I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. So, does everybody have the texts? I think maybe you don't. Okay. So, there's three, actually four different translations of the Song of the General Mayor's Samadhi here. the second page. I'll go over what those are. Oh, I didn't bring it with me. It's in the office, I guess. Should we have it or something? Oh, okay. So, why don't we start by chanting the Song of the Jewel Mary Samadhi. Would someone like to Kokyo?

[01:02]

Song of the Jewel Mirror is samadhi. The teaching of the sun has been intimately communicated by brothers and ancestors, now you have it. The meaning is not in the words, nor in response to the inquiring impulse. If you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. If you miss it, you fall into retrospective hesitation. It is bright just at midnight. It doesn't appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings. It's usual. It's all pain. Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. It is like facing a dual mirror. Form and image behold each other and you are not it.

[02:26]

It actually is you. It is like a babe in the world in five aspects. Baba, was there anything said or not? Ultimately it does not apprehend anything because its speech is not yet correct. an absolute degree, piled up they make three. A complete transformation makes five. It is like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like a diamond thunderbolt subtly included within the true. Inquiry and response come up together, communing with the source and communing with the process. is not within the province of delusion or enlightenment with causal conditions assigned to these. Now there are a sudden and gradual interconnection with which are set up basic approaches.

[03:39]

These basic approaches are distinguished and there are guiding rules. But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended, true eternity still flows outwardly still while inwardly moving, like a tethered coal that trapped or had the ancient saints put in it, bestowed upon them the teaching according to their delusions they called If you want to conform to the ancient way, please observe the ancients of former times when about to fulfill the way of Buddha. One gaze at a tree for ten eons, like a tiger eating part of its prey, or a horse with a wide Because there is thus darkly different there are house cat and cow. He with his archer skill could hit a target at a hundred paces. But when arrow points meet head-on, what is this to do with the power of skill?

[04:40]

When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance. It's not within reach of feeling or discrimination. How could it have been made of consideration and thought? So good evening. So we'll continue tonight. We got up to When you mix them, you know where they are. But I did a lot of introduction. I want to do a brief introduction for the new people and for those of us who were here last week, too. So this text was written by Tozan Ryokai or Dongshan.

[05:40]

Hi. Are you here for the class? Yeah. Oh, great. Come on in. We just started chanting it, so... Okay, so there's... You're going to be taking the class? Okay. Okay. So, last week we started... Let's do a little review of that now. There are... These also go with that. There are three, actually four altogether, different translations of the same text. So, for the people who just came in, this is the one that we chant in service. Which morning is it being chanted now? Is it Wednesday or Thursday or, does anyone know? This morning's service, but anyway. This is adapted from Tom Cleary's book, Timeless Spring.

[06:45]

It's pretty close to his translation. And then, so this is the base translation we're using, so you don't have to look at anything but this, but just as a basis for comparison, for those of you who might want that. We also have this translation from Essential Zen. These are on both sides. This is from Klaus Tanahashi and David Schneider's Essential Zen, and this is from Master Sheng Nian, so this is Chinese interpretation. And then there's a series of pages from the record of Dongshan by William Powell. And the first page is Dongshan's verses on the five ranks. And then bottom of the second page, number 116, is where the actual text starts. And there's some notes for that. So that's only on one side. And these are the four translations we're checking.

[07:56]

One we chant from theory, one from essential Zen, one from Poetry of Enlightenment, and then Record of Dongshan. And first, several people asked, we do have Chinese characters, kind of a line by line of the Chinese characters, and so we made some copies. So do you want to give those out, or do you know who to ask for them? Lee. Lee, and so, and how much do we need? It's the only one I remember for sure. Okay, and we can make more of these available if anybody else wants them, but right now we have three more copies for, I don't know, who had asked for them. Do you think I, one, if I look at them? Yeah, you're welcome to look at them. It goes through character, line by line for the Chinese characters, and if you're interested in those things, it's, you may. It's basically, it was $2. So it's, so we're not charging for these, but for the Chinese. Okay, so just to review from last time, Dongshan lived 807 to 869.

[09:02]

He's the founder of the Chinese Soto school. In Chinese it's called Saodong. The dong is named from his name, Dongshan. In Japanese we say Tozan Ryokai. And there's another text that this has a strong relationship to, which is the emerging of difference and unity, which was composed by Shito Sekito Kisen in Japanese, who was three generations earlier. We chant that also regularly. And I told some stories about Dong Shan. I'm going to go back over that, but just to frame it in time and say a little bit about what Chinese Chan was in that time. This was already at the peak, in a sense, of the classic era of the golden age of Zen in the 9th century and in the 8th and 9th century there are many great Zen masters and many of the koan collections are stories of their dialogues and activities and one of the things that happened actually during Dongshan's lifetime in 845 there was a persecution of didn't last very long a year or two or three of all of Buddhism in China there was an emperor who was

[10:17]

wanting to live forever and thought there was a form of Taoism that would do that for him and that if he wiped out Buddhism that would help and also I guess a lot of the Buddhist established schools had large properties and so forth. Anyway, that happened during Deng Xian's lifetime and part of what Chan was, that's Chinese for Zen, was a kind of post-graduate movement for Chinese Buddhism in the sense of freeing people from, freeing monks, scholarly monks, from their attachments to particular sutras and schools and particular formulations of what the teaching was. The Tang Dynasty? The Tang Dynasty. Tang. T-A-N-G. And Chan is just the Chinese way of pronouncing Zen. So anyway, that was kind of the context of what this comes out of, and Chan or Zen survived when most of the other schools didn't, for a number of reasons, but partly because they weren't, didn't depend so much on having large institutions and lots of statues and particular libraries of scriptures.

[11:26]

It was more about personal interactions between teachers and students. So, we talked last time, starting to go over this text about some of the main themes. And again, what I want to do in this class is to go through the text line by line, not necessarily every line, but maybe mentioning all the lines, but there's certain kind of key lines that we'll focus on. And so I want to go over just explaining kind of references, which there are in some cases, and also There are a few places where this translation kind of doesn't quite get the whole meaning. So we'll go over that. And that's part of having the other translations to look at. But also I want to talk about it in terms of our practice. So part of what we'll do is just that I have material to present in terms of what's, in terms of the references here, but also I'd like us to, as we get further into it, to discuss how we feel about it and what it brings up for us in terms of our own practice.

[12:40]

So before we get to the text itself, just to review a couple of the stories I told about Dongshan. I found the other version, the other translation of some of those stories in Book of Serenity, Case 49. It's a little bit clearer than that version I gave last time. So there's a series of stories that have to do with Dongshan and his teacher, Yunyan. One of the themes we started to talk about that's in this text is about the relationship, about the teaching and how we find the teaching. And essentially the teaching is something we have to find ourselves, but then there are teachers to help us, or there are, I don't know if there are teachers, but there are, there is this way of interacting, back in China until today. Is it a little hot and stuffy in here, or is it just me?

[13:46]

Could someone open maybe some of the top windows, just to get some air? Thank you, ma'am. So, would you say that the Sun, the Drona, or Samadhi is like the core teaching of Taoism? Is that all you're comparing it to? Yeah, and in a sense we could say it's the core teaching of Soto Zen. Or at least in China. It's in a sense the central teaching, and it's been chanted for So it contains this teaching of the five degrees or five ranks, which we'll get to in some detail next week, I think. Although it's not so explicit in it, so that's kind of a complicated issue. But before we get to the text, just background on Dongshan. One story goes, Dongshan was leaving his teacher, Yunyan, after having studied with him for a long time. Dongshan asked, after your death, if someone asks me if I can describe your reality, how shall I reply?

[14:53]

After a while, Yunyan said, just this is it. Dongshan sank into thought. Yunyan said, you are in charge of this great matter. You must be most thorough going. So we talked about this first line, the second part of this first line of the Song of the Jal Mara Samadhi last week. Now you have it, so keep it well. So in a way, this is the same. This is, you are in charge of this great matter. As an effect, now you have it. You must be most thorough going, means take care of this way of finding our truth or this way of finding this teaching about how to find out what our life is about. Dongsan left without saying anything more. Later, as he was crossing a river, he saw his reflection and then for the first time was thoroughly enlightened, it says here. Thereupon he composed a verse, and I gave you a different version of this last time, but this one goes, just don't seek from others or you'll be far estranged from self. So we can't, this is about an experience that actually we have to experience ourselves.

[16:00]

It's like, you know, you can tell if water is cold or hot when you put your hand in it. tell us exactly. Just don't seek from others or you'll be far estranged from self. I now go on alone. Everywhere I meet it, it now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with thusness. So this is one of the key lines in this first page of the Song of the General Mara Samadhi to you are not it, it actually is you. And we talked about that fair amount last week and we'll talk about it again when we get to that place in the text. So then there's a picture of that event when Dongshan looked in the river and realized this. It's a traditional picture of Dongshan looking at this reflection in the river. So then the story goes on. When Dongshan was in the community doing, setting offerings before the image of Yunyan for the monthly memorial service for Yunyan, he told that story about describing the reality of Yunyan.

[17:09]

And then a monk asked, well, when Yunyan said, just this is it, what did he mean? Dongshan said, at that time, I nearly misunderstood what my late teacher meant. And the commentary here says, if you go to the pause and just this is it to understand the point, this is just conveying the matter by a different name. This is why he knew the form upon seeing the reflection and became enlightened just as he crossed the river. So this is emphasizing actually seeing the actual experience of this reflection, of this mirror, of this dual mirror, awareness, or samadhi. The monk said, did Yunnan know it is or not? And Dongshan said, if he didn't know it is, how could he be able to say so? If he did know it is, how could he be willing to say so? So he doesn't take either side of that.

[18:15]

But it leaves us in this kind of paradox, or this complicated relationship to this it, this pronoun it, which we will talk about in this song of the Jalmer Samadhi. There's one last story, which is the actual case of case 49 here. Or no, that's the same one. There's another story, though. Another time when he was doing a service for Yunyan, a monk said, what instruction did you receive at your late teacher's place? And Dongshan said, although I was there, I didn't receive instruction. The monk said, then why conduct a service for him? Dongshan said, even so, how dare I turn my back on him? The monk said, you rose to prominence at Nanchuan's, then why did you, do you instead conduct a service for Yunyan? So there's this historical thing. Dongshan studied before he studied with Yunyan, with Nanchuan and Guishan, who were very famous, great teachers of the age.

[19:18]

But he took as his main teacher Yunyan, who was not known at all. And so this monk is saying, well, why do you honor this person? And Dongsheng said, I do not esteem my late teacher's virtues or his Buddhist teaching. I only value the fact that he didn't explain everything for me. So this point about not explaining everything is part of the subtlety of this Jalal Mehra Samadhi. He didn't explain everything or he didn't explain anything? He didn't explain everything. One translation of it is he didn't explain anything directly. In this translation it says he didn't explain it, and he didn't explain everything. So this teaching technique of, but the point is this teaching technique of making, the student has to experience it themselves. You can't actually, if you try to explain, the example I think of somehow is if you try to explain to someone who's never tasted it, what does a vanilla ice cream taste like?

[20:22]

I think you'd be hard-pressed. This song of the Jhulmere Samadhi is essentially about our own experience. And as we talked about it last week, Jhulmere Samadhi is another word for zazen, another name for zazen, for sitting meditation, for just sitting. So we mentioned some of the other names, just sitting, or silent or serene illumination, or the ocean seal samadhi, or self-enjoying and self-fulfilling samadhi. These are all names for the same experience, which is the main practice we do at this temple, which is commonly called zazen or sitting meditation. Although it's not just a matter of something that happens when you're sitting formally, So samadhi, maybe you all know, but samadhi means concentration or in this case kind of an awareness. And the jewel mirror is something that is a way of being where we reflect our experience or the world is reflected in our experience in this way where it's kind of shining like a jewel and all the different facets of the world that come up are reflected.

[21:40]

in this awareness. And this song about this awareness is filled with lots of images and references and lyrics, in a sense, about talking about different aspects, different facets of what this experience is about. So, any questions or comments up to there? I might have asked you this last week if you don't mind me saying it. Did Dongshan write the Jewel Marrow Samadhi after he crossed the stream and said, I'm not really actually... Yeah, later on... Is he quoting himself intentionally? Yeah, yeah. So, actually he says in the record, he says he received the Jewel Marrow Samadhi from Yunyan. But there's no indication that there was anything written down by Yun Yan.

[22:47]

There's a problem in terms of historical accuracy and all of that. Most of what we have written down, supposed to be from the Tang period, the 7, 8, 900s, wasn't written down until 100 or 200 or 300 years later. So historians say that a lot of it never happened and we don't have videotapes of it. But anyway, something happened, and we have this text. Did Dangshan write it down? Well, we think so, but nobody can prove it. But anyway, yeah, so generally it's considered he wrote, he composed this. And it really is a core text in terms of Soto Zen philosophy. Later on, when this lineage and this teaching came to Japan, Dogen wrote a whole lot of things. Dogen was the man who brought it to Japan. But in terms of Chinese Saodong or Soto teaching, this is really very much the core text.

[23:49]

And there are a number of different issues in here. One of them is this quality of how do you share this experience? How do you receive this teaching? How do you understand this experience that shows us our inner self or true self? So that's one issue that's here and there are a number of lines here referred to the teaching and how that works. There's another kind of basic theme that's in here we started to talk about last time has to do with what's sometimes called the absolute and the relative. And there are lots of ways of talking about this, but there's this kind of dialectical process, which is developed in this five-degree teaching, which is kind of implicit in the second half of the first page here, without going into the five part of it yet.

[24:53]

there basically are two aspects to our practice and two aspects to reality and two aspects to being in the world and one of them is that there's this experience of that everything is the same or that there's a universal quality or that there's an absolute quality so we're all you know the same in that we have eyes and ears and nose and so forth We are all the same in terms of breathing the same air. We're all the same. Sue, how else are we all the same? The force of gravity pulls us off the ground. Right. Sylvia, how else are we all the same? How else are we all the same? Our bodies. Our minds. We all have bodies. We have bodies with two sides. We have a right and a left. We have minds that distinguish yes and no, or left and right, or self and other, and make discriminations.

[25:59]

And we all want everybody to be happy, or we want ourselves to be happy at least, and then at some point maybe we can have the feeling that we want everybody to be happy, we all want to love and be loved, we all want to have enough to you know, have a place to sleep and a roof and food and, you know, there are lots of things, ways in which we're all basically the same. Then there's the other side in which we're all very much particular. We're all totally unique. So there's this kind of double aspect of reality which the earlier poem I mentioned, merging of sameness and difference, or interaction of sameness and difference, starts to talk about and is developed in here. But part of the imagery is also about this. So it's talked about in terms of absolute and relative, upright and inclined. We could talk about it in terms of wisdom and function, or absolute truth and the function of truth.

[27:05]

Then there are various images that are used, like lord and vassal. So there was basically a feudal structure to the society, host and guest also. it's talked about in terms of, and that also is used as an analogy for teaching. So the teacher is the host and the student is the guest. Sometimes there's an interplay there. Anyway, I want to mention that theme from the beginning and we'll see it appearing in different ways. When you brought up everything is the same and did you bring it in because you want to point out that if one conscious or aware that we are the same than we would be inclined? Well, it's not that one is right and the other is wrong. In fact, those are the two sides of our experience. So how those two aspects of our life interact is kind of the topic or the subtext of this text, or one of them anyway.

[28:17]

So, you know, the regular worldly folks in the world who see everything as different and I've got to get mine and it's a dog-eat-dog world and all of that kind of way of thinking is based on just seeing the relative and not having any sense that we're actually also the same. Not having any sense that there is that this distinction between self and other, this distinction between things is an illusion. but then meditators can get into this other side too much and that becomes a problem too if you think everything is exactly the same or it's just all empty or you know, then that's a trap too. So how to balance out these two aspects of our reality, the conventional reality and this other side which sees the entity of everything. Neither of them alone is true. So that's all kind of background. We talked last week about this first sentence.

[29:22]

So, since it's so important, I just want to say a little bit about it again. The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. So this teaching of thusness is literally the Dharma of suchness or thusness. Things as it is, literally is, the Chinese characters mean like it is. as it is. And together, that compound means thusness or suchness, which is... So if I start talking about Buddha's terms that you're not familiar with, please stop and ask me if you need more background. But there's two sides of how to talk about There's a different two sides of talking about reality. So you've heard of the teaching of emptiness, maybe, as a Buddhist teaching. And emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. It doesn't mean that nihilism, it doesn't mean there's nothing there.

[30:25]

It means that each, it's a kind of technical term, it means that each thing is empty of separateness, or empty of independent self-existence. So nothing in this room could exist without everything else in this room. You know, we're breathing the same air, and there are many ways to talk about this. But does anybody have any questions about emptiness? Nobody? Sonya, what's emptiness? Say what? Anyway, there's this way of talking about Buddhist teaching, which is in terms of emptiness. And then there's this other side of talking about Buddhist reality, which is suchness or thusness. And it's kind of a more positive way of talking about it. And it's really talking about the same thing. It's talking about a quality of reality, a quality of being present, things as it is.

[31:27]

which is kind of this interconnectedness. So we mentioned last week Indra's net. Are you familiar with that simile of Indra's net? Has anybody not heard about it? Is that where all the jewels face each other? So the whole universe, according to this idea, is a net, this big net. And at each place where the net meets, there's a jewel. And each jewel reflects all the other jewels around it. And those jewels reflect all the jewels around them and so forth. So that actually in each jewel, everything else in the whole universe is reflected. This is a way of describing the way reality really is. And it's very much part of the background imagery of this text. So this is a jewel mirror, but it is kind of implied in here. This jewel net is, it's a network of mirrors. Maybe each of us is a jewel mirror when we experience this, when we have this experience, each of us is a jewel in this web.

[32:35]

So thusness is about that, suchness is about that. It's about things as they are, this quality of just starkness, of presence, of seeing something and really seeing it. Like maybe when you see a flower and really see it or walking in and see the moon or the sky or something that really you're just present with. And it's not that it's extraordinary, it's just something very ordinary, but to really be present with it. This is an aspect or a way of talking about this thusness. But of course, even if you don't see it that way, it's still there. So this teaching of thusness, this teaching of reality as it is, has been intimately communicated by Buddhists and ancestors, has been closely conveyed by Buddhists and ancestors.

[33:44]

We talked about the word intimately here, which is the same as the word for esoteric or secret, but it doesn't mean secret in the sense of hidden. It means very subtly, closely. Personally. Personally, yeah. In terms of experience. And then there's this line, now you have it, so keep it well. And again, this is... I feel it's one of the key lines in this whole thing. Now you have it. So this experience, this teaching of thusness, this experience of thusness, and also there's a kind of, there's a teaching, there's a dharma, there's a way of being with thusness that's implied here. It's not just that things are the way they are. There's actually a way of being present with and relating to this fact of things being the way they are. And that's what's been intimately communicated And it says, now you have it.

[34:46]

So there's a sense of, that from the very beginning, everybody has this Buddha nature. Everybody, that it is the way, it is the nature of the way things are, this suchness, this thusness. But I have this feeling, the way it says this, it says it very sharply in the Chinese too. It says, you now have this. You now have it. And I kind of feel like just saying that kind of is, now you have it. And until you recite this the first time, You don't know you have it. But once you've heard this, and each time you hear this, and each now that you hear this, now you have it. So now we have it. But then the other side is keep it well. So there's actually something we have to do, sort of, about it, which is to take care of it. So how do we do that? So that's what this whole text is about. How do we keep this well? This teaching of business, So like how do we keep it healthy? How do we keep it well? The well actually means kind of skillfully.

[35:49]

So it's not like health well, like get well soon. The Chinese character is more like ability, ability. How do you... It's the same character as in Queen Ying's name, Sixth Ancestor, which means wisdom, ability. It's how do you keep it ably? take good care of it? How do you hold it? It's kind of delicate. How do you carry something that is precious? Like imagine this jewel, this big jewel that's very valuable and maybe very fragile. Or at least if you drop it, it might shatter. And how do you carry that with you? But since we already have it, why do we have to take care of it? Ah, that's the question. It's not... That's the question. When you have a baby, you have to take care of it. Good. Yeah, so you might have a baby and it doesn't need you.

[36:50]

That's the beginning. So the fact of having this teaching of thusness, the fact of experiencing this, is the beginning of practice in a sense. What do you do with it? How do you take care of it? How do you share it? How do you let it unfold in your life? How do you express it? Well, I also wonder what what is there to have, so what is this keeping? Literally, it's maintain and protect, to be guardian of. It's not the same characters, but one of the Chinese and Japanese words for an abbot of a temple is juji, and it's the same idea, it's different characters. But it's protect, maintain, take care of, shelter, be guardian to, to guard it. And habit is a person who resides.

[37:56]

Resides and maintains the temple. Takes care of. Stays there. Is responsible for. Yeah. So it's saying that we all have this. There's this tremendous universal quality about this first sentence. Just to hear it said, just to chant it. The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated. Now you have it. Keep it well. So, I mentioned last week this footnote about ancestors, that it's sometimes translated patriarchs, but the original character has nothing to do with gender. It's not, it's really in this translation. But the people, the Buddhas and ancestors, the people who have awakened to the experience of what thusness is. So this first sentence, actually every single word in it is loaded with meaning. The teaching of thusness literally is the dharma of thusness.

[38:59]

So dharma in this case means teaching, but dharma also is, this Chinese character also means just the method or the procedure or the manner for taking care of it. And it's also just the reality of thusness, the truth of thusness. The truth of the way it is. how it is, and the manner for relating to how it is. So it has all of these meanings implied in it. So anything else on that first sentence? We could talk about this first sentence for a long time, I think. Any other comments or questions or reflections? I want to jump ahead. We talked about the next line last time. So I want to go ahead now to where we were, because I have this ambition of actually getting through this whole text in six weeks. We'll see.

[40:01]

We may spend more time on some lines than others. In fact, I'm sure we will. So we talked last time a little bit about filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight. They're alike, but not the same, or not equal. Or when you set them out, they're not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. Just briefly, it's talking about things that are alike, things of the same color. It's talking about sameness in the sense that we might see snow as similar in color to the silver bowl, and the heron is this white bird against the moonlight. They're similar in some way, but actually we can tell them apart. So there's these two sides, again. Sameness and difference. So that takes us up to where we were last week. Are there any questions on that second one? So the meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. This is also one of those real key sentences for me in this text.

[41:02]

The meaning is not in the words. This word for meaning also means intention, or the mind, or other implications of that. But the meaning, the purpose, And all of this refers back to the teaching of Vesnas. It's not in the words. It's not, so whatever, so another theme of this text is language. How do we use language? This is the third theme that comes up again and again in this text. How do we use, we could say the faculty of our mind, because basically, most of our mentality is conditioned by language, whatever language has subject and verb and object. And it's encoded in different ways in Chinese or Japanese or Sanskrit or English, but there's this separation that we have just by the fact of communicating with this syntax and grammar.

[42:09]

And it's saying the meaning is not in the words, the meaning is not in the exact words we use. So you can't eat a menu and be nourished. Menu is a symbol of something else. And the words itself are off. In a sense, all of the words of Buddhism are commentaries on silence. So this is a song, and I think it's important that it's a song. This is not like a philosophical explanation. This is not an explanation, first of all. It's not a kind of philosophical discourse. It's a way of using language. It's more like a song. Ma'am. Well, I'm just struck here by the memory. Of course, in the Chinese, there's no depth, there's no articles. So a more strict translation would be meaning.

[43:12]

not in words. And the way it's translated, there's implication is that it's referring to specific words, like the words earlier in the text. So is it actually saying meaning is not in words? Yeah, it's saying meaning not abide in or... In words, in general. Existing, yeah. It's not, it doesn't, yes. Okay, thank you. So that's very different meaning to me anyway than than to say the meaning is not in the words. Right. I think that's actually a good point. It might be better to say in English, the meaning is not in words. If we say the words, you might think it's talking about the words of the song. Oh, okay. Yeah, good. The meaning is not in words. That's like... Yeah, the meaning is not in any words. Yes, very good. Yes. Part of my agenda in doing this class is to correct our misunderstandings of this text, and this is one of the smaller ones.

[44:18]

I want to talk about that some more. Sure. It could be that the meaning is in words, as well as not words. Why would it be there also? So therefore, you could say that the meaning is not in the words, in any specific words. It's not captured by these words. It's not to deny that there isn't meaning in words. Right, well that's the second half of this, yet it responds. Well, it's not that the meaning, are you saying the meaning is, it's not that the meaning is never in words? Yeah, it's not, it's not to say that, it might be that he's saying that the meaning is not in these particular words here, you know, but it also may be that he's not saying that meaning isn't in words. I mean, there is meaning in words. But any particular set of words doesn't have all the meaning that we're looking for here. No, it's an interesting point because later on he talks about baby language.

[45:20]

He talks about what it means to be an infant and how that relates to this experience of thusness. So language is a very important issue in here. Later on it says, although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. So it's not saying that we should never use words. Or that there isn't meaning in words if you take everything else into consideration. Well, he's saying the meaning is not in words, but it's not saying that words are useless or that words can't be meaningful. The first step, though, is the meaning is not in words. But then what does that mean in terms of the fact that we're saying that in words? I think that what goes against what he said is that he's talking about precisely the experience of done business and that this transcends words. That's why I understood that I think it's more like what she means.

[46:21]

Well, everything is true. The meaning is, this is referring back to the topic of the teaching of thusness. So the essential meaning of the teaching of thusness is not in words exactly, to gloss it, you know, you could say it that way. But how we use words then becomes a big issue, and why do we use words? Just some kind of background is, you know, the first sense story is that Buddha was talking to the assembly, and he held up a ballpoint pen, and we smiled, and that was the first trick, you know. It was a flower, of course. Bodhisattva wisdom, Manjushri says to the enlightened, enlightenment, the Mala Kirti, stays silent like this, the final statement. And then there's another story about Shakyamuni Buddha, at the end of his life, was asked, well, what has been your teaching of your life?

[47:24]

or something like that, and he says, I've never spoken a single word after these libraries full of sermons that he gave. So there's this silence as kind of the background to this meaning is not in words. Well, I think also it sheds some light on it to see that, strictly speaking, again, kokoro is not just meaning, but there's a much broader It looks to me like the Chinese is actually much broader than that. No, because that's not the kokoro of shin. That's a different kokoro. There are different words for mind. That's not the heart. So, yeah, I understand that, but what is it then? It's mind. Also, it's just mind. The mind is not in the word. Yeah, so that... But it's also mind in the sense of intention or purpose. Yeah, so that then... sort of runs it out to me and makes more sense when you think, oh, like, mind is not just contained in words, or intention is not just contained.

[48:32]

So it's kind of like the primary meaning, the fundamental purpose meaning. Yeah. Yeah, it's got all of that in it, yeah. Because if you think of the word meaning in terms of the more narrow sense, well, you could say, like you said, well, yeah, meaning, that's what words are about. Yeah, so we, you know, this is a very subtle issue. We're talking about this, right? And we actually think we understand what each of us, you know, we have this common, we have this imagination of a common understanding of what these words refer to. And yet what this is talking about is something that we can't express in words some way. But also, later he makes this sort of extraordinary statement on the other side of it, that the baby ultimately does not have to have anything because its speech is not yet correct, as if without speech there is no understanding. That's right.

[49:33]

Right. So there are various ways in which he relates to the issue of speech and words. This is like the opening of a theme, you know, that we're going to return to. This is like a fugue or something. I think to read this more as a symphony than a kind of, or a poem rather than a... The meaning is in his words, so... What the heck, right? Yeah, so we chanted. Actually, these texts, sutras and this kind of text, are intended to be chanted and recited Because of that, because the meaning is in the resonances. Oh, it's in the resonances, it's not in the words. Well, I don't know if it's in there either. There is meaning, though. Now, the next line, though, is that... Would you say ultimate meaning is not in words? That's interpretive. It's not in the words. It's not in these words.

[50:40]

It's not in these words, but it is in words. It includes words. But what about the impulse, the inquiring impulse? Well, the key word here is response. What's it? All of these it's, you know, there's no it in the original, but in English we have to have a, we indicate a referred-to subject by using these pronouns. The lack of pronouns in Chinese and Japanese is a major problem in translating. But in English, it doesn't make sense if we don't say it. But I really think that even though there are a few, as I've mentioned, there are a few sentences that I think are way off in this translation. or really miss some of the basic meanings, like merging is auspicious, and because of the base there are dual pedestals. But basically this is a pretty good translation, I think.

[51:44]

And he uses it. This it here. This it and most of the its on this page refer back to the teaching of thusness. Oh, it doesn't refer to meaning in this sentence here. The meaning is not in the words yet. Well, vastness responds to the inquiring impulse. I would say that the id here refers to the teaching of vastness. It could be the meaning too, but basically I think it's the teaching of vastness. Literally, meaning not in words, inquiring impulse, we'll talk about that. Also, responds or comes to or goes toward. So I think this primarily refers to the teaching of thusness. So the meaning of the teaching of thusness, one way to gloss this, and I really meant that before when I said all of these ways of talking about it have something, some part of the truth, and yet mislead it.

[52:52]

Meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. This inquiring impulse, I think that's one good way to translate it, but there's a lot of meanings in this inquiring impulse. Literally, it's the coming of Ki, the same Ki as in Tenshin Zenki's name, which means inquiry, it means function, it means opportunity, it means energy, it means In this case it refers to the student, specifically, and this is the traditional interpretation of this. So it's sometimes translated as response to the inquiring student or response to the arrival of energy. Questioner 6 So that's what's translated as impulse?

[53:59]

There could be another paradigm somewhere. Answer Well inquiring impulse is not a literal translation but it's an accurate translation. If a student really wants to know about it, it cannot be explained in words. But it responds. It does respond. It moves towards, literally you could read it as it moves towards the arrival of energy, it moves towards the arrival of this functioning, it moves towards, it responds to this activity, this mechanism is another translation of it. It's not the main one here, but it's a very complex character which has a lot of overtones, this particular character. So some of our other translations, the meaning, the sense here is that it responds to bringing forth, the students bringing forth the energy of inquiry. So So inquiry is not what it says explicitly here, but it responds to, and I think the id is the teaching of thusness, but it's also the world, in a sense, the world of reality, the dharma-dhatu, the world of teaching, the world of thusness, responds to our energy and our attention and our inquiry is part of it.

[55:25]

So when you put energy into something, something comes back. When you actually make exertion, when you actually bring your attention and effort and heart to something, then there's some response. The world gives you some response in some way. It's interesting, if you read the other translations, like, the meaning does not lie in words, yet those who are right must be taught. That's quite interpretive. The meaning is not in the words, inquiring students, seek further. It's sort of, I think it's maybe a more mundane kind of translation. I mean, the meaning isn't in any particular words, but yet, when the student inquires, words may be helpful. This is one way of looking at it. Yeah, this is not saying to get rid of words. No particular words, but words are useful, or they don't have to be words. Well, I think it's saying beyond words, beyond any particular words, there is a response to

[56:32]

energy. There is a response to inquiry. There is a response to caring. There is a response to, I think in a way this refers to bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment, the thought of what's called way-seeking mind. When you put your energy and effort and intention into how do I live this life most fully, there's some response. I think that's what this is about. Yeah, I think that. Yeah. How would you translate it? Resonance with, cosmic resonance with Buddha. Yeah, I think this is about that. It's maybe responding to sincerity in the same way as responding to inquiring.

[57:43]

Yeah, I think that's there. You know, again, this is… The reason you have different translations is it is very interpretive. I think all of those meanings are there. It doesn't literally say inquiry. It doesn't literally say sincerity, but it implies all of that very much. Yeah. So this key is a very… It also implies turning. It implies things moving. It responds to things working. It could be translated as the workings. It responds to when you go to work, something comes up. When you really put your energy into something, something comes up. And so the other translation, Liam mentioned the others, but Powell's from the Record of Dongshan is, the mind not resting in words accommodates what arises. So again, none of these translations are perfect, but they kind of move around what's meant here.

[58:49]

And I think it's something that we can take as encouragement. There is a response, even though we can't put it into words, even though the meaning is not in any particular words, even though the intention or the heart of the matter can't quite be captured in any definition or explanation. There's some response. There's actually something going on. There's something working. This is, again, talking about how this dual mirror awareness is. And it has to do with reflections and mirrors. It's a kind of fun house. Have any of you ever been in one of those places, amusement parks, where you walk in and there's all these mirrors and they're reflecting off of it? You're not sure what's real. There's this sense of things working like that. Something's happening. And we don't know what it is exactly, do we?

[59:55]

Do you see this sentence as following in any way from the previous? Is it filling the bowl with snow, meaning words? Interesting question. Not exactly directly. But it's, you know, there's a subtle way which is totally beyond me, in which there's this five-ness that's going on in this text. A what-ness? Five-ness. Which we will get this, there is this unfolding and interfolding that's going on from the different levels of this interaction of the, and we can say the precise and the general, or the absolute and relative. So in that sense, I think there is an unfolding between those lines.

[60:57]

There's some connection, but it's not necessarily exactly direct. So I don't think it's talking about the meaning. It's not a mirror, huh? It's not directly referring back to filling a silver bowl with snow, no. But there is, you know, but if you think of a silver bull, there's a kind, you know, that's a kind of, what's that called? Parabolic mirror. So, and the moon, too, is this disk, you know, and the moon is, it reflects the sunlight, right? I mean, there are all these mirrors going on in these images. Moonlight is a reflection of sunlight, and moon is just- Is it gonna know that? I don't know. But we know that. I think they knew that the moon was not as bright as the sun. And they used the moon as an image of enlightenment, not the sun.

[61:59]

I mean, there are times when the sun is used as an image of gradients or something like that in Zen or Buddhist imagery, but the moon was really the thing. And when it says moon, it means the full moon. When it says moonlight, it means the light of the full moon. So there's also this thing about fullness and partiality. Whenever there's this image of the moon, there's the full moon and there's the crescent moon that are kind of implied in that imagery. It's also about, in a sense, it does resonate. It's like a song. It doesn't follow like a philosophical discourse, but it follows like a song. There's this hiding the heron. So we can see that the meaning is hidden in the words, yet we do know where it is, or there is some way in which it responds. So yeah, in a sense, we could see it echoing.

[63:01]

the dynamics of the center's echo from the previous. Again, we could talk about this a lot more, and I invite you to bring it up again, but let's push forward a little further. If you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. If you miss it, you fall into retrospective hesitation. So, a lot of this stuff, I think, is quite practical. And this is another example. And, well, having said that, I think that the practicality in response to the inquiring impulse is just to know that there is some response, that if you put out energy, there's some response. If you're excited, we could also read that as if you're agitated when you move. So I don't know that it means specifically like if you move when you're sitting, I don't think it literally is talking about zazen in that way. But there's a sense in which if you're agitated, if you're excited, we can think about it in terms of our mind during zazen, though sometimes we're very busy with thoughts, it's very drowsy.

[64:09]

This is this kind of excitement of many thoughts and many things going on and a lot of busyness, mentally. If you're agitated, if you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. So if... Could you just say which... Could you read the line, the Japanese lines that that's... Right. That's dozureba kawa kyu onashi. So pitfall, this word pitfall also is a kind of, it means a hole, but it's also like a nest or a den, it's kind of a trap. And it could be a trap that's kind of, you know, that's kind of cozy at first. You know, it could be something that attracts us, you know, we get excited about something. So if you're trying to, if you have something you're trying to do and you get very excited and very elated and happy about it, you know, it's hard, you can't do it. And you might get excited and, you know, feel like, oh, I've got it now, you know, or this is, you know, to get too excited about something is a trap.

[65:20]

It's a pitfall, you know, you might want to hang out there like a nice, you might think you can hang out there and actually you can't. So this is a kind of very practical, this and the next line, turning away and touching too. So these kind of go together. If you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. On the other side, if you miss it, you fall into a retrospective hesitation. So if you miss it or if you make a mistake, if you go off, then you fall. And this is something I think we all have some experience or sense of. When we miss it, oh no. And this retrospective hesitation is looking back and saying, oh, if I'd only done that if I hadn't. It seems like in the other translation, moving forward creates pitfalls avoidance leads to standstill it seemed like that was more tying into the next line which was turning away and touching i i always had a hard time with if you miss it you know i i

[66:26]

Well, I think they're related. I think both of those are implied in there. Literally, it's to make an error. But it's also like avoiding to push something away. So I think implied there. But this retrospective hesitation, I think it is like a standstill. Literally, it's one of the characters' standstill. It's like, you're stuck. Oh, if only I had done. So we sometimes spend time Worrying about the future. What am I going to do? What's going to happen? Planning. Doubt. Yeah. So this also definitely implies doubt. This retrospective hesitation. Kind of fretfulness. Looking back. Doubt. When we make a mistake, though, we spend time worrying. So it also implies regret. Looking back. retrospective hesitation, looking back and saying, if only, if only that hadn't happened, you know, if only, you know, we've all got thousands of if-onlys if we, if only not to.

[67:41]

Couldn't I sing on something ignoring it? Uh, not literally, but I think that's implied there. Again, this is a song, so there's, so there's lots of, and we don't really even know all the resonances of these Chinese characters in Tang Dynasty, but yeah, I think that's kind of an implication. The other thing, though, is that this missing is also a theme in this text, or there's some resonance later on. So the line that I've mentioned before, merging is auspicious, do not violate it. Another actually more literal translation, I don't think this is a mistranslation, it's not wrong translation, but part of what this means is missing is auspicious. Making a mistake is auspicious. not violated. We'll talk about that more later, but this thing about missing is also part of this. So, Baba Wawa, is there anything said or not? The speech is not yet correct.

[68:44]

There's a theme here also about how do we actually... It has to do with how do we enact or embody or come to practice or experience this teaching of thusness. And it's talking about the different ways in which we miss that, you know? And the missing, it isn't necessarily bad. It's, I mean, later on that this is developed, the missing is not necessarily, I mean, it's part of the process. There's this process that's going on in this, that he's talking about in the song. It has to do with these five aspects of the way that the ultimate truth and the conventional truth interact. Could you see it like, you know, in terms of the inquiring impulse, that's obviously in the coverage, so could you see it like sort of as journey to inquire? Yeah, right. So inquiring impulse has to do with missing, right? Inquiring means we don't know it yet, you know, we're on, there's some process here.

[69:45]

So there's communing with a source and communing with a process. There's this kind of, there's a dialectic I think is actually the best word that I know to describe what's going on here. There's a process that's a dialectical process between these two sides and how they come together and how they interact and how they unfold is what this is about. And part of what happens in the sun is that there's not like one There's not like one kind of culminating conclusion about it either, exactly. We talked about equanimity. Yeah. But equanimity is a kind of vital, active equanimity. So it's balancing. We could talk about it in terms of balancing. I think that's quite useful. There's one side where he's talking about all the ways in which we kind of go off. And we're balancing these two sides. So one side is, if you're excited, it's a pitfall.

[70:49]

If you get too excited and agitated about something, you fall into a hole. You fall into a trap. And what's that trap? I don't think it says what it is at this point. It's just that getting excited by itself is the trap. That you get excited and you think that there's something there to get excited about. Getting pleasure from the excitement? That happens sometimes. So there's something very, there's something exciting about getting excited. Holly said getting pleasure from the excitement. So to get agitated, to get excited, it's very dynamic, it's very active, but it's a little too much. And we might think that we're, that we've got it. Hey, Eureka. And then you're completely, What's that line from Dogen? Suppose you gain pride of understanding and inflate your own enlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, attaining the way and clarifying the mind, raising an aspiration to escalate the very sky.

[71:57]

You are still making initial partial excursions about the frontier, but are somewhat deficient in the vital way of total emancipation. This is about that. If you're excited, it's a pitfall. And actually, having been around Zen Center for a while, I've seen it. Others who have may have seen people get really excited, like after Sesshin, or have some very dramatic experience and feel very excited about it and get very inflated. And then there's this big fall that comes from that. So this is just one aspect, one example of this pitfall. And then if you miss it, you fall into retrospective hesitation. If you miss it, you say, oh no, I missed it. Oh, if only I could have, you know, and then you're, you know, caught back in something that you think you missed. And then it further, it further, the next slide further refines the sense of balancing. Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a mass of fire. You know, you can miss something you used to have, right?

[73:02]

I don't think this is that, that, I think that's in English. Well, I'm not sure that it's not. One of the meanings of this miss is mismatch. When things don't fit. When you miss in the sense that, you know, you miss the mark. So in a sense, it's to be apart. So in that sense, it is. If you miss something, if you're apart from something that you used to have, then you look back and you're in a standstill and you're in regret. So in a sense, yeah, it does include that. It's one of the things that I think is really neat about this song of Jomar Samadhi is that that each of these lines, there are all these resonances, and we can talk about them and think about it in terms of our own experience, and there are all of these different implications there.

[74:09]

And actually, the more we think about it and see it in these different ways, the more we can, the more it can be useful to us. That's the inquiring impulse. Yeah, exactly, in response. Exactly. Does the original text say more like, since it doesn't have a you or an it? Well, it doesn't have a you or an it, but it implies that. I mean, they don't say you and it, but they don't need to. It's understood. So it's not that there's no you or no it. I mean, literally there isn't, but we understand that it's talking about people. But literally it's just missing, fall, it fall into, um big hole in chinese or i don't know into um Yeah, I think so. I think that the its in this English translation I think are appropriate and I think they refer and I think all of this does refer back to the teaching of thusness.

[75:16]

The teaching of thusness is the subject for this at least this part of if not the whole of this. So that's not the missing that he is talking about? But it also includes that because so the its do refer back to the teaching of thusness but would also whatever you miss. Okay. has this kind of openness about it. So it is referring back to the teaching of thusness, but also the teaching of thusness comes up in regard to specific things that we might miss. I mean, gee, remember that orange? It was just so orange. And you might miss it. And actually you had an experience of thusness around that orange or something. That's just an example. But this turning away and touching are both wrong. I think it's really interesting. It is like a massive fire. So literally, it's turning your back and grabbing.

[76:20]

This touching is, it means touching, but it also means to roar or to offend or to arouse. It's like grasping or grabbing or clutching. So, you know, the, This translation is a little understated. The original Chinese says, really turning your back on or really grabbing a hold of are both wrong. But in a way I like it that clearly says turning away and touching because that's really all you have to say. Turning away from something and touching something are both wrong because the Chinese says like And it definitely refers back to the teaching of thusness, even though it doesn't have an it in it. It's like a great mass of fire, great balls of fire. So the it that's implied here, even in the Chinese, is this way of, is the dual merit samadhi, or the teaching of thusness, or thusness itself, or also how, what your relationship is to it.

[77:23]

And this, again, I think is real practical. When we're faced with the way things are, if we try and turn away from it, that doesn't work. Literally, a great ball of fire, if you touch it, you're gonna get a great mass of fire. If you touch it, you'll get your hand burned. But if you turn away and walk away from it, it might burn down your house. So how do you stay, present with this dynamic, responsive ball of energy that is your life without kind of trying to grab it and define it and control it and hold on to it and make sure it doesn't change into something else and all that kind of thing or without trying to turn away from it and give it up and get rid of it and deny it. So it's about balancing. And turning away and touching are both wrong.

[78:25]

In the Chinese, it says, like a blazing fire, useful but dangerous. That is interpretive, that translation. But that's, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so fire, we were talking about whether or not they knew that the moon reflected the sun. One of the things we do know is that they used fire a lot. They didn't have electricity and they didn't, you know, they, this is, I think we forget this when we read these texts sometimes, that their context for how they lived was really different. So fire was something that was actually part of their everyday life. They cooked with fire, you know, and what the monastery I practiced at in Japan for one practice period, there was no electricity. Working in the kitchen, a big part of your work was chopping wood for the wood stove. and taking care of the fire. And that was actually, working in the kitchen had a lot to do with the fire.

[79:27]

They talk about it as a massive fire, which makes it sound like it's really big. Dangerous. Is it just really large? I mean, it's a big fire. A great fire. It's die-large. Yeah, but also it says to assemble a mass. Yeah, well, in this case, it's a massive fire. It's not, I don't think it's a verb. It's like a great ball of fire, a great massive fire. It's kind of a theme of being careful. Yeah. It's like how do we... This whole text is a commentary on keep it well. How do we take care of our relationship to thusness or to the teaching of thusness, to the practice of thusness, to the truth of things as it is? That's the whole subject of this. And this dual mirror is this kind of way we have to keep adjusting the mirror to reflect what's going on in front of us. And if we ignore what's going on in front of us, that's not it.

[80:30]

And if we try and contain it and control it, that's not it. So what is it like to actually be standing next to a great mass of fire, a great ball of fire? I mean, you have to damage the body. Right. Can we take that kind of implication? Yeah. So, good. Yeah, I think it's good to bring this back to, again, it's not strictly speaking, talking just about sitting meditation practice, but he is talking about that also. I mean, it's part of what is, runs through this. So, yeah, that's right. I mean, I think back in the 70s at Zen Center when there was more of a macho attitude about sitting and people actually sat through pain in Sashin that they shouldn't have.

[81:36]

And I know people who couldn't sit down for a long time after. And this is not something to be afraid of if you're sitting in Sashin because there are clear signals about when you should adjust your posture and not sit through some particular kind of pain. So we're much more sophisticated of it now about how do we take care of it well when you're sitting. But yeah, it's possible to hurt yourself by being too intense and pushing too hard. But then again, if you back away from that, then you're missing it too. You have to just be present with this energy, this fire of the Dharma, this fire of the truth. Again, all of this is just about our own lives. What does it really mean to be you? And how do you really fully be yourself? So how do you do that without ignoring yourself and turning away from yourself or without pushing yourself so hard that you get sick?

[82:36]

And a community like this is, you know, a real good place to test that because the schedule pushes you and the demands of work push you. And how do you take care of yourself and take care of your job? And it's this balancing thing, turning away and touching, you're both wrong. And then he says, just to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement. Which is kind of, you know, funny, because here he is writing this literature about it. So we're almost at time, but, you know, I don't have so much to say about that, I think it's pretty obvious what that is. Let me just go a little further, because I want to try and start next week, or pretty soon after the story, because you are not in it, it actually is you again, and then get into this aliveness. But it is bright just at midnight, it doesn't appear at dawn.

[83:42]

We could read that it is truly bright at midnight. Right at midnight is most bright. This just is also truly here. True brightness is at midnight. We could read it that way too. And it doesn't appear at dawn. Literally, there's no trace of dew at dawn. There's no trace of? Of dew. D-E-W? D-E-W. The very literal meaning of that. But it does also mean it doesn't appear at dawn. There's nothing to be seen at dawn. So this goes back to this image of light and dark, and I mentioned last time in the Merging of Difference and Unity, which is this poem that precedes this, it talks about Light and dark are relative to one another like forwarded steps. And right in light there is darkness, but don't confront it as darkness. Right in darkness there is light, but don't see it as light. So this image of light and dark is another theme that's in here.

[84:43]

So the whole image of light, you know, if you have jewels and mirrors, you're talking about light. So there's light is a motif that comes up here. And in this particular line, This first part reminds me of it as darkest just before the dawn. Right in the middle of the darkest night there is light. Right in darkness there is light, but don't see it as light. Right in light there is darkness, but don't confront it as darkness. It was the merging of difference and unity. So this is a little bit like that. It is bright just as midnight, and then at dawn we don't see it. There's no trace. So light and dark are complicated the way those are used. Light, in this case, dark actually means the absolute or the ultimate. In darkness, everything is one. We turn on the lights and then we see all the distinctions. We see, you know, the way our mind works is that we separate and define book and table and cup and glass

[85:55]

lay and priest and bald and long-haired and anyway, whatever. So the light is the realm of distinctions. The dark is the realm of merging. Dark is the realm of unity or of the absolute or of sameness. They also talk about the lamp as being a symbol for... But then, right, so then the light is also the light of the Dharma and that's very much part of this that we're just talking about a mass of fire. So fire is also very bright. So these images, because this is a song, these images work in many ways at once. It's part of what poetry or a song does. So right in the middle of So in a way, we could read this line in a lot of different ways. One way to read it would be right in the middle of merging, we see the brightness. We see the light of the Dharma.

[87:05]

We see the light of this mass of fire, of the teaching of the way things are. And then it doesn't appear at dawn, we could say. There's nothing to be seen when we make the distinctions. So we can read it that way. But I think we can turn it. And using this image of light and dark, we can turn it in a lot of different ways. And then it says, acts as a guide for beings, its use removes all pains. Its use is sort of, what does that mean? The use of a business? Uh-huh. To actually put it to use. Putting it to use, that means just practicing? when it's functioning. To function, it literally means function. To use it, to function, functioning, all pain is pulled away, is drawn out, is let go of. The acts as a guide for beings, a guide means kind of a standard or rule or principle.

[88:09]

So this is again, this it refers back to this teaching of us, this practice of how to see things as they are, to see our life as it is. and using it removes, plucks out all suffering or pain. That's what it says here. So maybe that's enough for tonight. Those last couple of lines that we went through somewhat quickly so we can sit back if there are questions. But are there any other questions? Okay, well, keep looking at it. Do it again next week?

[88:51]

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