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Theme: Healing

About the Meditation

Meditation session led by Sharon Salzberg.

The guided meditation begins at 13:33.

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 forty-five-minute weekly program designed to fit into your lunch break. Each session will be inspired by a different work of art from the Rubin Museum’s collection and will include an opening talk, a twenty-minute meditation session, and a closing discussion.

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

New York Insight Meditation Center

Related Artwork

Medicine Buddha Palace (copy of first painting from the set of the Tibetan medical paintings from Mentsikhang Lhasa); Rebgong county, Qinghai Province, China; 2012″“2013; pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Art; SC2013.6

This painting of the Medicine Buddha in his palace illustrates the first chapter of the Four Medical Tantras (Gyu shi), which many medical students and doctors recite every morning in homage to this buddha and his medical tradition. The palace, presented as a traditional Buddhist mandala diagram, is surrounded by four mountains. Each mountain offers the perfect environment for specific medicinal plants to grow and harbors various types of minerals, precious stones, and springs with restorative waters, each associated with particular healing qualities and used in treatment. At the center of the palace the Medicine Buddha, in the form of the teacher Rigpa Yeshe, is seen expounding the science of healing to four groups of disciples, among them his student Yilekye. This painting is a rendition of the first painting of an important set of seventy nine medical thangkas created in Lhasa, Tibet, in the late seventeenth century.

About the Speaker

Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg, cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, has guided meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Sharon’s latest book is Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection. She is a weekly columnist for On Being, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, and the author of several other books including the New York Times bestseller Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, and Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Sharon has been a regular participant in many onstage conversations at the Rubin.

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