Once again, let me mention that the song of this precious mirror awareness starts out by saying, the teaching of suchness and intimate communication or intimate communion. And then it says, Buddhas and Ancestors, In Chinese, it has... there's a... Yeah. Teaching of suchness, intimate entrustment, brothers and ancestors. And I mentioned before that each of those... each of those is the... The teaching of suchness is an intimate communion, is Buddhas and ancestors.

[01:12]

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

[02:17]

It acts as a guide for beings, but actually it doesn't have the character. It doesn't have the character for it. It says, acts as a guide for beings. And also the translation says, its use removes all pain. But it really says, use, using it, or using the function of it removes all pains. So it is this, is Buddhism ancestors. Buddhism ancestors act as a guide for beings. That's not so. The intimate communion acts as a guide for beings. And the intimate communion, the use of the intimate communion removes all pain. Suchness is the teaching of the suchness of our actual intimate relationship with all beings.

[03:28]

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

[04:34]

Is that what you said? If you don't have this teaching of suchness, you can eat it. If you don't have Buddhas and ancestors, you can eat them. And they can eat you if they don't have you. And, in fact, we don't have them and they don't have you, so we are eating each other. We're living on each other. We're symbiotic. I don't know. That's kind of like, why did I become a priest? It's inconceivable how this song came to say a habit. Actually, I don't even know if it says that. That's just a translation. Why did they translate it that way?

[05:37]

I don't know. But it's also my 41st anniversary of becoming, of the ceremony of leaving home and attaining liberation. I've been liberated for 45 years now. So you can celebrate whatever you want tomorrow. Having each other or not having each other. In a way, it's like, you know, you can't really do... Contractors or painters or people who put on gutters. They're with us, too, so... In a way, bringing... It's not, no, no. It's not that they're Buddhas. No. Their intimacy is Buddhas.

[06:39]

That your intimacy with all these beings you're talking about, that intimacy is Buddhas. But I'm not a Buddha, but the intimacy of all you with me The intimate communion between me and you is Buddha's. I'm not that. But in truth, in reality, of this communion, I am Buddha's. In truth, I am Buddha, but I'm also not Buddha because I'm not, in a sense, I'm not a communion. But in the truth, ultimately, I am a communion. In that sense, I am the Buddha. So how we approach any relationship can break the Buddha. That's right. Really, our, in every relationship, is the Buddha.

[07:44]

Our actual relationship is the Buddha. Or is Buddha's. Really, we are inconceivably working together. We can't see this, but we can see ceremonies to celebrate it, like reading this song. And the function includes working with what we can conceive and what we can see. So this is kind of a later part of the text where it says, It says, it is like, it says, it is like the six lines of the double, of the illumination hexagram. What's it? This communion. This communion? What's it? Buddha's. What's it?

[08:45]

The teaching of sessionist. But the text doesn't say it. It just says, what's understood through the whole text is we're talking about this this precious mirror samadhi. The meaning of samadhi is, one translation of samadhi is awareness. Another translation of samadhi is concentration. Just thought I'd mention that somebody said to me that she realized that the ultimate is concentration. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I thought that's good. The ultimate haircut is haircut is haircut is concentration. It's a very concentrated haircut. Anyway, It doesn't say, it's like. It just says, like.

[09:47]

And what's understood is, it. What's it? Well, it is not you, but in truth, it is you. That's what it is. It is the trustment of Buddhas and ancestors and all of us. That is like the double... That's like the illumination hexagram. The six lines of the illumination hexagram. So here I wrote, and I'm really happy with the trigram. It came out very nicely. I wrote a trigram and then I doubled the trigram and made a hexagram. These are symbols used in the Book of Changes, right? So the teaching of suchness is like this hexagram. And this hexagram has six lines.

[10:51]

That's what hexagram means. And it's a doubling of this trigram. Can you see it? Trigram. So another translation is, which I like better, but somehow we got this one, sorry, is it's like the double of split hexagram. Because this character here, the name of this, this trigram is called a trigram. And the character Li means separation. It's a double separation hexagram. So the, for some reason this, this The song is bringing up symbols from the I Ching as a way to convey, to tell us about the working of this samadhi. But another meaning of samadhi is samadhi means one-pointedness of thought.

[11:58]

It means that the mind is one-pointed. So in samadhi, there's the realization that Subject and object are one point. There's no duality between me and what I'm aware of, or between you and what you're aware of. You're aware of other beings or Buddhas. In samadhi, there's no separation between you and other beings. That's what samadhi is like. So in samadhi, there's no separation between you and what you're meditating on, between you and suchness. Is that what intimate communion is? It's a kind of intimate communion, yeah. And this is an intimate communion about intimate communion, this particular samadhi. This is a one-pointed mind about the non-duality of living beings and Buddhas.

[13:03]

It's a one-pointed awareness of the non-duality of enlightenment and delusion. It's a non-dual awareness of the non-duality between bondage and freedom. between samsara and nirvana. That's the type of awareness this is. It's a one-pointed awareness about the one-pointedness of all. And I don't know if we'll ever get to the part of the text that's talking about this hexagram So I thought maybe I'd tell you about it now in case we never get there. I want to show you a trigram. This trigram is called a Lee trigram.

[14:13]

Actually, its name is a Lee trigram, but it's also called fire. Fire. Fire trigram. or it's associated with fire. And it's made of three lines, and the top line is what's called a yang line. The middle line, the broken line in the middle, is a yin line. The bottom line is a yang line. Can you see it? You all okay with that? Yang, yin, yang. This is the trigram that in some sense is being used as a symbol for our practice. At the center is the feminine, the receptive,

[15:17]

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

[16:24]

and feel that and conceive of that. And this practice which we can do and which we can enact surrounds something which is receptive and non-active. via teaching of suchness, which you have received now intimately and inconceivably, in practice is surrounded by actions which you can perceive. So there's a ritual which we perform, which surrounds this teaching which we do not perform by ourselves, but which we perform together intimately with all beings and with all Buddhas.

[17:37]

So, one way to understand this is that we have received this intimate entrustment, we are this intimate entrustment, and we take care of it by practicing remembering it with our mind which can remember things and forget things. But we remember it and we use our body to ritually enact it. But it is not our ritual enactment and yet it must be surrounded by our ritual enactment. And it's getting time to

[18:49]

conclude our day. But one more thing I feel I could say is that I've often used the expression clean the temple. The surrounding lines are like clean the temple or build the temple and clean it and then sit or and then don't move. Clean the temple is all the conceivable psychotherapy we need to do, all the conceivable psychoanalysis we need to do to be able and take care of this thing without doing anything. We take care of it not by leaning forward or backwards, right or left, we take care of it by being able to have no resistance to where we are.

[19:58]

And in the intimacy, we take care of it, or it's taken care of. So this trigram is kind of a symbol for set it up, clean the temple, live there in the middle. I'm still very curious on why the complete transformation of the style and relation of the prior and initial essence. Are you interested in that? Yeah. Well, take care of your health, because it's going to take us quite a while to get there. And I'll take care of mine. So, this trigram, put together with another one of these trigrams, make the hexagram, and you work with the hexagrams in the I Ching so that you can pile them up and make three, or work them, the full set of transformations makes five.

[21:13]

And then all those transformations describe the process. by which practice goes through the evolution from...through the bodhisattva path to Buddhahood. But how that works is a...it's going to take us a while to get there and discuss it. it's time to go, but I just want to say that the other day I was talking to a group of senior priests about this this hexagram and getting ready to study it with them. They said, I feel like the catcher in the rye. So according to Holden Caulfield's understanding of that term if a body sees a body coming through the rye and the poem properly but what he the image that came to his mind when he thought of that poem was of him being out in the rye grass with lots of children who are running around playing and at the edge of the rye field is a cliff and he's standing by the cliff and protecting the children from falling over the cliff

[22:44]

And falling over the cliff means that they would lose their innocence. So, as I approach this study, I want to stand at the cliff and protect your innocence in this study. I don't want you to like fall over the cliff into trying to figure out this inconceivable thing. But I want you to play in this field without losing your innocence. Because this material is very tempting to get. But if you get it, you won't be able to eat it. So how can we play with this wonderful teaching and not lose our innocence? This is the... I'm standing at the edge of the cliff here. I don't want you to... Now we're all innocent. Now nobody has the five transformations, right?

[23:51]

So how can we study piling up and complete transformation of this meditation without losing our innocence? In other words, without trying to get this teaching. Because the teaching of suchness is not something to get. It's something to let go of. And then we can eat it. So thank you for being so innocent and letting all this rain down upon you. Thank you too, Reb. You're welcome. May our intentions equally extend.

[24:42]

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