1996-07_03 Vipassana Retreat, Part 3 of 8 - Q&A 5

Talk: 19960703-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-vipassana_retreat_part_3_of_8-43307 Start_time: 01:03:42 Display_question: How do I see my fear as separate from me? Keyword_search: fear, anger, breath, calm, concentrate, mind, neurotic, intelligent, replace, courage, Vipassana, mantra, communion, express, impermanent, afraid, self, not self, social security, intelligence, uncertainty, insight, mindfulness, body, mind, instinctive, unintelligent, destructive Question_content: Questioner: Let’s say it’s fear or anger that’s coming in. Right there. You go to the breath sort of… Larry: Well, wait. Remember, right now, right now we're just working on calming and concentrating the mind. But the other part of our practice, which we will learn, the breath will be like an anchor helping you, and it's kind of a gateway into whatever is there. So as you're breathing in and breathing out, which was the one you used? Questioner: Anything. I said fear or anger. Larry: Okay, fear is a good one because it's a very important one for all of us to get to know. So when fear comes up, the art Vipassana practice would be to be able to not try to replace fear with courage or put up with it or cope with it or grin and… Questioner: Say a mantra. Larry: Nothing. To just enter into communion with fear. I'm intentionally using a very… slow down, slow down. I'm intentionally using a very positive term. We like communion in a religious sense or with good friends. But why would you want to enter into communion with fear? Well, first of all, the fear is you, the awareness is you, and the breath is you. It's all you. And we're broken up into pieces. We're fighting with each other. Break_line: So, yes, the art would be to fully attend to the fear to let it express itself, and to see its impermanent nature. As you begin to see its impermanent nature, you begin to see that–and here it gets a little confusing if you haven't studied any of the Buddhist teaching–it's not self. This drives people crazy. I can't help it. What you realize, we take it to be self because we identify with it. If you identify with fear, then you've just made I am afraid, and then you have I am afraid, and all that goes with it: the adrenaline, everything. But as you come to observe it, you'll see that fear, like anything else, is a mind state that arises and it passes away. Questioner: I've seen that. But I’ll be like using a mantra and still be, you know, just separating from it. But I’m wondering how to just really see it as separate. Larry: Well, that's what this is about. But sometimes the fear is very powerful, and we can't meet it directly so we do other things. But eventually that's what we're growing into. Now, the breath is designed to help you. I don't know anyone who just loves to look at fear. Just can't wait. So the breath is like a good friend holding your hand, breathing in and breathing out. But when you begin to see what fear is–I think I'm getting ahead of ourselves, but all right, we'll just, it’s okay–the breath is there, and fear comes up. As you get to know fear, you can get to know it like anything else. Break_line: Look, if you want to get to know a friend, if you meet someone and you want to get to know them better, how do you do that? You have to spend time with them, right? You have to get up close. You have to listen to them. You have to tell them things. It's the same with your own mind. If you want to get to know your mind rather than just use it all the time or really be used by it, then these states that come up, you have to open to them. You have to find out what they are. Now, the word fear, F-E-A-R, already we're off and running in the wrong direction, but when it comes up, you'll see that it's energy, and the energy affects the heart, it affects the pulse. Everything changes, the content of the mind and so forth. But it's all observable. If it weren't observable, then this would be useless. What I'm saying, it is observable. The other thing you start to learn, and then I think, it's okay–this is like a sampler, right? Yeah, I'm catching on, right. It's a sampler of what's going on, what's coming. Break_line: A lot of times when you observe fear, you can't miss seeing that the ground out of which the fear emerged was thinking. So that you start to see that the mind is thinking about something happening in the future that's going to be bad. And after a while, you see that, “Oh, it's thought.” The soil that it grew out of was thought. You look around, all's well, you're safe. But the mind well, you know, the way Social Security is going, you may be only 25, but by the time you're 65 or now they're talking about 70, there won't be a penny left for you. “Oh, my God! Bah bah bah..” Maybe you're just in high school and you're already terrified hearing this on the news. And so your mind is creating all kinds of turmoil for you. Break_line: Now, often there's intelligence packed into fear. It's saying, something's going on here. Maybe you should start a savings account for your old age. I don't know what's going to happen. No one ever knows what's going to happen in the future. Even the good old US of A is subordinated to another law that's stronger than the Congress: uncertainty, impermanence. Those laws don't get repealed. It looks like everything is impermanent. Break_line: Whatever is impermanent is uncertain, but we don't get any education or training as to how to live with uncertainty. It's not now and then. It's that nothing is certain. It never has been. It might seem certain since the 1930’s, 40’s; yes, Social Security. But that's really just an eye blink in terms of the history. Everything is. There once was no United States. Now there is the United States. At some point, there won't be a United States, obviously. I'm not anti-America. I love this country. Just I don't want to feed certain kinds of tendencies. Break_line: So, as you begin to gain insight, as you observe fear insightfully, one very good one is seeing that it's impermanent. Now, what that would be like is simply the energy of fear emerges. You're with it, you're attending to it. But how can you do that unless the mind is trained? You won't be able to do it. That's why we're bothering with all this walking, in / out, and all that stuff, so that the mind finally can get to be steady enough. Okay, I'm not used to this. So here's fear and here's your mind. Typically, fear just wipe the floor with your mind because your mind is not steady enough. But the day comes through practice, fear arises. Remember, it's not the word, it's energy; it's very alive. We're not interested in the word as much as what's happening. And the mindfulness is steady and strong. That's what we're developing. And it can move with the fear. And one of the things it sees is that the fear arises, it peaks, and then it starts to weaken, and then it falls away, and then it's gone. If you see that a few times, your relationship to fear changes. Oh, it's something that arises and passes away. If there's no awareness, then you identify with it, and it's as if it's forever. In those moments, it is. It feels like it's forever, it's overwhelming. And, moreover, it's you or it's about to assault you. As you begin to see it, you see the whole thing as an internal thing. Break_line: Now, there are certain kinds of fears that are instinctive–they’re intelligence. I'm not talking about that. You're about to fall off a cliff. No, I'm not talking, this is a kind of made in the mind, manufactured in the mind. Do you see what I'm getting at? So, wisdom, as you begin to see that the inside is seeing the nature of everything, of the body and of the mind. As you begin to see that the nature of the mind is that it's made up of conditions that arise and pass away and lack self, then they start to lose power, and you can let them go, which takes you to a deeper place. I think it's as far as I'd like to go with it now. Yeah. Okay. It's all right. Questioner: Don't all these so called clouds, don’t they originally come from some real source? Like you distinguished between real fear and the fear that’s coming about in our mind. Larry: I'm not saying it's unreal. Questioner: No, I’m not either. Larry: Some fear is intelligence and some fear is destructive, it's unintelligent. We would call it neurotic fear. Questioner: So what I’m saying is destructive fear, does it originate…? Larry: Yes, we're very, all we're concerned with survival and security, yes. It changes from society to society, but that need in humans is always the same. Questioner: So what I'm saying <inaudible>… I define destructive fear as intelligent fear so it’s hard to let go of and to observe. Larry: Of course, I understand. Yes, but it's not a matter of definitions. I have to speak so I have to use definitions. It's a matter of in the moment something comes up. Look, if you're about to step off Grand Canyon and suddenly something stops you, you're not going to say, “Oh, this is just neurotic. Larry was right.” No, there's something and there's a lot of fear that comes out of thinking. That's what I said. There is a piece of intelligence. If you see that the Social Security system is in danger and you start setting up some savings or something, that might come out of a piece of, so that fears have some intelligence in them. But often, first of all, often they don't. Often they're way ahead. We all know. And moreover, we repeat them internally over and over and over and over and over when the actuality isn't here. And probably fear has damaged the quality of life for all of us more than anything else because it handicaps us. We're afraid to do certain things. It distorts our thinking, our living and so forth. Break_line: So one of the big things in all meditation practices is to free yourself from fear, if not totally. I don't know how many human beings completely free themselves from fear, but it's certainly possible to do a good job on it. Please. End_time: 01:14:06