Q2-19990203-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_6-43038 Leandra Tejedor

Talk: 19990203-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_6-43038 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 01:21:35 Display_question: Can you speak to the shock, non-acceptance, and despair that happens when a loved one dies, despite doing the five contemplations? Keyword_search: grandmother, dying, Buddhist practices, contemplations, visualizations, reflections, father, Atlantic Ocean, Nathan Rosenberg, rebirth, corpses, meditation, metta, depression, present, self-pity, grieving, disengagement, attachment, love, subdued, dharma, dukkha, suffering, liberation Question_content: Questioner: Recently, I spent a lot of time with a dying grandmother. After she died, and I've done reflections on death for years. And we, you know, looked at corpus, traditional Buddhist practices. After she died, I physically sort of went into shock. Part of me could not accept it. It was like a wall. I just could not accept it. I wonder if you could speak to that phenomenon. Larry: Oh, yes, I've had my own experience of it because I did the very same thing, as you know, and it was helpful. In other words, there are contemplations. And one of my teachers, we observed the corpse, for a whole night, and it was blue, and swollen, and festering, and it brought up things, and the teacher would say, what's happening now? I feel like throwing up, and watch it be mindful, and all the same things you hear. And it was all helpful. And I did visualizations and reflections. So, I've been interested in this for a while. Break_line: But then when my father died, we were very close. I had his ashes. He didn't want to be buried. He loved the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean. And so, he and I talked about it, years before. It's in his will or in some paper. So, I had his ashes in an urn, and I put it on… I have an altar where I meditate, and I kept it there for, I don't know, it was about a month and a half, or so. It wasn't following any religious, you know, 48 days or anything like that. I just put it there. And I was doing my regular meditations, but from time to time, I had a picture of him near it, and I would just look over, and reflect. Wait a minute. It's in that little box. It was about this big is what is left of Nathan Rosenberg, at least the body. Oh, he's somewhere else. Rebirth and all that. Hope so, maybe. I don't know, not really. And I would make that connection. And it was very, very different than the dress rehearsals. They were all prompted, cultivated in that sense, artificial, and they're not intimate enough. Break_line: So that one thing. And again, I'm not saying don't do the Buddhist practice because they have been helpful, but that's what I was trying to say, that for me personally, just life as it is, is the greatest teacher there is. But you have to be available, you have to be a student of it. And if you are, all that you need is there, with you, or people that you love. And it's very, very different. So, I second what you're saying. All you can do is practice with what you're describing. Don't set up an ideal, or a way of hurting yourself, which is sort of like after all this Buddhist practice, and visualizations, and contemplating corpses, look at this, I'm no better than just someone who never meditated, or don't set up any ideals. The truth is, this is the way it is about you, and your grandmother. Don't compare it to anything else, and just be honest, from moment, to moment, with it. And that will really teach you things that are much more valuable, than trying to think it through. Questioner: I think it hasn't been so much things once I've been keeping the connection some sense alive. Holding this… Larry: Connection to your grandmother? Questioner: Yeah, or holding the sense that maybe she's in a bardo, she's passing on just doing daily or weekly, doing meditations, to try to have some connection. Maybe it's just for me, a quality of metta. Larry: Yes, I do that too. Questioner: Seems like a natural extension of a connection with some life force community going on. But the other thing that I really wanted around the whole time, it's been a couple of months, a few months and part of my engagement with life, and with my relationship with really close people around me, has been changed in a way that I feel like I don't have as much juice sometimes, in some ways. And it's not like a depression. It doesn't feel like a depression, or not coming to terms with the fact, that she's not there anymore. I haven't been so present at times, and I'm wondering how to bring when you're really in it, how can you bring that into the question, and being responsible, in an appropriate way, to people that... Larry: Yeah, but you know, let's say this wasn't about your relationship to your grandmother, and her death. Questioner: Right Larry: You know, as well as I do, that the practice goes through, it's like the weather, you really love it, or you hate it, or it's in between, and the mind is clea,r and then it's wacky. So that this is what's happening. But just from my own experience, not just in myself, but having listened to others. Look very carefully. Because I thought I was grieving for my father, like out of a textbook perfectly, until I saw that I wasn't. Because there was a time when I saw that there was an element of self-pity in it, which is very different. It was sort of, my daddy isn't here with me anymore. When I saw that, and it fell away. And it was just total, undivided attention to grieving. It was very, very different. Break_line: And the grieving is a powerful energy, and it was allowed to fully release itself, fully flower, and do its grieving. And it had no me in it. I mean, of course, not the concept me. Of course, there it was. It was right in here, and there was total attention to it. So, there was a subtle kind of self-pity that I saw. Once I saw it, it fell away, and the whole process of grieving changed. Sometimes people get confused, mistake attachment, with love. And so, you keep thinking about your grandmother in certain ways, because if you don't, then you feel you're letting her go, and you won't have her anymore. You don't love her or she's leaving your clutches. People have all kinds of notions about what will happen, if they don't feed the process, and try to keep the person whose dead, alive in their heart. Love has nothing necessarily to do with that, but that's a difficult one to disentangle, attachment from love, but they're different. Questioner: It doesn't feel conceptual. It doesn't feel like I'm actually thinking about this person, so much. I just noticed the whole surround at this time. These many weeks that there's a disengagement, in a way. And it's more wanting to be reflective, wanting to really embrace, but also be responsive fully in the world. Larry: Okay. There may be a subtle way in which you are maybe depression is too strong a word. Slightly subdued. Questioner: I think that would be a natural. Larry: Yeah. What I think would be better, personally, not anything I have to say from here on in. But if you can throw away ideals about how you might be, or should be, or you used to be, and practice with just what you're saying, and see where…and let it tell its story, let it unravel itself. Because if you keep comparing it to how you want to be more aware, more this, and your friends are being neglected, and then the mind starts speculating. Minds do that. But if you don't feed that process, instead come back to just the raw. You see what I'm getting at? To me, that's always the most reliable. That's the heart of our practice. It's the hardest thing to learn. Hardest thing to teach, too. It's to be with what's there, what's here, right in this moment, right here, and right now. And that varies from loving for it to be there, hating for it to be there. But that's where the liberation comes from. Break_line: That everything else can be helpful or counterproductive. But I would say teachings, Dharma talks, all these things, it's getting us more and more… it's like where we're hurting. That's another meaning of that. Dukkha is a gem. The suffering is a gem. It's where the suffering is. That's the jewel. That's where the liberation is. Liberation is not behind some cloud. It's all happening in the same place. And so, if you can connect with it, and throw away all your notions of should be, was, and even any of my notions. End_time: 01:30:26