Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Rebecca Li 04/05/2021

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

Theme: Awaken Artwork: Lama (Teacher), Milarepa; Tibet; 18th century; stone; Rubin Museum of Art; gift of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation;[http://therubin.org/31h]; Teacher: Rebecca Li The Rubin Museum presents a weekly online 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 a recording of the live online session and includes an opening talk and 20-minute sitting session. The guided meditation begins at 21:28. This meditation is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg, teachers from the NY Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. To attend a Mindfulness Meditation online session in the future 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, Dawn Eshelman. Every Monday 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 practice, currently held virtually. 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 Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. And now, please enjoy your practice. Hi, everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's our weekly mindfulness meditation practice online with the Rubin Museum of Art. I'm Dawn Eshelman. And it's great to be here with you to practice, to look at art together and meditate. We are a museum of Himalayan art and ideas in New York City.

And so great to see some some names popping up in the chat there, some new folks, some familiar faces. Great to see where you're joining from. We are about to take a look at a work of art together from our collection and then we'll hear a brief talk from our teacher today is the wonderful Rebecca Lee. Then we'll sit together just 15 to 20 minutes guided by Rebecca Lee. So we'll take a look at this artwork together. Before we do that, I'll just tell you that our theme for this month comes from an exhibition that we've just recently opened. It's beautiful. It's inspiring. It's it's called awaken a tibetan buddhist journey toward enlightenment and it really tracks that journey from facing chaos all the way through

awakening or enlightenment and it's called awaken and that is what we're exploring this month here together this idea of awaken what it means to wake up spiritually in your life. Sometimes we talk about that using different words like freedom, liberation. So let's take a look at this art together here. Here we see Milarepa. And Milarepa is a teacher, Lama Milarepa, but was a student, of course, for many years, as all teachers were and are. And this object is from Tibet. This is 18th century, made out of stone.

And Milarepa is sitting here in this kind of calm posture with one leg folded in meditation and the other leg ready to step out, his left hand is seated in a relaxed gesture of meditation on his lap. And then his right hand, it might look like he is leaning his hand against his head there, or his head against his hand. But in fact, he's cupping his ear. And this is a gesture that we often associate with Milarepa. And part of the reason is that Milarepa was known to sing in some of his most palpable moments of awakening. This is attributed to the deep listening that he gave to his own teacher.

So both singing and listening here. So we see that he's black in color. He's adorned with these golden yellow robes with just hints of green and a little bit of red as well. And the story of Milarepa, you'll hear a little bit more at the end of today, but I'll give you a hint of it, which is really that he's known for this epic life of lots of ups and downs and his own remarkable determination and personal growth from confusion to clarity, just like we were talking about from facing chaos to awakening. He actually had a life that early on had a lot of struggle and difficulty and grief and even causing pain and grief to others. And through that, he struggled, he found, he tried many different kind of ways of escaping. And finally, he came to be a student and seek out a master teacher. And he really dedicated himself to this learning and actually sometimes shown for having a green hue on his body, he would retreat into the caves and meditate and meditate, his clothing would be threadbare, he would eat just what he could find, which would often be nettles.

would eat just what he could find, which would often be nettles. And so he would be just so green himself from eating all these nettles. And this is kind of how he is best known, is for this depiction of him just in this moment of determination, with hardly any food, sitting in his cave, meditating, wilderness around him. And it shows us how one can progress from being caught in the cycle of confusion, samsara, to becoming a student, entering the path of dharma, and eventually understanding the meaning of being awake. And that listening and singing is sort of the signal of this experience of awakening. Now we'll bring on our wonderful teacher, Rebecca Lee, who is a Dharma heir in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen and is the founder and

guiding teacher of Chan Dharma community. She started practicing with Master Sheng Yen in the 90s and served as his translator until he passed in 2009. She later trained with Dr. Simon Child. She teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures, leads retreats. You can find lots about her at rebeccalee.org. And she is a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey, where she also serves as faculty director

of the Alan Daly Center for the Study of Social Justice. She's just put out a new book called Allow Joy Into Our Hearts, Child Practice in Uncertain Times, which really came out of talks with her and her students, and they really championed that into being for her. So, Rebecca Lee, it's great to have you here. Over to you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Dawn, for this wonderful Over to you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Don, for this wonderful introduction of today's artwork.

And I thought this is such a great artwork to remind us, and we can learn very much from Milarepa's story, that even though one has done something in the past and made grave mistakes, it doesn't mean that we are forever a bad person and there is no way for us to practice and achieve enlightenment or live another way of talking about it, lead a life of compassion and wisdom and help a lot of people. And so I find it a very inspiring story to introduce us to this topic of awaken for this month.

And when we think about the word awaken, it's helpful to remember to think about what we awaken, what our cultivation lead us to awakening of. And really from the story of Milarepa, you can see that what we awaken to is the true nature of our existence. That instead of being stuck in his deep regret, Milarepa was able to see that the self is empty. We use the word sunyata.

Now, this is a very misunderstood word, so I would like to explain it a little bit because our tendency is to think of ourselves as a fixed entity. And so, for example, someone with Milarepa's experience earlier in his life, he may have this notion in his mind that I'm this horrible person, fixed entity. And of course, this creates the idea that there's this me in opposition from the world, from others, separation from others. And that's actually an illusion, because the true nature of our being is that every moment, every moment of our existence is the coming together of many, many causes and conditions. So it does not mean that we don't exist.

We very much exist in this moment of everything coming together. The teaching of the emptiness of self really refers to how we exist, really refers to how we exist is that we everything exists including this moment of experience of ourself exists temporarily and um that there is no permanent self inherently existing uh independently existing entity called self but we we are most definitely existing right now, moments after moments after moments, all of us here co-creating this moment together. And when we remember this, then we are able to see and unlearn this unhelpful idea that we are separated from others, that we are in opposition against others. And in fact, the reality is that we are truly interconnected with everyone, everything.

Then we are able to embrace fully the practice that when we do anything to bring benefits to others, like love and generosity, we are the first person to benefit. And we probably have experienced that ourselves. And so when we listen to a story like that of Milarepa, we may also come away with the impression that, oh, it involves me going into a cave and eating nettle. And it really, you know, it would take this very arduous journey. And I don't think I am up to it. Maybe that's not my path.

Like, I guess I won't be able to cultivate to be awakened. But the reality is that every one of us can cultivate the practice and awaken to the true nature of our being right here, right now, in our life, living with our family and our job. Now in our life, living with our family and our job. So all we need to do is that every moment we remember to cultivate clear awareness of this fact that our present moment experience is the coming together of many causes and conditions, moment to moment. And so I will explain that a little bit to give you an idea what I'm talking about so it doesn't sound so abstract. So the self-experience of this moment of me being here, it's really has these components of the body and mind that are influenced by the environment. So every moment when we practice using our meditative method to be fully here in the present moment,

then we will notice that our bodily sensations are constantly changing. This is not how we usually understand our body, right? We have this sense that my body is this, this is my body, and we may register a certain experience of a body and reify it. But if we really stay with the changing sensations of the body moment after moment, we'll notice that how we feel, for example, like many of us, we can notice the energy level really changes throughout the day. Like in the morning, maybe we feel a little bit more energetic, especially if we had an opportunity to do some exercise,

to move the body around, do some yoga, stretching. We feel high energy. There's some part in the afternoon the energy is lower. It has something to do with our health condition, with food we eat. If we have allergy, allergy season really can take us down. So we can notice that not only does the bodily sensation felt in terms of energy level changes throughout

the day, from day to day, from moment to moment, it's really influenced by the environment. And of course, many of us have experienced sitting in front of the same screen in the same chair for hours and hours, quite different from how we used to do our work, for example, moving from one location to another location, talking to different people on the way. And we experienced our work quite differently because of the environment that we have put our body in. And similarly,

we'll notice that our mind, when we meditate and we are staying right here in this moment, noticing that moment after moment, their thoughts, the state of the mind changes constantly. thoughts, the state of the mind changes constantly. So sometimes, you know, there's not much going on, or maybe you had a chance to do some meditation, you feel that that moment, and that stretch of the day or like stretch of days, you may feel relatively calm, but then if you look closely, if you look closely there are moment and moment to moment changes so maybe you notice um today busy mind right this moment and um which was conditioned by perhaps a a lot happening over the weekend or the last week or seeing a huge list of messages in your inbox, many things for you to decide or plan, a lot going on in the mind, running through your mind, busy mind,

or maybe agitated. You will feel a bit agitated in the mind, and perhaps it's the echo from past moments or days of activity in your life. For example, maybe some family drama over the holiday weekend some of us had experienced. Maybe we received news about what happened in the world or news about our loved one maybe noticing that our elderly parents' health is deteriorating. Maybe they are really not able to handle certain things because of some cognitive deterioration slowly. Or maybe we got news of maybe our family member, partner, children, struggling with depression or motivation to do their work,

really struggling. So there are all these things that happen in our life that's our, when we think of our environment, that sort of affects our mind, of course, our anxiety and stress will affect our body. And of course, there will be, from time to time, memories of the past being triggered by something happening right now, in the moment. Let me trigger grief or resentment about something that happened to us in the past. Regrets of a mistake, great mistake we made. So moment to moment, we notice these thoughts, feelings arising, sensation of a body.

And when we allow all this to be here, which is not how we usually do it, we try to turn away, block them out, try to fix it, change it, instead of just allowing, allowing everything that's already here, sensations, thoughts, feelings to be here and see that they are like clouds. They're moving through and you're here to fully

experience and see them. And then they will sort of move on, dissolve. And it is really unnecessary for us to engage in a battle against it. But that's not how we usually respond. And when we try to block them out, remove them, change them, that cause additional agitation in the mind. And very often, we also fall into this habit of thinking that something is wrong with me because of what we are experiencing in our body and mind. And instead, if we can remember, remember to practice being fully here with the body and mind as it is right now.

Relaxing. Relaxing into the clarity of this moment. Stop trying to change and improve the past. Stop resisting reality. Then we can see clearly what it is that we can do and what it is that we can't do in this moment. So for example, if our mind is agitated perhaps because we heard news about health issues

that our elderly parents are experiencing. So perhaps we can see clearly that there may not be many good years we will be able to spend with our elderly parents. Maybe we can see what I can do, maybe is to make adjustment in my schedule so that it's possible for me to spend a little bit more quality time with them or see if I can make arrangement to get some help that will help them out a bit. And perhaps we notice regrets about some mistake we made in the past caused harm to others. We feel very, very sorry.

And maybe we're still feeling the repercussion of the negative consequences of what we did. And so we can notice that and accept full responsibility for what we did. We cannot undo it. And the consequence of the past mistakes and without the accompanying resentment. And also, they will allow us to commit to not repeating that mistake. And we can see clearly what we cannot do. If we cannot do certain things now, even though we want to, then we let go of it. It does not mean giving up. Let go of it. And we can see if we can cultivate the causes and conditions

for us to be able to do that in a future moment. Maybe it involves taking care of ourselves now first so that we can be in a better place to do something. So every moment we remember to practice seeing how our body and mind is really the coming together of causes and conditions. It is a moment of awakening because we are seeing into the true nature of our being. And the more we remember to be fully here with clear awareness, the more we can live in accordance with wisdom and compassion so we can bring benefits to others and ourselves and reduce our suffering.

So let's practice together for a few moments to cultivate this clear awareness in meditation. I'd like to invite you to set your body up in this posture that allows the lower back to fall into its natural curvature so that you can let the skeletal structure to hold up the body, minimizing the use of the muscles, allowing the body to relax and the mind can relax. And we begin. Feel the relaxation of the top of the head.

And feel the relaxation spread to the forehead. Check to see if we're holding tension in this area from worrying, perhaps. And allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the we hold a lot of tension in this area by habit. From a lot of judging, comparing, analyzing, planning. Right here, right now, there's no need to do that. We can give these muscles a vacation and allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the facial muscles.

Check to see if we're holding tension in these muscles by habit. And allow, allow the tension to melt away. And allow, allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the entire head. And feel the relaxation spread to the neck muscles. Directly experience the subtle sensations of these muscles softening as we allow the tension to melt away.

Allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the shoulder muscles. And down the arms. To the forearms. And all the way to the chest area. Check to see if we are holding tension in this area by habit. If we are holding tension in this area by habit, maybe from anxiety, sadness, grief, sorrow, remorse. Right here, right now, we can give them a rest.

And allow, allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the torso to the lower abdomen. And then We hold a lot of tension in this area by habit. Trust that the skeletal structure can hold up the body. These muscles don't need to work so hard. We can give them a vacation too. And allow,

allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the upper back. And the muscles between the shoulder blades. between the shoulder blades, allowing the way down to the lower back. Into the buttocks where we can feel the sensations of the body. On the chair or cushion we're sitting on. And feel the relaxation spread down the thighs and down the legs and all the way to the toes. And feel the relaxation spread to the entire body. Sitting right here, right now.

Moment after moment, with this relaxed, wakeful mind, maintaining, cultivating this clear awareness of the subtle changing sensations of the body Right here, right now, in this space. And we notice subtle movements of the body breathing. breathing. How wonderful this living breathing body can stay with the subtle changing sensations of the body breathing. Moment after moment,

allowing the body to breathe on its own. There's no need to make the breathing any different. Stay with the changing sensations of the body breathing. Breathing. Gently resting your attention on the changing sensations of the body breathing to anchor us to the emerging present moment, moment after moment. And if we notice our attention drifting off, losing contact with the breathing body, no problem. is to use that opportunity to practice finding your way back.

To come back to the direct experience of the breathing body. It doesn't matter how often or how long the mind trips off, as long as you eventually find your way back, you're practicing well. and you may notice thoughts and feelings coming through there may be a lot a few taking different feels shape maybe memories, fragments of conversations.

They're there already, allow. Allow them. No need to push them away. You're only agitating the mind unnecessarily by doing so. Like everything, they will be here for a bit and on their own will move on. If we allow them.

So allow these thoughts and feelings to be fully seen and experienced. And when they are done and ready to move on, allow them to move on. No need to identify with them. Moment after moment practicing this way

we are waking up to the true nature of our being. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Maintain this clear awareness of the changing sensations as we begin to move the body. Taking good care of this transition from stillness to motion. And continue to cultivate this clear awareness and bring it into our life lived in motion. Thank you, Rebecca. That concludes this week's practice. If you would like to support the Ruben and this meditation series, we invite you to become a member. Thank you for listening.