Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Rebecca Li 07/25/2018 Repost

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Theme: Emptiness Artwork: Vajra and Bell; late 19th century; silver and metal;[http://therubin.org/313] Teacher: Rebecca Li The Rubin Museum 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. Due to the holiday, this week we’re sharing a previously recorded meditation. This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience in Chelsea, New York City, and includes an opening talk and 20-minute sitting session. The guided meditation begins at 13:06. 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. Please enjoy your practice. So Rebecca Lee is a Dharma heir in the lineage of the Chan Master Sheng Yen and started practicing meditation in 1995. She trained with Master Sheng Yen in 99 and then Simon Child to receive full Dharma transmission in 2016. She's the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community and 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. Her talks and writings can be found at rebeccalee.org. Please welcome her back, Rebecca Lee. It's nice to be back. And the topic of emptiness is indeed rather commonly misunderstood. I would

like to say that is the most misunderstood concept in the Dharma, but it's incredibly important because what Shakyamuni Buddha realized is emptiness, the true nature of reality. Unfortunately, the English word used to translate this idea, emptiness, also had the connotation of non-existence. And that is definitely not what it means. That's not what this concept sunyata in Sanskrit, that's not what it means. But it's very commonly understood as that and think that the whole,

many people think that the practice is about realizing that I don't actually exist or the world actually doesn't exist. And it can really take us down some very problematic path. And so I want to talk about this right off the bat to get this established in our mind. So what does it actually mean? What it means is that actually everything exists. Everything. Every single one of us sitting here exists right here, right now, the way we are right now. Everything exists, But temporarily. So you are a different person now than when you came to the museum building,

when you were waiting outside. The way you feel right now is different from just a few moments ago. And the reason is that everything that exists in this moment is the coming together of many, many, many different causes and conditions. You're not standing anymore. You're sitting on this comfortable chair. You're inside this hall. You're not outside where you are surrounded by people chatting.

And so our environment and us are completely connected. So our environment and us are completely connected and all these sensory inputs are part of our present moment existence. But we usually don't have any sense of that. We don't have any sense of that. We are too preoccupied with all kinds of things in our mind. And Shakyamuni talked about liberation. Liberation from what?

The most important thing that we need to be liberated from actually is our misunderstanding of the true nature of our being. Instead of truly understanding that everything that we experience is empty in the sense that everything is existing, but temporarily, moment after moment after moment, we have a very strong tendency to believe that there is some permanence in something, and we want to hold on to that. And you might say, no, I know. I know everything is impermanent. I know that. We know that

intellectually, but at the emotive level, we believe something is permanent, and we're either constantly looking for that, or we are holding on to that without our realizing and so the process of the practice is to help us realize what it is that we are holding on to and when we really see that it would be quite easy for us to see the fatality of holding on to it when we see that what we are holding on to is really not what we thought we are. So the process of practice is actually really understanding the true nature of our being, of our experience, of our self. That moment after moment after moment, that is all coming together

of many things. And all these things are constantly changing. But in our mind, we believe that some of it is permanent. And so, what are we not free from? Or what are we trapped by? We are trapped by our idea of ourselves, our idea of who we are that we may have created from some time ago, or our idea of who we ought to be sometime in our life, and we're trapped by that. So the process of practice towards liberation

is to realize all this, the emptiness of it, and starting with understanding what exists and the nature of existence. So that is why the teaching of emptiness is such an important part of Mahayana Buddhism, not just in Tibetan Buddhism, in Chan Buddhism. It's a very central teaching in the practice of Chan. And it is not a philosophical endeavor. It is very much connected to our daily life. Let me share a personal example with you. It just happened to me.

Don was mentioning I just returned from Hong Kong. I just touched down from a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong on Monday. And before, less than 12 hours before I had to board the flight, I really injured my back. I couldn't really get up from a lying down position without enormous amount of pain. And my husband at home in New Jersey wasn't sure if I should get on the plane or listening to how much pain I was in. And because I was reporting to him how,

because he had a lot of lower back pain problems, so I was getting advice from him what I should and should not do. And he was like, well, I'm not sure you should get on the plane with all this pain. I'm not sure you should get on the plane with all this pain. And I said, well, I could feel that it's less painful than five minutes ago. And then as I was talking to him on the phone, I could feel that I was sitting there and I was okay.

My back was sore, but it wasn't enormously painful. And I told him, well, you know, I'm going to be on the plane for 15 hours. All I need to do is to sit. I think I'm going to be okay. So where else can I just sit for 15 hours without having to move around? And I want to share this example. We encounter this all the time, right? We get up feeling really lousy either physically or emotionally.

And our tendency is to believe that that's me. That I'm this. I'm this pain. Or I'm this sadness. Or I'm this anger. And we fix this sadness, or I'm this anger. And we fix it in our mind and make it permanent and allow ourselves to be trapped by it for the rest of the day, or week, or month, or years. That's what I meant by we create our idea of who we are

or our world and then get trapped by it. But the practice allows us to be free from it by seeing that actually our experience of ourselves changes from moment to moment. If we only bother to pay attention, next moment, slightly less painful. Next moment, different pain. Even though it's maybe not less painful, but different, it has changed. And it allows us to see that that permanence we have set up in our mind

cannot be held up. And before we know it, we feel different. Maybe that sadness that we woke up with, or that anger we woke up with, oh, not there anymore. We don't need to try to get rid of it. We don't need to get rid of it. We don't need to get rid of it. All we need to do is to stay with our present moment experience, moment after moment after moment. The reason why it's so difficult is that we haven't trained our mind to stay with the present moment. We get

distracted. And then we say, oh, I feel horrible, I feel horrible, and then our mind went somewhere else. We come back, I still feel horrible because we are mainly going back to our belief of how we feel, not how we actually feel. The practice of meditation allows us to train our mind to be connected with our body and mind at all times, moment after moment after moment, which then affords us the opportunity to really see that, yes, it is really true that this body and mind is impermanent, but not in the sense that it's bad.

It's like a flow, a constant flow. And this allows us to truly appreciate everything that happens in our life. Like right now. Right now. This moment of all of us being here, practicing together, is a miracle. All the causes and conditions that makes it possible for you to come

and for me to come, for me to be back here in the U.S. at all. So, and then a few moments later, you will be back to the rest of your day. But right now is this wonderful, precious moment. And so will the next moment. And this is something we can practice with, making use of the concept and the teaching and the practice of emptiness as well.

So it's not about things not existing, that I don't exist, that nothing matters. All those are erroneous understanding of the Dharma. So we will make use of this to set our mind for this period of meditation. We will make a commitment to stay with the practice. What we do is we set up our body to a position that allows the body to be relaxed. You might find that if you have anything tight-fitting on you, glasses on your face, it will help you to take them off, to facilitate relaxation of the body.

Start up with feeling the body sitting here, feeling, being aware of you sitting in this space with everyone around you, being supported by everyone practicing with you. And we practice staying with the body and mind in this moment. practicing with you. And we practice staying with the body and mind in this moment. And we notice the mind drifting off, no problem. This gentle, gentle attitude is the compassion, the compassion that accompanies the cultivation of wisdom.

They go hand in hand. So we begin. We feel the relaxation at the top of the head, like melting butter. And feel the relaxation spread to the forehead and check to see if we're holding tension in these muscles maybe between the eyebrows and allow the tension to melt away and feel the relaxation spread to the eyeballs

and eye muscles and feel the relaxation spread to the facial muscles. Check to see if we're holding tension in our face by habit. Maybe to hold a facial expression for the world to see. Right now, you don't need to do that. And truly allow your face to relax. and truly allow your face to relax. And feel the relaxation spread to the entire head.

Feel the relaxation spread down the neck like melting butter. Feel the relaxation spread to the shoulder muscles allowing the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the arms, down to the forearms, and all the way down to the fingertips and feel the relaxation spread to the chest area. Check to see if we're holding tension in this area, maybe from anxiety or worries.

And give this anxiety a rest and allow the tension to melt away and feel the relaxation spread down the torso to the lower abdomen. We hold a lot of tension in this area by habit. Allow the tension to melt away and feel the relaxation spread to the upper back area

between the shoulder blades allowing the tension to melt away and feel the relaxation spread down the back all the way down to the buttocks and feel the body sitting on the chair Feel the body sitting on the chair. Allow the relaxation to continue to spread down the legs and all the way down to the toes and feel the relaxation of the entire body sitting right here

right now Right here. Right now. Moment after moment. Real aware. We're aware of the subtle changes and sensations of the body. As the body breathes, we feel the subtle movements, subtle movements of this living, breathing body, allowing ourselves to fully experience this miracle. All the cells working the way they are to allow this present moment

Make use of our bodily sensations as an anchor of our attention gently on the moment-to-moment changes of the body's experience. If we notice the mind falling asleep or drifting off, no problem. The moment you notice that you're here, no need to be harsh with ourselves. Compassion. compassion, unconditional, gentle, loving-kindness for ourselves moment after moment,

whatever the body and mind is experiencing. We are here. No need to judge all we need to do is to be clearly aware Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The Thank you so much, 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.