1996-07_06 Vipassana Retreat, Part 6 of 8 - Q&A 6

Talk: 19960706-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-vipassana_retreat_part_6_of_8-43310 Start_time: 01:15:39 Display_question: When I try to focus, it’s harder to meditate—should I not try? Keyword_search: Krishnamurti, Dogen, Soto Zen, Dzogchen, meditation, effortless, choiceless awareness, mind, focus, clear, attention, mindful, practice, ripen Question_content: Questioner: I practice this in two ways. In the first way, much less common way, the attention opens up just without a decision. I’m practically walking and suddenly I notice thoughts going by and I can feel my body. Larry: Yes. Questioner: Usually that happens when my mind is fairly focused and clear. Larry: Exactly. Questioner: And then it feels very, it seems like those times are fruitful. Now, the more common way that I do it, much more common is, okay, I make a decision: “Okay, now I'm going to open the attention wire.” And typically, that seems much less fruitful. There's a lot more drifting, daydreaming and also it often happens when I do it that way that I don't realize it's not fruitful until ten or fifteen minutes have passed. Larry: Yes. Questioner: Maybe, this doesn't seem to be working. I've been thinking a lot. So that has led me to the conclusion—that's what I want to check out—that I would be better off spending most of my time practicing concentration until it unfolds naturally, rather than saying, “Okay, I'm going to practice Vipassana.” Larry: Yeah, I understand. It's not absolutely true and it's not absolutely not true. Let me give you some vocabulary. We don't use our language. I don't either. I plead guilty to that. But there is a way of speaking, and as people's practice unfold, I do speak this way. There's a difference between mindfulness and awareness. Or you can use the terms so that they're different. Mindfulness is something that you practice. It's like you aim your mindfulness at something. Okay? The second thing that you talked about, when it becomes effortless, right? Yeah. Okay. You can't make it be effortless, can you? Questioner: No. Larry: So, all that other work that you don't like so much, the effortlessness grows out of that. It grows out of the in breath in, out, in, out. It also grows out of the more contrived kind of open attention. The truth is you're not doing choiceless awareness. Let me, so we get clear on this. We're approximating choiceless awareness because in real, real choiceless awareness is effortless. But we're lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps, we're simulating it and so we're helping it along a little bit. Break_line: Look, let's say you write a term paper or something. If you can remember those, of you who have finished school a while back, or anything. A whole bunch of papers are in the wastepaper basket and then maybe only one important letter, and then finally something comes out of it. So yeah, you're bumbling around with mindful of this and mindful of that, and then suddenly, “Oh, it's effortless.” And everything gets, thoughts get heard and sounds get heard, and it's very joyful, right? Questioner: Yeah. Larry: Okay. Yes. And then you try to make it last, and it doesn’t. And you suffer. Now the direction of the practice is definitely that more and more, it grows out of the practice so that finally the practice ripens into no practice. Where the point is at some point… Break_line: Let me give you a quote from one teacher I worked with who… The Burmese use a lot of methods, a lot of technology, and you can work for years and years and it's very meticulous and almost bureaucratically regulated and systematic and, you know, and then one day you walk in and say, “Okay, what's the practice?” And they say like, “How do I know?” Now the point is of course, years of practice have gone by, so no help at all and say, “Well, should it be bah, bah, bah?” And he says, “I don't know.” The teacher refuses to help you. Okay, so that means you're throwing away all the methods and techniques. They're just like rafts that get you somewhere or crutches when your leg is broken or training wheels when you need them or when these children learn to swim, water wings and so forth. When the mind starts becoming really awake, why do you need all this stuff? The practice is wakefulness itself. Break_line: Now someone like Krishnamurti starts there. And it's very hard to do. Soto Zen, “just sitting” of Dogen. It's talking about that. But they give you years of other things to do. They may not appear in books, but you get it. And the same with Dzogchen. You asked about Dzogchen. It's a Tibetan practice that's similar, where they say “no effort, just observe your innate perfection.” Good luck if you're just starting out. So, in the meantime, what you're doing is hundreds of thousands of prostrations and mantras and guru worship. So, there's a lot of other things that are kind of equipping the mind to not need any of this stuff anymore. Break_line: So, you're doing fine. So, what we're doing, what I'm calling choiceless awareness is kind of simulated. It's like a video game. Airplane pilots, they learn on a video and then finally they get into a real plane. But it's not a waste of time and the day comes and you're getting glimpses of it and maybe some of you have had, perhaps, it can happen at any time. Suddenly… the first time it happened to me is I was trying so hard, sitting after sitting after sitting, the way you are, and “not getting anywhere” in quotes very, very much. And then the bell rang, and the sitting was over. So, I wasn't officially meditating, and then suddenly. It was just really nice, because there wasn't so much me the meditator trying to get the perfect sitting in. So let it unfold. End_time: 01:21:26