Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Sharon Salzberg Repost from 11/23/2016

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

Theme: The Unexpected Artwork: Previous Lives (Jataka) of Buddha Shakyamuni;[http://therubin.org/2-3] Teacher: Sharon Salzberg While the Rubin Museum of Art is temporarily closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, we want to stay connected with you. We are sharing a previously recorded meditation session with you and hope that it will provide support during this uncertain time. The Rubin Museum 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 in Chelsea, New York City, and includes an opening talk and 20-minute sitting session. The guided meditation begins at 18:01. 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 sessions 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 attend in person for free. Have a mindful day!

Welcome, and hello. My name is Dawn Eshelman, and I'm Head of Programs at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea, New York City. While our museum is temporarily closed, and during these uncertain times, we want to stay connected with you. So we will be sharing previously recorded meditation sessions. For more resources and inspiring content, head to rubenmuseum.org slash care package. We hope you enjoy, and we look forward to returning to our regular mindfulness meditation program as soon as we can. Take care. Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast, presented by the Ruben Museum of Art.

We are a museum in Chelsea, New York that connects visitors to the art and ideas of the Himalayas and serves as a space for reflection and transformation. I'm your host, Dawn Eshelman. Every Monday, we present a meditation session inspired by a different artwork from the Rubin's collection and led by a prominent meditation teacher from the New York area. This podcast is a recording of our weekly 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 Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. If you'd like to join us in person, please visit our website at rubenmuseum.org slash meditation.

And now, please enjoy your practice. It's a delight, as always, to have Sharon Salzberg in the house. And as you know, she is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts. She's been studying and teaching for over 45 years, and she's the author of some fabulous books, many of which you can find upstairs in the shop. And that includes her most recent book, Real Happiness at Work. Please welcome Sharon Salzberg.

applause From one angle, we are living in the unexpected always. We just forget, or we overlook that, and we are primed so much to try to seize a sense of control over unfolding of events rather than being with and connecting to and having the flexibility and resilience to move according to events and if I look at a an image like that Buddha I think of stability, you know, but it's not like brittle stability, like holding on for dear life or closing down perception of change, but there's something steadfast. There's something dignified. There's something reliable, accessible, no matter what may be going on.

accessible, no matter what may be going on. And it's great to see the Buddha depicted in, as would be traditional in terms of the legends around the Buddha, depicted in many, many lifetimes, during which he was really, it's said, kind of cultivating a path that created a sort of moral force that gave him the right to feel he could go beyond what was expected of him as a prince. He could go beyond what his teachers had attained. He could go beyond the strictures that society was placing upon him or the limits of what it was felt a human being could know and open to at that time. So in his last life, when he was the Buddha, all of those lifetimes of practicing generosity and kindness and patience as a bunny rabbit or a phoenix or whatever he was

throughout all those lifetimes, it all added up. And it culminated in this moment when, as the legend has it, the Buddha, then known as the Bodhisattva, or being aspiring to enlightenment, sat down under a tree known as the Bodhi Tree. And he sat down with the determination, the aspiration of not getting up unless he had become fully enlightened, unless he'd really woken up and broken through all of the constraints

of conditioning and training and so on. And as soon as he sat down, he was attacked by this legendary figure known as Mara. Mara is sort of like the satanic figure in Buddhist teaching. And Mara is also like not an underworld creature, but a heavenly creature who didn't want the Bodhisattva to leave his dominion, to kind of go beyond where he had. So he attacked the Bodhisattva with all these various elements, wanting him to give up, to get up.

He appears as these loathsome, shrieking, horrible apparitions to try to scare him, and these very seductive images to try to seduce him, and all kinds of things. And throughout all of that, the Bodhisattva would just sit there, steadfast. And then the last attack of Mara was, we would probably call it self-doubt. He said, basically, who do you think you are? You know, to dare to imagine you. How can you even imagine that you are capable of that much understanding and love and wisdom and connection? Like, get up.

Like, get up. And that's when, in many images you'll see everywhere in Buddhist art, the Bodhisattva reached his hand over his knee and touched the earth and asked the earth itself to bear witness to all of the lifetimes in which he had practiced generosity, morality, patience, all of these truthfulness, all of these qualities, so that he wasn't there kind of empty-handed. He had resource. He had a sense of belonging that was crafted out of the integrity of those efforts.

And he touched the earth and said the earth shook. And bearing witness to those lifetimes, Amara realized he was defeated and he ran off into the night and the Bodhisattva sat through the night and was fully enlightened at the appearance of the first morning star at dawn. And so 2,600 years later, as a consequence of that stick-to-itiveness, here we are in Chelsea.

Or is it the Flatiron where we are? Here we are, right? All these years later in another whole place because of that moment, right? Just hang in there. You have the right to be there. hang in there. You have the right to be there. So for any of us in any situation, that is part of what we search for. Like, where is our integrity? What's that stability? What's that steadfastness that isn't going to be defined by present moment circumstance, but is also not, you know, uptight and avoiding the reality of what one is experiencing right now.

So all kinds of imagery is used for that depiction of strength. It's like bamboo. It's flexible but not really breakable. It's like space. not really breakable. It's like space. The Buddha said very beautifully, develop a mind so filled with love it resembles space that cannot be painted, cannot be marred, cannot be ruined.

So open, so free, so unconfined. It's like if somebody was standing here in the middle of this room throwing paint around in the air, there's nowhere in this space the paint is going to land. There's something about that much openness that also sustains us and gives us a kind of stability. The paint isn't going to ruin the space, even if it's a horrible, horrible color.

So what is untainted, what's not defined, that's also where we rest our attention. We find that kind of stability, steadfastness, ability to hang in there through all of those taunts and threats and seductive efforts, whether it's a very personal Mara that we're facing today or it's a more collective Mara that we're facing today, or it's a more collective Mara that we're facing today. All those voices that urge us to forget those years, perhaps lifetimes, of commitment to generosity, patience, caring about one another, compassion, all of those qualities, the things that we could be drawing upon for that sense of resource. So how do we define strength? How do we define

stability? Can we feel our way into what feels like taking that seat, touching the earth, remembering what we really care about, finding one another, if that's a source of strength, and it usually is? Can we feel our way to that stability that isn't rigid and uptight and withholding but is is very much there that kind of presence so that we're not cutting off what is all around us or within us, and we're also not just lying down and being steamrolled by it and shaped by it in some way. The unexpected, it's like so here. And sometimes I think we associate that notion only with that which is shattering and traumatic.

And, you know, I was doing fine. I was just going along and then, you know, that happened, whatever it is. for it is. But really, when we look at a day, we look at a week, we look at an hour. It's, you know, we're just skating. It's like life itself is so volcanic with so many conditions coming together in any moment for anything to happen nothing is independent nothing is removed or remote from all of those causes and conditions like sometimes if i'm in a car driving back into new York City from somewhere. We get to the toll booth, which increasingly doesn't have human beings anymore, you know, and it's got like that mechanical arm that lifts up. Sometimes I sit in the car and I look at that thing

that needs to raise up, and I think, what goes into making that thing work and what happens if it doesn't work it's like we're sitting here there are all these cars behind us sitting here um we are counting on this intricacy of things working and Some of you know, you know, in the process of buying a new car right now for my home in Massachusetts, and I discovered that I don't know how to, like, drive a modern car. Because I have a 1999 car,

and it needs to be a four-wheel drive so I can get up the driveway and stuff like that. So, you know, I sat in like a Subaru and I don't know how to start a car without a key that's a problem you know I just sat there and the salesman started yelling at me like step on the brake and I thought that stops the car why does that start the car? I don't get it. I'm used to when I want to know what's behind me, I turn around. I don't even know how I'm going to drive this next car. I guess I can always turn around if I need to.

Life moved on without me. I had the same old car. I've got to adjust. I've got to get with it, at least to some degree. Right? Everything is moving. It's changing. And every moment, all these conditions need to come together for something to work out.

Okay. Or it doesn't. It starts to fall apart. And this is our lives. It's true, always. And I think, you know, this is the kind of time where it's very interesting to look back at what we have tended to do to be resilient, because resilience means meeting change right so what have we done

we've all needed resilience we've all counted on something to give us perspective let us have a break not be so caught in the actual circumstance that we can't see beyond it in any way. So what have we looked toward? Any of us? And think about that. And then think about, even if you were to make a list of those things, whatever they are, think about the last time you, well, first of all,

think about how you feel about them if you were to make a list. Because some things we may see on that list and think, you know, that was terrific. Too bad I haven't done it in three and a half years. Right? Gone out in nature, for example, or something like that. There may be some things we put on the list, and we look at it, and we think, that's pretty destructive, actually.

You know, that's kind of damaging. I think that would be well left behind if I find other tools and other strategies for making my way and finding that kind of stability. See how you feel about each of those, whatever they might be, because we have them. We each have them. We all have them. And then think about what we're about to do together, of course, which is some meditation practice as something you add to that list, something you replace something on the list with, however it strikes you if you're inspired to,

because in actually doing the meditation practice, this is what we're practicing, a kind of strength that's very supple, a sense of space so that it's like spacious. No matter what's going on, we can have like kind of a bigger perspective about things, which isn't avoiding what's going on it's really connecting to what's going on but it's it's in that sense of a bigger arena it's having that sense of immediacy and and and real presence that's not living so far into the future, that not only are we dealing with real difficulty,

we're dealing with, you know, completely imagined difficulty, which is sort of like extra, you know, that's extra stress. The process itself with meditation is like the lived reality of what we're talking about as that very particular kind of strength and stability as we face the true unexpected of everyday life. So let's sit together a little bit. So let's sit together a little bit. Said right away, our posture reflects some of that sensibility. You want some energy in your body, but not like so much.

You're really stiff and uptight. You also want to be relaxed and at ease, but not like so at at ease you're just like way slumped over ready to fall over so feel your way into what feels like a balanced posture to you and you can close your eyes or not. So imagine you're the bodhisattva sitting under that tree. You're resting your attention on the feeling of your breath, the actual sensations of your breath, wherever you feel it most distinctly.

Maybe that's the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen. Find that spot. Bring your attention there and rest. See if you can feel one breath. You don't need to look at what's already gone by. You don't need to lean forward for even the very next breath. It's just this one.. 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 as you sit there minding your own business, Mara strikes. All those seductive images, all those frightening apparitions. So much going on. Maybe that's self-doubt attack. that self-doubt attack. See if you can recognize that's what's happening right now without getting caught up in it. And return your attention to the feeling of the breath. and if you find you fall asleep

or you get completely lost in thought or spun out in a fantasy truly don't worry about it we say the most important moment in the whole process is the next moment after you've been gone, after you've been lost. We practice letting go of distraction, whatever it is, whenever we realize we've been caught.

We let go gently and we return our attention back to that primary object, the feeling of the breath. We let go and we begin again and we let go. We begin again. So this in itself is a kind of tremendous training and resilience. Thank you. Thank you for watching. 1.5 cups of flour 1 cup of water 1 cup of water 1 cup of water 1 cup of water 1 cup of water

1 cup of water Thank you. Спасибо. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you. I'm going to remember that no matter what's going on, you can breathe. And if you can breathe, you can find a place that's okay. Thank you. That concludes this week's practice. If you would like to support the Rubin Museum in this meditation series, we invite you to become a member and attend in person for free.

Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.