Q10-20000809-Larry_Rosenberg-CIMC-discussion_on_practice-8142 Leandra Tejedor

Talk: 20000809-Larry_Rosenberg-CIMC-discussion_on_practice-8142 Leandra Tejedor.json Start_time: Display_question: I would like to share how I worked with resistance, to my whining co-workers. Keyword_search: whining, kill hot/cold, work, Buddha, Jesus, wisdom, aversion, Japanese Zen master-Dogen, Instructions to the Cook, dharma, Bread and Circus, Flying Wallendas, waiter, cab driver, simplify, human invention, retreat, CIMC, IMS, attachment Question_content: Questioner: This is a comment, really, about this discussion in relation to the whining that I listened to, at work. Larry: Okay. Questioner: About work? Larry: Yes. Questioner: And I had this experience of hearing people whining, and saying, no whining, just work. But the experience was your, kill hot. It was the, kill the whining, kill the concept of work, and just do the task, because the task itself is not that unpleasant. It's all the stuff you bring along with it. Larry: That's right. Okay. But you have to be careful that you don't start whining about the whiners. Questioner: I understand that. Larry: Yeah, good. Because we tend to, nothing personal, we tend to favor ourselves. Have you noticed? And so somehow the mind is like a brilliant defense lawyer, and it has ways of finding everything out, except on numero uno. Okay now, but let's go to that situation. I think you're quite right. Let's say you have a job, and a job would be like going to a meeting, or raising children, or whatever. And instead of whining, why not examine what that's all about? Because you're going to do it anyway, probably. So, you have a choice. You can do it dragging your feet, exhausting yourself, and bringing everyone else down, making work, drudgery, and all the rest of it. Break_line: Or in examining it. And that would start with, let's say for a whiner, let's say one of the whiners would start to meditate. They would have to look at their whining and see, well, what does this accomplish? Shift back to selfishness. I was just kidding before. But let's say people do find that they just want to preserve everything, and they don't like to give, really? It's not about you. When you look at it, the reason to be generous is not necessarily because Buddha said so, or Jesus said so. A self-centered, selfish life doesn't work out to be all that happy. It turns out. You isolate yourself, people stay away from you, and then you wonder, I wonder why I'm so lonely. Well, you've done it to yourself by protecting your resources, and hoarding, and all the rest of it. So that sometimes, you break out of it, because of wisdom. You realize this is just not a good way to live. Whereas when you share, when you find yourself able to give to people, you find love, material, whatever it is, you find that the quality of life improves. You're the greatest beneficiary of the generosity, but it's something that you learn from your experience. It's not a should because some wise person told you to do it. It's not a commandment. Do you see what I'm getting at? So, to get back to… this is similar. Questioner: It’s really the AHA, in that moment was understanding that the issue that I was having was my own aversion. Larry: Yes. To whining? Questioner: To whining and sometimes to doing a particular kind of task. Larry: Yes. Questioner: And so, then I could explore the aversion, and figure out is there something about it that should change, or is it just an emotion, and let it go, and do it. Larry: Okay. But I get you're a practitioner, right? So, you have certain resources that perhaps your fellow whiners don't have. Questioner: Right. Larry: Yeah, Questioner: If they want whine, well, that's their energy. Larry: Okay. But you will have to live in that atmosphere. And so, you have to kind of see how it's affecting you, so that you can decontaminate, so you don't get contaminated by it. But let me leave you both with a general dharma teaching for all of us. And then a particular example that comes from my experience with meditators, who come to this center. One is in addition to this Hot Buddha, Cold Buddha teaching, which try it. See if it doesn't make life a lot easier for you. There's a teaching by a Japanese Master named Dogen, and its Instructions to the Cook. So, on one level, he's giving instructions at this monastery, as to how cooks should behave, in this monastery. But it's really much deeper than that. It's about that. But it also is how to cook your life. To make it short. A lot of what he's saying is, that whatever ingredients you have, make the best meal that you can with it. That's practice, dharma practice. Break_line: So, for example, if you have lots of really good ingredients, loads of vegetables, organic, not modified genetically, you bought out Bread and Circus. You got everything. And not only that, but the emperor is also coming with a full retinue, and it's celebratory. The monastery flags are flying, and drums, and chanting. It's a great event. So, of course the cooks are all inspired. They got great ingredients and they're making it for this entourage of important people, and a wonderful meal comes out of it. And then the next day, the emperor is gone. Most of the good ingredients are gone. There's some wilted greens, and a stale carrot. And there you are, in the same old… dreary monks and nuns, coming in to eat. You don't have the same interest. You just throw something together? Dharma teaching, is to have respect for everything you do. Nothing is trivial or worthless. Nothing. It's essentially learning how you're more alive, when you live that way. It's not like being righteous, or self-righteous. It's that in each moment, that's what your life is. If you're spending your life whining, you're the one who's losing. Because you're qualifying the quality of that life, your life in that moment. Break_line: Okay, so in this teaching the next day, what you would do is you take a look of what ingredients you have. And there this carrot, and some wilted greens, and some used rice, brown rice, of course. And you have all this stuff. It's not much. And the audience are the same old people that you've seen, year in, and year out. And of course, the last ingredient is the mind of the cook. And you see, well, what am I bringing to this meal? And you see that it's no enthusiasm. It's let's just get this over with. There's nothing happening here. Practice would be to slip out from under that, and to make the very best meal you can, with the ingredients that you have, because that's what your life is, in that moment. So, it would improve work life for everyone if they had that simple teaching. But of course, you have to make it viable. You have to practice it. And you start off with resistances, and not liking, and whining, and all the rest of it. And are you willing to take a look at that? Break_line: A concrete example of it which has happened a number of times to people that I've…you know when you teach dharma, in a certain way, it's good fortune. I feel very… the word blessed is overused. Anyway, it's good fortune because people openly, and sincerely, share their lives with you. And so, you kind of get a glimpse as to how other people are living. And there are two kinds of experiences that have been shared to me from work. One, people who are waiters and waitresses, and one, taxicab drivers. And I'm going to again, make a composite. Essentially what they're saying is, I'm not really a waiter, or a waitress. I'm not really a cab driver. I'm a ballet dancer. I'm a writer, I'm a filmmaker. Well, how long have you been driving a cab? 20 years. You're a cab driver, who likes to write. I don't mean that in a negative sense. And then at first, this is a concrete of saying you've been doing this for 20 years and you talk about it as if it's nonexistent. And that who you really are, is this worker, this writer? I think you have to acknowledge that this is a real chunk of your life, that you're doing day in, and day out. Break_line: So then if we bring over that teaching of making the best meal you can, you have to reinvent, being a cab driver. You kind of look into the situation, and see if you can find a way of redefining, what it means to drive, so that you see that there actually are some very useful, wonderful aspects of driving. It's a service. You're helping people often when they really need it. Sometimes they talk to you. You're like a priest. You hear them on the way to the airport. They know they're never going to see you again. And they tell you some stuff that they feel better and often they don't talk to you. But you get a glimpse of how other people live because you can't help but hear them in the back, et cetera, et cetera. However, you do it is to see if you can enliven it, to make it something that is viable. The same with, let's say, waiting table. Often, it's a special time. People come meet to eat a meal together. You have a way of enhancing that situation. Do you see what I'm getting at? So, you start looking for what's right about the situation, and try to emphasize that rather than getting fixated on one facet of life to the negation of everything else. Break_line: The extreme example, if you have patience, and then we're all released, from this bondage. Have you ever heard of the Flying Wallendas? If you haven't, because the main one is dead. And the story is about how he died. They were tightrope walkers, a family of they were world famous. They would just walk, way up there. And one night, some years ago, I turned on the news, and I'm watching TV, and there is Mr. Wallenda, the head flying Wallenda. And he scheduled it wasn't the news, it was some show about in in South America somewhere, and he's supposed to, or it was a footage of it, I really don't remember. And he was advised not to do it because it was outdoors, and there was this tremendous gale, tremendous wind. But he said, no, I'm going to do it. And you see him. I'm chomping on my tofu, and organically grown tomato sandwich, whole grain bread, and there goes this Wallenda walking. And you see him blown to his death. Now, to back up a little, he made this famous statement, which is what practice is not. He said, all of life is waiting. The only thing that's real for me is when I'm on the high wire. Break_line: Okay, now you think about it, we're not so different from him. For one person, it might be the piano, or tennis, or we have our areas, photography or whatever it is, where we really are happy, and we love to do it. But what about most of the life? Let's say if you fall in love with meditation, some people do you know, but most of your life is not going to be spent on the cushion. So, are you going to become, like the Flying Wallenda. Oh, on retreats, just put me in IMS, CIMC, any place with meditation pad, and cushions, and I'm just a happy camper. And as soon as the retreat is over, all I can think about is how to get back to that next retreat, how to earn the money to get there. And all I talk about is, like, a combat ribbon, how that retreat was. And I sat for two weeks, and it was really hard. In the meantime, life is most of our time is spent cooking, taking out the garbage, talking, listening, crossing the street. Do you see what I'm yeah. Break_line: So, practice has a lot to do with that. It's not just sitting on the cushion, please understand that those of you who are new and sitting on the cushion, learning how to do that is also special. It's not special. And it is special. It's special because it's such a simplified human invention. However this got invented, you have no other responsibility. You're not talking, or eating, or writing, or phoning, or watching, you're just stuck with yourself. The form is designed to utterly simplify your existence. So, there you are with yourself. We start off seemingly in an innocuous way, with the breathing. But as those of you who come here know, it soon expands to well beyond the breathing, to include your full experience. So, it's a wonderful, brilliant invention, to help human beings. But if you get fixated on it, attached to it, in some ultimate way so that you divorce it from the rest of your life, a la, the Flying Wallenda. Then I don't know what's been accomplished. You become like a hothouse plant. Something like that. Questioner: Right. What I have found, I looked back after I been on the retreat for six, eight, nine months, into practice at home. After the retreat, I look back over the last six, eight, nine months, and what I realized was, today my life is different than it was before I started this practice. Practice has value because I'm different. And my life feels better. My emotional state, day by day. Larry: Right. Questioner: That's what it's about. Larry: Yeah. So, when it's time to sit, just sit. When it's time to write, just write. It's time to walk the high wire. Walk the high wire. But not me. End_time: 01:20:08