Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 9/27/2017 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: September 28, 2017

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. Presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and the New York Insight Meditation Center. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on September 27, 2017. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://rubinmuseum.org/events/event/tracy-cochran-09-27-2017

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. And now, please enjoy your practice. Welcome, very warm welcome to all of you here to the Mindfulness Meditation. It's so beautiful to see this wonderful community every Wednesday at 1 o'clock, middle of the week, middle of the day. And so fantastic to see so many of you here trying to bring this beautiful, positive energy. So for today, this afternoon event is actually presented with Sean Salzberg, New York Insight Meditation Center,

Interdependence Project, Shambhala Center, and Hemera Foundation. My name is Tashi Chodron. So today's art connection is this beautiful thangka. It's called thangka in Tibetan word. Mineral pigment on cloth. Often you will see a central figure and the central figure here is the Shakyamuni Buddha, often addressed as the historical Buddha. And you can see a whole, you know, entourage and different figures surrounding. So those of you who are first time here, our theme for this month is community. And so we're bringing this art that has a whole community here of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. This particular painting is an 18th century painting, and it's depicting Buddha

giving a teaching at Vulture's Peak in northeastern part of India. In fact, modern day, it's called Rajagiri in Vulture's Peak. This place is actually, in fact, known as the Buddha's second turning of the wheel of the Dharma. Can anyone tell me where was the first turning of the wheel of Dharma? I hear something. It's Deer Park in Varanasi, deer as in animal deer. That's where Buddha taught the first turning of wheel of the Dharma. They taught the Four Noble Truth after he reached enlightenment. And this particular Buddha's second turning of the wheel of the Dharma, they say it happened 16 days after he

achieved enlightenment. And as Buddha traveled around giving public teachings, he formed the basis of his community as he traveled throughout the region. And I also wanted to share something else. And this is what it looks like, Vulture's Peak. I've been there many times, and every time when the pilgrims, the Buddhists and local people go to pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya, where Buddha reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, and to these other places, you know, we also formed practice gathering by sanghas and make offerings. And this is the spot where Buddha is supposed to have taught

the Prajnaparamita, which is translated as transcendent perfection of wisdom. Now, without further ado, and tonight our Buddha teacher is, or Bodhisattva, in fact, is Tracy Cochran. It's so wonderful to have Tracy back again, and it's my great pleasure and honor to introduce Tracy. Tracy Cochran is a writer and senior editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola, which can be found online at www.parabola.org and in the Rubin gift shop. She's been a student of meditation and other spiritual practices for decades. In addition to the Rubin, she currently teaches at New York Insight and

every Sunday at Tarrytown Insight in Tarrytown, New York. Her writings and teaching schedule can be found online via Parabola on Facebook and Twitter and TracyCochran.org. Please help me welcome Tracy. Welcome to all of us. The artwork is so inviting to look at, but also the photograph of Vulture Peak, which looks so cool. Doesn't it look cool up there? And this artwork, because even without knowing anything about the tradition, you can see that the Buddha sits in the midst of a circle, looks like a circle of beings. And I come back again and again to a phrase from the Zen sage Dogen who said,

when you sit down to practice, you sit down in a circle. You sit down, we sit down with each other in the cool and the refuge of this beautiful space. And we also sit down with unseen beings, with the ancestors. And not just our physical ancestors, but the people who brought this tradition with the Buddhas. And the Buddha would include earlier Buddhas, which is interesting. And I was thinking, when we think of community, we often think of this community.

But even in this body, we're sitting down with the community. Maybe some of you have done this too. And at one point, I did that National Geographic study where you can send a scraping from inside your cheek, and it traces your DNA back to our common mother in East Africa 150,000 years ago. They send you a map. And it's really quite awesome. It's like, you know, those wonderful, they're not just fairy tales, but also bestsellers like, think The Alchemist. Those stories where

there's this treasure and someone searches the world for the treasure and then finds it buried in his own backyard. And in some versions it's under the bed or in your pocket. But the point is it's right here. And it struck me, I always try hard to prepare to come here, because I know that we want something live. We want something real, not just something that happened to me 35 years ago, even though that might waft out. And I'm struck that my job, my joy, is to remind us of what we have.

Sati, the Pali word for mindfulness, means to remember. It means to remember the present moment. And we tend to think of that as something small, but our whole life can be present in the moment. It means not just our thinking mind, but we remember we have a body, a body that came to us from the distant past, from ancestors. And the same with our hearts, the same actually with our brains. It was passed to us from the past. So right here, right now, we're sitting in bodies with hearts and minds that have the same capacities and the same responsiveness that ancestors did who crossed great waters, who crossed deserts, who survived famines, who endured, who faced the unknown. Very same body. I'm not making this up.

And a body that has a connection with the animals and with all of evolution. I was just looking at an issue of Pravla that we're creating right now. We have a piece by one of my heroes, Jane Goodall. Wonderful being. Talk about a bodhisattva. And in it, she talks about how we're just finding out, even now, I think she's 83 now, how smart animals are. now how smart animals are. Her beloved chimpanzees that she spent so much of her life in the forest watching, it turns out that they can learn more than 400 American signs and communicate with us and with each other. And one detail that she shared that I loved is that they've observed chimpanzees watching a waterfall in the forest,

and they perform a very elaborate ritual to express their awe. Isn't that cool? This rhythmic kind of dance of awe. Isn't that cool? This rhythmic kind of dance of awe. And then they sit together and they watch the water fall. And they contemplate the water falling and falling. And they have joy and awe. And of course our minds can go beyond that. And of course our minds can go beyond that. But they build on the same sensitivities, the same presence. And I was struck preparing, I remember reading Carl Jung visited an elder in the Taos Pueblo. And he said, we never knew what the white man wanted

because they looked like they were staring all the time, frightening and mad, staring outside. And Jung asked him about that and he said, they think only with their heads. And he said, well, where do you think? And he said, they think only with their heads. And he said, well, where do you think? And he said, we think with our heart, with our heart, with our bodies. And I think in this ancient practice, what we're invited to do is to remember those parts. do is to remember those parts. And I feel it every time I come in here. First of all, it's so hot outside. It's so hot. And you can feel so anxious. Not just this apocalyptic heat, but

your own life, inner and outer, everything is just so anxiety producing. And you can come in here really at the end of your rope and just sit down and breathe in this beautiful space in front of this ancient art made by people who remembered, art made by people who remembered. Remember that there's more. There's more to you. There's a capacity to be present and to open your heart and open your mind in a new way. And as long as we can do that, there is always hope. Jane Goodall said this and I believe it too.

We can be here together and we can change. We can even change the past. We can change our hearts so that the way we are going forward is no longer determined by the fear and hatred and greed of the past. And we do this not by punishing ourselves, but by welcoming everything into the room, everything you bring. If you feel anxious, if you feel happy,

if you feel you don't belong here, all of that is welcome here. And the practice we're about to do is a practice of transforming that energy. Do you know what I mean? So if you come in with anxious energy or angry energy or bored or sleepy, whatever it is, busy energy, you feel it in the body and you say, welcome. And you notice that it's a vibrancy, it's an energy that can be liberated to be here, to be present, returning you to your life. So I'll let you experience this yourself. You can know it much more brilliantly than I can say it. We take a comfortable seat.

We put our feet square on the floor. And let your back be straight. And just allow your eyes to close. Some people aren't comfortable with closed eyes, in which case you can avert them on the floor in front of you, but it's best to allow them to close if you can. And just notice how it feels to be in this particular body. Without thinking about it or prodding it to be in any other way, just notice how it feels to be here. Bringing a welcoming attention to what you find.

And as the body begins to relax just a little, allow the attention to come to the breathing without seeking to change it in any way. Just notice the in-breath and the out-breath, where you happen to experience it today, which can be the rise and fall of the chest or the sensation of air entering and leaving the nostrils, picking one focus and allow that to be home. And almost immediately you'll notice that the mind starts to think. It's like a puppy straying. And we gently bring it back with no judgment and no comment, back to the breath and to the sensation of being in this body right now. Allowing everything to be just as it is, the sounds you home again to the body and the breath and this moment. Thank you. Noticing that when you bring your attention to the sensation of being here now, a vibrancy begins to appear, a light of awareness that isn't separate from sensation. Thank you. Thank you for watching. When you are taken, when you drift off into thinking or dreaming, you can gently come with no judgment, with an attitude of kind welcome, back to a light of awareness

and a sensation of being here. Thank you. Thank you for watching. 1.5 kg of fat. Noticing that as we make this movement of return to the breath, this movement of remembering the present moment, we begin to settle down, but we also open to life. We remember we're part of it. Things come in, come out, air, impressions. And we can be soft with it. Thank you. Thank you. Takk for watching! Thank you. So Noticing that as we return to the rhythm of the breath, we're connected to something very us from life, earliest life. Thank you. Thank you. As we continue to relax and return, we begin to remember that there is a stillness that doesn't mean silence but non-resistance, openness, being part of life. Welcome.. Thank you. Thank you. When we find ourselves taken and come home again, welcome and accepted. As we go to stop, you may sense an energy in the room, an awareness that we share, a presence. Thank you. And we put two hands together in to all beings everywhere, including ourselves. May all beings everywhere be safe and find refuge and be well and happy and free. Thank you. and be well and happy and free.

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.