Ep. 17 - The All

Welcome to the Joseph Goldstein Insight Hour. This podcast is an expression of our shared interest in self-discovery. Join Joseph as he shares his deep, practical wisdom. In the Satyapatana discourse, the Buddha outlines in just a few short pages many different practices.

And in Burma, there are perhaps over 50 different ways of doing Vapasana based on these different practices in the Sutra. What's interesting is that by practicing any one of them, it leads to all the rest. And any one of them will lead to deepening insight and to ultimate freedom. But tonight I'd like to speak about one of these practices that could be considered in some way the bedrock foundation of all the others.

In this practice, the Buddha describes the building blocks of all our experience. And he does it in a way that is extremely down to earth, pragmatic, accessible, and verifiable by each one of us. We don't have to be fully enlightened in order to connect with these very basic teachings. All of the further elaborations of the Buddha's understanding and awakening have their basis in this particular teaching.

And this is the understanding of the six sense spheres. These are the teachings on what it's possible for us to know and how we know it. The six sense spheres are the basis for the arising of everything we experience, the arising of the entire world of our experience. And also for how this foundation unfolds in our lives.

The Buddha declared this, he described it without any ambiguity at all. And he gave it this one short discourse, quite a comprehensive name. He called it the all. Bikus, I will teach you the all.

And what bikus is the all? It is the eye in visible objects, the ear in sounds, the nose in sense, the tongue in tastes, the body in tangible sensations, the mind and mind objects. This bikus is the all. Now, if someone would say rejecting this all, I will proclaim some other all.

Someone may say this, but when questioned, no one would be able to make good their boast. What is the cause of that? Because bikus, it would be beyond their power to do so. So I love that.

It's the all. You know, we think our lives are so complicated. But all that's ever happening are six things. All that's ever happening is a sight, a sound, a smell, a taste, a sensation, or some object of mind.

Might be a thought, a emotion, a mental image. And it's amazing the stories we create of our lives and the complexity of how we think of ourselves, given that this is all that's really happening. So in many suitors, not only in the South of Tana Sutra, but in many of the discourses, the Buddha repeats this teaching in one way or another, these teaching on the sense spheres. The eye in visible objects, the ear in sound, the nose in sense, the tongue in taste, the body in tangible sensations, the mind and mind objects.

Each with their respective consciousness. The repetition of these over and over again, in, there were times when an injury would be given talks on the sense spheres and how consciousness arises based on the eye in the visible object and the ear in sound. It just felt so dry and repetitious. Now, because we go through each sense door in detail.

But what's interesting, when we're just listening to it or hearing it as a kind of Buddhist philosophy, it really is dry. You know, and we kind of tune out. What's interesting is that when we turn our attention to our direct experience of these sense spheres, we find that these very ordinary aspects of our daily experience contain subtle and profound truths that lead to awakening. We can see how sufferings created.

We can see how we can be free by attending to the eye invisible objects, the ear in sound and nose. I'm going to repeat them so that you get thoroughly bored and drive you to look directly at them. These six sense spheres are the basis for everything we know. Don't you find that extraordinary?

I mean, that everything we know comes down to these six things. It's the basis for the entire world of our experience. So ladies, I had out, I got a great Burmese master. He likened the six sense bases, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind, to six train stations from which the train of our lives traveled to different destinations.

I love that image. It's like each sense experience, right, at each of the sense doors, it's like a train station, and the trains of our lives are just leaving from those stations going to various places. They take us either to situations of suffering or realms of happiness or to freedom, to awakening. But all the trains leave from those six stations, so we should pay attention to what's going on and to see which trains we hop on and which trains we just let pass through.

So we're not sure how every wholesome and unwholesome action that we perform with their attendant karmic consequences. So each of our actions have tremendous power. It's not only the effect of the action in the moment. Every action we do with a wholesome or unwholesome is experienced in the moment, but it's also planting the seeds of karmic results.

So our actions have tremendous power, and they all originate every single one of our actions, whether wholesome or unwholesome, originates at one of these six sense doors. So as we think of this and reflect on it, it's important to remember to understand that the mind is considered simply the sixth sense, when it has its own various objects, like thoughts or emotions or images, memories. So the first part of the Buddha's instructions in the Satipatana Sutta with regard to these sixth sense spheres is very simple. That's what he says.

One knows the eye in visible forms, one knows the ear in sounds, the tongue in taste, knows and senses, body and sensations, mind and mind objects. Another one knows what's happening at each of these sense doors. But there's an important difference between how we ordinarily know these things, our commonplace understanding and what the Buddha is pointing to. In our usual mode of knowing the world, we habitually reference all of these different sense experiences back to a sense of self.

To someone behind them all to whom they're happening. People I'm seeing, I'm hearing, I'm thinking, I'm angry, I'm happy, I'm sad. Generally we're referencing all experience back to this idea, this concept of a self. So it's not difficult to see the changing nature of the different sense objects.

That part is pretty easy. We can see sounds come and go and sensations come and go and thoughts come and go. So that is fairly obvious when we begin to pay attention. It's more difficult to see and understand the selfless impersonal nature of both the object and the consciousness that's knowing them.

Over the years, my practice, I've done different experiments. I'm just trying to explore the direct experience of these sense fears and to begin to understand on deeper levels, they're selfless impersonal nature. So at one point I became quite interested in exploring the phenomenon of taste. It's the sense of taste.

I began by just paying attention to the tongue. That's the sense base of taste. I don't know how much attention you've paid to your tongues, but it's a very strange organ. It's this big muscle thing in the mouth.

It moves around the mouth, turning food over and seeking out different textures and different tastes. First becoming mindful of just the tongue, just watching what it was doing. It was so interesting, it really seemed to have a mind of its own. It was just doing its thing.

But of course with a little more attention, I began to see that actually behind every movement of the tongue was an intention. And one, we really can begin to see that. It's not moving by itself. It's moving because there's an intention in the mind behind it.

So just this is interesting to see. You know how this sense base, this sense organ of the tongue works, how it's conditioned in its activity by intention. But then I took the investigation a step further, kind of exploring the experience of taste consciousness. And what were the conditions that gave rise to knowing taste?

I think the tongue is just physical matter. It's not the tongue which knows the taste. The tongue is the sense base. But it's consciousness.

There's a knowing faculty which is actually knowing the taste. So the Buddha described, both with taste consciousness and all the other senses, what are the conditions necessary for taste consciousness to arise? And it's pretty simple. And when we hear it, it seems somewhat obvious.

For there to be taste consciousness, we need the working organ of the tongue. We need to have food in contact with it. There needs to be saliva, some moisture, and there needs to be attention. If these four conditions are there, taste consciousness will arise.

Take any one of these causes away. Take any one of these conditions away. And there's no longer any knowing of taste. So it's precisely when we look in this way and we just take these very ordinary experiences of our lives, but bring some attention to how they're happening.

It's this kind of investigation that helps illuminate the selfless nature of consciousness, which is often the last hideout of the sense of self. We can see the selfless nature more easily of different objects. As we see things come and go, we can begin to get at least in intuition, thoughts of not self and emotions of not self and sensations of not self because they don't less that long. Even as we see that, this less hideout or holdout of self is in the identification with consciousness.

So we create the sense of a knower. This investigation into the sense fears begins to illuminate the conditioned nature of consciousness. We can explore all of the sense fears in this way. I was doing it with the tongue and taste, because it seemed juicy.

It was really interesting. It's not something I had paid much attention to. We can do the same thing with the eye, visible objects in the consciousness, which is dependent the ear and sound in those in sense. It begins to give us a very direct, intuitive experience of the contingent nature of each moment of consciousness.

So it goes from being a philosophic description. We really see that consciousness arises dependent on certain conditions. You take the tongue away, there's no taste, there's no knowing. You take the food away, there's no knowing.

Same thing with the eye or the ear. You take the organ of the eye away, there's no seeing consciousness. Take the organ of the ear away, there's no hearing consciousness. The consciousness arises dependent on these conditions.

And so when we're seeing that, it really helps us to let go of the identification with consciousness as being I, as being mine, because we see its contingent nature. Don't underestimate the power of these kinds of reflective investigations. Some years ago I read a biography of Einstein, and it was very interesting that most of his breakthroughs came through thought experiment. He created thought experiments in the mind, and then came to breakthrough insights.

So that's in some way what we can do in our investigation of these sense stores and how consciousness arises dependent on different conditions. We begin to see that the whole sense of I and mine, I'm seeing, I'm hearing, I'm thinking. The I and mine is completely extra. You have certain conditions, seeing consciousness arises.

The conditions away, there's no consciousness there of seeing. It's very simple, it's very straightforward. So all of this is summed up very succinctly in one suta that's in the collection of the connected discourses, the Sanjutta Nikaya. Well, a monk came to Ananda, who was the Buddhist cousin and attendant.

This monk asked Ananda, is it possible to explain the nature of consciousness thus? For such a reason, this consciousness is not self. So the monk says Ananda, is there a way to explain the reason why consciousness cannot be considered self? So Ananda replied, it is possible friend.

Doesn't seeing consciousness arise in dependence on the I in forms? Yes, friend Ananda. If the cause and condition for the arising of seeing consciousness, the I in forms of what sees, would seeing consciousness be discerned? No friend Ananda.

In this way the blessed what declared for such a reason, this consciousness is not self. Are you with me, Ananda? Connect with this. It's very straightforward and very profound.

It's really pointing us directly to the experience of how consciousness arises at each of these senses which is just the ordinary experiences of our lives. This is what's happening all day long, there's moments of seeing, feelings of body, thinking, that's our life, that's all that's happening. And the Buddha's pointing out here that the very place that we most take to be self just arises dependent on conditions. And for that reason, the consciousness of these six senses basis cannot be considered so take time in your practice just to investigate in your own way, different ones of these sense basis and really see, do your own exploration, your own experimenting, really asking the question, what's necessary for seeing consciousness to arise?

What happens if one of those conditions is not there? So then we really start to internalize these teachings and that's when they get interesting. In the next part of the Buddha's instructions on the sense fears, it says not only to know the sense base, like I hear, knows tongue body mind and their respective objects, but to also know the fetter or the defilement that arises dependent on both of them, to know how the fetter arises, how it can be removed and how it can be prevented. So in our practice, we can watch for the arising of the fetters or the defilements at each of the sense doors.

We might begin to discover that one or more of these doors is our own particular favorite entranceway for the defilements to enter. And when we know that, when we, through our own attentiveness, when we say, oh, the fetters are arising a lot through the eye door or a lot through the ear door or the body door or the mind door, once we recognize what our own particular patterns are, then we can really set the watchmen of mindfulness at that door. Mm, Mara, I see you, I see you coming, right? And it brings about a tremendous quality of interest and attentiveness.

So this is not simply an academic exercise, because what the Buddha is talking about here, seeing how the fetters arise at the different sense doors and which sense doors, what he's really talking about, is how suffering arises in our lives and the end of suffering. So this is not, this is not academic. This is really the basis for understanding how to free ourselves from suffering in our lives. So this is made very vivid in the third discourse the Buddha gave after his enlightenment.

He was talking to a group of monks who recently had become monks and previously they had been fire-worshipping ascetics. So this is, you know, 2,600 years ago in India. So he drew on their own background for the metaphor of this discourse. I mean, it's quite a, it's quite a famous discourse.

It's called the fire sermon. But remember, he particularly used this metaphor because of the background of the people he was addressing. And also just imagine, you know, they had all been worshiping fire and the Buddha addresses their monks. All is burning.

And what monks is the all that is burning? The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye consciousness is burning, eye contact is burning. And whatever feeling arises with eye contact is conditioned, where the pleasant, painful, and neutral, that too, is burning. Burning with what?

Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of delusion. Burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair. And then he goes on the ears burning, the nose is burning, goes through, all of the six sense spheres. Burning thus, monks, the instructed noble disciple becomes disenchanted with the eye, with forms, with eye consciousness, with eye contact, with whatever feeling arises with eye contact.

Becomes disenchanted with the ear, with the mind. Becoming disenchanted one becomes dispassionate. And through dispassion one's mind is liberated. So it's a pretty strong teaching here.

The Buddha's going through every aspect of our ordinary experience, the six sense spheres, was what constitutes our lives. And he's saying the eye is burning, the ear is burning, the nose is burning, with the fireman's burning, with desire or lust, with hatred, with delusion. But most of us probably have not been worshipping fire in this life, and maybe not for quite a few lives. So it would be useful, I think, remember the Buddha used that metaphor because of the background of the people he was addressing.

I think it would be useful for us to investigate how we experience the defilements as they arise at the different sense stores. When the moment of seeing if there's desire or wanting or lust or aversion or dislike, how do we experience that? Do we experience it as a burning? Do we experience it as a contraction?

Do we experience it as a feeling of stress or unease? In the moment of these fetters arising at the sense stores, do we stop to consider or intuit the karmic consequence of those defilements? So we want to make these teachings our own and really see how it is that we experience the different defilements that arise at the eye, at the ear, at the nose, it's tongue, the body, in the mind. So we get a very direct experience of the suffering that's involved when these fetters or the filements are present.

If we can recognize not only what the fetter is, not only what the defilement is, whether it's desire or aversion, but also how we experience it energetically. We're really feeling into that experience, the wanting or the aversion or the dullness. If we can recognize the felt sense, the felt experience of these defilements at each of the sense stores, it helps us to let go of them more quickly because the impact of them becomes very tangible. We can let go of them more quickly because we are actually feeling the suffering of them.

So interesting how the fetters or the defilements deceive us. There's often a superficial pleasure to them which seduces us and we sometimes let that mask the underlying suffering of them. One description of anger, which I really love, it's like the Buddha nailed it. He said, anger with its poisoned source, poisoned root and honeyed tip, murderously sweet.

Do you have that feeling when you're angry? It's just something that's murderously sweet about it, but we miss or often overlook the poison source, the real suffering of that ill will because it's really a form of hatred. When we can open to the felt sense of the defilements at each of these sense stores, whether they're rising at the eye or the ear or the nose or the tongue or the body or the mind, when we connect with the felt experience of these defilements, then it's much easier to let them go. It's like holding on to a hot coal.

When we feel the burning, we don't need much prompting to drop it. We drop it automatically because we feel the suffering of it. We can bring these instructions of the Buddha into our own experience at the different sense stores. Just as a few examples, suppose you're sitting just very simply and you're feeling the breath.

You're feeling the sensations of the air passing the nostrils, or you're feeling the sensations of movement in the chest or the abdomen. Like to see what's going on there. Is there ever any experience of wanting or expectation? We're just feeling the breath, but what are we adding to it?

Is there some kind of defilement that's coming in at that particular sense store? Sometimes these colysis or defilements are very obvious, but sometimes they're very subtle. We think we're just going along and being mindful, but really there's some colysis or defilement in the mind. There might be a slight holding on to the breath or a slight fixation on the breath.

We're trying to push things along a little bit. It's what I call the in order to mind when we're with something in order for something else to happen. With the breath in order to get more peaceful or in order to get more calm or whatever our expectation is. So that's just a leaning into our experience with wanting, with desire.

It's a very ab- that was phrased, which says don't push the river. The breath is flowing along fine all by itself. It doesn't need any help from us. You can just sit back, relax, let the breathing process do its own thing.

Can we be with it without any interfering, without wanting, without expectation? It's the same thing that can happen with unpleasant experiences. The famines can sneak in in such often invisible ways, something I've mentioned at different times and talks. It was a powerful interview with Saita, with Bandita when I was practicing Burma.

It just highlighted and opened up a whole understanding of what my mind was doing, unbeknownst to me. So I'd been there for several months and everything was flowing along pretty well. The body was quite open and just a flow of energy throughout the body. But there was one, kind of, not in my neck.

And so I'm just feeling this flow of energy and it feels really nice and pleasant. So I go in to describe this to Saita. I say the body's really open, but there's this block, this energy block. And I thought I was just describing it objectively.

There's an energy flow that's open and then there's a block. It totally got on my case for calling it a block. Because just in that word contains desire and aversion, block. You need to open it.

Don't like it. Watch it in order for it to go away. So here's something that I thought I was just being mindful of in a totally objective way. And yet hidden within that was aversion and one thing that I hadn't even seen.

So it's really useful to keep checking the attitude in the mind with respect to what's arising at any of the same stores. There is a world of difference between a mind that wants something or expects something and the mind that has really settled back into the openness of no preference. And this is expressed beautifully in the teachings of the Thirds and Ancestor, the very famous verses that starts with, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. And attachment and aversion are both gone.

Everything is clear and undiscised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. So look to see in your own mind. Really pay attention to the difference when we're with experience at any of the sense stores, in case you forgot what they are, to the idea or the nose, the tongue, the body and the mind pay attention to your mind at any of these sense stores.

And notice the difference when there's a wanting, when there's a resistance, when there's an expectation and when there's no preference at all, when the mind has really settled back into that empty, open awareness. And we'll see for ourselves that as soon as we make the smallest distinction, heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. And so the words begin to come to life for us. This is not to imply that we stop making choices in our lives.

We do. We need to be in the world and we make choices. But rather, we have the experience at different times in our practice of what it's like when the mind has settled back into this openness, a mind not conditioned by wanting. And so we get a taste, we get maybe the glimpse of the third noble truth of the end of suffering.

Even if it's just for a few moments at a time, we can actually feel what that's like. So in addition to investigating all this in our sitting practice, we also want to keep this sense of exploration throughout the day, and really looking and exploring the different sense spheres, just in the various activities as we go through the day. And there's at least six things that are ever happening. What are the six?

Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling something in the body, some mind object, that's all that's happening all day long. So just in the course of the day, pay attention to the good instructions, to the fetters which arise at each of the sense doors. Begin to see which ones are most predominant for you. Where do they arise most predominantly?

It might be sounds that we find disturbing, that we don't like. We just find ourselves getting irritated at different sounds. Okay, that's the fetter arising at the eardor. There might be sites that stimulate wanting or desire or aversion that's a fetter arising at the eardor.

It might be the aroma of food, as you pass through the food line. There's a wanting, if there's a desire that's a fetter at the snows door. Where it might be the seduction of something arising in the mind door, and we get lost in a thought, and we get lost in a fantasy that carries the mind away. Ones that are particularly seductive in the mind door, which we miss a lot, are the great seduction of Dharma thought.

Have you had any Dharma thought fantasies? We just have some interesting insight or thought, and then 15 minutes later we're still kind of exploring at all, and it's not a mindful reflection which would be fine. We're lost in it, creating all kinds of Dharma talks and we're going to tell our friends when we leave the retreat. But it's so seductive it's about the Dharma, and so we're not really seeing.

The fact that we're simply lost. There are a few short teachings in which the Buddha highlights the problem and also offers the solution. And these are some of my favorites that they're so short and so pointed. So here the Buddha said, forms, sounds, tastes, odors, tactile objects, and all mental objects, the sixth sense objects.

This is the terrible bait of the world with which the world is infatuated. But when one has transcended this, the mindful disciple of the Buddha shines radiantly, like the sun, having transcended Mars around. That phrase is the terrible bait of the world. I love that.

It's just like all these different sense objects are passing by. It's like they're hooks with an enticing bait, and we're like fish just biting on the hooks, the sight or the sound they were thought. This is the terrible bait of the world with which the world is infatuated, in which we are infatuated. This is all life.

These six things that we keep going after in one way or another. But when one has transcended this, the mindful disciple of the Buddha shines radiantly, like the sun, having transcended Mars around. So then the question is, well, how do we transcend this? This pattern is so deeply conditioned in all of us, biting on the bait.

So the Buddha goes on to say, how to transcend it. And this is a very powerful and pointed teachings. He said, bhikkhus, whatever is not yours, abandon it. Whatever is not yours, abandon it.

When you have abandoned it, that will lead to your welfare and happiness. Suppose bhikkhus people were to carry off the grass, the sticks, the branches and foliage in this forest grove. What to burn them, what to do with them as they wish. Would you think people are carrying us off or burning us or doing with us as they wish?

No venerable sir, because that is neither our self nor what belongs to ourself. So too bhikkhus. And then he talks about the aggregates, but could also be referring to the sixth sensefias. These are not self, they do not belong to us.

When you have abandoned what does not belong to you, that will lead to your welfare and happiness. So what is not ours? What is abandoning or putting down? What is not ours?

What is not ours is everything. Nothing belongs to us, nothing is self, nothing is I or mine. If we put down what does not belong to us, it is for our welfare, our happiness. So on my recent retreat at home, I was sitting for almost three months, and I remembered this teaching, abandon that which doesn't belong to you.

And I was intrigued by it. Well, how can I put that into practice? How do we abandon what doesn't belong to us? And I remembered another verse from the down of Pada, which pointed in a certain direction, where it says, let go of the past, which seems obvious enough.

You know, I don't get lost in thoughts of the past, let go of the future. That seems obvious enough. Then it says let go of the present and cross over to the fur of the shore. So let him go of the present.

That was very intriguing because so often, you know, they live in the present and be in the present. And here's the Buddha saying let go of the present. So I just started playing with that. And what does that mean?

Let go of the present. It's like unfix-seeding the mind from the present moment. You know, instead of having all our attention glomming on to the present, it's the opposite move with whatever the present moment is, any of the sixth sense object, or a sound or a a sight or a thought, a sensation. Let go of the present.

So it's this move. It's the dropping back from fixation on the present moment experience. That dropping back in the image that came to mind. I've never done this.

I've just seen pictures of scuba divers, you know, when they go into the water, they drop off backwards. They let go of the side of the boat and then just fall backwards into the water. And that was the sense of what letting go of the present means. Just let go backwards into the open emptiness of mind.

So what I was doing this is I was just playing an experiment. I was swearing, what's this like at each of the sense stores? And dropping back into that place of non-fix, I have just open this, open emptiness. That's knowing everything but is not reaching for anything.

So the mind just settled back into the open emptiness and the couple of words came to mind to describe it just quite spontaneously. Started calling it channel zero. Oh, this is channel zero. It's not channel wanting.

It's not channel aversion. It's not channel anything. It's channel zero. It really described this experience of the empty open nature of awareness that's free of wanting, free of clinging.

Now it's that dropping back. And so during the day, I would just, you know, that phrase would come to mind channel zero and it became like, you know, on a computer on a desktop, you have shortcuts to various programs, channel zero became a shortcut phrase. I would just say channel zero and the mind would drop back into that space. However, it would be on channel zero.

And then I began to notice that it didn't take very long before my mind started picking up things, again picking up things that didn't belong to me, like a thought, a sensation, a reaction, a judgment, a plan, a member, whatever it was, the mind would pick it up again. So then the phrase came to mind, don't shoplift. What's shoplifting? Picking up what doesn't belong to us.

And so this became my little mantra, channel zero, don't shoplift. And it was just a reminder, you know, of this place in the mind, really this place of freedom. So abandon that which doesn't belong to you, let go of the present, drop into channel zero, don't shoplift. And then kind of returning to the Buddhist words from the Satipanasuta, which I mentioned last week and also to many of you in interviews, the phrase, the teaching, which was so helpful where he says, be mindful, there is a body just to the extent necessary for clear knowing and continuous mindfulness.

So just that phrase, using that phrase, walking about, sitting, just using that phrase, where is a body? It was amazing. That phrase comes to mind and I found the mind dropping back to channel zero because it was a way of unfixating from the present. You know, because so often in our practice we're over-efforting to be present and that creates its own tension.

All that's necessary is mindfulness to the extent necessary for clear knowing. Just mindfulness is a body. That's all. We drop back into that space of awareness.

So as you probably know, we don't find channel zero and shoplifting in the polysootis. But they can still be helpful reminders to us of a different and freer way to relate to the all. Remember, the all are just those six sense fears which describes every aspect of our experience. These six sense fears, remember what they are?

The high-invisible objects, the urine, salmon, osmo, tongue and taste, body, and tangible sensations of mind and mind objects. These six sense fears are exactly the place where we either get caught up in suffering or remain free. So it's these very ordinary aspects of our experience that actually are the doorway to a liberation. It's right there.

It's right in these places. Now, at the eye, at the ear, at the nose, it's a tongue at the body, at the mind. And this is why the Buddha gave such importance to understanding these six sense fears and why he just repeated it over and over again in so many of the discourses. I'd really encourage you to take these teachings as the basis of your own investigation, really see for yourself in your own experience what all this means.

Because that's how the transformation takes place. It's not from kind of hearing it and either agreeing or disagreeing or any of that. It's just these words are pointing to what we can do in our own practice. And then we see for ourselves.

We'll just close with a short poem by Adrienne Rich. I don't know, we should probably wasn't writing this specifically about what we've been talking about, but it really describes it very aptly. She wrote, if the mind were clear and if the mind were simple, you could take this mind, this particular state and say, this is how I would live if I could choose, this is what is possible. I love that.

If the mind were clear and if the mind were simple, this is what I would choose. This is what is possible. This is really what I'll track this is about. Thanks everybody for listening to Joseph Goldstein's Insight Hour.

We appreciate your support and ask you to continue that support by going to mindpodnetwork.com slash Joseph. And either use the donate button or bookmark the Amazon portal through which MindPod and Joseph will receive a small percentage of whatever you purchase from Amazon. Thank you.