life. I remember that I'm part of it. I'm not just a photograph or an age or a marital status. I'm alive. I'm breathing in and I'm breathing out.

I'm taking in and I'm breathing out I'm taking in impressions I'm feeling joy and the rain comes and I feel sad and I let that happen and I let the joy come again I've seen the Dalai Lama in close quarters and I once saw him cry his heart out. It was quite touching. And he later said that he was remembering a friend who was gone. And then he rolled on. What if we could live our lives that way?

Letting everything happen to us. That doesn't mean to be passive. It doesn't mean to not care. It means to liberate ourselves from the isolation of our stories about ourselves. So that to be free of suffering, the first thing we do, since I'll be back next week to say more, is to allow ourselves to touch it, to know it. What is the nature of my suffering?

That's what the Buddha did. And he noticed that his suffering came from the life cycle, from change, and from the fact that he couldn't control anything the way he dreamed he could or he should. Nothing is under control. Isn't that relaxing? Relax.

Nothing is under control. But what we can do is be with life. So I'll finish my remarks today. There's always so much I could say, but I won't. The great Persian poet Hafiz said, I wish I could show you in your loneliness and in your times of darkness, the astonishing light of your own being, which is what you can show your eyes and experience now.

So I invite you to take a seat, comfortable seat, that means feet firmly on the floor and your back straight, sitting down right in the middle of your life, exactly as it is with everything unresolved and unfinished and we're going to be with that letting the eyes close if you're not comfortable with closed eyes avert the gaze and we're going to allow

ourselves to soften, to bring our soft attention to our experience right now. Noticing how the body feels, how it feels to be in this room with others, without rushing and without judgment. We allow the body to be here exactly as it is. And as it begins to relax, we bring the attention to rest on the breathing without instructing it or asking anything of it we simply notice the in-breath and the out-breath And we notice that as we sit there will be thoughts that bubble up and impressions, sounds, sensation on the skin, we allow all of this to be present without judgment or comment. And when we notice that we're being taken, we gently bring the attention home again to the breathing and the sensation of being in this body, in this time. Takk for at du så med. And as we allow ourselves to relax we notice that there is a responsiveness, a light of attention that receives. It's very soft. Takk for ating med. It's natural for the attention to drift. We gently notice this and come home. Meditation is the art of return. Sati, the word for mindfulness, means to remember.

To remember the present moment. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Thank you. Noticing as we continue that there is a kind of vibrancy in the body and mind. A light. A light that receives and also radiates. There is a feeling of participating in life. Just sitting here. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Noticing that we can keep returning no matter where we've gone, no matter what burden we Thank you. Takk for ating med. Noticing that there is a stillness in the room and in us that is really receptivity, non-resistance, and openness. Takk for ating med. Thank you. Takk for at du så med. Noticing as we practice this movement of return that we feel more settled, more present. And we may also feel more supported by life. Part of it, not separate. Takk for ating med. Thank you. Knowing that there will always be more. more, that no feeling, no thought is final. Thank you. Noticing as we draw close to the end how it feels to be soft, not braced against the flow, but soft within, at ease within, open to it. Thank you.... So one of our the beautiful things about this practice is that we don't save it

for ourselves we give it away freely to all beings everywhere so the way we do this the way people have done it for 2,500 years, is to put their hands together in front of the heart space. And we dedicate our practice together here, this beautiful stillness we touched. And we dedicate it to all beings

everywhere without exception. May all beings everywhere be free from inner and outer harm and danger of all kinds. May all beings everywhere feel safe and well, as well as they possibly can. well as they possibly can. May all beings everywhere know a happiness that doesn't depend on how things are going, a deep happiness. May all beings everywhere live with ease and be free, in all ways free. Thank you. applause 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.