Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Tracy Cochran 11/09/2020

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

Theme: Resilience Artwork: White Tara; Eastern Tibet; 19th century; Ground mineral pigment on cotton;[http://therubin.org/30d] 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 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 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. 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. Please enjoy your practice. Good afternoon, everybody. Just getting settled here. Welcome. Welcome to our weekly practice together, Mindfulness Meditation, here with the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea, New York City.

We're a museum of Himalayan art and ideas, and thank you so much for joining us. It's wonderful to have all of you from all of your various locations and today we're going to combine art and meditation and practice online together with our wonderful teacher Tracy Cochran who I'll bring on in in just a moment. And today's session brings us to one of the jewels in our collection, White Tara. And this month we are speaking about this idea of resilience and tying that to this overarching idea of impermanence, this idea that everything changes. And it's been quite a week, right? Especially if you live in the United States, so much going on just as a collective, as this large group that we're part of.

And it's a pretty potent time to think about resilience and what is required for our resilience together in our practice and outside of our practice. And let's take a look at the art. Are we able to to see White Tara here? There she is. And she's seated on her lotus throne and holding the lotus. And I believe it is a pale a pink or white lotus. Another word for lotus is kamala. Just want to make sure you know that. And it's pretty exciting. We have our very first female vice president-elect who is South Asian and Black. And her name means lotus. and her name means lotus. So what a milestone. And as we look at Tara today, we are really reminded of the importance of compassion. So she is the female manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion. And she, in particular, white Tara is associated with long life and the removing of sickness.

So she is facilitating healing. And healing, we know, requires resilience. And I think that that's an interesting relationship to consider, this relationship between compassion and resilience. So she holds a blooming white lotus flower in her left hand and extends her right hand in this gesture of giving. And she is surrounded by scenes of the eight perils. So these different vignettes are all illustrating fears and her ability to protect and to support those who call on her. So I know that Tasha will be with us after our meditation practice to give us a little bit of a closer look at those vignettes, some of those fears, and about how Tara

represents this sense of overcoming fear and compassion and healing. So let's bring on our teacher today, Tracy Cochran. She is the editorial director of Parabola Magazine, which is a quarterly magazine that for 40 years has drawn on the world's cultural and wisdom traditions. Hi, Tracy. To explore the questions that we all share. And she has been a student of meditation and spiritual practices for decades and teaches mindfulness meditation and mindful writing at New York Insight Meditation Center and throughout the greater New York area. I think Parabola has a relatively new issue that's just out about secrets, which is pretty cool. And you can also just find out about all of Tracy's teaching on her website, tracycochran.org. Tracy,

teaching on her website, tracycochran.org. Tracy, so nice to have you here today. I'm so glad to be here today to talk about Waitara and to talk about healing. It's been quite a week and it's been quite a year. And it's a wonderful opportunity to learn what it's like to be with uncertainty, which we've all lived with. And as John said, especially here in the United States, because we've had this election, which was full of uncertainty. And it was an extraordinary time to practice just being with our experience. And then we discover that even if we have joy, things seem settled, things seem hopeful. We can discover

that right in the midst of that, we can feel a new edge of uncertainty. What will come next? What will come next? How will I meet what's to come? And yet more good news about a vaccine. And still this reaching out, reaching out. And I discovered in spending a little bit of time with this beautiful goddess, this white Tara, that there's a story here that can help us come to a state that's more settled and yet more open. And the story I discovered was a popular myth or a story about Tara, which is that she was originally a tear that trickled down the face of the Bodhisattva of compassion.

She was a teardrop. Have you ever felt completely consumed with sorrow I have so this tear trickled down the face of the great bodhisattva of compassion and landed with a splat on the ground and it became

a great lake. And up from the depths of the lake came a lotus, Kamala, which we have just learned means lotus, this beautiful lotus. And we learned here at the Reuben that a lotus comes up from the mud, from the murk, from the most difficult feelings of uncertainty and pain and anguish. So up comes this beautiful, pure flower and it. And in the midst of the blossom, a goddess. And being from the West and being from the States, I can't help picturing Beyonce in an extraordinary video arriving that way. Or it could be Stacey Abrams. It could be someone in your life who represents to you what it's like to go to the depths of disappointment or hurt and to rise again,

hurt and to rise again, to come back as white-hearted, offering herself. Offering herself, first of all, is proof that no feeling is final. No state is final. No feeling of grief or defeat is final that more will come and especially the promise that compassion

will come from this so Tara offers herself as proof and as a protector. And I'm always delighted to see the traditional eight categories because it would include things that at first glance I don't have to worry worry about like wild elephants, for example. But when I think about it a little more deeply, I remember that once upon a time, I witnessed a riot.

And I saw that a mob of people can be like a wild elephant. A tyrant could be like a wild elephant. And in fact, come to think of it, we have a political party that's identified by an elephant. And similarly, snakes. And similarly, snakes. I don't live in an area where I worry so much about snakes, but I do worry about snake-like things like misinformation, conspiracy theories. Kidnappers have feelings that kidnap my state and take me away from myself. And I discover once again that the first step to healing

a person or a whole country isn't to jump out of myself and seek to fix or to compromise. It's just the opposite. It's to let myself sink into sensation, to sink down, just like white tar rolling down like a teardrop. Just let myself feel what I'm feeling. And we all feel a mix of things right now. There can be fatigue. There can be an edge of anxiety, what comes next, or feelings of hurt can come up about what almost happened, or a feeling of fear, all kinds of things, not just one thing. And the invitation is to just let ourselves feel those things. Tara was made from sorrow.

She was made from sorrow. So we let ourselves just sink even now before we begin to sit. As you listen to me, just sink, sink into sensation, sink into how it feels to be you today, without striving to name or to resolve or to fix, and to just let that be fluid like becoming a lake. Just let yourself flow.

And we'll practice this more in just a moment. And let yourself go down, down so that you feel your feet, so that you meet whatever is present with complete loving attention. And until you begin to feel more present, until you begin to feel more present. And discovering that that feeling of presence itself is like being accompanied. You're not alone.

The body is with you. This attention that doesn't judge, that's kind to all your feelings, to all your edges, that attention is with you. begins to appear. We begin to discover that we, we ourselves, when we're more present, when we're more collected, when we're more relaxed and compassionate towards ourselves,

we become a force for compassion in the world, for goodness and stability and balance, which is another word for healing. And I think resilience, in my experience, rests on this ability again and again to return to sensation, to give myself, my heart, my mind, my body, permission, full permission to be just as it is. And as I do this, I become capable of meeting what comes, whether it's a wild elephant who's off brooding somewhere or kidnappers waiting to take my attention and my energy or whatever it is. So let's sit. We take a comfortable seat and really notice how it feels to take time to feel your feet on the floor, to feel your back straightening up,

straightening up, to notice how it feels to bring kind attention to your state, letting Letting yourself be exactly as you find yourself. Welcoming yourself here. Just like this. helpful to just bring the attention to the feet. To the feet. Just notice them on the earth. And also notice that there's an attention that's inside you but also outside, making an atmosphere around you. About three feet around you. And see that when your thoughts take you far outside, you can gently come back, back to the body, back to sensation,, to be seen by an attention that doesn't judge, that surrounds you like sunlight. Thank you. And notice that you can always come back to this stillness, to this presence, by coming back to sensation, back to the sensation of the feet or the rhythm of the breath. Thank you. And notice that this presence that surrounds you, that's inside you, isn't thinking, it's

seeing, receiving you you just like this. Thank you. Notice that stillness is not absence, it's alive, resonant, nourishing. Thank you. When you get taken by thinking, by feeling, by picturing, notice this with no judgment and gently come back and go down into sensation. Noticing that this doesn't close you, it opens you to presence. To presence. To life. Thank you. See that there's a light inside you, a vibrancy. The body is responsive. It responds to life, to breath, to impressions. It's innately compassionate. Compassion is response. hearts. Thank you. And see how it feels to call yourself home, back to sensation, back to the presence that The sensation that waits for you. And notice that when you come back and find acceptance, just seeing, just sensing that this grounds you and also opens you. Thank you. Notice as you sit, as you return to sensation, to presence, you feel not alone, but accompanied. Accompanied by awareness. By presence. Accompanied by awareness, by presence, by sensation, Sensation. Thank you. Notice how it feels to be here. To come back.

To open like a lotus. To be seen. With no judgment. Thank you. to presence and open to the life inside you, the warmth and light and vibration. Thank you. Thank you. thank you for your practice thank you tracy take care take good care everybody bye bye 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. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.