Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Tracy Cochran 10/02/2019

Episode Date: October 3, 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 19:00. If you would like to attend Mindfulness Meditation sessions in person or learn more, please visit our website at RubinMuseum.org/meditation. This program is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. Tracy Cochran led this meditation session on October 2, 2019. To view a related artwork for this week's session, please visit: https://rubinmuseum.org/mediacenter/tracy-cochran-10-02-2019-podcast

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. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art and to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice. Great to see you all here. My name's Dawn Eshelman. Great to have you all here, and we are talking all about power all year long.

This month here in meditation, we are examining this concept of ritual and how ritual is a means to power, to spiritual power, to collective power, and to individual power. So we're in the midst of the Jewish holidays, and if you celebrate Rosh Hashanah, a good new year to you. And it is also Diwali, and Diwali is celebrated throughout several different countries within the Himalayan region, including Tibet, Nepal, India, and this is the celebration of light in darkness, right? And also it's fall. I guess Earth didn't get the memo, right? But there are some autumnal rituals

that many of us partake in just in our daily lives, like back to school, even if you aren't going back to school, don't you feel it? And apple picking, and then there's the daily things, like your morning cup of coffee or whatever. So there are these rituals that are important in our lives, whether they are part of our religious or spiritual practice, or just part of what makes our life meaningful. And whether they are formal or casual,

they engage us in the current moment while also connecting us to history and to our ancestors. And they bond us to other people and to our humanity. Rituals are interesting because they're about doing. They're not about thinking, right? I've been thinking a lot about going apple picking, but I haven't done it yet. And meditation is kind of like that, right? If you just think about it, it doesn't really count. You've got to do it. And meditation can be a ritual for us.

We can ritualize it. And certainly in religious practice, in Buddhism, rituals are known to have transformative power. They say that rituals exist outside of time, or in fact, stop time. But today, we're going to look at a ritual that honors time. So here behind me, we have a depiction of the chariot ritual, which is practiced by Hindus and Buddhists. We're going to look and talk about primarily the Buddhist version today, and most celebrated in the Kathmandu Valley. This artwork is called, it's a tanka, a scroll painting,

and it's from Nepal, 19th century. And it is called Ushnisha Vijaya, who is a goddess, depicted at the very center of the stupa there. And the celebration of old age. The chariot ritual is a special birthday celebration for an elder who reaches the age of 77 years, seven months, seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes. And to commemorate this day, the birthday girl or boy is asked to commission a construction of a stupa, which is a reliquary mount, or a sculpture or a painting of one.

So what we're looking at here, we have the five transcendent Buddhas at the top there. Below, we have ten astrological deities representing planets and the calculation of time. And at the center of the painting is the stupa containing the goddess Ushnisha Vijaya, and she represents the continuation of an already long life for the birthday elder. The festivities on the day require that the elder mount a chariot, yes, and ride through the city, stopping to perform a religious service in front of a sacred stupa.

So you can see the lower registers of the painting there is the chariot ride. Tracy Cochran is here with us today. She's a writer and the editorial director of the quarterly magazine Parabola. Parabola, right here. This one is about mercy and forgiveness. And Martin Scorsese is writing in here on forgiveness. And then we have a Sufi master on engaged spirituality.

And you can find this upstairs in our shop and at parabola.org as well. In addition to the Rubin, Tracy teaches at New York Insight and every Sunday at Hudson River Sangha in Tarrytown, New York, and you can find her online at tracycochran.org. Please welcome her back, Tracy Cochran. So I selected this image because I totally plan to have this party when I'm 77. And I'm making a vow here today on the podcast and in person

that I will do a version of this party if I'm lucky enough to still be here. And as Don said, it's Diwali. We're in the high holy days of Judaism. We're in a time when people are invited to reflect on light appearing in the darkness or coming into alignment with a greater oneness at onement, atonement. And it's interesting to think of birthdays as a ritual. And first of all, most of us don't do that. I mean, we might celebrate, or increasingly with age, we might avoid a birthday. But what would it be like if a birthday became a time to celebrate what you've survived in the previous year? And what helped you do that.

So I wanted to share a little story. It's a legend from the Athabascan tribe in Alaska. And it's a legend from the earliest days of that people that they hold precious. And it happened one very cold winter in Alaska. And this tribe, like all of our earliest ancestors, were hunter-gatherers. earliest ancestors were hunter-gatherers. And this particular winter was so bitter that famine was certain. So they decided that two old women, age 75 and 80, according to some accounts, were not going to come because they had outlived their usefulness and they would only eat up resources they couldn't contribute. So they were abandoned, which is about the worst thing a human being can experience, don't you think?

Abandonment by your people. So at first, as you might imagine, they felt desolate, desolate. They were left to die, and their people thought that death would come soon. But finally, the younger of the two said, You know what? Let's live. Let's do everything we possibly can. We'll probably die, but let's die trying to live. What do you say? And the other one agreed. So they changed their own hearts. They let their hurt turn to resolve.

resolve. And lo and behold, it turned out that they knew a thing or two. And according to the legend, they caught a squirrel. And I have to add that they had some help. The help was that one grandson was so heartbroken, he hid a hatchet, which was a symbol of his manhood in the tribe, a ritual gift, and he hid it for his grandmother. And one daughter was so ashamed that she was leaving her mother that she left a big hide bag that they used to boil water. So armed with these two seemingly small gifts, they took this squirrel that they managed to kill, and they cooked it, and they ate. And they became convinced that they could do better. So even though they were hungry, and they were colder than you can imagine,

especially today in New York, because it's ridiculously hot out, but in spite of this hardship, they caught a rabbit. They caught another squirrel. And then they remembered a place from when they were young. And they went to that place that was more sheltered from the elements, and it had a stream. So as the seasons grew warmer, they could fish and catch salmon, which they smoked. So much to their surprise, they began to thrive, and they stored up food and they saved the furs and they created a home. And lo and behold, a season passed and who should come cycling back to them but that skinny tribe, now skinnier than they were before.

And the tribe was astonished that these old women survived. And because they were mothers and grandmothers, they shared their food. Although, according to the legend, for a good long time they stayed somewhat aloof. And who could blame them? But finally, because they were lonely, and because they also needed love and exchange as part of their nourishment and their life. They took the tribe back to them and shared their resources and everything they knew.

So the tribe cherished this legend down to the present day, down to today with my sharing it with you because it began to show them that life isn't a straight line. I've shared this before that the Aborigines I once heard called us the lying people. The lying people because we had this insane idea that we must be grimly focused on the future, on the line ahead. When they knew, like most people that live close to the earth, like this tribe, thanks to the old ladies,

that life is a circle, that in the present moment, in Buddhism they know this too, the past is contained and the future is contained. But we have an invitation to see what helps us, what helps us, what warms us and feeds us, even in the darkest time. and feeds us, even in the darkest time. These old women remembered a place in childhood that was refuge for them. And it's interesting to realize that we can remember such a refuge, not in words and not right on the spot, but think about what comforted you and got you through.

And chances are it's not the worries and achievements that you care about on any given day, but cozy times, times when you felt safe and at ease. And think about what you've learned in this tradition. The biggest thing in the story that I'm going to share that relates is the idea of self-sufficiency. That these old women made a decision that they would be self-sufficient. When the Buddha was dying, Ananda, his attendant and disciple, said, what can you give us to help? He was crying. He was so worried. What would become of him? And the Buddha said, be a light unto yourself. And Ananda might have thought,

thanks a lot. What does that mean? What it means is realize how much you know. Not necessarily in words, but what it means to feel at ease and safe and okay with yourself. What does it mean to follow your own light?

About five years ago, I was in India as a guest at the Gandhi Ashram. And I was really humbled to be there with these extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. And at one point, the person who invited me came up to me and said, Tracy, tell us a story. You're an elder to us here. And I was shocked at first, thinking of myself as a youngster. You know, like, who are they talking about as an elder? But I realized that just like you, whether you're 17 or 27 or 77, you have experience. You have lived and survived. And there are qualities of heart and qualities of mind and of body that have helped you through. And it's an invitation right now for us to take a seat, a noble seat as the Buddha put it, to invite ourselves to remember who we truly are.

truly are. So let your eyes closed, let your feet be firmly planted, and notice how it feels to be here right now. Just accept the body just as it is and the contents of your heart and mind just as they are. You might be ill today, you might be tormented or in pain in some way. Let everything be exactly as it is without concealing it or rushing past it. Let it be. and let yourself see that there's a light of attention inside you right now and also intention. Intention. You might not be able to put it into words, You might not be able to put it into words, but an intention to be here, to be fully alive. no matter what pain or sorrow or illness you may also feel. And allow yourself to notice this with an attitude of welcome, welcoming yourself, remembering the whole of yourself,

That you are not just what happens to you. You are also your wish to see and to be with what comes.... You can bring the attention to the breathing if you wish, or else to the sensation of sitting here in a body right now, letting everything happen. And when you get taken by thoughts, see that you can gently come home, that you have a home in the sensation of the body. And the intention to be here, open to life. Thank you.... Notice that the stillness is not an absence, that it's full of life. of vibrancy inside you that wishes to meet life, to be part of it. Thank you. When you get taken, see this with no judgment and gently come back again to the refuge of the body breathing in this moment. Thank you. Thank you. and see that you can bring an attitude of non-judgment to what you see and also gratitude for the whole of your experience, for all you have lived through and all that has helped you. Just allow yourself to feel grateful for your own good purposes and intentions. and for the gift of being here. Thank you. Thank you. 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. yourself to see that even in the darkness of pain, and even if you have caused pain of an attention that is open and kind. Thank you. Thank you. Notice that there is a presence inside you that's greater than your worst day. Thank you. See how it feels to be loved, dark and light, the whole of you.