Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” — T.S. Eliot’s verse opens this 45-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun, framing the evening as a deliberate pause to tend the spiritual dimension of life. He maps the Buddhist path as twin work on heart and mind, surveys indirect means of practice — time in nature, meaningful work, community, art, daily ritual — then presents the direct means: a three-stage training of listening, reflecting, and meditating. A medical-student-and-X-rays analogy illustrates how Buddhist ideas must be absorbed over time until something clicks and a new world of meaning opens. The session closes with a guided introduction to choiceless awareness — noting whatever object the mind naturally drifts toward, without directing it — as practical training in the mental factor of alertness itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 HMA 1996 06 26.mp3
UUID: 4ec73892-8b92-4344-bb8e-b0285e5942fa
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-06-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~5,811
Perhaps accessing parts of ourselves that normally we’re very much unaware of, out of touch with, readjusting our motivation, our priorities, what is important to ourselves, you know, in terms of meaning, in terms of connectedness, in terms of quality of life, our values, depth, our dimensions of experience. A spiritual aspect of ourselves that perhaps goes unnoticed all the time, that lies dormant, but which is essential to any quality of life that we might want to aspire to. So, creating that space, taking the time to access that area of ourselves, our own psyche. You know, I know you’ve probably had a busy day, had lots of concerns to deal with, practical necessities of life. But I think the spiritual aspect, the spiritual dimension of our being is perhaps not perhaps is just as necessary to, you know, as eating food is to nourishing our physical body.
That aspect of ourselves is just as necessary to nurture our spiritual well-being, our psychological well-being, if you like, the quality of our life. There’s no getting around that. We can live and go through all the various motions of a life and then die and not have led a life that had any meaning, that had any sense of connectedness, where where there is no real love or no real sense of belonging, a sense of something greater than ourselves. And then we will probably have not lived a life at all. You know, what meaning will have it been if we simply died, you know, passing on a few material possessions to our children or relatives, maybe even a mortgage, maybe a car, seven years old or something.
So there are other priorities other than the priorities which are foisted on us by society about ourselves. There are other ways of being which might not be so apparent and so valued by our society. That is not to say that they are equally, if not more important. So, you know, creating this space, this time, it’s simply not a matter of information. Think it’s much more than that.
Sure, we need information and we’re going to talk about how that fits into an overall scheme of spirituality. But, you know, like I think there’s a verse by T.S. Eliot where he says, Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge that we have lost in information? It’s an information age. People mistake bus schedules for wisdom.
You know, they seem to know where they’re going, they have some sense that they’re leading a purposeful life. But if they were to stop and get off the bus for a moment, they might realize how lost they, in fact, they really are. So this is creating that opportunity for ourselves to get back in touch. To nourish a part of ourselves which perhaps isn’t so apparent to ourselves but still is necessary to a quality way of life, our well-being, our spiritual well-being, our psychological well-being, our well-being. Years ago I told you that in his day to day life a warrior chooses to follow a path with heart.
This is Don Juan. It is the consistent choice of the path with heart which makes a warrior different from the average person. He knows that a path has heart when he is one with it, when he experiences a great peace, a pleasure, traversing its length. And as I’ve probably mentioned a number of times, from the point of view of Buddhism, the spiritual journey involves traveling a path. A path as the means to move forward to get to where we want to go.
It is the path which empowers us and gives us, endows us with the competency to be able to attain what it is that we want. This is the purpose of the path. As I probably mentioned before also, the word for path in the Pali language, the language that was used in the scriptural Buddhism in the areas of Southern Buddhism, for example in Sri Lanka, in Thailand, Burma. The word is patipada. This is the word for path.
And it literally means putting one foot in front of the next, putting one foot in front of another. So in traveling the spiritual path there’s no substitute for actually taking a first step. We actually have to do something for ourselves. We have to try. And as I’ve talked about in terms of trying, maybe this trying might necessarily have to be different than the types of trying that we’ve been trying to implement before.
We either have to try harder, just more of the same, or begin to try differently, a difference which is going to make a difference in our lives. So, the trying of Buddhism, the traveling of the Buddhist path, primarily involves awakening the heart to all living beings and our minds to the nature of reality. So, in traveling the Buddhist path, the path entails both an emotional and rational aspect of ourselves, both an affective and cognitive parts of ourselves. Simply put, we’re trying to change the way that we feel and think about ourselves and the world, and thereby how we’re going to relate with ourselves and the world. And in this process there are two means, overall means, that we make use of.
The methods, the areas that we can implement, the techniques, both indirect and direct techniques or means. So, you know, the indirect means for traveling a path takes many different forms. For instance, simply going out into nature and spending a short while can raise the level of our consciousness and improve the quality of our own minds. It can bring about some kind of beneficial change for ourselves. The type of work that we do influences our thinking.
You’re producing a good, useful product with a healthy sense of pride. Or even more than that, doing something which is directly of benefit to others. The caring professions, the teaching professions, all these various possibilities that we have. Occupations which directly benefit others. The type of daily life that we lead, having a daily spiritual practice, spending quality time with others, work and study, creative interests, eating nutritious foods at relaxation, silent periods, exercise, tai chi, yoga.
All of these have a beneficial effect on our minds. Enjoyment of good music, art, literature can raise the level of our consciousness if they’re a reflection of the artist’s higher level of consciousness itself. In practical ways, there is the helping of others in doing voluntary work. Activities which are done out of little or no selfishness, self gain for ourselves. You know, it’s helpful to associate with spiritually minded people, you know, a Sangha, spiritual community, or even more so those who are more spiritually advanced than ourselves, perhaps, teachers.
Know, various rituals, chanting, the offering of a candle in front of an altar, doing prostrations. All of these have various beneficial effects on the mind. So all these indirect means are combined with each other in various ways. But though they are a necessary part of a complete spiritual practice, they by themselves cannot completely awaken our hearts and minds, which we’re trying to do. To do that we must additionally work with the mind itself in a direct manner.
So this is the direct manner of meditation. And this process of meditation involves three stage training process. You know, it’s said that meditation without three stage training process are three types of activities: listening, reflecting, and finally meditating. It is said that meditating without listening and reflecting is like having legs but no eyes, whereas listening and reflecting without meditating is like having eyes but no legs. In neither case do we get very far.
Meditation is to be seen in the context of this threefold activity of listening, reflecting, and then finally meditating. So this first stage, listening, simply involves listening or studying to the teachings with an open and receptive mind, a mind that doesn’t distort what is being heard or what is being read. It is the initial stage of gathering together the information, trying to understand the various categories, the different terms that are being used, the structure of the teachings. This is the stage of learning about various new and different ideas. The second stage, reflection, reflecting, contemplating.
Beginning to carefully consider what you’ve received, what you’ve heard, what you’ve studied, what you’ve read. What is the true significance? We examine what we’ve heard or studied both through reasoning and our own direct experience, what we’ve experienced in our own lives. Are these teachings true or not? Are what is being presented isn’t logical?
Do they agree with my own experience? And two, are my methods of reasoning and my ways of evaluating through experience, are they valid or not? Through this process of questioning, doubts will arise. Doubt is a precursor to true understanding, a stage that a process of going through from misconception to a right understanding. There’s a transition of doubt.
You know, doubt is something, in this context, something terribly positive, terribly important part of the process. Through the dissolutions of doubt, we gain knowledge for ourselves. Something that we’ve learned for ourselves is no longer mere assumption that hasn’t been worked through by means of our reasoning or experience, that’s simply been taken on for various reasons, but which hasn’t really touched us in terms of our own understanding, in terms of our own experience. And finally, the third stage, meditation. This involves integrating this newly acquired understanding, making it a part of our being, a part of our character.
In this way, meditation is like putting it into practice. Practice in the sense of actually doing it as opposed to thinking about it. And actually forming new and different ideas for ourselves and becoming those ideas, the embodiment of those ideas. So at the listening stage, we gather all the bare facts You know, see how the information begins to fit together. At the reflecting stage, using our reasoning, using our experience, we gain some kind of certitude.
Creating doubts, clarifying doubts, we gain knowledge and confidence. And then with this confidence we embark on the third stage, meditating. All the various doubts, all the various hesitations have disappeared and we experience directly the true meaning of the teachings. That is say, we actually realize the teachings. Then we accustom ourselves to the true meaning of meditation, to accustom, to get used to, to familiarize.
Familiarize our mind, get our minds used to this newfound experience again and again and again. And they become second nature to ourselves. They become our primary nature. They become us. We change, we grow.
Ultimately we awaken. So in this entire process that we’re working with and that’s being described, I think it has to be emphasized that Buddhism is not trying to tell anybody how they are to live their lives. But how to gain insight into how our lives are being lived. How are we looking at our life and our actual experience of our life, how to understand where we’re at, how we got where we are, how next to proceed, to what ends should we be proceeding to, where should we be going with our lives. That is how to grow and ultimately how to awaken.
You know, the how to live is taken care of in that, in that present itself, organically grows out of that. It’s not some taken for granted truths that somehow we can impose upon ourselves values and beliefs which aren’t autonomously derived out of our own wisdom, out of our own experience. But instead, you know, they we can be we take on the values and beliefs of our society even unknowingly, and it becomes terribly self oppressive and self subjugating. We don’t know what is true for ourselves anymore. And we must take assumption and belief for the truths of reality.
These various taken for granted truths that have become very much a part of our value system, but aren’t a reflection of what we actually feel ourselves. And therefore we feel almost nothing. You know, we feel, if anything, only confused. Because what we have come to believe should be is not validated within our actual experiences. So, out of these new ideas, these new understandings, gaining some kind of experience, and beginning to integrate these experiences, we naturally begin to change, we grow.
And our lives will naturally begin to reflect that. This is the traveling the path. It’s not something else. You know, are continually searching for some kind of universal prescription, telling us how to live our lives, how exactly we should go about making sense of our world. We all are hoping and praying and searching for some magical formula that we can just plug into our lives, as if our lives were some kind of mathematical problem to be figured out.
And this is more than not just another attempt to ascribe responsibility for our lives to somebody or something other than ourselves. This is something outside of ourselves. More than not just a futile attempt to avoid taking responsibilities for our lives and making choices for ourselves and accepting the consequences of those choices that we make. All that necessarily goes with the effort of putting one foot in front of the next, that is, say, traveling the path. It’s terribly hard to take responsibility for one’s actions in the world and to take responsibility for the consequences of what we do do.
Though we think otherwise, there’s no getting around the necessity of using our minds and the practical doing of actually changing them. We try every other avenue, every other possibility, than ever having to actually change the way we think, the way we feel about things. You know, to change our minds is to change the ideals within our mind. And that is to experience new and different ideas and having them affect us. Having these new ideas practice upon ourselves, act upon ourselves.
And thereby they begin to change the way that we think, the way that we feel, the way that we behave. And they change ourselves and change our world, thereby how we experience our world. Perhaps I’ve mentioned, I’m not sure, but the word idea, it comes from a Greek word, eidos. And ideos used to mean it meant both the appearances and the objects which were seen. But it also meant the means by which we see.
The word ideos, the word which meant ideas, means one of the primary meanings of it is the means by which we see. That is, ideas are the eyes through which we view ourselves in the world. We see with our ideas. Change your ideas, change your perception of yourself and the world. Change your ideas and you change yourself and your world.
Therefore, you’re going to relate with the world, and thereby, how you’re going to experience the world. Moreover, without them we cannot see even what we sense with the eyes and our heads, for our perceptions are shaped according to particular ideas. Once we consider the world flat, and now we consider it round once we observe the sun rotate around the earth, and now we observe the earth turn around the sun our eyes and their perceptions did not change with the Renaissance, but our ideas have changed, and with that, what we see. Ideas are not just ideas or just in the head and may not be poo pooed away since they are the very means through which we are envisioning and enacting our lives. We embody them as we speak and move.
We are always in the embrace of ideas. The eyes of different ideas are how we see anew. We have to see anew. This is what it means to change, to see anew, to gain insight, new sight, into how our lives are being lived. The more ideas that we have, the more that we see.
The deeper our ideas are, the deeper that we see. Ideas engender more ideas, bringing with them new perspectives for viewing ourselves in the world and thereby experience them in different ways. So we’re looking at a body of ideas, a coherent, complete system of a new way of seeing. And we’re trying to find a way to make these ideas our own. We have to, as it were, rediscover everything that the Buddha, the infinite Buddhas of the path discovered for themselves, to generate these ideas ourselves.
Otherwise, it’s like laying oil on water. It doesn’t mix with our mind. It hasn’t organically arisen from the depth of our being, and therefore, it will not change ourselves. It only masks our essential nature. We’re learning something very new, and there’s a transition.
There’s a working through. Think of a medical student attending a course in the X-ray diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. He watches darkened room shattering traces on a fluorescent screen placed against the patient’s chest and hears the radiologist commenting to his assistant in technical language on the significant features of these shadows. At first the student is completely puzzled, for it can see in the X-ray picture of a chest only the shadow of the hearts and ribs with a few spidery blotches between them. The experts seem to be romancing about figments of their imagination.
He can see nothing that they are talking about. Then as he goes on listening for a few weeks, looking carefully at ever new pictures of different cases, a tentative understanding will dawn on him. He will gradually forget about the ribs and begin to see the lungs. And eventually, if he perseveres intelligently, a rich panorama of significant details will begin to reveal to him, of physiological variations, of pathological changes, of scars, of chronic infections, signs of acute disease, he has entered a new world. He still sees only a fraction of what the expert sees, but the pictures are definitely making sense now, and so do most of the comments made about them.
He’s about to grasp what is being taught. It has clicked. We don’t see something until we have the right metaphor to see it, until we have the right idea, which is the means by which we see it. You know, our teachers are talking about ideas which sound perhaps initially terribly foreign to ourselves. We can’t see perhaps the relevance of what is being said, how it actually involves ourselves in our daily life.
You know, how does it fit with my Western sophisticated middle class approach to the living and life? It doesn’t seem to be of any use. Seems to be something foreign, something outside of my realm of experience. So we begin to look and we begin to at these presentations of these x-rays, and we begin to listen. And perhaps what was seen as meaningless, what was we were looking in the wrong direction and with the wrong angle.
We begin to develop an experience of something kicking. Something begins to make sense. We begin to have ideas for ourselves. And out of those ideas we begin to gain some understanding and we begin to see the relevance which perhaps was always there but was impossible to see because, you know, we didn’t have the right metaphor. We didn’t have the right tools to work with to be able to adapt it to ourselves and how it’s going to affect ourselves.
You know, the ideas of Buddhism are like therapeutic eyes that allow us to conceive. And the word conceive is a neat word, I think. It not only means to have an idea it, but conceive also has the idea of to give birth to, to bring into being. This is a very profound element of Buddhism that we’re eventually going to talk about when we discuss the awakening of the mind. That all phenomena are really imputed by mind.
That is to say, phenomena, everything, whatsoever arises upon conception, upon ideas, language, term, and conceptuality, how we use them. We bring into reality. We give birth to the world. We are co creators of the universe. And the way we do this is with our ideas.
Change your ideas, you change your world. We’re beginning to work with new ideas, the ideas of Buddhism. And these become like the eyes by means out of which we can begin to see a different type of world, a different, you know, a different way of being in the world, that we can give can give birth to a world which is no longer problematic, which no longer no longer in collision with ourselves. We can create that type of world. I’m not saying we’re going to go anywhere.
You know, it’s not as if we’re going to be transported to some paradise where it’s all fluorescent lights and music and incense and sweet sounds. It may be be not much other than this world that we as we see it now. But the way that we relate to it will be radically different. It will no longer be problematic. On the contrary, it will be full of meaning, full of depth, full of a source of bliss to ourselves and objects of compassion by means in which we act in the world.
Each of us has to discover this world for ourselves through the ideas. And here we’re working with the system of Buddhism, which is this coherent set of ideas, the ideas as taught by Buddha Śākyamūni and all the infinite Buddhas of the path. But we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We’re terribly fortunate in that respect. We have the wheel of Dharma, the teachings which our teachers compassionately turn for ourselves.
So we’re involved in the process. And I think it’s useful to appreciate this activity that we’re involved in. This forming of new ideas and new ways of being, new ways of seeing and conceiving. We listen and we read about the teachings of these experts, what they have to say. We intelligently reflect upon, look carefully for ourselves at what they’re trying to describe to ourselves.
You know, we have to admit that there might be other ways to look at the same experience that we’re going through. You know, we have a value system which we cling to tenaciously, which we think is the only right way, the only sensible way to look at the world and how to be in the world and how to deal with the situations and people about it. And we hang on to that with our last nail as it breaks. And, okay, we have to try until we’re exhausted. Our possibilities, our way of being, we begin to see our way simply doesn’t work very well, that it’s problematic, that we still continue to suffer in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over the course of our life.
Creating some kind of opening. Maybe there is another way. That possibility there’s some kind of gap where some kind of new information can enter into our system of beliefs that we’re working with. Maybe we have to involve ourselves with the ideas and persevere with them. And eventually, perhaps, we begin to understand and see something anew, come to see for ourselves something clicks.
And the significance of the teaching is grasped. There’s some kind of change that takes place. Then we begin to meditate. We allow these newly developing ideas to operate ourselves, to practice upon ourselves, and thereby to change. We see things differently.
And alternative pathways begin to evolve, we create a new refuge for ourselves. The idea of Buddhism, you know, how it views the world, are not prescriptions for living, but tools for growth. Buddhism is not asking us to believe in some kind of dogma. It’s not asking us to believe in any particular doctrine. It’s not even asking us to believe in Buddhism.
It is asking us that we take the idea of awakening, the idea of a life centered around the development of wisdom, the development of love and compassion, and personal power, and how these are expressed in our everyday life, as a priority in our life. Essentially, it’s saying, make inner growth a priority in your life, a necessity just as much as eating food is a necessity in your everyday life. Give it that importance. Make experiment and try. And see if in this trying, whether it be harder or whether it be differently, we might in the actuality of our own lived experience, which is what everything must basically come down to, which is the final test at the validity of any teachings or any way of being.
If in our own lived experience we might find more of what it is that we want in our life and be rid of more of what we don’t want in our life, happiness and suffering. And if it is just this very trying to come in to see for ourselves which more than anything else is going for refuge. Reprioritizing, this process of better focus, where we take as the primary idea as a goal of our life Buddha, the Buddha inside of ourselves, and trying to work with the ideas with the tools of Dharma, the means by which we can conceive, give birth to that Buddha. Within this social context of spiritual community, the Sangha. And again and again, trying to raise the level of motivation.
Why are we doing this? You know, again, developing these three principal aspects of the path that we’re working with is an actual means of the the ideas that which are going to which are transformative. Requires some kind of work. And it seems that maybe even the element of time may be part of the process, a necessary part of the process. But one thing we can do, no matter how learned or or not, no matter how how advanced the techniques of meditation are not, we can find ways of being a little more loving, a little more sensitive and caring, a little more concerned in all the various small ways that arise in the course of our everyday life.
And this is something that anybody and everybody can do, whether they’re whether they are concerned with spirituality or growth or whatsoever. Just as a way of leading us somewhat better life, as a way of of finding some some love for oneself, some comfort, if only for oneself. It makes we all want to be loved. And it only makes sense that the more loving you are, the more that, in turn, you will be loved. It doesn’t take a great deal of, I think, study or a great deal of reading or research.
It’s something which is readily understood if we if we stop to consider it, and to stop to consider it. And if we can do what we do, you know, this listening, this reflecting, meditating, and all the various, you know, activities, even if only in a slight sense, even if in some indirect sense. A limited sense for others, then we can be felt assured that it’s going to be a way to grow, a way to find the love that we’re all searching for, and ultimately, a way to awaken eventually. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Community. I go for refuge until awakening through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma.
May I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge into awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Community, I go for refuge and to awaken through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma. May I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings?
Reverently, I pay homage with my body’s speech and mind I present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. Okay.
Would you would you like to stand up for a minute, and then we’ll meditate together? Okay. So, we’re going to There are various types of meditations. Perhaps I’ve never mentioned this before, the overall categories of stabilizing meditations and analytic meditation. Most people, the first or having no familiarity or initial familiarity with meditation, usually think of meditation in terms of what is called stabilizing meditation, or fixative meditation, or concentrations where you simply hold the mind to an object.
It might be, you know, as we do quite often every evening together, the breath, in and out of the breath. It might be a visualization. It might be a sound, a mantra. Anyway, the type of meditation where we fix the mind, we hold the mind. But there is another area, category of meditation which is especially important in Tibetan Buddhism, but it’s important to Buddhism in general.
And this is analytic meditation where you try to penetrate the object. You simply don’t hold the object. It is where you try to break up the object into parts, where you try to understand the object. For example, even within analytic meditation there are two overall types or approaches to it. There is analytic meditation where we take an object.
It could be death, impermanence, could be emptiness, and we want to try to understand it. For example, impermanence or emptiness, the emptiness of the glass. We go through various reasonings, discursive ideas, thinking about it, trying to come to some kind of conclusion, something clicks, a new understanding takes place in our mind. Or we also another type of analytic meditation or using thinking or discursive quality of the mind is that we meditate on love and compassion. Normally when we meditate on love and compassion, not analyzing love and compassion as to its categories or its definition.
We try to transform the entity of mind into the object of our meditation. That is to develop a loving mind, a state of love or a state of compassion. This may require, and there are many meditations which do require, that we think about love. We think about the suffering of people. We think about our relationship to them, the bonding between ourselves.
We develop a sense of gratitude, a sense of caring. We think about all their qualities in our relationships, how kind they are to ourselves. We use all these various reasons from different approaches, different aspects. You know, when we come to the second principal aspect of the path, the awakened heart, we’re going to use all of these various methods to evoke, to transform our mind into the entity of love. We don’t want love to be an object out there.
We want it to transform the nature of our mind into the entity of love itself. But it is a discursive process, an analytic process. So, you know, this is more what people in the West might usually call contemplation. But it’s called analytic meditation. So it’s good to understand that meditation not only is concentrated or stabilizing, is fixative, but it also has an area of discursive analysis, investigating the object.
We’re going to do mindfulness of breathing this evening. And I thought I would add an element. I think it’s a very useful technique. It’s called choiceless awareness. So we’re going to meditate, and if it’s helpful, and I think it’s useful if you would experiment with it, these techniques of counting and noting the breath.
You know, simply in and out, counting one, in and out two, Knowing that you’re breathing in, noting to yourself in, knowing that you’re breathing out, noting to yourself out, when your mind wanders, when it’s distracted, simply noting, thinking, if it’s a thought or feeling, if it’s some pain or some itch or some sensation of your body, maybe it’s a car driving on the street or whatever, hearing, and then bringing the mind back to the breath. We are continually redirecting the mind back to the breath. But in choiceless awareness, we’re going to continue to note, but we’re not going to direct the mind. We’re going to allow the mind to become involved in any object that it actually tends toward. You know, like the car driving down the street, the mind gets involved in an object.
We allow that to happen. We don’t make a choice as to the object, but we continue to maintain this quality of alertness, that is, say, awareness. We continue to know what our mind is involved in from moment to moment. And in order to do that, we continue to note. So simply, you you have to be very alert.
Don’t take for granted what your mind might be involved in. Actually see for yourself, what is my mind involved in? What is its object? From moment to moment. The mind is a subject.
Subjects necessary are dependent upon objects. They coexist. They’re interdependent. If there is a mind, there must be an object in mind. Being alert to the fact of what is the object in my mind from moment to moment.
Thinking, hearing, hearing, feeling, thinking, thinking, hearing, feeling, smelling, smelling, hearing, think. Allowing the mind to become involved in any object that it naturally tends toward without focusing, without directing the mind. But maintain your awareness, this alertness, this awakeful quality of the mind. And that we can best do by using the technique of noting. Okay?
So we’re going to practice with that. And I think you’ll find it very useful as a training exercise in beginning to appreciate what the mental factor of alertness or awareness or introspection actually is and as a way of training that, developing that factor of alertness awareness more once you get a sense, ah, that’s what alertness is. That’s what awareness is. You know, also gaining some kind of feeling. You know, they talk about meditation and how we are to approach it.
One analogy is like the tuning of a guitar, You know, to to get the right pitch. Let’s not say that it’d not, know, too too high.