Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Jon Aaron 06/15/2023

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Theme: Impermanence Artwork: Six-armed Mahakala Mongolia; 18th century; Gilt copper alloy with semi-precious stones; Rubin Museum of Art; http://therubin.org/36wTeacher: Jon AaronThe 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 11:14. 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, everyone, and welcome to Mindfulness Meditation here at the Rubin Museum of Art, which is, of course, this global hub for Himalayan art with a home here in Chelsea in New York City. And I'm Tim McHenry. I'm Deputy Executive Director and delighted to be your host this afternoon.

So we take inspiration from our collection for everything that we do, including mindfulness meditation. And first in this session, for 45 minutes, we take a look at the art that we've chosen for you this afternoon. And then we hear from our teacher, John Aaron, who will give a teaching for about a little while. And then we embrace the space with a meditation and quiet for 15 or 20 minutes guided by a teacher, John. So let's have a look at today's art because it's a keen and fierce one for you today. So this is the six-armed Mahakala, a protected deity. You can see that it was crafted in Mongolia where Mahakala was indeed

held in high esteem because he was the state protector of the Mongolian Empire from the 13th century onwards. And who wouldn't want him on your side? So what's remarkable about this particular image is that you not only have this fierce aspect, but he stands, or teeters, I should say, on top of an elephant-headed god. What does that mean? Well, in this case, this isn't our beloved Ganesh or Ganapati. This represents the accumulation and the holding on of wealth. And you know you can't take it with you. So wealth and the idea that it's permanent and meaningful in that sense is, of course, an obstruction to understanding how everything connects and enlightenment.

It's a form of attachment, and non-attachment is our theme today. One thing that's worth observing about Mahakali, you can see his, they're called wrathful aspects, these deities, and although he is an emanation of Avola Kiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, you wouldn't know it by looking at him. But it's important to bear this in mind. The face, the bearing of the teeth, the wideness of the eyes represents not wrathful as an

anger, but the fierceness that you as individuals need to summon in order to be aware of that insidious thing that becomes an attachment in us all. Our habits, our accumulations, our reliance on things to support us emotionally through life, these become attachments if we're not aware of the broader implications of our relationship to them. And that is why we need six arms and hands in order to be aware of particularly the accumulation of social security and the like.

All right. So now we come to our teacher, John Aaron, who is no stranger, fortunately, to mindfulness meditation here in person at the Rubin. John, as you know, is a highly regarded teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction, MBSR, as well as a trainer of new teachers in this particular seminal eight-week curriculum. But what distinguishes John as a teacher is his integration of somatic work. In other words, the nature of embodiment, understanding that there's no distinction, essentially, between our mind and our body. And or at least understanding the relationship between how we use our senses and our bodily understanding of truths and vitality and relationships. And that makes them very important because, particularly during the pandemic, when we're experiencing all sorts of not only mental anguish, but also physical emanations of this anguish, this work was very well received. So he founded Space to Meditate with his partner, an online community of meditators

that is still going strong six days a week. So thank you for sparing one day a week here at the Ruben John to guide us through non-attachment via the wrathful aspect of the six armed Mahakala. John Aaron. John Aaron. It's six mornings. It's actually seven mornings a week now.

It's only in the morning, so coming here at 12 is fine. I find it interesting that Mahakala, it's about non-attachment, but he has six arms. You have to wonder what he uses those arms for. Nice to be here. Nice to see you all. So what I love about this statue in particular, but also Mahakala in general, I was telling Tim earlier, I was thinking about it on the way down, that he looks kind of like a sumo wrestler. And, you know, if you've ever seen sumo wrestling, they're huge. Although in many ways, the smaller guys, the smaller sumo wrestlers have a, they all have agility, but the smaller guys know how to use the weight of the bigger guys against them, basically.

So they can transfer energy. And there's something about the energetic and really kind of dance-like quality of this particular Mahakala that I really loved when I saw it. And to me, it also reminds me of a phrase that either came from Ram Dass or Jon Kabat-Zinn or Jack Kornfield, I'm not really sure who. I'm not going to take credit for it, but I heard it said that a good instruction is meditate as if your life depended on it. And frankly, our lives may depend on it in one way or another. And I think I even spoke about this the last time I was here. The fact that you are all here, the fact that every morning I sit with 45, 50 people. The fact that I teach new teachers who are teaching new people.

And it's this kind of net of awareness or net of wakefulness that's really spreading. So Mahakala is like a reminder to wake up. Mahakala is like a reminder to wake up, a reminder that at any moment you could be gone or the person you're with could be gone, a reminder that every out-breath could be your last out-breath, every step could be your last step, Every word could be your last word. So you want it to be a nice word, hopefully. Though Stephen Levine, who was one of the great teachers around death and dying, said that the most commonly, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this in the Ruben Mugazine, but the most commonly used phrase when somebody is dying is because it's often in an accident, it's oh shit, no, but do you want it to be that way? What do you want your last words to really be? I heard one of my teacher's teachers, Bonte Gunaratana, was telling a story about flying

from Hawaii to Sri Lanka. And shortly after the plane left Hawaii, one of the engines caught on fire. And it happened to be on the side of the plane that he was on and he was in a window seat. And the pilot came on and said, you know, we're noticing there's an engine on fire, so we're going to turn around and land back in Honolulu. It hadn't been that far out. And, you know, would the flight attendants please prepare for emergency landing? And so, you know, everybody's getting their rosaries and their Bibles and whatever out, and the Korans, and Bonte is just looking out the window at the fire

because it was so beautiful. And that was what he wanted his last memory to be, was of something beautiful, his last, what he took in last. And there was something very touching about that story. The plane landed. It was fine. They had the emergency slides came out, and he'd been a monk since he was really, really young, so he'd never been on a slide.

So he really had a nice slide out. In any event, you know, so if we're really thinking about it in those terms, if we're realizing that at any moment anything could happen, we want to be fully present for those moments, for every moment. And to me, the image of Mahakala is one that just wakes us up to that. And, you know, he's got all those skeletons hanging around his waist and he has a like a mala of skeletons in one of his six arms. Just to remind us that the death is there, but.

While it's there or while we're alive, we we need to be fully here and fully vibrant and really alive, fully alive. And I wanted to guide us actually in a practice of both receiving the breath. So as we breathe in, you know, we're receiving it as an opportunity to be alive, as a gift of life. And when we have an out-breath, it's a remembrance that, oh, it's a reminder that, yeah, this could be my last out-breath. And then the next in-breath, it's like, okay, again. And the other aspect about this, of course, is the... I'll just touch on this for a moment because it's a big topic, but the aspect of karma. And any of you who have done any level of Buddhist practice

and Dharma study will know of the five remembrances. The first of which is death is inevitable. I'm not beyond death. Illness is inevitable. I'm not beyond illness. Aging is inevitable. I'm not beyond aging as much as marketers would like to think we were. not beyond aging as much as marketers would like to think we were.

Everything that I have, like talking about the wealth that Mahakala was stepping on, everything that I have that is near and dear to me, all people that I have that are near and dear to me will be lost. I am heir to my karma. All that I am is my karma. What I leave is my karma. Karma is just actions, right? So everything we do at every moment, we are accumulating karma. Mostly good, I suspect for most of us, but us, but occasionally karma that's not particularly wholesome. And so reminding ourselves of that also keeps us kind of moving in the right direction.

If we're reminded that every moment that we are born into, and in a sense on every out-breath and every in-breath we're being born into another moment. What's actually being carried forward are the actions from all of our previous moments in this lifetime, in prior lifetimes, however you look at it. So everything that we're taking forward comes into the next moment. And then in each moment afterwards, that accumulates forward. And hopefully, we're living in a way where every moment is accumulating good karma versus bad karma, wholesome karma versus unwholesome karma, I should say.

So these are just reminders. These are just reminders. So I would like to guide a practice where the breath is just a reminder of living and dying, basically. And so as we breathe in, we remind ourselves, I'm alive. As I breathe out, this could be my last breath. And then breathing in, I'm alive. This could be my last breath. This can be a really powerful practice.

You can use it in a breath meditation. You can use it if you're walking. Because frankly, it's just stating the truth, right? It's a truth that we don't necessarily want to think about. But if we do think about it, then every moment becomes quite special. Every time we're with someone, we treat that person differently because it could be the last time. Yeah. So let's practice as the lights are going down. Yeah. So just settling into your seat, maybe having both feet on the floor to feel grounded. That's the other thing about Mahakala is that you can tell the way his body is built or

the way their body is built. It's just like really grounding and yet uplifting from the head up and the torso up. So we have a feeling the support fully of the floor and the earth below, and yet having an upright posture and a firm back, soft front. Softening the face, softening the shoulders, the belly. shoulders, the belly. Taking a few deep, deep breaths just to settle the body. And then just allowing the body to find the breath that it needs right now. And receiving each in-breath as a gift of life. As you let go into the out-breath, just recognizing this could be it.

Next in-breath, another gift of life, a reminder to be fully present for what's here just now. Each out-breath, just a reminder that this could be it for this body. And of course, the habit of mine will be either to jump forward, reminding you of what you may need to do later, or what you meant to do before you got here. It may go into some habitual place of planning or worrying. And you just, the next in-breath, just, oh, wait a minute. What's here now? What's present now?

what's present now, fully caring for this moment, this moment of this body. Each breath coming to every cell in the body. Caring for this body. Each out breath, getting rid of what the body doesn't need. Thank you. Thank you. If the mind has wandered off, just maybe bringing that image of the fierce fierceness of Mahakala, the fierce compassion of Malakala, just reminding you, come back, what's here now? Wake up. Don't lose a moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just going to read these words of the poet Ellen Bass called If You Knew.

What if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone? If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them, giving back the ripped stubs, you might take care to touch the palm, brush your fingertips along the lifeline's crease. When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase too slowly through the airport, when the car in front of me doesn't signal,

when the clerk at the pharmacy won't say, thank you, I don't remember they're going to die. A friend told me she'd been with her aunt. They just had lunch, and the waiter, a young gay man with plum black eyes, joked as he served the coffee, kissed her aunt's powdered cheek when they left. Then they walked half a block, and her aunt dropped dead on the sidewalk. How close does the dragon's spume have to come? How wide does the crack in heaven have to split? What would people look like if we could see them as they are?

Soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time. Every moment, every breath, an opportunity to be fully present with life as it is just now, however it's unfolding. Fully present for whoever you're with just now. Fully present with this body as it is just now. with this body as it is just now. Appreciating its aliveness. And maybe just as we come to this end of this meditation, just bringing a slight Mona Lisa smile to the face as a reminder of this aliveness, regardless of what may be going on in your life at this moment. The fact that you're here, alive, awake,

this moment, the fact that you're here, alive, awake, present. Bring some joy and some gladness to that moment, to this moment. Thank you very much. Thank you, John, for that exquisite distillation and the importance of how we can acknowledge each other by just breathing in the same room. That's an exquisite moment and you do so much body work. The breath is the beginning of that body work. Thank you, John Aaron, so, so much. 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.