Q5-20020209-Larry_Rosenberg-IMSRC-the_bhaddekarrata_sutta_reflections_on_true_solitude_4-8727 Leandr

Talk: 20020209-Larry_Rosenberg-IMSRC-the_bhaddekarrata_sutta_reflections_on_true_solitude_4-8727 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 00:46:59 Display_question Can you speak more about learning for understanding, in reference to pain? Keyword_search: learning for understanding, pain, meditators, Buddha, memory, stewing, insight meditation, Russian, Gulags, awareness, mindfulness, liberation, clear seeing, art of observation, non-judgmental, heal, Holocaust, vipassana, Indian, Munindraji, movie, Cambridge, World War II Question_content: Questioner: You talked about learning for understanding about pain… Larry: Yes, you mentioned the people that I referred to, let's say survivors of extreme situations, and I've worked with a fair number now, and most are unable to, but they were also not meditators. A few were meditators, and just were not willing to take the practice deeply enough. If you don't have the resource, of what the Buddha is talking about here, that ability, to when it arises, let's say a painful memory, from the past arises. That is a memory. Is that clear? That event is over. It could be over 40 years ago. It's a memory when it comes up. And if you identify with it, not observe it, observe it without bias, but identify with it, then it's as if you're going through it again. It's like reliving a bad movie. The movie is over. You're not even in the theater. It's 40 years ago. And yet…then the body then responds. Emotions come in. Before you know it, you have a very powerful drama as everything is reacting to everything else. But that's not a life of awareness. That's what I would call stewing. Break_line: And there's one person, a very close friend, has become a close friend, and keeps asking in a thick Russian accent, what is this Buddhism you keep talking about? And every time I try to explain it and apply it to her situation, she's a survivor from the Gulags. Lost. I mentioned her. She gets on roller skates, and gets out of there, as fast as she can. She doesn't want to look at her stuff then. And she's just wearing herself down. She looks 20 years older than she is. So, practice is a way, not of stewing, but of opening up to, of receiving, but not in a helpless way. Now, what is it that protects you? It's your awareness that protects you. But many of you are really new. Your awareness, is just baby awareness. Break_line: For example, we give the instructions, be mindful of everything you're doing, right? You've heard it many, many times. There are people who've been practicing for 30 years. And let's say we have a retreat, and we give the same instructions. The mindfulness for them, and for someone who just walked… first, retreat never sat before. Some of you are really new. You're pre new… sandbox. That's not a criticism. It's just that, the art of observation is, in other words, insight meditation. The key to liberation is through. You don't get free by trying to break free of your chains. Whatever your chains are, it's through clear seeing, it's through, seeing into, deeply. It's the seeing that frees you. That's not stewing. But in order to do that, you have to have…the mind has to be fit. Well, I can't find it. It has to be fit to be unwavering, to be able to look at whatever it is, you know what you're talking about, to look at it, in an affectionate, but non-judgmental way, and let it tell its story. Let it flower, that particular agony, of a certain memory. You can heal the past in the present. Break_line: To contrast that very briefly, there's one person who had also very nightmarish experiences, in the Holocaust. I told you about this person. Parents carted away at eleven. Never saw them again. Okay, but that person did have a practice. And even with a practice, so much ambivalence, at being able to look at that, it felt as if it was sacrilegious, to just observe the memory of her parents. But the day came when she saw that that was not her parents. That was just something in the archives, an old film that just comes back again, and again, and then we get… now that's good when you go to the movie, you identify with the film, and you become one with the actors, and actor, and you start sobbing, and it just feels, oh good, nothing's happening. If you go to the movie, and practice with Vipassana, you'll be finished. There'll be no more movies. Break_line: In fact, this is the last thing that… we need time for a go around. This is a true story. Everything else I've been saying has been baloney. Michael and I had a very eccentric, Indian teacher named, Munindraji. He was very, very good. We all learned a lot from him. He was one of the first teachers for all of us. And I had the honor of taking him to his first movie. He had never been to a movie. We went to a movie in Cambridge, and we came out, and he said, why do people make such a fuss about this? He didn't have a good time at all. I said, well, what was happening, Munindraji. He said, I was just sitting, I knew I was mindful of sitting in a chair, and light was going on the screen, and there was this, and people were sitting around, and images were flashing, and just going like that. I didn't get any satisfaction from it. What do you all see in this movie? So, I try to explain to him. A few months later we went to a movie again, it was a war film. It was bridge over...I don't know, something, one of those World War II war films. And by then he had been much more Americanized, and everything. We came out of it, and he was very quiet, and usually he's very bubbly, and cheerful and funny, and he was just really quiet, and kind of... I said, Munindraji what's happening? He went, all those poor people, you know, killing one another. So much death, so much unnecessary…I said Munindraji, now you understand what a movie is. But you were not a Vipassana yogi at that moment. Okay. End_time: 00:54:07