Q3-19840920-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-buddhas_ancient_med_path_a_modern_challenge_part_ii-1516 Leandra Tej

Talk: 19840920-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK buddhas_ancient_med_path_a_modern_challenge_part_ii-1516 Leandra Tejedor Start_time: 05:09 Display_question: What is the difference between attentiveness and detachment? Keyword_search: alertness, mindfulness, voyeur, awareness, clear perception, self-consciousness, fear, observation, meditative, dancing, Buddha nature, self-esteem, whole heatedly Question_content: Questioner: (inaudible) One thing that I have trouble thinking about…thinking through… is….when you talk about… alertness, mindfulness, noticing the consequence of your experience. That can sound often like a kind of aloofness for some people, a kind of detachment, kind of almost being a voyeur of your own life, being a voyeur of life and therefore not a sense living. Can you talk about the difference between attentiveness and detachment? Larry: Yes, there is. I would say there's a difference between alienation, and clear perception. The kind of awareness that I'm talking about, first of all, has no thinking in it. That's important to understand. Thinking separates us. The other thing is… it can be used that way as you're describing it. I would say that that's a preliminary use of it… where there's still self-consciousness. But the attention that I'm talking about, is not separate from, what's happening. Let's say I have a wave of fear, comes over me right now, okay? It's not like I'm stepping back, and saying there is that fear, at the beginning. Beginners typically have to do that. There's a self-conscious witness that's trying to watch what they're labeling fear. But that witness itself, is part of the personality. It's the past, and it will judge the fear. I shouldn't be this afraid, or it's okay to be afraid or… and that's all thinking. But when I mean attention, what I mean is that, it's so total, that there's no thought, there's watching, but there's no watcher. There's observation, but there's no observer. So, it means the awareness is, in the action and yet, it's also outside of it. Again, the words are not going to satisfy you. Break_line: Let me make it vivid. Suppose this meditation can be applied to action. If you're dancing, it's not like you're dancing, and there's a little you, a smaller you, watching yourself dance. Is that the dancing is totally conscious. You're wholeheartedly 100% dancing. And when it's really meditative, you're not caught in thought, you're thoroughly in the body. And there's great spontaneity, because the dancing is just happening, rather than the… mind calculating, and trying to direct the body in certain ways. The martial arts are other examples of where this quality of sensitivity, and awareness, is in the action. Break_line: Some teachings do teach it the way you describe it. I for I for one am not drawn to that, and it can lead to...now hen you talk about your real life, that becomes interesting, because from a certain point of view, from the spiritual point of view, which you're calling your real life, perhaps others would say, that's your fictitious life, that you think, is real. These are all the social games that you've been indoctrinated with, which you identify with, and which your self-esteem rises, and falls. Someone says you're handsome, or you're not handsome, or you're this, or you're that. And what they're saying, your true self… is beyond all these characterizations. It's that, let's say, Buddha nature that was hinted at before. It's the core of your being. And you may have to, the only way to get to it, is you may have to cut through some of these other things, and not be so holding on to them. End_time: 08:49