ABOUT THE MEDITATION
This week’s meditation session led by Kaira Jewel Lingo and the theme is Balance.
The guided meditation begins at 23:41.
For centuries Himalayan practitioners have used meditation to quiet the mind, open the heart, calm the nervous system, and increase focus. Now Western scientists, business leaders, and the secular world have embraced meditation as a vital tool for brain health.
Whether you’re a beginner, a dabbler, or a skilled meditator seeking the company of others, join expert teachers in a 45-minute weekly program designed to fit into your lunch break. Each session is inspired by a different work of art from the Rubin Museum’s collection and includes an opening talk and a 20-minute meditation session.
RELATED ARTWORK
Machik Labdron was born in 1055 and died in 1149, at the age of 94. She is revered for originating the tantric practice known as “cutting through ego” (chod). Chod practitioners intentionally visualize in their mind’s eye offering their own bodies to the deities.
Here she is shown adorned in bone ornaments, dancing to the sounds of her drum (damaru) and the bell she holds. To her right are dakinis, goddesses who walk the skies, dancing with her. To her left, a tantric master, possibly Machik’s teacher, is blowing into a leg bone trumpet. A personification of the Perfection of Wisdom, the deity Prajnaparamita is above her among the buddhas. Machik Labdron reminds us that realizing the empty nature of reality frees us from attachment and suffering, and enables us to gain a greater sense of balance.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in blending spirituality with social justice. Her work continues the Engaged Buddhist movement developed by Thich Nhat Hanh, and she draws inspiration from her parents’ stories and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King, Jr. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally in the Zen lineage and the Vipassana tradition, as well as in secular mindfulness, at the intersection of racial, climate, and social justice with a focus on activists, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, artists, educators, families, and youth. Based in New York, she offers spiritual mentoring to groups and is the author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption from Parallax Press.
Her teachings and writings can be found at www.kairajewel.com.
This program is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine and supported by the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism.
