Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Leslie Booker 07/31/2025

Episode Date: August 8, 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 11:04.Teacher: Leslie BookerTheme: JoyLords of the Charnel Ground, Smashana Adipati; Tibet; 18th century, painted terracotta; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2002.36.1 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 Children. Every Thursday, we offer a meditation session at New York Inside 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 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, Tashi Bel-Lake. And welcome, welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts, Mindfulness Meditation Program at New York Inside Meditation Center. My name is Tashi Churdan, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be your host today.

So the Rubin is a global museum dedicated to Himalayan art, and we are so glad to have all of you join us in person and online for this weekly program where we combine art and meditation. Inspired by our collection, we will first take a deep look at the work of art that's pan-picked by our teacher amongst a collection of art that we sent. And we will then hear a brief talk, of course, from our teacher. Leslie Booker. We are so fortunate to have you back. Leslie has been very, very busy and we've missed a few dates last few months, but I'm so glad you're back. We will have a short sit about 15 to 20 minutes for the meditation guided by her. Let's take a look at today's theme and artwork. The artwork for today's session is this beautiful sculpture of Lord of the Charnal Ground. This is in Tibetan known as Thurdaq. In Sanskrit, Smasana Adipati. This is origin from Tibet, dated 18th century, painted in Terakota. This is about six and a half into five and a half into one and a half inches. So this month, we've been exploring on the theme of joy.

When we planned this month's theme, it was based on His Holiness Dalai Lama's birth month. July is often celebrated by hundreds of thousands of Tibetan. and the Himalayan and people who, Tibetan Buddhists, as well as all around the world, peace-loving, celebrating Holiness Dalai Lama's birthday. Actual date is July 6th. And so the theme for this month's joy, these skeleton, lords of the channel ground,

are animated by ecstatic dance and laughter here. Their festive demeanor expressing the joy of being free from attachment. So they are known as the brother. and sister. Male and the female figures can be distinguished only by their garlands and attributes. The male sports a garland of freshly severed heads and holds a skeleton club and a skull bowl. And the female, in contrast, wears a garland of dried skulls and holds a staff and a golden vass. They support the practice of deity chakrasamara and are revered as powerful protectors. Protectors. Protectors. Protectors. protecting us from reaching the goal, which is the awaken or enlightenment.

The text on this, written on the cloth and attached to the piece, begins with the specific mantra of the lords of the channel ground, and then evokes the protective function of the couple that says, eliminate misery from harmful spirits, fire, water, and lightning. And the mantra in the Tibetan script, It's the first three letters are om, ah, whom, and then there's a lot more to be read. It says, in short, protect from outer, inner, and secret adverse conditions from today until attaining great awakening. And so now let's bring on a 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 Rock's teacher training and was named one of the Mindful's 12 Powerful Woman. She now serves as guiding teacher of the New York Inside. Booker, thank you so much for being here.

Please help me in welcoming Leslie Booker. Thank you. Thank you so much Tashi. Ah, good evening, dear ones. Good afternoon. Thank you so much. It is such an honor for us to be able to host this event here. And it's always such a joy to come in and expand my practice.

And the inside tradition, we don't do that much around with art. And so I love this opportunity to look at pieces of art and to utilize them as meditation. meditations. This one I absolutely love. So they sent me, I think, like five different pieces and it said, you know, our theme this month is joy, which one speak to you? And I saw this one and immediately burst into laughter. It brought me such incredible joy because there's such freedom. There's such liberation. There's such playfulness in the color. colors, and the fact that they're not alone, that they are a pair, they are a collective enjoying this together.

And it just brings me a lot of joy. I think I have a picture of me dancing at a wedding, kind of doing that same posture, so I also appreciate that. And it reminds me of, you know, of Anata, we've been talking a lot this week. We're doing a non-residential retreat here at New York Insight, and we've been talking a lot about the three characteristics, Anitia, Anata, Dukha. And so Anitia, of course, being impermanence, all things are impermanent, they arise and they fall away.

There's Anata, this sense of no self, which we find very difficult to wrap our heads around. And then there is Duka, which is the suffering that comes from forgetting those first two. And so Anata is something I've always been very curious about as a black queer woman, you know, my identities are a huge part of my existence and how I show up in the world and how other people receive me in the world. And many years ago, I was sitting a six-week retreat at Insight Meditation Society up in

Bury, Massachusetts. And early on, I've noticed that in this first few days of practice, I kept looking at myself. There's these giant mirrors in our rooms. I was like, why would they put giant mirrors in a room at a meditation retreat? It's so weird. And so I took a bunch of paper towels and band-aids, and I covered up this giant mirror. And so I didn't see myself for six weeks. And it was a beautiful experience. And at the end of the retreat, again, not seeing myself in a mirror. I went to a train station. And the conductor came up to me and he said, you must be Leslie Booker.

And I was like, wow, I'm like, how do you know that? And he said, well, two people got on the train at the stop when's a man and you're a woman, so this must be you. And I remember just being like, but how does he know I'm a woman? How does he know what I look like? And I was just so, and I realized I had been experienced Anata, like I had been so removed from this form. I had been so removed from whatever identified me. I was a practitioner who had been practicing with other practitioners. We were holding the nobility of silence, and so there was no space for unskillful language to arise or for anyone to,

comment on my appearance or my identity. And I remember after the conductor said this, I sat in confusion for a very long time. Like, how does he know I'm a woman? What, how does he know? And then there was this immediate joy of like, ah, Anata. Like, I am, I could feel that experience of being, free and liberated from all of these causes and conditions that have trapped me in this existence.

It was so freeing and expansive, and it felt that joyful. And so the moment I saw that image, I immediately recall that experience. And yeah, when we get to let go of who we think we are, who we think we should be, who others want us to be, when we let go of aspiring to become this thing or having a sense of shame around not being that thing that we thought we would be at this stage in our lives, there's something so liberating of just being. And even though these two identified as brother and sister,

there's nothing, as I look at them, nothing that says what their gender is, or their race or their class or their culture. They've released all of it. So that's what true liberation can look like. So let's take some time to practice with this. And what we do at New York and say what I like to offer when guided meditation is to take a moment to resource around the space to take a moment to keep our eyes wide open and look around the space

that we're in noticing the colors the shapes the textures and elements of nature as you bring your head back to center looking up noticing the space that is above you Bringing the head back to neutral as you feel into the space to the right of you and to the left of you, your capacity to hold the concept of anata, right? The capacity to have this wisdom. And then feeling into the depth of your space, so the space that is behind you, and the space that is in front of you. feeling into all those who are at our back all of our ancestors who came before us and remembering that we are practicing for the seven generations that will come in front of us you might want to keep the eyes open gazing at this beautiful imagery

or you might want to rest the eyes by looking down to a spot on the earth or closing your eyes all together and taking a moment to arrive in this body in the moment i say this body notice saying the immediate vision that might arise Part of this body that we feel doesn't belong. A part of this body that has discomfort. What is it like to just arrive in this form? This form of a human body. A form that has feeling.

Feelings of both pleasure and pain and all the nuance in between. This form that gathers perception through the sense gates of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, the feeling. The consciousness, the mind that comes alive. So what is it to rest on this cushion, on this chair, being a form? that can have feeling through touch, through our emotions, that can receive perception based on our sense gates that has a consciousness.

So understanding Anata through these aggregates use five scandas. Letting go of those things that we perceive as me, my, I, and resting into the joy of being being free from those external identities that can lock us into a box that don't allow us to be in the fullness of our humanity. So I invite you to rest. in that, in the joy of these two dancing skeletons in the charnel ground. Thank you. With each out breath that we take, can we feel another layer of self beginning to shed? That which keeps us in bondage, which keeps us from our

joy what can we lay down but part of this identity can we renounce and what is the practices that we can engage in, that remind us of who we be underneath all of the doing and the adornment and the grasping for status and positionality. When all of that is empty, What is left? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for your practice. Thank you so much, Puka, for that wonderful session. 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 podcasts Awaken which uses art to explore the dynamic paths to enlightenment and what it means to wake up available wherever you listen to podcasts

and to learn more about the Rubin Museum's work around the world visit Rubenmuseum.org thank you for listening. Have a mindful day. Thank you. Thank you.