Wiki Tag: Neutral Point of Direct

Discerning Power Takes Practice To Develop

In the beginning, for students sometimes it’s very hard because at first they can’t get any information there. They don’t know what…Alright. Don’t give up. If you give up from here that means you fall back to your experience of what you like or don’t like. You need to put that aside. To go from this end. This end is from knowing the moment. You have to have enough attention to hold until it turns clear. See, when you hold your attention can be there enough to let things speak for themselves—that means things start to get clear. The clear comes from the center. The center is a cross. The cross is a junction that separates things. That means to see the difference. If you see the difference that means seeing the separation: the outlines, the lines [points to all the body lines, etc.] the features are a separation, yes? How do the features come? Because they have different controls—there is a separation. A curve, why do you call it a curve—because there’s a separation and a curve. How you see it, then you know the difference from here.

But that needs concentration. How high your concentration is and how well can you keep your concentration to connect one center with another center—how many centers can you connect? How many centers can you stretch? The more centers you can stretch the more past, present future inside this one present. Understand? I see the center here—this past, present, future is one present. How well can you directly connect? The further I connect, I see more. Like I said before when just you drive a car and only see the car in front of you and emergency light comes on, if they hit the brake, you have a sudden reaction. But if you see ahead another 3 or 4 cars ahead of you, if that car makes a brake, you’ll already be ready here because you see more centers. So you are prepared, you can prepare, you can be ready—then there’s no more sudden. So close so sudden. If I can see longer—then I’m waiting for you to come. This is how your attention stretches and spreads. This is what we call discerning power. In Zen, this is what you call attention, awareness, being mindful. This is what we keep on looking at.

Back to training this concept physically:
Go up and down feeling the joints, stretching the joints, feeling from point-to-point: Feet pressure to crown pressure–two ends of the pressure—should be the same in order to be connected. Or else they can’t be connected. This is the philosophy and concepts that connect the training approach to the exercises.

Ex: Horizontal Plane – For more senior students, it’s not only the horizontal quality. Horizontal quality has what? [Side-to-side Forward backward] Side-to-side, yes, but it holds the horizontal. You hold the plane. The action is not only this way…actually, you hold the plane—that means try to see. The movement is this but the energy is up and down. Because it’s the grinding energy: that means I’m holding this horizontal plane. This holding of the horizontal press. If I press, he can go down; if I don’t hold, you can come in.

“The more centers you can stretch the more past, present future inside this one present.”
~GM Sam Chin

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Understanding Three Dimensions & Six Direction Energy

There’s a plane you need to hold. This is the energy of holding. The training of the grinding/wiping is left right forward backward but you wipe this plane. There’s a frontal plane and a sagittal plane. All planes have grinding. The misunderstanding is used by other southern martial arts, like Praying Mantis. Other martial arts talk about grinding energy. But how can you do it? Grinding energy means it’s not press to grind. You must have 2 energies to grind and it must be equal energy. You must have enough energy to go down and to go forward—to hold. But then to be right there must be 3 energies: forward backward up and down energy (already has left right). All direction energy. If you press too hard you can’t grind; if too light, you can’t grind. For the beginning student it’s okay just to get the movement; but we train to get structure, then relaxation (to see the yin yang), then the energy. Point of Contact—then, with this directional energy, on this point of contact you call this a balance point: constant changing, constant maintaining, that’s the balance point. (minimum 2 direction energy: down and up).
That means the balance point doesn’t change; you’re using 2-direction or 4-direction energy to maintain NOT to change. At least remember the concepts and the theory first! Remember the theory of HOW to get into this quality, right. You need to have this theory to understand what to look for in order to get the right energy. Because as you go higher, you need to put in the qualities.

Two energies at the same time (down and up) is from rotation. Keep on rotating: rotation, rotation! That’s why I call it skimming—but skimming on the point. Try to rotate as centered as possible on the point. The more centered on the point, then the splitting of the directional energy will be more clear! See, this rotation, if you push forward too much, you lose the direction. You hold and pivot/rotate on the point. With that energy first, then directional movement comes from there. Understand what I said? See now: That’s why we say circle-with-a center first: one that goes down here to rotation, equally—then you can move. 90 has 2 first. 90 is the quality. A lot of people can’t understand the skim—and go just forward or just backward—it’s not the right action and it’s not really precise. See, it needs to be 90° here! That means equal—rotating equally here, I can have one energy forward and one back, see? Like layers: first 90°, then 2 equal. Another layer, I’m going left and right, but to do that I’m doing this down up 90 first: center with yin, center with yang. That’s why I say you never leave the center! 

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Listen To Yourself First To Increase The Power of Concentration

Q: I have a question about how do we use the sound—certainly to try not to hear the words…
Sifu: You just listen: just pay attention to your self. If I put my attention on my sense, I listen. But at the same time I do listen to other sounds—someone right now is chopping in kitchen or we hear background noise. We are the receiver. But I believe that what we train, as Sifu Jiru trained us just now, we try not to get that involved. We don’t try to listen to that—we try to focus more—to get that Samadhi to train what is happening there, to see if we can hold there or not, and draw back to there.

Actually there’s nothing wrong with listening, we just want to increase the power of concentration more first. We want to increase here first so that under different conditions is there any thought coming or not to disturb us now? This is why part comes to “purification”, but normally martial arts people don’t like to listen to purification.

“Why do you want to purify? I’m a martial man—why do I want to be purify.”

Actually, it’s to clean the lens—to let the mind not to be disturbed: then you are there—concentration is there.

Here is what we train. Sifu Jiru talks about willpower—to not let thoughts pull you away. If your attention is not strong—poof, pulled away already. Pulled away by a lot of things—hunger, greed, what we don’t know (ignorance). These are the “Five Hindrances”, along with sleepiness and restlessness. Restless is like your mind running.

Q: something our students struggle with and I struggle with too, is balancing trying to ‘do’ something, trying to ‘do’ a move, and also doing it with sensitivity.

From Obvious To Refined/Subtle

Sifu: Sensitivity is there. If you train to be balanced, you must have sensitivity. If the sensitivity isn’t there, how do you know you are balancing? Yes? It’s just a matter of you are balancing, you are adjusting—your attention is there to meet. If my attention can’t arrive there, I can’t meet there. Sometimes because if we train too light, too loose—it’s hard to draw the mind there, so sometimes we do it a bit heavier. More obvious. That’s why the training has external, they call it ming jin 明勁,—that means it’s external and more obvious, before you can train very subtle.

Actually, that’s why I call you students to train big first. If you can’t do it big to draw a perfect circle, I call you to do it big, medium, small. From heavy, obvious, subtle. Obvious to help to draw attention there; or else attention is very hard.

Q: For me, the biggest barrier in partner training is performance anxiety. If the person I’m working with is ‘oh, you’re doing it wrong.’ I feel “oh, I’m no good.” How to change this?

Sifu: Yes, that can be very tough.

Sometime you can tell your partner and say, ‘let’s just follow the instruction carefully.’ Just do what we’re instructed to do—don’t do more than that, can we do that or not?” Following instructions is not easy. We try to put into how an instruction should be. Sometimes we say, “Do what you’re being told; don’t try to teach your partner now. You are training yourself now. You are learning both partners as an opportunity to do it: you aren’t doing on him or him on you: you are working on yourself. “ Can you follow instructions? If you can’t follow instructions, why is that?

Then what is missing that you can’t follow instructions?

Is it because you have your own view? Once you have your own view you’re thinking ‘Oh, I like this or I don’t like that.’ The problem is it’s so hard to see because it’s your own viewpoint. No one is blocking you—it’s because your view blocks you. Your view is yourself—all your ideas: how can it be wrong? So the hardest part is to change your view.

If you don’t listen carefully to instructions, your instructors have no chance to bring you out of your viewpoint. Everything you think is inside your view. I like to give the example of the student in Poland who was wearing a shirt that said ‘think outside of the box.’ And I said, Is that right? All the students said ‘yes.’ I said, ‘do you know what is thinking? Thinking is the box!” [laughter]

Be careful when you listen to some lectures; you tell me to do this and that, but you can’t get out of the box. So, no thinking. I have a quote: if you know, you don’t think; if you think, it means you don’t know. You’re stuck in the box.

“You can never think outside the box.  Thinking IS the box!”
~GM Sam Chin

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Holding The Touch Point of Contact To Connect

A lot of time instruction must be carefully designed to pinpoint to the path.

So this morning, what Master Jiru talked about connects to this. That’s why yesterday we talked about touch point of contact. Connect must have a balance. The balanced connect that means the connect has the idea of holding—the holding of the point—any idea of connect means the idea of holding to that thing.

If you don’t have the ability of holding there, you can’t connect. To hold there that means you must have a balance point to hold: too much you go through, too little you can’t hold slip off. This little simple thing here is the training. If you can’t initiate this right, the point of contact is wrong already.

Now you guys touch you know: too much pressure, too little—what is that? That’s the balance point in order to get it right. Then that balance point can you connect all the way down to his feet. If only at the touch here (at finger/wrist forearm)—that’s not enough. You must be able to connect to his body, to his hip, all the way down to his feet. Can you connect every joint that he moves or not? Then you can separate left back, front back everything so you can move—you can move your partner.

Q: Like a dancer?

Sifu: Yes, if I trained I could be a very good dancer [laughter]. I can be a teacher to teach but I can’t dance. Yes, just be a puppet master.

If you can do this, then you are the puppet master—connecting. The information that we talk about is like a spider web: it connects. And all the connections have crosses and junctions. All the connect comes down to the neutral center: where the spider sits.

So every junction, every spider web has tension line, you see. The tension line is the balance line. Later on, on every line, the connection is a tension line (like a musician plays a guitar string)—it attunes and you receive information. Also, like a kite—like a puppet master: you play the string here—too tight, too slack, you can’t move.

You must know how to move so that the tension light must be balanced. That’s why in every action you try to get the tension line first. On the grab here—there’s a pull. When I pull, I stretch the line—I get the slack away. If it’s too lose, then draw the slack and let the line come. If the opponent tries to relax to be soft, you can just whip (do the wave—like a towel). You try to maintain the line so that information is direct. This is all on the CONNECTING TOUCH.

This is all the principles that apply to EVERY MOVE! On here, then you look for what is open, what is close; what is absorb what is project—the unification of the self. The first thing we talk about is gravity—because we live in this world with gravity, and this body with a mass. Every object has a mass. The mass and the gravity—its relationship—that forms the axis line: that forms the balance line. The balance line means it’s 90 to the ground. This means it’s a center point to direct. 90 is the center. When you explain things, we say ‘what makes it 90’? What makes it a center?

Master Class on Sun. morning –August 4, 2019 (continuing the discussion)

Reference: Seeing the difference from the center

From the first cross you know the difference. From the second cross you know more because of the 2 crosses and the difference, that you match. And all the knowing and the changing must come from here, because the cross gives you the difference. I want you to see the difference from there. Difference from the center—from the cross: the difference of like pressure, open close (because left right have different pressure of open close have different pressure of open close).

Because when cross at the center, we start to pivot because there’s open-close and pressure. Or else the equal will be flat. Equal there’s no pivoting. Understand. So that kind of feeling is the direct feeling. If you can’t feel from there, as I’ve said before, it means your attention isn’t strong enough to hold. Then you will fall back to your memory, to your past experience. Then you aren’t in the moment any more. You’re using the past to know the present. That is what we don’t want to use. We want to have direct.

So, with all this above, then how are we going to get this information? 

• The truth is changing. If we believe that, according to philosophy, then that means that to be together, with this, then we need to go along at the same speed.
• That means we need to change with change together, in order to be together (‘with’), or you’ll be behind or go too fast.
• To change to be together that means on this point you must be equal: always have the balance to be equal.
• If there’s no balance point you can’t be together. So, the balance point here has the quality of no resisting and no backing off, then you can be together. Here’s how we come up with the balance point—otherwise you can’t be together.
• If you can’t have the quality of ‘together,’ then you can’t connect.
• If you can’t connect, then you’re not ‘there.’ You fall off, or you project too far. So how can you do this connecting first?

That’s why many people who don’t have the philosophy, or they just train but they don’t know this part, then they don’t know how to approach. That’s why yesterday when we talked about the connect and balance, that is on point of contact. So, every moment is from point of contact—where and how you get information and you act back on that point. If you can’t connect you can’t join, you cannot be with–so then you are not there. If not there, how are you going to get information? That means you can’t flow, you can’t maintain present. So you will fall back, drop back. You drop back and you have no other choice any more—you go back to your past experience, ‘Oh I feel this’, or go back to knowledge: what you have read, studied, gone through your life—what you have read, what you have experienced. All from accumulation. That’s why we call that ‘knowledge.’ But that’s the past experience. So, you want to know this moment, but you can’t. you’re judging form past experience

“Before everything, you are constantly adjusting, constantly balancing to maintain.”
~GM Sam Chin

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But if you can FLOW and be together, then you’re not judging: and the conditions REVEAL—because you are together. The conditions show you. This is part of ‘the Nature Speaks Itself.’ Every moment, every second what you come into contact with the nature is speaking, displaying, is showing, but we can’t see. Often we don’t have that kind of concentration: to hang on to flow along until we get so stable. That’s why we call it STILLNESS: it’s so stable, then the clarity comes.

RECOGNIZING ENOUGH, KNOWING ENOUGH
So stable is that maintaining, so stable that with any change, we know. Change is action. Not to change—to maintain—that’s balance. To keep on balancing means keep on changing. That’s how you know from there. Because your ‘changing to balance’ is the action. Is it too much, too little?—you just need enough, just right enough to balance: too much or too little you can’t balance. That’s why we ask ‘what’s too much, too little—what reference do we base it on?’ We base it on that balance: to maintain balance all the time. If it’s too much, you go off and can’t maintain—too little also. Just RIGHT to be balanced. And that balancing keeps on changing. Under the main base the characteristic of nature is change. That’s why I keep on reminding students telling you guys to maintain: change: because maintain is change; you need to change to maintaining. Stable—many can’t be ‘stable.’ You must ‘change with the change’ to be stable because the nature’s characteristic is change. Here is where the tricky part is.

RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, RIGHT ACTION
Before everything, you are constantly adjusting, constantly balancing to maintain, then from here you get able to connect. Able to connect means you get the right information—then the right understanding. Then with right understanding you can act with right [appropriate] action. Then you do it an act with what is most appropriate. Not form you thinking about but about what condition displays—this is what is called doing the right understanding, the right action. But normally we cannot. Sometimes we fall off. That’s why we have to follow the rules, the precepts: follow this, follow that.

Q: if you have an opponent/partner…. we want to stay neutral…is that the point?

Sifu: Yes, from staying neutral you know. You ‘know’ from neutral. Not only attack—everything you come in contact with. I’m taking this cup: there’s a balance there: too much or not enough I can’t pick it up. Too much, maybe water spills out. Yes? How I hold it, there’s also a balance. I don’t want to use too much force to hold: too little I can’t pick it up. ANYTHING you touch there’s something there. To get the right information, to get the right information. We say there’s a circle with center. You want to touch with 90 degrees. Is it round? is it square? You touch—you know it’s round. Or you know a different angle—you KNOW. You are there to balance it, with that angle you know things, you see. That’s the neutral approach of direct.

There’s a story I was talking about with this 90° touching, with Sonjue, she’s an acupuncturist, and she talks about how at the beginning of training, she had some difficulty reading the pulse, but after understanding the 90° she can listen more clearly—because 90° to the center is the most direct. You understand?

EVERYTHING YOU APPROACH, WITH TOUCH, MUST BE DIRECT—90° TO THE CENTER
Anything that goes 90° to the center is the most direct information you can get. So, everything you approach, when you touch, IS DIRECT. Then from 90° there you can move to 45 or go to 90° to move 20° or to however many degrees you want, but you must HOLD the 90° first to move.

So, now we find out that our attention is not ‘pure’ you can say: not stable. And why not? Because we have accumulation of too many other things that keep on opening up to disturb us. But for me, because I train martial arts, I can make it so simple in a way that there’s nothing to train. Because I don’t want you to think you’re ‘creating’ something—because it’s already there. What’s there to train? You only try to train to GET YOUR ATTENTION there, clear. If your attention isn’t clear it’s because there’s rubbish blocking that’s all. Only if you have nothing to disturb you then you can stay there and get clear.

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Q: But if attention is there, you still have to know what to DO about it…

Yes! That’s why we give you instructions to hold over there. Why can’t you hold? Rubbish comes, thought comes. So, you look at it and let it drop off. That’s why we talk about ‘letting go’—and come back. You must have a reference to come back to reflect on here, or else you won’t know. You have a reference to reflects what comes over there but that moment you are also training the present moment—because you are trying to see what’s happening at that moment that draws you off: that draws you off, come back. If you can’t see what’s happening—it draws and you’re gone.

Q: What about the path of self-unification? Is it important to touch the point to be aware, but then we ourselves is not balanced, or if I pay attention to point but I myself am not balance?

Sifu: Then you yourself are not balanced. That’s why you must have self-unification first. Unify yourself first. This is simply to say there’s a point of contact where you stand, you sit… every point of contact starts with you. Point of Contact needs 3 things: object, subject and conscious. If conscious or anything isn’t there, there’s no contact. If eyes don’t have Subject, Object and Consciousness, the eyes won’t see. The point of contact isn’t’ there. The touch you won’t feel if conscious not there. If you’re not conscious you won’t even feel that your shirt is touching you. Your shirt is always touching you but something you don’t feel—why not?

Recognizing the Neutral Point of Direct:
The Path of Wisdom

GM Sam F.S. Chin Viewpoint Talks
Transcript 2019 MABA RETREAT
Mid-America Buddhist Association (MABA)
Augusta, Missouri (July 27-Aug.3, 2019)
Friday morning, August 2nd

Introduction

For me, the most important message is that we talk about wisdom. What is wisdom? It comes down to having people get the right understanding. People will ask, what do you mean by right understanding? Where right understanding comes to is what kind of reference do you use? So we try to teach the reference of nature, from what is happening. Then, your understanding comes from where? It should come from the moment of recognizing through what is happening—through harmonizing, through balancing—that kind of understanding. You can have that to see things, then what you see and know will help you to make the right move. It all comes down to having the right move. How do you make a right move? Yes, it’s about coordination, timing, spacing—based on what?

“That’s why present is only FLOW—the balance point. Follow is not correct; follow is one step behind. ~GM Sam Chin”

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What is nature? It all comes down to what is knowing and how you know—knowing is the most important point. From knowing you have everything. Depends on what you want. (If you want to get rich, if I want to be peace of mind—then you know what to do—because of knowing. Right? The problem is—what is right knowing? Where is the right information and what do you mean by right information? This is where the skill is.
This is what is nature—what is happening in this world: with ALL things happening. Why do things happen that way? You can ask this question to everyone. Everyone will say their own perspective: ‘oh this is how I approach’, this is my viewpoint.

What quality and conditions are needed to get access to the right viewpoint? THIS is what I’m trying to teach. What is the approach, what is the condition, what references do you use to answer this? The problem is—how many people even know how to ask this question? (Next time it will be part of what students need to write. At student level 9, students will need to write the answers to these questions.)

Everything is based on what is your reference or what philosophy do you use—and what is the reference of that. What other conditions do you need? How do you apply your philosophy into your practice? Other martial arts may not understand the conditions; what conditions you need. What kind of qualities do you need to approach? They may say ‘you need to do something directly’, but they don’t talk about how or teach about it.

CONNECTING AT THE POINT OF CONTACT – CONDITIONS, FUNCTIONS, APPROACH

That’s why I talk about contact-ing: the moment of Point of Contact. If they aren’t taught about it, they don’t even know how to connect at point of contact—and how I’m going to connect that. That’s why yesterday’s talk emphasized about Point of Contact, the moment of contact and how to recognize it. If you don’t even connect, then how can you be in the present moment? You cannot? You can’t even have some requirements to be in the moment. How can you be in the moment if you can’t even connect? The subject is not there for you to study. There are requirements and conditions to be in the moment. Now this morning Jiru talked about things in this way, too.

(Comment: what’s so obviously different about the way you teach is everything comes down to real feedback, no hypothetical. You talk about the structure…)

Sifu: Because I talk about conditions, functions, approach—the concrete observables. What kind of concept do you need? Some other martial arts do have similar philosophies, but when it comes to action, the philosophy and action doesn’t connect. Why don’t the philosophy and action not connect? When you come to training the words have to connect to the philosophy. The words of instruction. Nature itself is like this: you must merge…All these kinds of references typically are not being shown or taught. Even open and close. I’m closing but you don’t know when to start to close. You can see in the teacher: if they learn from books yes they learn something, but how to put it into USE often is not there.

Me and Ven. Jiru are slightly different. We are practitioners: we want to see how it works, how it functions—then it comes down to there’s no more words. How can we get that across? When action/re-action, you must have the right information first: the right information to understand what is the present condition. What are the tools to get the right information? If you don’t have the tools to get this, then you don’t know how to start, how to approach the situation. If you can’t understand the situation, how will you start to get the right information? What tools.

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BE IN THE PRESENT WITH THAT MOMENT

That’s why it comes down to being present in the moment. Be in the present with that moment. It’s so tough, they don’t even know what that means. What kind of moment is that? What we try to understand is this first. The moment of things; anything by itself is called its nature.

Tao talks about change is the characteristic of nature—that as a base: change. So no matter what you say, you know you must be changing along with it. “Change with the change’ to know the truth. If you cannot do this. This means you must flow not follow. Flow means TO BE WITH. To flow that means the balance point. That’s how it starts, you see? Here is the right information that I can get. But to get that information what kind of quality do you need to be there order to flow? Only knowing, you cannot. That’s why the mind must be sharp. That’s why we need to learn Samadhi concentration. Or else you see you touch, and in one split second, you touch—and you’re gone already. You don’t have the penetration power—that means you don’t have the ability to access the information from directly. You’d touch it and if you relate it to past memory to feel, this is the steps that 99% of people do and call it the ‘present.’ But in Tao and Zen this is not the present.

Q: So the reference of yin and yang is just to observe the change?

Sifu: Well, yin and yang is just one thing. When Buddhism talks about cause and effect and yin and yang it’s 2 different things. Yin and yang is not cause and effect. But this yin and yang is the complementary—it’s the function. HOW WE WORK WITH THAT to balance that function; to harmonize the moment with that yin yang—it’s a balance. How the 2 things function in order to be in harmony and in balance. So if you can work with harmony and function and yin and yang and CAUSE, then the cause will be good. You will know what’s happening because of cause and effect: if you can balance things on a cause, then it’s a good cause: so you are doing the right (appropriate) thing only.

So everyone has a different way—this is a lot of the missing part of others’ philosophy when they come to training. (Some say, ‘oh yes, I’ve learned Tao philosophy—but when it comes to training, it’s a different thing). If the instructions and their concepts aren’t connecting, they can’t understand the conditions and quality of the approach and what you need in order to give the right instruction. If the instruction is wrong, you’re pointing your student’s mind in a different direction. That’s why I’m very careful with the words to tell students how to work on things. I don’t tell them to ‘think’ or to ‘imagine’; I tell them very directly. So in order to have things work, you see, to be with the moment—you must be THERE first. Simple to see if you’re not there: imagining is not “there’, thinking is not ‘there. You can understand some of the effort of the action—but if you’re thinking you aren’t there—so how are you going to work with this moment if you’re not there?

What is the condition, quality, characteristic of “BEING WITH” first? That’s why tai chi talks about we can’t resist, we can’t back off. If you resist it means you aren’t there. You only feel this, but you have an idea that comes in to block it out already—or you run away. That’s why present is only FLOW—the balance point. Follow is not correct: follow is one step behind.

RIGHT UNDERSTANDING IS THE VIEWPOINT

Just now we were talking about the message of how we would approach an article to explain our approach, that kind of thing—you see—and what is the most important thing to get across, to share with people with ZXD—and what’s unique about how we do it. To me, what’s important to get across is the Right Understanding. Right Understanding is the viewpoint. What do I mean by that—when everyone has their own understanding.

Q: You can say it, but need to feel it. I understand what you’re saying, except when I try to do it.

Sifu; what kind of philosophy do you use for the right understanding. Everyone uses a different philosophy for something. When WE train we use the philosophy of Tao and Zen, and even Confucius. Right, to get the right understanding from there—based on the nature itself. To get this right understanding from there. Just understand the way things are. That’s one part. Then how can you access… that’s why we are teaching this. OK, I want to get this right understanding—HOW?

This information—receive this information. First, to receive the information you must be THERE. TO be there you must be able to connect [student: I feel pre-kindergarten—if someone doesn’t have a body tied up…they’ll never get it]. No, first of all, some of this information you MUST understand theoretically first. And consider: do you accept this one first? If you’re not accepting, then how are you going to approach this. We say ‘you must be convinced’ first. Then, if you’re convinced then you can go on to ask HOW …But first, does it make sense to you or note?

Based on the philosophy of Zen and Tao the characteristic is based on change—the nature is always changing. And Zen is the same: impermanent. Do you agree or not? If not, your mindset doesn’t change. Then you have to explain…what is change. Everything changes—sometimes it changes too slowly that we can’t see, because it’s so solid…do you understand how solid it is—it’s still not one. There’s not ONE solid entity. Do you agree or not, you see? Because under Buddhism and the 3 characteristics of Existence: of Impermanent, Suffering, and No self—the most important thing first.1 No one solid entity. No ONE thing: They all come and go—it’s all by conditions that form; it’s the condition that must be there. If the condition isn’t there, it won’t combine—it will separate. You need certain conditions (to separate or absorb) and Tao talks about the way borns one, one that borns two, two that borns three—and everything from there (the tai chi symbol that separates: it’s two). But this kind of philosophy, first you have to see: do we agree or not? If you don’t agree, then you can’t go further anymore. Only if you want to see if it works this way or not (consider the computer world: 1 or 0—like yin yang: the hardware separation is only 1 or 0). So, okay, science can prove that yin yang can do so many things…