I was given this poem that you might enjoy to begin my talk. It says by someone named Norman Schaefer, who I don't know. It's about Rohatsu. Day and night in the chilly hall, the little group sits cross-legged. I try to forget myself. Press on with the task. But the week goes by without enlightenment. Knees aching and tired of making the effort. A woman asks this morning, why am I doing this? I know better than to try to answer. When I open my mouth, it will be for lunch. So today we're going to take up the Four lines.

[01:32]

The spiritual source shines clear in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness, though, is still not enlightenment. terms are really simple. They're both two letters. They sound similar. Ri and Ji. Ri is Japanese. Chinese have different terms. Same term, but different language. Sanskrit is a different language with the same terms, but I don't want to go into that. So ri is the source. Ji is phenomena.

[02:34]

So, Sandokai is about re-engineering. It's about the source and its works. The source and its expression. The essence and function. That's what Mahayana Buddhism is about. The source and its function. and a one. Not two, not one. It all gets mixed up, but it's very simple. And it all comes back to, what is this? Or, what am I doing? Or, this is what I'm doing. Or, this is doing. And so we, there are many ways of expression So, Ri and Ji.

[03:42]

The spiritual source shines clear in the light. That's Ri. So, the spiritual source illuminates everywhere. and he says, everyone has their own light. Each one of you has your own light. Everyone has their own light. But when you go to see it or grasp it, it eludes you. And then, Dogen has his comment on the spiritual light. which he calls ko-myo-zo, radiant light or spiritual light, but we don't like to use the word spiritual so much.

[04:56]

So, radiant light, it's also called the light of Vairocana. Vairocana Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya Vairocana Buddha. That's the same as the spiritual source shining clear in the light. Vairocana Dharmakaya. Sambhogakaya Nirmalakaya. Sambhogakaya Lokchana Buddha, Nirmalakaya Shakyamuni Buddha. So these are the three aspects of the spiritual source. Suzuki Roshi makes a pun on source. It kind of slips into sauce. But we eliminated that part. The spiritual sauce.

[06:17]

And the branching streams fall out in the dark. So we use dark and light in different ways. Sometimes light means illumination, where everything is separated. When you turn on the light, everything is seen. But when you turn off the light, everything is one. That's the dark. So the dark is actually the spiritual light. If you think of dark and light as two different things, only two different things, then this is a discriminating mind. So dark expresses itself as light, and light expresses itself as darkness. So the spiritual source shines clear in the light.

[07:24]

The branching streams flow out in the dark. So the branching streams flow out in the dark. You can't see, you know, it's like some mysterious thing. All-pervading mysterious thing are the branching streams. And so the branching streams flowing out in the dark means that the individual parts are not seen. The only thing that is seen is one whole being. That's darkness. When you turn off the lights, everything disappears, but it doesn't mean that it's not there. So appearance and disappearance are simply, Suzuki Roshi says, when you get into a dark room, if you go into the closet, there You can't see anything. There are no individual hearts. But as you stay there, pretty soon everything starts to reveal itself.

[08:27]

Everything is there. So it's a kind of metaphor for the oneness of everything. And when you turn on the lights, you see the comparative value of each state. When you turn off the light, everything has the same value. So these are the two sides of our existence, the dark side and the light side. But sometimes we say the light is like hope and so forth. That's another way of talking about it. So we talk about dark and light in different ways. So the spiritual source shines clear in the light. That's dharmakaya buddha, vairocana. This is the way of expression generally in Mahayana Buddhism.

[09:37]

The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. and enlightenment are two different things. Just like you think that dark and light are two different things. But things and sameness, again, resting at the phenomenal side, is delusion. But according to sameness is still not enlightenment. So I used to have a student one time who sat full lotus all the time and never wanted to do anything else. So he was always in his endo. Everybody else would go to work, he'd come back and stay in his endo. He was like, of course he was sameness, but still not enlightenment, because he was neglecting the other side.

[10:42]

He was neglecting the phenomenal side. He didn't want to do anything. He didn't recognize the phenomenal side. So when you fall into one side or the other, this is called delusion. When you totally practice within the phenomenal side, that's enlightenment. So we always want to avoid grasping at things, which is discrimination. That's the problem. There is a good discrimination. There is a kind of attachment. We get attached to the phenomenal side. That's our problem. This guy was attached to the noumenal side. But we always get attached to the phenomenal side. So he was doing really well because he was not attached to the phenomenal side.

[11:45]

But the problem is that he didn't know how to work with it. So people get So, to say according to sameness is still not enlightenment until we only get attached to the sameness side, or the noumenal side. That's the same, it's not any different than being attached to the phenomenal side. So, grasping at things is delusion. It's really good, though, to be attached to practice. Practice is a good attachment because it avoids being attached to re or ji. Practice is not being attached to re or ji.

[12:49]

That's what practice is. It's not being attached to the phenomenal side. It's not being attached to the noumenal side. It's practice. That's practice. It's being in the middle. That's called being attached to practice, which is a good attachment. Because it's non-attachment. It's the attachment of non-attachment. And it's the non-attachment of attachment. the forest for the trees, usually. We're very interested in the trees, but our perspective usually is not big enough to see the forest. So there's ultimate truth and conventional truth.

[13:59]

So conventional truth is the truth of the phenomenal world, which is delusion, but it's still truth. And then there's the ultimate truth, which is beyond the phenomenal truth. It's the real truth of the phenomenal truth. which is emptiness. Sometimes Suzuki Roshi raises the bar on enlightenment and sometimes he lowers it. He'll raise the bar by saying, you can't really experience enlightenment, it's beyond your experience, that's raising the bar. And then he lowers It's always with you.

[15:04]

So I'll turn you over to Suzuki Roshi. He says, the spiritual source shines clear in the light. That's the quote. And then he says, the source is something wonderful, something beyond description, something beyond our words. What Buddha talked about is the source and the teaching beyond discrimination of right and wrong. You know, if a person is always complaining about something, we say that they're a person of right and wrong. This is important. Whatever your mind can conceive is not the source itself. The source is something that only a Buddha knows. Only when you practice asin do you have it. Yet whether you practice or not, whether you realize it or not, something exists even before our realization of it, and that is the source.

[16:13]

It is not something you can taste. That's his permanent source. The true source is neither tasty nor tasteless. As they say, the food of the sages The delicious food of the sages tastes like nothing at all to ordinary people. In the last of these four lines, which is, according with sameness is still unenlightened, Shikito says, according with sameness is still unenlightened. So, just to recognize the truth is not enlightenment either. often we feel that the truth is something we should be able to see or figure out. But in Buddhism that's not the truth. The truth is something beyond our ability to describe, beyond our thinking.

[17:16]

Truth can also be the wonderful source, wonderful beyond of phenomena and the other is the truth of beyond phenomena, of the source. So what he does is he talks about everything that we can think or any idea we have, any concept we have is always on the side of phenomena. spiritualist, that's always on the side of phenomena. So by the way, when we say being, being includes our thoughts as well as the many things that we see.

[18:19]

So usually when we say truth, we mean some underlying principle that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. that the earth turns in a certain direction is truth. But in Buddhism that is not ultimate truth. It is also conventional truth, or the truth of unassigned being, being that is encoded in big mind. So big mind is the container. Everything exists within it. The big mind is the one thing. And so we talk about mind thinking mind, big mind or dharmakaya. Everything exists within dharmakaya. So whatever is in your mind, big or small, right or wrong, that is on the side of being.

[19:22]

If you think about something in terms of right or wrong, you may say, this is eternal truth, but for us that is not And that idea of eternal truth is also on the side of me because it simply exists in our mind, in our thinking mind, or in our mind. So we do not make much distinction between things and things that exist within ourselves. You may say, something exists outside of yourself. You may feel that it does, but it's not true. When you say, there is the river, the river is already in your mind. What he's saying, in your mind, means in your big mind, as a kind of thought. That things exist outside of ourselves is a dualistic, primitive, shallow understanding of things.

[20:28]

How do you understand this? Because we think of our mind in a limited way. We think that myself is this body and these organs and extensions and the thought process. But that's only a limited understanding of Our true body is the big body. Our essential true big body is the big body that includes everything. So where do we go when we die? How do we get here? This me, person, is on this little ball, this little cloud of earth, spinning around in the great cosmos, which is on this side, on the phenomenal side.

[21:32]

So, big mind is your true mind. And when we let big mind operate, or when we let big mind guide our small mind, then we have some opportunity to experience reality in that fundamental way. So we divorce ourselves from big mind through discrimination. Discrimination means divorce. Actually it means divide. To divide. Discriminate means to divide. So we're always operating and discriminating through discriminating mind. And when we're not operating through division. So we live in the realm of division, which is called delusion, which is called this side.

[22:42]

So we do not make this ... that things exist outside of ourselves is a dualistic, primitive, shallow understanding of things. So the characters of the first line, re, gen, myo, ni, ko, ke, ti, re, refer to re, the source of the teaching beyond words. So the true source, re, is beyond our thinking. It is pure and stainless. When you describe it, you put a limitation on it. That is, you stain the truth or put a mark on it. You know, we talk about precepts, about breaking precepts. As long as we're practicing, we don't break the precepts. It's called staining. We still honor the precepts and try to live by them through the guidance of the precepts, but we can't do it.

[23:48]

So we're always staining the precepts. And then when we repent, we wash the precepts and iron them and put them on again. that though. So trying to describe emptiness is not possible because what you do is put a limitation on it. Anything you can think about it in an ultimate way or identify it in some way puts a limitation on something that's limitless. So in the Heart Sutra it says no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no objects of mind, and so forth. And that is greed. So all Dharma's are empty in their own being. The next line reads, the branching streams flow on in the dark.

[25:09]

Branch, shiha means branch, stream, and Sekito says that shiha for poetic reasons. So to make these two lines of the poem beautiful, and to contrast shiha with reigen or source, essence and dark, reigen is more numeral. So, shi-ha is more phenomenal, the essence of it, which is dark in the flow. So to say numinal or phenomenal is not exactly right, but tentatively I have to say so. That is why it's good to remember the more technical terms like ri and ji. So, ji is based, which is phenomenal, is grasping at things. Ji, which is used in the third line, here refers to the phenomenal, something you can grasp, to something you can hear, smell, taste or touch, as well as the objects of thought or ideas.

[26:11]

Whatever can be introduced into our discriminating consciousness is a gene. Something that is beyond our consciousness, re, the noumenal is re, beyond our discriminating consciousness, because consciousness This is the problem we have. Consciousness discriminates. The sixth consciousness discriminates between seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and feeling. That's what it does. It discriminates. It says, this is this, this is seeing, this is hearing, this is touching, this is tasting. That's called discrimination. I see the Zahu that's discriminating between seeing and hearing, but if I and the Zahu are not separate, then there's no discrimination.

[27:17]

So if the subject and object are one, there's no discrimination, but we take one thing and divide it. But it's in the phenomenal realm, and it's discrimination. And so when we do that, we separate ourselves from the object. So in darkness, the branching streams flow everywhere, like water. So water is actually pure, but when it becomes acid, or when it becomes poison, or when it associates with other elements, it becomes tainted.

[28:25]

It becomes tainted. So we don't say any longer, this is water, we say, this is root beer, or this is lemonade, or whatever. But actually, it's water that's tainted. By tainted, I don't mean good or bad. It's just stained, which doesn't mean good or bad. It simply means it's conditioned. So we condition water in various ways, but the water is always pure, no matter what its taintedness is. And then we have ways of distilling the water so that it becomes pure again. And when it runs into the ground, as it runs into the ground, it sheds its stains and becomes pure again. But it's always pure. It's not sometimes pure. It's always pure. The water itself is always pure.

[29:28]

It's the staining stuff that's impure, so to speak. So water is like the source. It's like the dark flowing in the dark. It just pervades everywhere. And it really does pervade everywhere. Even in the Sahara Desert. You think there's no water, but without water there's no Sahara Desert. So, even when you are not aware of water, water is there. So water is inside our physical body and in plants too. Pure Source is everywhere. Each being is itself Pure Source, and Pure Source is nothing but each being. They are not two things. There is no difference between re and ji, Pure Source and stream.

[30:29]

The stream is Pure Source, and Pure Source is the stream. The Pure Source is flowing all over, even though you don't know it. This don't know is what we call dark, and it is very important. In Soto Zen, Katagiri Yoshi used to say this, to be a Soto Zen priest, you should be a little bit stupid. You have to be a little bit stupid, you know, meaning not knowing everything, not thinking that you know everything, keeping your mind open, not close to to the expert's mind is limited because of too much knowledge. So don't know for, in this practice, don't know is an asset.

[31:35]

And between the stupid, you know, yesterday we talked about the dull and the smart. The smart and the dull. And the dull person has an advantage because, you know, these words are just, you should not take them literally, please. If you take any of these words literally, you're lost. Then you think you know something. You have to read the back of the page when you study anything in Buddhism, especially Zen. You have to understand every word and phrase is a way of talking about something that you can't talk about. So the pure source is flowing all over even though you don't know it. This don't know is what we call dark and it is very important.

[32:39]

So the third line, grasping at things is surely delusion. Grasping at things means to stick to the many things you see. is something special or individual and usually you will stick to something, yet even if you recognize the truth that everything is one, that is not always enlightenment. It may be enlightenment, but not always. It is just intellectual understanding. An enlightened person does not ignore things and does not stick to things, not even to the truth. There is no truth. So, to be one with unknowing, as soon as we discriminate, as soon as discrimination takes place, we become jinn. So there is no truth that is different from what each being is.

[33:44]

Each being is its own truth. You may think that there is some truth that is controlling each being. This truth, you may think, is like the truth of gravitation. If the apple is each being, then behind the apple is some truth working on the apple-like gravitation. To understand things in that way is not enlightenment. To stick to beings, to stick to beings' ideas, even Buddha's teaching, say, Buddha's teaching is something like this, is to stick to G. That is the backbone of the Sandokaya. So we should not be attached to Buddha's teaching either. We should not reject it, because Buddha's teaching helps us to find our way. To say, I don't need Buddha's teaching, is not what is meant here. But we shouldn't be attached to some idea, because it's beyond all of our ideas. That's why we sit zazen.

[34:47]

When you sit zazen, There's just reality, undivided reality, non-discriminated reality. That's the opportunity that we have when we sit south end. We have the opportunity to go beyond discrimination. Steve Jobs. I did do that. Didn't I? Well, not yesterday. Not yesterday. Not yesterday, no. Reminders. Oh, okay. That's a figure of one.

[35:52]

Steve, many years ago, Colvin Chino was in, not in Menlo Park, but Los Altos, in his house, sleeping with his wife. And around midnight, someone came knocking on the door. And so, he got up to answer the door, and she said, come on up to that door, come on up to that door. You know, somebody, you know, kind of crazy-sounding. And he opened the door, and she said, he was yelling something to her, you know, and she That guy's crazy. He shut the door and he could see, he said, I could see that he wasn't crazy when I looked at his eyes. And so, he said, I want to talk to you. So, Coburn put on his bathrobe or something. They went to town and the only thing open was this bar.

[36:53]

So, they went to the bar and sat down and talked for a while. So, he was telling Kovitz, I want you to verify, I think I'm enlightened and I'd like you to verify my enlightenment. You've seen those people haven't you? You may have been one of those. So, Kovitz says, well, you'll have to show me what you mean. by enlightenment. So they parted. And a week later, knock on the door, again. And Corbin went down and opened the door. And the same thing happened. And they went, I guess they went back to the bar or someplace.

[37:56]

And he said, I've got the thing. I'm going to show you. And he said, this is the product of my enlightened mind. And Colin said, it's wonderful, but it's not enlightened. And they became wonderful. But it's not enlightenment.

[39:01]

It's just not enlightenment. It's an apple mint. That's what? It's an apple mint. An apple mint, yes. According to Semitism, it's still not enlightenment. To recognize the truth is not enlightenment either. It may be better not to say anything. If I translate it into English, if I translate re, which is the numeral sign, into English, it is already ji. Enlightenment is not something you can experience, actually. It's beyond our experience. If someone says, I have attained enlightenment, that is wrong. It means that person sticks to some explanation of enlightenment, and that is delusion. At the same time, if you think that enlightenment is beyond our experience, something that you cannot experience, even so, enlightenment is there. So you can experience it, and you cannot experience it. So you cannot say that there is no enlightenment or that there is enlightenment.

[40:07]

Enlightenment is not something about which you can say there is or there isn't. And at the same time something that you can experience is enlightenment too. So I think this is a great explanation of enlightenment. How we see enlightenment. In the last talk I referred to the big about sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment. In the Platform Sutra, one of the arguments was that this is at a time, back in the 6th or 7th century in China, when gradual and sudden enlightenment were kind of big things to talk about. And Jinxu was supposed to have been an advocate of gradual enlightenment. back on Eno, the advocate for Sudden Enlightenment.

[41:07]

But if you read the Platform Sutra, you'll realize that people say, well, the Platform Sutra talks all about Sudden Enlightenment, but Eno says, some may be, some are quick and some are slow. That's all. Some people need one thing, some people need another. There's no real difference between Sudden Enlightenment How long did that take? I think it took about 500,000 years. Did you ever see, there was a wonderful play, Monkey. I don't want to spoil what Monkey did, but in the play, Monkey is sitting down with a bunch of Taoist philosophers, and he thinks they're just having tea for an hour.

[42:08]

And then he talks to his companions when it's over and says, boy, you've been there for five years. Five years? I just had tea for about an hour. So which is it? How long is long and how short is short? It's just comparative values. There's nothing that's really short or really long. We just talk this way. And we experience things. in this way, because of our disposition. Disposition meaning the way our mind works. So, according to the Sutra, the Sixth Ancestor, it seems that just to sit is not true practice either. And then he talks about how that was just something that was inserted. So, in the Platform Sutra, Jin Xu, or his disciple Qin Shi, there's this poem, a religious poem, which you know already.

[43:26]

The fifth ancestor, Dai Ma Koning, wanted to find his successor. He asked the monks to write a poem to express their understanding. So, Jin Xu, who was the head monk, selected one because he's our teacher too, and he's a great scholar. But he wrote this poem on the wall in the middle of the night because he didn't want to reveal who he was. So the poem says, Our body is the Bodhi tree, and our mind is a mirror bright. Carefully wiped an hour by hour, and let no dust this the next day, he said to the monk standing next to him, I do have a poem, but since I am illiterate, would you write it down for me? So here's this, you know, nobody, you know, is writing a poem. And his poem says, there is no Bodhi tree, nor stand of a mirror bright, since all is void, where can the dust of light? So everybody thinks, ain't no one.

[44:30]

if you understand this poem. When Conan saw this, he knew the author had the understanding he was looking for, and he recognized Angel as his brother-in-law and as his patriarch. So that was the breaking point, the turning point. But these are two aspects of practice, simply two aspects of practice. Jinsu is talking about the function and the practice, and Ena was talking about the essence. If you only say that one is better than the other, or one is right and one is wrong, that's just falling into duality. So the essence needs the function, and the function needs the essence, and they're really one thing. although this is not stated exactly as that.

[45:45]

That's really, I think, part of the meaning of what Sekito is trying to say. So, Suzuki Roshi says, In those days, it was an honor to own a copy of the Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor. There are many versions of it, and the oldest ones do not include this poem or any criticism. That's true. The early versions of that, and they were very early actually, they were found in the Dunhuang cave. It doesn't talk about this poem. It's not in there. So there are many later additions to the Platform Sutra. So one name of the Sandokai is to clarify to realize or have complete understanding of ri, to accept ri, is our practice.

[47:00]

That's the phenomenal side. But even though you practice zazen and think that that is ri, the noumenal side, or the attainment of the realization of ri, that is not ever so. You know, study looks like the phenomenal side, which is self. But if you study as practice, then this G can also be re. Matter of fact, all of your activity, when it's practice, is not just G, it's also re. When you practice wholeheartedly without ego, it's re. When you study without ego, without trying to attain something, it's free. And that's just cheating. But we create this division between the phenomenal and the non-phenomenal.

[48:11]

That's why we say, be one with your activity. don't think about how to sit cross-legged. Just be totally one with your activity. That's how you practice. Don't think about Buddhism or Zen or anything. Just totally be one with your activity, undivided activity. That's how you live your life. And then that's called continuous practice. So, the first line of the poem are the introduction. The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east. Here, great sage can also mean hermit. In Sikhito's time, there were many Taoist hermits who were proud of their supernatural powers and who were seeking some elixir to prolong life.

[49:17]

They were not much interested in Buddhist practice and they couldn't understand why practicing zazen was so necessary. So this is also a question for Dogen Zenji. If all of us have Buddha nature, why is it necessary to practice? Dogen suffered over this point. He couldn't resolve this problem through intellectual study. He tried to do that. He studied Kyentai. When you really know yourself, you will realize how important it is to practice Zazen. Before you know what you are doing, you don't know why you practice. You think you are quite free, and that whatever you do is your choice, but actually you're creating karma for yourself and others. You don't know what you are doing, so you don't think there's any need to practice nothing. But we have to pay our own debts. No one else can pay our debts. That is why it's necessary to practice. To fulfill our responsibility, we practice. We have to. If you don't practice, you don't feel so good, and you also create some problems for

[50:21]

knowing this, you will say, why is it necessary to practice then? Moreover, when you say, we have Buddha nature, you may think Buddha nature is something like a diamond in your sleeve. But true Buddha nature is not like this. A diamond is ji, not ri. We are always involved in the world of ji without realizing it. So you may ask, what is the real teaching of Buddha? If you don't understand it, you will keep asking, what is it? What is it? What does it mean? You are just seeking for something you can understand. That's a mistake. We don't exist in that way. Dogen Senji says, there is no bird who flies knowing the limit of the sky. There is no fish who swims, knowing the end of the ocean.

[51:27]

We exist in a limitless universe. Sentient beings are numberless, and our desires are limitless. But we still have to continue making our effort, just as a fish swims and a bird flies. So Dogen Zenji says, a bird flies like a bird, a fish swims like a fish. That is the Bodhisattva's way, and this is how we observe our practice. When we understand things in this way, according to Dogen, we are not people in Mahabodha, which means the last era, the last 500 years after Shakyamuni Buddha, when nobody can really practice in a good way. Our practice is not disturbed by any framework of time or space. Dogen said, Buddha is always here. In some way, still, Buddhism exists. And when we really understand what Buddha meant, we are in Buddha's time. not in some time of decline. So, you do want to know things.

[52:33]

You always want to know, what am I doing, where am I going, where is it taking me? But actually, practice is like walking blind and feeling your way. through the, you know, wilderness, and then you find a signpost. And it points that way, this way. So, even though you're just staying in the same place, you do all that staying in the same place. But then, you know, something always happens. without knowing anything, you'll always be taken care of.

[53:43]

Sometimes I'll ask the questions, but we don't have that time. But if you do have one question, I can talk about it. Ron? When Darwin is constantly talking about clarifying, what is he talking about? He's talking about I'm taking one step after another. You know, it's not that you shouldn't try to clarify things. That's not the meaning. What's the difference between trying to know something and trying to clarify? Well, when you sit and chant Zazen, You clarify. Okay, I understand that. Yeah. And it's okay to know things. That's not wrong. But you know that what you know is on the side of Jesus.

[54:49]

So our mind wants to have some satisfaction, right? So we study, and we try to clarify it, and so forth. It's good. Yeah. It's still on the side of G. A clarified butter. The fat drops away. The fat is what's left. The fat is what's left. The impurities. Eventually nothing's there. It's just a puddle. I don't know. But clarified means make clear. That's OK. You don't want to be muddle-headed. muddle-headed is not the same as not knowing. Not knowing is clear-headed, actually. And true not knowing is clear-headed, because not knowing is the greatest knowing. Actually, Bodhidharma says, I don't know, which means of course he knows.

[55:57]

He knows the meaning of not knowing. Ross? Yes, what is being taken care of? What is the... Before I responded to Ron's question, you said you will be taken care of. Oh yes, well because there's nothing outside of you. So you'll be taken care of by the universe? Well, I guess you could call it that. The universe limits it. Not for our purpose. We can say, yeah, I'm in risk. That's our conceptual. So if we're going through some duress, we may feel that we're not being taken care of. We're not getting our entitlement. The problem is that when we talk about being taken care of, we have some idea what that means. Taking care in the way I want to be taken care of.

[57:01]

That's not what being taken care of means. Being taken care of means that you go, Isn't the Heart Sutra a way of the phenomenal describing the Source? Doesn't that come from it? Isn't that what we get? Let me say what the Heart Sutra is. is emptiness. Mark means characteristic. So when you say us or things or this or that, those are all things, dharmas, and their mark is emptiness. So that's what Sutra is saying, that phenomena, the phenomenal and the noumenal, are not two different things.

[58:13]

of uniting as a concept. Yes, that's right. That's what it's about. Uniting. And with our body, we speak it. But it's the uniting. Something has to be united with something else. That's duality. So pure individuality means there's no opposites. So if you are a true individual So G is an expression of the source, right? G is an expression of re. G, the phenomena, is an expression of the source, right? G is an expression of phenomena, the phenomenal side. Re is an expression of the source. So one of the teachings that I sort of understand is that The phenomenon is delusional.

[59:18]

There's an illusional quality to it, right? So could I say the same thing of G as well? You mean Ri? Of Ri, yes. Can I say the same thing of Ri as well? That Ri is also an illusion. The way I understood what you were saying is that Ri and G are flip sides of a similar coin in a way, right? One is an expression. Yeah, they're two sides of the coin. Right, so then I'm walking around believing that me, Eric, and Zafu are sort of delusional, not true, not concrete, not from the truth. Well, you know, it depends on, it's like, no, it's not like everything is illusory. It is illusory in that it's only a manifestation for a moment. Everything I'll recite is manifestations in a moment, right, so they don't have any fundamental existence, they have temporary existence, right?

[60:20]

Everything is a temporal existence, so nothing really lasts, and everything, all the phenomenal side is dependent origination, originates dependently on everything else, on something, on causes and conditions, right? But at the same time, everything, all the dharmas are also real. at the same time. So the real is the noumenon. But if you say real, that's also an idea. Noumenon is also an idea. But they're ideas that point to something. You can only have one question.

[61:18]

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