Three Sufi stories

Ken:

There were once two mystics talking. The first one said, “I had a disciple once. In spite of all my efforts, I was unable to illuminate him.”

“What did you do?” asked the other.

“I made him repeat mantras, visualize symbols, dress in special garb, do quite elaborate complex exercises, inhale special forms of incense, read various prayers and study various texts, had him do long vigils, sitting intensely for long periods of time.”

“Didn’t he say anything which might give you a clue as to why all this was not giving him higher consciousness?”

“Nothing. He just laid down and died. All he said was irrelevant: ‘When am I going to get some food?'”

Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humor, Idries Shah, p. 24


Will try another one. I’m not sure anybody got the point there. Yeah, I think this one might apply.

Mulla Nasrudin, when camping for the night, put a bottle down as a pillow. “Mulla,” said a friend, “surely that is going to be too hard for your head.”

“As an ordinary bottle, yes,” said Nasrudin, “but I’m going to stuff it with straw before I put my head on it.”

p. 38

There’s another one which I can’t find right now, but I think I can remember it.

Two teachers were talking. One of them was describing a certain student that he was having a great deal of difficulty with. And the other teacher said, “I had a student just like that.”

“What did you do?” asked the first teacher.

He said, “Well, in the end, the only thing I could think of doing was giving him a cup of kerosene to drink.”

The teacher said, “I think I’ll try that.”

And sometime later they met and one teacher said, “Well, did you try it?”

He said, “Yeah, it was very interesting. I gave him this cup of kerosene to drink. He stepped outside to have a cigarette, lit it, burst into flame, and that was that.”

Said the first teacher, “Yeah, exactly the same thing happened with my student too.” [Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humor, Idries Shah, p. 37]

Student: … [Unclear] [laughter]

The difference between method and result

Ken: The subject for this morning—and you can sit with these stories, they actually have a point, I’m sure some of you may be able to discern—the subject of this morning is integrity. Now just to touch on yesterday, there are two main themes that I was focusing on yesterday. One was the understanding of the difference between method and result. That is, until you’ve acquired a certain ability, trying to follow some instructions will be quite problematic, because they will be the results of other efforts.

And I gave the example of relaxing. If you know how to relax, then when somebody says “relax,” you’ll take a few breaths or you do something else. If you don’t know how to relax and somebody says “relax,” you tense up. And what you actually need is to be given the technique for relaxing, which is, in the example I’m using, taking a few breaths. One of the causes for confusion in practice is that many students, and I have to think more than a few teachers, are not clear about: when they give instruction, about whether they’re describing a result or describing a method.

If one tries to practice an instruction which is the result of methods you haven’t yet made or become conversant with, usually what happens is that your practice becomes very conceptual, and it stays in the head and doesn’t translate into your experience. And people can become adept at the manipulation of concepts and ideas—and they will have sometimes quite a sound intellectual understanding—but it won’t have penetrated into how they actually live. It won’t have become knowledge, it won’t become lived knowing.

A second problem that can result, is that a person is unable to relate to the instruction that’s given because they can’t do it, and they get frustrated or they regard the instruction as irrelevant, stupid, doesn’t make sense, etc., and they just turn away. That happens actually quite frequently. This is also an area where teachers wittingly or unwittingly collaborate. One way teachers collaborate in this is that if a person can’t work with the instruction, the attitude is “they just don’t have the karma, they aren’t ready.” And from my point of view, that’s a very convenient posture for the teacher. But from my point of view, lacks a certain integrity because the teacher isn’t actually relating to where the student is. A teacher in that situation is more concerned with their teaching than with teaching, if you follow.

A third problem that arises here is illustrated by the last story, where you have people who have connected with various techniques, who don’t understand actually how they work or what they do. They think they do, and so when they run into problems, they pull something out of their bag and interesting things happen for the student.

Severing the connection

Ken: So that was one theme that we explored yesterday. The second theme was severing the connection. And what I was suggesting is that in various arenas of experience—like before and after, inside/outside, subject and object, form and emptiness—they have a lot of dualisms, this and that, and the connection between this and that is us, or a sense of self. So that severing the connection here means dropping that sense of self, however it’s arising. And when that sense of self has dropped, then things are experienced differently. Now tomorrow we’ll talk more about what happens when you drop the sense of self associated with before and after. But with respect to inside and outside, when we drop the self, which actually creates that division, sense of self, then we find ourselves in a field of experience.

And that is going to be very important for our discussion on integrity today. And then, with respect to form and emptiness, we experience things one way, when we look at them carefully, we see that they’re another way. But if we drop, then it becomes possible to experience them both at the same time, even though they seem to be contradictory, they aren’t actually contradictory. It’s how things are. But it is our notion that things have to be one way or another. That’s a certain worldview we carry around with this that prevents us from experiencing them as they actually are.

Integrity

Ken: Now the arena in which I come across the word integrity most frequently, is in my business consulting. Almost always, when I ask a group or the head of an organization what one of their values are, it’s integrity. And at least in that context I have consistently found that it’s a word that is used like wallpaper. You know what you use wallpaper for? Cover up the cracks. And it’s also something which people have a great deal of difficulty defining. And I think the difficulty they have in defining it is because they’re trying to figure out a definition which isn’t inconvenient.

So after messing around with this for a number of years, I finally looked it up in the dictionary, and there are three principal meanings of the word integrity. First one is ethical, you have integrity, you’re ethical. Second one is complete, it’s the whole thing, which is actually the origin of the word, from integer, one unit. And the third meaning is that it is sound, as in: “has the hull lost its integrity?” of a boat. If it’s lost its integrity, you don’t want to go to sea in it. Is it sound?

When Jeff and I were preparing for this retreat, we were looking through the book Unfettered Mind. And the term that the translator had chosen was right mindedness which, never mind the clumsiness of the English, brought in a whole host of other problems. So when we examined this, we came to the conclusion this is really integrity. Now, if you take integrity as a value, my quick and dirty definition of a value is: something that you’re willing to kill or die for. That makes it fairly serious.

But what we call values are those elements of our lives, the way that we relate to experience, which are fundamental. Many people will tell me that one of their values is honesty, one of their core values, something they’re willing to kill or die for. I find it’s very rarely true. And I usually just pose the question, “If someone appeared at your door, and demanded that you hand over your son or daughter to be killed, would you be honest?” The answer is, “No, of course not.” So it’s not a core value. Protection of your child, that’s a core value. That’s something that most parents are willing to kill or die for. So, this raises the question: if integrity is a value, are you willing to kill or die for it?

And Takuan takes pain to point out some certain misconceptions. Money is very important in many people’s lives. Money in this context, is usually connected with desire. Many people are so consumed by desire that they will kill in order to satisfy their desires, and there are many forms of killing. But the reverse often isn’t true. Relatively few people are willing to die for their desires. If you say, “Well you can have all of this money or you can die,” they will usually choose life. Sorry, how do I want to set this up? Letting go of a large amount of money or letting go of their life, they will usually choose letting go of a large amount of money. So they’re not willing to die for it.

That’s a very, very interesting question—to look at what we’re actually willing to die for. Relatively few people are actually willing to die for their integrity, though many people say they will, and I think many people believe they will. [Reading from The Unfettered Mind, Ken substitutes integrity for right-mindedness]

I asked, “Is any man able to take his life lightly for the sake of integrity?”

The response was:

“There are many people in this world who cannot abide being insulted and who will quickly, along with their foes of the moment, throw away their lives in the fight. This is having integrity foremost in mind and taking one’s life lightly. It is dying for integrity rather than for wealth or life. Those who were cut down in the face of battle, their number can hardly be known. All were men who died for integrity. With this in mind, it can be said that all men value integrity over desire and life.” (And Takuan replies:)

“Dying because someone is vexed at being insulted may resemble integrity, but it’s not that at all. This is forgetting oneself in the anger of the moment. It is not integrity in the least. Its proper name is anger and nothing else. Before a person has even been insulted, he has already departed from integrity. And for this reason, he suffers insult. If one’s integrity is correct when he is associating with others, he will not be insulted. Being insulted by others, one should realize that he had lost his integrity prior to the offense.”

The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho, p. 48

So, we can understand from this that integrity doesn’t mean standing on principle. That’s a kind of rigidity. What does it mean? Well, I am going suggest that integrity has much more to do with balance in the whole, than it does with standing on any principle. Now, there are a lot of implications from that. The first, in order to practice integrity—or what everyone does with integrity, I’m not quite sure what the right verb is in English, or to have integrity, I suppose that’s the right verb—you have to be aware of the whole. You cannot be just aware of any one part.

Balance

Ken: So we have this notion of completeness, that I referred to in the three definitions coming in. It’s about knowing the whole. And this takes us back to ideas we started discussing at the beginning of the retreat: what is the whole? The whole is everything we experience. And you might ask, “Well what’s that?” That’s our life. From the perspective that we’re working, our life is exactly what we experience. So to have integrity, one essential part of this is you be aware of the whole. This is why I find it amusing or ironic to discuss integrity in the business environment, because in most business environments, there are many areas in which things are very, very intentionally ignored.

And it can be different things in different environments. But if you have the whole in one’s awareness or attention—and many of you have used this in your meditation and in your practice and in your lives—then you cannot help but become aware of where the imbalances are. Now interestingly enough, this is rarely an intellectual or conceptual process. The awareness of the whole is simultaneously the awareness of the imbalances. And here we find ourselves stepping into the five aspects of pristine awareness. Awareness of totality gives rise to awareness of balance, which is accompanied by the awareness of the particulars, and which creates—as much as you can talk about wisdom being created or awareness being created—of effective action.

So, one becomes aware of the imbalances. Now, where there are serious imbalances in one’s life, one’s experience, then one’s life isn’t sound, it isn’t healthy. So I come to this second thing, there’s a problem if there is serious chronic imbalances. And it is the willingness to address those imbalances, whatever they are, that is the essence of ethics. And many of you have heard me say this before. You come into a situation, you know what the right thing to do is, it costs you something. It may cost you some money, it may cost you a cherished possession, maybe it costs you a friend, maybe it costs you a job, but you do the right thing. How long do you think about it afterwards?

But what if you don’t do the right thing? Well, if you don’t do the right thing, you’ve ignored your awareness of the whole. You’ve ignored your awareness of the imbalance, and you’ve contributed the perpetuation of a dynamic which makes things unsound. I think it’s fair to say that in the scheme of things, the only value that is really important is balance. Now this becomes very interesting. It becomes interesting because it can never be attained or maintained, and yet to say, “Okay then I don’t care about it,” is a recipe for disaster. We become aware of imbalance, we address, that’s the direction of them present. We address the imbalance and things change. And now there’s a different imbalance. We address that and it just keeps going. So it’s very dynamic.

Let me talk about relationships for instance. A good relationship, a relationship that is alive, engaging and fulfilling is never in balance. But both parties are constantly addressing imbalances, so it moves. And in that movement there’s constant growth and variety and complexity and richness and so forth. On the other hand, when imbalances are not addressed, then they become fixed. And now the relationship becomes static with a dynamic that causes resentment on one side and disdain on the other and it breaks down.

So we started with integrity and I’m suggesting that the key to this is developing an acute sensitivity to imbalance. Now we have to ask the question, what stops us from being aware of imbalance? And I am going to suggest that imbalance arises whenever the mind is taken by something. That is, whenever the mind stops. Now, if you look at the techniques that we’ve been working with, they have a common feature. I’m going to pose a question here. In the various techniques that we mentioned at the beginning of this retreat, where do you end up placing the mind? Chuck.

Chuck: You don’t place it anywhere.

Ken: That’s right. Don’t place it anywhere. We say that:

If one puts his mind in the action of his opponent’s body, his mind will be taken by the action of his opponent’s body. If he puts his mind in his opponent’s sword, his mind will be taken by that sword. If he puts his mind in thoughts of his opponent’s intention to strike him, his mind will be taken by thoughts of his opponent’s intention to strike him. If he puts his mind in his own sword, his mind will be taken by his own sword. If he puts his mind in his own intention of not being struck, his mind will be taken by his intention of not being struck. If he puts his mind in the other man’s stance, his mind will be taken by the other man’s stance.

The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho, p. 29

What this means is that there is no place to put the mind. Well then, where does one put the mind?

If you don’t put it anywhere, it’ll go to all parts of your body and extend throughout its entirety. In this way, when it enters your hand, it will realize the hand’s function. When it enters your foot, it’ll realize the foot’s function. When it enters your eye, it’ll realize the eye’s function. If you should decide on one place and put the mind there, it’ll be taken by that place and lose its function. If one thinks he’ll be taken by his thoughts, because this is so, leave aside thoughts and discrimination, throw the mind away from the entire body. Do not stop it here and there. And when it does visit these various places, it’ll realize function and act without error.

p. 30

It sounds simple, it’s not easy. Among the problems, if you don’t place the mind anywhere, who are you? What are you? Of this, Bukkoku wrote: “Although it does not mindfully keep guard in the small mountain fields the scarecrow does not stand in vain.” When you place your mind nowhere, that is, you become empty, then you simply become an ongoing response to the pain and suffering of the world.

In the Indo-Tibetan tradition, this is usually expressed in terms of extraordinary similes. You become like the sun shining above the earth, warming the earth naturally with its heat. Without any thought, you become like the rain falling from the clouds, nourishing all who can draw in the moisture. And from these kinds of similes, you get the idea that you become something very, very big and very powerful and very wonderful, but that’s entirely misleading. In the Chinese tradition, you get such things as: the accomplished person leaves no traces whatsoever, disappears and is unknown. This is also true, but equally misleading.

The best thing is to have no idea about what it’s like at all, because any idea we have about what it’s like is inevitably wrong. So there’s no point. In the mind-training teachings, this is expressed as: have no hope for results. In terms of our practice, it becomes very simple. What am I experiencing right now? Open to the whole. Where are the imbalances? How do I address them? Moment to moment with no thought of gain or result, simply addressing what actually is, right now, and then, right now, and then, right now.

Now earlier in this retreat I talked about the practice of silence. I talked about it in the context of creating an environment in which we can all practice. And I suppose it’s an interesting instance of when you address an imbalance here, another imbalance shows up over here. So this may be a little bit like that arcade game of smashing the gophers with the mallet, but there’s a certain gopher that’s popping up which needs to be bopped. For these few days we live and practice together. So the whole here isn’t my individual body. That’s certainly part of it, but to say that my body or what’s important to me is the whole would be like one of my cells saying, “I’m the body.” Whenever a cell says that, it’s a good chance it’s cancerous. That’s how cancer functions.

Everything we do individually affects the environment. So the whole here is the whole environment that we have. Now I know that the structure of this retreat is a little different. Usually when we meet here, I teach twice a day. I’ve chosen for various reasons to teach once a day. Couple of those reasons, I’ve been accused occasionally in the past of giving too much material. So okay, that was one of the reasons. And the second reason is I wanted to create time—without cramping the schedule, which we’ve also tended to do in the past—for the movement work, which is intended to help us experience on a physical level, some of the themes that I’m talking about in terms of our meditation practice. I’ve certainly found that when we experience it on a physical level, it actually helps.

But one of the consequences of this difference in structure is there’s a certain looseness in the schedule; that’s also deliberate. You have more time. That’s very interesting. That looseness seems to have permeated or pervaded some of the other areas where looseness is maybe not so beneficial. People coming and going from the zendo during the meditation session. Now that may be fine for an individual, but it also introduces an imbalance in the whole. And the environment that we create for ourselves is actually everybody’s responsibility.

Various people have made comments to me, which I find really touching in one way. It’s also a little amusing in another. It’s as if I control the environment. I don’t, you do. So I hope that by bringing this to your attention, each of you can exercise responsibility in creating the environment which is supportive of practice. And that requires attention to the whole. It’s not about conforming necessarily. We build in, as much as possible, flexibility so that individual needs can be taken into account. Because in very rigid environments, the rigidity of the environment itself can set up imbalances within an individual, which makes it difficult if not impossible for them to practice. But on the other hand, without a certain cohesiveness or balance in the structure or the environment as a whole, then there’s a dissipation of energy, intention, whatsoever.

Just to give a very simple example—and in this scenario I don’t see a particular problem, but I just mention it because I think it illustrates the point easily—when we practice qigong together, strictly speaking, everybody has their own speed for practicing qigong; some people prefer it a little faster, some people prefer it a little slower. But what would be your experience if everybody practiced it at their own speed? We wouldn’t actually draw on the movement of energy that develops when we practice qigong together. And that’s why I’ve always asked one person to actually lead the qigong. So there’s a reference for everybody to follow because working that way creates an environment, creates a dynamic which benefits everybody. And what’s interesting in this is that if the person who’s leading the qigong, and I’ve been guilty of this myself, moves in a way which isn’t where everybody else is, that sets up another dynamic, which can actually felt quite palpably. So everybody including the person who is leading the Qi gong, has to have an awareness of the whole. And what I’m picking up here is that the awareness of the whole, or you can say, the integrity of the retreat, is not being practiced everywhere. So I’m going to put that before you in attention and see what you do with it. Okay, questions? Covered quite a lot this morning, so, John?

Student questions

John: Isn’t Takuan talking about integrity to the daimyo and how would you convert that over?

Ken: And much of his comments on integrity, he is, you’re quite right, the daimyo being the lord who hired samurai. So you get such passages as this:

Total loyalty is first in making your mind correct, disciplining your body, not splitting your thoughts concerning your lord by even a hairsbreadth, and in neither resenting or blaming others. Do not be neglectful of your daily work. At home, be filial—(etc., etc.) In this way, both lord and retainer, upper and lower will be good men, and when personal desire becomes thin and pride is abandoned in the provinces, the province’s wealth will be plenty, the people will be well ruled …

The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho, p. 41

Everybody will have happily ever after. This of course is being presented in the context of 16th, 17th century Japanese feudal society. And I know that some contemporary Zen teachers, Bob Aiken among them, have really taken Takuan to task on another essay in here called The Clear Sword. Bob Aiken disagrees with it very, very strongly. I think what we have to take from this is that, another theme that I’ve talked about in other contexts, what I’m trying to get across here, particularly in this talk, are some principles.

How those principles apply in our lives, that’s our concern. And what a lot of people do is that they don’t take the principles, or they’re unable to discern the principles, and so they take the applications and transpose them into situations in which … yeah, that’s what I was just going for.

Well, the story about Mulla Nasrudin and the pillow, of the bottle pillow, is one. [Pause, sound of flipping pages] In one area that I can see of this is, here’s one: in India, the Brahmins always wore white. They were the highest caste in the caste system. And as such, everything was arranged in the society so that they could be pure, which is what the white symbolized. And sadhus, if they wore anything, they wore scraps and rags, and they would usually dye them with the very cheapest dye that was available, which was usually saffron because it grows plentifully in India.

When Buddhism moved to other countries, there was a big debate, do we dye our robe saffron or do we dye our robes with the cheapest dye in our country? And in Tibet, the high lay lamas wore white, emulating the Brahmins. So this is where you have the application of, or in some cases you have just taking the application, and other people saying, “No, we should take the principle.” You follow? So there’s all kinds of this. And one of the things that I’ve done, to the extent that I’m able to in my teaching, is try to understand the principles and not just import the applications. But what is actually important about this? And that’s not always easy. Okay.

Student: I really appreciated this specific example you gave because it leads me right into the response I had to what you were saying about balance and integrity in general. With the example of the saffron, it reminds me in my own life; the constant struggle to think, “How hard is it to be good or to live up to an ideal?” The question of, who’s actually watching? There can be a principle and there can be a choice. From the point of view of sadhus, all of that internal material that comes with having to make that choice and to defend the choice. And when I look at what you were saying about balance, what tends to play out in my day-to-day busyness, is more of a vigilance that there’s either a flaw or I could do it better. There’s a flaw in me or the situation, an urge not to examine but to control.

Ken: Yes.

Student: And in your direction about just resting in the breath, there’s a difference between resting and constantly seeking balance.

Ken: Yes. Well, ideals are highly problematic in this practice, because the mind is taken by ideals, and then we start to ignore, because we’re occupied with maintaining an ideal. When we take the effort in our practice to address imbalance, then it doesn’t matter what level we’re practicing, we always have something to bring to the practice. So if one is at the very beginning of practice, like one’s first practice experience, and “Okay, this doesn’t feel good, let me try this.” And it becomes a case of exploring, not so much just to feel good, but finding the balance. And that’s a theme that Gail and I explored to some depth in the spring retreat.

And if one has had a lot of practice experience, then you usually are able to detect imbalance earlier, unless of course one has been practicing with fixed ideas, and then you actually become more and more insensitive to imbalance. So what I’ve been trying to convey and direct you in this retreat is—and in a certain sense, a continuation of what we were doing in the spring retreat—let the mind drop open. Open to what’s there and let the response arise. This involves trusting the non-conceptual mind. It involves listening, or sensing however we sense, what we actually experience. And it involves not holding onto any fixed ideas about what is right and what is wrong; and imbalances will arise.

From people’s comments, and my own sense, I’ve been picking up an imbalance that things are getting too loose. And so now I’m taking what steps I can to bring everyone’s attention to that imbalance, and we’ll see what results of that. Now if I come into the zendo and I see everybody sitting like this, I’ll know that something’s gone wrong, so we’ll have to do something else. It’s not easy to live in the clarity of intention, but it’s the only way to be awake and present in one’s life. Other questions?

Student: Two questions, one’s just a quick one about what is the best way for people who are doing walking meditation to enter and exit? And then the second question has to do with yesterday’s. Yesterday you talked about not taking things personally, and I wondered if maybe you could just elaborate on that a little bit about how that relates to the awareness of the whole.

Ken: Okay. What I’ve usually suggested to people for walking meditation is, it’s like Teresa of Avila. One day two of the other nuns in the convent came into the refectory, or dining area, and there was Teresa devouring two large cooked chickens. And the two nuns looked and said, “Sister Teresa, what about the sin of gluttony?” And she turned her gaze to them and glowered and said, “When I eat, I eat. When I pray, I pray.” So in order to maintain the integrity of the zendo, when you sit, sit; when you walk, walk. And by that I mean, you sit, and then you’re there for that half hour. We’re doing relatively short periods. Next half hour, you want to do walking meditation, you leave at the end of the Qi gong. That way we don’t have people coming and going. When you sit, sit; when you walk, you walk. And a word about walking meditation—some of you know how I like to boil things down into one instruction, like return to what’s already there and rest—that’s not terribly helpful for walking meditations. What I found, one way for walking meditation is, when you walk, feel the earth rolling beneath your feet.

Okay, now your second question is about—

Student: Taking things personally.

Ken: Taking things personally. Well, we do that, don’t we? What’s the problem there?

Student: One problem is it strengthens a sense of self.

Ken: Taking things personally or not—

Student: Taking things personally.

Ken: Yes, you’re right. But what’s the problem with practice? I sense there’s a problem with, how do you practice not taking things personally? Is that what your question is?

Student: A bit more about how not taking things personally can help dissolve the sense of self and—

Ken: Everybody’s in such a rush to dissolve the sense of self.

Student: It’s been around a long time.

Ken: Yeah, I know, but you’re really going to miss it.

Student: It’s true. [Laughter]

Ken: Let’s talk about the dynamics. When something happens, you need to take it personally. An application of many of the principles we’ve been discussing this morning: somebody comes up to you and says, “How could you do that? Do you know what’s going to happen now?” What tends to happen in this, right then, is that our awareness, which may have been here, goes whoosh, and now it’s only concerned with one thing. And if we answer or respond from that place, things usually get a little sticky. In terms of our practice, if you can sense that collapse, that’s great. But if you can’t sense that collapse, let’s hope you can sense the imbalance that comes when, suddenly you’ve become the center of the world. That’s what happens when we take things personally, we’re at the center of the world. I don’t know, but actually, most of us don’t like that. We can almost inherently feel the imbalance in that. You know what I mean? So before you say anything, open. And when you open, all kinds of other possibilities arise, 80-90% of them having nothing to do with you.

Now, part of you may feel disconcerted because you’re no longer the center of the world. On the other hand, one or more of those possibilities may be a more fruitful course of action. As I said earlier, don’t practice for a result. Don’t practice to dissolve the self. Don’t practice to get enlightened. Don’t do any of that because as soon as you do that, you’re not here anymore. Open to exactly what you’re experiencing right now, all of it; that’s the whole. Sense where it is not sound; that’s the imbalance. And address the imbalance; that’s the ethical component. In that way, you practice integrity. Okay.

Student: Thank you.

Ken: Whoa, we went over. Last question.

Student: So how to address the imbalance without grasping towards a result.

Ken: Yes, that’s exactly right. Address the imbalance without grasping for a result. Very good. [laughs].

Student: Helpful thoughts on that?

Ken: I thought you said it so well; I don’t have anything to add. But that’s exactly right. You have to trust the mind that doesn’t depend on anything. Pardon?

Student: Trust the non-conceptual mind?

Ken: Yeah, the mind that doesn’t depend on anything. Well, it should produce some interesting results, we’ll see.