Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Lavina Shamdasani 03/06/2025

Episode Date: March 14, 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 13:22.Teacher: Lavina Shamdasani Theme: Resilience Lotus Mandala of Hevajra; northeastern India; 12th century; copper alloy; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2003.10.2 Learn 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 Losar Tashi Delek, it's the Tibetan New Year. So I think I mentioned a little bit the Tibetan New Year this year is the Wood Snake year 2152. It's so wonderful and so auspicious to have all of you join us on this special day. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art for this weekly mindfulness meditation at New York Insight Meditation Center. I'm Tashi Chodron, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be your host today. So the Rubin is a global hub for Himalayan art,

and I'm so, so thrilled that all of you could join us for this weekly program where we combine art and meditation. Inspired by our collection, we will first take a look at work of art. We will hear a brief talk from our teacher, Lavina Shamdasani, and then she'll give a brief talk and guidance for 15 to 20 minutes for the meditation. This month, it's the beginning, sort of beginning the first Thursday of March, right? So anyone wants to guess what the theme is for this month?

It's resilience, right? So this month the theme is resilience and the art connection for today's session, which is hand picked by our teacher, is this beautiful sculpture of Lotus Mandala of He Vajra, which is known as the Che Dorje in Tibetan word. And this is origin Northern India, dated 12th century, copper alloy, and it's about 12 and a half into eight into six and a half inches. A beautiful sculpture. This month's theme, as I mentioned, resilient lotus flowers emerges from the murky waters signifying strength through adversity, purifying afflictive emotions into wisdom, triumph over evil. So the mandala houses the deities He Vajra and Nairatma. So that is Che Dorje and Dagme Lama. He Vajra is a meditational deity. Dagme Lama Amul emphasized as selfless or ego-less.

Ego is considered one of our worst enemy. Because of ego, we create so much, you know, you, I, all that separation. And then, hey Vajra, the Vajra is indestructible and symbolize of compassion. The lotus mandalas are considered to be one of the most unique objects in esoteric Buddhist art. These three-dimensional representations of deity palaces typically features deities and

then the surrounding entourage, the god and goddesses, as well as you will see the charnel grounds around. So if you look closely, you can see the details of so many beautiful different figures that is assembled in this one sculpture. The central figure is the Hevajra and the Nairatma. When you look at the sculpture, there are hinges, you know, petals around the central figure, and the sculpture's mechanical hinges allow for those petals to close around the central deities. And then I've heard so many miraculous stories

of, you know, the lotus petal, the medal ones, on auspicious days like Padmasambhava day, which is on the 10th day where the metal lotuses have opened by itself. So there are miraculous stories that I've heard from the elders. The Hevajra and Nairatma are at the center of this blossom surrounded by the eight yoginis and Hevajra is the Yidam which is the meditational deity. So let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Lavina Shyamdasani. Lavina is a certified compassion teacher through the Compassion Institute and Stanford University. She has taught programs focused on mindfulness, compassion, joy, and gratitude, and led book

club discussions and meditations for over many years. Lavina studied positive psychology coaching at the Whole Being Institute and helps clients transform their lives and meet their personal and professional goals. You can find Lavina at Souljoybylavina.com. Lavina, thank you so much for being here and please help me in welcoming Lavina Shamdasani. Thank you, Tashi, for the warm welcome. And thank you to the Rubin Museum for inviting me back today. And a heartfelt thank you to all of you for joining this beautiful Thursday afternoon. It feels like we are almost ready to shed our winter coats and join together in this moment of mindfulness.

So thank you for being here. And as Tashi told us, the theme for the month is resilience. And thank you for that beautiful description of the Lotus Mandala. And I've done a deep dive on resilience for the last few days preparing for today. And resilience can be described as the capacity to adapt and recover from challenging situations. So there are many elements that go into resilience, components of resilience that help us get stronger, get more resilient.

And I'll go through the first four quickly. The first one is acceptance. So acceptance that not every day will be smooth, that life will present with challenges, acceptance that it is the human experience to suffer, and acceptance of our own impermanence, right? Keeping that at the very back of our mind. And egolessness, essentially, we come with nothing and we will leave with our experiences, but not much else. So acceptance. The second being adaptability. The ability to cope, to use self-compassion, to use self-loving kindness to generate positive emotions, to create conditions for physical well-being, so sleep, exercise, coping strategies. The third being optimism. And both acceptance and optimism

require some wisdom when it comes to resilience, right? You could be overly optimistic about a situation and that's not healthy. And you could accept a situation and not want to proactively help yourself. So there is wisdom required with both acceptance and optimism. But going back to optimism, optimism is about using wisdom.

Also from our previous experiences with struggle, we might find that we've emerged stronger, more beautiful like the Lotus Mandala, and perhaps changing our perspective on challenge based on our previous experiences, based on wonderful stories of overcoming challenge that we can learn from. And so that's optimism.

And the fourth is social support. Seeking out loved ones, family, friends, professionals to help us during challenging times. So those are the four that sort of tap into resilience. But there's one that I haven't touched on, very important one, which is emotional regulation. How do you maintain a resilient mindset in the face of difficult news, setbacks, challenges? If anyone's been the receiver, and I'm sure we all have of challenging times, you know that the initial reaction is one of almost paralysis, right? Lightheadedness.

How do you overcome and maintain balance when you're receiving disappointing news, news of setback, financial, personal setback. And so that's what we'll work on today. Combating negative thoughts. And so when you're faced with a challenge, you might have a fear response. It's very natural to have a fear response, which is crippling, debilitating in some way. And then you might also have a strength response. So there is this battle going on within us.

And I would like to share a story about the battle of two wolves that we can hopefully take with us after today and remind ourselves how to address this battle. So the story is about an old wise Cherokee who was talking to his grandchildren about life. And he said, you know, there's a very terrible battle going on inside of me. A battle between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, sadness, self-pity, greed, ego, self-importance. And the other wolf represents hope, joy, love, compassion, kindness, generosity, sharing. He says, it's a raging battle inside of me. And he gave his grandkids a really good long stare. And after a while, they thought about it. And they said, well, grandfather, which wolf will win? And he said,

well, the one that you feed. And so that's what emotional regulation, emotional resilience is about. Which wolf are you going to feed? And it's imperative that our bodies are designed to have the negative talk, to have these negative thoughts. It's a way of protecting ourselves. And I wanna say that we're not going to starve the wolf of fear. We're not going to completely ignore the wolf of fear, but acknowledge, acknowledge the messages

they're giving us. Notice fear. That's what keeps optimism in balance, right? So we're going to acknowledge the wolf of fear while feeding the wolf of hope. And so I'm going to lead you in a meditation. So we'll spend the first few minutes with breath awareness meditation, just so you can see what comes up for you.

Try to release the thought and increase the space from one thought to another. And then after that, we'll go into a visualization, taking it one step further. So let's shift if we need to adjust our positions. I invite you to lower your gaze or close your eyes. Maintaining a comfortable yet position that supports alertness. And we'll begin with three deep diaphragmatic breaths, really inhaling deeply and releasing on the exhale, exhaling through the mouth for the first three breaths, again inhaling deeply and exhaling through the mouth. And one last inhale all the way into our belly button expanding our chest and on the exhale releasing any residual tension.

And now just settle into breathing normally. Settle into breathing normally. Relaxing your forehead, your shoulders, the muscles of your face. Relaxing your upper body, your torso, and your legs. Relaxing your toes, maybe a little wiggle in your toes, relaxing your toes. And bringing your attention now to the sensations of the breath. Noticing the inhale, the gentle rise of your abdomen. And on the exhale, the warm breath released from your nostrils, the gentle drop of your shoulders. Meeting yourself exactly as you are with loving kindness and compassion. Notice where the mind goes. Acknowledge the thought, the worry, and gently, ever so gently release. Remembering not to struggle with the mind or the thoughts.

Simply let them flow and with the lightest touch, like a feather on a bubble, release. And I'll leave you in silence for the next two minutes to practice breath awareness meditation...... And now bring to mind a challenge that you might be experiencing right now. Hopefully on a level six or five, between one and ten, if you can. As you think about this challenge, notice the thoughts that arise. And if a negative thought arises, ask yourself, is this thought helpful? and release the thought gently with kindness and compassion. Notice any thoughts of strength, any moments of hope that emerge. And ask yourself if you might actually benefit present in this challenge? Moment of connection possibly with loved ones. A moment of growth. to develop more resilience. As thoughts about this challenge emerge, consider which thoughts you want to feed today.. And now imagine that through great strength, optimism, resilience, you in fact have overcome this challenge. of this new day. And really notice how that feels. How would it feel for you to overcome this challenge? And release the visualization, bringing your focus back to your breath. And as this practice comes to a close, I'll ask you to reflect on the week, the start of March and think about three good things that happened this week.. And when you're ready, gently open your eyes.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. 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.