Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Rebecca Li 12/14/2023

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Theme: Ritual Artwork: Mahakala, Legden, Excellent One; Tibet; 15th century; Gilt copper alloy with inlays of semiprecious stones; Rubin Museum of Art;http://therubin.org/37qTeacher: Rebecca LiThe 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 15:33. 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. Good afternoon and Tashi Delek. Happy Hanukkah. Today is the seventh day of Hanukkah and tonight the eighth candle is lit.

And may I dedicate all the lights to illuminate all the darkness. And with that, I'd like to welcome all of you to our 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 New York City, and we are 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, Rebecca Lee, 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 the artwork for today's session is this beautiful sculpture of Mahakala Legden. Mahakala in Sanskrit means the great dark or the black one and in Tibetan he's known as Ngombo Penak Chen. The Legden means excellent one and the sculpture is origin from Tibet dated 15th century, gilt copper alloy with inlays of semi-precious stones. It's about 13.5 into 7.5 into 6 inches. The wrathful deity Mahakala is deeply associated with ritual practice due to his attribute of bestowing protection. Mahakala is a wrathful or fierce emanation of Avalokiteshvara. Mahakala, a super mundane Dharma protector who appears in a number of forms such as four arms, six arms, often in Tibetan known as Ngombo Chakduk or Ngombo Chajipa.

This particular one is a Nyingma tradition. The Nyingma school is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The sculpture is associated with the hidden treasure, Ther Ma, teachings. It is engraved with auspicious symbols and motifs of vajras, lotuses, clouds, and phoenixes. It is inlaid with quartz crystal and lapis lazuli. Mahakala's appearance is in a very fierce, wrathful form. This is emphasized by his blazing hair that stands on end. Although Mahakala is portrayed as fierce, his role is that of a guardian,

protecting practitioners from negative forces and destroying obstacles on the path to enlightenment. So a super mundane Dharma protector who appears in many forms. Now let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Rebecca Lee. Dr. Rebecca Lee, a Dharma heir in the lineage of Chan Master Shen Yen, is the founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma community. She teaches meditation and Dharma classes, gives public lectures, and leads retreats in North America and Europe.

Dr. Li is the author of Allow Joy Into Our Hearts, Chan Practice in Uncertain Times, arts, Chan practice in uncertain times, and her new book titled Illumination, a guide to the Buddhist method of no method was published by Shambhala Publications in October. The book is available here at the Rubin gift shop as well. She's a sociology professor and lives with her husband in New Jersey. Her talks and writings can be found at rebeccalee.org. Rebecca, thanks so much for being here. Please help me in welcoming Dr. Rebecca Lee. Welcome, everyone. It's lovely to be here practicing with all of you. Welcome everyone. It's lovely to be here practicing with all of you. And thank you, Tashi, for the wonderful introduction.

The theme of this month is ritual. And most people think of ritual as something that's perhaps only performed by religious figures such as the priest. And perhaps you can only participate in a place like a monastery or with a group, and perhaps it often will involve having a lot of different special Dharma instruments. It may not seem very accessible for us, including ritual in our practice, but the truth is we can actually incorporate simple rituals in our daily meditation practice. And it will be very helpful to sustain and support our practice to help us yield benefits beyond calming the mind in our meditation practice. So I'd like to share this simple ritual that we can all incorporate into our practice, which is to join our palms before we start our meditation each time. So this simple ritual of joining our palms

is quite important that we remember it's a ritual so that when we do it, we're not just going through the motion. It's like, get it over with so then I can get into the real meditation. This is the practice itself. This is part of the meditation that we are practicing. And just by bringing our palms together, we bring our mind to the body to help us fully embody. And also, it settles the mind, just the movement of bringing our palms together. So we may find that before our meditation, our mind's kind of scattered and agitated. Just the gesture of bringing our palms together will already begin to calm and settle our mind. And when we perform this simple ritual, what we are doing is we are bringing the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha jewel into our heart and transforming the space we're in into a sacred

space of practice. Wherever we are, we can create this sacred space for our practice. we can create this sacred space for our practice. And while we are joining our palms, we can also connect ourselves to a number of important attitudinal qualities. One is joy. So this moment that when we join our palms together as we begin our practice,

we can remind ourselves how fortunate we are that among all the billions of people in the world, we get to encounter this wonderful teaching. Think of how small the likelihood is, but we are the lucky ones that we get to encounter the practice, the teachings, and we have the circumstances that allow us to actually engage in the practice, the teachings, and we have the circumstances that allow us to actually engage in the practice. So we are indeed very blessed. So the joy of recognizing how blessed we are arises in our mind and touches us. And it also allows us to tap into the Sangha jewel because it allows us to remember that actually there are many, many, many generations of human beings, practitioners like ourselves since the Buddha's time

who have engaged in this practice. And they engage in this practice because they want to keep the practice alive so that it can be passed on to future generations of people like ourselves so that we can benefit from the teaching to free us from suffering. So when we tap into the Sangha Jewel, what it is is that we remind ourselves that we are not alone on this path. There are a lot of people traveling this path with us over the generations. And also we allow ourselves to be touched by their compassion, by their great vow, feeling very loved by so many people over the generations,

over the generations remembering that. And also, we remember why we practice. Because sometimes when we do meditation, we're like, it becomes one more thing you have to do. Oh, no, I have to do this. But like bringing our palms together also remind us, why am I doing this? Well, I am doing this because of compassion,

because we want to be kinder, more patient, more present for our loved ones and for everyone we encounter in our daily life. That's why it's out of love, out of compassion, and out of our desire, our aspiration to bring benefits to everyone in our life. That's why we practice. In this way, we remember that we are sitting in meditation. Yes, we may feel some calmness, but actually it goes beyond that. It helps us cultivate these qualities. But how does it happen? How do we do that?

Because sometimes when we say, I want to be kind, I want to be patient, it becomes like I want, I want. But when we are with someone, we're impatient and we are mean and we forget all that stuff. And so that's why when we bring our palms together

and remember why we practice, then when we engage in meditation practice, we remember to make use of what we learn in the meditation method to settle the mind and practice doing that. And when the mind settles, it allows us to see clearly the subtle movements of the mind that allows us to release unhelpful habits and cultivate these qualities that we

would like to cultivate. So for example, patience. We might notice that we have this habit of being impatient. And when we are in meditation, and we notice the mind, we want to be here, I want to be on the method. And then the mind drifts off. Oh, why does it happen again? Hey, so you notice this impatience of wanting us to be able to do this now. Now. And so when we recognize this habit of impatience, and we can release it and not act it out and not beat ourselves up, not be so toehard on ourselves and be patient with ourselves and remind ourselves, no problem.

When the mind drifts off, it's an opportunity to practice remembering to come back to the method. So all we need to do is just to come back over and over again. And when we practice cultivating patience this way with ourselves, then when we are with others, when we notice this habit of impatience coming up, we can apply the same attitude. Okay, yes, you know, they are agitated or they are cranky. Okay, no problem. Let me just be here and stay with them. The patience we cultivate in meditation will also benefit others in our life. And similarly, kindness. When we notice the habit of being harsh on ourselves, when we notice that we are telling ourselves,

I'm failing, I'm not doing as well as I want to in my meditation and want to beat ourselves up, notice this habit and then it's like no problem. And remember to be unconditionally kind to ourselves. It's okay, even my mind trickles off over and over and over and over again, and I fall into these unhelpful habits. It's okay, I just come back. And so this unconditional kindness that we cultivate toward ourselves will show up when we encounter someone who's in a difficult situation. Instead of judging them, being harsh, trying to fix them, it's like just be with how they are now, moment after moment.

And it brings us to the practice of being fully present. We want to be more present with others. Well, we learn to have been fully present with ourselves. How do we do that? Well, we learn to remember that every moment is brand new. And notice this habit of telling ourselves, I already know. I already know this breath. Oh, this breath is the same old breath. I feel boring. No, every moment is brand new. And let me be fully here to be with this breath, this body-mind as it is,

moment after moment after moment, not assuming that I already know. This is to cultivate being fully present with ourselves. And then when we encounter our loved one, when we notice this habit of, oh, it's like my husband, like the same old guy. No, this is a brand new moment of this miracle of my being able to spend time with this person.

Let me be fully here as they are right now. And that's how we can be more present with people in our life. So remembering why we practice will help us get through the difficult moment when we feel like, I don't know why I'm doing this. Then I'm not going anywhere. But actually, you are. Every moment you practice, you suffer less. When we suffer less, we are easier for others to be with us. We are already making the world a better place every moment we reduce our suffering and then we become more available to be kind and patient and present with others. So let's practice together. I'd like to invite you to sit in a comfortable position. make sure our head our neck our spine our line facilitated by tucking in the chin slightly

and i take you through a whole body relaxation and we begin feel the relaxation of the top of the head. Directly experience the subtle sensations as the scalp relaxes. And feel the relaxation spread to the forehead. Check to see if we hold tension in the area between our eyebrows by habit, perhaps from worrying. Perhaps from worrying. And allow, allow the tension to melt away.

And feel the relaxation spread to the eyeballs and eye muscles. We tend to hold a lot of tension in these muscles in our daily life from all the comparing, analyzing, judging, planning. They're right here right now. We don't need to do any of 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 hold tension in some part of our face by habit. Perhaps to hold a certain facial expression for the world to see.

Right here, right now, there's no need to do that. We can give these muscles a vacation. And allow, allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the entire head. your head and feel the relaxation spread down to the neck and shoulder muscles. experience the subtle sensations of these muscles softening like melting butter as we allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread down the arms to the forearms and all the way down to the fingertips and feel the relaxation spread to the chest area the chest area. Check to see if now, we can give them a rest.

And allow, allow the tension to melt away. to melt away and feel the relaxation spread down the back, spread down the torso all the way down to the lower abdomen. Trust that the skeletal structure can hold up the body. We don't need to tense up the lower abdominal muscles. And allow, allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the upper back directly experience the subtle sensations of these muscles softening like melting butter as we allow the tension to melt away. Spread down the back, to the lower back, and all the way down to the buttocks, where we feel the sensations of the body on our seat.

And feel the relaxation spread to the toes and feel the relaxation of of the entire body sitting right here, right now. Moment after moment, with this clear wakeful mind. And as we do so, we notice the subtle changing sensations as the body breathes. And we can rest our attention gently as the body breathes and we can rest our attention gently on the subtle changing sensations of the body breathing

to anchor us to each emerging present moment. There's no need to hold tightly to the breathing. Just allow the body to breathe. The body knows how to breathe. It's been reborn. When you notice the mind drifting off, losing contact with the subtle changing sensations of the body breathing, not a problem. Use that as an opportunity to practice remembering to come back, to reconnect with the direct experience of the subtle changing sensations of the body breathing.

It doesn't matter how often or how long the mind trips off, as long as we're able to find our way back, we're practicing well. And if we notice thoughts coming through, there's no need to chase them away. Allow them to come through. They're already part of the present moment. Allow them to be fully felt and seen and heard as they are without trying to comment or change them. Fully experienced as they are. And when they are ready to move on, allow them to move on. cultivate this total clear awareness of the body-mind sitting in this space

moment after moment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Takk for ating med. Maintain this clear awareness as we transition from stillness to motion. to motion as we move our fingers, our palms, and rotate our body from small circle into bigger and bigger circles in one direction. Stay with the changing sensations as the body moves moment after moment. moment and notice the urge to let the mind scatter just because the formal meditation period has ended we reverse direction we take good care of this transition we can take the clarity and stability cultivated in our sitting meditation into our life, lived in motion. Thank you, everyone, for your practice. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. and in-person offerings, sign up for a monthly newsletter at rubinmuseum.org slash enews. I am Tashi Chodron. Thank you so much for listening. Have a mindful day.