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Talk: 19911127-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-anapanasati_full_awareness_of_breath_series_tape_1-33804 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 01:05:33 Display_question: One problem that I noticed, using a breath as a practice, throughout the day is, I have a tremendous tendency to control it. Is there anything you can do other than just continually notice that tendency? Keyword_search: breath, control, trust, dharma nature, surrender, Buddha, enlightenment, ego, suffering, learning, fill-up, exhale, let go, nourishment, birth, death, mindfulness Question_content: Questioner: One problem that I noticed using a breath as a practice throughout the day is I have a tremendous tendency to control it. Larry: Yes. Questioner: And it's something that even when I see that I do it, I do it over, and over again. Larry: Right. Questioner: I find I almost end up, not hyperventilating, but to control it such that I notice it…well, I'm really trying to regulate it. Is there anything you can do other than just continually notice that tendency? Larry: Yes, but you see, the noticing of the tendency is the best thing you can do. Because most other ways, then you try to control the controlling. So, it's an infinite regress where you're trying not to control. The truth is that that's a large part of what we're learning is trust. See, we don't trust the breath to fill up as much as it needs to, and to empty, the way it wants to. And we're learning surrender, which is another way of saying trust. In the practice, we're learning how to surrender to. One of the meanings of dharma is, natural law. And we're studying the secrets of nature, but in ourselves. And the breath, of course, is so obviously a phenomenon of nature. So, we're learning how to hand ourselves over to the breath, and let it follow its own nature. Now, to begin with, we can't do that because we have a lot of calculation, scheming, control. Break_line: Moreover, if we hadn't heard, for example, the fact that you just got all this talk about how wonderful, and the Buddha's, the Buddha attained enlightenment using this practice. So now, of course, the ego hears this, and before that, it was just breathing. Now it hears that there's some money to be made on this. There's a buck to be made on following the breath. It's not ordinary anymore. So, it wants to get credit for you breathing in, and breathing out, and that compounds it. Does that sound familiar? Questioner: Yes, very familiar. Larry: Right. So, in a sense, we've given you a kind of suffering that you didn't have before you, but you can see it. And what you're calling the problem, is really the territory of learning. In other words, the ground of learning how to trust. A lot is symbolized in breathing. In breathing in that's symbolic of filling up in life. There's a time to fill up in life. In other words, to eat, to make love, to do things, and there's a time to let go. It's always like that. It's never only one, or the other. And then there's a time to exhale. There's a time to take in nourishment, there's a time to let waste out. There's a time to be born, and to die, and so forth. This is going on all the time. So, we're learning that, on the breath. And as you look at your breathing, you learn a lot about yourself. Some people are able to let the breath go, but then they hurry to breathe it in more quickly. And other people, it's the other way around. And we're all a little bit different on it. If you cannot see it so much as a problem, mindfulness itself will set things right. And then what we're learning is more, and more, how to do nothing, and just breathe. End_time: 01:08:51
