Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Elaine Retholtz 03/27/25

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art presents a weekly meditation for beginners and skilled meditators alike. Each episode is inspired by a different work of art from the Museum’s collection and is led by a prominent meditation teacher.The episode begins with an opening talk followed by a 20-minute meditation. In this episode, the guided meditation begins at 6:56.Teacher: Elaine RetholtzTheme: ResilienceMountain God Kula Kari; Tibet; 19th century; painted terracotta; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2002.7.3Learn more about the Rubin’s work around the world at rubinmuseum.org. 

Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast presented by the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, a global museum dedicated to bringing greater awareness and understanding of Himalayan art to people around the world. I'm your host, Tashi Churden. Every Thursday, we offer a meditation session at New York Insight Meditation Center that draws inspiration from an artwork from the Rubin's collection and is led by a prominent meditation teacher. This podcast is a recording of our weekly in-person practice.

The description of each episode includes information about the theme for that week's session and an image of the related artwork. Our Mindfulness Meditation podcast is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center, The Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine and supported by the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism. And now, please enjoy your practice. Hello everybody.

Good afternoon and Tashi Dele. Welcome, welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts Mindfulness Meditation Program at New York Insight Meditation Center. I'm Tashi Churdron, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be your host today. The Rubin is a global hub for Himalayan art, and we're so glad to have all of you join us for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation. I was walking to the New York Insight this morning. You know, I was in such joy thinking that we have this amazing place that we could all come together every week in the midst of so much chaos and uncertainty and all the crazy

news. So inspired by our collection, we will first take a deep look at the work of art we have chosen for today. We will then hear a brief talk from our teacher Elaine Rethals, and then we will have a short sit, 15 to 20 minutes, for the meditation guided by her. Let's take a look at today's theme and artwork. The artwork for today's session is handpicked by our teacher, this mountain god Kulakari, known as Jigten Peh La or Pen La in Tibetan word. Origin from Tibet, dated 19th century, painted terracotta and this is about 10 into 8 and a half into x 4.5 inches. Beautiful sculpture.

And the connection to the theme, as this month's theme is resilience, Kulakari has the enduring strength of the mountains. He inspires practitioners to garner stability and lead a life of balance. Kulakari is a deity associated with Tibet's indigenous Burm religion, which is pre-Buddhism. He was later absorbed into the Buddhist pantheon. You know, the Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, who brought Buddhism from India to Tibet in the 8th century. He subdued and subjugated many powerful figures who are known as protectors. And so they are oathbound protectors as well as enlightened protectors.

So Kulakari is one of the-bound protectors. He dwells on a mountain in Lodrak, south of Lhasa, near the border with Bhutan. So in this terracotta sculpture, Kulakari appears in a teardrop-shaped mountain setting. There's a three-story temple with Chinese-style eaves framing the god in the center center as you see, and tiny animals roam near the base of his mountain abode. Kulakari is dressed as a Tibetan warrior and riding a shaggy yak. Yaks are rarely given prominence in Tibetan Buddhist art, except in association with local protector gods such as Kulakari. And let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Elaine Rethols. Elaine has been studying and practicing the Dharma since 1988. In addition to teaching Dharma at New

York Insight, she is a certified mindfulness-based stress reduction, MBSR teacher, and a certified MBSR teacher trainer. She's deeply interested in helping students integrate mindfulness into daily life. Elaine is committed to deepening her own understanding of issues of diversity and the way racial conditioning in the United States affects all of us, both as individuals and in relation to the institutions

we are part of, including New York Insight. Elaine, thank you so much for being here, and please help me in welcoming Elaine Rethols. So thank you. That was an amazing talk, Tashi. Thank you so much. So resilience and mountains. So we already heard about how mountains are grounded and also open to the heavens and immovable. And actually there's a description of Nibbana where the Buddha says a mountain peak is immovable, precisely so Nibbana is immovable. So what can reflecting on a mountain,

how can that help us in terms of resilience? And I'm going to guide a meditation that some of you are familiar with. It's called the mountain meditation. But I just want to read. The Buddha talked about the eight worldly winds. Keep the world turning around and the world turns around these eight worldly winds. What are they?

Gain and loss, blame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. These winds that affect us from moment to moment in our lives. So I'd like to just guide a practice where we imagine ourselves as a mountain and consider what I'm going to be describing, you know, the conditions on a mountain over the years. And I'd like you to bring that in and I'll say a little bit more about it towards the end of the practice period. So coming up to a posture that is mountain-like.

So if you're in a chair, perhaps able to have your feet on the floor, feeling that rootedness and feeling your seat on the chair. Of course, if you're on a cushion, feeling the rootedness of your sits bone against the cushion and the legs, knees on the mat or whatever part of your legs are reaching the mat. legs are reaching the mat.

So here is this base of the mountain that is not just in contact with the cushion, the chair, the mat, the floor, but deep down through the 12 levels here at New York Inside and deep into the earth below, perhaps past the granite below Manhattan, really into the center of the earth, this rootedness of the mountain. Just getting a sense of that.

Just getting a sense of that. And yet there's also an uplifting energy. The energy moving, depending on your posture, it could be moving up the legs first into your seat, up into the spine, the elegance of the spine, no matter what the natural curve of it is now, and up through the neck and the head, and opening to the sky at the top of the head so that the top of the head is the summit of the mountain, and the sides of the head, the sides of the neck, the shoulders, the arms,

are the sloping sides of the mountain. the mountain. And just pausing to get a visceral sense of sitting in a seated mountain pose, rooted to the earth, open to heaven. And feeling this body breathing, this living breathing mountain. And I invite you to remember or imagine perhaps remembering a mountain that you're familiar with, maybe one that you live near or a vacation near, or it could be one that you've just seen pictures of, or maybe you have a picture on your wall. And it could be any mountain. It could be any East Coast mountain that's lower and rounder, older, covered with evergreens, as well as deciduous trees. Or it could be a more majestic mountain, West, in the West, or in Asia, Tibet,

or Europe. That's rocky, majestic, covered with snow all throughout the year perhaps, whatever it is for you. And taking a moment to reflect on the seasons of a mountain. Here in the northeast as spring is beginning, there may be melting snow, the streams, depending on the snowfall this winter, and be rushing full. There can be a lot of branches down and trees down from the winds and the ice.

Yet also the beginnings of wildflowers, snowdrops. Depending on where you are, maybe the first fiddlehead ferns are coming out and garlic scapes and the animals waking up from hibernation, beginning to move over the surface. And as the days go on, some days sunny and clear like today, some days cloudy, rainy, it's not too late for snow. And even over the course of a day, how the conditions on the mountain shift, light shifts, the temperature shifts, the weather. And days follow days follow days and more wildflowers and the buds on the trees and they become young leaves. Color might be bright. We call it spring green for a reason. Insects, tourists, hikers.

Through all this, the mountain is unmovable. This connection to the earth, the opening to the sky, there can be fierce storms. And as we've seen more recently, fires. And the mountain is unmovable. Moving on through the late summer, berries and so on. Moving into the fall and the animals so quickly have to begin gathering for a long winter.

The leaves turn as if they're on fire and fall. Days get shorter, the nights get longer. The mountain is not moving. All that I'm describing is happening on the surface. As winter comes, it's cold, icy, quieter, covered with snow. Everything looks dead. There might be occasional tracks in the snow. So what does it mean to sit like a mountain in our own lives. We are from moment to moment.

Our moods can change. Our sense of health and well-being can change, our energy changes. Over the seasons of our lives, not just days and weeks and months where we can see how quickly things can change in our inner world and our outer world, but also over the years, the seasons of our lives, we can see this body and experience this body aging, changing, this mind shifting, changing. Is it possible to cultivate a practice and cultivate a heart that can recognize our grounding in our practice, our grounding in our desire perhaps to not harm, to live in accordance with what we value most, even amidst all the storms of our lives, which

can be very painful. Times of harvest and times of warmth and connection and times that feel isolated. What does it mean to sit like a mountain amidst these worldly winds, worldly winds, appraise and blame, pain and pleasure, gain and loss, fame and disrepute as they rise and fall inevitably in our lives. So just taking some time now. Sit like a living, breathing mountain, connected to what we value the most and open to the heavens. And just feeling the resilience in that,

the unshakable resilience that can be possible for us in the midst of changing circumstances.......... Leopold wrote, the birds have vanished from the sky and I, until only the mountain remains. Thank you for your practice. Thank you so much. That was so beautiful. Only the mountain remains. Such a beautiful process of seeing ourself disappearing in the mountains, remaining beautiful teaching. Thank you. That concludes this week's practice.

To support the Rubin and this meditation series, we invite you to become a friend of the Rubin at rubinmuseum.org slash friends. If you are looking for more inspiring content, please check out our other podcast, Awaken, which uses art to explore the dynamic paths to enlightenment and what it means to wake up. Season 4, hosted by Isabella Rossellini, delves into the Buddhist concept of attachment and explores how the practice of letting go can transform our experience of the world. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. And to learn more about the Rubin Museum's work around the world, visit rubinmuseum.org. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.