Mindfulness Meditation Podcast - Mindfulness Meditation with Tracy Cochran

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art presents a weekly meditation for beginners and skilled meditators alike. Each episode is inspired by a different work of art from the Museum’s collection and is led by a prominent meditation teacher.The episode begins with an opening talk followed by a 20-minute meditation. In this episode, the guided meditation begins at 13:07.Teacher: Tracy CochranTheme: Open-MindednessDrum (Nga); Tibet; mid-19th century; wood, pigments, leather, metal; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, gift of Robert and Lois Baylis; SC2019.3.1a-bLearn more about the Rubin’s work around the world at rubinmuseum.org.

Welcome to the Mindfulness Meditation Podcast, presented by the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, a global museum dedicated to bringing greater awareness and understanding of Himalayan art to people around the world. I'm your host, Tashi Children. Every week, we offer a meditation session that draws inspiration from an artwork from the Rubin's collection and is led by a prominent meditation teacher. You can find more information about the related artwork in the episode description. Our Mindfulness Meditation podcast is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and supported by the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism. And now, please enjoy your practice.

Hello, everybody, and Tashidelik. Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Arts Mindfulness Meditation Program. I'm Tashi Children, Himalayan Programs and Communities Ambassador, and I'm delighted to be a host today. The Rubin is a global museum dedicated to presenting Himalayan art and its insights, and we're so glad to have all of you join us for our weekly program, where we combine art and meditation. Inspired by our collection, we will first take a deep,

look at the work of art we have chosen for today. We will then hear a brief talk from our teacher Tracy Cochran, and then we will have a short sit, 15 to 20 minutes for the meditation guided by her. Let's take a look at today's theme and artwork. The artwork for today's session is this beautiful drum called Nga in Tibetan word. Origin Tibet dated mid-19th century, and the size is about 8.3-4th into 42-3-4th into 22-1-8. And then 2.5 into 28 into 2.1-quarter inch is the beater. This is wood pigments, the mineral pigments, leather, metal, and this is a ritual object. The theme for the month of April is open-mindedness. The drums, dual nature, capable of both peaceful and fierce, wrathful expression,

mirrors the Buddhist understanding of open-mindedness as an ability to hold seemingly opposite truths simultaneously. The sound produced by this large, double-headed frame drum varies according to the type of ritual. It can be peaceful or fierce, wrathful, depending on the character of the deity he invoked. It's held with left-hand. handle and strikes the middle of the drum with a curved stick using their right hand.

The instrument is used frequently in rituals for wrathful deities, religious dances, and ritual processions. The drum takes on metaphorical meaning within Buddhism, in which sharing the Buddha's teaching is called sounding the drum of the Dharma. This type of drum is often associated with the sound of rolling thunder alluded to by the clouds of dragons painted on its frame. Now let's bring on our teacher for today. Our teacher is Tracy Cochran. Tracy Cochran has taught meditation and spiritual practice for many years. She's a spiritual and author whose most recent book, Presents,

The Art of Being at Home in Yourself, was published by Shambhala publication in 2024. Tracy is the founder and leading teacher of the Hudson River Sanger and has taught mindfulness and mindful writing at the New York Inside, the Rubin Museum, and many other venues. In addition to serving as the editorial director of the Acclaimed Spiritual Quarterly magazine, in addition to serving as the editorial director of the Acclaimed Spiritual Quarterly Parabola, her writings have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Psychology Today, the best spiritual writing series, Parabola, and many other publications and anthologies. For more about Tracy, please visit tracycochran.org. Tracy, thank you so much for being here.

So I'm delighted to be here today and to have an opportunity as improbable as it sounds to connect the theme of a drum, in this case a ritual drum, with the broader theme of open-mindedness. So I had the honor a few years ago of being on a pilgrimage in Nepal and India traveling with a group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns. And among the sacred sites, we visited,

we visited sites where there had been war and slaughter to the Buddha's family. His family was not exempt from war. And at one of the sites, I remember the nuns sitting down on the ground under the direction of their great abbess, Tensin Palmo, and taking out their hand drums and their bells, transforming a place of slaughter into holy ground. And that's the ritual significance and power of the drum. But what it was really doing, I felt,

was calling us out of our thoughts into our bodies, into our common humanity, calling us to remember that we live in a world of greater forces. It was an extraordinary moment, but I want to tell you a story of how that can be experienced in our own lives today, not in extraordinary conditions like that. Last fall, as many of us are aware, there was a group of 19 monks, Bapasana monks, who walked from Fort Worth, to Washington, D.C., to the National Cathedral. They walked 2,300 miles, 19 monks and one dog who had joined them in India and refused to leave their side.

And they were walking as an invitation for everybody who saw them to be touched, to remember in a way. how it felt to be whole, body, heart, and mind. They weren't preaching. They did stop, and often people would give them food. Churches would give them a place to sleep. But there was also incredible hardship, cold weather, rain, a hit-and-run accident that caused one monk a leg,

but they kept going. They kept walking. Finally, they arrived at the steps of the National Cathedral in Washington. And there were thousands of people gathered who had been touched by the coverage. Millions of people ended up watching and taking hope just from this simple action of walking with an intention to be present. Except there were also hecklers along the way. People who called themselves Christian, they were not Christians, yelling at them, heckling them.

And that happened on the steps of the National Cathedral, too. And you could see people, Catholic priests, other people feeling embarrassed, upset. But the lead monk said nothing, nothing about this heckling. He said to everyone assembled and everyone watching online, let's do something together. Let's turn our attention to our own heartbeat, to our own heartbeat, inviting people to close their eyes. And you could see all kinds of people, clergy of every denomination,

monks and nuns, atheists, people, all kinds of people who had walked a short distance with the monks or a long distance, shutting their eyes to listen to this rhythm, this beat, this common beat. And you could see, even in footage of this event, the atmosphere change. It's as if a stillness appeared. that could even include sound. All these people together, you and I were remembering the drumbeat of their deeper humanity, their deeper possibility, our deeper possibility to be present. And it's extraordinarily touching to me to remember this and to remember that.

and to remember that throughout the traditions in Zand 2, they'll have clappers, two sticks, to help people with walking meditation, that it's not so much the instrument or a ritual setting as being called to remember. We're drums. We're meant to vibrate. In accordance, with a deeper kind of feeling, compassion, presence, wisdom. There's something inside us that knows, that knows. So the drum, and across traditions, trans drums and shamanism, the drum in Tibetan Buddhism, the drum beats of people marching. It's going to be a march tomorrow.

The drums call us from the thinking mind, which is typically very isolated. It calls us to drop down into the body where we can begin to open. Open-mindedness is not about having and capacity to entertain new thoughts. There's a deeper mind. There's a deeper mind,

and it's very close to the body. That's the portal. It doesn't stop there. It begins there. We remember, we listen to the drum, we listen to the sound of the bell. We listen to prayers or mantras. And something inside us begins to resonate,

to remember, to remember that we're invited to participate in a deeper awareness. And that it's this action that transforms a place of slaughter or chaos into holy ground. This action of being willing just for a moment sometimes to become a whole. So now we're going to sit. And so take a comfortable scene. knowing that this is a very serious instruction to welcome the body here.

And everything it might be carrying all the feelings you come to this podcast with all the thoughts in your head, all the things done and undone, and just let them be here. allowing yourself to notice that there's an awareness that's already here that's closer to sensing, to seeing, than thinking. Allowing yourself to just rest in stillness, noticing that stillness doesn't mean perfect silence. but softness, letting be, just let everything be. And if you wish, allowing the attention to come to the chest, to the heart, making space for your own beating heart,

without trying to listen or sense in any kind of striving way, just making space. And when you find yourself thinking, drifting, restless, just allow that to be there, as natural as weather, and come back again to body. to the sensation of being in a body, remembering that you have a heart, remembering how it feels to be in life, surrounded by presence, by stillness, allowing yourself to be held in loving awareness, witnessed with kindness, with openness.

Remembering the heart is like an ocean, deep, just rest, in presence, in an awareness that's open, compassionate, wordless, noticing how it feels to remember that this is also you. Noticing how it feels to drop from the thinking mind into the body, into perception, sensation, into life. Noticing how it feels to open to life. opening to the experience of being seen with kindness, with compassion. Noticing that the stillness that surrounds you is alive, attentive, supporting, and nourishing you.

Your body, your feelings, your presence. Just rest in stillness. Don't know. Just be here. Noticing how it feels to feel the resonance in your own body, the rhythm of your heart, remembering how it feels to be part of a greater life. Noticing how it feels to be welcomed.

every time you come home to body, to presence, noticing the vibration of life inside you and around you. Nothing to fix, nothing to flee, just open, just rest, just be. and as we come to close, noticing how it feels to be grateful to your heart for its steady rhythm, grateful for those life and for those presence. Thank you. And thank you so much for that, Tracy. And thank you all for joining. That concludes this week's practice.

If you enjoyed this podcast or are a weekly listener, we invite you to support this series by donating and becoming a friend of the Rubin at Rubin Museum.org slash Friends. The Rubin is a non-profit that relies on the generous support of donors like you to create meaningful experiences with Himalayan art around the world. If you are looking for more inspiring content, check out our other podcast, Awaken, which uses art to explore the dynamic path to enlightenment and what it means to wake up. available wherever you listen to podcasts. And to learn more about the Rubin Museum's work around the world,

sign up for our newsletter at RubinMuseum.org slash newsletter. Thank you for listening. Have a mindful day.