Once again, let me mention that the song of this precious mere awareness starts out by saying the teaching of suchness. And then it says intimate communication or intimate communion. And then it says Buddhism ancestors. In Chinese, there is a... Yeah. Teaching of satsanism. Intimate entrustment of Buddhism ancestors. And I mentioned before that each of those, each of those is the same as the other two. teaching of suchness is an intimate communion, is Buddhism ancestors.

[01:15]

It's not like Buddhism ancestors are one thing and an intimate communion is another. Buddhism ancestors are intimate communication. And that intimate communication, which is Buddhism's ancestors, is the teaching of satsangas. And then it says, now you have it. You have it now. The Buddhists are not holding back this intimate entrustment. You have it now. So, protect and take care. 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.

[02:19]

You can put its, or it acts as a guide, 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. Also, the translation says, its use removes all pain. But the its is added. It really says, use, using it, or using the function of it removes all pain. So, it is this, is Buddhism's ancestors. Buddhism's ancestors act as a guide for beings. That's not surprising. The intimate communion, acts as a guide for beings. And the intimate communion, the use of the intimate communion removes all pain. The teaching of suchness is the teaching of the suchness of our actual intimate relationship with all beings.

[03:30]

It's the teaching of that that's the way we really are. is 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.

[04:36]

That's it. If you don't have this teaching of suchness, you can eat it. If you don't have Buddhist ancestors, you can eat them. And they can eat you if they don't have you. And, in fact, you 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. Then why does the song say you have it? Then why does the song say you have it? I don't know. That's kind of like, why did I become a priest? It's inconceivable how this song came to say you have it. Actually, I don't even know if it says that. That's just a translation. Why did they translate that way?

[05:40]

I don't know. But it's also to mention that tomorrow is my 41th anniversary of the ceremony of leaving home and attaining liberation. I've been liberated for 45 years now. Thank you. You can celebrate that in any way you want tomorrow. Thank you. question about the Buddhas and ancestors having each other or not having each other. In a way, it's like, you know, you can't really get... I was talking about, you know, working with contractors and painters and people who put on gutters that they're Buddhas too. So, in a way, bringing... It's not, no, no. It's not that they're Buddhas. No. Their intimacy is...

[06:41]

the way that your intimacy with all these beings you're talking about, that intimacy is Buddhist. But I'm not a Buddha, but the intimacy of all you with me, the intimate communion between me and you is Buddhist. And I'm not that. But in truth, in reality, of this communion, I am Buddhist. In truth, I am Buddha, but I'm also not Buddha because I'm not, in a sense, I'm not a communion. But ultimately, the truth is I am a communion. In that sense, I am the Buddha. So how we approach any relationship can bring the Buddha forward. How we really are in every relationship is the Buddha.

[07:47]

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, what we can see. So this is kind of a later part of the text where it says, it says, it is like, it says, it is like the six lines of the double of the illumination hexagram. What's it? This communion, what's it? Buddhas. What's it?

[08:48]

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

[09:48]

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

[10:49]

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

[11:53]

But another meaning of samadhi is samadhi means one-pointedness of thought. It means that the mind is one-pointed. So in samadhi, there's the realization that subject and object are one-pointed. There's no duality between me and what I'm aware of, but between you and what you're aware of. And if you're aware of other beings or Buddhas, in samadhi, there's no separation between you and other beings. That's what samadhi 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 means? It's a kind of intimate communion, yeah. And this is an intimate communion about intimate communion, this particular samadhi.

[12:56]

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

[13:59]

I want to talk about this trigram. This trigram is called a Li trigram. Actually, its name is the Li Trigram, but it's also called Fire. Fire. Fire Trigram. Or it's associated with Fire. And it's made of three lines. The top line is what's called a Yang line. The middle line, the broken line in the middle, is a Yin line. And the bottom line is a Yang line. Can you see it? You okay with that? Yang, yin, yang. This is the trigram that, in some sense, is being used in this song as a symbol for our practice.

[15:06]

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

[16:16]

which we can perceive of crossing our legs and sitting upright and still. We do that. And we can see that and feel it and conceive of that. And this practice which we can do and which we can enact surrounds something which is receptive and non-active. The teaching of suchness, which you have received now, intimately and inconceivably, in practice is surrounded by actions

[17:17]

which you can perceive. So there's a ritual surround 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. So, one way to understand this is that we have received this intimate entrustment. We are in 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...

[18:18]

use our body to celebrate it, to ritually enact it. But it is not our ritual enactment, and yet it must be surrounded by our ritual enactment. And it's... getting time to conclude our day. But one more thing I feel I could say is that I've often used the expression clean the temple and sit. The surrounding lines are like clean the temple or build a temple and clean it and then sit.

[19:19]

Or clean the temple and then don't move. Clean the temple is all the conceivable psychotherapy we need to do, all the conceivable psychoanalysis we need to do to be able to sit still and take care of this thing without doing anything. We take care of it not by leaning forward or backwards, right or left. We take care of it by being able to have no resistance to where we are and what we're thinking. And in the intimacy, we take care of it. Or it's taken care of. So this trigram is kind of a symbol for set it up, clean the temple, and then live there in the middle.

[20:25]

I'm still very curious on why the complete transformation makes five in relation to the triogram you just showed us. You're interested in that? Yeah. Well, take care of your health. Okay. Because it's going to take us quite a while to get there. Okay. We'll take care of mine. So, this trigram, put together with another one of these trigrams, make the hexagram, and then there's certain ways 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. And then all those transformations describe the process. by which this meditation practice goes through the evolution, through the bodhisattva path, the buddho.

[21:30]

But how that works is a... It's going to take a while to get there. And it's time to go, but... I just want to say that the other day I was talking to a group of senior priests about this, this hexagram and getting ready to study it with them. And I said, I feel like the catcher in the rye. So according to Holden Caulfield's understanding of that term, If a body sees a body coming through the rye, he didn't necessarily understand the poem properly, but what he, the image that came to his mind when he thought of that poem was of him being out in the rye grass with lots of children who are running around playing.

[22:34]

And at the edge of the rye field is a cliff, and he's standing by the cliff and protecting the children from falling over the cliff. And falling over the cliff means that they would lose their innocence. So, as I approach this study, I want to stand at the cliff and protect you, 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 for you to try 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... I'm standing at the edge of the cliff here.

[23:40]

I don't want you to jump over there. Now we're all innocent. Now nobody has the five transformations, right? So how can we study piling up in complete transformation of this meditation practice without losing our innocence? In other words, without trying to get this teaching. Because the teaching of satchinus 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, Rev. You're welcome.

[24:38]

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