Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Elaine Retholtz 04/13/2023

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Theme: Life After Artwork: Wheel of Life; Tibet; 19th century; pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin;http://therubin.org/36lTeacher: Elaine Retholtz  The Rubin Museum of Art presents a weekly meditation session led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area, with each session focusing on a specific work of art. This podcast is recorded in front of a live audience, and includes an opening talk, a 20-minute sitting session, and a closing discussion.The guided meditation begins at 13:09. This meditation is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg, teachers from the NY Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine.  If you would like to attend Mindfulness Meditation sessions in person or learn more, please visit our website at RubinMuseum.org/meditation.If you would like to support the Rubin Museum and this meditation series, we invite you to become a member and always attend for free.  Have a mindful day!

Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast presented by the Rubin Museum of Art. We are a museum in Chelsea, New York City that connects visitors to the art and ideas of the Himalayas and serves as a space for reflection and personal transformation. I'm your host, Tashi Chodron. Every Thursday, we present a meditation session inspired by a different artwork from the Rubin Museum's collection and led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area. This podcast is a recording of our weekly in-person practice. In the description for each episode, you will find information about the theme for that week's session, including an image of the

related artwork. Our Mindfulness Meditation Podcast is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Inside 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. Good afternoon and Tashi Delek. Welcome to the return of in-person mindfulness meditation with the Rubin Museum of Art. I am Tashi Chodron, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm so happy to be your host today.

We are a museum of Himalayan art and ideas in New York City, and we're so glad to have all of you join us for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation. Inspired from our collection, we will first take a look at work of art from our collection. 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. Now let's take a look at today's theme and artwork. The theme we are exploring is Life After, and this is as part of our most recent exhibit, Death is Not the End. This is a cross-cultural exhibition that explores the notion of death and afterlife through the art of Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. The connection to the theme is this painting of visualization of the cycle of life, which also depicts scenes of the afterlife. And this painting,

a beautiful Thangka painting, is the wheel of life. In Sanskrit, it's called Bhava Chakra, and in Tibetan, it's called Siphe Korlo, the wheel of samsara, or sometimes it's addressed as wheel of becoming or wheel of life. This is a symbolic representation of cyclic existence found on the outside walls of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries in the refugee camps in India, Bhutan, Nepal, or in Tibet. This pictorial diagram presents basic Buddhist concepts such as karma and rebirth in a manner that can be understood by all, including uneducated or illiterate people. Legend has it that the Buddha himself may have designed the first illustration of the Wheel of Life and offered it as a gift to King Rudrayana around the 6th century to teach us about the ever-changing

universe of cause and effect and how to liberate oneself from the cyclic existence of samsara. Now look at this painting, just an overview. As you see this Thangka painting with many circles, the images in the center most of the wheel are the three animals, a rooster-like bird, a snake, and a pig. They represent the three poisons. And in Tibetan, it's called Thuk Sum. They are Döchak, Shedang, and timuk, attachment, anger, and ignorance. Bird represents desire, clinging, attachment.

Snake represents anger, which leads to hatred. Aggression brings so much suffering. And then the pig represents ignorance, which also brings so much suffering because of not knowing. Ignorance is the root cause of all the suffering. The second layer represents karma. It shows two half circles. One half circle is usually light in color, people moving upwards to higher states,

possibly to the higher realms or the three upper realms. And the other half circle, usually dark in color, shows these naked people sort of dragged down by this alien-looking people in miserable state being led downwards to lower state, possibly the three lower realms. These images represent karma, the law of cause and effect. The half circle indicates people experiencing the results of positive actions, and the other dark half circle indicates people experiencing the result of negative actions. The third layer represents the six realms of cyclic existence. The six realms are God, demigod, human, and then the three lower

realms, which is animal, hungry ghost, and hell realm. The fourth layer represents the 12 links of dependent origination, the 12 nidana. The fierce figure holding the wheel represents impermanence. Usually, outside the wheel above you would find a Buddha pointing towards moon, indicating that liberation is possible. So now let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Elaine Ratholds. Elaine has been studying and practicing the Dharma since 1988. In addition to teaching Dharma at New York Insight, she's a certified mindfulness-based stress reduction teacher and certified MBSR teacher trainer.

She's deeply interested in helping students integrate mindfulness into daily life and has been involved in New York Insight's diversity efforts for many years. Elaine, thank you so much for being here. Please help me in welcoming Elaine. Well, thanks for coming. It's so good to see you all. I was actually telling Tashi before that there was this New Yorker cartoon of these two

hamsters on wheels side by side. And one hamster was furiously running on the wheel. And the other hamster was sitting on the bottom with the wheel still. And the caption said, I had an epiphany. And the caption said, I had an epiphany. And so we look at this wheel, right, which is also constantly in motion. It's not just like what happens from one life to the next, but what's happening from one moment to the next. And how do we practice with this in this moment, right? So that maybe if not forever, but maybe we can have moments where we step off the wheel and have epiphanies, small moments many times, we sometimes say. And so it's true, we could talk once a week for the rest of our lives about something having to do with this piece of artwork. But I wanted to focus on three links in the outer ring, which is the links of dependent arising.

So if you look at 10 o'clock, there are three houses there. And these empty houses are our sense doors, which are the five senses that we usually talk about, and then the mind. So we have these senses. And the next link is contact. Because with our senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and also the mind and heart, we make contact with the world. We touch the world. And one of the things that I've been really practicing with is that recently I heard John

Peacock talk about how actually that word, I believe it's phassa, P-H-A-S-S-A, can be translated as touch instead of contact or in addition to contact. So it's not just that it's passive, but that we touch the world and the world is touching us both, this relationality of our senses. Both. This relationality of our senses. And when we touch the world, there is this feeling tone that arises. It's called vedana. That can either be pleasant, pleasant tone, pleasant vedana, unpleasant vedana, or neither. Some people say neutral. And for me in my practice, this feels like a really potent and accessible place

where we can have an exit ramp, right, from the spinning wheel. That if we can begin in our practice and in our daily lives to just notice what arises when we make contact with our surroundings, our internal surroundings that we might be contacting through thoughts and ruminations and reactivity or non-reactivity, and also when we're making contact with the people in our lives, the weather, everything around us. Because the Buddha said that if we don't bring mindful awareness to this experience of vedana,

that the experience of pleasant leads to craving. The rooster, right? The experience of unpleasant can lead to aversion, hatred, ill will. And not being mindful of the experience when things are really neither, not much going on, leads to delusion, ignorance, confusion. There we are in the center of the circle, right? So I was going to guide a practice now where we just try to notice contact and vedana.

One of the important things of beginning to pay attention and understand vedana is that the vedana is also conditioned. It's not in the object. It's not in the contact. For example, some of you might be in this room and think, wow, it's so pleasant. It's cool. Just came in from outside. This is pleasant. And others might feel like it's unpleasant. Some of you might eat a meal and somebody could go, this is really perfect, I love this. And somebody else would be, oh, olives, I hate olives.

Right? As long as we place the vedana as a quality of the object, we go around the world in our lives expecting the world to make us happy. So there's an ethical dimension of paying attention to contact and vedana and beginning to know that things can be unpleasant without having an aversion to it, without leading to ill will. It can just be unpleasant. Things can be pleasant without having to hold on to them, get more. It can just be this is pleasant.

And we can give the world a break, whether it's the people in us that we, in our lives, that we're constantly assuming that their job is to act in ways and say things that will make us happy. Or the situations outside of our control that we feel, oh, if only things were different, I could then be happy. But there can be this deeper promise of touching into a more durable happiness that's not dependent on things being pleasant or unpleasant, right? Or not being unpleasant. So let's just sit for a bit and see if we can explore this on our own.

So coming into a posture that supports you, if you're sitting in a chair, it can be good to have your feet on the floor and not leaning back slouched in your chair, but certainly having the chair's back support and just pausing, becoming aware that this body is sitting here, becoming aware of the contact of the body, perhaps in obvious ways of the feet on the floor, the feet touching the floor, the floor touching the feet, all the different sensations that perhaps are associated with that,

shoes, socks, temperature, texture, if your feet are bare at some point. And also the contact of your seat on the chair. The thighs and the buttocks touching the chair, the chair touching us. And just becoming familiar with this experience. Perhaps noticing the contact of the hands intertwined or resting on the knees or at the lap. Maybe sensations of warmth or coolness here. The texture of whatever surface is being touched and is touching you.

Perhaps noticing contact of clothing. All of this through the sense door of touch. Perhaps noticing hearing now. Even in the relative silence, there can be a hum or a buzz of the building or whatever the facilities are. And then my voice and perhaps sounds from the folks you're sitting near or grumbling of your belly or whatever. And it may be that there's awareness of sight even with the eyelids closed, or perhaps you have a soft gaze. But even if your eyes are closed, this contact of light and the way it's perceived through the eyelids.

Many of us use the breath as a primary meditation object, so feeling free to turn the attention to the sensations of breathing. Not having to have the breath be any way, just receiving the body that does such a great job, mostly. Breathing. And as we sit, choosing either a broad focus of contact or relatively narrow focus with the sensations of the breath. You may notice that some of the vedana is pleasant, some of the vedana is unpleasant, and I suspect much of it is

neither not getting on the scale to be registered as either pleasant or unpleasant. Not having to do anything, just sitting, aware of the sensations of the breath. And perhaps noticing the shifting nature of the Vedana now if you have to think about is this pleasant or unpleasant that's not Vedana

that's thinking deciding so don't worry about that just dropping into the non-conceptual experience, sitting, receiving the breath. Thank you. And in those moments when you find your attention has wandered, certainly it can be habit, right? And it's an opportunity to pause and were you moving towards a pleasant vedana or perhaps away from something unpleasant? Again, not thinking, but just if it's available.

And then regrounding in the body and continuing practice. Thank you. Thank you. This wheel of becoming keeps spinning, but in those moments where we can catch contact vedana without moving on to a reaction. It's a moment of freedom. It's a moment of not proliferating what I want, what I don't want, how I'm going to get it, how I'm going to avoid it. Just this. Just knowing, coming back to direct experience, oh, this is pleasant. I want more.

It's like this. And then returning to your primary object and continuing practice. Thank you. Thank you. In a moment I'll be ringing the bells, just paying attention to the experience of hearing how it is for you. Sometimes the meditation bell can be a really great place to practice because is the sound pleasant or unpleasant? If you're having an agitated sitting, does that affect whether it's pleasant or not? If you were very deep and calm and wanted the calmness to last, how do you come to the bell? So the context changes it as well. and calm and wanted the calmness to last, how do you come to the bell? So the context changes it as well.

So thank you for your practice. Thank you so much for that beautiful session, Elaine. That concludes this week's practice. To support the Rubin and this meditation series, we invite you to become a member at rubinmuseum.org. 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 2, hosted by Raveena Arora, is out now and explores the transformative power of emotions using a mandala as a guide.

Available wherever you listen to podcasts. And to stay up to date with the Rubin Museum's virtual and in-person offerings, sign up for a monthly newsletter at rubinmuseum.org slash enews. I am Tashi Chodron. Thank you so much for listening. Have a mindful day.