Jon Aaron Leads Rubin Museum Mindfulness Meditation Inspired by Art

Jon Aaron returned to the Rubin Museum's ongoing "Mindfulness Meditation" audio series on March 20, 2026, leading another installment of the weekly program that anchors each session to a specific artwork from the museum's Himalayan collection.

The series follows a consistent structure: a short opening talk, a 20-minute guided meditation, and, in sessions recorded in front of a live audience, a closing discussion. The format is designed to serve both beginners and experienced meditators, with the object of art serving less as decoration than as a contemplative focal point for the practice.

Aaron's previous appearances in the series show how deliberately the program pairs practice with image. In an August 2024 episode distributed through Apple Podcasts, he led a meditation on the theme of Interconnectedness using a silver Water Bowl from 20th-century Tibet as its anchor, with the guided meditation beginning at the 11:34 mark. An August 2023 session, recorded in front of a live audience and released through Insight Timer, opened with a talk before the guided sitting began at 12:18, followed by a closing discussion. Another episode posted to the Rubin Museum's own site paired Aaron with the theme of Fierce Compassion and a 19th-century Tibetan embroidered silk scroll depicting Vajravarahi, a tantric goddess described in the museum's notes as "both peaceful and wrathful." The guided meditation in that session began at 10:11. The accession number for the Vajravarahi work is C2003.13.2 in the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art's collection.

The Vajravarahi scroll's museum description offers a sense of the interpretive depth these episodes reach: the figure is shown dancing atop a corpse, representing the defeat of the ego, and surrounded by what the notes call "the flames of pristine awareness." Its small scale, the description notes, marks it as a piece made for personal devotional use rather than public display, a detail that resonates with the intimate, inward nature of the practice Aaron guides.

Aaron has been teaching at the New York Insight Meditation Center since 2006, offering both Dharma instruction and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction classes. After moving to Chicago in 2024, he took on an advisory role with the Spiritual Life Office at the University of Chicago and founded an Insight Sangha in the Hyde Park neighborhood. He is a founding member of the Global Mindfulness Collective and, with his partner Upayadhi, launched Space2Meditate, a community that has offered daily meditation sessions since March 2020. He also co-hosts the podcast Diggin' the Dharma with scholar Doug Smith and regularly leads retreats across the United States.

The Rubin Museum's series is presented in partnership with Sharon Salzberg and teachers from the New York Insight Meditation Center, the Interdependence Project, and Parabola Magazine. Funding support comes from the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism. Episodes are distributed across the Rubin Museum's own site, Apple Podcasts, Insight Timer, and YouTube, giving the series a reach well beyond the museum's walls and continuing a weekly rhythm that, with Episode 408 logged as early as February 2024, shows no sign of slowing.