Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Elaine Retholtz 12/04/2025

Episode Date: December 12, 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 10:31.Teacher: Elaine Retholtz Theme: Wisdom Page of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) Sutra Manuscript; Tibet; ca. 13th–14th century; pigments, gold and silver inks on paper; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2006.66.669Learn 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 Children. Every Thursday, we offer a meditation session at New York Inside 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 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. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon and Tashi Bel-A. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts Mindfulness Meditation Program here at this beautiful place at New York Inside Meditation Center.

I'm Tashi Churden, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador. and I'm delighted to be a host today. So the Rubin is a global museum dedicated to presenting Himalayan art and its insights, and we're so glad to have all of you join us for this weekly program where we combine art and meditation. Inspired by our collection, we will first take a deep look at the work of art that is chosen by our teacher, amongst a selection of art that we send in to connect for the theme. And then we'll have a short sit, 15 to 20 minutes for the meditation guided by our teacher, Helene Rethels. So let's take a look at today's theme and artwork.

The theme for this month is wisdom. And the artwork, that is for today's session, is this text of Prajana Paramita. So it's a title as the page of the perfection of wisdom. Now, in Tibetan, Prajana Paramita is known as Sherapki Parol du Chinba, which literally translate as transcending beyond wisdom, something like that. And so this is origin from Tibet, dated 13 to 14th century. This is mineral pigments with gold and silver inks on paper. This is about almost 28 into 36 and quarter.

into two quarter inches. This is, of course, a manuscript known as Becha in Tibetan word. The Buddha's oral teachings were recorded as sutras and envisioned as images. The practice of reciting sutras is intended to help practitioners forge a sense of wisdom,

and also reciting texts is believed to purify once verbal, any negative carmas that we may have accumulated, whether it's this year or past years or many past lifetimes. So it's a very powerful practice. Therefore, practitioners recite hundreds of thousands of mantras and these texts would be recited many, many times in order to invoke that wisdom that is within each of us and to purify our verbal negative karma. So it says at the time of their writing, the sutras represented the latest development in Buddhist philosophy and the practice. The Perfection of Wisdom's Sutra is one of the earliest recorded and most important sutras. In fact, the Buddha's first teaching, there's actually three turning the wheel of the Dharma.

So the first one is he sat under the Bodhi tree, awakened, and then soon after that went to Deer Park and gave the four noble trees. which is the foundation, talking about suffering, cause of suffering, secession of suffering and path that leads to awakening. And then the second teaching was taught at Vulture's Peak during Buddha's life, and that is the perfection of wisdom. This is the teaching. And then there's a third teaching also supposed to have taught at many places, including Vaishali, on the three natures. So with that, let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Elaine Rethals. Elaine has been studying and practicing the Dharma since 1988. In addition to teaching Dharma at New York Insight, she is certified both as a mindfulness-based stress reduction, MBSR teacher and an MBSR teacher

trainer. Elaine has deep interest in helping students integrate mindfulness into daily life. And I I have had the great fortune to study under Elaine for the Mindfulness MBS art class as well. So thank you so much, Elaine, for being here. Please help me in welcoming Elaine. So thank you, Tashi, for that wonderful presentation on the art. And, you know, I want to take it in a slightly different direction. as Tashi said, you know, my interest is how do we bring this into our daily lives and into our practice? And what I have learned is that in the teachings, at least in the insight tradition, that the Buddha taught that there are three levels of learning.

The first level is that we listen to the teachings, or here in this case that we read the teachings. And, you know, it was an oral tradition. and so you would go and you'd hear the Buddhist speak and often there would be some interest or intellectual agreement, you know, like I'd like to use this example. You may have heard me use it before. If I said to any of you, oh, do you know things are impermanent that they change? Probably nobody would argue. But if I said, did you know that there's actually no permanent substantial unchanging self? that might be a little bit more challenging, right? So the second level of teaching is that we investigate it. There's some kind of intellectual agreement or intellectual interest if there's curiosity. We investigate it in our lives, right? For example, you know, when I woke up this morning, I wasn't the teacher sitting in the Dharma seat, right?

I was, you know, awake in relationship, preparing breakfast, thinking about other things, stretching when I'm stretching, you know, my aging body, it's a different me that as the day goes on when I'm sitting on the subway, I'm a commuter, you know, like that my sense of who I am, can you get a sense of this? So I could become very, we can become very interested in the different identities we take on during the day. And, for example, the different levels of identification that causes that identity to become very solid. Oh, this is me, this is mine, this is who I am.

So that goes on. I'm assuming that interest is something I want to cultivate for different aspects of the teachings for the rest of my life, taking something on, I've heard the teachings, I've read the teachings, now I'm pondering them and investigating them and trying to apply them. The third level of teaching is when it's embodied that we've realized more or less that teaching. And so I just want to say that because I'm so interested in noticing, for example, what excites me about the Dharma, what excites me about practice, and then taking that on for a day, a week, a month, months, and really seeing, you know,

The Buddha said, don't believe something because anybody says it, including me. Check it out for yourself. Come and see for yourself. And so that's what I'm inviting, that second level of learning, is that come and see for ourselves. And then there's the integration, the embodiment, the realization. And for those of you who have been practicing for a while, I'm sure that there have been some fruits, that there are some things that you once believe that now maybe you're

seeing through and some things that you're incorporating and so on. So I just wanted to offer that in the service of wisdom, right? This month's theme is wisdom. And the wisdom that we're talking about isn't necessarily the wisdom that we get in an academic way from studying a book and studying facts. What we're really trying to do, and there's a Rumi poem about this, that it's not about what's coming in in terms of facts, but what are we waking up?

What are we enlivening, the stream, you know, the spring that is within us coming out outward. So let's just sit for a bit. And you could maybe think of, I'll guide something, but you can think of, well, is there some aspect of the Dharma of teachings that is exciting for you now? And how might you pay attention to it? So coming into presence, pausing, just noticing this body sitting, the body sitting, in whatever posture it's in.

And receiving the body, through the lens of sensations. It could be a general sense of all of the different. sensations in the body. Or it could be the sense, the sensations that arise from contact. The Buddha said that with contact, the world arises. And the contact is through each of our five senses and the way the mind and heart contacts the world. And it is a And it's not unidirectional. We contact the world and the world contacts us. So opening in this moment to the sensations of the feet on the floor, if they're on the floor.

Your seat on the chair, your thighs on the chair. It could be hard or soft the touch of a sock or clothing. General sense of the skin making contact with clothing or the atmosphere. And often there's temperatures, you know, associated with that warmth or coolness. And maybe from moment to moment you notice subtle or larger changes. this sphere of sensations that we call body, noticing the breath, the body breathing itself into being. It might be a general sense of the breath, or it might be a narrower focus, the breath as it enters, or leaves the nostrils or a sensation of the breath in the lungs

or the sensation of the body itself expanding and contracting either the chest or the abdomen or the rib cage and the torso expanding and contracting so many sensations and just in the breath we can witness impermanence because we can't have an in-breath forever it turns to the out-breath and so on And the sensations of coolness or moisture or dryness or whether the nasal passages are clear or congestive, this is also changing from moment to moment as we refine our perception.

Turning to the sense door of the ear, just receiving sounds. And the space between sounds and relative silence, And perhaps we can experience in this moment and from moment to moment the changing nature of sounds arising. We create perceptions that say near or far or identify particular sounds. And that too is arising and passing everything. changing. And the sense door of the eye, even with the eyes shut, maybe experiencing light, shadow, colors. There may be the presence or absence of smells, or the presence or absence of tastes.

And the Buddha described the sense store of the mind and heart as the sixth sense. And most of us are very familiar with the changing nature of our experience of thoughts and moods. It can be easier with hearing to recognize that sounds are impersonal. They're not happening to us. They're not mine. And we bring the same curiosity to move. moods that are arising and passing to a sense of liking or not liking. There's some contact. Hearing arises. Maybe we don't like it. We think it shouldn't be here.

We make up a story. There's resistance. We make it something we have to do. Perhaps you can feel some contraction around it. Just easing. becoming sensitive to the changing of the changing nature of moods, which often arise in relationship to the pleasant and unpleasant and what we think is right or wrong or what we like or don't like, just noticing moods and noticing thinking. Not having to create thinking if the mind is relatively calm, it's just like the absence of

hearing of sounds or the absence of smells, noticing what the mind is like when it's relatively free of thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So. It's one thing to hear, everything is impermanent. It's one thing to say, oh, I know, everything is impermanent.

But what is it like, really? to sit from moment to moment or to be in our lives from moment to moment amidst the swirling of everything Perhaps for the next few minutes of this practice period, you can choose one of the sense stores, perhaps hearing. And just noticing beginnings and endings. The beginning of a sound, the ending of a sound, the arising of another sound. Not me, not mine, I can't control it. I can't control it. I can't make it stop or start. art, just impersonal phenomena arising, staying for a while, passing away.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, this is a little bit of just a small taste, a small example. But even now as you hear my voice, I mean, what happened to the words that I said a minute ago? They're gone. Or if we hear a siren, it's not the same

siren. Or if the radiator is banging, it's not the same banging that was happening a minute or two ago, we tend to think that it's the same, but noticing, this is just one window into the three characteristics, right? So one window, you know, in some ways impermanence, is something that we can really pay attention to if we want to. You know, the meditation, what happened to it? The formal meditation, right? And also noticing... is something, is it the end of the meditation or is it the beginning of the question and answer period? Right? That we can really begin to, this is just an example, of taking some aspect of the Dharma on and see what the wisdom is that comes out of that. It's not just you read about it and go, okay, I believe that.

but really, really drilling down and making a commitment, a really heartfelt commitment to exploring this so that we can really deepen in wisdom. You know? So thank you. 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 Rubin Museum.org slash friends. If you are looking for more inspiring content, please check out our other podcasts, Awaken, which uses art to explore the dynamic paths to enlightenment and what it means to wake up. wherever you listen to podcasts. And to learn more about the Rubin Museum's work around the world,

visit Ruben Museum.org. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.