Tracy Cochran

A meditation session led by Tracy Cochran. If you missed this program, check out the podcast, now live in the Rubin Media Center.

For centuries Himalayan practitioners have used meditation to quiet the mind, open the heart, calm the nervous system, and increase focus. Mindfulness meditation offers both a refuge from the world around us, and an opportunity to engage with it more consciously.

Whether you’re a beginner, a dabbler, or a skilled meditator seeking the company of others, join expert teachers in a forty-five-minute weekly program. Each session is inspired by a different work of art from the Rubin Museum’s collection. Designed to fit into your lunch break, the program includes an opening talk, a twenty-minute sitting session, and a closing discussion. Chairs will be provided.

This program is supported in part by the Hemera Foundation with thanks to our presenting partners Sharon Salzberg, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine.

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Theme: Transforming Obstacles

Above is an image of the 108 gods as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the most famous revealed treasure text in the West. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, after a person dies their consciousness experiences all these gods. Some of the gods are attractive while others are frightening. If a person’s consciousness reacts too strongly to either the positive or the negatives gods, they will be reborn. The key is for the person to realize that all the deities are simply projections of their own consciousness, leading them to achieve enlightenment between the stages of death and rebirth. No matter how attractive or repulsive these gods are, they are ultimately obstacles, preventing the consciousness from seeing its own nature.

About the Speaker

Tracy Cochran is editorial director of Parabola, a quarterly magazine that for forty years has drawn on the world’s cultural and wisdom traditions to explore the questions that all humans share. She has been a student of meditation and spiritual practices for decades and teaches mindfulness meditation and mindful writing at New York Insight Meditation Center and throughout the greater New York area. In addition to Parabola, her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Psychology Today, O Magazine, New York Magazine, the Boston Review, and many other publications and anthologies. For more information please visit tracycochran.org.