Sheng yen says practitioners of Chinese should learn all kinds of skills and attain excellence in many disciplines. These things are the light of the mind and show us the breadth of our mental scope. They may also be the means whereby we can help others who had never mistake them for the unlimited wisdom. If these skills and attainments in the skills and attainments there is nothing reliable, if you're attached to them, then you're into allegiance has made you stupid. Even short of awakening, the progress that we make, in practice makes us more available to other people. It grows our own natural compassion. It gets the self out of the way. The self is out of the way we can see and we can hear, see and hear what's needed, respond, notice and respond. The poem goes on. Consciousness is an untamed horse, the mind is an unruly monkey. If the Spirit is overactive, the body will sicken and die. And Sheng yen says, If you recognize the unruly monkey, then perhaps you can set about finding out what sort of wandering thoughts possess you. If you examine them, you will find that rather than being of unending variety and interest, they are in fact few limited in scope, repetitious and boring. I think in the last four days, all of us have had our noses rubbed in this. I always think I would hate to have to read a transcript of my mind. says maybe you don't know how many wandering thoughts you have or what their nature is. They're like the sheep around here. Of course, being good practitioners in the middle of a retreat, you haven't really looked at them, but you probably saw them before the retreat started. To find out how many sheep you have, how many black ones and how many white, you need to be like the wealth Welsh Shepherd, who rounds up his sheep with skilled dogs and corrals them in a pen. Then when they're all collected, you can count and examine them, give them names, even whether you like whether you are like an untamed horse, an unruly monkey, or a bleeding sheep, the same principle applies, be like the shepherd who rounds them all up, then you can see what the problem is. The problem is how to tame the monkeys. The first method of practice is to pan them up, you can do them this by holding them in one place, you can catch the thoughts as they come up, and prevent them from wandering on. A device for doing this is the method of counting the breath. There are many variations of this method, depending on the unruliness of the monkey's. If the mind is quite concentrated, then all you need to do is be aware of the breathing. You don't need to count at all. With a less concentrated mind. Counting is useful since watching and the breathing is insufficient to prevent wandering thoughts. And he goes on to mention other strange breath practices. Counting the breaths in reverse order. odd number is even numbers that I've heard of counting backwards from 100. Think we're all Nobody here is needing to do that. The monkey isn't quite that untamed. Says the method of koan. It's in Chinese it's going on. Though method the koan method is based on a similar principle, it enables us to reach a point where we do not even have to concentrate. To begin with using the colon is just like mechanically counting the breath. One repeats the colon over and over like a mantra. As the mind becomes more focused, you can use the colon in a more precise way. In Chinese This is called Sun, T apostrophe S A N. It means investigation, looking into the mind to perceive its nature. When the mind is focused, you get a certain flavor from using the koan, and derive power from it. It is like eating ice cream on a summer day, it gets more and more attractive. And as you immerse yourself more and more into it, wandering thoughts a lesson. They may even disappear completely. However, this does not mean you're enlightened. It simply means that thinking in a random way has come to an end. The koan ties the monkey to the tree, you go deeper and deeper into it until you reach the point of enlightenment. What is that? No explanation will help you. You must experience that inside yourself. Although the koan method resembles counting the breath at the beginning, it will take you all the way this is unlikely through counting the breath alone. Even so, through counting the breath one can enter Samadhi, which is a valuable aspect of training.