Our last week here in France, I think. So, tonight, so we're talking about concentration today. It's interesting to me, this is a little inside, but it's interesting how I give different kind of talks under different kind of circumstances. And so I don't, when we're all sitting together like this, it feels pretty settled. And I don't feel like I have to entertain you so much.

[01:12]

I do in some of the circumstances. When I get in front of certain other audiences, I feel like I need to be more entertaining. And partly that's interesting because it's the difference between, it partly has to do with the difference in level of concentration. A few times ago on Saturday at Queen Gulch, we were talking about concentration. And I used, I read part of a passage from, I forget the person's name, but it was a passage. This person wrote, first of all, about an ocean trip coming over from London to America on a kind of a freighter with all these huge cargo containers. Which turned out that a lot of them were filled with brick and brack from Macy's. And then he wrote about going to Macy's in New York City. And how Macy's in New York City had fields of nightgowns and meadows of sofas.

[02:17]

And then there was like, you want a log cabin, you've got it. And then you want the English gentleman's country estate, here it is. And then they have the fishing rods and things that really are kind of cheap and junky. But they're kind of associated in the store with the English lodge of the English gentleman. And so they have this aura of being like what you would get if you were an English country gentleman. And then different parts of the store have different kinds of music and so on. And there's the music and then there's the different things. And so Macy's obviously doesn't think much about your level of concentration. Because, you see, their idea is that you need to be amused and entertained moment after moment. You know, around every corner, around every turn, something new, something entertaining, a different music. You know, they have classical music in one place and country and western in another.

[03:20]

All kinds of different music and different things. In one store? Yeah, yeah. So this is marketing. The idea of marketing is that people don't have much capacity for concentration. So this is the way it is in television and in stores. Basically, people can't concentrate or are incapable of concentration. They need something to catch their attention. And they're not particularly focused or engaged. And so the next thing that's more entertaining and more interesting is something that's always there for you. And then the idea is that by spending money you can have these amusements in your house for you all the time. And so he was saying that obviously Macy's doesn't think much about your capacity for concentration. That you need to be amused and entertained moment after moment.

[04:22]

And that all the objects in the store have this little kind of thing that they say. They're all saying, for you, for you, just for you. But that there's an insidious coder that goes along with it. Are you sure you belong here? You know, like, are you really good enough to have all these things? You know, maybe you should be, maybe you don't really belong here. If you have the money you can belong, you can join. Macy's? Well, Macy's made this sort of strategic move, which should have helped them for a long time, which was they decided to go upscale. They used to be more on a par with sort of Penny's and Victoria and other places. And they kind of, Macy's went upscale. That's also part of what's in this little story.

[05:23]

And they decided to, you know, sell status rather than objects. The public would be more interested in buying status than they would be in buying objects. And they'd be willing to pay more for the objects if they got status with them, you know, in addition to just getting the object. But this also came up recently, and I was reminded of it too. And some months ago somebody from Rodale Press called me up and started talking to me about meditation and cooking and meditation. She heard I did these retreats on cooking and meditation, so I talked to her for 20 or 30 minutes. So I get back this, you know, about 50-page thing, which is her article for one of the Rodale magazines. And it was one of the most inane things I'd ever read. And the part where I'm in there, she talked to me for 20 or 30 minutes, there was three paragraphs, and she didn't get the most basic information about what I said correct.

[06:29]

You know, and then she had completely the wrong idea about tazam. She said, you don't follow your breath, you just sit there and regard the world. And it's kind of like, you know, I said when I was talking about concentration that, you know, it has something to do with the depth of things. And here's a perfect example of where somebody does not have any respect for concentration and there's completely no depth to this article. It's completely superficial and little tidbits like that. You know, little tidbits like in Zen, you don't, and she's contrasting this with things that come before it, right? You know, where you've gotten involved with your breath, or you've done a mantra, or you've focused on something. And in Zen, you don't do this and this and this, you just sit there and regard the world. And so that's supposed to fit in and be this little blip in things, but really tell you nothing and has completely no depth. Well, they sent this out to me so that I could comment on it, and so I've made a few, I had a chance to make a few corrections

[07:30]

before it goes into this article, you know. And so Zen and, you know, everything I had to say was, you know, Zen, three paragraphs on Zen, that's it. Because, you know, and then, you know, yoga, another three paragraphs, and they had Mendo Kugosa, who I... What was the overall subject? Oh, it was sort of like, it goes about, you know, your life is very stressful, isn't it? And it's always one thing after another. And, you know, if it's not the kids, it's this and that. And then, you know, it paints this little picture of, you know, modern stressful life. And then here are the things that you could do. You know, and you could do yoga, or you could do Zen, or you could do this, or you could do that. And then, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-de-de-de-de... And then it gets through the article. And then, so, eight pages later, you don't know anything more than you knew when you started. And it was kind of a little amusing, and a little titillating to kind of read, and a little entertaining. But in the process of it, it doesn't really allow you, you know, to go to any depth in any of these things, and it doesn't allow you to go into your own depth.

[08:33]

Because it's keeping you on the surface of things with these little entertaining things without really telling you anything about anything. And so it's not like you needed to concentrate to read the article either, basically. It's not like you needed to concentrate to, like, what are they talking about here? Oh, and then, you know, there's nothing that's drawing you into any depth, or you into any concentration in the process of reading it. So, when I talked to this editor, she agreed to take my name off their list of people. I said, you know, I talked to this woman for 30 minutes, and now I have to talk to you for another 30, and I'm writing your three paragraphs for you now. You know, the woman couldn't even write the paragraphs for herself after talking to me for 30 minutes, and now I have to, you know, she said, okay, I'll take your name off our list of references. But anyway, my point is that, you know, there's another example that basically, you know,

[09:37]

I'm just saying that our culture doesn't particularly value the quality of concentration and the quality of looking into something with some depth. And so a lot of things that are, and especially at that level of media, you know, the newspapers, magazines, television, these things to catch your attention and keep you on the surface of things, and keep you from actually looking at anything or experiencing anything, thinking about anything in some depth, and keep you out of, and it keeps you out of your own experience of something, because it's all these little interesting little tidbits of, I don't know, thought. And so there's actually a kind of antipathy or fear of concentration, a fear of depth. So anyway, this is all kind of an aside, but it's something about the context that we're living in, where concentration isn't particularly valued.

[10:40]

I don't know if you have a very short question, but I just wanted to say that I think it's really important to value the content of the media, and that they don't publish good information. Like, for example, I think there are a lot of people, and I think it's really important to, like, we want to respect the content of the media, and we want to make sure that people are allowed to do what they want to do, because we have a lot of children. Well, there's sort of qualities or ways in which both are true of children. I mean, obviously we must all have some kind of, you know, there's enough, there's enough... In certain ways we do have a kind of short attention span, but on the other hand we have this great capacity for concentration too. Both are there, or there wouldn't be all this mass media stuff if we didn't have something that happens in that direction too.

[11:54]

So this brings up, I guess, in a certain way, what is this about? So concentration, the qualities of concentration we talked about, but it's, so it has to do with some, you know, focusing, or collecting one's energy, collecting one's being, and in that process there's a kind of depth to one's experience which isn't there when you're just down the surface. Now if you actually want to find out about Zen, you can't, you know, sort of say, you know, three paragraphs. You know, they don't follow their breath, they just sit still and do nothing, or regard the world. You know, or they make their mind blank. You go, oh yeah, so that tells you about Zen? You find out something about it because you sit here, you know, for 40 minutes, then you've got some depth. And your experience has some body to it, which is something, there's something more to it than you can just sort of put in a few little words,

[12:58]

or summarize it in a little capsule. Your experience is, all the time our experience is bigger than that, or deeper than that, even if we describe it to somebody, or describe it to ourselves. It's something bigger than that, or deeper than that, at the same time. So, the quality of concentration is said to have this kind of depth, and it's also said then too, one who is concentrated can see more clearly. You can see more clearly when you're concentrated than if you're scattered. If you're switching from one object to another, and first one thing you have to relate to, and then you have to relate to something else. And so, partly that, what she's talking about, about modern life and the stress of it, is the quality of having so many objects and things to relate to, that there's not the opportunity, and you have to keep switching from one to another, and there's not the opportunity to relate with any one thing in any depth.

[13:59]

So, one who is concentrated can relate to your concentration, one who is relating to things more deeply, and then there's a kind of clarity of seeing, asking to see what's going on. And next week we talk about what you see, and what is seen, in a sense. And there's certain, in Buddhism, there's considerably five basic kinds of hindrances, or things that we tend to do, rather than concentrate. Only five? Yeah, five. So, the reason why they're called hindrances is because they hinder concentration and absorption, not because they don't have their own value, or something, you know. But in the context of concentration, they're considered hindrances because they interrupt concentration. So, the five things that interrupt concentration are, first of all, there's sense desire.

[15:05]

Something is, you know, there's a kind of, so the mind or something goes out, the mind or whatever you call it, the awareness goes out, to something that would be sensually pleasing. Either something that's present, or something imagined. It doesn't have to be, you know, there. But there's, instead of, you know, like, if you were following your breath, and then you start to, but how pleasant, you know, it might be to be outside in the fresh air, and wonderful, that might be. Something pleasing, something very sensual. You know, or there's, you know, there's the categories of food, you know, very sensual experience. And then the second category is the opposite, dislike and anger. So, that tends to interrupt concentration when you start thinking about how painful it is to be here,

[16:08]

or how much it is to be here. I'm noticing a lot of that lately, but anyway, we don't need to dwell on that. The third one is known as sloth and torpor. Sloth and torpor. Instead of concentrating on something, you fall asleep. It likes a peace and quiet. You know, to concentrate on something, you know, may involve something problematic. You know, there's a certain kind of, when we're actually paying attention or something, going into something, some depth or something, you know, that things are happening at that level that, you know, they're, things can be pretty intense.

[17:12]

You know, whether it's a pain or an emotion in your own body, in your own being, or, you know, the person who's in front of you is upset with you, or making demands on you, or the situation, you know, it's even if you didn't mention how stressful it is to be driving, you know, in traffic jams, because, like, when I came over to San Francisco, there was, there had been an accident on a public road. The traffic was backfilling up the road there. And it's, that tends to be kind of stressful. So, one of our kind of responses then is, like, well, why don't I just go to sleep? Because this other is, it's such a strong level of experience. So, to experience that is, you know, anyway, it's, you know, you're not going to be able to maintain your usual body

[18:14]

when you're facing such problems. So, anyway, one alternative is sleep. And the fourth one is known as excitement and worry. Excitement and worry sort of go together, but it's, because it's projecting into the future. And either being excited about the possibilities of the future or worried about the possibilities of the future. And then the fifth one is known as doubt. And this is the kind of doubt that questions everything. What's the use? Who cares? Bye-bye. It's not the kind of doubt which sometimes, since Anabuddhism is Zen, especially, it says you need to have great doubt. Which is more like the doubt is in the superficial level of things. You doubt the reality that you experience ordinarily and you want to penetrate to some fuller fiction, you know, your fuller sense of your life. So, there's a kind of a doubt which sets aside experience as you know it.

[19:20]

So that you can look forward. Or the kind of doubt that, you know, that's a kind of, so that's a kind of positive kind of doubt. Or, you know, or you could say like, Suzuki Roshi said that Zen practice is like feeling your way along in the dark. You don't know where you're going. And you don't know what's there, so you have to go more slowly and just feel your way along. And you might come into something new, and find out what it is. So there's a kind of doubt when you're proceeding in life. You know, you're not knowing where you're going. Or what you might come into. So it's rather than doubt, you could call that a kind of openness or receptive kind of quality, feeling your way along. So that's positive, but the doubt as a hindrance is this is really stupid to be here sitting in meditation. Start to think that and then get involved in that. And then, where's your concentration? Your awareness is gone.

[20:26]

Yeah. So these are the five, and we tend to, you know, we may or may not find any one of these particularly pleasant. You know, some of these may be depending on who we are. Sometimes, you know, we actually, people actually enjoy, we enjoy sense desires. They're really pleasant. You know, we think they're pleasant. And, you know, there's this sort of, there's this sort of idea in Buddhism, this is also divided just into three. You know, the greed type, hate type, and delusion type. So the greed type, you walk into a party and you look around and you see all the people that you'd like to meet. And the food that looks good. Gee, this looks like a great party. And then the hate type walks into the room and goes like, God, these people are so dull and stupid. And the food doesn't look good. And the delusion type walks in and goes like, What's going on here? So those are sort of the, you know, if you want to just have three.

[21:29]

But we have five in any way. So, we may like sense desire or we may not. You know, it may be pleasant or unpleasant. Or anger is the same way. Some people, you know, really enjoy getting angry. And any one of us may sometimes enjoy getting angry or feel justified in making it, other times we may not like it. And sometimes we may appreciate the fact that we can fall asleep many times. You know, we find it thoughtful. Some of these, you know, we may like or not like. And there's not, and we're getting around, we're getting around to the fact that, you know, each in it, well, we'll get around to it. Let me go through one other thing. I'm giving you the quicksand. Our tendency is to take one and then fight it with another. Okay, so, for instance, you know, if we get angry, then we might get angry about getting angry. And then we might get kind of depressed

[22:31]

about having been angry, so we kind of go into, you know, sloth and torpor about the fact that we were angry. And then when we're so involved in sloth and torpor, then there's some doubt. What's the use? Why bother? You know, and then we get something that's kind of interesting. It's a new sense desire comes along. Oh, well, this looks pretty good. I think I'll go after that. And then we have a little excitement about it. Whether or not I'm going to get it. And worry, like, maybe I won't get it. You know? And then there's anger when I don't get it. And then there's, you know, or there's depression about that. So, there's some tendency to be flitting from one of these to the next because they're all pretty, they're all pretty, you know, they all have their kind of juice, electricity, their kind of, you know, there's a certain kind of, they all have their energy, they all have a certain energy to them, which then tends to take over. And part of the, you know, and then the, so in this context, the basic kind of problem that we have

[23:35]

is thinking that the solution is to control my experiences. And we think that these, the sense desire, anger, and so on, is in the object of my experience rather than in me. So if I get angry in traffic, then the solution is not to be in traffic. And if somebody, if some person makes me mad, then don't hang around that person. And if one kind of activity is interesting and engaging, then do that one. And, you know, so we try to, we try in this way to manipulate our, you know, our experience by manipulating what things we do and what things we don't do and what things we see and what things we don't see and so on. And so we think that these things are embedded in the object rather than seeing that they're embedded in the way that I am related to the world.

[24:36]

And this causes us a lot of problems because it's not possible, right? The person that you thought you liked, you know, the next minute is telling you something that you didn't want to hear. You know, and the job that seemed like it was interesting next week is so difficult and tiresome and so on, right? So that the object, and then so if we look, when we look closely at things, we realize that, in fact, these hindrances are problematic experiences because they're not embedded in the object. So from this point of view, to work on concentration is to take an activity like meditation, say, a simple kind of activity, and then to practice one's concentration on that activity. Then you can take one activity after another to practice your concentration and actually try to absorb yourself

[25:41]

in that activity, whatever it is. You can still do the dishes or your work, or you can, and your anger then, in a certain sense, can be transformed into, you know, clean dishes or... You can sit with it, and then, you know, then your anger is transformed into a kind of energy that, you know, in a certain sense can be invigorating. You don't concentrate on anything. You're concentrating on your breath. You're concentrating on the activity that you're involved in, not the anger per se. Because that's another thing that tends to happen is if we have anger, we tend to think we have a certain associated behavior that's associated with the emotion, and then we think that the solution is to do that behavior. So with anger,

[26:43]

the solution is screaming or hitting or, you know, there's certain things that you can do in a certain sense to express anger. Yeah, well, you can do that too. There's... I'm kind of tonight emphasizing a little different approach. That's... There's... One approach is more like you take your awareness and you go into, like, the anger. You go into the anger, and you're observing anger, what is anger, and looking into that. And so... And that's the same, like, if you're sitting in meditation and your knees are... And you go into the pain of your knees and say, what is it? Actually, you try to experience it very closely. And you examine it in some depth.

[27:44]

What is it? And with some concentration. And you... Is the other way of running anger free from the outside? Observing it as not part of... Yeah, it's more peripheral. Not part of you. And then you're... So then it would be... So in that sense, it's not like you're repressing anger or not being aware of anger, but it's more peripheral. You're certainly not identifying it in that sense. And... Because it's possible then too that you can... There's anger, but then if you're continuing with the activity that you're engaged in, that anger is also the possibility of just more energy and intensity in doing what you're doing. And so, you know, there's doing the dishes... There's doing the dishes like this.

[28:47]

And after a while, if you start doing... If you're... So the anger is getting translated in a certain sense. You're transformed into another activity. And then your life is... Your life is more... There's more energy in your life when the anger is able to come through into the activity of whatever you're doing. If it gets... And so this is why we also say why we talk about being collected. Because if... When you're not collected, then you can be sort of doing the dishes, and then your anger is going off somewhere else. Because your anger is also your intensity and your creativity. And it's going off looking for someplace to be something to be intense about, something to be, you know, energetic about. You go too intensely into the dishes. You might... You might break something. You might break something. But so you're... But the question is then how to bring... How to bring anger, collect anger, bring anger into your life

[29:48]

rather than have it be something that is always this thing that is, you know, a hindrance. We call it at the start a hindrance, but it's also... You know, in Zen we have an expression that hindrances are enlightenment. So you could also say hindrances are your teacher. So the fact of the hindrance is the fact of something that's not collected or not included in the sort of habitual way I'm going about things. If I'm going about things like in a kind of... So for instance, if I'm... You know, I mentioned at the beginning of this time if I follow my breath as a kind of job or task and I'm not particularly enjoying it, then you might have this... You know, there's some aspect of being that's going off looking for something to enjoy. So if you find, you know, if you find regularly that your awareness is going off somewhere for something to enjoy, what does that say about the way that you were

[30:49]

attempting to do things in the first place? That means that while in the first place you sort of were thinking that you couldn't enjoy your breath or you couldn't enjoy your work or you couldn't enjoy being with your kids or you couldn't enjoy the dishes. So the aspect of concentration is what about some effort to whatever it is you're doing to have some possibility of enjoyment rather than sort of thinking that, you know, define it ahead of time and say, well, doing the dishes isn't enjoyable and driving isn't enjoyable and sitting in meditation isn't enjoyable and now I'm going to go do something that's enjoyable. And you see, that puts it all... That's our way of thinking that tends to put it in the object. Enjoyment is in the object of the experience rather than in the way I'm going about it. Does that make sense? So in that sense, the hindrances then are little clues or teachings. Something like, how can you incorporate

[31:51]

what is coming up in a kind of isolation? How do you incorporate that into your being? How do you re-unpack in your being and express it in your life? Whether it's senses or whether it's anger. What is it then that you're sort of leaving out or what is it that you're leaving out? So from a positive point of view, that's what we talked about in the beginning. From a positive point of view, concentration includes application. And application is like another way of talking about anger. In other words, to concentrate on something actually takes a kind of fierceness. There's a kind of fierceness that's necessary. Or after a while, you just sort of like go off into the next sort of interesting thing that comes up. Maybe that over there would be good. Or gee, that over there is as scary. So you're sort of getting off.

[32:51]

So to actually focus on something takes a kind of intensity or fierceness, which is the positive side of anger. Does this make sense? So that's application. And then for sense desire, the positive side of that is actually enjoying something moment after moment. Something that you, when you have your tea, that you actually, it's not just tea, but there's some awareness that you can actually enjoy the tea or actually enjoy your breath. There's the inhale. There's some possibility of this. You leave the possibility at least, if not the actual experience of joy. You have the possibility that you can enjoy. And it's wonderful.

[33:54]

It's just a breathing. And so the more you can do that, then the less it is like you're going along and sort of like, where is the next thing that I can enjoy? The ice cream or the movie or the TV or the app. Where's my next fix coming from? How about just already? So this is the sense desire. I can't remember all of these. But anyway, you get the idea. I'd like to hear about the tea. You mentioned worry earlier. Yeah. Worry and excitement. I'd like to hear what you have to say about that. Worry and excitement. What else is it called? I can't think right now.

[35:00]

But we just came to meet up. In Sanskrit. But I can't remember. I'll check. Yeah. It's projecting into or anticipating. Yeah, maybe so. I don't know. I'll look. I was thinking of this. Well, anyway, maybe we'll come up with it. I think this has to do with the quality of these. I don't know. I could be off. But there's some quality here.

[36:04]

Again, rather than projecting into the future for the possible resolution. In my experience now, what about some resolution here on the spot? So this is what I think of as a kind of being at home or settling down where you are. There's an expression in Zen to unpack the saddlebags. Take off the blinders and unpack the saddlebags. And the blinders is the horse with the blinders. There's always this kind of place to get to. And then once you get there, it's like the idea is once you get there, you could relax now. But then, of course, what happens is our tendency is once we get there, then we project and we have a new thing

[37:07]

that we project in the future. And we have some tendency to go about things in a certain way. So if our tendency is if our way of going about life is to project things, places in the future that we could get to and then we could relax. And then we could take off the blinders. But when do you actually take off the blinders and unpack the saddlebags? You're always going to be on the road. So this is the quality of always being on the road, always having some place to get to in the future. But actually when you get there, you still don't unpack the saddlebags and make yourself and you project a new place in the future that you need to get to. So again, this is pointing to the quality of wealth and understanding then that the place in the future is not going to be any different than the place where we are. And so, if you want this quality of unpacking the saddlebags and making yourself at home or settling down in some way

[38:08]

or having some kind of ease, then it's not going to... You can't... There's no... You know, you'll be holding it forever and forever to get to this place in the future. So what about, in some way, cultivating that quality right where you are? Even though the place where you are doesn't seem like it's necessarily the greatest place to be. And those places over there look like they might be really good. How did Gary Racy tell this story when he came about it? He said, You know, the place where you are in heaven, in heaven, there is a hollow tree. You know, and things are going not very nice in heaven. But there's this hollow tree and there's this voice in the hollow tree that says, Over here. Is that the snake? Yeah, it's like the snake. Yeah, yeah. Over here.

[39:08]

And then you go, No, no, no, no. It's okay. This is pretty nice. I'm doing all right right here. But this is really good. You wouldn't want to miss it. No, no, no. I'm really enjoying where I am. This is fine. Even though I brought out a tea, it's still pretty nice here. But this is bad. Yeah. So anyway, once you go over to the tree and you look into the hollow tree, that's straight to, that's basically straight to hell. You know what I'm saying? Straight to the bottom. And so, to actually entertain those things, so that those are, those kind of things are the, the excitement, worry things. You know, the places that you could get to in your life. And what about if

[40:10]

I was more this or less that and then, you know, I could get more, you know, or when I buy my house or when this happens or when that happens and everything will work out all right. And, but then it never does. And what about, you know, I used to do this with Stan, right? If I only sit still for one period, well, what about when I sit still for a day? But then that doesn't help, you know, right? Then you want to sit still for a week, you know. And so you can keep, you know, then it'll, then that will indicate something and then I'll, then I'll really be somewhere when I can do that, you know. So you can keep projecting these things. And so the, you know, the remedy or, you know, if you find yourself doing a lot of that, the remedy is, is this quality of coming back to where you are. But at the same time, how do you find some, some quality of unpacking so that you can pick up the mind and unpack

[41:11]

so that's how you, even though this isn't necessarily such a hospitable place, this is where we live. This is where we live. You know, in the midst of inhale, exhale, feelings, emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, this is where we actually live. There's not some other place. And so, come back to this place and find some sense of how do you actually, kind of, make yourself at home here. So that's that one. So I associate that with that kind of making something or something as a sudden down, sudden down, sudden down to your mind. And doubt, doubt has the quality of reapplying to something. Also, that it's some indication that you're not, that we're not, that we're not as deeply engaged

[42:11]

in what we're doing as we should be. So it's a kind of repeated application as a kind of reapplying yourself. This is also very similar, I think I may have told you a few weeks ago that when I asked Suzuki Roshi for some advice when I started cooking at Tesla Park, when you wash the, when you wash the rice, wash the rice, have the carrots, have the carrots. When you stir the soup, stir the soup. So that's, I think I might have mentioned this in terms of energy, but it's also kind of an aspect of concentration. That you do what you're doing. And even though there's all these other things that look like they might be giving you something, you're not getting where you are, but unless you find it where you are, you know, we spend a lot of time chasing after some illusions and places we forget

[43:12]

to where it's going to be better rather than finding these things when we find them. So this is where, you know, I think you can see how meditation could be useful in this context because it's a very straightforward way to make this kind of effort to concentrate, to be absorbed, to collect yourself, to collect your being, and have some depth in your experience, and then reintegrate. As things come up, you reintegrate them into your meditation practice. Meditation is you're always having things come up and you're always working it back in, leaving these loose ends that come up and go out somewhere and leaving us back into the depth into your effort. So that's my

[44:15]

quick synopsis of the practice. I don't know if that's just the illusion that I'm told or it's I'm not supposed to be thinking about this in the beginning but it's supposed to be like that. So I can't figure out why I'm wondering what's over there because I can't stop that in the context of the fear. Well, there's... Well, those are two different kinds of efforts, and to come back to your breath and especially if you can come back to your that's a very immediate way to do that weaving back in. To come back to your breath because you're and that will tend to the fact that you've gone off somewhere and you're doing something then but that quality still as you bring when you bring your awareness back

[45:15]

it's not like that quality is getting lost. You're actually bringing your awareness back and as you do that bringing it back over a period of time you're developing the concentration you're actually doing that bringing things back in. And then but then you know as you do this over a period of time I think you'll also find that in my experiences that then I wouldn't worry about it if you if you find yourself stopping to examine what is this about particularly things that stay with you. You know your initial effort is just to come back to your breath and that is that is doing this literally but then if something is persistent and is over a period of time you know and then and you'll find that then you may need to make a different kind of an effort with it.

[46:16]

So if initially you're starting out in a certain sense of just with your breath and then these other things are on the periphery and then you come back to your breath and that's bringing these things back to your breath and you're developing a bigger concentration by doing that but that may not be that may not continue to be the answer. So there you may find that you need to make a different kind of investigation and that's where you may at some point find that you want to look at it directly because if you find you know if anger becomes predominant enough in your experience and even though you keep bringing your awareness back to your breath it keeps you know at some point you have you know it's something natural that you look. One of the analogies I use is if you have a child who always wants your attention and you can't always you know at some point you can only say

[47:17]

so long you know like later I'm busy now after a while finally say you know you have to make a deal let me concentrate now and then I'll spend some time with you later you know it's deceiving such and such and your your your psyche is like that and you'll probably need to say at some point you'll need to know you'll find that you need to make that kind of that kind of effort as well to look at the thing directly and not just be working right with anything else Please be careful with this Yeah Because it's pretty interesting you know finally to you know it's kind of like where we have to do a kind of translation you know our anger is not you know at various places

[48:18]

of our being they're not real articulate so basically you know if we take the kind of approach of hindrances are not just hindrances hindrances are enlightenment or hindrances are your teacher at some point you have to you look you turn to your teacher and say what are you trying to tell me and then you you know kind of you may find some words coming or not you see then you can kind of then if you start to if you have that kind of what are you trying to tell me that kind of interest or attention just that kind of like the analogy of feeling the way along the dark what is it what are you trying to tell me at some point you'll find that you make that kind of effort that kind of that kind of activity

[49:18]

as well it just comes back to you and they're complimentary actually another kind of way to do this is I sort of mentioned disasters of mindfulness but another kind of way to do this is if anger or sense desire or anticipation planning if it if it it keeps coming up strongly and there's some aspect of our being that is not getting engaged in meditation it's usually saying as I mentioned before something about the way we were meditating so we often have some idea this is the right way to meditate and I'm going to do I'm going to meditate the right way and then there's these energies that we have in our being our being is bigger than that and we're trying to learn partly how do we manage bigger energies than we're used to managing so at some point you kind of have to say to these bigger energies

[50:19]

that aren't you know that aren't somehow included in the right way of meditating you have to say to them their tendency is like you know I'd like to go up and hit somebody or I want to go and yell at somebody you have to say to them but we're doing meditation now if you don't like the way I'm meditating would you show me how you would meditate you know and so you invite anger or a sense of desire would you please do the meditation show me how you would do meditation that's the kind of you know how we're you know becoming a bigger being and how we grow in that and as opposed to you know well I think the thing I need to do now is go back and step out you know you don't you know necessarily get a bigger being by going and acting things out the same way that you do if you invite that kind of bigger energy

[51:20]

you know into your meditation and that that kind of thing is actually possible and so and the reason why we don't I mean part of the reason why we don't all of us have you know much more energy much more vitality much more vigor you know is because the energy at first glance this bigger energy that's more vital more creative more vigorous is also kind of unmanageable and it's partly unmanageable because we have such such strong ideas about the right way to do things which excludes the unmanageable energies and so part of our effort is we're obviously going to find out how to we're going to have to find out how to manage what seems to be unmanageable and so in a simple way that's inviting you know saying to your anger

[52:21]

or desire that you bring the meditation to life show me how you can take that look at the burning spot well next week we're going to talk more about that what does Suzuki Roshi mean when he says don't try to stop your thoughts let them stop by themselves is that really possible now? that's the same as saying don't try to stop your hindrance let the hindrance stop by itself because basically if you try to stop the hindrance you adopt another hindrance to stop it you try to stop a hindrance

[53:25]

so the way to stop it is to get mad at it or the way to stop it is you know to think about something more pleasant try to enjoy that so the problem with trying to stop something is that we tend to adopt another one to stop it so our effort is to you know is how we make some effort just to be present and to you know to be in our present to be in the activity that we're doing right now in a kind of balanced way rather than looking somewhere else for our salvation or you know enlightenment is over there or you know calm is over there or peace is that way you know what about now? right here right now anything that I'm doing thank you

[54:35]

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