If it's a concentration practice you want, to get stronger concentration, just chant to yourself "Coca-Cola." Just sit and chant yourself Coca-Cola for a whole hour. Some of you are going to get stronger concentration that way than you are getting by any method we teach. That is true. Walking meditation - do it with your eyes closed. Sure, do it with your eyes closed. You are going to get stronger concentration. Yet you will have no idea how many ants you are going to kill, you will have no idea where you are going and you will have no idea if you will fall down, but you are going to get stronger concentration. You can always tie a rope or something so you won't fall.
There are ways of practice where a person gets stronger concentration but we are looking for a practice that is balancing concentration and mindfulness, bringing us wisdom. To actually know reality, to actually know you are walking and to know your footsteps. We would like to be able to do that. Now if by chance you are actually able to do it without the mental noting, talk to us about it in the interviews, because you may be able to do it or you may just be kidding yourself. There are many people kidding themselves, thinking they can drop the mental noting and get stronger concentration and mindfulness. But the noting technique is simply a method to get us closer to reality, to get us closer. It is also a training method.
Now, how many of you can type with all 10 fingers, raise your hand - only two of you. I can type with all 10 fingers. You can also think about this if any of you can play the piano or an instrument of the same type. When you are typing with 10 fingers you have to learn how to use the little finger. For some reason, and I actually know the reason, they put the letter "a" under the little left pinkie and because most people are right handed, this is probably the worst finger that they can use, the left pinkie, it is the lousiest one and generally we don't use it very much. So this is the lousiest one and they put the most important letter, the letter "a", the one that is used more than any other letter, they put it under the pinkie.
There is a reason for that and the reason is that if you typed too fast on the original typewriters they would break. So the inventors purposely put the letter "a" under the pinkie to slow down the typewriter. Interesting.
At any rate, when you are learning to type or even to play the piano, it is very difficult to get that pinkie to hit the letter "a" and then hit the other letters above and below it, you actually have to think about it consciously. It is slow, it is awkward, and there are a lot of mistakes. But when a person practices enough they just type, they don't think "pinkie, left hand, a". They don't think about it any more, they just automatically do it. It is just automatic. A very good typist makes very few mistakes.
The mental noting is very similar to learning how to type the letter "a" with the left pinkie. It slows things down a little; we have an extra thought in the mind compared to the actual experience. It is a technique to help us get to the experience. Make it very, very light if you can. Sometimes you can just go "uhm, ahm, ehm". Three different sounds. It shortens the amount of thoughts you have and that is fine, too, just "uhm, ahm, ehm". That can sometimes help people who are having resistance to the mental noting in the walking. But it would also be good if you talked to us about it in the interviews if you really have a lot of trouble with it.