Tag: Tracy Cochran

• Three Marks

  Space aliens, robots, and clones don’t have belly buttons—this is a common trope and test of otherness on TV and in the movies.  Yet I remember finding this devastatingly clever when I first encountered it on TV as a child.  You could be perfectly human in every way, but if you lack this one tiny, seemingly insignificant detail, and you are revealed to be not of this world.   It felt like an important lesson: little facts that are easily overlooked can turn out to be crucial.  Did Adam and Eve have navels?  How could they?  Yet what did it mean if they did not?  This silly little mark turned out to be a door to Mystery.

  In the same way, the Buddha’s three marks or seals of existence can seem like insignificant details of our lives, no big deal…until they are.   The first of the marks is that all things in this phenomenal and temporal world (including you and I) are impermanent.  Everything changes yet nothing disappears completely—the state of things change.  Secondly, all things in this world (including our mental constructs and machinations) lack a separate and inviolate selfhood—everything is subject to causes and conditions, everything is influenced by other things and made up of other smaller parts that themselves contain smaller parts.  The third mark or seal of existence is knowing that such a changeable, dependent world is bound to lead to frustration, anxiety, unease, suffering—“dukkha” in the language of the early Buddhist’s texts.  Nirvana is waking up from the fever dream that we can control such a world.

  This week, if you wish, join some of us as we continue to observe these marks of existence as they manifest in our lives, remembering that we are all in this together, that no one can really stand apart, on higher ground.

  June 2, 2014

  Allowing, Awakening, Awareness, Happiness, Presence, Seeing, Three Marks of Existence, Tracy Cochran, Waking Up

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• Life Preserver

  I dreamed I was being carried along by life like a leaf on a stream.  In the dream I was wearing the royal blue dress I wore at my daughter’s wedding in England last November, which seemed strange because moments before I was holding my daughter’s tiny hand as we walked down steep brownstone steps in Brooklyn.  As I floated by someone standing on the shore told me my hair looked good and that was nice but hardly enough to make a life.

  Here’s the kicker:  I woke up realizing that I hadn’t been dreaming and that I actually am—that we are—being swept along by life, being lived rather than living, helplessly reacting to circumstances and conditions vast and microscopic, outside and inside.  Interconnected and impermanent we may be, subject to ceaseless change, but I wanted to add my conscious “yes” to life.  I wanted to live deliberately, to actually read and sign the contract that bound me instead of travelling blind.  I wanted to feel it before it passed by.

  It turns out that being present is a courageous act. It involves discerning what we cannot change and changing what we can.  We cannot change other people or the forces that act on us—we cannot change the relentless force of change.  But we can change the quality of our presence here and now.  We can turn away from the old thoughts, pull ourselves out of the deep groove of habit, and be here now.

  We have a special potential the Buddhists call “bodhicitta.”   This isn’t a very graceful metaphor but think of it as an inflatable life raft or vest implanted in our hearts and minds (heart/mind).  “Bodhi” means awakening and “citta” derives from the Sanskrit root “cit,” which means “that which is conscious”—consciousness or mind.  Bodhicitta means “awakening or awakened mind” or “mind of enlightenment.  Bodhicitta is an expansive capacity of awareness and compassion, allowing us to be with change, connecting rather than being swept away.

  April 30, 2014

  a refuge, Allowing, Awakening, Awareness, be an island, Bodhicitta, Climate Change, Embodiment, Presence, Seeing, Tracy Cochran, Waking Up

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• Entering the Temple

  Late yesterday afternoon, ten of us sat in a sunset-washed yoga studio, practicing being still together, noting in the barest, sparest way how it feels to be in a body.  By noting in a bare and spare way, I mean we practiced gently restraining thought, allowing our sensations and feelings to arise and present themselves effortlessly, without commentary and judgments–including judgments about our inevitable thoughts and judgments.

  For me, the stillness of our shared meditation had a holiness about it that went beyond associating the day with Easter.  There was a sense of returning to the greater Whole that went beyond the experience of remembering that I have a body, that I am present on the earth, breathing and alive.  Sometimes when we sit, the sensation of being whole opens into the sense that we are part of a greater wholeness–a light of awareness appears that seems to come from a greater Whole.

  After we sat together, someone shared an experience that happened during the recent Passover holiday.  In the midst of an ordinary reaction to a family member, another way of seeing and feeling suddenly opened in her, allowing her to see that her sister and everything that was all right, just perfect just as it was.  I thought of something that I once heard from a great teacher–that the truth cannot be thought, that the truth is not a proposition but living reality to be perceived.   Sometimes, as my friend did, we experience being filled with a light of awareness that is finer than thought, that is made of an energy that is not separate from wisdom or compassion, not separate from the Whole.

  Einstein famously tells us that problems cannot be solved on the same level they are created.  Meditation is one way to contact this higher level.  Another noble friend who came to meditate last night, compared meditation and prayer, offering that mediation is being with what is while prayer is more often seeking (even if it is seeking to praise).   We spoke of the kind of prayer that is deep listening—a listening that is not separate from the sense of being listened to by a greater Whole.   We could substitute seeing or receiving or perceiving.

  In years past during our Sunday meditations, we spoke about the word “contemplate,” that it comes from a Latin root that means to come into the temple (originally not a building but an empty space set apart for reading augurs or signs—for reading the way things are).   Sometimes when we sit and turn our attention to our experience just as it is, when we re-enter the temple of our own mysterious bodies, we can perceive what is usually imperceptible, that we are surrounded and filled by the unknown.

  This week, if you wish, join us as see how deeper truths open to us at moments, right in the midst of our ordinary lives.  Open to the possibility that a great and mysterious Wholeness can find you right where you are…as if we have never really been apart.

   

  April 21, 2014

  Allowing, Awakening, Awareness, Presence, Seeing, Tracy Cochran, Waking Up

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• Including the Body

  Try this gentle exercise:  Without adding any thoughts, gently restraining the impulse to comment or analyze or strive in any way,  allow yourself to notice “there is a body.”  Be patient and gentle with yourself.  Allow the sensation of being in a body to be whatever it is.

  The Buddha instructed his followers to abide contemplating the body internally, which is what we usually do when we meditate or often when we are relaxed and walking or sitting in nature.  He also invited people to contemplate the body externally.

  The Buddha instructed those who wished to meditate to “abide contemplating both internally and externally.”  What he meant by this two-way attention is much debated in scholarly circles, but it can be quite simple. We can allow ourselves to have sensation, all the while regarding ourselves as a human being moving through the world, conditioned by myriad forces and conditions,  open to and impacting the world around us.  We can bring our attention to the sensation of being in a body. AND  we  can be open to an experience of the whole of ourselves.

  Moment by moment, such a practice can remind us that we belong here on earth : )

  April 16, 2014

  Awakening, Awareness, Daily Bread, Embodiment, Forgiveness, Happiness, Letting Be, Parabola, Tracy Cochran

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• Samadhi

  Last Sunday evening, a group of us meditated and exchanged about what the Buddha meant by the word “samadhi” — a word usually translated as “concentration.”  I don’t know about you, but I dreaded the word and the state that I thought went with it.  I associated concentration the kind of grim mental effort I made in college, usually the night before a test or a paper was due and fueled by lots of coffee and cigarettes and fear.  In meditation, I believed I strongly preferred  mindfulness, a sky-like state of awareness that would alight on things like a butterfly and move on.   But turns out that those beautiful moments of alighting on a sensation or a sound were moments of samadhi.

  It was revelation to discover that samadhi happens when we are free from stress and strain.  In his classic teaching on meditation, The Satipatthana Sutra, the Buddha describes concentration as being “free from desires and discontent with regard to the world.”  It the blossoming of attention and joy that can appear when we are fully present. Ajahn Sucitto, an English monk in the Thai Forest tradition,  describes the joy that comes when we let go of all the tensions and thoughts that keep us from being fully present (quote via Mindfulness by Joseph Goldstein):

  “Receiving joy is another way to say enjoyment, and samadhi is the act of refined enjoyment.  It is based in skillfulness.  It is the careful collection of oneself into the joy of the present moment.  Joyfulness means there’s no fear, no tension, no ‘ought to.’ There isn’t anything we have to do about it.  It’s just this.”

   

  April 9, 2014

  Allowing, Awakening, Awareness, From “I” to “We”, Letting Be, Presence, Samadhi, Satipatthana, Tracy Cochran

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• Going Deeper: A Writing Workshop

  Going Deeper:  A Writing Workshop with Tracy Cochran at New York Insight Meditation Center

  Sunday, July 21, 2013 from 10 am – 5 pm.

  “There is just one contribution which every one of us can make,” writes Dorthea Brande in Becoming a Writer. “We can give into the common pool of experience some comprehension of the world as it looks to each of us.”

  The Buddha left the known for the unknown, striking out on his own to find a path to awakening, to a deeper and larger sense of what it means to be human. Everyone must walk their own path, yet we can support each other on the way.  Join us as we create a safe community, pooling our diverse experiences, exploring together how we can gain confidence, reach further, go deeper, moving past fear to find the buried treasure of truth in our own lives.

  No previous writing experience (and no reading out loud) is required.  This workshop will include many new exercises, so previous participants and experienced writers are very welcome.

  For more information on how to attend, please visit the New York Insight Meditation Center website.

  May 30, 2013

  Tracy Cochran

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