1996-07_07 Vipassana Retreat, Part 7 of 8 - Q&A 1

Talk: 19960707-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-vipassana_retreat_part_7_of_8-43311 Start_time: 00:13:17 Display_question: What is the importance of karma on mindfulness? Keyword_search: karma, mindfulness, body, rest, retreat, sitting, standing, Buddhist, money, power, sex, fame, limitation, now, grasping, craving, suffering, koan, Korea, balance, conditions, worry, past, present, future Question_content: Questioner: I was wondering about the importance of karma on mindfulness. Larry: Karma? Questioner: The reason I ask you is because somehow I feel that I've come to these understanding of wanting to practice desperately. Last night I said to myself, “This is the only way to live, to practice.” And yet I feel that I've come to it too late because my body doesn't want any necessary requirements. This is a five-day retreat. I would like to take one for a month, two months. I don’t feel that I can, and not mentally and not… body is craving rest. Larry: I hear you. Questioner: I tried sitting, I tried standing. Larry: But you see, I understand. Please be careful. Because what kind what typically happens is we grasp after money, power, sex, fame—and we find out they're a little bit empty. I don't mean Buddhist empty, just empty. So then we find this. And this can become just as much kind of something we <panting noise> hanker after in ways that if you could just take it, why not have a practice for the rest of your life? Going away for a month is helpful. Three months, three years, ten years, all that's helpful. Sitting in caves, all the things that we read that people do. Okay. Break_line: But what that also does it excites some ideal of somehow what you could become that's better than who you are now. If only you had more time, you were younger, had fewer children, had more money, something like that, then you could really do this incredible thing. Can you see through that, if what I'm saying is true for you? I don't mean it in such a negative way. It's only natural. There is something wonderful about any spiritual practice. But you don't have to. If you start comparing it like, “I got to it too late,” or “This body needs some rest.” What is that about? See, there's some kind of striving there. There's something that you want to get. Questioner: Feeling a limitation. Larry: Yeah. Where does the limitation come from? Questioner: Karma. Larry: Okay. So if you want to call it that, it's all right with me. But the practice, see, how about this one? That all there ever is is now. Reflect on that. It's taken me a long way. It's a simple idea, but I don't think you'll find the end of it. There's only now. Everything else is chasing after shadows. It's just now. So that take care of this now. And if because you're x number of years or you're tired or someone else has a certain illness, you need more rest, when the time comes to rest, you go to rest, go to sleep. You can only do what you can do. Otherwise, you're going to drive yourself crazy. The practice is not about driving ourselves crazy. We're already doing that. Okay, so it's not so easy. We're finding a fine balance between an aspiration, a yearning, something that's worth aspiring to. And yet when it goes over a certain limit, we can feel that there's grasping and craving, and it's suffering. So how to find that fine balance where we give what we can, and the conditions can be the age of our body or health. In a way, you can always practice. Break_line: When I was in Korea, there were three of us, three Americans. No one had come to a Korea yet, and so they didn't know what to do with us, and we didn't know what to do with them. We didn't speak the language, and the food made us all sick, especially me. I was just day after day after day, just dysentery. And we were starting to get worried, and the retreat began. And so we were doing a retreat. And we were working with a koan called “What am I?” And what you do is you ask that question, “What am I?” Not always in words, you get that question going. And then after a while, you ask it without words. Sort of a deep looking, “What am I?” And when you're healthy, you can really fire that up. Break_line: But here I was. I hadn't been able to hold food for almost two weeks, and so I practically crawled into my teacher's little room, and he saw how discouraged I was. And this sounds like a Jewish joke, but it isn't. It really happened. So I said, described what it was. “I'm working with the koan, ‘What am I?’ And I'm finding it impossible to do.” He said, “Look, when you have a lot of energy, it's “WHAT AM I? WHAT AM I?” When you're as sick as you are, it’s “what am I? what am I?” So, you do what you can. And some days you have a lot of energy. Some days not. Some days you're busy, some days not. Some days you can put together and come to a retreat. At other times, the requirements of the world are such that there's no way to get to places like this. Can we learn to land on our feet all the time? Break_line: In other words, no matter what the conditions are. That's why what is being emphasized so much in this style of practice is that wherever you are, the perfect place to practice—it's not in Omega, it's not in India, it's not in Burma—it's wherever you are. The materials are your life as your life is expressing itself in that moment. So, you can do what you can. And if you're starting to set a romantic, ideal, wonderful, noble goal, and then you're imagining this poor body that can do just so much to get to that goal. And who wouldn't feel exhausted? I mean I got exhausted listening. No insult meant it. Do you see what I'm getting at? Yeah. It's about taking care of this moment, always. Break_line: Supposing you get enlightened, whatever that might mean to you. Then what? You still have to go to the bathroom, wash up, eat. Sometimes the body hurts, and then you go and die anyway. But you get better karma. You'll go to some better place. In terms of karma, I'd rather not get into the doctrine, because on a retreat, it's not so wise to feed that quality of mind, the speculative, abstract mind. There is a place for it. But on retreat, it's best to stay as close as we can to our experience. Break_line: When you take care of the present, you're taking care of past karma, and you're taking care of the present, and you're also taking care of future karma. For example, let's say I use the example of worrying. So maybe you're worrying because that's from the past. If you watch the mind, you'll see that when the mind is in such bad shape, it's because of something that we did, not necessarily criminal. Something happened. And you can see karma right now, from moment to moment, sometimes. So when you observe that worrying, rather than either suppressing it or identifying with it—I tried to make that as clear as I could during the guided meditation—you're taking the power out of that past. It's happening in the present. There's only the present. Break_line: It isn't that, let's say you're worrying about something that you did 20 years ago. You feel badly about it, will you get punished by it, and you're karmically punished by it. The punishments already happened because of the worrying. In that moment, you're already suffering. And so you take care of it through wisdom, through seeing into it and letting it down. So in that moment, the present is a much better present, because you haven't either drowned in it or suppressed it, which is exhausting too. In taking care of the present moment, you're planting healthy seeds for the future. So that moments of mindfulness tend to contribute to a greater likelihood of future moments of mindfulness, future moments of clear seeing, future moments of insight. Break_line: So that if you take care of the present, you're taking care of your karma. What's done is done. The future is not here yet. But you can tell a lot about your present. You can tell a lot about your past by looking at the present. After all, that's what got us here. But you can also tell a lot about the future by looking at the present, by seeing how you're behaving right now, what you're doing. That's as far as I would be comfortable going with the idea of karma. End_time: 00:22:55