Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Sharon Salzberg 12/04/2019

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

The 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 17:21. If you would like to attend Mindfulness Meditation sessions in person or learn more, please visit our website at https://RubinMuseum.org/meditation . This program is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. Sharon Salzberg led this meditation session on December 04, 2019. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: http://therubin.org/2xx If you’re enjoying this podcast, you can listen to more recorded events at the Rubin, such as the conversation by Black American Buddhist leaders on activism and community, with DaRa Williams, Kamilah Majied, and Willie Mukei Smith. You can find it at: https://rubinmuseum.org/mediacenter/black-american-buddhists-on-activism-and-community

Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Eshelman. Every Wednesday at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea, we present a meditation session led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area. This podcast is a recording of our weekly practice. If you would like to join us in person, please visit our website at rubinmuseum.org meditation. We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center. In the description for each episode, you will find information about the theme for that week's session, including an image of a related artwork chosen from the Rubin Museum's permanent collection.

And now, please enjoy your practice. Welcome, welcome, welcome to our weekly mindfulness meditation here at the Rubin Museum in presenting partners with Sharon Salzberg, Interdependence Project and Parabola Magazine. My name is Tashi Chodron. I manage a monthly program called Himalayan Heritage, which brings Himalayan community living traditions from the five boroughs to the Rubin Museum, where you can experience not having to spend 24 hours in the airplane. And this week, so much went through, right? What we celebrated Thanksgiving

with the family. So our theme for this month is generosity. So generosity, Thanksgiving, Black Friday. And then after that, there is like a post-Black Friday.

And then there was like, I heard a friend saying, oh, don't worry, you know, there's a better sale called Cyber Monday. Oh my gosh, talk about the generosities. We are so fortunate to, you know, have so much opportunity to accumulate merit. Isn't it? You know, that's how, like, when there is these big events at the Dharma Center

and opportunities to make tea offerings or tea sponsors and talk offering sponsors, that's how we look at it. So much opportunity for us to make offerings, to accumulate merit out of generosity. And so for today, the artwork that we have is this beautiful, really blissful Tara. This is a thangka, a mineral pigment on cloth. It's called thangka in Tibetan.

And the central figure is the female Buddha Tara. And so the central figure is Tara. And in fact, as you can see, it's green Tara. So Tara is called Dolma in Tibetan word. And Dolma is sort of lamp lit in the dark. And Tara is a Sanskrit word, star. So in essence, you know, lit in the dark, a light, of course, and Tara emanates in 21 different forms, and out of the 21 forms, two of the most common, the popular Taras are white Tara and green

Tara, and each Tara associates with certain, you know, power and energy and blessing. The green Tara associates with enlightened activity. Often people do refer to her as a healing as well. And now on top of the Tara you see so many figures. In fact, the top three, you see a hat color, right? So often when you look at the color of the hat that some of the Buddha's teachers are wearing, you can kind of associate with which school of Tibetan Buddhism it's coming from. So as you see, yellow hat. So yellow hats are often associated or, you know, connected to

Gelugpa school, which is the most recent school. And Dalai Lama, most of you are familiar with, comes from Gelugpa school. And then you see the Shakyamuni Buddha on this top holding the begging bowl and with his hand gesture, the touching the earth gesture. And so I am so honored to introduce our teacher for this afternoon, Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of Insight Meditation Society, Barrie, Massachusetts, studying and teaching for many years. It's so humble of you to say studying, you know, books. You can find her amazing book, Real Love, The Art of Mindful Connection and Real Happiness, The Power of Meditation, among others.

In fact, you can find them in our gift shop upstairs as well. And regular contributor to On Being and the Huffington Post. So please help me in welcoming Sharon Sonsman. Thank you. Thank you for the beautiful introduction in that she talked about sharing merit because it kind of clarified for me some of the things I wanted to talk about. So when I was first practicing in India, there were almost like two streams that were considered to support one another. They were on one level, they were unified, and on another level they were kind of distinct

just because of the arena. One was practice, it was formal practice, learning how to be more concentrated, more aware, have more balance with anything that might come up in your experience, internally generate loving kindness for yourself and for others. So it was all the elements of learning a method and experimenting with it and learning the various experiences you could have doing it, and then also realizing that that was

a part of the picture. The other part, the other arena, had to do with life practices. So here you have all those funny stories about the person who looked saintly and they were meditating and they thought they were the calmest person on earth and then somebody jostled them or stepped on their toe, and they were enraged, and they shoved them away. So how do we live? How do we talk to one another? How do we respond to someone's apparent need? How generous are we? How kind are we? And really, those two are inextricably connected. We may

be devoting more energy to one or the other, but they support one another completely. And so there's a lot of emphasis on qualities like generosity and actually cultivating it in real time, you know, real circumstance, because that lends itself to a deepening meditation practice. All those many, many, many times we have to let go of a thought, you know, when we really want to hold it and figure it all out. Or we are down a path that we know is pretty self-destructive and we see it in our minds again and again and again and we want to let go. So the letting go is not a process of aversion or dislike. It's actually generosity. It's this movement to relinquish, to open. And so what we do in life is very supportive of what we do in practice. And practice is like the muscle. It's the formal training. It's like strength training, so that when we are then out in a certain situation,

we have a much greater ability to relinquish, to open, to share, not to sort of hold. You know, why do we hold on to experience? Why do we hold on to possessions? That's an interesting thing to look at. You know, sometimes it's because we think that's what makes us okay. And we can't possibly allow things or circumstances to change because maybe we won't be okay. Things like that. So those two arenas really reinforce one another.

And one of the links, one of the formal links, has to do with this concept of sharing merit, which is the idea that it's a belief that when we do something toward the good, like we're kind, or we're generous, or we're restrained, like it would be awfully easy to tell a lie and we don't. Or we study, we want to understand, we question, or we meditate, even if it feels like our concentration is totally crummy. The fact that we sit down to do it is considered to generate a very positive energy. That positive energy is the merit.

And the invitation is not to say go home and think, well, I made so much merit, you know, how great am I? But to dedicate it to the well-being of others, to offer it, to share it. And so that's what came up in my mind, which is a very profound act of generosity, to realize that even the inner work that we do is not just for ourselves

alone, but can be seen as this kind of offering. So external generosity, you know, those moments of giving which will reinforce our internal ability to relinquish is a very powerful thing. internal ability to relinquish is a very powerful thing. And like any discipline, any structure, it can also be exceedingly weird, right? We can do things from a variety of motives. We can have a kind of good spirit, or we can feel coerced. We can give something, for example, because we feel we

don't deserve to have anything. And so it's not all that generous, really. Or it can be very calculated in some way. Like I kind of came through a system of teaching where um the teachers uh didn't receive like an honorarium or a fee for teaching um but you had the opportunity to make a donation if you chose to and and so that was like a very strong conditioning that I had through all my time in Asia. And we kind of brought that system to some degree, certainly to the retreat center like the Insight Meditation Society, where it's still the way teachers get compensated.

society where it's still the way teachers get compensated. And people will say things like, well, I calculated how many people who were in the room. And I thought, well, I can't give them too much, because then they'll have too much. I mean, it was only a two-day retreat or something like that. Which is not the spirit. tree or something like that, you know, so, which is not the spirit, you know. You know, the whole idea is that one looks in one's heart and you decide what you want to offer. Maybe it's nothing, you know, because of circumstance, not because you really didn't like the teacher, maybe,

but, you know, it's fine, whatever. It's totally voluntary, but the process is a learning process. Looking at one's heart, seeing maybe the impetus to give, seeing what's reasonable, because with all of these practices or disciplines, there's a question of wisdom. And I will say here, because it's one of my favorite things to say, and you can only say it in New York, you never give up your rent control department. Never.

Right? And you do things that are reasonable. They're not going to hurt your family or, you know, whatever. And maybe the best description I heard of it, I think I can remember who said it, was you should give so that you feel generous, not so that you feel burdened, you know, because you gave too much, and not so little that you leave with some regret. Like, wow, you know, I feel I could have done more.

So with wisdom and balance and intelligence, it's like a huge experiment to make in our lives because it is a potential source of great, great joy. Yesterday, you know, of course, was Giving Tuesday after Cyber Monday. And I realized I had a better time on Giving Tuesday than I had on Cyber Monday, where I thought, oh, I'm going to buy all these things that I don't really need, and then they're going to arrive. I don't have room for them, and it's going to be so regrettable. But despite the intensity of getting a million emails about these different organizations,

there's something wonderful about that moment of really wishing someone else to be happy. You know, for this organization to be able to fulfill its mission to feed people, to help people, whatever it is. And it's not really a question within the framework of the teachings. It's not a question of the amount. It's the heart space.

It's that sense of generosity. It's that sense of offering. And so it's a very powerful experiment to make. As I often say, around the Insight Meditation Society in Bari, not only do we have a lot of snow, but we have a residential community. There are people who are on staff at the center or the people who live nearby. Sometimes we undertake these sort of voluntary disciplines. It's like a form of play.

Because the whole idea is to just keep paying attention to what your experience is and so um once we more than once we said okay if a strong impulse to give something arises and it's reasonable you know it's not really going to harm you or somebody else the strong impulse give it, even if the next 50 thoughts are fearful. Like, oh, you know, I haven't read that book in four years. I've been carrying it around through all these moves. It's close to the top of the pile. And, you know, what if I read it and I get enlightened? It's the one thing I need to get enlightened. Stupid me, I gave it away. I'm not going to get enlightened.

I better keep it. So we have the impulse to give, then we have all the fear and the withholding, and then we give it anyway because that's the discipline, whatever, a month or whatever, however long we undertake it for. And we keep paying attention. What does it feel like to have that urge to give? What does it feel like to pull back and feel frightened? What does it feel like when you give it, and do you ever regret it?

It's all a training ground in greater and greater awareness. So let's sit together. We'll have time to practice an internal generosity. Remember that suggestion I made that when we let go of something, it's not like hurling it away because we hate it or ashamed of experiencing that emotion or that thought. It's the same thing like if you're holding something tightly in your fist and you open you just let it go okay so as you sit see if you can sit comfortably your back can be straight without being strained or over arched you can close your eyes or not however you feel most at ease. See if you can find the place where the breath is clearest for you or strongest for you. Maybe that's the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen.

You can find that place. Bring your attention there and just rest. See if you can feel that place bring your attention there and just rest see if you can feel one breath And if you like, you can use a quiet mental notation like in, out, or rising, falling to help support the awareness of the breath, but very quiet. So your attention is really going to feeling the breath, one breath at a time. And if thoughts or images or sensations or emotions come up that are strong enough to take your attention away from the breath, you're just lost or you fall asleep, don't worry about it.

That's a really significant moment when you realize that. That's the moment we practice that kind of generosity. Just unclench your fist, let it go, just like unclench your fist let it go and see if you can return your attention to the feeling of the breath Thank you. No matter how many times you have to let go and begin again, it's fine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to make a Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to do a sharing of the merit out loud the way I would say it. And you can think if there's a way that makes sense to you, so you can do it internally on your own. So it begins usually with an appreciation of the fact that I chose to practice. So there's a kind of joy there.

It's not conceit or arrogance, but lots of ways of spending time, you know, and there's a kind of delight in rejoicing, like, oh, you know, this happened. I did this. I chose this. And allowing yourself to feel that, That positive energy is the merit. And then we share it. We offer it. So I first think of the people who've helped me, seeing who comes to mind. Maybe they helped me long ago.

They're helping me right now. And I would internally recite something like, I share the merit or the positive energy of my practice with you. May you be happy, may you be peaceful. And those whom I know are struggling or suffering in an affirmation of the fact that my inner work could never be just for myself alone. Seeing who comes to mind, I share the merit of my practice with you.

May you be happy, may you be peaceful. Thank you. And then all beings everywhere in the boundlessness of life. I share the merit of my practice with all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Shivan, for a beautiful session. That concludes this week's practice.

If you'd like to attend in person, please check out our website, rubinmuseum.org slash meditation to learn more. Sessions are free to Rubin Museum members, just one of the many benefits of membership. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.