Mindfulness Meditation · Fearlessness
This week’s meditation session is led by Jon Aaron and the theme is Fearlessness.
Green Tara; Tibet; 13th century; Brass with inlays of silver; 18 1/2 × 12 1/2 × 9 5/8 in. (estimated); Rubin Museum of Art; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; C2005.16.30
This incredible 13th-century sculpture of Green Tara from Tibet displays all the classic traits of this popular Buddhist goddess. Dressed as an Indian princess, she sits in the fluid pose of royal ease, suggesting her active and helping nature. One of her origin stories says that Green Tara was a beautiful princess who through her fearlessness and commitment to helping one hundred thousand beings a day became a bodhisattva. She vowed to always be reborn as a woman to reach as many beings as possible. The head of her buddha family is Amoghasiddhi, who exemplifies fearlessness. Green Tara also has this quality of fearlessness since despite all the suffering in the world, she remains full of compassion and equanimity. The grace of her pose reminds us to remain fearless despite all challenges we that we in our lives.
Jon Aaron teaches meditation, Buddhist dharma, and is a Somatic Experience Practitioner® in New York City. He is well known as a teacher of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as well as a trainer of new teachers of this seminal eight-week curriculum. Among his primary interests are the use of meditation and somatic work in healing trauma and working with individuals with chronic pain and grief. He has been teaching for the New York Police Department in an eight-hour intervention called Cultivating Mindfulness: expanding the capacity of mind and body to work with stress, anxiety, and trauma. He is a cofounder of the MBSR Teacher Collaborative of Greater New York and a founding member of the Global Mindfulness Collaborative, and is a long-time teacher at New York Insight Meditation Center. When the pandemic hit, along with his partner he cofounded Space2Meditate, an online community of meditators that is still going strong six days a week.
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