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Q2-19990217-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_4-43036 Leandra Tejedor
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Talk: 19990217-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_4-43036 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 01:02:29 Display_question: How do I help my friend make sense of her husband’s death caused by a hit and run driver? Keyword_search: hit and run, killed, karma, God, lawfulness, cause and effect, suicide, Christina, Jewish, Buddhist, rebirth, intelligence, IMS, coincidence, intimacy, pain, grieving process, uncertainty, impermanence, dharma, Holocaust, remorse, don’t know mind, sorrow, meditation Question_content: Questioner: You spoke at the beginning about things not being random, and about there being an intelligence. Love can help find that idea of situation. My son's husband got killed by a hit and run driver. They were walking down the street to dinner, it happened…. and everybody's obviously struggling with how to make any kind of sense of what happened. Larry: Yeah, it couldn't. It couldn't. For example, if I'd say to you, oh, it was his karma, I wouldn't say that, because to me, first of all, it's a colossal conceit on my part to say a thing like that. And it's not the way karma's meant. Sort of like he did something bad, in a past lifetime, and now he's got to be run over. To me, it's like God punishes. I don't think it's in that. The lawfulness I'm talking about, is cause and effect. Okay. So, I wouldn't… now, when people try to make sense… if there's a teaching that can help, it depends on the person again. If the person has a deep commitment to practice, it's one thing. If they don't, it's another. Break_line: Let me give you an example. Suicide is a very common one, especially if it's a young person. And this is a case that I know well, personally. Intelligent, has everything to live for, et cetera, loved by everyone around her, and nonetheless takes her life. The mind is boggled. Like, how could this happen? Why could this person, what did we do wrong? And then starts groping for, and then there are Christian explanations, and Jewish explanations, Buddhist and karma, and then there's the teaching of rebirth, which can be reassuring. Okay, she's not gone. She's just moving on. She'll be learning her lessons. Oh, that makes me feel better. For some people that's enough, but for other people, it doesn't work. Because when you look closely, you realize, I really don't know. I really don't know. And this don't know, is a kind of intelligence, because you don't know. Break_line: Now, if you Buddhist teachings, our library is full of them, and some of them can be comforting. And for some people it is appropriate to do it because it'll help them. And I'm pragmatic with these things, like with my mother, and if it helps her, this person, great. But for other people, it will be like a band aid, and then they're still going to be left, with their pain. And then the practice can help that person work with their pain. You can't bring this person's husband back, and why it happened. I think at a certain point the mind will get exhausted, because they realize it can't figure it out. Look, if you ever walk around the country, I know when I'm at IMS, and I take the walks around the loop, it's not unusual. There'd be a dead squirrel. It's sort of like the coincidence. A squirrel runs out on the road, and a car happens to be coming at that point. And I realize, wow, that's a little bit like the way we are. Sort of like you're in the wrong place, at the wrong time, squashed. And there is room in karma for that too. It’s not all exactly meticulously worked out, in a kind of punishment, reward system. Not in Buddhism at any rate. So, I don't know your friend, is she a practitioner? Questioner: A little bit. Not much, but she's really sort of passing around for some way to make sense. Larry: See, what I know is, just so unsentimental that I don't want to… hope it isn't taken as an insult. It's sort of... I'm just going to follow this train. Let's say, I'm just putting myself in her shoes. The pain, of course, must be immense. The practice would help this person work with the pain, not indirectly, but directly. Which means at a certain point, is to help the grieving process, to really be effective. Meaning to really grieve, that means to really be intimate with the pain. To use that metaphor here. Let's say I would realize that finally, I don't know. I don't know why my husband walked out on the road, and was run over. But what I can learn from it is, that life is uncertain. It's very tenuous. All of us are fragile. If it's not by a car…there are just so many ways to die. We hear them, and see them on the media, all the time. And what I'd learned from it is, that life is uncertain. Which might seem like a platitude, and a truism, but if you could, it's a very powerful one. It has been for me. When you reflect on life is uncertain, literally. It's a derivative of the law of change, of impermanence. That this law is unfolding, and we don't own life, in this sense. Break_line: So, for me, some reflection on understanding that, all of us are subject to this uncertainty, to the law of uncertainty, which is unrelenting. In small ways, the weather says it's going to be sunny, and you plan a picnic, and it rains. Or you go to have a good time, and go to a great restaurant, and you get food poisoning. Or they're just all kinds of expectations. We have a little… expectation, equals suffering. It's a mathematical formula in Dharma circles. The expectation would be that this man would live his full life out, and be a husband, and a father. And that's the thing. These things never happen to us. They happen to other people in the news, until sometimes we wind up being the one it's happened to. Break_line: So, I don't think what I know can be so helpful. Karma could be useful, but I've seen it misused. Where the person will take it to beat up on themselves, or beat up on… maybe we all as a family have done something, that's just awful. And there are books that sometimes give even detail like you intentionally crush a mosquito, and you're born as an ant. Or I feel that's folklore. I just really do. And I don't put much stock in it. I think the law of karma to me is not ridiculous, that the law of cause and effect seems, even on our own life, you can verify it. You can see that there's some cause and effect. But here this driver...something was going on with him, and that came together, for some reason, and any deeper meaning of it, which is what you're asking for. You know them the same way I do, and I think that what might happen… Break_line: see, that's what I mean. A lot of the things I'm talking about down here, I don't know if they're helpful, if you don't have a practice. Because let's say it's someone who has a practice, then you would have to cycle through all the what ifs, and whys. I don't think there's any way to escape that. I've seen that with suicide. The mind endlessly tries to figure out, why did this happen? And at a certain point it becomes exhausted, because none of the... for most people, for many people, they're not satisfactory. And what you're left with is, I really don't know. Not only don't I know, but I'm not going to know, not really. And some psychic can give you, or a medium can give you an answer. It makes you feel better. And then maybe three or four days later, it falls apart, and you realize. And so, after the mind kind of gets exhausted, making up stories, to help it, sort of, comfort itself, then I think when the comforting phase falls away, you're left with the starkness of the event. I see this event as quite comparable to the suicide of a young person. And then the practice would be, rather than seeking ways of explaining it away, or putting some salve on the heart, with explanations, is to look at the wound itself, and to become intimate. Now, how can a person do that, unless they've had some training? I think the mind won't be able to do it. It's just fanciful. Do you see what I'm trying to say? Break_line: Sometimes maybe if a person is so motivated, and they hear the instructions, I wouldn't rule this out. Because what's being asked is intimacy with sorrow. It would mean to throw away all the stories. And then there's one story that's the hardest to throw away, which is self-pity. It's really not about her husband. It's about her. Why did this happen to me? And if someone were to bring that up, that would sound coarse, or vulgar, or just insensitive, unkind. I've seen this with survivors from the Holocaust. It's very tricky ground. It's very hard to talk about it. The practice would be of help if… not knowing your friend. I don't know anything else to say. But you know her, and do you know these teachings? Are there anything in these teachings that okay, let's say the law of uncertainty, that we know. And the fact that death comes unannounced, at any time, everyone knows that they're going, okay, we're getting maybe this will help. Break_line: Because these reflections are used, and they can be useful even without strong concentration. Everyone must die. This is a reflection that's used in Buddhist teaching. But death is certain, but the time and the occasion of death is, uncertain. So, everyone's subject to that same event, that this man was. And that's what I mean, by shining the light of death, on life. If after the period of tremendous grieving, or remorse, of groping for verbal explanations, and theories, and anything really. If it wears itself down, as it may, then just to reflect that all of us are subject to this, that it's...no one knows when our time will come up. No one. This is when his time was. We don't know why, but it's a fact. And my time will come, and even my child's time will come. In other words, the entire planet, no one gets out of this alive. It could prompt someone. Break_line: Now, it's dangerous because it could push someone into cynicism, skepticism, or total despair. And so, the timing is very important. It's not for everyone. If the person's strong, and at a certain point in their life, to actually take the bitter medicine, rather than sugar coating it. But that would take tremendous skill on your part, as a friend, to know what is appropriate to suggest, and because then it can help the person understand that this is a human, existential problem. It's not just my problem, and my husband, and my child's problem. We're all subject to this strange state of events. We're born, and we love to be here, and it's going to be taken away from us. There's something, no matter how much Buddhism, and meditation, something poignant about that. We're not animals. We know it's going to happen to us. We know it, and it's happening to everyone, but they maybe don't know it, the way we do. So that reflection on uncertainty, can enhance the value of the life, that is she's alive, and her child is alive. And at a certain point, maybe that can make life even more precious, but not in a frantic way, but in a refined, subtle way, to really enhance her ability to love her child, to love herself, and to live well. Do you see what I'm getting at? You're going to have to be creative, and very sensitive. I have at times, with people, one wrong word, and I've offended the person not intending to at all. End_time: 01:15:19
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