The Three Essentials

Great faith, great doubt, and great determination are considered to be three essentials for Zen practice. If any of these essentials are absent, we may not accomplish our aim.

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

I came across the uh three essentials of Zen practice quite early on when I became interested in in Dharma practice. I read about them I think in the there's uh an old book called The Three Pillars of Zen. It's quite famous in in in Zen circles. The three pillars are not faith, doubt, and determination. Apparently I think the three pillars are three pillars are um meditation or zarzen, Dharma talk, and uh dokusan or interview with a teacher. Those would be called the three three pillars. Um I I I'd take issue with that. I remember somebody saying that once on a retreat that those were the three most important things. And uh and I argued the three most important things were uh lunch, the nap after lunch, and then uh you know brushing your teeth before you go to sleep. Those those were m my three most important uh r retreat activities. Um but these three essentials we talk about as uh great faith, great doubt, and great determination. Maybe not talked about a lot in in the Zen school of meditation, but they they they are there as three main principles, and it said that we need to have um uh all three of these aspects of principles operating well in order to really um uh to deeply realize in our practice. Yeah, and maybe maybe maybe that's so. It says great before each one of them, which would be in Japanese die, you know, great faith, great doubt, great determination, and really always in uh in in Dharma practice, you really don't get a lot, uh there's not a lot of benefit in just putting your toe in, right? Or just kind of um half half doing it, or you know, half assing it, as uh someone said to me very very recently, right? There's this you there's not a lot to be gleaned in life from from any activity where we're we're sort of half, only half doing it. Anything that requires um if we wish to gain some mastery, isn't there a study I refer referring to now where it says you have to do at least 10,000 hours of something to gain to gain mastery? That's one that you hear about. That's true for really for for me for pretty much everything. If you wish to become very adept, then you need uh practice consistently and and to to put the time in and you can become adept. So that's that's the great part. It's it's uh uh meditation, dharma practice, and practice. It's an all-in practice. It's an all in with our with our effort and the way that we apply ourselves. Uh all in, you know, it makes me think of the kind of um I've never played poker at a like at a casino, but I've walked by the tables where people do that, and they thought, oh wow, that's like maybe I'll do that one day, and I I I I never have, right? But I I've seen that when you you see it sometimes, it'll be whether it's on the TV or in a movie or something, and and someone will say, I'm all in, you know, and they and everything goes in there and then the big bet goes on. And practice can be that way if you just play on the kind of a dollar the the five dollar table, you know, you can pass some time and maybe win a few bucks or lose a few bucks, but maybe nothing so so nothing much is is on the line there, right? So again, that's an aspect of a great faith, like middling faith, a little bit of faith, you know, not so useful. A little bit of doubt, niggly doubt, maybe not so useful. Little bit of determination, that's kind of uh a misnomer to say you have a little bit of determination, you have a determination or not, right? So just having a little a a little bit or one toe in the in the water, uh not really so useful in practice. Dharma practice can sometimes be that way where we we uh a meditation where we're really just walking around the perimeter. You keep walking around the perimeter, and maybe peering through the fence or over the hedge, and you think about jumping over, but really you just you know we we we know about well-trodden path around the perimeter of self and we we continue to walk around. It's about that can that can be happening too. So it's really like an encouragement and an admonition to say, hey, if you wish to deeply realize in the way that the Buddhas and uh the the teachers, the sages of old have have realized, then that is possible for you. That is possible for I, that is possible for each one of us, for everyone on this uh planet can realize there's no there's no actual barrier there and no real distinction. The uh great realization and enlightenment is contained in equal measure with each one of us. For many, a large part of our enlightenment or awakening uh lies somewhat dormant or or is latent and then with practice and with circumstance that can be realized, made real, brought out of the dark, brought brought out of dormancy, and brought into living reality. And we say that that is realization, and then that realization can be actualized, which means we can actually bring it in, have it function in reality, and um have that produce results. The way that these are structured, these three great faith, great doubt, great determination. You know, we may wonder it's like why does um why does faith come first? In the in in the whichever meditation tradition we may be involved in, they usually I think they pretty much all go back to the um the historical uh Buddha as as the founder. The great the great archetype. Um we don't know a lot about the Buddha's day-to-day life and activities like like um like how he was, or really so much about a person like that's personality, and and uh necessarily over the years and over the the centuries and and millennia, that character, that personality, the person becomes the uh um uh somewhat the deified image. Right now we see the Buddha, we see the Buddha as uh a statue or a painting, usually presented in his uh the archetype of being fully at peace or fully illumined. It's like when we see a Buddha sitting cross-legged, like how we've been practicing so far this morning, this afternoon. Sitting that way in a contented samadhi or a contented concentration. And so the Buddha becomes the the the archetype of a standard to which we practice toward. Now it it is it is said that at the moment of the Buddha's uh enlightenment, after long and and and arduous effort, yeah, we shouldn't skip over that part, after a ceaseless effort, certainly with uh great determination as one of the main ingredients there, it said that he's opened his eyes, saw the morning star, and exclaimed, I all beings of great earth simultaneously attain the way. I all beings of great earth are the wisdom and virtue of the awakened one to thus. So this is called the great lion's roar of the of the Buddha, an awakening, a realization that says, I all beings the great earth, and we shouldn't skip over that part. I all beings of great earth, that's you, that I that every one. Everything is is contained in that in that great realization of the Buddhas. The um wisdom and virtue of the awakened one to thus, that is our Dharma practice. It is awakening to this, to thisness or thusness. Right? Just as it is, the whole everything as as it is. Now can we do we take the do we take that on faith though? Right? It's like do we do do we understand, do we believe that when we hear that? When the Buddha says, I all beings of great earth simultaneously attain the way, or I great being all beings of great earth are the wisdom and virtue of the awakened one. Do we have faith in that statement? Do we trust in some way that that is true? Or is there a feeling or a sense of that may be so for the Buddha, and the Buddha may have had that realization, and other teachers and other people may have that realization, but that's not my realization. I'm somehow a little outside of that experience, right? And that will bring us more into the place of doubt. Right. It said with um, I remember tension, my teacher telling me that um a lady he trained with, with his teacher, Maisumi Roshi, um, she I think it's a Brazilian lady, she lives and she teaches in Brazil now. He said she was never interested in working on koans, like the the sayings of the masters or any of these questions. She just wanted to do just sitting, just sitting, choiceless awareness, from the get-go, and from the get-go, just had faith that she was awake and in that just that great faith in enlightenment, and that that was so. And he said it was very it was an he said it was annoying in that sense because it's like it's just okay, what? And if you know, practice was very straightforward for her, and she only trained for a short period of time before uh my Zumi role. She said, Okay, you go ahead and you just go ahead and do your thing. You can go ahead and and help other people and start a group. And she went home to do that. Faith was very strong. It wasn't that way for for him, for my teacher. He had a lot of doubt. It wasn't that way for for me. It's just like to have the like great faith from the beginning. There's more perhaps more of a sense of doubt, right? But I always find it intr interesting to go back and look at the um the etymology of of words, you know, to look back at these words because even just single words come so loaded with uh baggage, with with narrative, with ascribed meaning, with popular meaning, the things that have been attached to words. That'll come up over and over again in practice. A word will strike somebody uh differently. Some people will struggle with a certain word. And at such times, sometimes they'll say, Well, have a look at the thesaurus and and you know, choose a word that means the same thing, and it's a different word, and that will change things because the the third the word had a connotation which brings up a lot of difficulty, right? So it's the what the word, the baggage of the word will function as an obstruction. What's important is really the what is the meaning, what is the meaning, how is that word, how is that word, what was the clear meaning of that word before the baggage that gets attached to it? Faith is a great example of that, of that. If you say what is faith, that can carry a lot of baggage for a for a lot of people. Right? So I I I looked up um faith, and of course, and and it it's interesting, I don't have the full thing here. I I took a note of it. Um you you can look it up for yourself if you like, but it's amazing how the words change over the years. Uh faith became typically understood as faith in something, or or faith typically in in Judeo-Christian world, faith in God, or faith. It was really used for religious purposes back in the back in the Middle Ages. But you had to have you had faith in a deliverance, faith in a redeemer, faith in something or someone, or some result, or some power. That is not the great faith. That is not great faith in in Dharma practice. Faith in Dharma practice is just faith. It's not faith in something that's separate. Human beings that we are, we have this dualistic object subjective objective consciousness, right? I always mix those two things up. Objective consciousness that navigates the world, a world of things, a world of separate uh appearances, has that feeling or contraction or narrowing of separation. And so we tend to think of things in that way. It's natural in that way, it's a nice fit with a with an easy human dualistic consciousness to say you ought to have faith in something or someone. But whatever the altruistic roots of that may be, having faith in something or someone is always open to uh negative manipulation by by people, by institutions, by dogma, by by whatever that is, to have faith in someone or something. But it's because strictly from a Buddhist insight perspective, if you can name it, if you can see it, you can't rely on it. Because it is impermanent. Anything that appears in form, people, institutions, things, countries, religions, anything at all that can be named, described and and located is inherently unstable and a shaky investment, is always undergoing change, it is always moving, and ultimately it is always disappearing. So from the the lens of great faith here, it's not about having faith in something.

unknown 16:28

Right?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

An older definition here, faith, is neither the submission, is faith is neither the submission of the reason, nor is it the acceptance simply and absolutely upon testimony of what reason cannot reach. Faith is being able to cleave to a power of good appealing to our real self, not to the low or apparent self. So this is this is this is sort of it, this is interesting, I think. Faith is able to cleave to the power of good, appealing to the high or real self. Now, this statement actually then transcends religions. This would be consistent with any spirituality, it would be consistent with Taoism, it would be consistent with Buddhism, right? To to cleave to a power. It says here of goodness, but let's let's look at that. But appealing to our higher or real self. Now, so this is leans more, can point more to the experience of faith in meditation and in our practice. The appeal to a real self, or in in Zen we would say to the original self of a non-personal self, the same self that you are, that I am, that all things are, the self that is before the name of a label, the self that can't be found or fixed, and so you can't have faith in it because it's not a thing. Like in our direction, when we talk about how to approach our sitting practice, a lot of the the art the art of that and the instruction there is to don't dwell and ponder about the conditions of our life, this life of me, me self. That's that me self is never satisfied ultimately. Myself is always grasping for something. Me, I self is is always somewhere in attachment and aversion, is always wanting to get away from something and is always trying to get somewhere to some degree. As human beings, isn't it always that way? There's always more to do, there's always some problems, there's always some challenges. You know, I always see, I'm I'm amazed, it's it's like it's miraculous. If I have my to-do list and I feel like and I can clear the decks, like work through everything, as soon as I get to the point where I'm like, all right, I'm getting at things, and then the world rushes in and fills that space. Right. I remember once like deciding I'm gonna, I read an article about inbox zero saying like how to master your email and clean your email out and get it organized and then get it down to no messages and just be in control. And I was so I felt like such a slave to email that I'm like I'm gonna do this. And I I went through and it took me some hours, and I and I and I and I got there that my primary inbox had nothing in it, and I felt so happy, and then I heard like one of those notifications, and I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

And I'm like, oh no, and then like I had two or three, and it all starts all over again, and you realize there's no escape, other than you know, completely pulling the plug on it, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:32

So we're always as human beings, we're always in that place of uh attachment and aversion, and preference and bias, and picking and choosing. Meditation is is the great repose and refuge from that preference and picking and choosing. Where you can really learn, hone, and refine the art of allowing all of the content of this wild, mysterious human life and this sphere of existence that we're living in, let it alone and let everything be as it is without distinction. That is e uh I I found that that is easier to say than it is to um actualise, right? I mean, it it really is, but that is the art of meditation that each of us um can can learn. When those distinctions are um, and when I say you can learn it, it is rather a returning to our baseline experience rather than than learning and getting something new. But it's rather remembering the original self that you were before we colored in the picture with our likes and dislikes. Likes and all of our conditioning. It's returning, it's a returning to things as they are. This is much more this um appealing to the real self, not to the small self. Because this sense of me, this me, I identity does feel small in this huge world. There's this me and my to-do list and my you know my my particular drama, which may seem very important to me, but actually is not so very important at all. Not important at all to right, just that coming and going. And yet we are a part of this we have this living part of this extraordinary connected whole, which is appearing as the whole universe, the whole world. That is an ex and it is an extraordinary realization to look and to really just see everything that is here. Yeah, there's real power in meditation where to to really closely align with the way with with this when we rise rise up from sitting. Like we had these that period of sitting, walking, period of sitting, got up, I walked into the kitchen, and then you know, I kind of turn away the window is there, and you just look outside through the window, and I was just struck by wow, it's a beautiful day today. It is a beautiful day. But that that that wonder of our actual realization of beauty is so much more apparent when we are still and aware and unobstructed to let that light in, to let the light of the world in. When it's covered up with the what am I doing and what's going on and what I have to do later, and you know what so and so said that and and etc. When that clouds the mind, you miss, we miss often the beauty of the day. However, that's showing up, whether it is a bright blue and sunny sky, or whether it's uh rain clouds and thunderheads building. Yeah, we we're we're often so absorbed with all of the, particularly these days, as things get busier and faster and more chaotic, it's it's easy to just give in to that and just become like the hamster on the wheel of doing, where it's just about fulfilling whatever is next. And how essential it is then to open the eye of awareness that is able to tangibly look into this vast, broad, ungraspable self. Now, if we don't have faith in something, then what do we have faith in? We I brought up the Buddha's statement earlier, I all beings are the great earth. Do we have faith as Dharma practitioners? This is a this is a question here. Do we have the faith that whatever it is that we're seeking, we already are? Do we have faith that this enlightenment or this realization that we hear so much about, that that is uh here, that that is possible. That it may feel a little unrealized or a little bit out of out of reach, but there is a truth when we hear these words, there is a call from the dark that says, yeah, that is speaking to something. Isn't it that way with Dharma practice? I always remember they'd go to so many Dharma talks, and I'd hear a talk, and I'd just be like, Oh yeah, for yes, you know, I I know it. I know the truth of that. Truth recognizes truth, truth wakes truth up. Truth being transmitted as truth, you know, that that being shared. I would read something in as, you know, in in in the in the in the text or hear a word and just be reminded. So I was like, I forgot that. I forgot somewhere along the way that I was enlightened. I forgot that I was awake. I fell asleep again for a little bit. Dang it, I hit snooze again for, you know, only my snooze was set for ten years instead of ten minutes. And I I went back to sleep. But then you wake up and you're reminded. That's our faith. It's the deep knowing of a knowledge in one's heart and mind that yeah, I know that that's true. That the what the what the Buddha awoke to, the awakening of the realization that that is that is here for me also, that that is the truth. Somewhere, maybe a little out of sight, maybe buried somewhere. You know, where did I lost it? If that then, if that is there, then that is great, that is great faith enough. Right, because now you can do something, now you can do something about that. If that's completely abandoned, it's like, no, that's not true. The Buddha was a liar or he misspoke, it's all a bunch of nonsense, etc. Then we're in the wrong game, we're in the wrong business.

unknown 28:17

Right?

SPEAKER_01 28:18

But if it calls us something there that calls out in in talks, what we write, or whatever brought us to this un wild and unusual practice of still sitting, it is that recall, that remembrance by the body-mind that yeah, at the heart is the real life is this realization, is the realized life. And it really and it comes forward even in just even in just one period of sitting. You know, you might not be able to name it or really express it, but you know it. You feel it. You know, the the feeling of the room changes, the the quality of one's mind with sitting and with practice shifts, and there's a remembrance, that deep old remembrance. Wow. Right here at the core of things, there is peace and stillness and freedom. I need to do this more, you know. That would always be like my like a kind of reminder for retreats, you know, for going into retreats, it'd just be like, I really don't want to do this retreat, and then you know, a few days go in, now I really don't want to do this retreat, and then towards the end of it, it's uh, you know, I want to do, I I never want to leave this retreat, you know, and having to just go in and out of that fire over and over and over again to be reminded over and over again. But as human beings, without without practice, that lens clouds over, it becomes obstructed, it becomes obscured, and we just fall back into that into that doing mind, the me life with the people, the relationships, the job, the the bills, the goals, and everything else.

unknown 30:20

Right?

SPEAKER_01 30:20

No, great. The world continues to turn, the sun rises and sets, and is completely undisturbed by that. But again, if we wish to re to in this in this life that we are, to realize the depth of this aware, this this mysterious awareness that we are, we can there is no limit to what can be realized there. All the way, it's don't even be hindered by the Buddha. You can you can realize well beyond the Buddha. You know what a wild statement that is to say. But as a statement, there's a saying in Zen that says Um Shakyamuni Buddha is only halfway done or halfway there. You know, even even the Buddha has not uh completed the race. There's just no limit to realization. That's more what I wanted to bring up about this aspect of great faith. I I really want I really want you to trust yourself, you know, as practitioners of meditation and of Dharma, to just have the to really to awaken that, to awaken that trust in you, in this one that you are, that yeah, this one, as I am, with all of the scars and the flaws and the knots, you know, all of the good and the bad together, but the one that you are right now, this is the realized life, and there is no limit to how that can be deep the appreciation appreciation of that can be deepened and made ever more real. Yeah, then you have faith in yourself, but not faith in Jokai or or or or you know, just not not in the one with the name, the history. That's the finite one that comes and goes. Right? That that is born, gr, lives, goes to college, gets a job, everything else, and lives and lives that human life. Again, like you said at the beginning, a hundred and ten billion people already managed that, you know. But the one I'm talking about to have faith in here, to bring faith in to here, is the one before the name. The name the that nameless one, the very presence and being and awareness that you already are now, that you've always been from the very beginning. Yeah, it's so curious, you know, how kind of you know, you see we we see ourselves changing and uh getting older, or you know, I I you know putting weight on in my care, you know, whatever whatever may that may be. We have this change going on, and yet there is a timeless, is there not a timeless one here? A timeless awareness that has not changed one iota. There is an aspect of this being that I experience now has not changed from when I was five years old. Now the content of my mind and how I understand and organize the world, that has changed. There's been a lot of change on the level of form, but in the perspective of a principle of formlessness or emptiness, from that principle, nothing has ever happened. Nothing has ever changed. And that that that is an extraordinary realization, and that is that realise that is this realization now. Now, if we take a position and try and think that through and know and organize it, then that's not so helpful. But if we feel it and the heart knows it, and we lean into that and really to make that make that real, then it can really be embodied. It's a wonderful thing to be really to become presently aware and engaged with the world as it appears directly. Then life becomes very straightforward in terms of what needs to be done or what needs to be taken care of. I should say something about something about doubt. Oh, it can resonate with doubt, you know too, right? Yeah, it's the hands going up, yeah. Yeah. Well, I looked at the the word again, uh, looking at the the translation and where these words come from. I was excited to look up, like I say, the etymology, and then there was this, there's an app. It's like etymology something, you know, and I'm like, oh finally, there's an app for the etymology of words now. So I'll be uh I'm gonna be nerding out on that for years to come, I'm sure. I was surprised and also but also quite delighted to see that the root of the word of doubt is uh duo or means two. That's a root of doubt. Two. How how interesting that that is his uh definition. Yeah, two or notion of two minds. The notion of two minds or the choice between two, two direction or two ways. Is isn't that perfect? Do you ever do you ever know that mind of doubt or being stuck between with an apparent choice of uh two or in two minds about something? It's uh it's not a comfortable place, it's an uncomfortable place to be when we're in a place of two. Again, you know, human beings, right? Every one of us, we're navigating this world with a dualistic, discerning consciousness. That is the software we're running right now, right? We're our software with human-centric, dualistic, discerning consciousness that is navigating um an impenetrably mysterious reality which is uh beyond duality. So it's like good luck figuring that one out, right? It's like dualistically, we can't we can't resolve that, we can just look at something, right? I don't have to say spend too much time there. The notion of two minds. Now it's like imagine that when we come into practice, or we're talking about enlightenment, that's a real setup of duo or two. Here's me practicing, and out is realization or enlightenment. Now, how do I get there? Right? Or can I? Can it even not me, not this one here, how can that even be achieved? How could how could it be, you know, etc. etc. And that is then to fall into we fall into doubt about things. But it is a natural, it is a perfectly natural um way in which we experience the world as human beings. You know, in in in Dharma practice, we take we see that life is full of positives and full of negatives, and then we try then we use both positive and negative as fuel for practice. You can use positives and negatives too, you can use all of that in a positive way. Like, how do you it's like there is all there is doubt. Now, how do we use doubt to wake up? How do we use doubt in order to deepen realization? Yeah, like for those who have d who have looked at done or or practiced carn study in the Zen school, that is a system of doubt. It's a statement for the principle of enlightenment, which you read and makes no sense, and there is doubt, and then you have to you use that doubt as fuel in order to bring that bring yourself and that principle into alignment so understanding or realization can take place, you know. But like the definition says, you'd be uh the notion of two minds or two or two choices. That is part of our human discerning consciousness. You have doubt about usually about something. Again, doubt about the practice, maybe doubt about the teacher, doubt about the country, doubt about family, society, any of these things. Again, it's usually involved in or doubt around what to do next, which job to take, which state to move to, with what doubt about, etc. etc. Again, it is it is not something inherently wrong or bad, it is just an aspect of being human. But we can use it again as as a fuel for practice. Doubt is a powerful and enlivening, it is a powerful and enlivening energy. If we're sitting and we bring up those words of the Buddha where the Buddha said, I all beings, um, the great earth simultaneously attain the way, and we have doubt that our that our experience is included in that, then the work is to close that gap. The work and the practice is is to resolve that two-mindedness and bring that two-mindedness into alignment. Now, for most of us in in practice, um that is a uh a long, again, a long and steady practice of showing up to the cushion, showing up to the practice of present awareness and mindfulness, because we fall into that sense of separation and doubt. So we have to practice over and over again bringing ourselves back to a place of oneness, bringing ourselves back from a sense of from two-ness back into alignment with the world and into oneness, over and over and over again, and reminding ourselves to to do so. But with you know, and then I mean great doubt, it says great doubt here. You know, great doubt can really be can really be harnessed. It's like, why don't I see this? Why don't how why am I why is there still a gap here? Why isn't this really understood in this way? You know, where where's the gap? Where's the problem? What's holding what's holding me back? What's standing in the way? That that doubt then of our energy can be used to like, okay, you know, in this retreat, in in this sit, in this period of meditation, I'm gonna I'm gonna take care of this once and for all. You know, I'm gonna go beyond this sense of just me and the circumstances of the world and and and work you know and the travails of that, and I'm gonna move through that. I'm gonna step into the awakened life. You know, it's like Master Rinzai in the Rinzai school said, the only thing that's really needed for enlightenment is for um courage to leap into it, which is a provocative statement. Another statement in the Zen school said says, How do you take um a step from the top of a hundred foot pole? How do you step from the top of a hundred foot pole?

unknown 43:55

Right?

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Now you imagine yourself you're up there on a pole. I think people used to do that in the Middle Ages, right? There was these people, they'd be saints, they'd climb up on a pole and they'd stand there for a year or something. Like they just dwell on this pole and they wouldn't move from there. It's one of those kind of curious ascetic practices. That's not that's not for me that. I don't I wouldn't like to do see much much much use in that. But you imagine you're up on a pole a hundred feet up in the air, and and the Zen school says, take a step from the top of a hundred-foot pole. You know, how do you do that? Now, if you s if you if we're standing on that pole and you think, well, if I step off, I'm gonna fall and I'm gonna die. Or I'm gonna break at least I'm gonna break both legs. Right? Or or that, you know, well, and then you you we end up clinging to the pole. This is a sense of me self, you know, this is a sense of identity and I and this life that we're we're we're protecting around ourselves. That's like that pole that we're standing on. But Dharma says, the practice says, no, you need to step off that pole. Unfortunately for those you know who practice that way, that there's I've seen walking around, you know, you're still walking. You don't, of course, literally fall a hundred feet, but it can be that sense of fear, doubt, will arise in sitting where sometimes it even feels like you are losing yourself. You may lose yourself in it. You know, it sounds very nice to say, like, well, the death definition of you and the construction and the way you understand life, that'll all dissolve. It's like, wait, hold on, is that a good thing? Do I do you know, but hold on, what's it like on the on the other, on the other side of that? Right? When when this uh sense of me and the way that I understand the world, uh understand the world collapses. You know, but each one of us, you know, if you wish to match the Buddha's enlightenment or what he said there, that's the cost. You have to be willing to jump, you have to be willing to step off the pole. You have to be willing to ultimately there, sounds a little strong to say it, but you have to be able to throw the self away. Dharma practice is that, it's throwing the self away like this. Throw it away. Throw it away. This is like me, my accomplishments, my failures, what I think about things, what I think about other people, how I understand the world, how I understand the Dharma. What it throw it away. Throw it away. Throw it away. Over and over. Then you're always leaping, you're always stepping, you're stepping into this experience, this moment in time. You know, there are no moments in time, right? It's a kind of a goofy thing to say. You're stepping always into this present, you're going straight ahead, letting everything, let all of these notions, the thoughts, the descriptions, the doubts, the worries, fears, and concerns let them fall. Let them go. They're not needed. But that requires stepping, stepping beyond doubt and just stepping forward. And again, it's you can I can talk this way and you can say these things, but these are just pointers. Pointers to remind you in your innate experience that you are now, as a reminder and a pointer of like you know what to do, you know how to live, you know how to practice. These are reminders. Let go of the way that the world is interpreted and understood in the mind, the belief, the opinion, the preference, the rationalities, all of the way that that's organized. That's all ultimately smoke and mirrors. But when all of these things are thrown out, what's here? The whole world. It's still here, everything's still here. The sun's climbing over the mountains, the day is warming up. People are getting about their Saturdays all over the world doing whatever it is that they do.