Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Sharon Salzberg 11/30/2020

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

Theme: Resilience Artwork: Mandala of Amoghapasha; Northern Nepal or Tsang Province, Central Tibet; http://therubin.org/30m Teacher: Sharon Salzberg 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 13:48. 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. Welcome to Mindfulness Meditation Online with the Rubin Museum of Art. My name is Dawn Eshelman. And for those of you who are new to us, we are a museum of Himalayan art and ideas in New York City. And we're so happy to have you all joining us today for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation online. For today's session, we will look at a work of art from our collection. We'll hear from our wonderful teacher,

Sharon Salzberg, who is back with us. We've missed you, Sharon. And we'll then have a short sit, 15 to 20 minutes. So we're looking today at this beautiful mandala. This is from 15th century Nepal. And this is the mandala of Amogha Pasha, five deity mandala. And Amoghaapasha means unfailing lasso. So it refers to this unfailing compassion, like a lasso, which is constantly reaching out to all sentient beings and inviting them into the state of compassion and happiness, which ultimately can lead to enlightenment. So if there was ever a cowboy for compassion, this would be Amokapasha. and happiness, which ultimately can lead to enlightenment. So if there was ever a cowboy for compassion, this would be Amogha Pasha,

with this lasso reaching out. Amogha Pasha is a complicated deity and subject in Tantric Buddhist iconography, and actually is another form of Avalokiteshvara, a deity that we talk about on a regular basis here. And actually at the center of the mandala is Avalokiteshvara, surrounded by other deities immediately. There are four around him there. And then in the four corners of the outer section of this painting, you can see four additional deities and figures, including Buddha Shakyamuni at the very top left, and a mandala, if you remember from our previous conversations,

kind of exists in many realms. We have this very kind of literal, practical overview of as if we were looking from the top down of a palace. It is kind of like a footprint of an actual palace with the center room being occupied there by Avalokiteshvara. And then these four gates of entry at each of the four sides, the four directions there. But it is also considered a map of the cosmos and even in another reality, the map of the inner self. that practitioners can use to take steps closer and closer to the center of their practice, of what they are working towards. So the main meaning of this mandala here today is this idea of that unfailing lasso,

this continual kind of reaching out of compassion. And so that's part of the reason that we selected this with Sharon today to look at with you because of that sense of resilience. And that's what we've been talking about all month today. This idea of resilience and how we see that in the world around us, in ourselves, and in our practice, how meditation can be a resilience practice. So we'll hear from our teacher today, Sharon Salzberg, and what she has to say about meditation and resilience. So Sharon Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts, and has guided meditation retreats worldwide for many years. She has a beautiful new book called Real Change, Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World.

And you can find that at the Rubin Shop or anywhere books are sold. And she has many other incredible, useful, practical, and just wonderful to read books. And they make incredible gifts too. So I hope you will join me in welcoming her back. Hi, Sharon. Welcome back to the Rubin. Thank you so much. I feel almost like I'm there, which makes me very happy. That's so nice. Yes. Let's pretend. And here we are together, which is a tremendous thing. So thank you for all the work and fostering that and creating and sustaining this community, which is really great. So the topic of resilience, of course, is a great and compelling topic. Not too long ago, I had to look up somebody's email address, and the last time I'd heard from them was last New Year's Eve.

And ironically enough, the email that they sent was full of eager anticipation for 2020 and how much better it was going to be than 2019, no doubt. And that sense of starting over or new beginnings or, and then, you know, just this really overwhelming sense of difficulty and strife and struggle and chaos and disruption and loss and so many things that are really a part of this year. And here we are, we're about to have another new year not too long from now, which will be really interesting. really interesting. But every day, I think the question of resilience comes up, you know, that sense of beginning again or going forward. Bouncing back is probably the most classical way of seeing the term. And I often think that that term, that idea of bouncing back is a little static, like we're going to come back to just the way things were before. We're going to have enough energy.

We're going to have enough stamina in order to return. But the truth is, of course, what we return to is not exactly the same, and we are not exactly the same. It's a very fluid state, and it's actually the very fluidity which marks the strength of resilience, that we're not trying to mash the future into the past and say, I'm back, you know?

Let's just pick up exactly where we were before. Life is never like that. Life itself is change. And so when I think of resilience, I think of the kind of imagery that supports that sense of supple strength, that ability to be interested in what's happening in the sense of connecting to what is true right now with courage, with a sense of energy, with a sense of interest. So it's not weak or passive, but it is kind of fluid. I think of water probably more than anything,

where we think of water as like the weakest thing in the world, but actually it can wear away rock. It's that sense of flowing. We think of bamboo as an image of strength, where if you're rigid, if you're uptight, if you have that kind of demand that things be just the way that they were, you break. be just the way that they were, you break. Whereas that ability to flow, to move, to be mutable as is life, is what allows us to survive. It allows us to regrow. It allows us to have that

kind of forward thinking that we really need, not in the sense of grasping as a future, but being able to adapt, being able to move, not kind of lost or locked into nostalgia, but actually enriched by and replenished by the circumstances that we find ourselves in, however they may be. And so it's almost like holding both things at once, the sense of loss and difficulty, and genuinely holding it, not trying to deny it or diminish it. But at the same time, not neglecting that capacity to flow and to adapt and to return, to begin again, to have some sense of renewal. Somebody asked me just this morning what I felt. I think everyone is in sort of a mood of moving toward the new year. They asked me, what do you feel you've

learned this year? Which of course course, is many, many things. But partly what has been so pronounced for me and a big part of my thinking about resilience is the sort of match of the strength of giving, of being generous, of being caring, as we find in the imagery, like in the Bodhisattvas, and the strength of giving, of being generous, of being caring, as we find in the imagery like the Bodhisattvas, and the strength of receiving, of asking, of being vulnerable, of allowing ourselves to recognize those vulnerabilities, maybe express those vulnerabilities and ask for some kind of help. And to see the match in myself and in everybody, really, I think has been the most powerful thing and the biggest learning that we have an ability to give, to share, to offer,

to care. And it doesn't have to be like giant things, you know, big exercises in compassion and big exercises in compassion and generosity. It's often the smallest gestures that other people will remember. In fact, that there is caring that it may seem so meager to us, but when we listen, when we pay attention, when we care, when we offer loving kindness, when we are generous materially, when that is within our ability to do, it not only returns us to a sense of wholeness and completeness that exists within ourselves, it also connects so powerfully with others. And it is a source of energy and joy. And that joy gets metabolized into more energy so that we have a sense of resilience. And when we can honor the frailty we feel or the confusion that we feel and realize that we could use some help in one way or another, in any level, we could use some help in one way or another, in any level.

And especially when we have the ability to express that. But even just to honor it is a big, big thing. But when we do have that ability to express it in some way, I think that's the place where we find one another. And we realize that we're not so alone. It's not just me and that it's okay. That this is a part of life, that life is big and contains all of the ups and downs and joys and sorrows and difficulties and strengths that we may not realize we've had before. had before. It's everything. And so one of the clearest reflections of that is in our meditation practice where anything may arise. It's not like, unfortunately in the eyes of some, it's not like

we move from serenity to joy to bliss to unfathomable peace always in our meditation. Anything may arise, and it's okay. Because what we're most concerned about is not what's coming up, it's how we're relating to what's coming up. And therein lies our power to be more accepting, spacious, understanding, kinder toward ourselves in the face of whatever may arise. And so let's sit together now and put this into practice. You can sit comfortably.

Remember that imagery of water or the bamboo. You don't want to be like really stiff and uptight. Like you're going to resist everything that happens. Just relax. And you can close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. You can start by listening to sound. I don't know if you can hear the rainfall here. I can hear it. Or the sound of my voice or any sound. It's a way of relaxing deep inside, allowing our experience to come and go.

Of course we like certain sounds and we don't like others, but we don't have to chase after them to hold on or push away. Just let it come, let it go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And bring your attention to the feeling of your body sitting, whatever sensations you discover. See if you can feel the earth supporting you. See if you can feel space touching you. Usually we think about touching space and we think about picking up our finger and poking it in the air. But space is already touching us. So you can shift into that kind of receptive mode. Thank you. See if you can feel your hands and make that movement from the more conceptual level, like

go fingers, to the world of direct sensation. Picking up pulsing, throbbing, pressure, whatever it might be. You don't have to name these things, but feel them. And bring your attention to the feeling of your breath, just the normal, natural breath, wherever you feel it most distinctly, the nostrils your attention there, and just rest. See if you can feel one breath. Without concern for what's already gone by, without leaning forward for even the very next breath, just this one. If sounds or images, sensations, emotions should arise, but they're very faint, if you can stay connected to the feeling of the breath, just let them flow on by. You're breathing. If they get stronger and they start to capture your attention,

just have a moment of recognition. Oh, this is what's happening right now. No judgment, no blame. This is the experience of the present moment. Joy, the sorrow, whatever it might be. Then see if you can let go, bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. And for all those perhaps many times you're just gone,

you kind of wake up. You have no idea where you've been or you actually do fall asleep. Don't worry about it. The next moment after you've been gone, after you've been lost, is the one we're really concerned about. Because that's such an opportunity to not judge ourselves, not put ourselves down, but just gently let go.

And bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And when you feel ready, you can open your eyes or lift your gaze and we'll end the meditation. Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you in a week with Tracy Cochran. Take good care. Thank you so much. Thank all of you. That concludes this week's practice. If you would like to support the Rubin and this meditation series, we invite you to become a member of the Rubin. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.