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Talk: 19840927-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-buddhas_ancient_med_path_a_modern_challenge_part_i-1514 Leandra Tejedor FEQ&A Start_time: 01:12:52 Display_question: Can you speak about the ego in relationship to both our practice and daily life? Keyword_search: ego, self-centeredness, compassion, spiritual teaching, non-attachment, meditating, self-enhancement, Israeli, Arab, awareness, daily life Question_content: Questioner: (inaudible) Larry: And who's been working on the ego for three decades? This is the big question. Because it may be the ego is working on the ego. It's very slippery…the ego, as soon as becomes a new project…no ego, selflessness, that's the way, you know, then…oh, I'm going to get in on that action. So, then the ego jumps behind, and look how egotistical I am there, and there, and there, and there. Aren't I selfless? Just wonderful how I'm seeing through all of my ego hang-ups. Who's seeing through the ego hang-ups? It's ego's ingenious way of surviving. This particular form of meditation is designed to allow those expressions of self-centeredness to completely surface, in other words, as not to try and stamp them out, and in the light of very gentle, loving attention. See how… it's like studying a four-year-old. You know how egotistical little children are…all day, I want, I want, I want. We're not that different. We're just more sophisticated, and disguised, and we covered over a bit. Seeing that with compassion. In other words, it's in us. Each one of us has that. Questioner: (inaudible) Larry: Yes. So do I. So do I. Okay, and so the practice is suggesting… a loving familiarity. In other words, getting to know that which has… we need it…I mean, you have to become an adult, to function. And then the question becomes, is this it? Am I going to spend the rest of my life… buttering up this entity, and warding off threats to it, day in, and day out… dressing it, washing it, you know…cosmetictizing it, parading it so that it feels okay, and it never works. If it would work, great. But it's exhausting, and it's not…so then it's clear, in this kind of teaching, I would say in all spiritual teaching, is how to release ourselves. The non-attachment doesn't mean crushing it. That's terrible. Break_line: But it means, let's say, manifestations of ego come up. If they come up, they're not harmful. You see yourself as, the most greedy person, wanting everything. Fine, you let it out and you hear it with tenderness. You really hear it. It doesn't have potency if you do that. It's what the ancients call, taking the poison out of the fangs, in the snake. Break_line: In other words, the self-centeredness still comes out, whether you've been meditating for, I don't know, 20 years or 20 seconds. But more, and more, as you get familiar with how self-centered…how so many of our actions during the day, are motivated by self enhancement, I'll do this in order to get that, all day long, it's on the line. That chair is better. I can see better from that point of view. I'll get over there, that person got it. I better try the next one. I mean it's almost everything we do. It’s… kind of infiltrates. Then you get to the next question, which is, is there anything beyond that? I mean, is this asking you to become a prefrontal, lobotomy patient? I mean, what else is there? You mean all these self descriptions, I'm of this, and I'm that. The message is that there is, in fact, that who we really are, are none of these descriptions. Because as we look at them, they're accidental… they come and they go incessantly. And there's something deeper that seems to have a strength. Break_line: Each one of us has to test that, because if you believe what I just said, that might be nice. It might make you feel good, for a few minutes, maybe a few hours. But the only thing that will really help, is to try it, to taste it. Is it possible to live without this addiction to self-description, endlessly describing ourselves, and trying to protect those descriptions? Yes, I'm a meditation teacher. Yes, I'm a psychotherapist. Yes, I’m speaking as... speaking as an Israeli, speaking as an Arab. Because what it's leading toward is…is being, can we just be… just be a human being? And again, all these biographical things, they have their place too. It gives life its flavor. Like pepper and salt. Questioner: (inaudible) Larry: Exactly. Absolutely. Okay, now, the question is of those I know those people, and the ones who are sparky, you know, if we look at ego that way, it's more a kind of…qualities that we've accumulated. One person will be more talkative. Another person will be more introverted. That doesn't have to change. One person will like sports. Another person will like the movies. There's no one way to look, and sound, but it's more, who's doing it? Who's doing it? Is there freedom in the midst of it? Is there freedom in the midst of it? Questioner: (inaudible) Larry: Okay, now, if you're bringing awareness into daily life, one of the messages that I certainly learn, I don't know, probably you will too, is you find out how unfree, we find out how unfree we are. If you really start paying attention, you see how pushed around we are. A lot of it's by from the past, what our parents wanted for us, what the school system wanted for us. We think it's our own, there’s precious little that's our own. We've just picked it's all secondhand. We have all these opinions that we've accumulated, and we're even killed for them. End_time: 01:18:57
