By anchoring or focusing your mind in a different location, nothing can grow up where that stone or breath counting is taking place. However, when you move your focus or the stone, growth and mental activity i.e., wandering thoughts returns.

After meditating in Zen Hall our mind will grow up again a little bit at a time. Our mind is still wandering and worrying. This occurs because once we leave Zen Hall we stop practicing and our mind returns to generating random thoughts and worries. In the beginning, without a strategy to keep the mind focused like a simple technique like counting the numbers, our mind is grown over again by our habits and attachments.

Some people are bad natured and some are good natured. If a bad natured person, wants to become good natured then all they need to do is change one aspect of themselves, and that is their thoughts. By changing our thoughts and doing good deeds people can be changed and improved. However, by only changing our thoughts we are not also changing our ego. The reason for this is that if a bad thought arises we still have the possibility of doing a bad act again. It is just like the story about the stone, when the stone was moved away, the grass grew up again. This concept represents human nature.

Regardless of the method of practice you rely on you must understand that it is a technique not a solution. The breath counting technique and all others are merely techniques designed to help practitioners cultivate habits to calm, clear and better manage their mind and thought processes. We are cultivating new habits that calm the mind and help you manifest your true nature but, these techniques do nothing to break your ego. A truly calm mind can only be realized after we learn to manifest our true nature and break our self-attachments. So, how can we manifest our nature? Only after we break our ego and self-attachment. Only after we reach enlightenment can we break our ego. When we learn to break self-attachment or ego our mind will be free. This is very important.

Sitting meditation is very important. Every Zen practitioner, does sitting meditation for long periods of time, such as, for several hours or all day long. Even at night, they still do sitting meditation. Sitting meditation is a good habit that is cultivated for the rest of our lives. Once practitioners develop the habit of meditating it is hard to change.

When we are learning buddhism, we must recognize two things. First, we are normal people with wandering thoughts and second, we possess the Buddha Nature and can reach enlightenment. Our practice is based on these two points. Practice means to purify our mind by cleaning away wandering thoughts and old negative mental patterns. In your life, if you can manage to generate the right thoughts, you will live a happy life. However, understand that good thoughts may not be the right thoughts. There is a difference. Only the right thoughts can help you, not good thoughts.

By meditating we discipline our mind to hold the right thoughts all the time. Meditation practice should be performed in the morning and in the evening before we go to bed. Ideally, practice should be done twice per day. More importantly, our ultimate goal is to reach enlightenment by breaking the ego and self-attachment. Prior to reaching enlightenment thoughts follows an existing pattern. As a result, we try to break our ego, thoughts, habits and self-attachments. Only after we break these can our mind become clear and aware. Only then, can we create an improved path and establish a more stable and suitable root.

To change your life you must change your thoughts. When thought change, phenomenon changes too. Different thoughts produce different phenomenon. Forget our body. Forget everything around us. Every phenomenon will unite to become one. They cannot be separated. Thought is different, phenomenon is different. What is phenomenon? Your feeling, your body, and everything around you is what we call “phenomenon.” Forget your body, forget your ego. For most of the people, their master is not at home. Instead, they live in response to their stubbornness, and attachments, and follow their senses to every outside phenomenon. Thought change, your body will change. Thought change, the phenomenon will change. So, he tied the rope of the gate the the donkey's back. The rope connected the donkey and the dog. The rope is the habit created by the attachment and our sense.

If you try to generate the right thought, your mind must be flexible. Otherwise, you cannot generate the right thoughts. You must know what, when, and how to express things correctly. This is wisdom. If you want to say some words to touch people's mind, you must know what, how and why to say it. All our effort is just trying to make this work in our lives.