Mindfulness Meditation At The Rubin Museum With Sharon Salzberg

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 slash meditation.

We are proud to be partnering with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center.

The series is supported in part by the Hamera Foundation.

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 and to our weekly mindfulness meditation practice.

My name is Dawn Eshelman.

So nice to have you all here on this beautiful spring day.

And this month is all about discovery.

We have been talking about Padmasambhava and the exhibition up on the sixth floor,

The second Buddha master of time.

And Padmasambhava's kind of wizardry level skills in that he can plant teachings in the future for treasure revealers to discover.

And we're talking about that moment of discovery and seeing how,

What metaphors we can find in our meditation practice around that,

Our own discoveries,

The quality of those discoveries and,

And how we interact with them when they happen.

So the image that we're looking at today is a different one for us.

And this is by the artist Chitra Ganesh,

Brooklyn born contemporary artist.

This is actually a still from an animation.

If you have roamed the galleries recently,

You may have stumbled across some of these kind of what we're calling interventions.

They are placed at certain areas in the gallery in relationship to traditional objects that are that have a place in the gallery as well.

So you may stumble upon the Shakyamuni Buddha in this instance on the second floor,

And then motion sensor will trigger this projection of this animation.

Now this animation and all they all relate in some way to Padmasambhava and the second Buddha exhibition and or to objects that are within their physical vicinity.

This one in particular,

Not the image we're looking at right now,

But the narrative that this animation tells is the story of Mandarava.

And she was a consort of Padmasambhavas who had a really interesting story.

She broke away from traditional royal expectations and sought out a monastic life.

And she subsequently,

After much practice,

Did reach this point of enlightenment,

Which is told in the story.

It shows Mandarava waking up and then being sucked through the bardo into rainbow realization,

Discovering the true nature of phenomena.

Okay?

So really what that means is that she became enlightened.

And in the Dzogchen tradition,

When someone dies as they are becoming enlightened,

They actually physically transform into a rainbow,

A rainbow body.

In that tradition,

The perception is that in fact,

All of reality is simply light that has been fractured.

And so this is a kind of a culminating,

Beautiful moment of that light.

And in the narrative of this video,

We see that happen.

And then from that rainbow body emerges this image.

So this is the discovery,

If you will.

And I think it's really fun and interesting.

We see the Buddha,

Shakyamuni,

In the middle.

And the face of the Buddha is kind of blacked out through that.

You can see the background,

Which is a galaxy.

And then I don't know if you can tell,

But there's a fracture through the center of the Buddha's body up there,

Which is also the universe kind of bursting through.

There's a ring of fire around that.

And then on either side,

We have these figures,

Not necessarily named or referenced figures in any way.

They look kind of contemporary,

Right?

From the sort of hairstyles.

And they're holding these eclipse viewing glasses.

Remember that?

Not so long ago.

And looking at this kind of a rainbow eclipse.

So it's kind of this moment of just kind of rediscovering awe and really taking in exactly what is around you,

This sense of wonder and appreciation for these kind of seemingly miraculous things that happen.

So we are so delighted and happy to have Sharon Salzberg back with us.

She has traversed the globe a few times maybe.

And it's great to have her back here in New York.

And as many of you know,

She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Berry,

Massachusetts.

She is a renowned teacher and author.

And her latest book,

Real Love,

Is available in our shop upstairs.

Please welcome her back,

Sharon Salzberg.

Isn't that a great piece of art?

It's so different.

Makes me want to go right to the exhibit.

So when I think of discovery,

I see that my mind keeps going back to this one moment in time.

I think I talked about it here once when we talked about wonder.

And that was when I went to India for the very first time.

It was 1970.

And like,

Of course,

The whole overarching theme was discovery.

I mean,

There I was going off to India.

But like we all did in those days,

I went overland from Europe through Turkey and Iran,

Afghanistan,

Pakistan,

And finally India.

And the moment that comes to my mind is when I was standing in Istanbul on the banks of the Bosphorus River,

Which according to conventional geography,

Divides Europe and Asia,

Somewhere in the middle of that river.

And so I was standing in Europe,

So to speak,

Looking at Asia,

Just wondering,

What will that be like?

I have no reference point for this really.

I had one Asian philosophy class in college.

I had no real in-depth knowledge or insight.

But it was just this eagerness to come close to the experience and not to arrive with my own bias or projections or whatever and just like,

What is this?

What will this be?

So that was a beautiful moment and clearly a long time ago.

But there's also a great innocence in that moment because there was no way I could have guessed that the sort of the teachings and the principles and the values and the whole way of life that I learned once in India and Asia would be the center of my life for the rest of my life.

There was just no knowing and on all of that openness.

So I think of that as just a beautiful,

Beautiful state.

It's different than being convinced of something and holding on to that conviction so that you don't have a sense ever of learning anything new or seeing different perspectives.

But it doesn't mean that you let go of all values or understandings.

It doesn't mean being really stupid about things.

There are just surprises all along the way,

I think,

When we are willing to pay attention.

So as you would know,

If you've been here before with me,

I very often use the example of talking to a stranger and you're not really listening and you're not really paying attention and you're not really looking at them or checking them in because you're thinking about the email you need to write or who else you'd rather be talking to as you're looking around.

And maybe you realize that and you do actually exactly what we do in meditation practice,

Which is you gather your attention and you really arrive.

And then there's the possibility of so much discovery.

Maybe you find that you find yourself in them in surprising ways.

Or maybe you hear aspects about their experience that kind of surprise you.

I was recently in Louisville,

Kentucky,

Very recently.

And my friend and I were walking to the kind of conference center where I was going to give a talk and we stopped by a homeless person on the street.

I assumed he was homeless,

Asking for money.

And my friend gave him some money and then he started talking to us about his recent sobriety and one day at a time.

And it was actually quite a beautiful conversation.

And I thought,

Well,

That's a surprise for this morning.

Who knew?

Some time before that,

Before I was in Kentucky,

I was teaching a course and there was a woman attending the course who had various very debilitating and really quite painful physical conditions.

And she said that some time ago she'd been in the hospital,

Just wanted to die because it was just too much.

And she had the thought,

You know,

You can turn any ordinary day into an extraordinary day just by finding one new thing.

So she resolved to find one new thing about each day.

And,

You know,

Since she was meeting many people for the first time at this particular retreat,

She could spread it out.

She allowed herself that,

You know.

It wasn't like a grim thing,

You know.

So let's say she met 30 new people at this retreat.

That could cover 30 days.

You know,

She'd think of them one at a time.

Or she said maybe it's doing a new thing with an old friend.

Or reading something new.

Or what I really liked was that it was fun.

You know,

She said,

Worse came to worse and she couldn't find anything a new ice cream flavor would do.

You know,

So I thought that is so cool.

And she like got out of bed and she was,

You know,

Still in her various modes of distress and they were obvious,

You know,

And obviously painful.

And she was like the most radiant,

Generous of heart,

You know,

Like spirited woman.

She's going to write a book about it so I don't want to go into too much detail because she's been more than 2,

000 days since,

You know.

I had never asked her how many were ice cream flavored days.

You know,

But I don't think they're that many new flavors.

So you probably have to,

They might be.

But isn't that amazing,

You know?

It's all about how we pay attention.

So I always use this example,

You know,

As I was saying about a stranger and not really listening to them and not really taking them in and then realizing you can actually.

And somebody pointed out to me,

They said,

You know,

It's really the same in long term relationships,

You know,

Even friendships,

You know,

Sort of thing.

I know the end of that story.

You know,

I know how that joke goes.

I'm not listening anymore.

And we just get more and more removed and we tune out more and more.

And we're left lonelier and more cut off rather than that feeling of connection when we're just fully there.

It doesn't mean we like what's happening,

Right?

Or we're enjoying it or we want it to continue or we're going to put energy into making it continue.

It means we're very fully alive in that moment.

That's the moment of discovery.

And in some ways,

That's really at the heart of meditation practice.

You know,

We think I probably most commonly of meditation these days is like stress reduction and relaxing and getting calmer.

And certainly it can do all that.

And that's not a small thing,

You know,

For most of us.

That's a very good thing.

But at the heart of meditation really is insight.

It's understanding.

It's not just being more fully present with our lives.

It's actually understanding our lives more.

We see certain things arise in our minds and we realize,

You know,

That's an old habit.

That's not onward leading.

I don't need to go there again.

Or we see certain possibilities like an impulse toward generosity,

For example.

And even though we feel kind of timid and,

You know,

Maybe I'll regret it,

We get frightened,

We kind of go for it because we have more of that spirit now of understanding.

Oh,

That actually helps me,

You know,

Or that actually changes the dynamic in a good way.

And so we're willing to use our own insider understanding to make choices about our lives.

And there's no better thing in a sense because it is our own understanding.

However many times somebody told you,

You need this or you need that,

Whether it's a person telling you or commercial an ad,

Something.

But how really,

How many times do we hear that?

If only you had this,

You would be perfectly happy forever.

So just buy it.

And then buy the new model.

And then buy that.

Even the Dalai Lama,

He tells some funny story about,

I think long ago they took him,

I think it was L.

A.

,

Somebody took him to a mall.

He passed or he went into an electronics store and he said he just wanted everything and he didn't even know what they were,

You know.

It's like,

They're just things everywhere.

It's like,

I understand,

You know.

I want them too.

You know,

So what if we turn that around,

Right?

And we didn't fall into those messages and we said,

I'm going to find out for myself.

I'm going to look.

I'm going to discover.

I'm going to develop my own understanding of what really helps me be happier and what kind of brings me down and cuts me off,

No matter what anybody says.

Right?

And so that's the possibility and the empowerment that comes from our practice.

So let's sit together.

You want to sit comfortably if you can.

See if your back can be straight without being strained or over arched.

You can close your eyes or not,

However you feel most at ease.

You can start by listening to sound,

Either the sound of my voice or other sounds.

It's a way of relaxing deep inside,

Allowing our experience to come and go.

Just let the sounds wash through you.

And within that space,

Bring your attention to the feeling of your breath.

In this system,

It's the normal natural breath.

You don't have to try to make it deeper or different.

You can find the place where the breath is strongest for you or clearest for you,

Like the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen.

Bring your attention there and just rest.

See if you can feel one breath.

And if you like,

You can use a quiet mental notation like in,

Out,

Or rising,

Falling to help support the awareness of the breath,

But very quiet.

So your attention is really going to feeling the breath,

One breath at a time.

And when you find your attention slips away,

You get lost in thought,

Spun out in a fantasy,

Or you fall asleep,

Truly don't worry about it.

See if you can let go gently and just bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath.

We let go and we begin again.

Yes,

We can hear you.

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