Refugio Libre

On Meditation - Synopsis

For my project with Beta-Local we will be exploring meditation. Meditation really is a resilience practice, it
is a form of mind-training. It is not a religion. It can be used by anyone from any background and even
people who adopt different beliefs. It is really a way of accessing our own innate sanity, at any given time
and under any circumstance. There are stories of practitioners who use it as resilience practice while in
jail, recently there was a story about Thai students who were stuck in a cave who used meditation as a
way of coping while faced with a strenuous, uncertain, life-threatening experience. The truth is life is filled
with uncertainty, it is impermanent, we all die, we all suffer, and there are things that no matter what we
do we still can not change. What meditation does is it provides us with an inner resource, an inner
stability, so that we may face challenges more productively, with clarity, awareness, and with compassion
towards ourselves. It’s not so much about reaching a state of Nirvana as it is about being able to look at
our lived experience more fully. It is about cultivating the ability to be present no matter what arises. No
matter what difficulty we are facing.

We will begin with a 15 minute meditation where I will guide the participants. My practice is based in
Vipassana meditation, a type of buddhist practice, where the meditator focuses their intention on the
breath, or the body, and through this mindfulness practice the participant begins to witness the activity of
the mind. The idea is to let go of the thoughts as soon as they arise. When we find we are following the
thoughts we notice this, let the thought go, and bring the focus back to the breath. It is a process of
slowing down, allowing, and letting go. We sit with our inner experience, we sit with painful emotion, we
sit with our own negativity, pressures, anger, angst and we learn to acknowledge these mind-states, and
let them go. We show up for ourselves and accept whatever arises as part of the process of life. The truth
is we have a tendency to make bad situations worse by associating them with all kinds of emotions rather
than just allowing them to be. Our mind has a tendency to do this. Have you ever sat in traffic and gotten
really upset, even though there was nothing you could do about it? Meditation allows us to sit and breathe
with whatever arises, knowing that our one true resource is an inner resource.

We will follow the 15 minute meditation with a talk and open it up to questions/dialogue. One of the
beautiful things about this practice is that it is contextual - it can be applied to any given situation. There
are specific issues facing Puerto Rico right now, where developing an inner resource, an inner sanity,
becomes not only important but necessary. Again, I would like to mention, I am not a certified meditation
instructor, I am an artist sharing my practice. I can answer questions to the best of my ability, and offer
guidance based on what I’ve learned in my practice and through my lived experience. I would also like to
welcome questions about art + meditation - can art function as a space of refuge? What is the purpose of
generosity + public action/engagement in art? How can art affect human consciousness, how can art look
at human suffering, and engage with it? Can art heal? Can art ameliorate the suffering that is intrinsic to
human experience? Can art foster community and dialogue? I believe it can.

After the Q + A, I will guide another 15 minute meditation to end the workshop.

Kathryn Garcia
kathryn.garcia@gmail.com
01.25.2019