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.
Hello.
Hi,
Everyone.
Welcome,
Welcome to the Rubin Museum of Art's weekly mindfulness meditation session.
It is so nice to be here with all of you,
Even virtually,
And to continue our weekly ritual together.
My name is Dawn Eshelman,
And the Rubin Museum of Art,
If for those of you who are new to this practice here with us,
Is a museum of Himalayan art and ideas in New York City.
And we are so glad to have all of you join us.
So today is day three,
I think,
Of the nine-day Hindu festival,
Navaratri,
Which began on Saturday.
So this is a post-monsoon autumn festival celebrated in many different ways,
Depending on a variety of regional variances,
And were often observed in the honor of the divine feminine Durga and her battle of overcoming good,
Overcoming evil.
So this month,
We are building on this kind of annual theme that we've been discussing all year long,
Which has been impermanence.
And of course,
Who knew that we would be collectively experiencing impermanence in such a visceral way together and connecting here online as a result.
And this month,
This aspect of impermanence that we're talking about is growth.
It's really more of a result.
It's this idea that through experiencing change and embracing it,
We can grow personally,
And that that is an aspect of our own impermanence.
So we are looking today at this beautiful stupa.
This is a sculpture from 13th century Tibet,
And it is made of bronze and just a bit of turquoise in there,
If you can see around the middle section.
And it's a beautiful,
Sturdy structure.
It looks almost like a bell at the base,
At its base.
And at the very tip there,
There is a lotus blossom,
Right?
And a stupa is a symbol found all across cross Buddhist traditions that originated in India as a mound made to hold the sacred remains like those of the historical Buddha,
Shakyamuni.
But it's not limited to the mortal remains of a holy person.
It can include their objects,
Right?
Such as clothes,
Sacred texts,
And even figures made of clay and the ashes of the deceased.
So while a statue or a painting of the Buddha represents more of the divine body of an enlightened being,
The stupa represents the mind of the supreme kind of spiritual awakening.
And so it is the symbol of Buddhahood and a symbol of the ultimate growth that is possible within each person.
I'm so happy that Kate Johnson is here with us today and is our teacher today.
It's been a while since we've connected,
Kate,
And I'm so delighted to have you back and have missed you.
I'll just share Kate's bio with you before we bring her on.
Kate Johnson works at the intersections of spiritual practice,
Social action,
And creativity.
She has been practicing Buddhist meditation in the Western Insight Theravada tradition since her early 20s.
And is empowered to teach through Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
She holds a BFA in dance from the Alvin Ailey School at Fordham University and an MA in performance studies from NYU.
She's a core faculty member of MIT's Presencing Institute and has trained hundreds of leaders and change makers in using social presencing theater,
Which is a mindfulness and dance improvisation methodology.
Kate,
Thank you so much for being here.
So happy to have you.
Hi.
There you are.
Thank you.
Thanks for the introduction.
It's really good to see you,
Dawn.
And nice to be with the community.
I see there's people who are tuning in today from all over the country,
Which is exciting.
And I'm also picturing some of the familiar faces of the people I miss from New York City who I hope you're doing well today and wherever you are.
Well,
It's great to have you here,
Kate,
As I mentioned.
And I'm so happy to sit with you today.
Well,
It's an amazing theme and a wonderful image.
The stupa is actually something that's,
Even though I'm primarily trained in the Theravada lineage,
It's something that a symbol and an object that's really dear to me.
Over the last several years,
I've spent several months at a time with teachers that I love,
Tenisar and Kitisaro in South Africa at a hermitage they have there for extended meditation retreat.
And on this land,
Which if you can imagine it,
It's kind of in the Drakensberg Mountain.
So there are these delicious,
Rich green hills in the northeast corner of South Africa.
And then it's at the base of a very large mountain.
And then right at that base,
There's a few huts where you can sit to meditate.
And that's where I go.
And the teachers live in this little cottage at the base of the mountain.
And right in front of their cottage is a stupa that was given to them as a gift.
And the interesting thing,
I guess,
For me about meditation is that it seems like no matter how long I practice it,
There's sometimes where I feel like my growth is really in this linear kind of pattern where I can see step by step how I'm progressing and really feel the difference in my practice.
And then sometimes it feels kind of like wandering in the wilderness in the dark.
Like have I literally ever meditated before in my life?
And so one particular retreat I was sitting with them,
I was in this kind of,
Yeah,
My mind felt very wild and difficult to settle.
And so I took to do my walking meditation around their stupa in front of their house and would just be walking in circles for hours.
And it was an experience that taught me that sometimes growth looks like a straight line and sometimes it looks like a spiral.
And that especially in our practice,
We may not always feel progress,
But change is happening.
And if we can just keep turning,
Often that change will be revealed over time.
I think that this theme of growth being circular and the willingness to keep turning feels especially useful right now when the future for me and for a lot of people feels a little uncertain,
But we know that change is happening.
And it reminds me of the words of a beloved Buddhist ecologist and activist and teacher named Joanna Macy,
Who talked about the concept of the great turning,
Which she said is,
Well,
I'd like to actually just read her words to you.
These are from a book that she wrote in 2012 called Active Hope.
I think the full title is Active Hope,
How to Face the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy.
And this is what she writes.
She says,
Right now,
A shift of great scope and magnitude is occurring.
It's been called the ecological revolution,
The sustainability revolution,
Or even the necessary revolution.
We call it the great turning and see it as the essential adventure of our time.
And involves a transition from a doomed economy of industrial growth to a life sustaining society committed to the recovery of our world.
And this transition is well underway.
She goes on to say,
In the early stages of major transition,
The initial activity might seem to exist only at the fringes.
Yet when their time comes,
Ideas and behaviors become contagious.
The more people pass on inspiring perspectives,
The more these perspectives catch on.
And at a certain point,
The balance tips and we reach critical maps,
Viewpoints and practices that were once on the margins become the new mainstream.
So here she's talking about how we turn together as a society and how we might have times where it seems like nothing's really happening except through the fringes.
But that at some point,
The sense of the transformation and the world that is wanting and needing to be born with us and through us becomes apparent to all of us.
And we seem to be somewhere kind of approaching that sense of critical mass.
At least that's my perspective.
So Macy talks about this great turning as having three elements that are important to our practice.
The first she talks about is holding,
She says holding actions.
So for her,
These are protests.
These are demonstrations.
These are ways of actually interrupting harm that's occurring.
And we can see examples of this happening all over the world.
The second part of this great turning that she emphasizes is what she calls building life sustaining systems.
So this is rather than the kind of blocking action of interrupting harm,
This is envisioning and building new structures,
New ways of being together,
Of relating together,
Of caring for each other.
I know that for me and my neighborhood before the pandemic began,
We never had a neighborhood text chain where anyone could say like,
Hey,
I need an egg.
Hey,
Can anyone drop off my ballot for me?
And now we do.
So starting to build out of necessity these new systems that can really be microcosms of the more enlightened society that we hope to build.
And then the third,
She talks about a shift in consciousness,
Which is where we'll place our attention today with our meditation practice.
So meditation doesn't seem to be very good for,
If not an activist practice necessarily,
Or not out there chaining ourselves to a redwood when we're sitting.
We're not building new organizations or creating community alliances when we're meditating.
But we are working with our own minds and hearts and we're priming ourselves to be of service and action in the best way that we can whenever we're called,
Whenever those unique leverage points that may be available to us present themselves.
And if nothing else,
We're learning how to be with change and to be awake in it.
So when we think about the stupa and this symbol of Buddhahood and supreme awakening,
It's an invitation to be with our experience and to notice what our relationship is to it and to incline the mind towards wakefulness.
So the practice that we'll do is simple.
The world is complex.
Our practice can be simple.
I'll invite you in a guided way.
I'll just give you an overview now and then I'll guide you in a moment to bring your attention to a sensation in the body that feels soothing.
Many people like to use the breath and the sensations of the breath coming and going as a way to steady the mind,
Gather it.
Some people prefer if the breath feels agitated to use the feeling of the hands or the feet touching the floor or the back if you happen to be lying down.
So there's something that can be studying about a sense of contact.
And then to allow your mind to rest there in that sense of the breath or the hands or other aspect of the body that we'll call an anchor or a home base for your awareness.
And as you know,
From time to time,
The mind gets bored or gets interested in something else or gets distracted,
Kind of wanders away.
And then our activity is just to bring it back and gather because we're practicing being steady in a world that is changing.
And from time to time,
I'd like you to just reflect on the theme really or the invitation that I see of this image of the stupa to contemplate our relationship to what's happening right now.
So whether we find our mind still staying with the breath moment after moment after moment,
Totally steady,
Whether we see our mind is whirling around kind of to the future and to the past and to the imaginary experience,
That from time to time we can pause and say,
Okay,
What is happening now?
And can I be awake with it?
So it's the essence of the practice.
We're knowing what is happening,
What is our relationship to it.
And for today,
Inspired by the stupa,
I'd love for you to ask yourself the question,
Am I awake in this moment?
Sometimes even asking the question can wake us up.
So I hope that you're willing to try this together.
We'll be sitting for 15 minutes,
Maybe a little more.
So go ahead and stretch out your body.
You've probably been sitting for 20 minutes or more.
If you'd like to shake out your legs or arms or give your neck a little stretch,
Please do.
And then go ahead and find your comfortable meditation position.
You could be sitting,
You could be lying down if that's more appropriate for your body or even standing.
The benefit of practicing from home is that we get to decide what's really good for our bodies right now.
And as we move forward in the practice,
Just taking a moment to reflect on our individual intention,
What brought you here to meditate today.
You might even conceive of this question as who or what am I meditating for.
And also to remind ourselves of the liberatory possibilities of this practice that actually this is a practice that can lead to growth.
This is a practice in which we necessarily grow.
And this is a practice in which we can become more awake and more free,
Allowing us to be a part of that great turning rather than resisting it or freezing up.
And all that can be achieved in just a simple practice of paying attention to what's happening right now.
And so choosing now,
Whether you'd like to be with the feeling of your breathing coming and going,
Or you'd like to focus your attention on your hands resting or some other part of the body that feels steady and grounding and soothing.
And start to gather your attention around that space in such a way that everything else kind of falls into the background.
And this bodily sensation comes into the foreground and fills up your awareness and magnetizes your awareness in a certain way so that the mind starts to want to stay here.
And so the primary activity here is to gather and collect our awareness around this home base or anchor that we chose,
And then rest the mind there,
Letting the mind be simple,
Body be simple.
Everything steadiness and groundedness,
Even in the midst of change.
Okay.
You you From time to time just Noticing what's happening in the mind right now?
I'm also noticing your relationship to it and asking the question am I awake?
And then having let that question resonate for a moment coming back to your anchor or your home base the place where the mind can rest you studying mind Thank you.
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Reflecting on this second aspect of Great Turning,
The building of life-sustaining systems.
Taking a moment to celebrate what you cultivated for yourself and for others in this world that sustains life and supports life.
Protects it.
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Yourself and for others in this world that sustains life and supports life,
Protects it.
And then finally celebrating your commitment to participating in a shift in consciousness yourself,
For your own consciousness and also in your circles of influence.
And if there's any aspiration that's arising for how you might lean in even more deeply to one of these activities of great turning,
Please take this moment to articulate that to yourself.
An aspiration or commitment,
A place you'd like to grow in your expression of weightfulness.
Thank you for your practice today.
And I hope everyone keeps practicing to the extent that we're able to during this time.
I think for me,
I know it's been life-saving in being able to notice.
Because when turning is happening,
Because when change is happening,
It can be a time where fear naturally comes up because we don't know what's happening.
In response,
We can get stuck or contracted or retreat in.
And to practice being steady in the face of change,
Being awake with what's happening,
Gives us an opportunity to choose how to respond.
Whether that's to join the turning or just step aside and let it happen.
So I hope that's helpful.
Thank you,
Kate.
Thank you.
See you soon.
That concludes this week's practice.
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We invite you to become a member of The Rubin.
Thank you for listening.
Have a mindful day.
