Mindfulness Meditation at the Rubin Museum with Sharon Salzberg

The theme for this meditation is Beginning Again. It is inspired by an artwork from the Rubin’s collection & it will include an opening talk & a 20-min session.

Transcript

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 the teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center.

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.

Sharon Salzberg is here to kick off the New Year with us.

Great as always to have Sharon here.

And many of you know her as the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Center in Barrie,

Massachusetts,

Where she's heading off to today,

I guess.

And she's been studying and teaching for over 45 years and is the author of fabulous books like Real Happiness at Work and some others you can find up in the shop.

And really because you all have asked for this,

Sharon is teaching an evening workshop next week.

It is the very,

On the very timely topic of working with enemies,

Inner and outer enemies,

And really diving into,

I think,

That framework of what we think of when the word enemies comes to mind and how we're defining that for ourselves,

Especially right now and kind of going into home politically and otherwise.

So I think it's,

Again,

Hopefully something that will be really useful to you as something that has been requested.

And we'd love to get your feedback from it as well.

So let's talk about that.

And we'll meditate.

And we will begin again many times today,

I'm sure.

Please welcome back Sharon Salzberg.

Hello there.

Happy New Year.

I thought I'd start actually by going a little further into the structure for next week when I'm back here in the evening because it's an unusual offering for me here.

Bob Thurman and I wrote a book together called Love Your Enemies,

I think.

And so I thought for the structure of the workshop I would follow the structure of the book,

Which was interesting and provocative.

And that was,

It's a Tibetan system from their psychology where first they look at outer enemies.

And those are the beings we consider harmful to us,

That we feel some fear,

Trepidation,

Anxiety around,

Although we may not do it in this order.

And then inner enemies,

And that is not feelings that we simply feel,

But certain mind states when we get really wrapped up in them and they define us and they overtake us and they guide our choices especially,

Like fear,

Anger,

Greed.

Think about a time when you were just like overcome by greed and how massively you felt you needed a thing,

A particular thing,

Precisely that thing,

And nothing else would do.

And then look back at a time when you regain some perspective and it was like really?

That was awfully tight.

So that state is considered,

Being overwhelmed by that kind of state is considered being kind of captured like an enemy because it has now defined our sense of possibility and left us in a world of great limitation.

Like only that thing will ever make me happy and so on.

So it's the outer enemy,

The inner enemy,

The secret enemy is a very Tibetan way of describing things.

The secret enemy is the construct of a rigidly separate independent self so that we don't recognize we live in an interdependent universe of connection and so on and we more have this sense of self against other or us and them.

And then the most secret kind of enemy,

The ultra secret enemy is a kind of self loathing where one doesn't understand that in fact we all have some capacity for growth and change and understanding and love and so on.

No matter what our life experience may have been in fact as a potential,

As a capacity this is said to exist within each of us,

Never to be destroyed.

However covered over it may be,

It's never ever destroyed and so that's the workshop.

Because one can get very entangled in outer enemies,

That's why I thought of switching the order.

So we'll see,

We'll have fun.

Anyway and all of this has a lot to do with beginning again doesn't it which I think anybody who's ever sat with me or read anything I've written know like I talk about that ad nauseum.

I hope it's not really ad nauseum.

I talk about it a lot because I think it's so essential and it reminds me of so many of the great lessons I have learned from meditation practice that were kind of surprising to me.

So you know I had a lot of expectations about meditation practice being kind of fancy and esoteric and magnificent and you know it was kind of going to be initiated into another world and it was going to be free of suffering at last and I was going to feel whole,

I wasn't going to feel so fragmented anymore right away and instead you know to come to a place where I was told feel your breath and your mind will wander.

The important thing is being able to let go of that distraction without so much judgment and simply begin again.

Sounded to me like they don't think I can do the real thing.

You know I'm getting like the remedial instruction and he's no doubt taking people aside into a room where he's giving them the real thing and it's just like here I am day after day after day after day,

Month after month after month.

It's the same instruction.

It's like I never made it you know into the secret room.

You know so I really I didn't understand the potency of the idea of letting go and beginning again in part because I didn't understand that the meditation practice was a practice for being different for the things we face in life.

That we really were learning skills that weren't just about that,

Well in this case it was intensive retreats but you know for most of us these days it's not just about the 15 minutes a day that we're formally practicing,

It's about the rest of the day and how we confront traffic or being late or our plane being late or meeting a stranger or a delightful delightful wondrous beautiful thing that we maybe habitually kind of shy away from like we don't deserve such nice things or you know in all the millions of ways our own conditioning comes into play where the conditioning itself might actually arise but we can see it,

We can let go of it,

We can begin again.

If you think about how many conversations you have with somebody where you're not really listening and you're thinking about the email you need to send or what you need to do when you get home or or whatever and you realize that I'm a million miles away you let go,

You gather your attention,

You begin again,

You really arrive.

That's connection right.

You may not agree with what the person's saying or want to take them home for dinner you know but that's genuinely being there with one another and we do that over and over and over again.

You think about how many times you're not perfect in a day and there's a little voice inside that points that out but what do we do when we realize maybe I should have said that in another way or god I wasted 20 minutes that's really a shame that I'm gonna have to really hustle to make up for that or ooh that was kind of a detour that might have been thought of in a very different way but those aren't failures that's just like the rhythm of life you know and now of course there's a lot being written about how we need to fail,

We need to experiment,

We need to try,

We need to take some risks.

If we never make a mistake it means that we're kind of stultified right but even even short of like a kind of glaring error we stumble that's just the nature of things you know we go forward we fall down we have to pick ourselves up or let someone else help us up we go forward again or we have like an incredible aspiration and we forget it we lose sight of it in the sort of the details the minutiae of life and then we remember oh right or we have a kind of aspiration you know a sample New Year's resolution I'm gonna try to bring kindness into every conversation I have whether at work you know where it's more kind of stylized or at home or casually I heard that that resolved from from many people over New Year's Eve and then you're on the phone and someone's annoying you and the annoyance may be genuine and there may be something you need to try to negotiate or shift in the dynamic and you forget totally about your resolve and you just snap at the person then you remember oh right I was gonna do I was an experiment being strong and kind I was an experiment with different kinds of strength rooted more in a sense of compassion let me start over you don't have to wait till next year we start over again every moment and much to my surprise that's exactly what I was practicing in the meditation it wasn't a question of like a fine analysis or certainly wasn't a question of chastising myself or blaming myself it was like muscle training was practicing letting go and beginning again and letting go and beginning again and even though the word forgiveness isn't necessarily involved there like self-forgiveness in terms of expression it's involved there as a value that's really what we're cultivating and it doesn't mean being lazy or having excuses for yourself it's being able to move on in a much more effective efficient true way because the more time we spend disparaging ourselves and blaming ourselves and the more hopeless we feel the more you know low energy we feel it's just not useful in the end if it worked it would be kind of great because it's what we're used to so it would just be like okay keep doing what you're doing that's my new year's reason I'm just gonna do everything I've been doing it's just fine but it doesn't actually work that well and it leaves us so tired and feeling so like you know especially you know if you in a time when there seems to be a lot of external adversity and challenge you know one has to muster up a lot of energy to try to seek change and so on so the things that drain us are especially I think worthy of really examining so in a sitting practice as an example where we choose an object of awareness we rest our attention on that object we get distracted a billion times we need to let go and begin again we are practicing exactly what we need to practice and then you all know what a fractal is you know we should actually look for some art that's fractal like here in the museum it's you know when a small portion of something represents the whole it's like an identical replica of the whole so I always think of that moment as the perfect fractal for all of the teachings of freedom for somebody like the Buddha it's there's so much contained there even if the words aren't spoken that quality of forgiveness that sense of compassion in this case for oneself the actual ability to relinquish not to hurl something away because you're enraged that it came up and distracted you but just to gently let go to start over with some sense of resilience and and like a clear mind and dedication and energy it's all there like right in that moment which is why you know despite kind of the social pressure and it does exist you know to be able to leave a meditation and run into a friend and you know have them ask what happened and for you to be able to say it was so glorious you know I put my attention on the breath and it never wandered and like the whole energy of the universe just drew to one point and it lit up it was like a flame that just arose out of that point with the entire energy of the universe there and then the flame and the energy and the universe just entered my body and it was just like I and the whole universe were one that's a really nice thing to be able to say you know much nicer than yeah my mind wandered you know I let go a little more gently I started over again with a little more kindness was like all right you know that's what matters right because that's the that's what transfers into life I mean I think those kind of fantastic meditation experiences are fantastic I think they're great and they are available it's not like you know any one of us cannot have them ever we can if we train in that direction but in terms of day-to-day life and what really frees us and brings us happiness and more love into our lives and all that it's kind of irrelevant right it becomes like this fond memory remember back in 2017 when I you know like saw that little flame and it was like so this is a great time you know I'm always amused by New Year's because it's a construct and I really am into New Year's and often spend it teaching and you know together whoever I'm with we we have this sense of a passage and a turning and a new beginning and it's really great and it's just a construct I always say like as a Buddhist a Jew and an American I get three a year you know so I get three times a year when I have a chance to like completely re-figure my life so here we are you know it's it's that tiny moment of letting go that represents the whole of the path letting go and starting over okay so we'll practice together if you want to sit comfortably 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 if you want you can start by listening to sounds whether the sound of my voice or other sounds just as a way of relaxing deep inside allowing your experience to come and go으들갈세요 You can bring your attention to the feeling of your body sitting,

Whatever sensations you discover.

Bring your attention to your hands.

See if you can move from the more conceptual level to the direct perception of sensation.

Picking up pulsing,

Warmth,

Coolness,

Whatever your predominant sensations may be.

You don't want to be naming them,

But feeling them.

And bring your attention to the feeling of your breath.

In this system,

It is just the normal,

Natural breath.

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

Just however it's appearing.

See if you can find the place where the breath is strongest for you.

The nostrils,

The chest,

Or the abdomen.

You can find that place,

Bring your attention there,

And just rest.

See if you can feel one breath.

And if you'd like to use a label very quietly,

Like in out,

That's fine.

To help support the awareness of the breath.

But if you use one,

Then very quietly.

So your attention is really going to feeling the sensations of the breath.

And remember,

When your mind wanders,

That will be followed sooner or later by the magic moment of realizing,

Oh.

It's been quite some time since I last felt a breath.

That's the most important moment.

Where we practice letting go,

And we practice beginning again.

Iente.

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Thank you,

Sharon.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Let's sit together one last time before we go today.

We can begin again.

Sharon.

Sharon.

Thank you.

That concludes this week's practice.

If you'd like to attend in person,

Please check out our website,

Rubinmuseum.

Org slash meditation to learn more.

Sessions are free to Rubin Museum members,

Just one of the many benefits of membership.

Thank you for listening.

Have a mindful day.

Reviews

Very nice way to begin again. Thank you for sharing this with us.

I enjoyed this talk and meditation on beginning again with Sharon Salzburg. Thank you.

Thank you Sharon. A pleasure as always

So appreciate the learning, thank you.

That was ok thank you

There was a talk for the first 15 mins still insightful talk though leading into it

Another fabulous guided mediation, the alchemy of wit and experience worked its magic for me.....

Very interesting and back to the basics. Thanks so much

John

Loved the silent times. I enjoyed this very much. Thank you 🙏

Beautiful and I would add that it is mostly a talk with a short meditation

Great explanation prior to the 15 minute meditation.

Thank you!

I am grateful for Sharons perspective, wit and humor always.

Wonderful dharma talk and practice. Always beginning again!

Good instruction which includes 15 minutes of meditation. Beginning again. Thank you

A wonderful guide. Sharon is a masterful teacher.

This was wonderful, I learned about Sharon Salzberg yesterday.

Important and lovely teaching! Thank you!

We keep beginning again. Wonderful reminder as I start this work week.