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Talk: 19990623-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-shining_the_light_of_death_on_life_part_9-43041 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 01:04:53 Display_question: During my childhood I was part of a faith tradition, where the body was considered bad, and I find it is impeding my meditation practice. Keyword_search: culture, family, faith tradition, Buddhist meditation, decompose, Ajahn Suwat, Greek, identification, human body, attachment, craving, God, images, media, aversion, conditioning, intimacy, Question_content: Questioner: I have a question about certain experience of myself that I have from childhood. Partly things in the family, culturally, cultural tradition. And it's partly the faith tradition I was in. Larry: Faith tradition? You mean a particular faith? Questioner: Yeah. Both of which, without going into detail, led me to a way of spiritual practice at the time, tradition of essentially treating the body as the enemy, treating the body as something essentially bad. And I feel it's impeding my practice, and I'm particularly interested in what that might mean in terms of meditation practice. Larry: I would say these are not called for because I could just reinforce what you're saying. But here's… excuse me. The point is, let's say probably everyone in this room, all of us, are we're not free of identification with our body. Now, some love their bodies, and they are very happy with what they have, and they think it's extraordinary, and beautiful, and have a whole romantic… and other people no, but they're equally, from this point of view, doing the same thing. They're identified with the body. Now, many people, because of having a somewhat romantic notion of the body, these things of, let's say, going through the 32 parts of the body, visualizing what it's like inside, urine, pus, blood. It's a Buddhist meditation. And also this one, on seeing the body decompose, can balance you. Break_line: But when I had my own training with Ajahn Suwat, who a few of you have met. When I got really good at seeing, let's say, certain of the repulsive aspects of the body, no matter how much we have images of the body which can be quite beautiful, and the media is devoted to strengthening those images. But then when you reflect, with a quiet mind on, if you unzip this, and what you see is blood, and urine, and fiches, and pus, and synovial fluid, and brain matter, that's what's underneath this incredible... So, once I got good at that, then he pulled a rug out from under me, and had me go the other way. He said, now put it together, and see sort of almost, a Greek view of the body, because it also is an amazingly beautiful creation, a human body is, and they're both true. And what he was trying to do is to get me to be free. So that free of either super-duper positive identifications, or negative ones. Break_line: Many spiritual traditions see the body as the enemy. The only way to get to God, the body is the problem. If I can get rid of that, and get to God, that isn't the approach that I'm suggesting. It's really to steer clear. of either attachment, craving, or aversion. And so perhaps, you need a little bit more of the other, to appreciate the marvel of having a human body. And when those old notions come up from your conditioning. I believe I don't know you, so I'm making a general statement. It may not apply to you. You have to be careful because you can develop an aversion, to that way in which you were brought up, as sort of like, oh, God, they just bent me out of shape, with that way of thinking, and now I'm stuck with… it's just an ugly way of looking at… why couldn't I have, and so forth. So, then you're working hard, you're in a struggle with this old conditioning, but you're replacing it with a new conditioning, which is anti the old one. Break_line: Whereas in the practice, the gentleness doesn't mean that it's flaccid, or flabby. It means when those old notions come up, which are not complimentary, about the body, just see them, let them come up, let them be there, without either aversion, or attachment. Just see whatever it is that comes up. And that's what I meant by receiving it without any separation or intimacy of practice. Because the mind is always very often telling us what's happening. There's just this body. You had your trip laid on you. I had a trip laid on me. Conditioning poured in. Break_line: But finally, the body is just a body. Here it is, it's poor body. It just does what it does. And then all these different cultures decide what this body is, and what its fate is, and what it really means, and so forth. In the meantime, it's a body. So, the practice is to come to that… intimacy would be intimate with the body, as it is, not any notions about it. Do you see what I'm getting at? Questioner: Yeah. End_time: 01:10:02
