Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Leslie Booker 02/13/25

Episode Date: February 21, 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 28:05. Teacher: Leslie BookerTheme: Lovingkindness Wrathful Shrine Doors; Kham Region, eastern Tibet; ca. 19th century; wood, cloth, pigments, gesso, varnish; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; gift of Bob and Lois Baylis; C2014.3a-h    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. Good afternoon, everyone, and Tashi Delleck.

Welcome, welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts Mindfulness Meditation Program here at New York Insight Meditation Center. I'm Tashi Chodron, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be a host today. So wonderful to see so many of you here on this kind of wet, rainy day out there. And the Rubin is a global hub for Himalayan art, and we are so happy 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 look at work of art.

We will hear a brief talk from our teacher, Leslie Booker. We are so fortunate to have Leslie Booker here. Been trying for a while. She's a very, very busy teacher and very popular teacher here at New York Insight. And this is Leslie's first time with the Rubin's partnership and we're so happy to have her time today. Let's take a look at today's theme and artwork.

The theme this month, some of you who have been here in the past week probably know that the theme is love. You know, the month of February. And the artwork for today's session is this beautiful, wrathful deity shrine door, which is handpicked by our teacher. This is from eastern Tibet, Kham region, 19th century. It's wood with cloth, mineral pigments,

and gesso varnish. This is about 85 into 75 into 16 and a half inches. And this is known as a beautiful architectural element sometimes referred in the list of furniture as well and this this is often used at the entry of fierce wrathful deities chapel or a shrine room and the deity here is the Mahakala, which is the enlightened protector. So how you can identify that this is a fierce, wrathful deity is when you see these bulging eyes, fangs coming out, and then you will often see skeletons with different fierce offerings. Radful deity is basically to subdue one's own ego. That's the metaphor.

Because ego is considered one's worst enemy. Because of ego, we create so much suffering. Now in Tibetan Buddhism, the fears often terrifying manifestations of enlightened beings like Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to forcefully remove any negative energies or evil forces. I think that is so needed right now, considering what we are all facing every day with so much negativity. And here's a close-up look

of the same. In the Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism, you will find a lot of the skeletons, the wrathful kind of offerings. Also a simple reminder of how everything is impermanent in nature. Now let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Leslie Booker. Booker is a heart centered activist and meditation teacher focused on creating a culture of belonging. A co-author of Practicing Liberation, she was a 2020 Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow,

graduated from Spirit Rocks Teacher Training, and was named one of the Mindful's 12 Powerful Women. She now serves as guiding teacher of New York Insight. Booker, thank you so much for being here, and please help me in welcoming Leslie Booker. Thank you so much, Tashi. I'm so happy to be here and so great to see you all. I was a huge fan, still am a huge fan of the Rubin Museum. And so I'm so honored to be here at New York Insight and be able to

have this partnership with you all so these can continue. So I absolutely love this work. They sent me three pieces of art to choose from and I saw this one and I was like, yes, that is me. I absolutely love this. It reminds me of Kali as well. You said this is Maha Kali. And when I was a yoga teacher many years ago, there is a Hindu deity named Kali, I think, you know, very similar with the black skin and the very fierce face. And I always felt such a strong connection to this image of loving something, caring for something so fiercely that you kind of put fear in others to protect what is sacred to you. And I've always just felt so connected. And I think in my early years of activism, I looked very similar to that. It was just like, ah, just my mouth wide open being like, don't come

near me. And so when I saw this piece of art, I felt so like, yes, that is the one I really want to speak to. It feels so beautiful. And my dear friend Teo says that when he thinks of meta or love, he thinks of it as heart with fists. And I really love that. I think especially in the Western convert Buddhism lineage that I'm in, the insight tradition, people lean towards meta and it can be a little kind of a bypassing over what's truly happening. There can be a little, I'm just going to offer meta and there is something that's fiercer in meta. It's not just about butterflies and rainbows. There's something that is very fierce underneath it that allows us to have this kind of love that is offered without discrimination. And so we are in a moment in history. There's

a particular flavor of global divisiveness that we might all be feeling into where everything is being politicized, even our own healthcare is being politicized. And it can be really challenging for us to understand where our practice can support us, where our heart can show up, where to place our heart during these times. And we need options to figure out how to not succumb to the hatred and the ill will that is out in the world. And so in the midst of difficult times, in the midst of fear, in the midst of dominance, we can turn towards the impenetrable practices of the Brahma Viharas, of these heart practices. And so the word Brahma Vihara is made up of two words, Brahma meaning from the God, the

creator, and then Vihara from home or abode where the awakened heart lives, a sacred home. And so the four heart practices, I think a lot of us are familiar with our metta, this loving kindness, benevolence of friendliness, karuna, this compassion, which starts with equivering towards our heart and then a move towards action of alleviating suffering. There is mudita, this joy for another person's happiness. And then of course, there's equanimity, a place where we have this balanced heart and mind that allows us to kind of be still for a moment in the midst of all of it and decide how we want to respond to the world. And so with these practices, it really allows us to soften the edges but without dulling.

And it can be a refuge for a weary mind or a rageful heart. And these practices remind us that we belong to each other. So it's recorded in the Buddhist times that he had this ability to speak to all kinds of people to be able to offer the right kind of teaching for where they were in that moment. He was able to speak to a king who was about to take his people into war. He was able to speak to a farmer who had lost their prized ox. He was also able to speak to a weary mother who had just lost her child. And so over the 45 years that the Buddha traveled with a group of ascetics, he instructed them to always speak in the vernacular of the people that they were speaking to, to use their hobbies, their livelihoods,

what was happening in their lives at that time to create stories, metaphors, so people could remember these teachings. He made them very concrete for them so they could remember these and to move them forward. And one of the stories that I love is the story around Metta. And the legend goes that the Buddha and his group of ascetics were traveling and the Buddha gave them the instruction to go into the forest and to practice. And they came running out and they said, oh, it's so scary in there. The tree devas are giving off these horrible smells and they're making these scary sounds and we can't practice there. And so the Buddha didn't give them instructions of how to win them over or how to manipulate them or how to change them or how to convince them that they didn't mean ill will. What he did was he gave them the practice of meta. He gave

them this hard practice to go back into the forest and to practice. And he offered them this practice as one of protection, to protect their hearts from fear, from anger, from hostility, because when the heart is full of those qualities, we then harm other people. We push them away. We say, this is mine, you don't belong here. And so the legend goes that the tree devas were so moved by this practice of meta that they allowed them to continue to practice whenever they wanted. And I didn't learn Metta in that way. I didn't learn it as a protection. And I think many of us didn't learn it that way either. For many of us, we learned it through this system of repeated phrases meant to collect and gather the mind towards this feeling of benevolence. And these repeating phrases also went into different categories of working with, starting with ourselves because apparently rumor has it giving love to yourself is the easiest place to start. I don't know

who decided that, but maybe in a different era without all of the noise of social media and news, maybe it was easier to start with loving ourselves first. I don't know. And so the categories are we start with ourselves, we move to a neutral person, we move to, I'm sorry, start with ourselves, and then we move to a benefactor, a dear friend, to a neutral person, and then to a person who's a little bit more challenging in our lives. And the phrases we offer are, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, and may you live with ease. And I don't know about you all, but I have ADHD. And when I tried to remember the categories and the phrases,

it just became word soup in my head. I would always get things confused. And I was spending my entire practice in my head, trying to figure out who goes where and what I say what to, that it just became a very cerebral practice and I wasn't rooted in my heart anymore. And I also realized that because it wasn't living in my body but more in my brain that this practice became more of its near enemy. I began to have this attachment to everyone being happy, everyone being healthy,

everyone being safe, everyone living with ease. And that isn't what practice is. That isn't what metta is. And so early on in my teaching practice, the first 10 years of teaching meditation, I worked in jails. I worked in all the juvenile centers in New York City, and I also spent two years on Rikers Island working with the adolescent population. So 10 years of working in jail, you really learn your practice. It's a really great way to understand the depth of your practice

and why we do it. And going into that environment and working with children that were locked up, I felt very much like this wrathful protector. I felt very much like Mahakali. I had such a fierce energy, such a fierce protection over the kids that I was supporting. And I wanted to, because I was sharing practice with, and I wanted to teach them meta. It felt like a good practice to offer them. And again, I felt myself so caught up in the near enemy of attachment, and I knew that I couldn't teach it to them without that little flavor of attachment. It felt really difficult to… And I worked with not just kids in jail, but with all kinds of vulnerable populations for 12 years in New York. And so it felt really complicated for me to look at a 12-year-old kid who was locked up

and away from their families and say, may you be happy. It felt difficult for me to look at a person who is living with HIV and AIDS and say, may you be healthy. It felt hard to work with a person who was unhoused and say, may you be safe. And I didn't feel aligned to speak to a person who is actively in drug recovery and drug recovery, and to say, may you live with ease. And so, I found different ways to bring the energy of benevolence and kindness. And what really supported me was when I heard the teachings of the four boundless qualities. This I learned as a chant, and it speaks to how we practice with the four categories of the brahma-viharas. And so the four boundless qualities are… So I learned it as a chant and it's also a sutta and it says,

I will abide pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with loving kindness Likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth, so above and below, the four, so above and below, around and, without hostility and without ill will. And that was profound to me because it allowed me to understand that this practice was meant to be expansive, that it moved when upwards and down and outwards. It didn't just live in here. And that's the way I had experienced metta when I was practicing and I was kind of shutting off the teachers that were giving the phrases.

For me, this practice always felt bigger than my own body. It felt bigger than the phrases. I felt that the phrases sort of locked me in when to me it felt so big and so much bigger than could ever be articulated in these phrases. And so another time when I really began to see the expansiveness of this practice was during the Occupy Wall Street movement, myself and some friends started the meditation working group of Occupy down at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. And we as a collective decided that we wanted to use one meditation each day so that no matter who was leading, there'd be consistent practice that we

were offering every day. And so we decided that we would use a practice of metta and we would use the phrases. And I remember one of the first times I was leading, it was really full space. We probably had about 75 people that gathered around for the meditation period. And these were not only occupiers, but these were also a lot of visitors to New York. And also, we were very highly policed. So there's a lot of cops around us all the time. And usually, being down at Occupy, you're constantly being photographed by the tourists. Whenever you saw a cop, they always had one hand on their gun waiting for anything to happen. And I remember one day when we were leading Metta and I was observing the people that were watching us, people that were watching us. And I noticed how the tourists began to lower their cameras,

how the guns that were being gripped by the cops, they began to move their hands away from their guns and they widened their stance and softened their knees. And I could see their bodies relaxing into this posture as opposed to having this hypervigilance in their bodies. They began to allow themselves to receive the benefits of this practice. And it felt like such an act of love to offer this to whoever wanted it. It wasn't directed towards any one person. We just offered it to the space. We offered it to whoever was kind of brought into the forest field of Metta. And you know, Venerable Lanaglio says that Metta is like love without discrimination. He said, it's like the sun at high noon shining its light on everyone without discrimination. And for the first time, I was like, oh, that's happening in this moment. There wasn't that 99 and the 1%, that rhetoric that you heard a lot during that time. We were all a bunch of people together trying to get free and trying to figure out what that looked like for us. There was a sense of love without

any kind of boundaries around us. It was abundant, exalted, immeasurable. And the thing about meta that I've learned over the years is that it's not about how much we can feel this quality of the heart towards those that is easy for us to care for, our friends, our pets, our family members. But it's really about the breath and the depth and and how far-reaching this responsive heart can be. So I can't talk about love without bringing in bell hooks, this beloved ancestor and just such a dear, dear teacher of mine. I got to meet bell hooks just one time. This is a little sidebar here. Many years ago, she was doing a series of talks at the New School. So she had weeks, maybe just one week, I felt like a month, maybe just like one week of these free public talks at the New School. And so she was in conversation with Gloria Steinem. She was in conversation with Cornell West. And so she was in conversation with Gloria Steinem. She was in conversation with

Cornel West. And so I went to every free talk that I could. And she wrote this book, All About Love, which is like the Bible, if a lot of you know about this book. And I was leaving the talk and she had walked out in front of me and I was with a friend. I was like, oh my God, there's Bell Hooks. She's like, go talk to her. So I ran up behind her and I was like, Dr. Hooks, Dr. Hooks, your book, it means everything to me.

Just totally like fan-girling her so hard. I said, can I get a picture of you? She turned around and she rolled her so hard. And I said, can I get a picture of you? And she turned around and she kind of rolled her eyes at me and she said, make it quick. And I was like, yes, ma'am. And it is a terrible selfie, but I got it. The lighting is horrible.

But I do want to bring in Dr. Hooks, this beloved ancestor of ours. And she says that we must understand love. And she says that the assumption about love is that love means that we will not be challenged or changed. No doubt this is why people who read writing about racism, sexism, homophobia, religion, etc., that challenges or set assumptions tend to see that work as harsh rather than loving. And I love this so much because I love having the hard conversations. because I love having the hard conversations. I love, as someone who is raised by a Republican,

I love having the hard conversations because it allows me to hear your story and where you come from. And as we peel back those layers, we tend to see that we have more in common than we don't. It allows me to not hate you and to judge you, but to remember that we belong to each other. And that if I meet your hate with my hate, then nobody's winning here.

But if I can meet your hate with, tell me more about this, that I'm opening up the possibility for us to be in relationship with each other, for us to be able to be in a shared humanity and to find a way for us to come to an understanding of how to move through this world together. And so these conversations that seem hard, these conversations that people don't want to get into, I would invite you to reframe them as an act of love because it truly is what it is. And so dear ones, an undefeated heart is rooted in courage. It does not turn away when it's faced with injustice, with jealousy or

violence. It allows the felt sense of anger and rage to be known and allows it to be used as a catalyst towards skillful action and change. It allows us unapologetically to center love in a world that is broken and bruised and to turn towards it knowing that we are protected by this practice of protection of love. So thank you so much for listening to these words, hearing me kind of riff about what love is for me. So I'd love for you to take a posture that works for your body, whether it's standing, sitting, lying down, or standing. And I'd like to take a moment to orient myself to the space so that I can first know who

I'm practicing for, who I'm practicing with, and just to feel that sense of safety and protection if I know what's around me. So take a moment just to open your eyes wide and to turn your head from side to side as you notice light and color and texture as you notice elements of nature including the dear one that might be sitting next to you, noticing the height of the space, this width of the space, and also the depth of the space, even turning around seeing what's behind you. And when you're ready, you can rest your eyes. For some people, resting the eyes means to hold the eyes wide open. For some it means to look down to a spot on the earth.

For others resting the eyes could mean to close the eyes altogether. And I invite you to feel into the felt sense this quality of what metta can feel like for you. For some people they might bring a memory or an image of somebody that is easy for them to feel this benevolence, this kindness towards. For others, they might bring in the phrases. For some people, just saying the Metta brings a sense of warmth throughout the body, the sense of spaciousness and openness, the sense of being protected. And so I invite you to contemplate, but really through the felt sense of the body, what it's like to abide, pervading the all-encompassing world with a mind and a heart and a body imbued with loving-kindness that is abundant, exalted, and measurable without hostility and without ill will............ you So Thank you all so much. 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 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.