Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Tracy Cochran 11/01/2021

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Theme: Transforming afflictive emotions Artwork: Tara Protecting from the Eight Fears; Kham Province, Southeastern Tibet; late 19th - early 20th century; Pigments on cloth with silk brocade; Rubin Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. Michael Henss, Zurich; C2014.8 [http://therubin.org/32w] Teacher: Tracy Cochran 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 16:38. 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, Dawn Eshelman. 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. Hi everyone and welcome to Mindfulness Meditation Online with the Rubin Museum of Art. I'm Dawn Eshelman and we are a museum of Himalayan art and ideas in New York City and so glad to have all of you join us for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation online. program where we combine art and meditation online. And we are open and hope some of you have been able to come to visit recently. We are just at the very beginning stages of sharing our new installation called the Mandala Lab, where emotions can turn to wisdom, which explores five thought-provoking, playful experiences, including videos, scents, sculpture, and even some curated percussion instruments that you can play. These are all experiences that guide you along an inner journey focused on self-awareness and the awareness of others. And so you can use all of your senses, see, smell, touch, breathe your way through the space, which is designed to really inspire connection and empathy

and learning. And this is all based on the structure and symbolism of a mandala, structure and symbolism of a mandala, the Virochana mandala. And here in our practice, we will be taking inspiration from that, this idea that through this experience, whether it is here in the mandala lab or a practitioner navigating a mandala, that we can grapple with afflictive emotions and really turn them into wisdom, not bypass them or skip over them or wish them away, but really work with them to transform them into this idea of wisdom. So we'll look at our artwork that we've chosen for you today, again, with that in mind. So in just a moment, what we'll do is we'll look at this work of art from our collection. We will hear a brief talk from our teacher, who is today the wonderful Tracy Cochran. And then we'll have a short sit with Tracy guiding us for 15 to 20

minutes. Let's look at this very large Tonka painting, unusually large. This is Tara, Protecting from the Eight Great Fears. And what we see here is quite a large narrative painting with eight different vignettes around a central figure. And Tara really represents a peaceful and outwardly benevolent aspect of female power and is in fact known and thought of as Tibet's most beloved female Buddha. This is the fierce, even more benevolent than the fierce goddess Durga or Vajrayogini. Similar to the wrathful protector deities, Tara saves practitioners from their fears, both internal and external. So it's interesting that here, the afflictive emotion that we're working with or thinking about is fear. And Tara is really helping people, certainly with the dangers that they're facing, but even more so with the fear of those dangers.

So really helping them to have a sense of bravery and confidence about what they need to deal with. So the eight narrative vignettes in this painting depict the natural and human-made perils, such as floods and robbers, fire. Unlike the wrathful deities, though, she does not wield any kind of deadly force. She just simply extends her hand. So this gesture, this mudra, is very powerful. The palm extended down is the sort of gesture of boon, and the gesture of the freedom from fear is the palm extended up. And our central figure here has numerous hands and numerous arms, and they are all holding different objects and expressing different mudras. And what's really interesting is that the central figure, many see the goddess Tara, who is also depicted throughout this Tanka, But also others see Ushnishavijaya. And Ushnishavijaya, Tara, along with Amitabha Buddha, are three longevity deities.

And Tara and Ushnishavijaya also share a lot of physical attributes that are quite similar to one another, including this color, which is described as moon-like, moon-like. So very glowing and white in color, like the moon, like the harvest moon, in fact, is the specified description. So similar to Tara, Ushnesha Vijaya makes gestures and is known to offer these gestures of granting freedom from fear and hold weapons and sacred objects. So the more wrathful aspects of tantric power are present, though very subtly depicted in this central figure here. Now to talk with us a little bit more about this idea of really understanding and honoring our afflictive emotions and transforming them into wisdom, maybe even through our meditation practice, is our wonderful teacher today, Tracy Cochran. Tracy has been a student and a 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.

And the link for her weekly meditations can be found on her website at tracycochran.org. In addition to teaching here at the Rubin, Tracy has taught mindful meditation, mindful writing as well at the New York Insight Meditation Center, as well as in schools, corporations, and other venues nationally and internationally. She's also a writer and the 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 her website and on parabola.org. And there's a new edition of Parabola just out. Welcome, Tracy Cochran. Well, thank you. Thank you, Dawn. I'm extremely happy to be back in this community. And I think it's fascinating that today is November 1st. Last night was All Hallows' Eve or Halloween.

Today in the West, it was traditionally All Saints' Day and tomorrow All Souls' Day or the Day of the Dead. In other words, it's a time for, and we can feel this right now, even if we don't practice any of these traditions, it's time for welcoming what's unseen. But it's interesting to discover that even if, like me, you grew up in the West, without these particular deities, Tara, goddess of compassion, and all the rest, we know somehow in our hearts, in our bodies, in the deepest parts of our minds, what it's like to reach out for help, to reach out for protection against those feelings and events that cause them, that we think will kill us even, that we'll die from.

And to discover that all of these dangers, lions and elephants and fire and flood and images of bondage and demons, things that might seem far away or fanciful are things that we've already known. The burn of anger, of pride, wounded pride, the sting of jealousy and envy. We know how that feels. Flooded feeling of an attachment that overwhelms us, what will become of us if we lose this relationship or this job or this house. We know these times when we feel helpless against the unknown and this is the time of year Halloween the Celtic New Year when we're invited

to welcome the darkness or at least face it and the beautiful thing about Tara the darkness, or at least face it. And the beautiful thing about Tara, goddess of compassion, and one detail I can never forget is that one of the details of her birth, her coming into being, is that a tear fell from the eye of the bodhisattva

of compassion at all the different forms of suffering that we endure or can endure. And this deer became a lake, and out of this lake, a lotus came, and Tara was born. In other words, this female deity, this unseen force of compassion, is born of suffering. born of suffering, born of suffering. And this isn't far away from us. I invite you to remember how it feels to have a really good cry, to cry your eyes out. You can't hold back your pain or your sorrow or your heartbreak anymore. And you cry and cry and cry. Let your body remember it and how it feels in the wake of those tears, when all those tears are quelled, and you lie there or you sit there quietly, and you discover something, that after the tears, there's calm. There is often a self-acceptance

There is often a self-acceptance that wasn't there before. A feeling of here I am world. Here I am. Just like this. No more striving. No more pretending. No more fighting or fleeing. Here I am.

I'm not special in the sense of being capable of escaping my suffering. I am human. I am human. And I'm enough and in that moment in that moment sometimes we can taste the power of kindness

of compassion in that feeling of self-acceptance, of self-compassion that grows from that, we begin to see that we can approach the whole of our lives that way, without fear, fear without fear, understanding that whatever we think we are, we're also more than that. We're human. And Tara protects us ultimately because she destroys ignorance. The ignorance of thinking we're separate from other human beings. She invites us to relax and just sink into our humanity.

It's such a good time of year to practice sinking into sensation because leaves are falling gently the night is coming sooner and it's a good time to just invite ourselves to just let go Let go of trying to be anything other than this. And discovering that this opens us to a feeling of our common humanity. And we can begin to see how we can greet other people and other beings and the whole world with a kind of friendliness and compassion. And a good friend of mine, I was talking about this in my saga on Halloween last night. And he sent me a beautiful line from the poet Rilke, actually just a phrase. And the phrase is, I believe in night. I believe in night.

Tara, a goddess of compassion, belongs to the realm of the unknown, the unseen. She's a force that's within us, that appears when all of our defenses come down for a moment. And as we finish talking, I invite you to take a comfortable position. Let your back be straight so that you can have a more complete experience of yourself

and feel, even as I finish talking, And have a more complete experience of yourself. And feel, even as I finish talking, how it feels to really welcome yourself to be here just like this. Just like this. Without striving for a better state or anything, any result. But to be just like this and be willing to discover that the emptiness that you might feel is actually fullness. Fullness. Actually fullness. Fullness. When we stop fighting our feelings, our fears, we begin to make space for compassion.

For compassion. And the understanding that comes from it. And we begin to discover that the unknown, the unseen, not just outside, but inside ourselves, It's something that we find when we allow, not when we strive, when we soften. And let's begin to do that right now. Just let your eyes close if you feel comfortable with closed eyes. It's wonderful to do that. To turn the attention inward. Not as if you're searching for anything in particular, but as if you're welcoming

what's unknown to appear, to be sensed. And notice how it feels to not be in a rush not seeking just sinking sinking like leaves falling gently having home desensation and let everything happen

let thinking happen sensing, feeling, memories let everything happen and notice that you can gently come back to sensation, to feet on the floor, to the weight of the body. and notice something else that there's an awareness in you

that sees this senses this an awareness is this. An awareness that isn't thinking, but seeing, sensing with complete acceptance. With compassion. with compassion Thank you. When you get carried away by thoughts or emotions or fears, anxieties, notice that you can still and still come back, back to sensation, back to the feet on the floor

and the weight of the body. And this presence, this attention that sees you with compassion, with compassion, with acceptance. Thank you. As you make this movement of return, you begin to remember. This practice means to remember how alive you are, that you belong to a presence that's not just inside, but outside. Thank you. Just rest in stillness, in presence. And notice how it feels to be surrounded by forces and beings who are good, who are helping, who are compassionate. Thank you. Thank you. And notice that you can begin again at any moment. Just come home to the body at this moment, finding complete acceptance. Thank you. And notice that stillness needn't be perfect silence, just softness,

just not resisting, just allowing yourself to sink into your aliveness, your presence. your presence and notice that you feel met by an attention that doesn't judge or comment

just accepts and just accepts. Thank you. Thank you. And notice that the softening and opening also feels grounded and strong, connected to life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you. That concludes this week's practice. If you'd like to support the Rubin and this meditation series, we invite you to become a member. If you're looking for more inspiring content, please check out our new podcast, Awaken, hosted by Laurie Anderson. podcast Awaken, hosted by Lori Anderson. The 10-part series features personal stories that explore the dynamic path to enlightenment and what it means to wake up. Now available wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening and thank you for practicing with us.