Jon Kabat-Zinn Meditation with Anderson Cooper

foreign [Music] [Laughter] so let's just take a few moments and establish ourselves in a posture whatever that means to you that embodies wakefulness and dignity even at this uh odd time of the evening if there if there is such a thing as an odd time and keep in mind that it's it's perfectly possible to be fully aware and awake with your eyes open so there's no prescription about eyes opened her eyes closed whatever's most comfortable to you uh and experiencing the richness of the sensory world of the body sitting here breathing not in isolation but we're all here conspiring together and I'll often use the sort of terminology of dropping in okay so that it takes in a sense no time at the clock but we just drop in to this moment fully aware fully awake we don't have to push anything out of our head or pursue anything in our head thoughts or emotions but to just hold the entirety of your being in Awareness as you sit here Moment by moment and recognize that you're already completely whole w-h-o-l-e no matter what's going on in your life or in the world even this world on fire as we're calling it and that this present moment has an element of timelessness to it that when we take up residency in the now there's a an intrinsic spaciousness in both the domain of time and the domain of mind because awareness is boundless and you already have it so it's not something you have to acquire and then we just sit now it doesn't take long even for the most experience of meditators to under most circumstances realize pretty quickly that the mind has a life of its own and it's just like the ocean it's going to wave depending on the atmospheric conditions in your life and in your mind or body in any particular moment and that that's not a problem that doesn't mean you're a bad meditator or something's wrong and you have to force some kind of calmness or Stillness because the awareness is calmness and Stillness and so the awareness can hold even a mind waving and thinking and reacting emoting and so whatever arises in your practice whenever you take your seat in this way metaphorically and literally is simply the curriculum of the moment to be apprehended in Awareness without either pursuing it or pushing it away and in that way when the mind gets lost sooner or later the awareness recognizes that the mind's gotten carried away in the thought stream no problem you see what's on your mind that's information and then of course you're already back because you're seeing what's on your mind and the fact that it wandered away so that's awareness so here you are again and it doesn't matter how many times it wanders off because we're engaging in recognizing that that's just the surface of the Mind getting caught up in this or that usually repetitive patterns that go on endlessly and produce very little except anxiety and depression anger and sadness but the awareness if we can learn to inhabit it right here in this moment is not angry or sad or it just knows whatever is arising without the words and so in a certain sense it's an invitation to be 100 at home in the only moment any of us ever have and it turns out now to be this one here in this you know NYU SKU ball Auditorium but it's equally true anywhere that taking your seat is really taking a stand in your life and it's outside of time and in a very real way beyond space and time even as it's Anchored In a place we call here and I think whether you've been meditating for years or decades or whether you're fairly new to it might be valuable to emphasize that you're not looking for a particular feeling or to wander into some ideal meditative state where everything will be completely peaceful and copacetic as was said whatever arises is the curriculum and the awareness is not disturbed by the comings and goings in the thinking mind or a reactive emotions or or what's going on in the body when you can embrace it in a kind of open-hearted way and be the knowing and and for that matter the not knowing that your awareness always has been and is in this moment and so in a very real way awareness can be a refuge Shelter From The Storm s of the world storms in your own world storms in your own mind not an escape but it's just a refuge and an occasion for deep insight and the potential for again not Escape but Moment by moment freedom to respond to conditions rather than react mindlessly to them which is so often what happens when we fall into mental States like fear or sadness and lose our minds just when we need them the most and lose our hearts just when we eat them the most because when we hear the word mindfulness in all Asian language the word for mind and the word for heart is the same word so if you're not healing hearing heartfulness when we use the word mindfulness you're not really understanding what is being invited so again perhaps taking a slow deep more intentional breath in with full awareness and really feeling it as it fills up the entire you know torso as the diaphragm descends as far as it can descend and the air moves into the apices of the lungs and front and back and sides and just holding it for a moment that the absolute apex of the inbra and feeling that embracing of the breath and then when you're ready simply letting it wash out and if your eyes have been closed or welcome to open them and again I said this earlier today but notice I didn't ring any bells to say okay we're gonna meditate now and then bring some Bells say okay I did that for decades but um and I still do it but I want to make the point that uh life itself is the real meditation practice so there's no beginning and there's no end there's just like one moment you realize oh my mind is off and the next moment your mind's not off because you realized it

Channel: Wisdom 2.0 with Soren Gordhamer

Views: 2,413

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Id: yO52v2RK7d0

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023