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Talk: 19900217-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-hot_buddha_cold_buddha-1581 Leandra Tejedor (1).json Start_time: 00:21:13 Display_question: You spoke about the balance of bringing more warmth in the practice. I wonder about how to be equanimous, and bring warmth, and intimacy, without it turning into indifference? Keyword_search: Ajahn Suwat-Thai Forest teacher, Zen monk, warmth, wisdom, cremation, Korean, nun, Ajahn Funn, death, love, suffering, grieve, mourn, equanimity, equanimous, indifference, attachment, detached, mindfulness, compassion, karma, Kalu Rinpoche, parent’s, therapist, Buddhist Question_content: Questioner: No, the other night in your talk, you talked about bringing some warmth into the practice, that it's not so much being attached. It's not like being on the top of a mountain, with looking glasses, looking down. And I remember the story about the Zen monk. The second time I heard it. The first time you talked about it, you talked about the burning, crying, going, talking, and he saying, I grieve fully. Then you said that you talked to Ajahn Suwat after. And then he said, well, that's well and good that he cried and everything, but maybe the wisdom wasn't all there. Okay, so my question is, from his point of view, how then…it sounds like that's a cold place to be. It sounds like there could not be a whole lot of warmth there, but, from my perspective. Larry: Yeah, well, Ajahn Suwat will be here in May, you can ask him. But people don't know what you're referring to. So, let me… I'll have to go, and I'll leave it for you to decide because they both seem like valid decisions, and I'll just give you a sense of what was the point was. Ajahn Suwat is a Thai forest teacher, and I told him about watching the death cremation of a nun, at a Korean monastery. I told you about this, that a Zen master there was crying. And I was surprised. I talked to him. I mean, I felt foolish that I was surprised. And what he said was, he had known her for many years, and she was a good friend, and of course he would miss her. And he grieved fully. And then it was over, which sounded like a very good answer to me. It sounded like what human beings do. Break_line: So, I asked Ajahn Suwat this, and I said, what do you think of this? I wasn't just being mischievous. I like to, you know, because there are all kinds of subtle points. And he heard it, and then he had some hesitation because he didn't want to say anything negative. And he said, well, it sounded like that monk. That was fine, but it sounds like he didn't have complete wisdom. Now we're just playing because it's one person talking about another person's experience, and what can you do with that? He wasn't being arrogant at all. Break_line: I'll finish the point. So, then we know what we're talking about, all because other people here may not know what you mean. So, then he said, that monk still had some something…it was like that was his nun. My nun died. See, in other words, there were still some possessors, and what he was suggesting. So, then I asked him about his own teacher. He was very close to another wonderful teacher, who died a few years ago. And I said, how was that for you? Because you were very close to him. Break_line: And he said, well, many times when I was a younger monk, I would get sad, and depressed, and be worried, what will happen when Ajahn Funn dies. Because he was so important to him, he said, but I kept practicing, and years went by, and he said, as a matter of fact, when Ajahn Funn died, there was just deep, deep love for him, and it wasn't an enormous amount of suffering. And I drew him out on that. What he was trying to say is that, when the wisdom gets really deep, to me, this is plausible. This doesn't mean it's coldness at all. When you really, and deeply understand, that we all must die, not talking yourself into it, but through deep meditation, and understanding, understand that it's just the way things are. It's not necessarily cold. Although from our point of view, it may seem that way. Break_line: And so, I asked him in a few different ways things like, what was that cold? Do you think you repressed it? And he said no. There was just tremendous love for Ajahn Funn. It couldn't have been more if it was my father. But wisdom had developed a little bit more, over the years, and I was totally comfortable, I knew it was time for him to die. That's all. Break_line: Now, I'm not saying that's superior to the first monk. How could we? Who knows? Now, the practice is really not trying to give you some kind of ideal that you're supposed to run after. Because if what turns up is that you start to cry, because let's say the nun died, it's not saying that's bad. It's saying to enter into that, with awareness, fully. Because that's what's happening. Now, if you do that, then you're not making me and mine out of it. You're just simply allowing a natural condition to happen. If you have very little awareness, or not so much, the crying inadvertent… it has to have, mixed in with it, a lot of that's my nun, I'll miss her, it's a loss to me. It's all, I, and me, and mine. A lot of that in there. But it's not saying there's only one way to grieve, or to mourn, or to relate, to a dead person. But it's pointing us in a direction that probably we all need to understand a bit better. Does that make any sense? Questioner: Yeah Larry: When he comes here, ask him. I'm comfortable with both of them, actually. Both responses. Questioner: I guess I'm driving at the problem, equanimity turning into indifference. Because I saw that Ajahn Suwat point of view, comes from a equanimous sort of place. So, I think that I've seen possible problems in my practice with remaining equanimous, but at the same time, maybe, having a problem remaining, equanimous but yet in touch with, intimately in touch with… being the looking glass, but not being involved quite as much, as when I'm sitting. The separation you are talking about. So how to bring warmth into it, how to do both at the same time? Larry: It's hard for me to know exactly what you mean. Equanimity, by definition…for equanimity, is not indifference. In other words, indifference is sometimes it looks like equanimity, the two can look very much like, but they couldn't be more different. Ajahn Suwat was certainly not talking about being indifferent. So, equanimity can have warmth in it. The key thing is, the attachment. Now, indifference can be one pole of the same problem. One extreme you could be holding on, the other is that you're pulling away. Whereas indifference can be, a protection against something. Being callous is often… people develop a callous stance towards things, to defend against their emotions. But that's the other side of getting lost in emotions. They're the same thing. Now that's equanimity as neither of those. It's even distance from what's happening. But the distance again is not that you're pulling away from it, is that there's an experience of it, a full and even experience, of what's happening. And you're not knocked off course, you're not identified with what's happening. I don't think it's wise to try to program warmth into it, but rather to examine the way it is for you, and let the warmth come naturally. But it's a little too abstract for me right now. Is it a particular situation? Questioner: I'll try and explain it. I have a lot of things come up, like feelings, for instance, and usually they're very troubling. And when I am usually sitting, I can watch them come up fairly easily, see them, and they go away. And I'm just concerned that the possibility might be there of becoming detached in a very sterile way. Larry: Are you doing that? Questioner: I'm not sure. I'm sort of trying to ask, what are the signs to know, when you've turned things sterile, when you've anesthetized rather than actually… Larry: Oh, the feeling is totally different. Questioner: Okay Larry: Yeah. If you're asking the question, then you feel there's something off, right? Questioner: I do. Larry: Yeah, then look at it carefully investigate it, and see it. Find out what's off. That means, it takes very delicate work. It means you have to look at how you're relating to what you're being mindful of. Perhaps the mindfulness has got other things in it. It's not just being mindful. Equanimity is… one way that can help us, so we don't polarize it, it's very important to develop along with compassion. Maybe you've heard that many people who are, let's say, who work with people who are troubled. Let's say, if you're a therapist, or a social worker, whatever you're doing. And of course, compassion is necessary, to really do, that kind of work. I mean, it's done without compassion, but I think we all understand that that work ideally has some compassion in it. Break_line: The equanimity factor comes in, let's say now many people who are doing this kind of work, are burnt out. That's something you hear a lot of. People who are working with very troubled people, physically, and emotionally troubled people get burnt out a lot. And some of them, people who are getting burnt out, are very kind, feeling, compassionate people. Now, the Buddhist suggestion, or one suggestion, I don't want to harden it into some kind of ideology. What you could suggest, and I'm speaking now in general, but maybe it has to do with what you're undergoing, or not, would be compassion would be, for example, doing what you can do for somebody. And sometimes you reach a point where you realize that's all you can do. You've done everything you can do, whatever that is, economic love, food, care, warmth, et cetera. And you realize that's all you can do. Break_line: That the person has their own karma, and their own destiny, that has to be lived out, and there's nothing else that you can do. The equanimity comes in, in that you rest peacefully in understanding, that you've done what you can do. And now this other person is an heir, to their own karma. They've inherited it. There's nothing that anyone can do. I heard Kalu Rinpoche give advice to parents once. Parents were just really concerned. They were asking all these questions, sort of taking the blame for anything that went wrong with their children. Of course, also taking the credit that anything went right with their children. But in this particular point, it was mainly what was going wrong. And Kalu Rinpoche saw how incredibly involved they were with everything that went wrong with their children's lives. Break_line: And he said, you know, when a child comes into the world, they already come in with a lot of their own karma. Part of that is, of course, having you as the parents. Now, I didn't really mean it that way, but okay, I was just being descriptive. Um, and, you know, what you can do is give the child, of course, warmth, and good food, and a good place to live, and help the child find out what to do, and obvious things. But an enormous amount of what's going to happen to the child has nothing to do with you. That child has to live out their karma. Everything that happens to the child is not your fault, your responsibility. You don't own the child. The child has sort of come through you. You're a vehicle for it. And so, for goodness sakes, relax a little bit, kind of have equanimity. You do what you can do. Parents do what they can do, but they then get involved in all kinds of areas where they have no control, and they worry, well, you know, we all know what happens. Break_line: So, the equanimity brings a kind of sane note into it. The truth is, if there isn't equanimity, often the compassion gets overdone, or comes out in kind of stilted ways, and it sours even the good part of it, because of the clinging, and the holding on. And it isn't genuinely respectful, let's say, of children. But they have to make their own mistakes. They have to grow up. Every one of us has done that, and no one's going to be exempt from it. So, it's getting comfortable with that. It has nothing to do with… you can be a warm and loving parent and understand the limits of parenting. Break_line: You can be a warm, and loving therapist, and understand you've done all you can for your patient, and rest comfortably in that, and it can be love in it. But you don't do things that make no sense. Simply because you understand, that you've reached your limit. That's equanimity. You're comfortable, you're balanced, with what's happening. End_time: 00:35:09
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