1996-07_05 Vipassana Retreat, Part 5 of 8 - Q&A 2

Talk: 19960705-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-vipassana_retreat_part_5_of_8-43309 Start_time: 00:44:15 Display_question: Is it helpful to understand causes of specific suffering? Keyword_search: depression, causes, explore, nature, expectation, wisdom, understanding, process, uproot, attachment, torment, uproot Question_content: Questioner: Well, in the case of depression, it seems to me if you stay with it, you can explore the nature of it. But I don't understand that there's any, can be an expectation that you'll understand the causes. Larry: This is not about that kind of understanding. Yours is intellectual understanding. Questioner: But, for instance, I might if I wanted depression to go away and be directly aware of situations, for example. Larry: Yes, that what: bring it about? Questioner: That bring it about. Larry: Yeah. Questioner: How would that happen in this process? Larry: Wisdom. Some of wisdom is understanding our limits. So, if you start to live a mindful life, you start to see how you actually live. And some of that could include avoiding situations that produce it. But that is still not the uprooting of it. Do you feel that there's no possibility of uprooting? Break_line: See, the main thing to uproot is the attachment that we have to these states. It's not the state itself. We don't have control over what's going to come to visit us, but our relationship to it makes all the difference in the world. So that if depression comes and we attach to it, fighting it is attaching to it, also swallowing it is attaching to it, then not only is it depression is torment. So that, if depression comes and we can see it as just like a rainy day, “Oh, here's depression.” We're not necessarily suffering as the depression is there. It's just that kind of mind state. Now, but it's also true with practice, unless there's a deep biological reason that it seems to thin out because if people have been practicing for a long time and they're still very, very depressed… <audio cuts out> End_time: 00:46:01