A master in Zen is not simply a teacher.

In all the religions there are

only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you dont know,
and they ask you to believe because there is no way to bring those
experiences into objective reality. Neither has the teacher known
them - he has believed them; he transfers his belief to somebody
else. Zen is not a believers world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for
those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason,
mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries.
But it brings a tremendous transformation. Hence, let me say that
while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in
metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authentic alchemy: it
changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be
understood, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with
your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is
true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has
been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what the Buddha called
"eighty-four thousand doors" open.


Bruno, you are not grokking the essence of the instructions, which puzzles me for
two reasons:

1) You are one of the smartest guys I know.
2) I gave you the instructions myself, in person, three times. (Images of Kenneth
pulling out his white and thinning hair.) :-)

Here's how to get enlightened:

Sit. your. butt. down. and. NOTE.

Forget about the tips and tricks. Forget about the centerpoint. Forget about the 3
characteristics. Forget about whether you think you are concentrated or not.
Forget about what you think you know about meditation.

Every time you discover the "problem" with your meditation, note your reaction to
that thought. Note the thought itself. Note once per second, aloud, for the
duration of your sitting. Note catastrophizing, dramatizing, histrionics, self-pity,
evaluation thoughts, impatience, despair, self-loathing, joy, triumph, scenario
spinning, longing, desire for deliverance, irritation, doubt, bliss, absorption,
distraction, fear, anger, rage, disgust, euphoria, hope, contentment, anticipation,
softness, hardness, coolness, warmth, pulsing, burning, itching, throbbing,
stinging, tingling, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral,
petulance, futility, dullness, fatigue; what have I left out? Of course you would like
some kind of a shortcut or a tip. There is no such thing. There is only the mastery
of this simple technique. By the time you master this technique, you will be an
arahat. If you distract yourself from this technique by trying to tweak the recipe,
the warrantee is void.


You are right that it would be counterproductive to lapse into a state where you
are disconnected from the noting, so if noting at once per second causes this you
should definitely slow down. Also, if forcing yourself to note at an uncomfortable
pace is adding unnecessary anxiety, it's not a good idea. So, what I would do is
find a comfortable pace that can be sustained while noting aloud. It has to be fast
enough to use up the available bandwidth of the mind, while not being so fast
that it causes you to miss the phenomena being noted. For me, this is about
once per second, but it may vary from one individual to the next and the
appropriate rate may be stage and state specific. I want to be careful not to buy
into my own dogma here, so let's experiment with it some more and see what we
can learn. Just keep in mind the criteria. The noting is:

1) aloud
2) fast enough to engage all of the available processing power of the mind,
leaving nothing left over for wandering/speculating
3) slow enough to be sustained while breathing normally
4) slow enough to clearly notice each object being noted