Dear Thay, dear Sangha. Many people of us have mainly to think a lot during working in companies or if they are self-employed. So the main point is that we have to think eight or nine hours a day, with making stops too, but the main point is if we are thinking, I can speak for myself, I often lose my breathing, I often lose my insight, I often lose looking deeply, because I feel that I have to succeed something, to succeed from thinking, to produce a concept, to produce a product, to learn about a product, and to be successful in my results.

And this is a shame and a sort of notion anyway. And what I want to know or I like to have your experience if you write poems or write books or if you have to plan and organize the trip to Vietnam in 2007. You have a lot of thinking to do and responsibility that you succeed in talking with the government, with the Vietnamese government, and so you could feel the same like me at work.

So my question is, how do you handle that you can stay in deep looking while you are thinking, that you are aware of the ultimate reality if you are thinking? You talk about the different truth and which truth can we touch while we are thinking? So it is very important for me to share with you your experience. Thank you.

In the Soto tradition, non-thinking is the practice. Just sit and refrain from thinking. Is it easy to do? Is it possible? Thinking is something very productive. But thinking is grounded on our feelings, on our perceptions. So thinking is a kind of fruit.

If you have a lot of worries, of fear, of anguish, that is also a very fertile ground for thinking. And this kind of thinking is completely useless, non-productive, harming. That is why as meditators, we should learn the art of non-thinking, stopping the thinking, and learn just to be. Otherwise you are only your thought.

I remember one day I saw a cartoon on an American newspaper with Monsieur le philosophe Descartes in his formal dress. And he was looking at a horse and he made the declaration, "I think, therefore I am." And the horse asked, "You are what?" And I can see that the answer is we are our thinking, we are our thought.

And we are much more than our thought. We are also our feelings, our perceptions, our wisdom, our happiness, our love. We are more than our thinking and we should not allow the thinking to take over. And the thinking, if they are not useful, if they are harmful, then it is better not to have them. But the thinking just knock the door and come in. They do not need any invitation.

When you practice walking meditation, you can touch reality, you can touch life with all the wonders without any need of thinking at all. When I say, "I have arrived," that is not a thought, that is a practice. I want to stop completely the thinking, the running into the future in order to really enjoy the step I make. And you have one in-breath in order to do the stopping.

You breathe in and you make a step. And you have five or six seconds in order to stop the machine, because the machine is turning. And you allow the machine to carry you like a tornado. That is the case of many of us. We do not live our life, we allow ourselves to be sucked away. And in the machine there is a lot of thinking.

So you have five seconds in order to stop. And for practitioners like me, five seconds is largely enough to stop the machine and to really be established in the here and the now. And if you are a beginner, you might allow you to have ten seconds or twenty seconds until you can completely stop the machine. You can allow one in-breath and you can allow one out-breath with one step. One nerve impulse, one action potential needs one millisecond. And you have five thousand milliseconds in order to stop it. And if you want, you can have more than five thousand, you have ten thousand or twenty thousand milliseconds to stop it. And for experienced practitioner, with one in-breath or one step, you can stop the machine. And you release completely your body and your mind.

And you experience the bliss, the joy, the happiness of stopping. And during that time of stopping, your body is capable of healing itself. Your mind also has the capacity of healing itself. And who prevent you to continue to have a second step, a second breath? And instruments are there for you to heal yourself: your steps, your breath.

That is śamatha. Śamatha means stopping. Śamatha, the first meaning of śamatha, which is the first component of meditation, is stopping, to help to stop the formation. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya, there is a definition of śamatha: the stopping of the formation, the mental formation.

The mental formation is maybe anger, maybe the eagerness to go finding for something. And that kind of force, that kind of energy always pushing you, even during your sleep. And that is why mindfulness should be able to recognize that this habit energy of pushing is there. And having recognized it, we smile to it. And with our practice, we are capable of helping it to stop.

And I hope that our friends, the scientists, are capable of doing this, because they do have also a very strong habit energy pushing them ahead. And many of them are not capable of living peacefully in the here and the now. So sitting is not to think, just to enjoy sitting. And with your body, with your breath, with the Dharma, you can just enjoy deeply the sitting. You are completely alive, very alive while sitting.

While walking, while lying down, while washing the dishes, while brushing your teeth, you can practice stopping. Śamatha is stopping. And I hope that healers, therapists, psychotherapists, medical doctors would learn to apply that technique to themselves and help the patients, help the people who come to them to practice. Because they know that without that kind of relaxation of stopping, it is very difficult to heal. We cannot count on medicine alone. And therefore, practicing non-thinking, enjoying just being is very important. That is the foundation of the practice. When you write a poem, you should not think about the poem. When you give a Dharma talk, you should not think about the Dharma talk. You allow the Dharma talk to manifest. You allow the poem to manifest.

When you water your vegetable garden with joy, in the mood of non-thinking, just enjoy the watering, just enjoy the vegetable. But the poem is being born and grown in you. It's not thinking about the poem that you have a poem. A poem does not need thinking in order to be born.

And if you live deeply and happily the moment when you water your lettuce and tomatoes, then sometimes there may be an urge for you to sit down and deliver the poem like a baby. And I write poems like that. I do not have to think about the poem to write. A poem is like a baby. And sometimes the baby wants to manifest. And you know, you feel that, you sit down and you use the pen.

In fact, I have never written a poem on the computer. All my poems have been written by hand, except one. That day I did not have a pen, so I used the typewriter. And I know that as an artist, you might like to follow that practice. You allow the art, the beauty in you to be born, to grow, and sometimes later on, it will tell you that it is time for the manifestation of the artwork.

And I think this practicing of stopping, especially stopping the thinking and the eagerness to run, is extremely important for our healing, for our creation, for our happiness. And if our friends can bring that practice home, that would be—the retreat would already be a big success. You may give me my bag.