I remembered after the talk yesterday that Albert said something like, it sounds like what you're saying is an invitation to discursive thinking, and I said something like, oh no. But later I thought, well, maybe it is an invitation to discursive thinking, but not your discursive thinking, it's an invitation to house discursive thinking. And my discursive thinking, your discursive thinking, it doesn't go far enough, but house

[01:11]

discursive thinking is thorough and carries all the way to what we call the unthinking. So, as I mentioned before, someone asked, is non-thinking? Discursive thinking, how is doing the thinking which finally is unthinking? When how thinks through us, this is the unthinking.

[02:20]

So in that sense, whether I invite you to discursive thinking or not, discursive thinking probably will go on, you don't need an invitation, so I won't invite you to do that, I would just sort of say, go right ahead as much as you like, but I would invite each of us to let how think through our life. And this is where self-surrender and devotion comes in, in some sense we offer up this body and mind to how, we let how's thinking happen here, how go right ahead and think here, how live through here, live through this, this is giving up self and it's being devoted to

[03:29]

the way. Of course we don't understand how that happens by our usual discursive thinking, but this is a way to express my faith and my understanding, to say those things. I remember one time, Edward Kansa said, the Tibetan Buddhists sit and they chant, om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum, mispronouncing mantra, but anyway, their faith is that by sitting there, Avalokiteshvara's compassion becomes manifest in their thinking, in their feeling, in their sensing, in their emoting, in their consciousness.

[04:41]

In their five skandhas, the great compassion comes, lives in them by constantly calling forth through that mantra, calling forth Avalokiteshvara's function. He said, the Soto Zen monks sit, but they don't say anything, but he says they're basically doing the same thing, but they don't even say, they don't even invite verbally Avalokiteshvara to come. However, in both Rinzai and Soto temples, not temples but monasteries, every day they chant this incredible chapter from the Lotus Sutra about Avalokiteshvara, incredible, incredible from the point of view of the non-believer. You know that chapter where it says, if you're surrounded by muggers, just sincerely say the

[05:50]

name of Avalokiteshvara and they'll all immediately become members of a religious organization. If somebody pushes you off a tall building at a single bound, just sincerely call the name of Avalokiteshvara and you'll float gently down to a nice soft turfy area. If venomous snakes are crawling all around you, just call the name of Avalokiteshvara and they'll slither away. This kind of thing, for a whole chapter. They chant that in Zen monasteries. Well, not always, but when I first heard that it seemed very strange because I didn't think Zen people thought such thoughts or even heard such things being said. But later I felt it's okay in the sense, not so much literal sense or unliteral or whatever, but just inconceivable.

[06:50]

This is an inconceivable message. And I don't know what to make of it, but they do that. In temples they don't usually chant that every day. In temples in the morning they watch TV. Basically the same thing, you know. It makes about as much sense that watching TV would accomplish these things as the saying Avalokiteshvara's name, I would say. And they're both equally entertaining. And Japanese television is good. So, I want to again quote our former advisor, Gordon Sherman, former president and reformer

[07:53]

of Midas Muffler Company, and volunteer critic of the San Francisco Opera and so on. He said, to find out what you want, to find the answer to the question of what you want in the midst of evolving contingencies will not be solved discursively. So we're sitting here, and what do we want? What is our great hope for the world of suffering beings and so on, for our own self, for our own practice? Discursive thinking is not going to ever figure it out because discursive thinking involves going back and forth between various alternatives and contingencies and so on. And when contingencies change, just about when you've got it figured out, everything changes and you have to start over again. So discursive thinking doesn't work except if you sort of...

[08:56]

It works in mathematics when you set certain assumptions and you don't change them halfway through the problem. Then discursive thinking can do things, and you can make computers and rockets and stuff by that means, which is the use of it. But for your own self, for your own desires, for your own wants, you're changing too much. You can't set an assumption for yourself and hold it still. So discursive thinking doesn't work. But how is discursive thinking? How is thinking? That just keeps going. And it's so total and fills your whole body and mind. So how is thinking is, for example, to breathe. Breathing is how is thinking. And to breathe with your whole body.

[09:58]

Inhale and exhale through your whole body. That's how is thinking. And so... You can't exactly make that happen, but you can let it happen. If you trust that you don't have to do something more important. So thank you for your question there, Albert. Actually, I shrunk from it at the moment, but later I realized that actually I do want to invite you to do how is thinking. That would be good, but I'm not inviting you to do necessarily any particular kind of discursive thinking

[11:01]

to solve the question. And one other point is, I remember when I was... When I was in college, I only failed one course. I was in calculus. And then I took it over and got an A. Which wasn't too hard since I took it and got all the answers. Anyway, I became a math major. But I was studying math as a second language. So eventually I dropped out because the people who were studying math as a first language were never going to be as good as them. But anyway, I remember my calculus teacher. I think it was in the class that I got the A in rather than the class that I got the F in. Calculus teacher said, he was a Texan or something in an accent. Big tall guy with red hair.

[12:03]

He said, put some theorem up on the board and gave the proof and so on. I don't know. He said, I remember what Leibniz said. If you don't understand this proof, memorize it. So there are certain things which you may not understand in Buddhist teaching. Or there are certain things you might get an F in. But... I found it quite useful to then go back and memorize the course and take it over and major in that subject. I'm not saying you have to do it that extreme, but... Just don't worry about not understanding it. Just memorize it. In some sense you don't have to memorize the stuff you already understand. Just enjoy it and go on. Here's something probably some of you already memorized. A monk came and asked... What's his name?

[13:05]

I don't know. Walking Thinking. I go Walking Thinking. Ching Tsep. Ching Tsep. Walking Thinking. He lived at a place called... Ching Yiran. Ching Yiran. Ching Yiran, which means something. And his Buddhist name was Ching Tsep. Walking Thinking. Because he used to think while he walked. And a monk came and asked him, What's the meaning? What's the great meaning of Buddha? And what did he say? Harold? Harold? No. What did he say, Harold? Huh? No. He said, What's the price of gas in Salinas?

[14:08]

He said, What's the price of rice in... Where? Huh? Luling. Luling. Luling. Now, in those days, monks didn't run on gasoline. They ran on rice. That's how they got around. They put rice in their mouth and they chewed it. And then they go... Up the hills, down the valleys. Sit down, stand up. And they eat some more and do some more. So, it's a very similar question. To what's the price of gas these days. Hmm. Today, what I've been saying is, What's the price of Buddha? Huh? What's the price of Buddha? The price of Buddha is the precepts. That's how you get in the door. And then, once you pay the price and you're in the door with Buddha,

[15:20]

then you have to live with it. That's the actual practice. Living with Buddha. After you pay the admission price. And we don't exactly know how to live with Buddha. Yesterday, someone asked me, What's the cutting edge of my practice? And I said some things. And finally I said, I think it has to do with working on intimacy. Trying to find out about... Again, to quote another book that was given to me. To struggle with intimacy. But, then the person says, Well, once you get intimacy, then what? So, once you pay the price, and eat your rice, and practice the precepts, then you get to get in the house with the Buddha, and the Bodhisattvas, and get intimate, and then what? So that's the situation we've got now.

[16:21]

It's kind of like, Well, what now, right? What now? I mean, how now, excuse me. How now shall we proceed, now that we're in the house together, and pretty intimate? Well, we could say, which I did say, we're not intimate enough yet to discuss that. Postpone the final not knowing a little longer. But, of course, we do have to work on intimacy. We do have to work on keeping it up, taking care of it, and then facing the fact that we don't know what to do. But we can do that. So, that's the price of admission. But also, the meaning of the Buddha is, well, what's the price of rice? In other words,

[17:21]

now that we're talking about this, how's your life? What's the meaning of Buddha? How's your life? And lately, lately, I haven't been using stock phrases in dōsan, but that's one of them. How's your life? Or, how's about your life? How's your practice? Is there something you'd like to talk about? So, I love this teacher, Qingyuan Xingzi. He was a disciple of the sixth ancestor, one of the two major watersheds of the Zen movement in China. And, 700 years later, something like that,

[18:30]

600 years later, another Chinese, a Chinese descendant of him, Dogen's grand-uncle, a great-grand-uncle, commented on this short little talk about the price of rice in Luling, and said, the accomplishment of the great work of peace has no special marks. The accomplishment of the work of great peace has no special sign. You can't recognize the tautograph by signs. The family way of peasants is most pristine, only concerned with village songs and festal drinking. How would they know about the virtues of shun

[19:36]

and the benevolence of yao? Peaceful government has no special form. So, giving him not so much attention today, but just to say, I really feel that he's, he contributes a really wonderful flavor to our practice. And the other great disciple of the sixth ancestor, Nanyue Huirong, he also contributes a wonderful spirit, so he produced a disciple like Matsu. Very dynamic, elegant, enterprising, creative type of practice, which is an important element in our practice,

[20:41]

but this side is more the side of, well, we're just little villagers here, wandering around in Buddha's heart, eating our rice, and just doing our daily life. We don't know actually even about our uncles, our cousins over on the other side of the lineage. We go visit them, but we can't hardly remember how wonderful they are, and what great insight they have, and what spectacular disciples they are. But we're not, there are relatives, but we're the poor branch over here. We don't have imperial patronage, so we have to be concerned about the price of rice. So, that poem by Rumi that I said yesterday,

[21:45]

I think I feel close to his heart. So, Shimsa was a disciple of, you know, a grown-up disciple, a disciple of the sixth ancestor. When the sixth ancestor died, he was, I think about 40 or 45, so he was pretty grown-up. The next ancestor in our lineage is Stonehead, Chito, Sekito. Chito also went to study with the sixth ancestor when he was 14. He was initiated into the order of priests,

[22:45]

but the ancestor died before he received full coordination. And I've told that story to you before about, as he was dying, the sixth ancestor told the kid to go study with Sagan, Shimsa. But the way he said, go study with Shimsa, you know, maybe he was dying, he didn't want to go study with Shimsa. The boy thought he said, there's another word in Chinese, it sounds like, you know, enter into deep contemplation. So he thought the teacher said to do that, so he went and sat by the teacher's, by the ancestor's stupa and just did meditation. The other big disciple of the sixth ancestor,

[23:50]

Nanyue, just noticed that the boy was, the monk was meditating there and came up to him and said, what are you doing that for? Your teacher's already dead, you should move on. And the boy explained his understanding of the instruction and Nanyue said, no, that's not what he meant, he meant go study with Shimsa. So the boy went to study with Shimsa. And he went to study with Shimsa

[25:03]

and Shimsa asked him, where do you come from? He said, from Shaoshi, that's where you used to hang out there, remember? He didn't really say that flat. He said, I came from Shaoshi. And Sagan raised his whisk and said, do they have this there? Shito said, not only do they not have it at Shaoshi, they don't even have it in India. And Sagan said,

[26:10]

have you been to India? And Shito said, if I had been there, I would be there. Shimsa said, that's not quite enough. Say more. And Shito said, you should say have to. Don't rely entirely on me. And Shimsa said, I don't decline to speak to you, but I'm afraid that later on there would be no one who would get it. And Shito said, getting it is not what's missing.

[27:15]

No one can say it. And Shimsa took his whisk and hit him. And he was greatly enlightened. This is a custom, this custom of going to see a teacher when you go to a temple and getting into a meeting like that. A lot of good things happen at that time. We don't do that, because we're so busy going to the gas station, or whatever, but a lot of these great things happen right there. The guy walks in the door and it happens. Maybe we should have that kind of practice here. Anyway, that was how they started out, those two.

[28:17]

This amazing dialogue. I don't know exactly how old Shito was at that time. Probably not too old. So you can see he was a confident little bugger, and kind of alert. As I mentioned, when he was a boy, in his area, the hunters in the area used to make these kind of like Greek sacrifices, like they did in the Iliad, where you make an altar, and you put cattle or something up on the altar. They offered hecatombs, hecatombs of cattle, large-scale offerings, wouldn't even put wine over them, set them on fire. So he went out there,

[29:21]

Stonehead went out there, where they had their altars, and destroyed their altars, and released the cattle. And he said, the village elders couldn't do anything about it. So, I'm not recommending that you destroy the sacrificial altars or whatever, I don't know what they would be. But if you did, probably the village elders couldn't do anything about it. Someone, someone, maybe it was Bonya, one time some people were trying to catch the blue jays in a box, and they put them, they caught the blue jays and put them on the back of the truck, and they went to Janesburg, but when they got to Janesburg, they weren't in the cages anymore. Somebody released them. I don't know if it was Bonya,

[30:24]

but probably some agent of the Buddhist Concern for Animals. So, that story, please memorize that story, because you may not completely understand it yet. Next, we come to the 36th ancestor of the lineage, Yaoshan. Yaoshan means Medicine Mountain, Yakusan, Medicine Mountain. And, according to Dogen Zenji, all the ancestors from Shakyamuni Buddha down to him are always talking about, are always investigating and studying and trying to teach

[31:25]

immobile sitting. And, this monk, Yaoshan, he feels has the best, most helpful teaching, the most beautiful teaching about immobile sitting. Which, we talked about already quite a bit. Even today we talked about it, remember? So, Yaoshan's teaching is house thinking. We should become proficient at house thinking, which is the same as becoming proficient at our thinking,

[32:28]

but completely, exhaustively proficient at our thinking would be house thinking, which is what leads us, leads me to feel some confidence to study Abhidharma. Because Abhidharma is, as you study more and more intensively these five skandhas, the thinking that's going on becomes more and more like house thinking. I'm smiling because, as you study Abhidharma you get more and more confused. And, if you're really sincere, you get confused faster. No, you know, you get really into it. What's going on here with these skandhas? But, in other words, your sincerity is sponsored by how, and drives you deeper, beyond the place where you're comfortable. You get to a place where you kind of understand five skandhas.

[33:34]

Well, there's form, feeling, conceptions, formations and consciousness. If you stop there, you might be alright, or even stop before that. But, as you start going deeper, you start to get into stuff that you didn't expect, and you didn't particularly want to know about, but there it is. So you start to get not so sure what's going on. Well, how doesn't care about that and just keeps driving deeper. So, like this practice period, I myself must say, I have really, in a positive sense, not a scary sense, refreshed, and widened, and a more interesting understanding of the first skandha from our classes. A better sense of what these four great elements are. So I feel pretty good about it. But, when I first ran into those four great elements, I did not particularly appreciate them. I thought they were weird. All of a sudden you have wind, and fire, and earth, and water.

[34:36]

What's that got to do with my psychology? I didn't know. So, as you said, you get deeper, you run into these layers that aren't necessarily what you were planning to think about. But, hopefully, the dharma keeps... If you go to the dharma, the dharma will respond and say, come deeper. So, if you let ha push you, ha will pull you. Eskwes said, for a person who, you know, when a person makes a big effort, the gods come to help. Isn't this in the Christian Bible too? The Lord helps those who help themselves. The same thing. It responds to the arrival of energy.

[35:39]

So, again, if you don't understand it, memorize it. The energy of memorizing, somehow it may say something like, I'm still not going to tell you, but that's very good. Keep it up, sweetie. So, now we're at Yaoshan, and again, I'll say that story. His first... When Yaoshan first met Sekheto, when Medicine Mountain met Stonehead. Remember what he said? Yaoshan said, Well, I have some understanding of the canonical teachings. So, this, you know, the Ratna Gotra Mahayana, who taught us tantra, shastra, that's maybe like a canonical Mahayana text.

[36:43]

He maybe studied this kind of stuff. And he studied maybe, maybe early sutras, which the Chinese have the Sanskrit versions of them, rather than the Pali. And I don't know what else he studied. But anyway, he had some understanding, or some familiarity, with the canonical teachings. But he's heard that in the South, down at Cao Xi, where the Sixth Ancestor and Xingzi and also Shito had studied, that they have a way of directly pointing to the nature of mind, and understanding Buddhahood, or realizing Buddhahood. So, at this time in China, this is like around,

[37:56]

this is the 9th century now, a lot of people knew something about Buddhism, studied it, and practiced it in various ways. So, some people were walking around with some understanding of the canonical teachings. I don't know if you can imagine that. I don't have much understanding of the canonical teachings of Christianity myself. And if I try to imagine, what would it be like to grow up in a place that had this religion which was quite popular, and then you study it, and you have some knowledge of it, and then you hear that there's some people in the country who aren't so much into knowledge of the canonical teachings, but actually they're kind of like going back to the source of the religion, and actually experience the fountainhead of the religion. Is that what born-again Christianity is about?

[39:06]

I don't know. I'm not an officer. I was looking at this book called Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, and he says that what he's going to be studying in this book is not the... well, I guess he said, what I'm going to be studying is the pattern-setters, the founders of the religions, the people for whom religion was an acute fever. So I'm not going to be talking about the religious life of the imitators. So, Yaoshan's walking around China

[40:22]

studying Buddhism, eating rice, and he hears that there's some people who are in the southern part of China that are kind of like... they're not imitators, they're breaking open the core of the essence of the way and attaining Buddhahood. So he's attracted to the idea and goes back to the source of the religion. And he goes to see one of these people from the south. And he says, I have some understanding of the canonical teachings and I heard that the people down in the south actually point to the essence and achieve Buddhahood. Please, you know, help me out. I don't understand how that could be. I beg your compassion. And Stonehead says, Being just so won't do. Not being just so won't do either.

[41:22]

Neither being just so nor not being just so won't do at all. How about you? Shiksa said, I mean, Sekinto Shiksa said, Your affinity is not here. Go study with Matsu. So he did. He went to study with Matsu and had another nice talk which I told you before. And... He had a great awakening. However, after he had the awakening, Matsu said, That's really great, but... Your teacher's the guy who sent you here. That's part of the...

[42:33]

I don't know what to call it, magical chemistry or... or... mystical... mystical... I don't know. Anyway, the chemistry that sometimes happens is you go to see your teacher and it ain't happening with your teacher. It's not going to happen with your teacher and your teacher's sending you someplace else. It happens there. You actually... Your understanding occurs in the presence of another person or a tree or something. And then sometimes if it's a person, the person won't tell you if you go back to the person who sent you. But that's actually your teacher. Of course, they're both your teachers, but... Sometimes it's a person who's... Your teacher doesn't teach you anything. That's their job. Their job is not... is to be the one who won't teach you anything. They send you other places to learn stuff. This is a part of the flavor

[43:36]

of this side of the lineage. It's singing village songs and drinking in a festive way. I say, This water tastes like ambrosia. So that's all, you know, that's all we do. But if necessary, you should be sent someplace else to learn something. Someplace where they'll teach you some Buddhism. Two generations ahead of this place, we come to Dongshan. And Dongshan first studied with the great Nanchuan,

[44:37]

or he was first recognized by the great teacher Nanchuan. So you have sixth ancestor and you have Sagan, or Xingzi over here, Qingyuan Xingzi, and over here you have Matsu, Daoyi, and you have Sekito, or Shito, and you have Nanchuan. Nanchuan and Baijiang, and Jitang, and so on, coming from Matsu. So this young monk, Dongshan, goes to study. His name is Yangjie at that time. Yangjie goes to visit Nanchuan. And at the time that he visits, I think, the first visit, he goes to see Nanchuan, and they're doing a memorial service for Matsu. They're doing the preparations for the memorial service. And Nanchuan says,

[45:40]

I wonder Matsu will come to the memorial service. All the monks didn't say anything, except the one kid, stupid kid, comes up and says, he'll come, he has a companion. He will respond to the arrival of energy. He will respond to the acquiring impulse. So, and then Nanchuan said, this kid is worthy of some work. And then the boy makes a pun on his own name. His name means good servant. And he said, making a pun on his name, he said, don't corrupt the good. Don't corrupt the kid, the kid's safe. And years later,

[46:43]

when Dongshan is doing a memorial service for his master, Hungan, Yunyan, who's the disciple of Yaoshan, the monks around him said, why do you do a memorial service for Yunyan? Yunyan had like about, just about like one disciple. Pretty good one, but just like about one. And he wasn't famous. Nanchuan, very famous. Cut the cats in half and stuff like that. So he was well known. All over China, they talked about, how'd he get by with that? What's going on? I thought we were Buddhists. Don't we practice the precepts? Who is this guy anyway? So the monks say, Nanchuan recognized you. How come you do a memorial service for Yunyan?

[47:47]

And he said, it's not the depth of my teacher's understanding or the elegance of his practice that I revere. What I value is that he didn't teach me anything correctly. So, I'll go this far because I feel like this is a, at this point, with the teaching of Yaoshan and what's happened before and what's coming up, particularly the story of Yaoshan's meeting with Shinto, I think that's, I hope that gives you a kind of sense of how these, well,

[48:49]

I feel that provides a kind of real life demonstration of this canonical teaching. So now I'd like to go to the canonical teaching and see if you can see how these people bring this teaching into their lives, into their, how these stories are really just intimately related to this other stuff. But now it's time to stop. So, just before I stop, I'd like to go over again the, just the structure of this treatise. I just wanted to tell you again the five, I mean the seven sort of hard to penetrate bases which are Buddha,

[49:51]

Dharma, Sangha, and then the essence of Buddha, the womb of the Buddha, and then the perfect enlightenment, and then the qualities that arise with it, and then the acts. So that's Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, the matrix of the Buddha, the perfect awakening, the qualities of perfect awakening, and the actions of perfect awakening. Those seven are the basics, the basics of this text. And what I'm proposing is the central one in the middle there, the fourth one in the middle of the seven, this the womb of the Tathagata. I feel that the spirit of this lineage that I'm alluding to

[50:52]

very much hovers around that that teaching, this womb of the Tathagata teaching. And as I've already told you, the womb of the Tathagata, the essence of Buddha is what? Remember what it was? What? The cauldron. It's the cauldron, but what's in the cauldron? Life. Huh? Life. The mass, the mass of living beings, you know, shujo, shujo, the shujo, shujo is what the essence of Buddha is. That's what it says. maybe I'll just read that little part there. So,

[51:54]

they call it dhatu. Dhatu is like the eighteen dhatus, remember those? Dhatu means one means it's element. Another meaning of it is sort of like nature or essence. So you can say the eighteen dhatus, eighteen elements, but also eighteen essences or eighteen natures. Same Sanskrit word, but here it's taking the sense of the essence of Buddha, the dhatu. And as authority for this teaching, he's quoting a sutra and he says, Verily, O Shariputra, this meaning is a subject for the Tathagata. The meaning of this, of this essence, of this dhatu, this is something that's a subject for the Tathagata. Does everybody know what Tathagata means? Thus, thus come, or thus gone. We're never really sure.

[52:55]

You know what I mean? Literally, Tathagata, that's a long A there, Tathagata, it could be Tata-gata or it could be Tata-agata. So that Sanskrit word has that nice play in it. Does that make sense? So, gata means gone, go. Agata means come back. So Tathagata could mean the one that has gone or it could mean the one that thus come. So the Tathagata could be what has just thus come or it could be what has just gone. It could be somebody that attained liberation and went away or it could be that it came back and this is it. We're not sure though, right? You're not sure, are you?

[53:58]

So that's the Tathagata. This germ, this germ, this womb of the Tathagata, this essence of Buddha is something which is the concern of the Tathagata. Well, what's that? Being just so, being thus so won't do. Being not thus so won't do either. Being neither won't do at all. How about you? This is who is concerned with this essence. This essence is a concern for how about you? Okay? That's like your connection here. It's the subject for the Tathagata, the sphere of the Tathagata. Tathagata. This meaning of Sariputra can neither be known

[55:03]

nor seen nor examined correctly through the knowledge of the Sravakas and Pratyekabuddhas. Needless to say, this applies in the case of ignorant ordinary beings except when they have faith in the Tathagata. O Sariputra, the ultimate truth is really approachable only by faith in the Tathagata. O Sariputra, ultimate truth is a synonym for the mass of beings. Sattva-dhatu. Hmm. The element of beings, or shujo. The mass of beings is, O Sariputra, nothing but a synonym for the womb of the Tathagata. Tathagata-garbha.

[56:08]

The matrix of the Tathagata is Sariputra, nothing but a synonym for the absolute body of Buddha, the Dharmakaya. Okay? Ultimate truth is a synonym for living beings. The mass of living beings is a synonym for ultimate truth. Shujo. Jo is life. Shu is the mass or assembly or gathering, collection. The collection of life is a synonym for ultimate truth, and ultimate truth is a synonym for shujo. Shujo. Shujo-muhen, se-gan-do. This mass of living beings, shujo-muhen.

[57:09]

Muhen is a boundary or a limit. Shujo-muhen. This mass of living beings has no boundary. It is limitless. I vow to awaken with it. You're going to awaken with what? You're going to awaken with ultimate truth. We used to say save, maybe that's good because you want to save ultimate truth, right? You're going to save ultimate truth, which is a synonym for saving all this mass of beings. And this mass of beings is a synonym for the womb of the Tathagata, and the womb of the Tathagata is a synonym for the Dharmakaya. So this is a good example of something which of course nobody understands,

[58:20]

so it's good to memorize it. You ever memorize it? The ultimate truth can only be approached by faith in the thus come one. Ultimate truth is a synonym for what? Buddha. It's a synonym for Buddha, and Buddha is a synonym for the mass of beings, the mass of living beings. There's lots of synonyms for Buddha, right? There's Buddha, Tathagata, World Honored One, Sugata, Jina, Bhagavat, Avatara, etc., etc. Those are synonyms for Buddha, but there's other synonyms for Buddha too,

[59:20]

some that aren't written down usually, like for example, Gabriella, a synonym for Buddha. But not just Gabriella, also Gil, Vigita, David, and so on. As you keep going, you start to fill out these synonyms. These are all synonyms for the Dharmakaya. These are not synonyms for Sambhogakaya, I mean the Nirmanakaya. Shakyamuni Buddha is not a synonym for David Buddha. They're not synonyms. They're different Buddhas. But the Dharmakaya, the absolute body of Buddha, all sentient beings are a synonym for that absolute body of Buddha. This is the womb of the Tathagata. And this is, I think, what they're talking about

[60:27]

when they meet each other, when these monks meet each other, when Yaoshan met Chito, and when Chito met Shingsa, and when Shingsa met the sixth ancestor. I think they're all talking about the same thing, because that's about all there is to talk about, which is the same as, what's the price of rice in a blue vein? So, again, I'm not inviting you to do any particular kind of discursive thinking about all the stuff I said. I'm actually inviting you to let HAL think through you,

[61:31]

which means to really devote yourself to your posture and your breathing. That's the way to do it. That's how HAL thinks, too. Total devotion to sitting. And then, see how you think. Watch how you think. Pay attention. Take care of yourself. I'm not asking you to control the way you think at all. You can't anyway. I'm not asking you even to try. Just take care of yourself. Take really good care of yourself. And I think you are taking pretty good care of yourself. Am I correct? You seem to be taking pretty good care of yourself. As far as I can tell. How's your health? Good. Are you tired? Fine.

[62:34]

Anyway, if you get any diseases during session, a hair will do a sweat at the end, right? And cure you all. Thank you. Thank you.

[64:00]

Meditations are harmless. I vow to awaken with them. Illusions are inexhaustible. I vow to let them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to return to them. Good wisdom's irresistible. I vow to become it.

[64:39]

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