Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Lavina Shamdasani 12/07/2023

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Theme: Ritual Artwork: Goddess Marichi; Mongolia; late 17th century or early 18th century; gilt copper alloy; Rubin Museum of Art; C2005.16.26 (HAR 65449) http://therubin.org/37pTeacher: Lavina Shamdasani  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 16:16. 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. Hello, good afternoon, and Tashi Delek. Welcome to Mindfulness Meditation at the Rubin Museum of Art. Please enjoy your practice. Hello, good afternoon and Tashi Delek. Welcome to Mindfulness Meditation at 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 global hub for Himalayan art with a home base in Chelsea, 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 by our collection, we will first take a look at work of art. We will then hear a brief talk from our teacher, Lavina Shyamdasani, 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 this month is ritual and ritual can come in many different forms and practice and the ritual of this mindfulness

meditation once a week at the Rubin Museum and many others. So the connection to the theme, Marichi, the goddess of dawn, is associated with illumination and dispelling darkness. In ritual practice, light is used metaphorically to signify transcending the obstacles that obstruct the path to enlightenment. And the art connection for today's session is this beautiful sculpture, Origin Mongolia, and it's late 17th or early 18th century. Beautiful gilt copper alloy about 16 into 10 and 1⁄2 into 7 and 1⁄2 inches and this is the Marichi. Marichi literally means a ray of light from either the moon or the Sun. In Tibetan she's known as Wuzel Chenma, the Shining Ones or the Goddess of Dawn.

Marichi appears in many forms. In this sculpture, she appears in two arms, holding a Vajra in her right hand. It's put to her heart. And then on the left hand, a branch of the Ashoka tree. She's seated in a royal ease position, left leg folded, right leg extended. The Vajra to her heart symbolizes indestructible diamond-like thunderbolt. She's known as the remover of obstacles with her radiant light. This beautiful sculpture is attributed to the exceptional Mongolian artist Zanabazar. He was born named Yeshe, later named Jetun Thamba Kutuku. Zanabazar, who lived at the end of 17th century, is believed to have single-handedly brought the tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism to Mongolia. He's the most famous Mongolian

Buddhist artist. He produced works of excellent craftsmanship and innermost beauty and was imitated by many sculptures, the Zanabarza school. The body proportions are very harmonious, adornments are fine and detailed. Some of the aesthetic of Zana Bazaar are these S-shaped figures and fuller lips, oval shape face, and so forth. He founded the sculptural style that continues to have a profound influence to this day. He was known to be a student of the great fifth Dalai Lama and many other teachers. Now, let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Lavina Shyamdasani. Lavina Shyamdasani is a certified compassionate 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 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 more on Lavina at souljoybylavina.com. Lavina, thank you so much for being here. Please help me in welcoming Lavaveena Shyamdasani. Thank you, Tashi, and thank you to the Rubin Museum for welcoming me back today.

And thank you to all of you for being here. It's an honor to be here with you practicing mindfulness meditation today. And Tashi, that was a beautiful description of Marichi. She can take so many different forms, multiple hands, and such as you saw. The goddess of dawn, where light is used as an embodiment to overcome obstacles, obstacles that are in the way of our pursuit of happiness. And along this theme of marichi and rituals,

specifically today focusing on mindfulness rituals, of course, I thought it would be perhaps something poignant to talk about developing equanimity. We're familiar with meditation practice, breath awareness practice. We're familiar with the revolution practice of intention setting. And perhaps we can take mindfulness meditation deeper to practice equanimity, especially with the holidays coming around. I feel like, you know, joy is palpable. There's cheer everywhere. And when we're faced with disappointment or loss at this time, it feels particularly hard. So I want to

leave you and strengthen you with this practice. And so what is equanimity? Just show of hands. Familiar with equanimity? Yes? Okay, a few of us, not everyone. So equanimity can be described as a psychological state of stability and groundedness. of stability and groundedness. Equanimity is about being able to respond to challenges,

stillness of mind, in order to respond to challenges with evenness, unwavering, both ups and downs, actually, but maintaining this evenness of mind and temper. We all know that challenges are inevitable and equanimity is about knowing that obstacles will arise in our pursuit of happiness. Things will go wrong.

And it helps us stay in the sort of middle ground of calm and strength. Equanimity is finding an unshakable steadiness within. An emotional safe haven, if you will, that keeps us from extreme highs and lows. So it kind of sounds boring, right? Like, do we really want to be this person? But don't mistake equanimity for being boring. It doesn't mean you're not fun to be around.

You're still a fun personality, but it's about this strength within, this knowing that things are going to change and responding with evenness of temper and mind. Also, equanimity is not about being apathetic. things are going to change and responding with evenness of temper and mind. Also, equanimity is not about being apathetic. It doesn't mean we pursue our goals any less or we just sort of accept whatever comes our way without wanting to make change for good, improvement for becoming better.

So it's not apathy. It's not being boring. In fact, equanimity has for centuries been very much the core of Buddhist practice. It has high-reaching values in Buddhism because it helps us be even-minded, protects us from highs and lows, also help us develop our spirituality and remaining in good ethical conduct. So why? Why does it help us practice with more ethical values, whatever it is our pursuit in life?

Because we're not acting from extreme fear. We're not acting from aversion or attraction. We're maintaining the groundedness. And in being bounded in this way, we can respond to change with wisdom and always remaining ethical. If our fears are unbounded, we might tend to respond and do things that we're

not really proud of, right? But equanimity helps us stay this ground of remaining ethical. So how do we do this, right? That's the big question. I mean, in the face of real life issues, you just found out your company is about to go under, as Lehman Brothers did, and all of a sudden your multimillion-dollar net worth is zero on paper now. Your old marriage is on the brink of divorce. Or you just learned that you're battling a pretty serious illness.

How do you remain steadfast? How do you find that inner stability in these moments that really test us, right? Well, for one thing, we can go into a tizzy. Is it going to stop this thing from happening? Most likely not. Second, it's at these times that we really need to respond with clarity, with wisdom, right, with clear thinking, with good judgment.

So maybe it's not such a good idea to go into a dizzy. But let me share with you a story that helps maybe push us in this direction of remaining calm. It's a very old parable about a farmer. I don't know if you've heard about this, the farmer with a horse. And I'm going to ask you all to share in the response of the farmer with me. So we'll chorus what the farmer says during the story. And he has only one line. And it goes like this, good or bad, who can say? Right? So when I go, we'll all chorus good or bad, who can say? So this farmer was a very fortunate farmer. He had a horse, a horse that helped him plow the land, you know, do the heavy work on his farm.

And one evening, the farmer forgot to latch his gate. And unfortunately, the horse escaped. And of course, the neighbor comes over, and the neighbor says, Oh, farmer, this is bad. This is really bad, bad luck. Good or bad, who can say? Next morning, the horse comes back with a stallion, wild stallion.

Wow, now the farmer has two horses. Neighbor comes over and says, wow, farmer, this is really good. This is really good. Good or bad, who can say? The neighbor comes over and says, Wow, farmer, this is really good. This is really good. Good or bad, who can say? Next day, the farmer's young son is training the horse, reining in the wild horse, you know, going around and reining him in.

And unfortunately, he falls off this wild horse, breaks his leg. Neighbor comes over. Oh, now this is really bad. Now your son has a broken leg. The farmer says, Who can say? And next day, the army comes through this little village and enlists all able-bodied young men to come and fight the war.

And of course, the farmer's son was spared. So, this story tells us that our estimate of what we think is going to happen to us really shapes how we respond to things and events in life. really shapes how we respond to things than events in life, right? As a 2,000-year-old philosopher, stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius said, if you are bothered by external events, troubled by external events, the pain is not from the event of itself, but from the estimate of what you think this event is going to have on your life. And that you have the power to revoke at any moment.

2,000-year-old stoic philosopher. But fear not, modern-day science has done some similar research so we can get grounded in science. Have you heard of Dan Gilbert? He's a Harvard psychologist. And he has found, over years of experiments that human beings aren't really good at estimating what's good or bad for them. So he's done some pretty wide studies and he's found that we tend to think some things are going to be good for us. Tracks these people and finds later on that, you know, may have been happier for a while, but went back to baseline happiness.

And same for the negative events in their life. About three months later, except for some, a few exceptions, people go back to their general baseline of happiness. So Dan Gilbert tells us baseline of happiness. So Dan Gilbert tells us that really our worries are overblown, that we're not very good at estimating whether something's going to make us happy or not. So all the more reason to not label things as good or bad. Who can say? And I'll leave you with some more research. The same gentleman Dan Gilbert has found that human beings are very good at reshaping negative events. We're very good at finding the silver lining when things don't go the way that we expect them to do. When we don't get the happiness that we're expecting to get, there's one more

thing human beings are good at, and that's synthesizing happiness. Synthesizing happiness is just as good as natural happiness. So take faith. Know that we're going to be okay. As the song goes, we will survive. Right? And the next time you're about to label something as... We're that bad. You can say. There you have it. So hopefully this will give you a little more calm,

help you cultivate this inner strength, this shore of emotional stability when things don't go as you expect. And so, if you'll join me, I'm going to share with you a mountain meditation to develop equanimity. And it's been adapted by, slightly adapted originally by Jon Kabat-Zinn. And so we'll begin. And find yourself a posture that's upright and comfortable at the same time. You may lower your eyes, lower your gaze or close your eyes,

whatever feels most comfortable to you. and paying attention, bringing your focus to the natural sensations of your breath, knowing that you're breathing just fine in this moment, paying attention to the inhale, the flow of air on the exhale, the gentle rising and lowering of your chest. And taking a moment to really feel how you were supported by your spine. Sitting here with an element of dignity, solidarity and wholeness. Really feeling and embodying that inner strength.

And now bring to mind a beautiful mountain. See if you can visualize this grand structure perhaps with one or two snow-capped peaks gently sloping sides, and firmly grounded in the bedrock of earth. And if you can't quite visualize this beautiful mountain, simply outline its form in your mind. The high peak. The sides. the sides, the strength that it represents.

And when you're ready, see if you can bring this mountain into your own body so that the peak of the mountain and your I are one in your mind. Your head represents the peak, affording you a panoramic view of everything that goes on around you. Your arms and shoulders are the sloping sides of the mountain. And your torso and pelvis are the core of the mountain, supporting you. And your legs grounding you to the ground just as the mountain is deeply connected with the bedrock of the earth. And as you're sitting here in practice, see if you can become one with the mountain. of unshakable stillness, unshakable strength,

whole, and never changing at its very core. And you know the mountain experiences so much change on its surface. As the seasons change, in the winter the mountain might be capped with snow. Spring gently melts the snow into streams, rivers, high lakes. leaves sprout during the spring teeming with wildlife and people may come and visit the mountain some may like the mountain

and some might think it's not such a beautiful day to visit the mountain. And through all the seasons, the mountain remains unchanging at its core, always abiding this change with calm. And as summer approaches, the mountain may be teeming with playing children from the base villages. And during the fall, the colors might change. And as each day and night

sheds its light or shadows on the mountain, it's always still. The mountain may weather storms, heavy pellets of rain, lightning on its surface. Lightning on its surface. People coming, going. Some really enjoying the mountain and some not caring for it as much. And through all this,

the mountain remains steady. And as we practice and sit here together today, see if you dignity that the mountain embodies. Just as the mountain experiences changes at its surface with weather patterns, wildlife, people, so do we experience changes. External changes of our own. We weather ups and downs and emotional tempests of our own. Remembering that things happen to us. And we take them personally,

but they're really so impersonal in nature. In fact, that's what all these external changes have in common. They're completely impersonal. And see if we can imbibe the strength from this mountain to weather our own changes with dignity and strength, remembering remembering that they don't change the core of who we are. We are still very much whole and very much ourselves. By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice, we can link up with the strength and stability

and adopt them for our own. stability and adopt them for our own. We can use its energies to support our energy, to encounter each moment with mindfulness, equanimity, and clarity. It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings, our preoccupations, our emotional storms and crisis. All the things that happen to us are very much like the weather on the mountain.

The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied. It is to be encountered, honored, honored felt and known for what it is and held in awareness. And in holding it in our awareness in this way, we come to know a deeper stillness, a deeper silence, and unshaking wisdom. In the next few minutes of silence, continue to sustain the mountain meditation on your own. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. When you're ready, gently open your eyes.

Thank you so much for that beautiful session, Lovina. Thank you. That concludes this week's practice. To support the Rubin and this meditation series, we invite you to become a member at rubinmuseum.org membership. 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 e-news. I am Tashi Chodron. Thank you so much for listening. Have a mindful day.