Q1-20060303-Larry_Rosenberg-IMSRC-learning_how_to_live_self_knowing_in_action_part_4-4628 Leandra Te

Talk: 20060303-Larry_Rosenberg-IMSRC-learning_how_to_live_self_knowing_in_action_part_4-4628 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: 00:31:07 Display_question: What is the difference between self-knowing and self-knowledge? Keyword_search: self-knowing, insight, clear seeing, self-knowledge, storyteller, mind, letting go, faith, conditioning, decondition, skillful, unskillful, attachments, liberation, reaction, response, past, future, awareness, fabricated, freshness, Buddhadharma, intelligence Question_content: Questioner: This concept of self-knowing. Larry: Yes. Questioner: And how it helps us. Larry: This concept of self-knowing. Yes. Questioner: You mentioned not having a book of insights that you write down all the little things. How does it actually help in the future, if you don't remember necessarily. Is it something that affects you, on a subconscious level? Larry: Oh okay, see you're psychoanalyzing…you’re trying to figure it out, and I understand that. Let's start with the beginning of your question, taking notes, and filling it... let's say you hear people do this, have a spiral notebook and full of insights about me, what I learned, and all that. By the way, there are some things that you learn, we're not banning. Some of it will stay in memory. What I'm saying is that's not what we're trying to do. See what the emphasis is on the clear seeing, in the moment, of what's happening. But sometimes an important lesson is learned, and it's with you. So, do you see what I'm getting at you? It's just that we're not setting that up as what you have to do. Now, your question about what future… Questioner: I guess just the difference between self-knowing and self-knowledge. Is it something all throughout the core? Larry: Yes. Okay, self-knowledge is an accumulation like knowledge. And by the way, when you have a notebook like that, full of your insights, what is that about? That is about, that's your story. Who I used to be, who I think I am now, who I will be, take a look at it. And our mind is a great storyteller, constantly. And we live a lot of our life in the service of that story. Editing it, revising it, protecting it, condemning it, throwing whole chapters out, rewriting chapters, rewriting history, making up some incredible future, either in the nightmare, or fantastic. But if you want to stay on that level, full speed ahead. Liberation is from your story, from attachment to the story. We have a story. No one's trying to kill that. Break_line: Now, here's the hard part, because I'm asking you to… that there’s… it's not in one given moment. Let's say self-knowing…it’s… as you more, and more are paying attention, to what's happening, in the moment, it's learned. There's a letting go. Those are moments of clear mind. Those moments grow. And here's the part you may have to take, I think you will have to take on faith, far more valuable, than your conditioned mind, trying to always figure things out. Even if you have had good conditioning. And some people have had been fortunate to have good conditioning, family, school, et cetera, and some not so good. This is not trying to improve the conditioning. This is to decondition us, to loosen, and let go of our attachments. Now that takes you to another dimension. Break_line: Now, what I am saying, the only way you can test it, is by continuing to practice, the clear mind that's empty. It's not based on your…. for example, to go back to what was said earlier; is something skillful, or unskillful, and that takes some thinking, and some reflection, to begin with. As the mind gets clearer, less and less is thinking needed. More, and more, is that the seeing itself, it's a form of intelligence, and it will guide you, in order to see what this situation, actually is. And out of that comes more likely to come a response, not a reaction. A reaction is conditioned. See, all this probably sounds very abstract, and dead but the freshness, when the awareness starts becoming extended… see more, and more, can you live in that place? It's not just a second here or there. We begin that way. Break_line: Now, the thing that's mysterious is that, it's not like you develop amnesia. If you meet someone, you can tell them about where you're from, and where you went to school, and all that. And it's not like we don't... we can't think about the future. I went to retreat. They said no future, no past. But we're learning how to use the past, and the future, skillfully. So, it's not as if it's not training in becoming… and it's not a prefrontal lobotomy. But how… you see otherwise. What I hear from your question is the premise that the me that's being put together, and has been put together, by a lifetime of concepts, and thoughts, and experiences, and memories, and aspirations, and yearnings, and failures, and successes, and hurts, and on, and on, and all in memory. And that what we call me… by the way, as you start to look at that, that's not going to stand up. It isn't what you think it is. I don't know if you've gotten a glimpse of that. Now, the whole point of liberation, is from living on that level, which is fabricated, it's constructed. Break_line: And so, for example, one of my teachers, the last instructions he gave me, is he knew I loved this teaching, and so he gave it to me in the calligraphy, don't make anything exclamation point. See, we're constantly making ourselves, inventing ourselves, to ourselves in words, and pictures, and that's holding it together. That's what we know. And of course there's some security in it, no matter how bad our story is, or we think it is. But this is going somewhere else. Liberation is from attachment to all of that. Break_line: Now, self-knowing is a moment of practicing, like I'm doing it right now to the best of my… I'm really attending to you. I'm looking at you, very carefully. There's not a whole lot of well, I have to do some thinking because I want to remember what you said. But I do. I think. And there's more. Freshness. Michael likes that word. And it's a good word, freshness. I'm experiencing you in a fresh, new way, rather than through the filter, of all of my accumulated conclusions about myself, and life. Now, I know we learn some lessons by living, and it's not like they go away. But sometimes the lessons, very often that we learn from living, they become generalizations. And every situation is unique. And they're kind of a crude solution to a situation that, when seen freshly, something else may come out of it and it's not calculated. I don't know. Does it make any sense, what I'm saying? Questioner: Yes, it has a little bit of faith in there I think. Larry: Well, yeah, you see, there is faith in the Buddha, in Buddhadharma. It's provisional. In other words, how can you do anything, unless you have… give it a try. So, you have to have some sense that, for example, in traditional terms, some faith that someone called the Buddha, really did free himself. That it is possible, there are human beings, who are not suffering so much, or even at all, anymore, psychologically. Everyone has pain, physical pain, that can help you do those things, set in motion. You came here, and all the rest, so that you can find out, because you can't figure it out in your head. People try. They weigh what's being said. And it's the old mind that's hearing it. And then it's imagining what this new…oh, a mind that's before thinking. And they're imagining what that would be like. And it sounds idiotic, or helpless, like you're just wandering around lost. You don't know what to do. And it's quite the contrary. It's a kind of intelligence, the clear mind. You have to jump in, and see what happens. End_time: 00:38:56