It is like the six lines of the illumination hexagram, relative and ultimately correct. Pile it up, they make three. taste of the five-flavored herb like a diamond thunderbolt. Subtly including it in the true inquiry and response come up together. Communing with the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory, and treasure the road. Respecting this is fortunate, do not neglect it. Naturally real and inconceivable, it is not within the problems of delusion or enlightenment. With causal conditions,

[01:19]

is a statelessness, in its greatness it is utterly non-location. A hair's breadth deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement. Now there are sudden and gradual in which teachings and approaches arise. Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are value rules. But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended, But identical to trap-raft, the ancient sages could again be set upon man's teaching. According to their delusions, they called black as white. When erroneous imagination ceases, the acquiescent mind realizes itself. If you want to conform to the ancient way, please observe the sages of former times, who weren't about to fulfill the way of Buddhism. Because there is the common, there are jeweled vestals, fine clothing.

[02:35]

Because there is the sword, we meet a different, there are house cat and cow. Ye, with his arches still, could hit a target a hundred places, but one arrow points ye head on. What has this to do with the power of steel? within reach of feeling or discrimination, how could it admit of consideration and thought? Ministers serve their lords, children obey their parents. Not obeying is not filial, and not serving is no help. Practice secretly, working within, like a fool or like an idiot, just to continue in this way as all bubbles within bubble. Once again, let me mention that the song of this precious mere awareness starts out by saying, the teaching of suchness.

[04:25]

And then it says, intimate communication or intimate communion. And then it says, Buddhas and ancestors. In Chinese, it has, there's a... Teaching of suchness, intimate entrustment, Buddhas and ancestors. And I mentioned before that each of those, each of those is the same as the other two. the teaching of suchness is an intimate communion, is Buddhism ancestors. It's not like Buddhism ancestors are one thing and an intimate communion is another.

[05:34]

Buddhism ancestors are intimate communication. And that intimate communication, which is Buddhas and ancestors, is the teaching of suchness. And then it says, now you have it. You have it now. The Buddhas are not holding back this intimate entrustment. You have it now. So protect it and take care of it. Later in the text it says, it acts as a guide for beings. It doesn't actually say, it. It says, acts as a guide for beings. You can put, it acts as a guide for beings, but actually it doesn't have the character for it.

[06:41]

It says, acts as a guide for beings. And also the translation says, its use removes all pain. But the its is added. It really says, use, using it, or using the function of it removes all pains. So it is this, is Buddhas and ancestors. Buddhas and ancestors act as a guide for beings, that's not surprising. The intimate communion acts as a guide for beings. And the intimate communion, the use of the intimate communion removes all pain. The teaching of suchness is the teaching of the suchness of our actual intimate relationship with all beings. It's the teaching that that's the way we really are.

[07:44]

It's that we are intimate beings. We are intimate communal or communing beings. And that is our guide. Our guide is the intimate, is the intimacy. the function of this intimacy is to relieve suffering. The function of Buddhas is to relieve suffering. Buddhas are the function of relieving suffering. And as Charlie says, if you don't have this, you can eat it too.

[08:46]

If you don't have this teaching of suchness, you can eat it. If you don't have Buddhas and ancestors, you can eat them. And they can eat you, if they don't have you. And, in fact, we don't have them and they don't have you, so we are eating each other. We're living on each other. We're symbiotic. I don't know. That's kind of like, why did I become a priest? It's inconceivable how this song came to say, actually I don't even know if it says that, that's just a translation. Why did they translate it that way? I don't know. But I just want also to mention that tomorrow is my 41st anniversary of becoming, of the ceremony of leaving home and attaining liberation.

[10:00]

I've been liberated for 45 years now. So you can celebrate that in any way you want tomorrow. Questioner 2 I have a question about buddhas and ancestors, having each other or not having each other. In a way, it's like, you know, you can't really It's not that they're Buddhas. No. Their intimacy is Buddhas. The way that your intimacy with all these beings you're talking about, that intimacy is Buddhas. But I'm not a Buddha, but the intimacy of all you with me, the intimate communion between me and you is Buddha's.

[11:11]

And I'm not that. But in truth, in reality, of this communion, I am Buddha's. In truth, I am Buddha, but I'm also not Buddha because I'm not In a sense, I'm not a communion. But ultimately, the truth is I am a communion. In that sense, I am the Buddha. So how we approach any relationship can bring the Buddha. That's right. How we really are in every relationship is the Buddha. Our actual relationship is the Buddha, or is Buddhas. Really we are, inconceivably, working together. We can't see this, but we can see ceremonies to celebrate it, like reading this song.

[12:18]

And the function includes working with what we can conceive and what we can see. So this is kind of a later part of the text where it says, it says, it is like, it says, it is like the six lines of the double, of the illumination hexagram. What's it? This communion, what's it? Buddhas. What's it? The teaching of suchness. But the text doesn't say it. It just says... What's understood through the whole text is we're talking about this precious mirror samadhi. And one meaning of samadhi, one translation of samadhi is awareness. Another translation of samadhi is concentration. Just thought I'd mention that somebody said to me that she realized that the ultimate haircut is concentration.

[13:34]

I don't necessarily agree with that, but I thought that's good. The ultimate haircut is concentration. It's a very concentrated haircut. It doesn't say, it's like. It just says, like. And what's understood is, it. What's it? Well, it is not you, but in truth it is you. That's what it is. It is the intimate entrustment of Buddhas and ancestors and all of us. That is like the double That's like the illumination hexagram, the six lines of the illumination hexagram. So here I wrote, and I'm really happy with the trigram. I thought it came out very nicely. I wrote a trigram, and then I doubled the trigram and made a hexagram.

[14:45]

These are symbols used in the Book of Changes, right? So the teaching of suchness is like this hexagram. And this hexagram has six lines, that's what hexagram means, and it's a doubling of this trigram. Can you see it? Double the trigram. So another translation is, which I like better, but somehow we got this one, sorry, is it's like the double split hexagram. Because this character here, the name of this trigram is called the Li trigram. And the character Li means separation. It's a double separation hexagram. So for some reason, this

[15:51]

This poem, this song, is bringing up symbols from the I Ching as a way to convey, to tell us about the working of this samadhi. But another meaning of samadhi is samadhi means one-pointedness of thought. It means that the mind is one-pointed. So in samadhi, there's the realization that subject and object are one point. There's no duality between me and what I'm aware of, or between you and what you're aware of. And if you're aware of other beings, or Buddhas, in samadhi there's no separation between you and other beings. That's what samadhi's like. So in samadhi there's no separation between you and what you're meditating on, between you and suchness.

[16:53]

Is that what intimate communion is? It's a kind of intimate communion, yeah. And this is an intimate communion about intimate communion, this particular Samadhi. This is a one-pointed mind about the non-duality of living beings and Buddhas. It's a one-pointed awareness of the non-duality of enlightenment and delusion. It's a non-dual awareness of the non-duality between bondage and freedom. between samsara and nirvana. That's what the type of awareness this is. It's a one-pointed awareness about the one-pointedness of all opposites. And I don't know if we'll ever get to the part of the text that's talking about this hexagram

[18:03]

So I thought maybe I'd tell you about it now, in case we never get there. I want to talk about this trigram. This trigram is called the Li Trigram. Actually, its name is the Li Trigram, but it's also called Fire. Fire. Fire Trigram. or it's associated with fire. And it's made of three lines. The top line is what's called a yang line. The middle line, the broken line in the middle, is a yin line. And the bottom line is a yang line. Can you see it? You all okay with that? Yang, yin, yang. This is the trigram that in some sense is being used in this song as a symbol for our practice.

[19:16]

At the center is the feminine, the receptive, non-action. For example, in the practice of sitting meditation, at the center of that is a receptive, non-active receiving and giving. And it's surrounded or ensconced in two male lines. active lines. So, one way to see this is that when we sit, we do this thing which we can perceive of crossing our legs and sitting upright and still.

[20:33]

We do that, and we can see that. and feel that, and conceive of that. And this practice which we can do and which we can enact surrounds something which is receptive and non-active. the teaching of suchness, which you have received now, intimately and inconceivably, in practice is surrounded by actions which you can perceive. So there's a ritual surround which we perform

[21:34]

which surrounds this teaching which we do not perform by ourselves, but which we perform together intimately with all beings and with all Buddhas. So, one way to understand this is that we have received this intimate entrustment. We are this intimate entrustment, and we take care of it by practicing remembering it with our mind, which can remember things and forget things. But we remember it, and we use our body to celebrate it, to ritually enact it, but it is not our ritual enactment, and yet it must be surrounded by our ritual enactment.

[22:48]

And it's getting time to conclude our day. One more thing I feel I could say is that I've often used the expression, clean the temple and sit. The surrounding lines are like clean the temple or build the temple and clean it and then sit. Clean the temple and then don't move. Clean the temple is all the conceivable psychotherapy we need to do, all the conceivable psychoanalysis we need to do to be able to sit still. and take care of this thing without doing anything.

[23:59]

We take care of it not by leaning forward or backwards, right or left. We take care of it by being able to have no resistance to where we are and what we're thinking. And in the intimacy, we take care of it, or it's taken care of. So this trigram is kind of a symbol for set it up, clean the temple, and then live there in the middle. We're interested in that? Well, take care of your health, because it's going to take us quite a while to get there. and I'll take care of mine. So, this trigram, put together with another one of these trigrams, make the hexagram, and then there are certain ways you work with the hexagrams in the I Ching, so that you can pile them up and make three, or work them

[25:22]

the full set of transformations makes five. And then all those transformations describe the process by which this meditation practice goes through the evolution from the Bodhisattva path to Buddhahood. But how that works is a... It's going to take us a while to get there and discuss that. And it's time to go, but I just want to say that the other day I was talking to a group of senior priests about this hexagram and getting ready to study it with them, and I said, I feel like the catcher in the rye. So according to Holden Caulfield's

[26:23]

understanding of that term. If a body sees a body coming through the rye, he didn't necessarily understand the poem properly, but what he, the image that came to his mind when he thought of that poem was of him being out in the rye grass with lots of children who are running around playing. And at the edge of the rye field is a cliff, and he's standing by the cliff, and protecting the children from falling over the cliff. And falling over the cliff means that they would lose their innocence. So, as I approach this study, I want to stand at the cliff and protect your innocence in this study. I don't want you to fall over the cliff into trying to figure out this inconceivable thing. But I want you to play in this field without losing your innocence, because this material is very tempting for you to try to get.

[27:35]

But if you get it, you won't be able to eat it. So how can we play with this wonderful teaching and not lose our innocence? I'm standing at the edge of the cliff here, and I don't want you to jump over there. Now we're all innocent. Now nobody has the five transformations, right? So how can we study piling up and complete transformation of this meditation practice without losing our innocence? In other words, without trying to get this teaching. Because the teaching of suchness is not something to get. It's something to let go of. And then we can eat it. So thank you for being so innocent and letting all this rain down upon you.

[28:40]

Thank you too, Reb. You're welcome. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Aren't the gates are boundless? I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Isn't this triangle pretty? brain of the chalk, the way it interacted with the slate, isn't it?

[29:55]

Yeah, worked out really well. So, take care of that now, okay?

[30:01]

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