Mindfulness Meditation Online With Tracy Cochran 10/26/2020

The Rubin Museum of Art presents a weekly meditation session led by a meditation teacher from the area, with each session focusing on a specific work of art. This podcast is a recording of a Mindfulness Meditation online session and a 20-minute sitting session, and a closing discussion. The guided practice begins at 15:17.

Transcript

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,

Everybody.

Welcome,

Welcome to mindfulness meditation online here with the Rubin Museum of Art.

I'm Dawn Eshelman,

And thanks for joining us.

For those of you who are new to us,

We're a museum of Himalayan art and ideas in New York City,

And we're so happy to have you join for our weekly program where we combine art and meditation online.

As we start today,

I'll just remind you that in our sessions,

We take a look at a work of art from our collection,

And then we'll hear a brief talk from our teacher today.

It's the fabulous Tracy Cochran.

And then we'll sit together for a short time,

15 to 20 minutes.

So nice to see many of you joining.

And this month,

We've been talking about this theme of growth and its relationship to our larger idea of impermanence and how things are always changing and growth is a part of that personal growth,

Growth in the natural world around us.

And even as the seasons really are changing,

Especially here in New York City right now,

That is a type of growth too,

That letting go,

That shifting of the seasons.

So let's look at this art object that we have today.

We're looking at the bell and the vajra.

And these are late 19th century.

They are silver and metal alloy,

And they are from Mongolia.

And they will be familiar to many of you who have spent time in our galleries and have some familiarity with Buddhist art,

Especially tantric Buddhist arts.

These are two very powerful symbols.

But maybe even more importantly,

They're actual tools.

They are ritual tools from the tantric tradition used in ritual and are a type of offering,

One of many types of offering that are given to the gods.

So the vajra and the bell complement one another.

And the vajra looks like a thunderbolt.

And it represents skillful means,

This sort of active component of life for a practitioner,

Taking compassionate action,

Making sure that that action is as skillful as it can be.

You can imagine aiming at a target and throwing that thunderbolt.

And the vajra or the vajra ganja or the bell is a much more receptive quality,

Represents the wisdom.

And is a symbol of that more receptive action that is still the quality of which is especially still incredibly important.

And together they symbolize enlightenment as they are embodying this union of their dualities.

So compassion and wisdom.

And they're not just complementary,

But really interconnected,

Interdependent in two parts of this whole.

So the sound of the bell also calls to mind this empty nature of everything from a Buddhist perspective that nothing can exist independently,

That everything is connected.

And that if we're aware,

Profoundly aware of the empty nature of all things,

That we can become free of attachment and aversion and become liberated.

We evolve,

We grow.

So let's bring on our teacher today,

Tracy Cochran.

She is the editorial director of Parabola Magazine.

It's a quarterly that actually I heard that there's a new and a new parabola just about to launch.

And it has been around for 40 years and it has drawn on the world's cultural wisdom traditions to explore the questions that all humans share.

Tracy has been a student of meditation and spiritual practices for decades and teaches mindfulness meditation and mindful of writing at New York Insight Meditation Center and throughout the New York area.

In addition to Parabola,

You can find her writing on the New York Times,

Psychology Today,

O Magazine,

Many more.

Please check out her website,

TracyCochran.

Org.

I think that's where you can learn about her regular meditation offerings and special classes and things like that.

Tracy,

Hello.

Thank you for being here.

Hi.

I'm so glad to be back with you.

And especially at this time of year.

Ah,

Great.

This is one of your favorites,

Right?

It is,

Definitely.

Definitely.

Thank you,

Tracy.

I'll be back in a little bit.

Okay.

Okay.

And I'm excited to have a chance to be with my friends in the room and with all of you because it is my favorite time of year because we're approaching Halloween.

And I know it seems a bit subdued this year,

But on the other hand,

Many of us have treated the whole year like Halloween in many ways.

It's been dark.

It's been frightening.

Anything could happen.

And of course,

We've been wearing masks.

And many of us have been hitting the candy pretty hard.

But there are deeper roots to this holiday that speak to our practice and even to the sacred objects that Dawn introduced.

And we've come to think of it as a kind of playful holiday.

And where I live,

As you can see,

I live in the country north of New York.

People decorate their lawns with ghosts and cobwebs and rubber body parts,

Pants coming up out of the ground.

As though this is seasonal decorating,

Which is a bit ghoulish.

I've even seen it once in a Catholic cemetery in Long Island,

Ghosts and so forth,

Which is kind of weird.

But I'd invite you to realize that this turning of the year towards darkness in this hemisphere and this custom that became Halloween was once an ancient Celtic rite.

And holiday,

Holy day called Samhain.

They would welcome the coming of the darkness.

And they would welcome it because it was a thin time.

A time when the boundaries between worlds was more porous and more thin.

And one of the customs I read that used to be performed in ancient Scotland was that people would risk putting out the fires in their homes and rekindling the light from a common fire.

And I invite you to imagine how dark it must have been in a world lit just by fire.

And it's interesting to consider that that common bonfire was,

Yes,

It was community,

And it's also an embodiment of compassion.

We all have suffered darkness.

Personal darkness.

Born of loss.

Born of disappointment.

Born of fear and disillusionment and collective darkness.

Uncertainty about what will come for the country,

For the planet.

And there's a bit of ease that begins to come just by realizing that everybody in this space right now is sharing or has shared that same experience.

There isn't one person here,

Not me,

Not Dawn,

Not Tashi,

None of you,

Not Elise,

Who hasn't suffered loss,

Not Terini,

No one.

No one is exempt.

No one alive.

And so it begins to bring a bit of ease that we can feel right now even before we sit,

If you just bring your attention to this body.

You begin to discover something else,

That this idea of a thin time can mean that this can be a wonderful time and a wonderful practice for letting the boundaries between your head,

Your thinking,

And your heart,

Your feeling,

And your body,

Your sensation of being here,

To begin to become more porous.

So we're sharing a time,

We're all on Zoom,

Because there's much less travel,

Much less freedom of movement in one sense.

But it's in another sense a wonderful time to grow down,

To let our attention come down into the heart,

Into the body,

To let our awareness soften and expand,

Not to be anchored to a certainty in the future,

But just because things are uncertain,

We can let the attention come home to sensation,

To the heart,

To right where we are,

To begin to notice what is basic goodness right now.

The feeling of breathing,

The feeling of practice,

The feeling of being with this wonderful community,

We're from all different places,

And we share this wish to be present.

We share this calm and fire,

This capacity for compassion,

And we begin to see when we grow down,

When you can't go out,

Go down.

We begin to see that these lightning bolts of insight,

When I was younger,

I always,

Always wanted lightning bolts,

A big,

Wide blast of enlightenment.

But I begin to see that moment by moment,

Insight,

Wisdom can be something very soft,

Very gentle,

It can come as we relax into sensation,

Into the rhythm of the breath,

Into being with our experience exactly as it is,

With kindness and no judgment,

That as we do this,

Tiny insights can appear,

That I'm more than my thinking,

I'm much more,

That even in the midst of darkness,

I have a capacity to soften and open to the world around me,

To remember that inside me there's a light of attention that isn't just thinking,

That's also sensing and feeling.

And as this continues to open,

I begin to see that I'm capable of action,

Beginning with this simple action right now.

We take a comfortable seat,

All of us,

Wherever we are,

San Francisco,

Brooklyn,

Washington,

Wherever you are,

Take a comfortable seat and let your eyes close.

If you aren't comfortable,

Let your eyes be soft and gazing down,

But it's best to let the eyes close.

And notice as you do this that whatever is present inside you,

It might be tension,

It might be sorrow,

It might be fatigue or joy,

Whatever state,

That you can bring an attention to this state that welcomes,

That accepts without judgment.

And let yourself notice how it feels to be completely acceptable,

Exactly as you are.

And let everything happen,

Thinking,

Sensing,

Feeling,

Picturing things.

Let it all happen without judging and see that you can gently come home,

Back to the sensation of sitting and breathing,

Attending to things.

Let it all happen.

And notice that when you make this movement of returning to sensation,

Letting yourself sink from the head to the body,

That you don't shut down,

You actually open,

Open to life.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And notice that this stillness that surrounds you,

That's inside you,

Isn't an absence,

It's very alive.

It's an attention that sees without judgment,

That receives what it finds.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And notice that if you get lost in thinking this is perfectly natural and that you can always come home,

Come back to the body,

Back to sensation,

And be welcomed by a presence that doesn't judge.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And notice how it feels to remember.

Mindfulness is remembering that we're full of experience.

We're not just thinking.

We're breathing and sensing and feeling.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And see that when you bring the attention back to the body and sensation,

You also open to a light of awareness that isn't thinking,

That's seeing,

Embracing,

Welcoming everything that comes.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Notice that you can let go and sink into the sensation of being present.

Letting go of all striving and just resting in awareness.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And see that the stillness is in absence.

It's a presence that's alive,

That supports us and nourishes us.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

As you let yourself soften and relax and come home to the body and sensation,

You begin to remember that you're not alone,

That you're connected to life.

You belong to it.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And see that there's a presence here,

A source of light and warmth that we share.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

And notice that there's a light in the midst of the darkness of the unknown.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Let it all happen.

Reviews

Most enjoyable thank you and best wishes for the election too. Dare I look yet? It’s Wednesday 5.19 Uk time. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Thank you Dawn and Tracey!