Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Tracy Cochran 10/24/2022

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Theme: Openness Artwork: Mahasiddha Jalandhara; Tibet; ca. 16th century; Copper alloy; Rubin Museum of Art;  http://therubin.org/35wTeacher: Tracy CochranThe 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 14:38.  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, Tashi Chodron. 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 supported by the Frederick Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism. And now, please enjoy your practice. Hello, Tashi Delek and happy Diwali. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining our Mindfulness Meditation Online through the Museum of Art. I am Tashi Chodron and welcome and very happy Diwali to all of you. We are a Museum of Himalayan Art and Ideas in New York City and we are so glad to have all of you join us for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation online. Inspired from our collection, we will take a look at work of art from our collection.

We will hear a brief talk from our teacher, and then we will have a short sit, 15 to 20 minutes for the meditation guided by our teacher. We're still continuing on the theme openness, as we've been exploring last two Mondays for this month. And the art connection, the theme openness is openness of the paths to realization and the art connection. So the art connection for today is this very special sculpture of Mahasiddha Jalandhara. So the Mahasiddha Jalandhara, the Dakini's chosen one

who appeared in ninth century, great Indian master. Legendary men and women called Mahasiddhas or great spiritually accomplished ones are considered to be among the first teachers of Tantric Buddhist practice. Maha Siddha means great realized one. Maha means great, Siddha means realized one in Sanskrit. And usually they come as an ordinary background occupation, such as wandering monks, weavers or farmers or fishermen. They are often depicted in various yogic posture, as you see here, or flying or dancing, sometimes wearing little or no clothing, drinking alcohol in their wide variety and very unconventional behavior.

The Mahasiddhas exemplify, there are the tantric Buddhist practices, which often offers many paths to realization. So esoteric tantric means many methods or many, many paths to realization. So they are celebrated as real people who embodied enlightenment through tantric practice. And this particular master, as we're looking at in this very yogic, you know, fluidity, looking at in this very yogic, you know, fluidity, the openness of the physical body is the Indian Siddha, Jalandhra, depicted here in a very active posture, as you see, known for his many yogic feats. It is said that he could manifest his body in many places, in fact, at the same time and live in many bodily forms and widely, you know, desperate lands. Simultaneously, he's known to be the founder of Hatha Yoga. Those of you who are familiar in the different types of yoga.

And to transform the physical into awakened perceptions, which is absolute reality. absolute reality taught practices that unify male and female forces, dissolving the subject and object dichotomy and spent in a learning or awakening into a non-dual forces, which is actually awakening or the wisdom opening. And now let us bring our teacher for today. And now let us bring our teacher for today. Regretfully and unfortunately, Sharon is not available today and she sends her blessing. But fortunately, Tracy is available for us. And so let's bring our teacher, Tracy Cochran, who has been a student and teacher of meditation and spiritual practice for decades. She's the founder of the Hudson River Sangha, which is now virtual and open to all. The link for her weekly meditation

can be found on her website, tracycochran.org. In addition, Tracy has taught mindfulness meditation and mindful writing at the Rubin Museum of Art and the New York Insight Meditation Center, as well as in school, corporations, and other venues worldwide. She's also a writer and editorial director of Parabola, an acclaimed quarterly magazine that seeks to bring timeless spiritual wisdom to the burning questions of the day. Her writings, podcasts, and other details can be found on our website and on parabola.org. Tracy has her new edition, The Overcoming Darkness, and Tracy will share more deeper into that. Thank you so much for being here, Tracy. Thank you so much, Tashi, and happy dwelling to everyone.

And thank you for being open to having me here this week. I know it's a surprise, surprise for me too. And so I invite all of us, even as I am talking to you, us, even as I am talking to you, to make yourself comfortable with yourself. In the most simple way, that means be aware of the body, be comfortable as you're listening. You might not feel great today, but you can welcome yourself to be just like you are, to make space for it. And I chose this figure, in fact, because it's an invitation for us to remember that there is this beautiful form of the tradition, this form of meditation,

and this long heritage that Tashi has so much to share about after the place of these great figures. But to invite all of us to open to an approach to what it can mean to make a distinction between a form, a particular monastic form, and the real juice or the light or the life of the wisdom itself. So there are these figures that break all the rules. We saw this beautiful image of someone. He looks like he's dancing, scantily clad.

They're tales of these wild women who take on monks and teach them the difference between the living truth and their forms, their rules. And the living truth starts right here when we sit right now and inviting ourselves to be comfortable being here for ourselves, not just reaching out for someone else to tell us a truth or a pithy quote that we can hang on to, but the truth of how it feels to be here right now. now. And then adding the piece of attention to how it feels to be here, to be me. And then finally, if we wish to open to the heart, which doesn't again have to feel happy or open, but it's an invitation to draw closer to ourselves, to have a sense of intimacy with ourselves, with our experience, to let it be our own, to know that the truth appears from our own living truth. So some of my friends who sit with me regularly

and know me well know that cozy is one of my favorite words. To be cozy, to let ourselves be at ease and be at ease with each other but I discovered to my delight and want to share with you that there's a whole new dimension to the word cozy and I I heard it and I experienced it by listening to and watching a video of Beyonce St. Cosy from her magnificent new album. And the reason I'm bringing it up in this context is as an invitation for you to lay yourselves, remember, or notice figures. or notice figures. And they can be great artists like Beyonce who remind you of your own deepest potential.

And in this song, which I will make no attempt to sing, it includes a refrain that's very applicable to the talk today, where she is goddess-like and proclaiming herself a goddess and saying, I'm comfortable in my skin. I'm cozy with who I am. And it's Diwali. She goes on to say, I've been dark, I've been light, inviting us to see for ourselves. What do you know about that? In other words, she is a wisdom figure, a wisdom teacher who has found the truth in her own life,

going through darkness, emerging into light, being broke, being back. And it goes on, showing us that the real truth, the spiritual truth that we seek isn't something that's up above out of the mess and difficulty and challenge of life, but something we find as we open. There's that word and that thing. As we open to our own deepest experience,

our own deepest awareness, which can begin now, again, as we sit. We can do it even before we shut our eyes. but even before we shut our eyes, notice how it feels to let yourself fully be here, be you, as you're feeling today. In a sense, proclaiming your right to be here,

to be you, and no other person, no person far away, but right here. And noticing that there's an attention that you can turn and bring to yourself. That's not closed and telling you to be this way and that way and sit up straight and look like this or cross-legged or sit in a chair. But just

an open attention that's inviting you to be comfortable in your own skin. Opening and making space for all that you've been through. You don't have to list it in your head, but you're inviting it to be present with you.

All that experience of being up and down, in light, in darkness, emerging into this moment. And noticing that in the center of your chest, in the center of my chest, all of us, there's a heart. We can make our attention to it. And that this heart opens into an experience of being deeply and intimately deeply and intimately close, cozy with experience, with life. So let's let our eyes close and we'll go from here into 20 minutes of meditation.

Just notice feet on the floor, back straight, sitting in the middle of your own life. Letting the eyes close or look down. Notice that there's an attention that's already here that can come to rest on the sensation of the body. And notice that this attention isn't full of comments and opinions, it simply sees. It meets sensation as it is. Notice that you can bring the attention also to the chest, to the region of the heart, without asking it to be one way or another, just being open to our innate potential to be intimate with experience, with life, to draw close to it. And notice that if you become distracted, first of all, this is natural. And second, you can come back again to the body,

to stillness, which is not rigid, but letting be. Letting yourself be just like this. Noticing that there is a light of attention inside you, of awareness that's kind, that accepts you just like this. Thank you. And notice that this awareness inside you is open and light and also deep. It includes sensation. It includes the whole of your experience. You don't need to think about it. Just make space. Allowing yourself to be comfortable, to just be. Thank you. Noticing that stillness can be cozy, a refuge, and that darkness can contain light. Thank you. Noticing how it feels to come back to sensation, back to the body, to experience it as deep.

grounding us and connecting us to earth. Experiencing the vibrancy of your life inside. Thank you. And noticing that the darkness or depth of sensation of the body, the physical experience of being alive also includes the light of awareness. sees and accepts with compassion everything that arises. Thank you. Notice how it feels to let go of striving to be apart from life, to think about it and name it, but to just let yourself be. Thank you. Noticing the light in the darkness, the life in you behind closed eyes. How connected you are to life. Thank you. Just let yourself sink into the darkness of not knowing, not naming everything with thought. Noticing how it feels to just let yourself be connected to life, to be open, to be comfortable with what's beyond the borders of thinking. Thank you. Noticing that there is a light of awareness here that you can trust, that you can soften Soften it to. Open to. Thank you. Noticing how it feels to be cozy with the living truth of your life. To be comfortable here. Thank you. I'm going to make a Thank you, thank you for your practice, for great presence. Thank you. Thank you so much for that wonderful session, Tracy. 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.

If you're looking for more inspiring content, please check out our other podcast, Awaken, a podcast that uses art to explore the dynamic paths to enlightenment and what it means to wake up. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.