Yogi: I give myself a task to see if it is possible to feel, see and hear at the same time. Is it?

Sayadaw: Of course.

Yogi: I can’t.

Sayadaw: At first, you will experience the switching; it’s fine because the awareness is not so fast at the start of the retreat.

Yogi: The training keeps me awake.

Sayadaw: That’s the most important thing – that the mind has a task. If it’s working, then it’ll be awake; if it no longer has a task, it gets dull.

Meditation is mind work; so, the mind has to have something to work on.

What can the mind do? It can pay attention or think about what it is doing. If we know how to think, it will help us to observe. 

Whatever I say is just to help us to think or it may lead to other things that are helpful to us, like now you’ve found a task that is interesting.

Sometimes we hear other people’s experiences and we think that it’s interesting – we have something similar and we go and investigate. That keeps us awake and aware.