1996-07_05 Vipassana Retreat, Part 5 of 8 - Q&A 1

Talk: 19960705-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-vipassana_retreat_part_5_of_8-43309 Start_time: 00:24:24 Display_question: What can I do about a depressive, “is that all there is?” feeling related to meditation? Keyword_search: depressed, feeling, peace, inner peace, meditation, walking meditation, lovingkindess, chanting, happiness, joy, negative, state, discomfort, passing, natural, Thailand, attitude, slow down, training, allow, freely, sit, mind, body, smell, body, sensation, sound, depression, helplessness, denial, suppression, evasion, escape, coping with, insight meditation, Vipassana Question_content: Questioner: I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling depressed. It came on after the first meditation just after lunch. It started with overwhelming feeling of, “Is that all there is?” Larry: What do you mean, “Is that all there is?” Questioner: I don’t know. Larry: You mean to life or to this practice? Questioner: Well, yeah. Larry: Yeah what? Questioner: To the practice. Okay, it's the first time that I’ve felt that and after I did walking meditation, it was alleviated. Larry: What do you want from practice? Questioner: Peace. Larry: Mhm. You would like to have, what, inner peace? Questioner: Mhm. Larry: Okay. The way to inner peace in this practice—there may be other ways, more streamlined, faster and better, but it's the only one I know—is through the absence of it. It's not the only thing we do because, for example, just being with the breathing brings, especially as you learn how to do it, brings enormous peace. And other, we also do chanting and other meditations, like lovingkindness, meditations on compassion and so forth. But all of them, as wonderful as they are, they cultivate the quality that you want. But the real peace, the deep peace, requires understanding. You don't have to agree with this. That is, if you, for example, all of us have a tendency to get depressed. There's a tremendous amount of sorrow in being alive. To the Buddha's credit, he didn't hide from that point. That sometimes causes a problem for many people thinking, “Oh, Buddhism is just a real downer, just always talking about dukkha, suffering, and so forth. But if you read the complete teaching, what the Buddha is saying is that the way to real joy, real fulfillment, real peace is through the way it is for us. And since, as humans, who can deny that there's sorrow in human life. Did you get infected by depression, by coming to Omega or coming to this meditation? Probably you brought it with you, as all of us have. Am I speaking too strongly? Questioner: I guess I didn't feel it until that moment in time. Larry: Yes. Questioner: It passed. Larry: See, but everything you've said, you're focused on the passing. You want to get rid of it. I walked and then it felt better. I understand. Yeah. Did you miss the first few days? Questioner: The first day. Larry: Okay. Hm. See, that's why one of the reasons I didn't want to do a sampler is you have to sort of… The heart of the practice is to, the hardest thing to learn is not sitting still for long periods of time, et cetera, even going on retreats for months on end. But it's to, the mind wants particular experiences. When we come to a retreat, it's an expense, both in terms of money, time, effort, energy. There are other things you've given up that you could have done. You've come here and it's only natural the mind wants to get something out of it. And what it wants to get are those feelings that I was talking about, vedana. Again, see if it's true. We want to get more pleasant feelings. I traveled all the way to Thailand to get more pleasant feelings. You're not as stupid as me. Of course, the teachers there roared with laughter. Yeah. Break_line: So, the peace that you're talking about. I mean a peace worthy of its name; substantial peace requires that we get to know ourselves as we are: self-knowledge. Self-knowledge includes the whole aspect of what we are as a person. If you were really committed to understanding yourself, and I don't mean just thinking understanding but really intimate and direct understanding, then you can't say—I mean, you could but it wouldn't be real understanding—say, “Well, I want to know this aspect of myself but I'm not interested in that.” That's what we're already doing. Many people are quite facile and articulate in giving their story with “this happened to me” and all the things that happen to us. There are still usually their areas that we're not in touch with or we don't want to be in touch with, or we're really frightened of that we don't talk about or even know about. Break_line: My point is not to frighten you, but rather it's a different attitude. The attitude is one not so much of getting particular experiences. Who wouldn't want happy experiences? We all do. But of learning how to be awake and mindful of the experiences that we actually in fact do have. So, depression is not good or bad. It's just what came to you, from the point of view of this practice. The question is “What do you do with it?” If you fight it, deny it, try to get rid of it, you've been doing that. I don't know you so, this is a bit… something or other—help me out… Questioner: Presumptuous. Larry: Presumptuous. When my mind gets quiet, I become a dumb dumb. Break_line: So, one art we're learning. And I would say if you even open that up a little bit during your stay here, from my point of view, your time would have been well spent, is learning how to get comfortable with discomfort. How to not always bolt and always sort of react, to not only depression but all kinds of things, but rather slow down. Use the breath to just slow down and establish an entirely different relationship, which is one of friendship to whatever turns up where you're a nonviolence. We're quite violent to ourselves. There are certain things that we really disapprove of and we try to quickly banish them or we don't even allow them to surface. So this is the opposite. It's a very different attitude. It's one of opening and allowing what's there to come up. Break_line: The instructions, more and more, sorry to say what you're in store for, is an invitation for whatever is there to come up but we're learning to be, we're training, just as you were trained for a sport, to be equipped so to know what to do and be able to do something with it as it turns up. It's not for you to drown in depression, but for when depression comes up, for it to be workable, for you to learn how to make it workable so that you can really see what this energy that we call depression or fear or joy or happiness, for that matter. It's not just these negative, so-called negative states, but the full range of what makes up a human being. It's insight into that that we're interested in. So, the fact that depression came up is not good or bad and it's very much part of the practice. You know why? Because it's what your life was in that moment. That's all. It's not that we love depression or that we think we got to dredge it up. We're not trying to dredge anything in particular up, but the fact is that it turned up. Break_line: Let me skip a little to where we're going. Some of you know, and some of you perhaps are starting to see. Tomorrow we'll open the field up even more to include the mind itself. If you think about it, we were with the breath primarily for a number of days. We let sound in and then now bodily sensations. And you can include smell, of course. And tomorrow we'll let the mind in. So, the meditation we'll be learning tomorrow will be after you've calmed down a bit, using the simple in and out breath will be to sit, just to sit and breathe, with no agenda whatsoever. None. You're not supposed to be feeling anything in particular. Nothing in particular is supposed to be there. What you're open to is your life as it is in that moment. So, we're learning to sit right smack in the midst of our experience and to allow that experience to just unfold freely, let the mind roam, let feelings come. Break_line: And our practice will be to meet whatever turns up with mindfulness and interest. So, if depression should come up—now this is after you've been practicing for a while; depression, not the word but the energy comes up—the practice would be to turn our attention to what is being called depression. There's definitely going to be something in the body, right? Can you remember whether there's some…? Questioner: <inaudible> Larry: Pardon? Questioner: Unease. Larry: Yeah, the body felt a certain way, right? Okay. So usually that's, to begin with, the most accessible, accessible and easy to observe, the more subtle thoughts and images and so forth, often we get captivated by them and caught up in them. Break_line: So, to begin with, the bodily expression of depression is more manageable. And, as we breathe in and breathe out, and the breath can be very, very helpful here, kind of accompanying us as we walk into an emotion or a bodily state that we don't like. No one wants to be depressed, but there it is. Now, no one wants to be afraid. No one wants to be lonely. But unless you say hello to these states, how are you possibly going to say goodbye? It makes no sense. So, we all want to say goodbye. We want to skip the hello part. And you want a magic bullet. Maybe such bullets exist, but this is not such; this is not four days or five days to nirvana. I would call this a practice for adults. Which means sometimes it's boring, sometimes it's incredibly wonderful. It's everything that life is. So that sometimes there's depression. Break_line: In order to keep doing this practice, patience has to be developed. But I would say all spiritual practice, maybe anything worthwhile in life. Can you be a good parent if you don't develop patience? Or any business, how can you do it? So sometimes people have dramatically lower expectations for what is needed for this than they do for other things that they've already done. Could awakening or enlightenment be less demanding than some of the things we've already done? I don't think so. Break_line: But the joy is the doing of it. It's not some incredible far-off goal where Steven Spielberg's special effects go off and we call that something. It's a more fulfilling way of living. I know this probably isn't true when you're beginning but the day can come where even when depression comes up or anger or fear or loneliness, and when you're really practicing with it, meaning you're engaged, you're in communion with it, there's a certain goodness about doing that because you understand that you're doing the very best thing that you can for yourself. Break_line: Now, to the beginner's mind, I don't mean an open mind. I mean someone who's very new to this. That may make no sense. “Why don't you just give me a chemical, so I'll feel better?” Okay, sometimes that's essential. And sometimes the depression is so deep that meditation isn't appropriate. But I would say for most people it's not either or. We work along many fronts. External help and internal help. What I like to, I'm going on like this because it's not just about you, it's about all of us. And it's the next step. And so we have to lay the groundwork for it. Break_line: Let's take depression since you brought it up. Typically, what happens is we want to avoid it. Isn't that true? We want to escape from it. And two ways that we relate, two major ways: One is denial. We press it down and some people are very good at that to a point and until finally they can't do it anymore. But the other extreme is there are many escapes. I don't want to have to go through all of them, you all know them. They're an elaborate network of escapes that we have. The other one is when we drown in it. That is, we are just deeply depressed. That means we've identified with that energy that visited you. That's probably what most of us have been doing anyway without any training and meditation. We don't know that there's another option. So, we're caught either between on one extreme: denial, suppression, evasion, escape, coping with, all that family. And the other one is helplessness, where we're just totally identified with it and, as a result, feel tremendously depressed and then can make a statement like, “I am depressed. I was very depressed.” Now, so these are the two extremes. Break_line: The practice is neither. The practice is right here in the middle, where if the depression is out, we let it out and we attend to it, we bring full attention to it. It's also not detachment from it, as some people think. Although to begin with, you may find that that's the only way it can be manageable, sort of you create an observer who's pulling away from the depression, who's observing it. That's on the way. To begin with, we're rather self-conscious about meditation anyway. So, there's a self-conscious meditator doing it. But with practice, that falls away and there's just an intimate observing of the energy of depression. When you do that, when you're able to do that, you see it for what it is. It's a kind of energy. It arises, it passes away. Break_line: Moreover, it's not self. This part is confusing, especially if you've not read or heard these kinds of teaching. It's an energy that comes and goes. Now, if you identify with it, attach to it, then you make self. Then, it may as well be you because you've attached to it. And then that dramatically amplifies whatever the depression is, it makes it much worse. So, our art is a kind of participant observation. We're not trying to pull away from life, quite the contrary. We're learning how to open up to life, but to be able to do that in a way that's skillful. Break_line: Now, to begin with, if depression comes and you're a beginner and you can't do what I just said, fine, I understand that; you probably can't. So then it's best to pull off, pull off to the side, perhaps do lovingkindness meditation or to do some walking meditation, as you did. That's not wrong. Some skillful way, since if you try to observe it as I just mentioned, you may not be able to. And what will happen is it'll be an exercise in futility. You'll just drown in the depression, and that's not going to help anyone, certainly won't help you. But little by little, the day comes where you see that no matter what turns up, it's workable. You develop that confidence in yourself that comes out of a sincere commitment to practice. It's not a hobby. This is not a hobby. It becomes more and more a way of life. Break_line: Again, I'm not talking about, I'm not trying to turn people into Buddhists, whatever that might mean to you. I don't think the Buddha was a Buddhist. Dharma is a little different. What it means is understanding the lawfulness of the way things are. So, we're developing a calmer, more concentrated mind so that it would be able to look at that state that you just brought to us and to be able to see its nature, to see deeply into it. And, as you're more able to see that, at least in theory, until you have seen it for yourself. When you begin to see that it's an energy that arises and passes away, it's kind of impersonal. You didn't ask for it, but there it is. You don't own it. It comes and goes when it wants to. Break_line: As you begin to see that, it starts to lose its power. Mindfulness itself is a power. Think of like the sun shining on a flower and the flower opens up. Mindfulness is a force. It's a very subtle one, you could say invisible. But when mindfulness is directed to something, the energy of mindfulness, let's say, touches depression or fear or loneliness or add whatever you like. And what happens is there's a transformation. A lot of the energy that's trapped, let's say in fear, frozen there sometimes for many, many years, the mindfulness touches it. That means full acceptance of it, allowing that energy to flower, meeting it, seeing its nature, its impermanence. What happens is the energy that's been held captive in fear, depression, loneliness, anger, and so forth is released. And then it's just free energy for you to use, to live with. Larry: Does that make any sense, at least in terms of the words? When you said, “that's all there is,” help me understand that. Questioner: I’m not sure I can. Larry: Okay. It's important that you know it. It's more important. Questioner: <Inaudible>… and looking ahead and wanting something more. Larry: What do you what do you want more? You want peace, as you said. But how will that come to you? Questioner: I haven't… <inaudible> Larry: Okay. Are you rather new to insight meditation, to Vipassana meditation? Questioner: Yes. Larry: Okay. Anyway, I hope it gets a little clearer as we go on. Please. End_time: 00:44:14