Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation 9/28/2016 with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: November 15, 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: rma.cm/1e-

Thank you. please visit our website at rubenmuseum.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. Such a delight to have Tracy Cochran back. And she's the editorial director of Parabola,

which is a quarterly magazine. And it has for 40 years drawn on the world's cultural and wisdom traditions. She has been a student of meditation and spiritual practices for decades, and teaches at the New York Insight Meditation Center. Please welcome her back, Tracy Cochran. Thank you. It's good to be back in this room. As I mentioned to Dawn, out there, this is called hump day, that unlovely term for Wednesday. It means we're in the middle of the week, and if we can just survive today, there'll be a promise of more ease. So even if you don't work in a job, So even if you don't work in a job, you can have a feeling of the repetitious grind of life.

And more and more so, I think. So it's beautiful to be in this room under this beautiful bodhisattva, this goddess of compassion because it's very much what we can experience at least at moments when we sit down and be still. We bring a different kind of awareness to our muck and that's the first thing we find when we turn our attention to it. And I was thinking, ten years ago, I had a conversation with a religious historian, Karen Armstrong, that I wrote about in Prabala.

And she said at the Axial Age, the time of the Buddha and the time of that beautiful artwork, people had a sense not just of logos, which is words and thinking and analysis and productivity, but a sense of the place for stillness, for wordless knowing, for myth, which is what that beautiful artwork represents, which isn't something made up, but something deep, something that accompanies us when we go deep to our unconscious, to the suffering that arises. And that can be our fears, our anger, which is a way of dealing with fear.

So this practice of sitting down and being still is one part of the path that the Buddha said leads to the end of suffering. Another part is wisdom, the wisdom that comes from seeing into that the Buddha brought. And the third part is using our actual lives, the way we really are, as a way to wake up. So anyway, when we sit down, if you're like me, you might remember things or feel things.

You might remember words that you said in anger. I do that. You might remember times that you've contracted in fear. I do that. And the gift of having this practice of stillness is to see that in a new light. The beautiful thing about this path is that it's not one more invitation

for you to judge yourself and find yourself lacking. It's not one more invitation for you to fail at some commandments, at what you should do, but to see yourself, to see, think of a time you lashed out in anger. I was thinking of that as I prepared. I was feeling cornered. I was feeling like I had no space. Have you ever felt that way? That someone was bearing down on me. Have you ever felt that? So I made a brave stand. That's how I felt.

I stood up against injustice. But when I sat with that, I began to feel what the Buddha said was lashing on anger is like having a hot coal and holding it in your hand, preparing to throw it at somebody else. It burns. It burns. So when I sit, I can feel how it burns. And I can feel the sorrow under that and the hurt. And I can feel the sorrow under that and the hurt.

So the steps, not just the practice and the wisdom, but steps of how we live, like right speech or wise speech, or my favorite term for it, skillful speech, is an invitation to walk with how we are, but see how we might be, to remember how we might be. The steps on the path aren't about building a better Tracy or a better Dawn or a better anybody else. They're about remembering who we really are.

The word for mindfulness, sati, means to remember, literally to remember. And when we give ourselves time and space like this, when we dare to embrace the muck just like the goddess Tara would with compassion, with kind awareness, we begin to see that under it there's an impulse in us to be part of life in a harmless way.

We want to be part of it. We don't want to do damage. We begin to discover that the steps on the so-called Eightfold Path leads to our indigenous self. the steps on the so-called Eightfold Path, leads to our indigenous self. Not something new, but something we were born to be. Something native to us.

So when we sit in this room, we do something quietly radical. We give ourselves space and stillness and attention. Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. To give attention. That's what Tara does. As Thich Nhat Hanh once put it in a mantra, it's like saying, I'm here for you, darling. I'm here for you in your fear. In a moment of anger, it can feel like we're falsely imprisoned. It feels like this is not who I really am. This is not who I am. Or it can feel like tigers are after us.

We can feel like we're drowning in the world, in work, in input, in stress. Imagine this kind attention saying, I'm here for you, darling. The poet Hafiz, who I mentioned last week, Persian poet, said, fear is the deepest room in the house. I'd like to see you living in better conditions. And when we sit down and turn our attention towards ourselves, we grant ourselves permission to enter the rest of the house. This beautiful, open house,

which is our birthright. So I think we will try it. I could keep talking, but why don't we sit together and then maybe talk at the end. We take our seat. Our noble posture, as the early Buddhists called it, because that's who we were born to be, upright, rooted to the earth.

We allow the eyes to close unless we're uncomfortable with closed eyes, and then we can keep them gazing at the floor in front of us. gazing at the floor in front of us. So we give ourselves welcome. Welcome the body here, and welcome all of its contents exactly as you find it today. Nothing is excluded.

Nothing. You may feel a process like thawing a little bit, softening. As you feel ready, allow the attention to come to the breathing, without asking it to change in any way. Allow the attention to come home, to the center of yourself, to the movement in and the movement out of the breath. and immediately and very naturally you'll sense and think and hear all kinds of things the sensation in the body

tensions that came in with you a sensation of cool or warmth. Sometimes pain. Meeting everything with the sunlight of our awareness. Noticing thinking as it arises. just allow thoughts to come and bubble up and pass away

sometimes thoughts stick. Just gently bring the attention home again to the body, breathing. Thank you. Noticing how it feels to be touched by the light of your own awareness. everything all right. Thank you. As we begin to soften, we may notice that there's a natural change in flow to things. No feeling is final. to things. No feeling is final. Thank you. As we soften, as we relax, we begin to remember that there is an intelligence, an intuition in us that is not thinking, not words, but a light of awareness in the body and the mind. Thank you.... When we get lost, we simply return again to the rhythm of the breath. Noticing that we can be still, yet open. Resisting nothing. Thank you. Thank you. When we get taken or fall asleep, we gently notice that and come home again to the body breathing. breathing, noticing the fluid nature of our experience. We're like a river that flows. Thank you. Thank you. As we continue this movement of return and allowing, welcoming,

you may notice at moments how it feels to be at ease. moments, how it feels to be at ease, allowing our experience, even our painful experience, to softly open like a fist. Thank you. And we may notice how it feels to have open hands, willing to receive and give our true nature. Thank you. We remember that there is a true essence in us which wishes to be here, to be part of life.... And we may glimpse that this vibrancy, this light of awareness is not ours alone, but something we share with life. Thank you. As we prepare to close, we remember that the word to suffer means to bear, to hold. We begin to see that we can hold our experience lightly with an intention not to harm, to be kind and loving, and to be generous, starting with ourselves. Thank you.... I just wanted to say

before we close that since you've just had this experience that when the Buddha discovered this great path that's made up of three parts the practice we just did, the wisdom that you brought, and the trainings or suggestion that all of our life, the way we speak and live, can be a way to see ourselves in a new way and to wake up. All of this is something that you touched when

you sat, this red this remembering of another way to be? That's the path and the way to have more ease with suffering. So thank you.