1994-07_16 Breath Awareness Meditation As A Gateway To Living Wisdom - Q&A 5 - 5

Talk: 19940716-Larry_Rosenberg-IMSR-breath_awareness_as_a_gateway_to_living_wisdom_5-319.json Start_time: 00:43:45 Display_question: What can I do to honor my own experience when conflict arises? Keyword_search: angry, feel, fear, resentment, frustration, harmony, disharmony, via negativa, violent, nonviolent, war, ant-war, equanimous, even-minded, dialogue, upset, cause, effect, living wisdom, Buddha-nature, non-meditators, vegetarian, meat, opinion, overwhelming, battle, quiet revolution, Krishnamurti, actually, live, retreat, wisdom Question_content: Questioner: Somebody's speaking to you, and inside I'm listening but sometimes I'm noticing inside myself that I feel angry about this. And I want to say this and this and this but I know I'm not going to. Fear, that's what's going on. And all these, what happens inside of me is the set of thoughts that I know I'm not going to say what I want to say, and I'm dominated by fear. And then the person leaves and it's over. And yet, once again, we've had this exchange where I didn't do whatever was, you might say, honored what was going on inside me or whatever. Can you do it more from that side? Larry: Okay. I mean, what you're giving me, we humans do that a lot. Let's see if we can unravel that a little bit because it sounds like you have someone in mind or other, right? Okay. And it's happened more than once, right? So there's a build up and so there's an accumulation of resentment and frustration and things of that sort. So now you have this practice, you have that backlog and Monday comes and there you go again, the two of you. But what you're going to begin to do is you can now begin to intervene in a way by using the practice to begin to, first of all, work with the resentment, the annoyance, the frustration. Some of that will come up when the person isn't even there. And so as you start to now, like with conflict, which was your original question, people want to be harmonious. You know, we all, it sounds like a good word and when we are… But from this practice, one of the main ways you get to harmony is by becoming really aware of disharmony. Break_line: It's sometimes called a via negativa, the negative way. In other words, you get to the good stuff by letting go of the bad stuff, not by trying to do an impersonation of being a harmonious person. I'm a very harmonious person. You see that you're not. And so if you want to be nonviolent, you have to get to know the violence in you. Those of you who know the anti-war movement during Vietnam, you had these people pounding tables, just the term anti-war. We were at war with war and it was not so high. And it also limited our effectiveness. Break_line: Okay, so you start with yourself always. And what's built up is that you have this frustration, et cetera. Maybe that gets a little bit weaker. Now, we're not here to program you. So let's say the day comes where this person, you're speaking and you feel it again. As you get better at being with it as it happens and also as your samadhi gets stronger, then that starts to lose some of its potency. And then you have other options. One of the options might be, see if you're in touch with what's happening, you actually can be more skillful in terms of a response. Just as if you're in touch with what's happening, you know, this room is burning down and you're the first one out of here. Break_line: Okay. So here you feel that starting to happen. Sometimes you pick it up earlier in the conversation, just the very bare beginning of the here it comes, the resentment, “She's doing it again,” or whatever it is. And now there's no formula for it. But as you become more able to be equanimous with it, observe it in an even-minded way, you might then speak to her and say, I'm feeling very frustrated right now. But if you're speaking to her from a place where you're not upset because you've been dealing with it inside, then you have a chance for a dialogue. If you're just sort of like, “I'm feeling very upset with the way you're talking to me,” what do you think that person's going to do? Yeah, so then it goes back. So, if you take care of yourself, then I don't know what you should do. But you may find some way of speaking to her in a new way, break some new ground. If you start to see how much it's bothering you and that starts to fall away, you may have a response that changes things and then enables this other person to be different, too. In other words, you break out of this mechanical reaction. Cause and effect. Cause and effect. Cause and effect. Break_line: I just want this last thing. We've used the phrase living wisdom. Of course, this is, we've been in the lab here, and now it's time to put it to a test. Living wisdom. Our life is a test. That is, can we manifest Buddha-nature while taking three screaming kids to school? Can we manifest Buddha-nature while listening to a boss who makes no sense? Can we manifest, you know, so the challenges of practice, instead of seeing life as this horrible place out there, that somehow all these non-meditators who just keep screwing up my life; they're not vegetarian, they're not meditators. They're not going to go away. I've been at this longer than you have. They keep being there. They don't want to meditate. They like steak. They like it. They're not interested in this tofu and all the rest. And they have lots of strong views and opinions, and there are many, many more of them than there are of us. Overwhelming. We've lost the battle already, just to understand. Break_line: But what you can do is, if you change inside, that's why it's sometimes called a quiet revolution; it's a bloodless one, if you do it right. It has nothing to do with hurting, insulting. It has to do with, you change in how you relate to what's happening. You change in how you relate to what's happening. And if this practice is valuable and it is helping you to see more clearly and to understand a lot more clearly, then at some point you have to demonstrate it. And you demonstrate it from how you actually live. Actually. Break_line: I'll leave you with this. My first teacher was a man from India named Krishnamurti. And when I first met him, we spent some time together over a period of a week, and over and over, you use the phrase “start to see how you actually live.” And at first it sounded, yeah, okay. But at a certain point, the actually is what became like neon lights, because we all have notions about how we live. And when you start to pay attention from moment to moment, you see how you actually live. Do you know what I mean by actually? A lot of images get shattered; they fall away. And, the real wisdom comes out of that. Break_line: I think we have to, we can continue talking to each other, but now in a new form. Can we all just in one, one aspect of the retreat is over. I get it. When you talk here, sound goes on. I'm no dummy. Okay. If we could all kind of don't worry about this precious, sacred formation that you've been living in for nine days now. It's over. End_time: 00:51:02