We might want to believe that there is a definitive end—a clear point where some patterns have died and new ones have been born—but in fact, we are always in a process of realization. It’s a continuous cycle of forgetting and remembering to let go of expectations and remain open to each moment. It might seem small but these shifts in awareness have the potential to be completely transformative.
AWAKEN Season 4 is hosted by actress and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini. Guests featured in this episode include poet and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar, Founder and Director of the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Founder and Chief Visionary for Healthy Minds Innovations, Inc. Dr. Richie Davidson, contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman, poet and essayist Ross Gay, artist and writer Jenny Odell, scholar of Tibetan Buddhism Annabella Pitkin, author and transformational thought leader Sonya Renee Taylor, teacher and meditation master in the Bon Buddhist tradition Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, and writer, professor, and photographer Ocean Vuong. The Tibetan at the start of the episode is spoken by Tashi Chodron.
Creators & Guests
What is Awaken?
AWAKEN is a Webby Honoree podcast about the dynamic path to enlightenment and what it means to “wake up.” Throughout the series we dive into the personal stories of guests who share how they’ve experienced a shift in their awareness, and as a result, their perspective on life.
Tashi Chodron:
མེ་ཏོག་འདབ་མར་ཆུ་བཞིན་དང་།
ཁབ་ཀྱི་རྩེ་ལ་ཡུངས་དཀར་བཞིན།
སུ་ཞིག་འདོད་པས་མི་གོས་པ།
དེ་ལ་བདག་ནི་བྲམ་ཟེར་བརྗོད།
Isabella Rossellini:
As with water on a lotus leaf,
as with a mustard seed on the point of needle,
one whom attachment cannot affect,
I call that person a supreme being.
Dr. Richie Davidson:
This is exactly where I need to be on the planet right now, and this feeling of total unfettered awareness, just wide open and totally connected with recognizing what is happening in the mind, and with a really deep sense of purpose, all operating together.
And that's an amazing feeling!
Sonya Renee Taylor:
And all the things we try to make separate are not. They are just actually not. It’s just our brains trying to understand transition, trying to understand what it means to leave a thing and go into something else.
It’s like everything at any moment is exactly as it should be.
Annabella Pitkin:
The skillfulness of reaching each person where they are right now, that skillfulness, from very, very early moments of Buddhism, up into the present day, has often meant that Buddhists have gravitated toward the arts.
In other words, all of the ways that we engage with our senses provide us with our opportunities to learn about ourselves and the world.
Isabella Rossellini:
Welcome to season 4 of AWAKEN, a podcast from the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art about the dynamic path to enlightenment and what it means to “wake up.” I am Isabella Rossellini, an actress and activist and your host for this season of AWAKEN, where we are exploring a fundamental concept in Buddhist thinking and philosophy: attachment.
Himalayan art has long been a pathway to insights and awakening, and in this season, we will look at objects from the Rubin’s collection as a way to better understand attachment and its counterpoint, non-attachment, which translates to openness, or seeing things as they truly are. With stories and wisdom from artists, writers, poets, Buddhist teachers, psychologists, scholars, and others we will explore the meaning of attachment and how it shows up in different parts of our lives.
In this final episode, Realization. It’s a bit of a misnomer because we are always in the process of realization. We might want to believe that there is a definitive end—that we get to a point where some unhealthy patterns have died and new ones have been born but in fact, according to Sonya Renee Taylor, author and transformational thought leader, it’s a continuous cycle of reminders and realizations.
Sonya Renee Taylor:
We like—containers. We like clear lines and delineations. We’re really into a thing that was this and now it is that. Our linear minds want to understand it linearly. But, there is no linearity. It's not linear. It’s all—it’s all cyclical. It is all an ever-unfolding constant spiral.
Everything has a story with it. A story about—whether it’s an actual story like, “I got this when”—da da da da da—"and so it means”—or, the story we construct in our heads. Like, “This
experience means this about me, means this about life.”
Dr. Richie Davidson:
So, to just give some concrete examples, we often use a sentence; like, very commonly in everyday language, we might say, "I am sad," or, "I am happy." Those are sentences that people say pretty commonly.
Isabella Rossellini:
Psychologist Dr. Richie Davidson, Founder & Director of the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Founder & Chief Visionary for Healthy Minds Innovations, Inc.
Dr. Richie Davidson:
Well, what does it mean to be when we use a sentence like, "I am sad"? Who is the "I" in this case? Is it every morsel in our body? Every cell? What is it that we mean, actually, when we say, "I am sad"? Is there any part of me that's not sad when we say, "I am sad"? And we begin to examine that, really analyze it over and over. And what we ultimately come to is that this entity which we spend so much time thinking about is just not what it's cracked up to be. It's much more porous.
And that is nonattachment, when we can see that. When we experience the porous state of that.
Annabella Pitkin:
Although Buddhists describe all of the universe as interconnected, so that no being is ever truly separated or alone…
Isabella Rossellini:
Annabella Pitkin, scholar of Tibetan Buddhism.
Annabella Pitkin:
It's also the case that each individual being has their particular, distinct, special qualities at this particular moment, all of those causes and conditions coming together in one particular set of ways that are in motion, that are impermanent, but that are very particular.
Ocean Vuong:
If you guard your intention, and your intention serves the work, centers to curiosity and questions, then whatever method you use, you follow it to the end.
Isabella Rossellini:
Writer, professor and photographer Ocean Vuong, whose novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, won the American Book Award.
Ocean Vuong:
You have to follow it to the end, because if you buckle halfway, then you succumb to critics or the culture. And then what? That's easy. Anyone could just say, "Oh, the culture wants this? I'll do it." And then you lose yourself. You can adjust according to what the culture wants, but then you become like any other commercial product. Or you can follow through in a very disobedient way. Disobedience is so important to how I function in life and in my work. And in Buddhism!
Be disobedient.
Eve Ekman:
Being involved in Buddhist philosophy is, as was said in the time of the Buddha, walking against the stream.
Isabella Rossellini:
Contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman.
Eve Ekman:
That’s true, right? There is a way in which we are engaging in these practices we are going counter to contemporary culture. However, it’s not as though we’re just going against something.
There is this structure and framework that supports us in kind of becoming different and new.
There’s an analogy I love from one of my earliest teachers, Alan Wallace.
He says that when we move from our conventional way of finding happiness in the world—like that acquisition model—to that inner cultivation model, it’s a lot like a little town that has depended on coal for its energy and so it decides it wants to move to solar. Right after that decision is made and all the panels are put up and they stop the coal, there’s still this fog and haze over that town. The sun can’t get through. So often we experience this in-between space, not doing what we did before to try to find happiness, status, all sorts of feelings of “I’m great, and I’m wonderful and I’m reflected in the world and that I have value”. Then this other mode of cultivating the light within, the sunlight we can think of not so much outside of ourself but inside of ourself.
Sonya Renee Taylor:
I think part of what's happening in the question is I’m thinking about all of the things I’ve been asked to become non-attached to in the last four years. It’s been relationships, it’s been places. It’s been material things. It has been lifestyle. It has been people’s opinions of me.
Isabella Rossellini:
Again, Sonya Renee Taylor.
Sonya Renee Taylor:
It has been this constant, great—It’s almost like being a really slow sieve. Like, can it all pass through? And some of it, you’ll get to savor a little bit. You’ll get to touch it. It’ll linger in there a little bit. But it will all pass through. And it is futile trying to hold it. That’s just not the way I am made. And so, yeah! It’s been, you know, one of the most difficult lessons of my life, and also one of the most liberating lessons of my life. The less attachments, the easier life has been. The less attachments, the less suffering. That has been an absolute truth for me.
Fatimah Asghar:
I felt that a lot during COVID.
Isabella Rossellini:
Poet and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar.
Fatimah Asghar:
I think that there was a way where I had all of these fixed ideas of things that I thought were going to happen in my life before COVID. Like, I was like, “Oh, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this, and this is my trajectory for the next few months.” And then when COVID happened, it really deeply threw us all into these places of uncertainty and also these places of extreme isolation and trying to have to figure out what it meant to no longer have that plan be viable.
I had these moments where I had to be like, “Okay, cool. What's afoot? What’s next?” And how to be okay with being in the present, even if the present required such deep uncertainty, and if the present meant being in a house and not being able to leave that house.
And really having to kind of challenge and check my own idea of control, and being like, “Yeah, I actually can't control this. I can't control any of this.” I can't control the ability to show up in this way where I think that what's going to happen is something that I know is going to happen, and really surrendering to whatever the universe was providing.
Eve Ekman:
Accepting what’s happening, and accepting what’s happening, and being able to work with and move with that. The opposite, that clinging, that pain body contracting around change, it just feels terrible. So in some ways if we want to know what it feels like to not experience attachment in that aversive way, we’re experiencing a sense of natural ease and flow with the world as it is, and a natural sense of our own flexibility and resilience, again cultivated by just really feeling there’s an okayness intrinsic in here, and a sense that we’ve kind of shined or polished up the heart, that it can really hold us. It’s, again, not something we need to earn, not something we need to gain, just something we need to reveal more clearly. We kind of leave for another our own heart. We go and seek out their affirmations and love and sometimes we forget in the process that the goodness and the love, it’s just right here.
Jenny Odell:
I'm collaborating with someone on a sound project that involves me needing to make ambient sound recordings of the Rose Garden right now.
Isabella Rossellini:
Artist and author of How to do Nothing, Jenny Odell.
Jenny Odell:
There have been several times when I've gone and sat down, and I would have described the Rose Garden to you at that point as quiet, or nobody's here because it's the middle of the day. And it kind of feels that way even with the recording and listening to what's happening for maybe the first five minutes, and then after 10 minutes it starts to fill in. But the thing is that it's not that there are more sounds happening, it's that I've been sitting there for a certain amount of time and not really paying attention to anything else other than the sound. And then by the end I'm just always kind of shocked by how many sounds are happening. And again, they're very tiny, little things. It's like leaves wrestling, and then some construction happening three blocks away, and someone's footsteps on the other side of the garden; but there's no silence. There's always something coming in and out. There's all of these different sounds happening. And it's like, after all these years, and even after having done this thing multiple times, I'm just always very surprised by how many sounds there are.
But it takes that duration and the practice of sitting there and not doing anything else to have access to that richness of sound.
Isabella Rossellini:
This is such a great example of what happens when we’re just open to what is. Our mind and sensory experience expands exponentially. Teacher and meditation master in the Bon Buddhist tradition Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche shares another story about sound.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche:
I spent some time in Berlin. I had been paying a lot of attention to my sleep. My neighbor upstairs, every night around midnight, like making this noise walking.
I don’t know how—it was a bumping like this. For years. And especially it bothers me a lot because I’m really paying attention to my sleep. I’m working on it. And noise is continuously. It’s a long period of the night. I’m trying to unplug—I even thought I would move
away somewhere. But then I said, you know, maybe he or she or a family shift working. This is where they come back in the night. They are exhausted, whatever they are doing.
Basically I’m trying to open my heart up, and I’m trying to feel all the difficult, challenging scenarios they might have going through. And say, it’s okay to make those noises. So of course the noise doesn't change; I have changed. So I sleep perfectly fine now, because I am not attached to that noise anymore. That noise shift into—noise to just a sound. The sound which doesn't bothers me anymore. The noise bothered me.
Ross Gay:
I can witness and note many, many evidences of our beloved connection.
Isabella Rossellini:
Poet, essayist, and New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, Ross Gay
Ross Gay:
I realize how moved I am by these what feel like very small, sweet interactions.
I didn't realize it, and maybe I didn't. Yeah, I don't know if I ever realized or decided to be touched by them, but if you're on an airplane, people are constantly helping each other, like reaching for the bags. And then you notice, Oh, that's always happening. This is always happening. People are always trying to help each other. I didn't realize how moved, how much I needed to be able to notice that, and how it tunes one's eyes, or it tunes oneself to that. Now, I'm extra alert. So, that's one of the things: learning the things that you love. They kind of go into, like, a satchel or something.
Like, Oh yeah, I love that! And now I know I love it, so now I get to realize, Oh! I'm in the midst of something that I love right now. That was the thing that I kind of forgot, that the accumulation of the delights—I'm making a gesture like I'm putting stuff in a backpack—is really important. It feels like to periodically or often be like, “I'm in the midst of what I love right now.” And to come back to what you're saying, “I'm in the midst of what I love right now, thank you. It's not me. I didn't do anything. I'm in the midst of what I love. Thank you.”
And to have that be as florid and profuse and prolific as possible feels lucky.
Eve Ekman:
I just was on a walk this morning and watching the way that the rose climbs up this other bush and the way that the tree is kind of bent in order to reach the light in this certain way. You’re doing and getting what needs to be done but without ambition, and letting the world move you. I think—I feel that.
Isabella Rossellini:
There seem to be some key factors on the path to non- attachment. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always available to us. And if we’re deeply suffering, it can be hard to find ways to cultivate that presence and openness. As Fatimah Asghar says,
Fatimah Asghar:
Sometimes people can't walk away from certain situations because of survival, and that's a very real thing as well. So, those kinds of things, they get a little tricky for me because they're journeys and they're beautiful principles to get to, and also there are certain moments where, due to lived reality, sometimes those things are not always possible in the moment.
Isabella Rossellini:
That’s why a painting of Milarepa and Scenes from His Life from the Rubin’s collection is so perfect for this final episode. As scholar of Tibetan Buddhism Annabella Pitkin says, his life…
Annabella Pitkin:
…really has all aspects of the human condition wrapped up in it: terrible suffering, terrible betrayal, terrible loss, psychological pain, real violence, psychological violence, total freedom, deep intimacy, devotion between teachers and students. Everything you could imagine in the human spectrum of experience is present in this story.
Isabella Rossellini:
And yet, he did achieve enlightenment, becoming the first historical Tibetan person to be described as becoming a Buddha in one lifetime. Take a moment to view the painting at rubinmuseum.org/awaken as Annabella Pitkin describes it.
Annabella Pitkin:
Milarepa is beloved. His poetry and songs continue to be recited and performed and sung today. There are operas and movies and YouTube videos and stage plays of his life. He was extremely funny, according to the vast corpus of literature of his sayings and activities. His story is also agonizingly sad—cry and cry sad.
And so in this painting, we see Milarepa as the central figure in the position of the enlightened being, in the position of the Buddha. He's seated in the meditation pose. He has one leg up in a special meditation posture. He's wearing very significant things. He's wearing a red robe, and then a white robe over one shoulder, a white cloth over one shoulder.
And he is not actually dressed as a monk. He was a special category of practitioner, someone who is imagined and remembered as the most complete renunciant, the most complete practitioner of non-attachment, someone who renounced and gave up all attachments, but someone who did not become a monk in order to do that, but who actually dove directly in deeply to the inner work of non-attachment, and who marked his special status—not a monk but also not a married householder, business person, lay person—with this special kind of tantric yogi clothing. And his name, Repa, has to do with being a cotton-clad, with wearing réas his clothing, and his followers also called themselves Repas and also wore this kind of white, undyed white cotton clothing.
And they practiced forms of yogic meditation that allowed them to protect the heat of their bodies, even in very cold mountain environments. And their simple cotton clothing was a marker of this particular lineage of internal yogic meditation practice, foundational to the type of meditative freedom that Milarepa practiced and experienced and taught. And so the clothing of Milarepa marks him as the key figure in this lineage of wandering renunciant, men and women, mountain hermit practitioners, deeply committed to renunciation and non-attachment.
And so this painting shows Milarepa in a mountain cave, in a mountain range, in a wild place, in a place of freedom, of natural beauty, but also a place that requires courage, a place that requires looking deeply within, and challenging one's attachment to one's own comfort or one's own conventional understandings, one's own desire for reassurance or safety. There's a real kind of daring in Milarepa's location here. And he has his hand cupped behind his ear to symbolize his singing of his spontaneous poems of enlightenment, his songs of realization, which are still beloved and widely shared today, both as songs and as poems.
And at the bottom register of the painting, there are enlightened beings. There are wrathful forms. There are also images of him teaching, clad in white, to his male and female disciples. There are representatives of his lineage in the sides of the painting. And then at the very top are
the mother, father, Buddha, fully enlightened in tantric union, symbolizing the indivisibility of wisdom and compassion, of bliss and emptiness. The father, mother, Buddha, who together are a kind of metaphor for the indivisible bliss, emptiness, wisdom, compassion, that is a way of characterizing what Buddhahood is.
And so Milarepa is part of a lineage. He's the center point in this painting of a lineage connecting pure enlightenment with the human and more-than-human world to whom he teaches this non-attached path of enlightenment and practice.
Isabella Rossellini:
Milarepa’s life story illustrates that reaching enlightenment doesn’t necessarily come only when you have followed a specific, laid out path. Things can go terribly wrong and you may still be on the right path.
Annabella Pitkin:
One of the things we can think about is Milarepa's childhood. He was born into a very comfortable, wealthy family; very happy mother and father. He had a lovely younger sister he was very close to. And then when he was just a small boy, his father died, a terrible early tragedy. And then on the heels of his father's death comes a terrible devastating betrayal because his father has entrusted not only his wealth and his estate but also his family—his widow, his son, and his little daughter—to his brother and to his brother's wife.
And they are the executors of the will, and they are supposed to be the guardians of Milarepa and his mother and sister. And of course, they promised the father they will take the tenderest care of Milarepa and his family. The minute his father is gone, they turn viciously on Milarepa and his sister and his mother. And Milarepa knows the deepest most terrible psychological betrayal, and also terrible material deprivation. All of his enjoyments are stripped from him. And he's just a small boy, and he grows up in this crucible of suffering.
And this crucible of suffering is also the terrifying crucible of his mother's rage. And when Milarepa reaches his teen years, when he comes into young manhood, his mother says to him, "You will be the instrument of my vengeance against the evil uncle and his wife who have made our lives hell." And Milarepa doesn't want to be the instrument of her vengeance. He already has some kind of understanding, some vague awareness of Buddhist ideas of karma, of cause and effect, that it might not be so great to do revenge.
And it's also kind of frightening, and he doesn't want to do that with his life. And his mother terrifyingly says to him, "If you do not do this for me, I will kill myself in front of you." We all have seen that happen around us in the world and in the lives of people that we know, maybe in our own lives. And the way that Milarepa as an adult later comes to cultivate his most profound compassion, when he thinks about the wasted, suffering life of his mother, and the fact that ultimately she dies, having fulfilled her revenge but still unsatisfied, such a sorrow. And so his practice is partly dedicated to liberating beings who suffer as his mother did.
And he goes and he learns the cruel magic, and he brings a natural disaster, a roof collapse and a hailstorm down on his uncle and the people in the village who failed to protect him and his mother. And he kills some more than 30 people, guests at a wedding. And then consumed by horror at the karma he has now created for himself of being a murderer of tens of human beings, he flees, and he goes to seek a Buddhist teacher who can help him free himself from this terrible prison he knows he has created. And he tries various teachers, and they don't help him. He's not able to do anything with their teachings. His obstacles, his burdens, mentally, morally, spiritually, are just too great, until he hears the name Marpa. And then he falls down in tears. All of his hair stands on end. It's his predestined guru.
And he goes and meets Marpa. And I'll tell you the happy ending. Marpa eventually reveals that he is Milarepa's spiritual father. Milarepa is his destined spiritual son. Milarepa receives all of his teachings. Milarepa practices them in completeness, and becomes fully enlightened, and teaches a lineage that is still one of the most flourishing lineages in the Buddhist world today, the Kagyu lineage, family of lineages. And he goes into mountain retreat. He faces obstacles. He meets mountain land goddesses, and they become his partners in learning the path to Buddhahood. He teaches humans and, eventually, he becomes liberated after showing that path to others. And the stories about him describe hundreds of them as finding a path to freedom, to non-attachment, and ultimately to Buddhist liberation through following him.
Sonya Renee Taylor:
There is no thing that is more important than life itself.
Isabella Rossellini:
Sonya Renee Taylor.
Sonya Renee Taylor:
That to me is the beginning of what it means to become unattached, is that there is nothing I have that is the sum of my existence. There is nothing you can create, or make, or write, or conceive with your mind, that is greater than existence itself. And so, if you are trying to have that thing define you, define existence itself, it is an illusion. It is inherently an illusion. And what life wants from me is freedom from illusion, and so, yes, that thing has gotta go. And so I feel like the invitation for folks is, have I made this more important than life? What have I made more important than life?
Isabella Rossellini:
You just heard the voices of Fatimah Asghar, Dr. Richie Davidson, Eve Ekman, Ross Gay, Jenny Odell, Annabella Pitkin, Sonya Renee Taylor, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, and Ocean Vuong.
I am Isabella Rossellini, your host.
To see the artwork discussed in this episode, go to rubinmuseum.org/awaken.
If you're enjoying the podcast, leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and tell your friends. For more stories and news from the Rubin, follow us on Instagram @rubinmuseum and sign up for our newsletter at rubinmuseum.org.
AWAKEN Season 4 is an eight-part series from the Rubin.
AWAKEN is produced by the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art with Tenzin Gelek, Jamie Lawyer, Kimon Keramidas, Gracie Marotta, Christina Watson, and Sarah Zabrodski in collaboration with SOUND MADE PUBLIC including Tania Ketenjian, Philip Wood, Alessandro Santoro, and Jeremiah Moore.
Original music has been produced by Hannis Brown with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.
AWAKEN Season 4 and Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now are supported by Bob and Lois Baylis, Barbara Bowman, Daphne Hoch Cunningham and John Cunningham, Noah P. Dorsky, Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), Mimi Gardner Gates, Fred Eychaner, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Jack Lampl, Dan Gimbel of NEPC, LLC, Agnes Gund, New York Life, Matt and Ann Nimetz, Namita and Arun Saraf, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Eileen Caulfeld Schwab, Taipei Cultural Center in New York, and UOVO.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
The Rubin Museum's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts
Thanks for listening.