Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Sharon Salzberg 02/27/25

Episode Date: March 7, 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 13:22.Teacher: Sharon SalzbergTheme: Lovingkindness Green Tara; Tibet; 17th century; brass with pigments; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2005.16.3a-bLearn 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 Churden. Every Thursday, we offer a meditation session at New York Insight 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 Insight 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. Tashi Dele, again, good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome, welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts Mindfulness Meditation Program here at New York Insight Meditation Center. I'm Tashi Chodron, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be your host today. Today is the last day. It is called Nishugul on the eve of the eve of Tibetan New Year,

but the eve is missing in the Tibetan calendar. So tomorrow is Losar, the Tibetan New Year. So I thought I'll share with all of you. The Rubin is a global hub for Himalayan art with home base in New York 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 have a brief talk from our teacher, Sharon Salzberg, joining us virtually. And she will speak for about 15 to 20 minutes

for the meditation guided by her. And today is the last Thursday for this month, the theme of loving kindness. And the art connection for today's session is this beautiful green Tara called Doan Jang in Tibetan word. Its origin from Tibet, 17th century, brass with pigments. This is about seven and a half into four inches and it's a beautiful sculpture.

And the connection to this month's theme is loving kindness. Green Tara associates with loving kindness as she embodies compassionate action and the willingness to embrace all beings without judgment. And this sculpture is created by Chuying Dorje from 1604 to 1674, the 10th Karmapa, head of the Karmakarjuk School of Tibetan Buddhism. And not only was the 10th Karmapa a very great spiritual teacher, but 10th Karmapa was a remarkable artist. The 10th Karmapa's love of animals is often beautifully incorporated. As you can see here, the two birds on top and the pair of birds can be on top of Tara's head. From a young age, the Kamapa demonstrated deep love for art and in both painting and sculpture,

he was particularly drawn to metalwork from Kashmiri and Swat Valley, which is in present-day Pakistan. These stylistically influences are evident in this sculpture of the Goddess Tara sitting on a lotus pedal, as you can see, which is the symbolic of enlightened. You can identify the green Tara is how she's sitting, left leg folded, right leg extended, and the right hand palm open resting on her right knee in a supreme generosity. That's the symbolic of the Hanumudra, left hand holding the stem of the lotus flower.

So out of the 21 Tara, this is the green Tara, associates with enlightened activity. And now let's bring on a teacher for today. Our teacher is Sharon Salzberg. Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts, has guided meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Her latest books are Real Life, The Journey from Isolation to Openness and

Freedom and Finding Your Way, Meditations, Thoughts and Wisdom for Living on Authentic Life. She's a weekly columnist for On Being, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and the author of several other books including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, The Power of Meditation, Real Change, Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World, Faith, Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience and Loving Kindness, The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Please help me in welcoming Sharon Salzberg. Thank you, Sharon. And of course, this is my favorite topic. And I actually love the image of Tara very much.

The Buddha in teaching loving kindness meditation taught it as the antidote to fear. And that's also very much my association with Tara, that this is the symbol that maybe we're not so alone in our turmoil and that we need not be so afraid. And so I wanna talk a little bit about loving kindness and then we can do some of that meditation together. So I'd say in my years of teaching loving-kindness meditation, because it's been a lot of years at this point, I feel like

I've seen two major controversies. One is the idea that loving-kindness or love is sort of weak and sentimental, and it's gonna mean we lose discernment, we lose strength, we lose intensity of action. And of course, it doesn't have to be that way at all. That's not what loving-kindness is about. And the second controversy is the idea that it can be cultivated, it can be strengthened, it can be developed. I don't know if in the West we kind of have the idea that you got what you got.

Like if you have compassion or love in your heart, that's like a gift, and if you don't, you're out of luck. Whereas in, say, Buddhist psychology, it is very much believed that these qualities can be developed, they can be cultivated, because they are seen as emergent properties of how we pay attention. It's not about trying to force yourself

to feel something you really don't, or being hypocritical, or certainly not about being stupid about things, you know, and not protecting yourself or drawing boundaries or anything like that. But rather to understand how we pay attention is going to make all of the difference. So the questions in life are things like, what do we predominantly pay attention to? If you're thinking about yourself, for example, at the end of the day, and you pretty well only think about the mistakes you've made and the word you said incorrectly and

how you didn't show up in the way you wanted, you just go through a list of problems. Those all might be true, but that's not all that we are. It's not all that the day brought either. And so we see what happens when we pay attention to ourselves differently, wishing ourselves well, offering, giving the gift of kindness and that attention. There is, of course, the question of how do we pay attention? You think about how many conversations you've had

with somebody where you're not really listening and you're not really taking them in and maybe you're holding an assumption about them. Maybe someone else told you something about them that you didn't even see for yourself, but very much there's a filter, so you're not really looking at them, you're not really hearing them, and so what do we do?

You know, we don't feel a sense of connection. And the very profound question of who do we pay attention to? Who doesn't count? Who do we objectify? Who do we exclude? It's one thing to kick a table and know that you're kicking a table. It's quite another thing to kick a person or a puppy and feel like you're just kicking a table.

And yet, in effect, that's what we do so much. We just look through people rather than at them. And in the practice of loving-kindness, what we're doing is actually taking them in and paying attention very differently. All of that is the basis for the emergence of loving kindness, which does not mean we like everybody. It doesn't actually mean we like anybody, but we have a bone-deep understanding that our lives have something to do with one another, that the self and other and us

and them, which we hold very rigidly, is just a construct. And on another level, here we are. And once we understand something of interconnection, that we just live in an interconnected world. That's the reality of it. We get a sense of the power of loving kindness because it reflects this truth. It doesn't mandate a particular action like I'm gonna lend you more money, I'm gonna smile sweetly, I'm gonna say yes. That decision toward how we act or how we speak or how we hold back from doing or speaking something

is all based on context, wisdom, understanding, discernment. But we can be motivated not so much by this icky kind of separation and fear and hostility. We can be motivated by a genuine sense of connection. So my favorite translation for the word meta, M-E-T-T-A, in Pali, which is usually, of course, translated as loving kindness, and I obviously use loving kindness as a translation. My favorite translation, or favorite sense of it, is the word connection. The literal translation of Metta is friendship. And yet I hesitate to use that because in my mind,

when I say friendship, it has certain associations with it, like we're gonna hang out together. We're gonna go off and meditate together. We're gonna have dinner together. Whereas it is so much the case that loving-kindness as a quality is not demanding a certain action, but it's transforming absolutely where we're coming from, the mode of the intention, the spark that is yielding the action.

So instead of that being distaste or indifference or dislike or fear, we can be motivated by the force of loving kindness, compassion, and what we then do in manifesting it will be very situationally based in some ways. So to free up the notion of loving kindness from this idea of you gotta behave in a certain way,

I tried to not use friendship all that much because of the association it has for me. But connection, the truth is that our lives are interconnected. That's just how things are. And the more we recognize that, a lot of things just fall away, like fear. So the practice of loving-kindness

is done as a meditation, and of course as a quality it's developed in lots of different ways. It's developed through life. It's developed through any practice where we need to be beginning again and not hating ourselves for our minds having wandered, for example. But it's explicitly developed through the practice of loving-kindness meditation. So in that meditation, which we're about to do,

rather than say resting our attention on the feeling of the breath, which is so common in mindfulness practice, we rest our attention on the silent repetition of certain phrases. The phrases are the way we're paying attention on the silent repetition of certain phrases. The phrases are the way we're paying attention differently. It's not a practice where we're trying to force a certain feeling or emotion or make anything happen or fabricate anything,

but we gather our attention behind one phrase at a time to be fully present with that phrase. And then, like usual, our minds wander or we fall asleep. That's okay, truly. You realize that. See if you can let go. Whenever you realize that, let go gently. Come back to the phrases. You just gather our attention behind one phrase at a time.

The nature of this practice is gift giving, it's offering, it's blessing, it's a practice of generosity. So maybe we bring someone to mind and we're silently repeating, may you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. You don't have to use those phrases. You may already have a loving-kindness practice with your own phrases. It's fine.

Or there's something that doesn't work for you in those phrases, but I'd say for now, if you're not used to this practice, try these phrases because you don't want to sit here and just think of phrases the whole time. May you be safe. Be happy. Be healthy. Be happy. Be healthy. Live with ease. Live with ease means in the things of day-to-day life, like livelihood and family, may not be such a struggle. May you live with ease.

The first recipient of loving kindness classically is ourselves. And then we move on through various categories, so we come to all beings everywhere, all of life. And I'll guide you through just one of many possible versions of that. When we're repeating, may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. People often say to me, who am I asking? We're not asking anybody. We're gift giving, we're offering. Instead of going through the list of our

faults one more time, we're doing this for a little while and seeing what happens. Okay, so you can sit comfortably, close your eyes or not. Let your attention just settle in your body, your energy just sink into your body. And begin repeating phrases of loving kindness for yourself, like, may I be safe, be happy, be healthy,

live with ease. And if you find your attention wandering, truly don't worry about it. And recognize that, gently let go, come back........ And see if you can call to mind someone that you're inspired by or delighted by. The texts say this is someone who when you think of them you smile. Is there someone who you think of them and it just lifts your spirits? It can be an adult, it could be a child, it could be a pet. Is there someone who makes you smile? And if so, you can bring them here. Get an image of them or say their name to yourself. Get a feeling for their presence and offer the phrases of loving kindness to them. May you be safe,

be happy, be healthy, live with ease. Even if the words aren't perfect, they're carrying the heart's energy, so they're serving us.......... Let's see if you can call to mind someone who's struggling right now. They're having a hard time. If someone like that does come to mind, you can bring them here. Get a feeling for their presence and offer the phrases of loving-kindness to them. Just see what happens. phrases of loving kindness to them, just see what happens.

May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease......... And then all beings everywhere, all people, all creatures, all those in existence, near and far, known and unknown. May all beings be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease....... And when you're still ready, you can open your eyes or lift your gaze and we'll end the meditation. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Sharon. 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 4, 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. Music