Mindfulness Meditation · New Beginnings
This week’s meditation session led by Jon Aaron and the theme is New Beginnings. The guided meditation begins at 12:18.
Shezad Dawood; Wrathful Activity, Fierce Energy; 2018; Neon on black painted board; 112 5/8 × 66 15/16 in.; Rubin Museum of Art; Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art; SC2020.1.1
Buzzing with energy, this abstracted fierce figure is a contemporary twist on depictions of Buddhist deities who help practitioners transcend obstacles. The contemporary artist Shezad Dawood blends cultural heritage with references to popular visual culture and materials—like the neon of this sculpture—to reexamine how we tell and perceive history.
Skull crowns often adorn the heads of wrathful deities. There are six small skulls and enveloping flames above the central figure’s elongated face. The glowing neon gives the sculpture a playful quality, and reveals the goodwill beneath the figure’s tough exterior.
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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