Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Lama Aria Drolma 02/08/2024

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Theme: Love Artwork: Buddha Shakyamuni; Northwestern Nepal, Khasa Malls rule; 13th -14th century; Glit copper alloy; Rubin Museum of Art; http://therubin.org/37-Teacher: Lama Aria DrolmaThe 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 11:29. 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. Welcome everyone to Mindfulness Meditation at the Rubin Museum of Art. I'm Jacqueline Smith, Manager of Programs and Education, and I'm delighted to be your host today. We are a global hub for Himalayan art with a home base here in New York City,

and we are so glad to have all of you join us for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation. Inspired by our collection, we will first take a look at a work of art. We will then hear a brief talk from our teacher, Lama Arya Drolma, and then we will have a short set of 15 to 20 minutes for the meditation guided by her. Our theme for the month of February is love, and the work of art that we've chosen for you today is Shakyamuni Buddha on view on the fifth floor of the museum. Buddha exemplifies love for all sentient beings. He reminds us of our deep sense of interconnectedness to one another. This remarkable depiction of Shakyamuni Buddha, the historic Buddha who lived

in the 5th century before the Common Era, was created in the 13th to 14th century in northwestern Nepal during the period of Kasha Mala rule. A unique feature of this work of art is that the Buddha is adorned with earrings. Typically, Shakyamuni Buddha is portrayed in an ascetic manner to demonstrate how he renounced all attachment to the material world. The Buddha is seated in the Vajra or lotus posture. This was his pose when he attained enlightenment in that sacred spot under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India. As we gaze upon him, let us open our hearts to more fully embody love. Now let's bring on our teacher for today, Lama Arya Droma. Lama Arya Droma is an ordained

Buddhist teacher in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism who has completed over a decade of monastic study and a three and a half year meditation training. She emphasizes Vajrayana Buddhism and Buddhist principles, making them relevant to our everyday lives, helping us to cultivate loving kindness and compassion, and bringing about a transformation of contentment and a genuine sense of well-being. Lama Arya, we're honored to have you with us here today. honored to have you with us here today. Hello, welcome everyone. Thank you all for coming in today. I'm so happy to be here with you all. So today we have this beautiful artwork of Shakyamuni Buddha and his hands are now called the earth touching mudra. He's touching the earth this way. And apparently when he became enlightened, the Maras, who are the obstacle makers,

they asked him, who's the witness to your enlightenment? And he said, the earth is my witness. And that's why it's called the earth touching mudra. And apparently when he said the earth is my witness and that's why it's called the earth touching mudra and apparently when he said that the whole earth shook in in answer to what he uh what he said and of course the theme today is love great love all of us have had great love, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, lovers. But what is the understanding in the Buddha's teaching about love? So I just want to give you a little insight to what Buddha thought about his perspective on this amazing love that we've all had. And we've loved and cherished people and cried a river. I'm sure all of you have done that.

And I also want to take this opportunity to say happy Valentine's Day to everyone. I wish you an abundance of love and joy. And also, this month is very special because we also have Losar, which is the New Year's for the Tibetans and Chinese. So in the monastery, we are celebrating that on Saturday. And there's going to be a lot of people attending and a lot of activities and so if any of y'all have broken your new year's resolution this is another chance to make new resolutions and you know resolutions are all to you know to

break break and redo you know know, change and so on. So you have another opportunity. And it's going to be the Chinese and Tibetan New Year's. And so I want to read what the Buddha's perspective about love. And this is, I got this lovely teaching from the great master Thich Nhat Hanh. And according to him, what Buddha's perspective on love was, on true love. So in the teachings of the Buddha, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, true love needs four elements. First of all, maitriya. Maitriya is compassion, loving kindness. So loving kindness, that is the capacity to offer happiness.

If you cannot offer happiness, that is not true love. In romantic love, if you are not able to help the other person to be happy, that is not true love. So you should train yourself in order to be able to offer happiness to you and to him or to her. Without that, both will suffer. The second element of true love is compassion. Compassion is the kind of energy that can help remove suffering, that can help transform suffering in you and in the other person. All of Buddha's teachings are transformation. And that's the most amazing thing. There's 85,000 verses of his teaching.

And all of the teachings are techniques how to transform your suffering into happiness, your suffering to peace of mind. So that's what the reference here is, transformation. If you cannot transform and take care of the suffering in you and the other person, that's not true love. That is why karuna, the second element of true love, should be cultivated by you and the other person. Karuna means compassion, great compassion. The third element of true love is joy. If by loving you make the other person cry all the time, which we don't do,

that is not true love. True love is bringing joy to the other person, making sure that that person doesn't cry. It's a joyous thing to be in love and to generate love to make that other person happy. True love is also inclusiveness. You do not exclude his suffering or her suffering. His suffering and her suffering is also, and his happiness and your happiness should be the main, that is what inclusiveness is. There is no individual suffering. What it means is when we are with a partner, we often, you know, when they bring something to the table that they are suffering or they're not happy, most often we tend to say, that's your problem, you take care of it. And this is what it says here. It's inclusiveness. It's not that you go and suffer alone so in true love there's no separation

there's no barrier between you and the other person in that spirit you cannot say that's your problem no your your problem is my problem my suffering is your suffering. So this is the fourth element of true love. And if romantic love has all these four elements, it can bring great happiness to both the partners. These are just the four elements. There were more. Just the four elements, there were more. And a very tall order to live. But, you know, at least we can try. And that's the most important thing.

So, you know, I wish that this Valentine's Day, all of you, you know, use one of these elements and practice. And that's what Buddha's teachings are. And in that jest, today's meditation will be on loving kindness and compassion. It's a beautiful technique. It's a fantastic technique. And the technique is called Tonglen. and the technique is called Tonglen and this was a meditation that was a very old meditation technique and you can spell Tonglen as T-O-N-G-L-E-N and there are various techniques of meditation in Tonglen and Tonglen means sending and receiving And it's sending compassion and love, loving kindness and compassion to the whole universe

and really taking their suffering. It's a very intense practice. But today, more than anything in this whole event that's going to happen, Valentine's Day, all of us, I see here, I'm sure that you are the great givers of love. But when it comes to self-love, we are pretty hesitant. And today, it's going to be love for yourself. Because when you love yourself, you have abundance of love to give. So this is a practice.

So do know there are so many amazing practices in mindfulness meditation. And tongling is one of the practices. So how do we begin this practice? So when we start the mindfulness meditation, there are two elements to the practice. One is your body posture. So let us all sit upright. So, you know, there are many teachers who come here and they give you many different instructions. So let's keep all that instructions as, you know,

something that we can learn from. So in our tradition, when we meditate, there are two elements which I just told you. One is our body posture and the second is the mind because the mind is what does the meditation. Within the body posture, in the tradition, we have seven body postures. But out of that, if you just keep your spine straight, that's good enough. And your hands, you can keep it on your knees like this. And preferably, it'll be good not for you to lean on your chair back, but it's okay. The most important thing is for you to be comfortable and your legs can be, since you're sitting on a chair, your legs can be parallel to the floor. What does all these

postures mean? These postures help you meditate and we have a lot of wind energy within us. So when we sit up straight, it's really a great way for you to sit in a proper posture for meditation. Okay, so that's one. The second element is the mind. The mind does the meditation. So today as we're sitting here now, you probably think, Oh, she's reminded us of Valentine. I better get that card.

I better get that flowers. You know, I better get that card i better get that flowers you know i better get my act together so what we can do is the mind probably is wandering around what should i do after the class where do i go and have lunch so let's all bring our mind to the present moment okay and preferably when we do mindfulness meditation you can keep your eyes closed or you can keep your eyes opened. The way to keep your eyes opened is, you know, you just pick a spot in front of you and just lower your gaze and your chin can be tucked a little bit. So your posture is really conducive to the mindfulness meditation. conducive to the mindfulness meditation.

And it's totally okay to cough, to sneeze, to shift a little bit. And all this is okay. So I'll ring the bell and we'll start the mindfulness meditation. And it'll be a guided mindfulness meditation. So let's all come together. Be in the present moment. So this is a mindfulness meditation on loving kindness and compassion. So before we start the meditation, this is how the mindfulness meditation will go, the loving kindness and compassion.

So bring to your mind the present now, be here and now. And this is a beautiful visualization meditation. So as you sit here, just visualize yourself in front of you. And to your heart center, bring this beautiful white light of loving kindness and compassion. Inhale and exhale through your nose at your own pace. And as you inhale, just

visualize from the heart center the beautiful brilliant light fills the whole of you who's sitting in front of you unconditional love and just sit in that present moment inhale and exhale and let's sit like this with the heart fully open and in front of you is also you sitting there

and just visualize this light entering you and you're filled with unconditional love Thank you. Inhale and exhale and from your heart center there's a beautiful white brilliant light and in your mind stream feel that light which has unconditional love and visualize yourself sitting in front. And from your heart center, the white light fills the one you're sitting in front, fills you with unconditional love.

And just sit there with an open heart and open mind receiving this unconditional love And just keep repeating the practice. Inhale and exhale. Breathe normally at your own pace. And bring to your mind stream unconditional love. And in your heart center is this brilliant white light. Filled with unconditional love.

And in front of you is you. Visualize yourself sitting and give this light. Send this light yourself, filling you from your head to your toes. Unconditional love. Just rest in that present moment of awareness. Inhale and exhale and somewhere now your mind has wandered off and when you catch yourself thinking

it's ok just label it as thinking let go of the story and bring your breath to your mind's attention and just feel your bring your mind's attention to your breath breathing in and breathing out

and then visualize in your heart center beautiful white light, brilliant and bring to your mind stream the feeling of unconditional love and then the light fully goes into the visualization of yourself in front of you the light goes from your head to your toes and feel that unconditional love.

Sit in that present moment of awareness. Thank you. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, breathe normally at your own pace and bring to your mind stream the feeling of unconditional love and in your heart center, a brilliant white light filled with unconditional love. And now just send that light out to the whole universe in a second. That you're sending out all the loving kindness and compassion, the light of loving kindness and compassion. The whole universe is filled. And sit in that present moment of awareness. Thank you. Breathe in and breathe out. Breathe through your nostrils. And breathe out through your nostrils.

Bring to your mind stream, in your heart center, brilliant white light of unconditional love. Just send that love as a form of light into the whole universe, as spacious as you can. And sit in this present moment of awareness. This is the practice of Tonglen. And when you practice Tonglen, self-love is very important. So let's all sit up straight again and do this one more time. Sit comfortably.

Inhale and exhale. And bring to your mind stream unconditional love. And visualize in your heart center a beautiful, brilliant light. And the feeling of unconditional love. And now again visualize yourself in front of you. And let this light penetrate your whole body from your head to toe and fill you with absolute love, light and peace. And let's sit for a moment like this. Thank you. Again, bring to your mind's attention a feeling of unconditional love

and in your heart center a brilliant white light of love and again send it to all your loved ones whoever you can recall in your mind let this white light from your heart center touch every person you love and you can send it to the whole universe and just bask in that unconditional love,

a feeling of unconditional love. Okay, now we will relax and open your eyes gently Thank you so much, Lama Arya. We're deeply grateful to you for leading us in this meditation on the theme of unconditional love. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes this week's practice. To support the Rubin and this meditation series,

we invite you to become a member at reubenmuseum.org slash membership. And to stay up to date with the Reuben Museum's virtual and in-person offerings, sign up for a monthly newsletter at reubenmuseum.org slash enews. I am Tashi Chodron. Thank you so much for listening. Have a mindful day.