I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. I've been I'm trying to decide how to space things out here, given that we have, including tonight, we have three sessions. And then the practice period starts in November, and there are only three classes in November because Thanksgiving would have been the fourth and I didn't have a class on Thanksgiving so it's only three.

[01:08]

So what I've decided to do is tonight to go over the basic concept of the five ranks, of Tozan's five ranks and then finish the Hokyo Zamae this month. And then for those three classes of the practice period in November, I want to go over in more depth using Hakuin's commentary, the five ranks. because he relates it to many things, which makes it more full. And also, that could be a separate study for people who are not in the class here, but who join the class for the practice period.

[02:18]

So, I think that will work out very neatly. So tonight we've come to the place where Dozan starts to talk about the five rags. And he says, He talks about it this way, in a very obscure way. In the illumination hexagram, apparent and real interact. Piled up, they become three. Their permutations make five, like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the five-pronged vajra.

[03:21]

This is Zen esotericism. And if you just look at this on its face, you have no idea what he's talking about. So... I gave you this diagram with the circles. This is from Charles Luck's book, which was printed many years ago, and he had maybe the first translation of the Jewa Mira Samadhi. Since then there have been others, and so this diagram comes at this place where

[04:27]

he's talking about the Five Ranks. And the Five Ranks was a systematized diagram which illustrates stages of practice but also not necessarily stages in a progression sometimes stages in a progression sometimes not stages in a progression but Tozan expressed it in different ways so sometimes you read one version and it's a little different than another version and there are different ways that Dogen expressed it and the five ranks in Tozan's time Zen masters used various diagrams as a teaching method to talk about what practice is and what enlightenment is and

[05:54]

Yangshan, Chinese, had a system of a hundred circles. Sometimes you would put a character in the circle which stands for something. An example is a circle with a cow or an ox, not a cow but an ox. And you know the ten ox-herding pictures are from that time as well. So the ox-herding pictures are kind of variant on Isan's Hundred Circles. One of the circles is characters for an ox eating patient's grass. Do you know what patient's grass is? What? It gives you patience.

[07:03]

It gives you patience. That's right. Not constipations, but it gives you patience. Right. Patience grasp may be difficult. Yes, it may be difficulty. Right. So And Tozan used these five circles as illustrations of various stages of practice. So sometimes there's one way of looking at them as this stage leading to this stage leading to this stage. But there's also a way of looking at them as each stage is a standpoint from which to look at from which to view or illustrate what is enlightenment. So if we look at the diagram, on the left we have the trigrams and hexagrams of the I Ching.

[08:15]

When the Chinese, well let me just say this, With the sixth ancestor Huineng, Buddhism in China became Chinese. For the first few hundred years, Buddhism was imported from India to China and the language was different, the writing was different, the Indians used more of a and the Chinese used these characters and to translate the scriptures from one to the other was very difficult. So the Chinese, or the Indian teachers who came to China used Taoist terms to teach

[09:23]

Buddhism. The Tao was the closest that the Chinese had to Buddhist concepts. There was no Taoism at that time. Taoism was formulated later, but there was the Tao, there was Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu and their philosophies and the Taoist hermits practiced this Taoist philosophy and it was the closest thing to Buddhism. So the Indian teachers used Taoist terms and concepts and it wasn't until Kumarajiva came to China and translated translated the sutras into Chinese in the way that we know them now.

[10:28]

Kumarajiva was his great intellect and the Chinese provided him with a translating bureau of hundreds of scholars working on these translations of the Buddhist scriptures. And this was a major project in China at the time. And there was a Japanese scholar who came to UC who said that the translating committee had the same kind of focus as the space project that we have today. So at some point they switched over from using the Taoist terms to using Buddhist terms.

[11:37]

The Chinese understood Buddhism, began to understand Buddhism from the Indian point of view. And then when the sixth ancestor, Huineng, appeared. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor was called the only sutra that came from China because all the sutras came from India and to have the sutra come from China was the first, was to have Buddhism come from the heart of China rather than the import.

[12:37]

It was intrinsic understanding. So it took several hundred years for that to happen. Of course, Bodhidharma was a condition for that happening. My point here is that the Chinese started using Chinese literature in order to illustrate Buddhism. Just like sometimes we use Christian terms or psychological terms, which is popular in America. to illustrate certain concepts in Buddhism. So the I Ching here is one of the five books, five books which are the basic texts of Chinese culture and very ancient and so Tozan used these trigrams and hexagrams to illustrate his circles but I don't want to talk about those.

[13:50]

It's not necessary. It's just nice to see that illustrated here. The second line is the circles. You see those five circles. The real containing the seeming is the top one. The seeming containing the real is the second one. Resurgence of the real is the third. The seeming uniting with the real is fourth. and integration of the real and the seeming. And if we skip the next line and go over to the end, it says, 1. Host position. 2. Guest position. 3. Host coming to light. 4. Guest returning to host. And 5. Host in host. So host is the real.

[14:54]

Guest is the seeming. He uses these terms real and seeming. There are various terms you can use. This is what Charles liked, the terms he used. For the real, you could use the absolute, the infinite, the one, the dark, sameness, emptiness. And for the seeming you can use relative, finite, many, the world, light, and difference. The one and the many. So the host is the absolute position and the guest is the relative position. In Japanese terminology it's ri and ji.

[16:08]

Ri is the host or the universal form, the relative, the particular. So these circles are a combination of the host and the guest, sometimes called the prince and the minister. The prince is like the host and the minister is the guest. So each one of these is a combination of the absolute and the relative and the purpose here is to show the relationship between sameness and difference.

[17:12]

as I explained before, the horizontal and the vertical. There are many ways to explain it or express it. So the real containing the seeming and the seeming containing the real are a pair. It's like the real containing the seeming means that darkness prevails and the light is hidden. Now these terms light and dark, like in the

[18:19]

equality, everything being equal, no differentiation. And light means everything revealed in its particular form. So when night settles in, unless you have some light, you don't see anything, right? Things are there, but you don't see them. They're all equal. And in the light, things are revealed. When you turn on the light, you see everything in its individuality, phenomena. dark and light are really not two things, but they appear as two things. So in order to talk about these two aspects or the two sides of this coin, we divide them into dark and light in order to talk about it, in order to explain something, which is always just the finger pointing to the moon.

[19:51]

So don't get caught by the explanations but try to understand the meaning behind the words. So the first one is the real containing The second one is the seeming containing the real, where the light is dominant and all the phenomena are revealed, but the dark is hidden within it. So in the first circle, the light is hidden within the dark, and in the second circle, the dark is hidden within the light. And in the third circle, the host coming to light is called the resurgence of the real.

[21:00]

I want to say one thing first. The five ranks in this particular illustration start with enlightenment. There are five positions of enlightened understanding. So these first two circles are like form is emptiness and emptiness is form. You can see it from that point of view and they balance each other. The resurgence of the real is where reality, the balance of light and dark are within the revealed is seen the absolute.

[22:10]

The fourth circle, where one is totally in the world, working in the world, without any idea of absolute. The fifth one, integration of the real and the seeming, is where one has no idea of practice or This is where there's total integration. No Zen. No helping anyone. Just everything that one does is correct. No idea about anything. So when we come down

[23:20]

to this next illustration. This is underneath these five circles. Number two, he says, the triple basis is transformable into five positions, like five flavored herbs and having the shape of the thunderbolt. You see that? I would like you to look on the diagram because what I'm trying to do is explain the diagram. And if you're not looking at the diagram, pretty hard to explain it to you. So, the text says, in the illumination hexagram, apparent and real interact. Piled up, they become three. the permutations make five, like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the five-pronged Vajra.

[24:21]

So this diagram is the Vajra, in the shape of the Vajra. The five-flavored herb is the Hysot plant, which seems to have five different flavors. I've never eaten the Hysot plant, but Apparently if you chew it, five different flavors seem to appear. So it's a kind of metaphor for five poetic illustrations of these five positions. So triple basis, what is the triple basis? Triple basis is on the left, A, B, and C. You see A, B, and C? Who doesn't see A, B, and C?

[25:31]

Okay. So, A is the two pairs, the real containing the seeming and the seeming containing the real. B is the resurgence of the real. It's not a pair. C is the seeming within the real and the integration of the real and the seeming. That's a pair. Yes. Would it be possible, would you be willing to try to illustrate these in very concrete ways of either your experience or the experience of ... Yeah, I will but first I want to just ... everybody understand the diagram because what I want to do is to understand what's being said here. That's first. First I want you to understand what's being said here so that when you ... next time that you chant the sutra

[26:36]

I know what that means, I think. It means this, right? So I just wanted to say what the sutra is saying here. And definitely this will all be illustrated and expressed, but first the nuts and bolts. So this is the triple basis. The triple basis is A, B and C. Does everybody see that? Okay. And the permutations make five. One, host. Two, guest. Three, host coming to light. Four, guest returning to host. Five, host and host. Okay. The five positions on a triple basis. forms a vajra, or like the five-flavored hysop plant.

[27:43]

So one way to express these five positions is as a kind of progression of practice. The real containing the seeming is the first one, right? The host position, which is called the shift. Shift meaning to turn from a usual way of observing our life to seeing things through the eyes of dharma means shifting from our dualistic understanding to understanding of reality or non-duality. shift one starts to study actually one this particular illustration is more like not beginning from but beginning from enlightenment the reason why it's beginning from enlightenment is because

[30:12]

What leads one to this shift is the enlightened mind. What brings us to practice is enlightenment. We don't know that we have enlightenment. There's a difference between enlightenment and realization. Enlightenment is our basic nature. but we don't realize our basic nature, we don't realize our enlightenment. So enlightenment, we say Buddha seeks Buddha. We don't necessarily always know why we come to practice or why we turn from our usual to wanting to practice.

[31:19]

But this shift is the beginning of our enlightened nature seeking itself. So we say enlightenment, practice begins with enlightenment. Not just seeking enlightenment, But it is seeking enlightenment. It's seeking what we already have. It's like our ego brings us to enlightenment. Ego also can be enlightened mind. But ego brings us to practice because we want something.

[32:22]

We want something for ourself. But when we actually engage in practice, then at some point we let go of wanting something. When we let go of wanting something, we can have some realization. Realization is then possible. But what we don't always realize is that we bring our ego through the door. And then we lay it down at the foot of the altar. That's called bowing.

[33:25]

We just lay it down there and offer it up to Buddha. But hard to cut it off. So when we realize our nature, then we realize that whatever we do is an offering and we no longer seek anything. So this is the shift from self-centeredness to Buddha-centeredness. were centered on Buddha nature rather than on self so it's a shift away from self shift from self-centeredness to letting go and engaging in practice so that's called the great mirror

[34:42]

allow the mirror to come forth. Then the seeming within the real, the second one is called submission in this system. Submission means to allow yourself to let go of control, to let go of trying to control everything. You know how we hang on very tightly to control. Dogen says, the secret of practice is turning and being turned. When turning,

[35:50]

we're in the strong position and Dharma is in the weak position. When being turned, Dharma is in the strong position and we're in the weak position. We like to be strong and we don't like to be weak. Suzuki Roshi said A strong person allows themselves to be weak. If you don't know how to allow yourself to be weak, you can't be strong. So turning and being turned means to allow, let Dharma turn you, to submit yourself to Dharma. and let Dharma turn you, and you turn Dharma.

[36:56]

When you're turning Dharma, you're in harmony with things, and when Dharma turns you, you're in harmony with things. So sometimes you're in the host position, and sometimes you're in the guest position. So this is where emptiness is formed. And this position, this submission is seeing the equality of everything.

[38:03]

Each one of us is in a hierarchical position in relation to everyone else and we're also in a level position with everyone else at the same time. This is the level position, this is where We let go of position and just assume the position that we're in. Allow the harmony of the situation to determine our position. And the only way to do that is to see the equality of each thing. So in the third position, resurgence of the real, this is called achievement.

[39:10]

This is when there's total harmony between yourself and your surroundings and total harmony between the relative and the absolute. This is where you know who you are. you actually have realization. This dot in the center is the host, which means that all of your activity is centered on Big Mind. Big mind is like the pivot and all of your activity has that basis.

[40:14]

You're no longer controlled by ego or by karma. You're living by vow rather than by karma. So living by vow means practice. No longer simply driven by desire in the realm of greed or ill will or delusion. You may fall into those, but you know how to come back. We're always falling into those. We're always falling into greed. ill will, delusion, but we know how to come back, we know where to come back to, we know what our practice is. And so this is where one is really stabilized in practice and without turning back.

[41:20]

The fourth one, the seeming uniting with the real, is called collective achievement. Collective achievement means that not only do you practice for yourself, but your practice is dedicated to helping all beings. This is actualizing the Bodhisattva vow of working for the benefit of all beings. where you see there's no difference between yourself and others and you're no longer practicing just for yourself. What you do for yourself also helps others and what you do for others also helps you. So you may be living in the monastery

[42:34]

You may be living in the world. You may be living under the bridge with the bums, the homeless. We call them homeless now. We used to call them bums. You're a hobo. You know what a hobo is? It's a dharma priest. Ho means dharma and bo means priest. It's a dharma bum, actually, a hobo. So it doesn't matter what position you're in in the world and you take on any position and your life work is simply helping people to understand themselves. So this is Avalokiteshvara's practice.

[43:40]

Transforming into any shape in order to help people. You take on the shape of a woman in order to help women. Or you take on the shape of a man in order to help men. Or you take on the shape of a homeless person to help homeless people. Or you take on the shape of a financier to help the money to circulate. So your place in the society, that's the place of practice. And you understand that that's the place where you practice. And you use that place as a practice place. That's your zendo. And then the fifth one is called integration of the real and the seeming, which is called here absolute achievement, which is the dark circle.

[44:58]

That means this is where there's nothing obvious. And the illustration is like an old man in the winter, you know, sitting by the fireside with his shawl on and sniffling and people say something and he says, what did you say? He doesn't seem, he seems like a stupid old man that cannot hear or understand what you're talking about and mumbling and yet everything he does helps people, saves sentient beings. This is, at the end of the Hokyo Zamai, it says, practice like a fool or an idiot, right? That's the fifth rank.

[46:00]

Practice like a fool or an idiot. If you can just have this continuity, this is called the host within the host. there are stages of the Hokyo Zamai that illustrate the five ranks. And this is one very obvious one, the host within the host. And the work that this person does is just hopeless, you know. It just, you know, does hopeless work without worrying about it. or without being discouraged or without getting tired of it. In other words, to save all sentient beings, right? This is the hopeless task which one never gets tired of doing. never discouraged, never, it doesn't matter, you just go about your business of saving sentient beings without worrying that you are or aren't, or whether they're going to be saved or not, or whether you're going to save them or not, or am I saving sentient beings?

[47:27]

You just do your work. So there's no self-consciousness in this totally unselfconscious. And your actions are so ordinary that no one recognizes what you're doing. So this is a simple illustration of the Tozan's five ranks. Hakuin's commentary, which I gave you, expresses it in wonderful ways, and I want to go over that with you during the practice period, but I want to finish the Hokyo Zamae before I do that, because we can study that as a separate thing, coming back to this.

[48:48]

Do you have any questions? Yes. So you said that it starts with enlightenment. Yes. So that first stage is that we have the old mastery said, when I first looked at mountains, they were just mountains. Then, when I looked at mountains, they were more than just mountains. Is that where we're starting? Yeah. We're starting at the second level. But before I came to practice, mountains were just mountains. Then when I met my teacher and engaged in the practice, mountains are no longer mountains. That's the stage of entering into enlightened practice. Yes? The second position has a feeling for me of faith, that a person is letting go of the

[49:50]

that it takes a certain stage to sort of feel that things will be okay, I don't have to control things. Yeah, that's a good point. I would say that that's a stage of faith. When one has really let go and has faith in the Dharma, that's an enlightened act. Yeah. Go ahead. You said sometimes these are considered, in a linear order, like ranks of achievement in practice. Yeah. Sometimes they're not. So in other words, this is sort of like the way karate schools use white belt, gold belt, and black belt, kind of like a stage like that, like relations and achievement in here. Well. I mean, it's three, or whatever. Right here, you know, these are stages of levels of achievement, right?

[51:02]

But they're on two levels at the same time. One is the level of hierarchy and the other is that each one of these levels is equal. They're just illustrating the practice from a different point of view. So at least one way of looking at them is as a five gradations where the last one's the highest or something. Right. It's not, right. So it's linear. It seems linear, but it's actually circular. Okay. Because from the fifth position, you go back to the first position. And so the fifth position is very complete, but the first position is also complete. Each one of them is complete, but you can speak of them in both ways.

[52:09]

So Hakuin likes to speak of them as a progression, because Rinzai Zen has more of a progressive thrust, whereas Soto Zen has a no-gaining idea. So, the Rinzai perspective, you start out from delusion to enlightenment. That's a kind of, you know, it's a usual kind of path, right, for most endeavors. you start out from not knowing to knowing, or from apprentice to... But in Santo Zen, what you don't realize is... I mean, what most people don't realize is that the beginning is the end. And the end is the beginning. And although there are levels and there's progress,

[53:19]

It's not in the sense of gaining something. And when you understand no gain, then you have enlightenment. Then you have realization. But the hardest thing to understand is no gain. Very hard to gain no gain. To accomplish no gain is very difficult. So, You can tell where everyone is by the measure of gaining and not gaining. By the measure of not gaining, as a standard, you know where everybody is. the hardest place to be is where you are.

[54:23]

So, as Suzuki Roshi used to say, usually to accomplish something you go away from yourself. A line going away from yourself. But that's a mistake. for practice. Practice is to be able to settle here. To find yourself right here. Has somebody in the back had their hand up first before you? I can't see very well. Anybody in the back have their hand up? Mark? At one time, when Tozan and afterwards, the five ranks were considered to be a great teaching tool, or great, but I don't quite understand how- What happened?

[55:42]

Well, for each of the five ranks, Tozan had a poem. The poem illustrates the illustrates the meaning and so it's up to a teacher to use the five ranks in a way that illustrates the teaching. I just illustrated it in five ways and it's possible to study using that, the five ranks, and relating it to our activity.

[56:59]

We haven't done that yet. Dogen does it in the Genjo Koan. Genjo Koan, I just want to say that the five ranks were very popular at one point in Tozan's, just after Tozan's time, but people used them intellectually and it became, they lost the meaning and it became a kind of intellectual game. people stopped using it. Dogen didn't use the five ranks as the five ranks in an obvious way, but he used the five ranks and disguised them in his own way, to express them in his own way.

[58:03]

And in the Genjo Koan, the five ranks are expressed as, to study the Buddhadharma is to study the Self, To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas. To be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas is to drop body and mind of self and other. To drop body and mind of self and other is... And no trace of enlightenment remains. And this traceless enlightenment continues on and on forever. That's Dogen's version of Tozan's Five Ranks. And then he illustrates the five ranks and the Genjo Koan talks about those five positions from various points of view. All right.

[59:10]

So my advice to you is actualize them in your daily life. Okay. Yes? Well, perhaps if I could just bring examples of how maybe the third rank was actualized for people to sort of see. Because what Mike suggested seems like a really good idea. How could you concretize Well, the fact of the matter is, you see, that the teaching that we have, it is about this, right? Suzuki Roshi, in all of his talks, if you know how to relate them, you can see that he's always talking about what Dogen's understanding is, and Dogen is always talking about what Tozan's understanding is, and so forth.

[60:25]

So just in our practice, this is all brought forth. intellectual understanding, okay? So you may feel, well, we don't need that intellectual understanding, all we need is to sit sadhana. That's true, but that's only one side. The other side is that you have a mind and the mind needs some food. to have some understanding of the basic concepts of our practice is important. If you only have one side, then something's missing. If you only have the intellectual understanding, something's missing.

[61:27]

And if you only have zazen, something's missing. You need both to have a good foundation. Yes? Well, I've been kind of thinking about this lately and it seems to relate. It's hard to understand maybe how the mind, the intellect needs food because have so many ways that we feed it in the way that we practice here in the 20th century, around the 21st century. The Doga needs to say, if you're a monk, just study Buddhism. Don't read anything else. If you need to read something, read Buddhism. So it seems like this kind of a teaching is really... Well, I notice in my own life, whatever it is that I'm working with.

[62:38]

There's a point at which I find myself wanting to reach out for something, like to read a book or to... There's a point at which I have a choice between letting go and going within and finding kind of the next step from there. Or I can reach out and grab something. I can choose to go without food. and use that, or I can put in something new when I may or may not need it. So it seems like this kind of a teaching is for if we really made a practice of letting go of our intellectual study in the other realms that we do, like in our jobs, then we're really going to be hungry for something. at some point, and this is kind of like a ball, like a candy, to kind of give that mind something to kind of pacify it, so that you can just keep going.

[63:51]

I don't know about pacify, I think it's more like focus. You know, where does our mind focus? You may sit Zazen, and your mind is focused, but then when you get off the cushion and walk out the door, you know, your focus is all over the place. So reading, studying Buddhist things, texts and so forth, keeps your attention focused. And that's the value of understanding what has been handed down to us. I always find it really interesting to try to understand what the old teachers were illustrating for us. To me, it's like a wonderful gift. And so I don't think, well, we shouldn't do this, or we shouldn't study that, or we should just sit silent.

[64:56]

I think that there's a whole wealth of others other people's experience that is helpful for us and we should appreciate it I always appreciate these things but you know all we have to count on is our own practice we shouldn't substitute it for practice but if we do have a practice then these things are helpful and we can practice this is how we practice with the ancients Back to the question of concrete examples. In one of Thomas Clary's books, he talked a lot about the host and the guest in a way that made it, at least the first two positions, somewhat understandable that the host is true nature and the guest is the

[66:06]

sort of the persona, we might say, that you assume in the different aspects of your life. And so the first two, it depends. There's a way of being a person that you need to be in your job, or in your family, or in whatever activity you're doing, but at the same time remaining conscious of true nature and remaining in touch with that. And so it has an effect on how you carry out your daily life, as opposed to becoming so caught up in the persona and the games or the rat race or whatever you want to call it, that you could become completely estranged from the true nature. And also, going back to the source and kind of connecting with true nature, while at the same time understanding that in order to function, you do have to go out into the world.

[67:16]

And when you're in the world, you behave as a person in the world, but you don't lose the contact with that true nature. Yeah, that's what we've been saying, I thought. Yeah, but I mean, maybe that makes it more concrete, I don't know. They can be expressed in various ways and I appreciate that expression. These are two sides, two sides of your nature. One is true nature, so to speak, and the other is self-nature. But they're not different. The point is that they're not different. They're not two things. That's the whole point. But to show the relationship of these not two things, the witness of not two, it's looking at it from these various points of view.

[68:29]

Yes? Sometimes I'm very much aware of acting from a self-centered from a self-centered position, being motivated by self-centered motivations. Sometimes. Sometimes I notice that, yeah. Once in a while. Huh? Once in a while. Very rarely. But it does happen. And sometimes it seems to me that it's very hard to see how this is not different from unselfish or unself-centered activity. You've been speaking, you've been talking about how on one hand there are these different things or ways and on the other hand there's equality. So sometimes it's hard for me to see what I'm doing when I'm acting from a self-centered

[69:37]

You're not. So then it's hard to see how the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. That's quite a leap. You said we start from a place of enlightenment, and even before we even come into the gate. But if we're acting with self-centered motivations, then continually, even after beginning practice,

[70:44]

How is that not different? How is that the same as being unselfcentered or realized? It's not. It's not the same. As I said, turning toward practice is the Enlightenment. Enlightenment is what turns us toward practice. That's what I said. And I said, but that's not realization. Realization, even though enlightenment turns us toward practice, we don't realize that. That's not our realization. It's intrinsically so, but it's not realized so. So, in order to realize it, you have to practice a lot harder than you're practicing now. That's your special message.

[71:52]

It also applies to others, not just to you. Your difference is also your equality. Recognizing the difference in everything is the same as equality. Because we don't understand what equality is. When I say equality, you may think that how can everything be equal if everything is different? That's because in order to understand that we have to understand what the darkness is. Everything is equal in darkness. Right, so more zazen. Darkness is just a metaphor.

[73:00]

for non-discrimination? Each individual thing, entity, has the Buddha nature. And Buddha nature is equal in all things. So therefore, everything is independent and at the same time has the same amount of buddha nature therefore everything is equal in reality and incomparable equal because it's not it's incomparable you are incomparable even though you compare yourself to everything else but your intrinsic nature is incomparable and your uniqueness

[74:12]

is beyond compare. So therefore, we can appreciate you just as you are. Yeah. That's right. And they're equal. Totally equal. Or the five flavors that are... Yeah, like Neapolitan ice cream. Yeah. And you can pick out the chocolate and the vanilla. That's right. But it's still really one flavor. Yeah. It's five in one. We say that, but it's just one flavor. But the one flavor has many characteristics that you can focus on.

[75:30]

You can focus on each one. In some cultures, they only have three words for color, and that's all they need. Or is it kind of just that experience that's being described as the relationship between those? Well, it doesn't matter how many. How many is not the point. The point is that the one thing has many flavors. And each flavor, chocolate is equal to vanilla, which is equal to strawberry, and rocky road, all equal. You also said that all qualities are inherent within every particular experience.

[76:33]

We only experience what our eye and ears can reach. That's right. When we look at somebody, we don't necessarily see them. We only see a few qualities. Some people see a few more qualities. And even when we experience ourself, we only experience a few qualities. But we should be able to experience our true self. And when we experience our true self, we know the true self of everyone. And then we realize that we're all equal, and because we're different. Equality does not mean everything is the same.

[77:45]

Equality means things are only equal because they're different. It's not the same as our usual understanding. And that's what this is talking about.

[78:12]

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