Good morning. I want to speak this morning about our zazen, our meditation practice. And I want to talk about it, well, in comparison to an article that Laurel gave me from the New York Times a couple weeks ago about current research in neurobiology about the mind and what they call wandering mind. And I want to talk about that in comparison to what we call in our tradition beyond thinking. So this beyond thinking goes back to a story from one of our ancestors in China, Yaoshan, or Yakshan in English. And the story was that he was sitting in meditation or just sitting uprightly, and one of his students came up to him and said, what are you thinking about as you sit there so steadfastly?

[01:09]

And he said, I'm thinking of not thinking. Or it might be translated also, I'm thinking of that which doesn't think. And the student said, oh. How do you think of not thinking? And Yao Shan used another Chinese negative, which I would translate as beyond thinking. Sometimes it's translated as non-thinking. So this beyond thinking is what I want to talk about first. So this beyond thinking includes both thinking or not thinking. Or maybe it's neither thinking nor not thinking exactly. So it's very common for people to think that the point of this practice is to not think, to get rid of all your thoughts. That's not it. He wasn't not thinking.

[02:11]

He was thinking of not thinking. He was beyond thinking. So our usual thinking mind and we, in our meditation practice, we of course see these thoughts rumbling around. We have various thoughts about something that you have to do later today, or that happened yesterday, or to-do lists, or all kinds of thoughts arise naturally as we just sit. So it's not about the thinking, and yet we see that the thinking goes on without our kind of control or expectations. We sometimes think that we are what we think, but actually thoughts keep arising in our awareness, even as we sit. And sometimes there are gaps and

[03:11]

there may be spaces where there is not thinking. But what Yaoshan was saying, this beyond thinking, which later Dogen, our founder of Japanese Soto Zen in the 13th century, Yaoshan was from the 8th century, Dogen called this the essential art of Zazen, this beyond thinking. So in, particularly in our meditation tradition, we don't emphasize, we emphasize kind of objectless meditation, not focusing on some particular object of thought or concentration, not some particular samadhi object. However, in the context of just sitting, as I often say, sometimes it's helpful to have some object to bring our attention back to. So practically speaking, we sometimes sit, well we always sit aware of posture and aware of breath, of inhale and exhale as part of posture.

[04:23]

But there are specific practices one can do, focusing on For example, counting breaths, counting one at the end of the exhale, and two at the end of the next exhale, and so forth, to ten, and then starting over again, not trying to see how high you can count, just using that as a way of focusing on breath. We also sometimes, I talk about mantra practice, using mantras in zazen as a way of focusing. Some object to settle on, or sound is a very good one. to be aware of the sound of the air conditioning or sometimes traffic out on Irving Park Road or whatever sounds are there. There are these various objects that you can focus on, but basically this beyond thinking is not a matter of thinking, it's not a matter of not thinking. It is a kind of awareness though. So beyond thinking is, and it's a physical, somatic, bodily awareness.

[05:30]

We emphasize posture. We emphasize sitting upright. We emphasize enjoying your inhale and exhale. So there is a kind of awareness that happens. It's not exactly thinking, but it's not exactly not thinking either. And Yaoshan called it beyond thinking. And so we've talked about this recently. One way to talk about it is in terms of foreground and background as the kind of foreground thoughts of your, you know, things you have to think about. So our usual thinking mind is very much about discriminating and making distinctions and making judgments. And that's our usual, this is the usual human mind. It's not that that's bad, but that's thinking. Not thinking is just, maybe just enjoying the sound, no thoughts arising, and that may happen for a little while. Or, you know, there are certain yogic practices where it happens longer.

[06:34]

But this, beyond thinking, we are just present and upright and feel our posture. Upright but relaxed, shoulders relaxed. feeling the sensations of our body aware. So that if a thought wandered by in front of you, or if some sound arose, you would be aware of it. You wouldn't have to focus on it, but it would be there as part of your physical awareness. Reverend Isha Fujita, when he was here recently, talked about this in terms of soft focus. that we can sometimes have a very sharp focus in calculation and deliberation, but also it's possible to kind of just relax our mind and have this kind of softer focus.

[07:35]

So all of this is about beyond thinking. Maybe it's a kind of thinking, but it's not a thinking that's caught up in trying to manipulate things or fix things or solve problems or getting caught up in stuff. It's just, it's a kind of awareness. It's not not thinking. It's not dullness. So one of the issues in Zazen is attention. So this sitting is not about sleepiness or drowsiness. Sometimes that happens, and it may be useful to sit at those times. But there's always some quality of attention in the early Buddhist psychology system of Abhidharma. One of the things that's happening in every state of mind is attention, focus on something. There's some object of attention. Beyond thinking is kind of loosening that, maybe. And yet, we sit present, aware, aware with our bodies, as well as some thinking process, and bring our attention to this.

[08:53]

And one of the issues in Zen is there are different branches of Zen have different attitudes about what the quality of that attention should be. So there are certain branches of Zen where they focus on a very intense attention. It was a kind of edge-of-the-seat zazen in some schools. In our school, our branch of sitting practice is more gentle. Still, it's not that we're just kind of sleepy. Come back to attention, to awareness of your posture, awareness of your hand positions, mudra, awareness of your inhale and exhale. So, that's all background about Zen beyond thinking, and there's much more one could say about it or not, but I want to shift now and talk about this current research by psychologists and neurobiologists talking about the mind.

[10:05]

So they talk about mind-wandering, is a phrase that psychologists are using now, as a subcategory of daydreaming. And they say a wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. So I just want to go over some of the things in this article, because I think it's very interesting. And then I want to talk about how it relates to beyond thinking and how it doesn't. So, again, this is current research that people's minds seem to wander about 30% of the time. And according to some of the researchers on this who are at UC Santa Barbara, one of them, Jonathan Smallwood, says, people assume mind-wandering is a bad thing, but if we could not do it during a boring task, life would be horrible. Imagine if you could not escape mentally from a traffic jam.

[11:10]

So another psychologist from the University of Minnesota, Eric Klinger, says there's an evolutionary advantage to the brain's system of mind-wandering. He says, while a person is occupied with one task, the system keeps the mind, keeps the individual's larger agenda fresh in mind. So this Dr. Klinger has written a handbook of imagination and mental stimulation. So I think this is very interesting to look at in terms of what is the quality of mind. We talk a lot in Zen about mind. And this is a way of talking about something that is related to what it is our Zazen, our beyond thinking is about. And so one of these researchers from UC Santa Barbara talks about being in a state of meta-awareness.

[12:13]

And they've done various researches on research subjects. Students reading, you know, they mentioned Tolstoy or Jane Austen, and seeing how often the mind wanders off from focus on the text, for example. have our own experience of reading something and then realizing, oh, I drifted off. And he says there are many other occasions when readers aren't aware of their own wandering mind. Sometimes we are aware of it. And he says this is a condition known in the psychological literature as, quote, zoning out, unquote. Oh, this is an interesting passage here. The frequency of zoning out more than doubled in reading experiments involving smokers who craved a cigarette and in people who were given a vodka cocktail before taking on reading War and Peace. Besides increasing their amount of mind-wandering, the people made alcohol less likely to notice when their minds wandered from Tolstoy's text.

[13:22]

In another reading experiment, researchers mangled a series of consecutive sentences by switching the position of two nouns in each one, the way that alcohol and people were switched in the last sentence. So the sentence that says, besides increasing the amount of mind-wandering, the people made alcohol less likely to notice. Anyway, our mind automatically makes corrections for those things. So our mind is amazing. And part of what we do, as we said, is to be aware of thinking. How's thinking? To think of not thinking, or to see what our mind is. To just be present with it, without trying to manipulate it. So the other side of thinking, discriminating thinking, is again trying to fix or manipulate or arrange our experience or ourselves, Many people think they can control their thinking until they start sitting and see all the thoughts coming up.

[14:24]

So there are a number of interesting things in here. There's another, well, just to say, this idea of meta-awareness or zoning out. I would say that what we call beyond thinking is not the same as daydreaming. Maybe there's some relationship. It happens. I used to date him a lot when I was in school as a kid. But maybe this is a way I've found for that to be OK. But it's not exactly the same when you're sitting. It's this meta-awareness. There's one way that the psychologists have been talking about it that I actually don't like these definitions, but it's useful. They talk about the default network and the executive network. And I would like to redefine those, but somehow this is relevant. By observing people at rest during brain scans, neuroscientists have identified a quote unquote default network that is active when people's minds are especially free to wander.

[15:35]

So they call this wandering mind the default network. When people do take up a task, the brain's executive network lights up to issue commands, and the default network is often suppressed. So these are two functions of the brain, actually. And again, they call them the default network and the executive network. Maybe this is somewhat related to what I was talking about as kind of background mind and foreground mind. During some episodes of mind-wandering, according to a study from the University of British Columbia, both networks are firing simultaneously. This is very interesting. This is what I really want to talk about in terms of this, beyond thinking. And again, we're thinking about beyond thinking, or I'm talking about it, having thoughts about beyond thinking.

[16:36]

The practice is just to do beyond thinking. So we don't have to understand this. Understanding is part of maybe what they're calling the executive network. Still, I thought this was interesting as a way of just hearing a little bit about the terrain in which we sit, and how our mind works, and what this beyond thinking is. Again, Dogen called this the essential art zazen. And I think to call it an art is useful. So I'll come back to that. So just a little bit more from this article. Another school of psychologists, including the Santa Barbara researchers, theorizes that both networks are working on agendas beyond the immediate task. That theory could help explain why studies have found that people prone to mind-wandering also score higher on tests of creativity. So I have talked often about zazen as being a kind of creative act, a kind of creative expression.

[17:47]

We are each expressing Buddha, expressing our Buddha nature on our cushions. And this experience of just sitting upright and being present and taking this buddha mudra, this buddha position of upright, relaxed uprightness, is a kind of creative act and relates to all the other creative acts in our life. So all of you have various things you do during the week in your life that are creative in various ways. And they are mutually supportive with the creativity of this beyond thinking, of zazen. So this kind of gets at some of that. Again, this idea that both networks, they call them default and executive, Again, I don't know how I would redefine them exactly, but let's say foreground and background.

[18:47]

They're working on agendas beyond the immediate task. Maybe I missed that in the article before, but the idea that this mind-wandering function that is part of all minds It reminds us of our larger agendas. It reminds us of our intention, as we say in Zen practice and Bodhisattva practice. It reminds us of what's most important, as Sukhyavati said. At the same time that we're performing tasks with our mind and taking care of things and thinking out things or doing physical tasks that we're focused on, there is this background mind-wandering that allows us to be aware of other things, that allows us to be aware of maybe our most important agendas as background.

[19:54]

And to encourage this creative process, Dr. Schouler, one of the Santa Barbara researchers, says, it may help if you go jogging, take a walk, do some knitting, or just sit around doodling, because relatively undemanding tasks seem to free your mind to wander productively. So this is very interesting, because I've talked about how other activities, athletic activities, creative activities, making music, going for walks, all are kind of creative activities. They allow the creative side of our mind to be present. this researcher says, for creativity you need your mind to wander, but you also need to be able to notice that your mind is wandering and catch the idea when you have it. So, I think this recent neurobiology and psychological research on the mind is very interesting in terms of

[21:05]

seeing what the terrain of beyond thinking is. And I would say that mind-wandering, as they're talking about, and beyond thinking are not exactly the same, but they're related in very provocative ways. So again, as we sit We return to attention, and as I said before, in some schools it's very, you know, edge of the seat, strong attention. In our practice, I emphasize a kind of gentle, sustainable attention. So it's okay if your mind wanders off. You may get on some train of thought and 20 minutes later realize, oh, and come back to sitting in uprightness and facing the wall. And so there is this, but there is this background awareness and it's kind of creative and it allows free association and you know this doctor says it's important to actually be able to catch our mind wandering so if we have some creative thought we can actually use it.

[22:18]

His example, if Archimedes had come up with a solution in the bathtub but didn't notice he'd had the idea, what good would it have done him? So he says it's important to have your mind wandering and also catch the idea when you have it. I would say in our beyond thinking, we don't have to worry so much about catching the idea. When, partly because we're, well, Zen practice, in addition to Zazen, Practice in the monastery involves a lot of manual, repetitive actions, chopping carrots, sweeping the temple. These are all kinds of actions that are very conducive to Zen practice, doing something repetitive and physical. not so demanding of thought, is a part of Zen training, traditionally, going way back.

[23:23]

My old friend Philip Whalen, a Zen teacher who was also a noted beat poet, used to say, if it's not boring, it's not Zen. So, you know, in some ways, people sometimes think that Zazen is boring. Well, it has that side. What are we doing? We're just sitting facing the wall, breathing. Simplest possible activity. Again, I'd emphasize that it's not just daydreaming. It's a yogic practice because it's a physical practice. It's very important. That makes it different from daydreaming. We are upright. We are aware. It's a formally yogic posture. including whether you're sitting in lotus or kneeling or sitting in a chair, can be this yogic posture. There's a kind of yogic physical quality to it. There's a somatic awareness to it. So I think that's important, that we have this container, this form of zazen, and we have all the other forms

[24:32]

In Zen practice, walking meditation, walking in a certain direction, holding our hands in a certain way, holding our hands like this when we're walking in the meditation hall, even coming and going, our practice of bowing, prostrations that we sometimes do, all of these forms are physical ways of having a container for beyond thinking. they show us something about how this body-mind is. So what is it like when we return to attention as we are beyond thinking? Again, it's a gentle attention. Back of the neck straight, chin tucked in, looking down at the wall in front of us.

[25:38]

Not focusing on one spot. Again, it's the soft focus like Jida Sensei was talking about. But I think our keeping our eyes open, as we do in this branch of Zen meditation, is part of this balancing of these two, you know, what they call executive and default network, or foreground and background awareness. So we don't go into this mind-wandering, again, I don't think it's exactly the same, but it's related, this function of background awareness. We don't kind of just dissolve into that. We keep a balance between that and some kind of attention to our posture, aware of sounds around us, aware of our inhale and exhale. So again, I think our eyes open is not just to not fall asleep.

[26:40]

It's to be open to the world around us so that then when a creative idea does come up, insights arise in meditation, in settling. So this is a very basic example. It goes back to the sixth ancestor in China talking about the oneness, the sameness of prajna and samadhi. In our settling or samadhi, Right in that, prajna arises. It's not that we meditate in order to, so prajna sometimes is translated as wisdom, as in the Heart Sutra. We don't meditate in order to get wisdom later. That's not the point. We don't meditate for some future experience, for some future awakening. This is the form and expression and practice of awakening right now. This is samadhi or settling. So it's a context in which this beyond thinking is free to be beyond thinking.

[27:42]

And at the same time, insights arise. Our creative mind is available in a unique kind of way. This is what the Sixth Ancestor is talking about in terms of the oneness of settling and wisdom, or settling and insight. So in this kind of practice, we don't need to take notes of the insights, like Archimedes or something. In this deeper beyond thinking, which, again, I'd suggest is related to what they're talking about as mind-wandering, insights arise. And because we're doing this yogic practice, we are informed by them. This goes back to something Linda Roos Weintraub said to me many, many years ago, that if you have some insight while you're sitting, you're informed by it. It's in your form. Because we have this form of upright sitting, we don't have to worry about are we going to remember some insight we have in zazen.

[28:50]

When we need it, it is there in our uprightness. So this also has to do with why regular sitting, I think, is important. So I encourage doing this practice somewhat regularly, several times a week anyway. As well as when you come here or another similar place where people are sitting together at home in your spare time, it's OK. We sit for 30 or 40 minutes, but even 20 minutes, even 15 or 10 minutes, just to stop and sit and be present, kind of tunes this beyond thinking, wandering mind, background awareness. It is more available than in our active executive mind functioning. So again, I don't think that Zazen and beyond thinking is the same as daydreaming, but it may be helpful to see this relationship that by sitting, by being present and upright, again, this art of beyond thinking that Yaoshan and Dogen refer to, allows something.

[30:20]

allows some creative energy, gives rise to some creative energy, gives rise to some balance between these mental functions that these neurobiologists are now starting to explore. So in Buddhism, we talk about the middle way and balance. Our practice, our yogic physical practice is to find uprightness, to find not leaning left or right, front or back, and not according to some idea, because we all have particular versions of curved spines, but how do we find what feels upright to us physically? I would suggest that this has to do also, because one of the things that's clear in Asian thought is that mind and body are not actually separate, that we think with our body.

[31:23]

And this beyond thinking, this awareness in zazen becomes very clear that it's not just some mental calculation in our brain or head, it's an awareness that we have in our mudras, an awareness that we have in our knees, it's an awareness in our shoulders. So how do we find the balance? Thinking and not thinking, and beyond thinking. Inhale and exhale. And allowing this, and I don't know what to call it, mind awareness, Mind-wandering is, you know, the term they're using. I don't like the term default network because, you know, still it does have some... There's something about it that's a fundamental kind of awareness that we don't necessarily know about much.

[32:27]

We don't have much training in that in our culture. We're trained to think through things and fix things and figure out things and calculate and deliberate. This other kind of awareness, though, is actually extremely helpful, and has to do a lot with our Zazen and our beyond thinking. So maybe that's enough for me to say about it. I'm interested in your thinking, or beyond thinking, or whatever, about this issue, how it feels to you in terms of how is thinking. So going back to the original story, One translation of that is that, as Sean said, I'm thinking of not thinking. And Meng just said, how's that? How's thinking? How's not thinking? How's beyond thinking? How is it? So questions, comments, responses, please feel free.

[33:33]

Laurel, since you gave me the article, you may have had some thoughts about it. Well, I have a lot of thoughts about it. One thing is something about the way they approach looking at the mind bugs me. It's like they want to dissect it in a way that they want to dissect imagination or creativity or something that I just resent being dissected as if they could, I think that is terms, executive and default are more than good definitions. But so I feel as if things like transformation, which I connect with Sazen, is not dissectable. So I feel like they And I thought, oh, these neurobiologists are poking into my mind.

[34:57]

I was, I don't know. It's a little bit like, recently Nancy sent out an email to some people in the Samba saying, if you've been sitting for more than a year or whatever. Would you be willing to be part of this experiment? Some graduate student is going to find out if your brain has changed. But, well, I didn't. You don't have to say yes to that question. Anyway. Yeah, well, thank you. That's a good point. Because we don't do this, as you point out, for gain. It's our measurable way. How many points do you get? No. But, you know, it's interesting though, because there is this whole field now. There's this huge book. I haven't read it. Has anyone read Zen and the Brain? There's this very thick book about that. And so neuroscientists and neurobiologists are

[36:03]

You know, what science is about is this other side of dissecting, making distinctions, judging, categorizing, qualifying. I support science as a good antidote to superstition and something that helps us to be able to live in the world we're in. And yet, we can see the limitations of it, to dissect and categorize and so forth. But anyway, we live in this world where, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama has actually participated in this and encouraged it, where neuroscientists are studying meditators. And I think they think maybe their default network is, well, if we can learn something about stress reduction, or we can learn something about the mind or relaxation from meditation, from looking at meditation. As meditators, I don't need some scientist to say what you're doing is good.

[37:07]

We don't need to... participate in that or feel like we need some validation from modern science. At the same time, it's kind of interesting that there is this way that they're learning about the brain and about the mind, and about the brain in terms of neuroscience, but also from psychologists about how the mind works. So what this is pointing to is not the dissect and calibrating analyzing part, which is necessary for science, but to see that there is, it's a way for science to find something beyond science and show how it is helpful. So maybe it's helping science to develop, I don't know. But I appreciate your point. Josh, you're involved in research on meditation and psychology. Any comments on this, general? You know, I was just thinking about, like, three different things I do, which is, like, one is, like, rumination.

[38:18]

And that feels, like, very repetitive. But I was thinking about sometimes when I meditate, I feel too tired to sit and I just lay down. And I feel like I get much, sometimes much more relaxed. And it's like a very creative activity, it seems like going online sometimes, but you get very lost. That to me feels like kind of the daydream, but it doesn't feel like, in terms of like very much identifying with what is going on, with still some relaxation, whereas When I sit upright, there feels like more of an ability to kind of see what's going on without getting caught up with it. So I'm just thinking about kind of mind-wandering in terms of like the percentage or how much you identify with what's going on.

[39:22]

Yeah, that's an interesting aspect. Sorry, go ahead. No, that was about it, because I think sometimes when I lie down, I think it's just meditating because there's so much... It feels like really letting go, but also not kind of being able to... have some space between what's being interviewed. It's very much almost kind of let you go very much into the fantasy or whatever it is. That seems different than what you cultivate, or what I'm able to cultivate, or I don't cultivate, but what I'm able to see and witness. Yeah, interesting. Well, you know, to talk about this as an art, as Dogen does, I think has to do maybe with this aspect of letting go and at the same time the aspect of being aware of the mind letting go.

[40:25]

So you were talking about being aware of the mind wandering in some way. So it's a kind of attentive kind of letting go maybe. I don't know, I'm searching for, ways to describe it myself. Thank you. Other comments or responses? Yes, Adam. I was thinking about, as they call it, default mind and what that mind is composed of and why and what, if any, influence we can have on restructuring that, or adding some things and taking some things away, or just really interested in that idea of default mind. But then it sounds like you're trying to think about how to rearrange default mind, and I think the point of that is this kind of background awareness which is... But that's interesting, you know, where's the balance, the middle way, between attention and awareness

[41:38]

of something and also letting go. So the mind that's in the background, that reminds us of our fundamental intentions or creative space. Part of what I feel in Beyond Thinking is this kind of access to that. So there you're talking about access in terms of daydreaming and mind-wandering. So, rather than kind of rearranging it, kind of having access to it and interface with it, I think, is some awareness of it, maybe, it would be... But I was thinking a default line is different than beyond thinking. Right. And there's definitely... a certain material that shows up when you get with, what was the other kind of mind they called it, executive?

[42:43]

They talk about default network and executive network. Again, those terms, but the executive function of the mind and this kind of background. Yeah. It's interesting. I guess it's from your background in both meditation and psychology. Any reflections on this issue? Of course, you can go with the Tarka, which one? Would you please explain? No. There's a concept of focused, kind of, we don't say it, but pro-liberal oriented attention, which is the Tarka. mind. And I guess, you know, for me in practice, paying attention to, what was it I paid attention to? Paying attention?

[43:45]

I've been, lately, I've studied, so I'm actually feeling Satsang is very empirical. It's a practice, it's a scientific art form. Yes. So I don't see the two as very opposed. I don't think that, you know, somehow, Buddha located five, you know, three years, you know, for the first one year. that also never can stop there. You know, I think we're evolving in terms of our ways of looking at understanding the world. I appreciate that. I feel science has contributed a lot to Buddhism. Buddhism has contributed a lot to science. And I actually like the fact that people look inside the brain and go, wow, this thing's lighting up, and people are happy. This is what's lighting up when people are angry, and people meditate. Somehow they light up in the happiness part. compassion, and I think science, you know, at its core maybe is a way of understanding things to be helpful to people.

[44:51]

I think we have the same intention. Thank you. You know, I'm a scientist. Yeah. Yeah, it's very good, points well taken. This is an empirical practice where studying the self, as Dogen says. We're being aware of what it's like to be present in this body and mind, on our cushion or chair, as we sit. The conclusion part of it, making judgments about it, in science too, that's later on. First you just study and observe. Yes. So, you know, shifts in the way that we think about what is knowledge occurs through kind of not holding on so tightly to any conclusion. Yes. And yet there's a middle way that between science and art, they're not, they don't have to be in conflict.

[45:57]

There's a kind of, and I think our Zazen does have a creative artistic side, as well as this empirical side, and how do we harmonize that, how do we appreciate, maybe they're not different in some ways. Scientists, when they have a creative insight, that's their creative mind at work, and to come up with an experiment or some way to demonstrate or observe more clearly, that's a creative act too. So yeah, in some ways these neurobiologists, psychologists are doing that. Laurel, you were going to say something else? Well, I was just going to say my favorite new way of thinking about Zazen came from the talk on Socrates, and he said, it's organized freedom. That is so helpful to me. It's like a form. It gives you the way to free your thinking.

[46:58]

It's organized freedom. I've been sitting with those two words for a long, for a week now. It just came back to my head as we were talking about it. Yes, it's sort of your body is in this posture and your mind is here too. It's organized. Yeah, there's a freedom, but it's not chaos. There's a structure to it. And it's not like, you know, holding on to the structure in some fascist, you know, uptight way either. It's, okay, allowing the mind to wander in this yogic structure. Yes, Jane. On some of the big issues in life, my experience is that the sort of rational side to use

[48:00]

gets hammered out, literally. Which side gets hammered out? The more scientific, rational side that's kind of really worrying the problem. And the other side is always there watching, and drifting around, and observing. And then it's almost as if It sort of hammers out and the other one takes over. I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean by hammers out. What is it? Hammers out the problem. Oh, I see, I see, okay. It's just a personal sort of feeling sometimes about the big issues. So may I ask you, as an artist, as opposed to some of us here who are scientists, how do you find that rational process, is that helpful to you? Is there a place where that's helpful to you as an artist? Is there some balancing there?

[49:05]

Is that possible? Well, interestingly, I've sort of given up. I've stopped painting. It's a huge Zen experience in a way that came to its ultimate conclusion in a very interesting way, where I suddenly was able, after years of deliberations, let go and I didn't have to identify with this mental side anymore. It was an experience. I don't want to get lost on that, but I would say painting was always an experience. I wouldn't let the intellect drop and it took care of itself. I don't think I'm making myself great. That's all right. Part of, you know, the great Zen master Jao Zhou said, I do not take refuge in clarity.

[50:06]

So that's part of the balance too. But a creative clarity takes over at some point. Well, I think part of the point about Beyond Thinking and our practice is that we have access to this range of what the mind is. And so what we're talking about today is exploring the topography of that. And, you know, it includes empirical and creative and, you know, all kinds of different ways. Do you have any last thoughts? Yes.

[51:18]

I have a question. Yes. Yeah, I guess something that has changed for me as I'm practicing was what, and actually I really appreciate what you said about, the point about, the gentle approach to the city, because when I first started, and also your point about trying to not think, that was very much my idea of what practice was. You can actually, you can put your mind into states where you suppress things. It's possible to do, and that's kind of what I was doing in the beginning. But so my question, I guess, is just, and you can also describe different types of practice, whether it's counting or, attention to breath or not. It sounds even like you're talking about a practice without attention to breath. So I'm just wondering, how does one, because my practice now is a bit less concentrated than it was in the beginning because I was very concentrated at first.

[52:20]

So I'm just curious, how does one pick between those three, or probably there's even more practices to discuss. How does one know what's useful when you're doing it? Good. Thank you for a very good practical question. One response is to come and check with someone, with a teacher, someone who's been doing this for a while. So I am available for formal practice discussion if you make an appointment. But more generally, I don't think you have to pick one. Part of the creativity of zazen is to just sit. And having had the experience of more concentration is useful. Having the experience also of allowing more of the, we might call it, mind-wandering side is also useful. finding a practice focus, whether it's just awareness of breath and posture, or something more specific, like a mantra, or focusing on sound, or counting breaths.

[53:25]

I don't think you should hold on to one of those. Try something, and see how it feels. And you can shift. There's a range of how beyond thinking expresses itself. And whatever helps you feel more centered and upright is good. And also it's good to allow. the mind to wander a little and then bring it back. It's also good to focus really sharply for a while. So there's not one part of the point in the idea of skillful means and Bodhisattva Mahayana ideal is that it's not one right answer. Each of us at different times has a different mode in which we can more fully settle into being ourselves more deeply.

[54:32]

So this is why I talk about these different approaches as a way of making that space available to you. But also you can come and, you know, check. Thank you. Very good practical question.

[54:46]

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