I turned the subtitles off, of course
So we started with a guided meditation, the youngish Tibetan teacher Yongey Mingur Rinpoche inviting to a simple exercise in awareness of your body, then of your mind in your body, then of the area around you, and then expanding outward to the larger world - even beyond the clouds! - and back.
As it ended, I asked: did that seem long or short? I asked in part because I was surprised it ended so quickly. But as I anticipated, several students found it very long. "Generation Z..." one explained, half-apologetic. Another shared my experience that it passed more quickly than expected, but the consensus was that once Rinpoche asked us to open our eyes (for the final 5 minutes) they got "antsy." I tried to work with the reported antsiness. It's normal to get fidgety, in body and mind, in an exercise like this, I said. And it's common to berate ourselves for this antsiness. But that won't make it go away, just add to it. Instead, these practices propose, you need to acknowledge the antisiness, observe it, see it arise - and fall.
It turned out that several in the class have done meditation of this sort, but as part of learning to deal with anxiety of various kinds. It was a new idea that it should ground you in reality, a reality that is itself antsy, rising and falling. We were using terms that seemed at odds with each other - noticing, accepting, inspecting, holding, letting go - so I asked them to use their hands to show what they thought was going on. Several of us had open hands, as if gently supporting something, but one of the more vocal students put her hands together around a pen as if in prayer, explaining that the pen would otherwise fall, she needed to hold a feeling or sensation to inspect it.
The Lang courtyard trees outside the window pitched in at this point, letting some leaves gently fall. Instead of pointing out how grasping is precisely what many Buddhists will say is the cause of our suffering (the second Noble Truth!), I sensed a teachable moment. Yes, I said, maybe things are falling all the time, like the leaves outside. We try to know them, catching them in our hands as it were. But we can't ultimately stop them from falling. My hands were falling leaves as I spoke but the last word went to the trees. which kept, falling, one by one to no discernible rhythm, as I segued to a broader account of Buddhist traditions, traditions which spread in part because they offered practices which people tried out and found helpful in this world of falling leaves...
This is a different kind of leaf but sympathetic, in Fort Tryon Park
