Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Rebecca Li 12/19/24

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

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 21:49.Teacher: Rebecca Li Theme: Illumination Artwork: Goddess of the Dawn, Marichi; Zanabazar; Mongolia; late 17th early 18th century; gilt copper alloy; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2005.16.26Learn 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 Chodron. Every Thursday, we offer a meditation session at New York Inside Meditation Center that draws inspiration from an artwork from the Rubens 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. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon and Tashi Delek. Welcome. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts Mindfulness Meditation here at the New York Inside Meditation Center. I'm Tashi Chodron, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be your host. I've missed you all last two Thursdays, and you were in very good hands, so I'm sure you didn't miss me. So Ruben is a global hub for Himalayan art, and we're so glad 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, Rebecca Lee.

So nice to have you back. For 15 to 20 minutes, she will guide us with meditation instruction. Let's take a look at today's theme and artwork. The artwork for today's session is this beautiful goddess of Dhanmarichi. In Tibetan, she's known as Vizelchenma. This is origin Mongolia, dated later 17 to early 18th century. Gilded copper alloy, about 15 and a half into 10 and a half into seven and a quarter inches. And it's a beautiful sculpture. The connection to the path, our path to awakening,

to blissfulness, to openness. And Marichi, the Buddhist goddess, appears in many forms. She manifests in multiple arms, six to eight arms, to two arms, as you see here. The sculpture presents her as an attendant to the goddess Tara. Now, most of you may know Tara emanates in 21 different forms, and out of the 21 forms, Marichi is known as the 21 form. She often appears on the right side of the Tara. In fact, the description seems to say that this particular Marichi might have been on the right side of the Tara, part of the 21 forms. is attributed to the exceptional Mongolian artist Zanabazar, who lived from 1635 until 1723. And his workshop, Zanabazar's symbolic or signature characteristics of his art is this translucent motif on the Marichi's clothing,

and then the fuller lips and the three-bent, you will see, sort of the way she's sitting with the armlets and anklets and all of the beautiful ornaments. Zanabazar was Mongolia's first incarnate lama. In fact, he's known to be one of the greatest students of the great fifth Dalai Lama during that period and was sent to Mongolia to teach Buddhism. And now let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Rebecca Lee. Dr. Rebecca Lee is a Dharma heir in the lineage of Chan master Shen Yang, 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. Rebecca Lee is the author of Allow Joy Into Our Hearts, Chen Practices in Uncertain Times, and her new book titled Illumination, A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No Method, was published by Shambhala Publication in October of last year. She's a sociology professor and lives with her husband in New Jersey. Her talks and writings can be found at www.rebeccalee.org. Dr. Rebecca Lee, thank you so much for being here, and please help me in welcoming Rebecca Lee. Thank you, Tashif. And I'm delighted to be sharing practice today with you

in this beautiful space, New York Insights. And I was told that the theme of this month's practice is illumination. And I don't even notice that happens to be the name of my book, Illumination. So I thought I would take this time to share with you the practice of silent illumination, which is the focus of the book. And when I looked through the chapters in the book that talked about the practice of silent illumination, one caught my eye. It is a chapter that talked about silent illumination being a different way of being.

Our usual way of being is the way of suffering. And silent illumination is a different way of being. A way of being that is not suffering, that is freedom from suffering. And the subtitle of the chapter is, Allowing All to be Illuminated. Illumination, what is it about? What it's referring to is about the practice of allowing the present moment to be as it is

without succumbing to our very entrenched habits of wanting to objectify, turning the present moment into some fixed entity in our mind. We do it so much that we don't even know that's what we are doing. Now, the present moment, it's actually the constant coming together of changing causes and conditions. Every moment is brand new as a flow. Yet we might have heard it a million times, but we will forget right away. Our very entrenched habit is to objectify, reify, turn into a fixed entity, into something that's in opposition to us. So we either like it, we want more of something,

or we hate something or part of it, reacting to it with aversion. So that's why we constantly find ourselves in some way reacting to whatever is going on in the present moment, even though it's something that we chose to come to take part in, either with aversion or craving. So some of you may be able to recognize this habit of maybe nitpicking some aspect of the present moment. It's like we're like zeroing in on one thing that is not perfect. And then we just focus on that and everything, we forget about everything else

that's actually really working quite well. Or the opposite of that would be craving for something to be different in the present moment, craving for the present moment to be other than what is. Both are habits of suffering. And the practice of silent illumination, allowing all to be illuminated,

is to allow ourselves to see fully how we are truly interconnected with all and fully embrace it. Again, this is a concept we may have heard a million times, but it is only when we are fully here allowing all to be as it is that we can see, wow, this moment is made possible by every being. Like just think about this room right here, right now. It's not possible unless everyone's here doing what we are doing. But we usually don't remember that. We're busy focusing on the one thing that we don't like and try to make a

difference or you're busy thinking about like oh you know my friend's not here i wish she's here like we're constantly doing that instead of being able to wow everyone's here everyone who's here is here doing the wonderful thing that they're doing that makes this present moment possible. And there's a very different way of being. And when we allow ourselves to be fully here, to be with the present moment as it is, embracing it fully, what it allows is also the compassion that naturally arises. There's no need for us to make ourselves to feel compassionate. It naturally arises. It's like you just love everyone.

Not that like, oh, I want to hug you necessarily. We're able to appreciate everyone as they are right now in this moment. No problem! There's no problem. It's a very different way of being than nitpicking. Ah, I guess something is wrong, I need to do this. Ah, everything as it is. One perfect as it is.

And you can see how it is a way of being that is truly at ease. What comes with it is this sense of connectedness, sense of compassion. And with this compassion, what it means is that we realize because we are truly interconnected, that we are not separate, that means bringing benefits, doing something that brings benefit to you is no different from benefiting me. Because if you are not suffering,

then I will also suffer less. If you are happy, it will also make me happy. No difference, no separation. And so what it means is that we realize it's just so clear to us that when we refrain from doing something that will cause harm to others, or when we decide to act in ways that bring joy to others, or when we decide to act in ways that bring joy to someone,

we ourselves benefit first. That moment, we suffer less. And also, we bring benefit to other people, which because we're interconnected, we all benefit. It's very obvious. It's not something we have to be convinced and have someone tell us. It's very obvious it's not something we have to like be convinced and tell have someone like tell us it's like so obvious so some of you may be wondering yes this silent illumination thing right here already.

All we need to do is to remember, to practice, to reconnect with the present moment as it is. So we can reconnect with silent illumination, the present moment as it is, when we remember not to activate our unhelpful habits of reacting to the present moment by objectifying it, craving for something to be different, trying to make something go away. And recognizing these habits and release them when we are in the midst of suffering. And what it does is it allows us to see that suffering is not inevitable. We can be free from suffering.

That's what the Buddha taught us. And what we realize is that when we do not give rise to the cause of suffering by activating these unhelpful habits, then there's no suffering. And just the present moment as it is, whatever is going on in the present moment, no suffering. It's not a problem. So how? This all sounds really good, but how do we go about it? This is where the meditative

practice comes into play here. So we can have all this philosophy in our mind, and I know this should be okay, I should not crave, but we get more and more upset with ourselves for not being in silent illumination for our suffering. So the practice, the meditative practice of cultivating moment-to-moment clear awareness of the body-mind, being in this space as it is, whatever is arising in the mind, whatever the body is experiencing, whatever's going on in the environment, whatever's going on, moment to moment, clear awareness, allowing all to be here. And that allows us the clarity of how entrenched habitual reactivities are activated, we notice how we are reacting to

something and how we, by reacting in that way, are causing ourselves suffering. And then we're also causing pain to others, even though we don't intend to. We love this person, but we are acting in ways that cause pain to this person. We really try to help this person, but the way we act is causing pain to this person. And then we realize also how when we suffer, we have this tendency to act out our frustration. We are so frustrated, we're suffering tendency to act out our frustration. We are so frustrated, we're suffering, we're not at ease. And we act out our frustration because the mind is agitated. And we often act it out in a way that causes tension and conflict

in our interactions with people, oftentimes with people we love the most and closest to us. And what happened is when we act that way, this person feel they are being attacked for no reason. They're being nitpicked and criticized disrespected even though that's not what we intended and then they react in their own way and then we view attack

and then we fall into our reactivity we go into this vicious cycle samsara the cycle. Well, the good thing is we don't have to be stuck in this vicious cycle, the samsara. That's the good news that the Buddha discovered and taught us. And of course, oftentimes we thought that, well, like maybe like what I need to do is to try to tell this person, I'm not attacking you. I want to help you.

We try to change people's mind. We try to fix other people. And you might find that it's not that easy. Oftentimes counterproductive. Actually, there is an easier way. The easier way is to practice silent illumination. We practice. this student, she's been practicing with me for a number of years. And now she's been working with the book and practicing silent delumination.

And she shared a story with me saying how she tried to get her husband to go and get vaccinated. And she was very worried about him. So it's out of love, good intention. She tried to get him. And then so one weekend, she's like of love, good intention. She tried to get him. And then so one weekend, she's like, okay, I will go with you whatever time you want to go. I clear my, I move my calendar around. I go with you because I love you so much. So, and whatever time. So her husband picked a late afternoon time, not what she had in mind.

So she was trying to say, wouldn't you want to go in the morning instead? And her husband reacted. It's like, see, you're always like this. You told me I can choose. And then you tell me it should be something else. And you might recognize this. And she recognized it right away. Oh, I do have these habits. I will let you choose. But I already have an idea what is the right way to do it, because I already know all the right ways. And so she recognized her habit being activated.

And she also noticed how it often ended in argument. He was upset, and then she would tell him that like, but you know, your idea is stupid. And so they end up in an argument. She, by practicing moment to moment clear awareness of her habitual reactivity and how her actions causing suffering, she released her habit. She didn't continue telling her husband, I told you, I have a better idea, just do what I want to do. And then she also recognized what she has done has caused some pain. And so she noticed by staying with her practice of moment-to-moment clear awareness,

she noticed her other habits showing up. She always wanted to be super productive. So she thought while she's sitting there waiting with her husband, she's going to multitask and talk on the phone to check on her parents, which of course meant she wasn't really there with her husband, which she promised. And she caught herself with that urge of wanting to be productive and released it. So I shared this story with you because oftentimes when we find ourselves making a mistake, we will beat ourselves up, getting all upset with ourselves and our mind or agitated and failing to see what we are going, what we're doing.

But what she was able to do was staying with the practice and notice her other habits showing up and release it. showing up and release it. And so whatever shows up in the present moment, recognizing how we are about to act in a way that causes ourselves suffering and causes pain in others so that we can choose to release, to stop, to stop, to perpetuate these habits is the cultivation of wisdom and compassion that we are doing here. Wisdom, not causing suffering to ourselves, and compassion, remembering to abandon our urge to activate this habitual reactivity so that we can bring benefits by acting in ways appropriate for the moment. Like this student, she decided to stay and sit with her husband to make him feel loved and cared for. And so the

rest of the day went very well. And so she was able to work with herself using this practice. So I hope you can find ways to apply and maybe integrate this in your own life. And let's do a practice together to see how we can cultivate a meditative practice that allows us to free ourselves from suffering. What we do is we will sit ourselves in a comfortable posture

and take you through a whole body relaxation. Feel the relaxation of the top of the head. Feel the relaxation of the top of the head. Directly experience the subtle sensations of the scalp relaxing as we allow the tension to melt away. 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. in the area between our eyebrows by habit, perhaps from worrying, and allow, allow the tension to melt away. And feel the relaxation spread to the eyeballs and eye muscles. We often hold a lot of tension in these muscles in our daily life. From all the comparing, judging, planning, analyzing. And 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 hold some part of the face with tension by habit. Perhaps to hold with a certain facial expression for the world to see. Right here, right now. There is 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. And feel the relaxation spread to the neck and shoulder muscles. and shoulder muscles directly 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 check to see if we hold tension in this area by habit. Perhaps from anxiety, sadness, grief,

fear. Right here, right now, we can give them a rest and allow, allow the tension to melt away and feel the relaxation spread to the abdominal area all the way down to the lower abdomen we often hold a lot of tension in these muscles by habit. Trust that the skeletal structure can hold up the body. And these muscles do not need to work so hard we can give these muscles of occasion to in the low attention to melt away

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 And feel the relaxation spread down the body's weight on our seat, and feel the relaxation spread down to the thigh muscles,

and down the legs and all the way down to the toes of the entire body, sitting right here, right now, with this wakeful, clear mind, moment after moment. And as we do so, we notice the subtle changing sensations of the body breathing. We can rest our attention gently

on the subtle changing sensations of the body breathing. We gently anchor our mind to each emerging present moment, allowing the body to breathe. The body knows how to breathe. It's been doing so since the moment we were born. And from time to time,

you may notice the mind drifting off, losing contact with the direct experience of the subtle sensations of the body breathing. 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 drift off, as long as you find your way back, you are practicing well. And if you notice thoughts and feelings come by to visit

allow them through they're already part of the present moment trying to chase them away only agitates the mind. Allow it to be fully felt and seen and heard

as it is moment after moment. And when it's ready to move on, allow it to move on. Moment after moment. Maintain this total clear awareness of the body-mind sitting in this space. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Maintain this clear awareness as we transition from fingers one by one and move 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. Notice the urge to allow the mind to scatter just because the formal meditation period has ended. Why would we want to stop being clearly aware moment to moment? The practice can continue, just changing form, now in motion. We can rotate the body in opposite direction. If we take good care of this transition, we can take the clarity and stability cultivated in sitting meditation into our life lived in motion.

Thank you so much for that, Rebecca. 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 four, 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.