Contemplation is without a center and is therefore not concentration, although it has all the intensity of concentration.

Clarity is thus not only obscured by the images and forms, thoughts and judgments that flow through the mind, but also by our emotional reaction to them.

Paying off the interest is overcoming the restlessness

It is something like the shapes of jugs, plates, cups, and teapots—they are all ways that clay can show itself. While we are intent upon the forms and the uses that these forms can be put to, we do not see the clay; but if we see the clay, we are no longer taken in by the forms. Then, later still, we see into the nature of clay itself.

Why do we need to meditate to come to awakening if we are already awakened? There is a simple experiment that can help point you in the right direction so that you can see for yourself why it is necessary: observe the second hand of a watch for two minutes, all the while remaining aware that you are observing. Only after you have tried this should

so on. In short, they become lost in a stream of thoughts. But it is also important to notice that at some point before these thoughts begin to flow the mind is clear.

Concentration means “with a center” (“con,” meaning with, plus center);

A cup has an inside and an outside, and these are quite different from each other. If one pours tea, for example, it obviously goes inside and not outside the cup. Inside and outside are two and distinct, but the cup is one. In a similar way, “I” and the “world” are two and quite different, yet there is one life. “I” could be looked upon as the

The truth of suffering resulting from our craving, and the possibility of transcending suffering by letting go of what distorts our relation to others and to the world, is the basis and motivation for spiritual effort.