This morning, I'm going to talk about those on five ranks or five positions. But so I want to begin by talking about circular forms in the history of them. circular forms have always been part of the teaching device. In Tibetan Buddhism, there's the illustration of the Wheel of Life. In Dong Han's time, 8th century, 9th century in China, Yishan, Guishan, had a system of 100 circles, which he used as a teaching device.

[01:21]

would put a character or two to illustrate what he meant by that particular circle. Like you would have the circle and then the character for cow or water buffalo and. then he would have a character for grass. And the meaning would be a cow eating patient's grass. I have a number of his circles with their meanings. Sometime it would be interesting to look at them. This is not an uncommon thing. And later in the Song dynasty, there were the ten Oxford pictures with their circles.

[02:31]

Tozan used his five circles. And then his student, Sozan, continued or elaborated on Tozan's five ranks with his circles and so forth. You know, this mudra is called cosmic mudra. It's a circle. And when Suzuki Roshi explained, he never explained this, but he said, it's like when you sit you should feel like you're holding a jewel. So, you know, this is also letting people know that this is like holding a jewel, but he never explained it.

[03:36]

He just, you know, he would say something and then leave it up to you for the rest of your life to discover what he was talking about. That's his teaching method. Actually, his teaching non-method was to say something and then you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what he's talking about. Wonderful. That's why he never taught. It's also in Soto Zen, there's what's called the Wei Ring, or the Ring of the Wei. which is a way of talking about continuous practice. But it's called the Way Ring. And it includes Zazen, teaching, work, and all kinds of activities and so forth. Various activities that contain practice.

[04:42]

But also this ring is sometimes narrow and sometimes wide. So it can be as narrow as necessary, like Zazen, or it can be as wide as possible, which is benefiting the world. So that's what it's called. It's called the Ring of the Way. And it's circular. Because whatever you produce comes back to you. So, in Western thought, we often think of linearly, but in Buddhist thought, it's always circular. So, the Buddhists always knew that the world had a round configuration. They didn't have to wait until Columbus.

[05:48]

But when we look at the world, it's very flat. So it's also flat as well as round. And as Dogen said, it's neither round, nor flat, nor square, nor triangular, or whatever. But through our observations as a human, We recognize the roundness of the world, and of the universe, and of the planets, and so forth. And revolving is circular. The planets all revolve around each other. We revolve around each other. So there's circles within circles within circles. So using circles as a teaching device is rather logical. So, we come to the place where the poem says, the six lines, what I mean is,

[07:04]

Charles Lutz translation that has the diagram. So Charles, let's say you're not changing anything in his diagram of the six of the five ranks, five positions, reverses the order of dark and light. Does everybody have this? You probably do, but... Show PowerPoint presentation.

[09:08]

That would be good. Actually, Ross offered a large diagram. And I said, thanks, because we have a little one. But we don't. I hope we have it. You have it. Yeah. Does anybody not have it? Who would like to have it? You probably have it in there. You know this. I didn't copy that. So you handed it over. The first thing that came out of that space. That's not the right one. But then I looked outside. OK. It's pretty hard to follow this. So you said that Shen Ying Yin has it reversed in some way?

[10:21]

Well, he says the dark is vexation and the light is the truth. And we always consider the light as, not vexation, but the realm of activity. We don't want to get caught up in this, I think, but I think his, whatever he calls them, he has number four being complete emptiness and number five being kind of function of the world, which goes with the Oxford and pictures and everything else. Yeah, it looks like the Oxford and pictures. Yeah, where you have the time of, and I mean other circles that I've seen too, the time of, you know, complete stillness. Right. It doesn't come after the time of activity in the world.

[11:24]

Activity and function in the world is the last, the ultimate. It is. Yeah. That's how he presents it. But it is. Yeah. So it's a little different. We should speak well of death. You know what? When Carl, what's Carl's last name? Carl Bufield was a young scholar. Charles Luck came out with a book. And Carl really criticized it, his understanding. And it totally crushed Charles Luck. And he died. I don't know if that's why he died.

[12:26]

But I remember, it was devastating for Charles Luck to have that kind of criticism. Some people might not know who Carl Jungfrau is. They probably don't. But Carl is a scholar who teaches at Stanford. And he was actually a student of Suzuki Hiroshi, and Suzuki Hiroshi sent him to Japan to study and be a scholar. And that's the main reason why he became a scholar. That's to be expected among scholars. That they criticize each other. We're going to have to hang it to attach to any particular idea. We would hope so, yeah. But they do. Let's do the five ranks before it's too late. So the line.

[13:28]

Do we have. We all have the paper. OK. The six lines. So this is so much commentary done just before. The diagram's three lines from the bottom of the page 150. The last three lines of page 150. They're not footnotes. Six lines of the six lines of the truly hexagram representing the intermutable real and seeming are interlinked to establish a triple basis which transforms into five positions. They taste like five flavors. They had the taste of the five-flavoured herb and looked like a thunderbolt.

[14:28]

That tastes like five-flavoured herbs is badly translated. Although it's a translation. They don't taste like five-flavoured herbs. They like the taste of the five-flavoured herb. Anyway, I'll explain that. So this is Tozan's way of talking about the five ranks. And if we look at, it's divided into two parts. The symbols are divided into two parts. The upper part is the symbols, the circles, in a vertical succession in order to explain each one. The bottom that looks like, to me, looks like facing a cow. Two eyes, two nostrils, and a little tongue. I can never see it any other way.

[15:29]

Maybe. Anyway. Now we're never going to see it. But this one at the bottom represents the Vajra. If you know what a Vajra looks like, Tibetans use them all the time. They have five prongs at the top. They vary, but this one has five prongs at the top, five prongs at the bottom, and a handle in the middle. So you see them holding the Vajra and ringing the bell. Please see the boundaries. I'm sure. I think I'm not going to see the budget. You didn't have to know what it was.

[16:31]

Yeah. You bring one in the afternoon. Yeah. I had one for the cross budget. Maybe somebody has a bigger one or a single. I'll bring it. Anyway. So that's what this symbolizes. So, he says, the six lines and the chung-li hexagram. So, does anybody who doesn't know what the I Ching is? Good. So, Tozan used the I Ching to illustrate these circles, to illustrate what he's talking about. Now, I don't want to go into the I Ching, because that's a whole study in itself. But I can just say something about what he's referring to in order to orient us.

[17:34]

The I Ching, of course, is one of the earliest classics of Chinese literature. And we always used to use the I Ching that. It's the Book of Changes. And it has very profound meanings. And it's composed of trigrams and hexagrams. A trigram is three lines and a hexagram is six lines. So there are various combinations that are put together of the trigrams to illustrate certain understandings. So, if we look on the left, where it says, where we have two continuous lines and a broken line, you see that?

[18:42]

That's called a suen, or a trigram. The top left one. That's a trigram. It has three lines. Two unbroken lines and one broken line. The unbroken lines are yin, I mean yang. The broken line is yin. So it's the balance of the yin and yang lines that create the meanings. The feminine and masculine yin and yang, which create the various meanings. So these are very early symbols of literature. So this particular trigram, the Li trigram, represents fire, or heat, or light.

[19:44]

And the double Li We're putting this together with another one just like it, which is down at the bottom. See the bottom, which has six lines. That's a hexagram. Putting two lead trigrams together is the hexagram at the bottom. Everybody not get that. Somebody not get that. Lee is sun? Huh? Lee is sun? Lee is which one? Lee is the one at the top. Oh yeah, no it isn't. Well, it's sun, but it's a double. It's called double Lee hexagram. Yeah, but if you put one on top of the other. Then it's called double Lee hexagram.

[20:46]

Show me Lee hexagram. And as you go by the one on the bottom, it doesn't. They don't show the person. You know, as you go through some of the transformation. Yeah. Yeah. It's not right. So the six lines from the Chumley hexagram. Yeah. Just look at the bottom. Chumley hexagram. The six lines of the chungling hexagram representing the intermutable real and seeming are interlayed to establish a triple basis. So this chungling hexagram, you know, it's like the balance between the feminine and masculine, and the inner and the outer, and the dark and the light, and the way the universe works, basically.

[21:58]

It represents the way, the true way that the universe works. Light and dark, all the opposites are subsumed in this chundli hexagram. And so the chundli hexagram, when it's taken apart and analyzed, it's analyzed in this way as representing the inter... it represents the intermutability of the relative and the absolute, the real and the seeming. Intermutability means the oneness and differentiation. And are inter-laid to establish a triple basis which transforms into defined positions. They look like the five-flavored, they have a taste of the five-flavored herb, and look like a thunderbolt.

[23:08]

The five-flavored herb is like a high stock plant, which when you taste it, you feel five flavors. It's like wine. When people taste wine, they say, oh, there's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's like yesterday, Raul brought over a little bit of his soup, and he said, taste this, see if you like it. So I tasted it, and you tasted it too, right? When you had it for lunch. And it had a lot of tanginess, and when I tasted it, I could feel, I could taste the onion, and then I could taste the tomato, and then all these various flavors started coming out one after another. So this is like the high salt plant. When you taste it, you, little by little, the various five flavors come out, and you taste them one by one.

[24:19]

So he's using this as a kind of simile for the five positions. It's one position that has five tastes. It's one thing that has five tastes. And the thunderbolt The Vajra is using that in the same way. It's one thing with five aspects. It's like the child with five aspects complete, as we read before. So, the Thunderbolt And if you look at the bottom figure, the cow, on the left side, it has A, B, and C. Do you see A, B, and C?

[25:32]

There are other things there too, but just A, B, and C. So A, B, and C are the three parts. That's the triple basis. A has two parts. B has one part and C has two parts. So A contains guest and host. If you just read right along a horizontally, A has guest. And then on the other side, it has host one and two. So the other way around, the host is number one. That's true. But still, host is one and guest is two. Do you understand that? There's two things. Two things on one end of the thunderbolt.

[26:34]

That's a pair. Let's just say that's a pair, right? So the first two is a pair. And the bottom, C, is a pair. five and four four and five and Then in the middle is being is just the number three is just one circle Which is corresponds to what's above? It simply corresponds to what is above here, right? vertically One two three four five But this way is putting putting it into a A form that count. So in the poem, when it says piles up, they become three. The three is the triple basis. The three is the triple basis. That's right. The triple basis is this. Well, the triple basis is one, two, three. So piled up, piled up, they make five.

[27:39]

No, no. The permutations, the permutations. They make part of that. They make three, one, two, three and one, two, three, four, five. I know it's confusing, but it's simple. It's really simple. And to change is is is number three inside number four in the middle of the number three is the middle circle around it. Number four, containing number three. Number four doesn't contain number three. No, it's four and five on the bottom. He's just wondering what that extra circle is. It's two circles. I know, but it's just a mistake or something. I don't think it has any meaning. So we hope not. The triple basis is. One, two, three. Vertical.

[28:42]

ABC ABC. One and two, three, four and five. The middle circle is the beam. What? The triple basis is vertical. Right. Oh, no. The triple basis is the whole thing. Yeah. Triple basis, he means that to be the title, even though he puts a B next to it. I don't know why, though. Right. It all works out. It's all logical. The triple basis is one at the top. I mean, A at the top, B in the middle, and C at the bottom. He's starting to wonder whether the triple basis Right. No, no, no. It's labeling. Yes, sir. It's not the labeling.

[29:47]

Actually, there is no error. So anyway, this is the illustration of what I said is that the triple basis in the five positions, which taste has the taste of the five flavor herb and looks like a thunderbolt. So this is the thunderbolt. I mean, it doesn't really look like a thunderbolt. It's not a very good drawing of a thunderbolt. It looks more like a cow thunderbolt because it goes right left down and then right left again. It goes like a reverse. Well, I don't think so. And originally it came from India and was used as a a weapon. And then it was used by the Buddhists as a kind of strong symbol of compassion, I think.

[31:02]

Compassion practice. Isn't it also a kind of object that shocks you awake? Shocks you awake. Could be. Could be. Could be. So I have to say I don't want us to get hung up on this, but I'm concerned that the triple basis refers both to the third point and to the whole diagram. No, the simple basis is ABC. I like that. I'm worried about that typographical error. What's the graphical error? It's not an error. It's just a design for the design. But still, it's all there. Just imagine it as a budget. So earlier we talked about five characteristics or senses of the engine. Is there a relationship? That's what I just said. I said I just said that. I said when I was talking about the five aspects.

[32:02]

Yeah. And then I quoted that five aspects complete like the baby. So is there a counterpart between the five positions in the five senses? The five aspects are not necessary. You'd say they're five senses, but not necessarily. I think they're more like five aspects. That's we don't care whether the baby has five senses or not. What we care about is the five. It's just a simile. Another simile for this is like a baby with five aspects. And so that figure share, because this is the baby practice. This illustrates all of the things we've been talking about. If we continue. So. So don't use this as a way to because they wanted to kind of get away from explanations.

[33:09]

But we have we have to explain things. OK. So. We can go back to the top, the vertical succession. I'm not going to talk about the trigrams anymore because that's not necessary. But if we look at. To the right of the symbols. OK. The first one is called the real containing the seeming. So he's using dark and light to represent what he would. is translated here as real and seeming. The real is the dark, and the seeming is the light. So, in the Sandokai, the darkness is the real, and the light is the seeming, or what seems real.

[34:22]

The light is relative. So the dark would be the absolute. The light would be phenomenal. Right. So there are many ways to express that. The dark is like essence, absolute, infinite, one, dark, emptiness, real, so forth. The light is function, relative, infinite, no finite, many, world, light, inference, seeming, and so forth. This is kind of the reverse of Shengyin. That's just what I said in the beginning. I said this is the reverse of Shengyin. It's not. It's on page 107. And tomorrow's basically right. It says that being at the fifth level again relates to the world of phenomena. But he uses vexation as a tool of wisdom to help sensual beings.

[35:31]

That's okay. We don't agree with that. That doesn't negate what we're talking about. But he states that he uses the dark for vexation. In the fresh spirit. If you look at page 114, page 115, If you were to try to say that the dark, the dark symbol. But that's not what we're really talking about now. None of these experiences make equivalent. I mean, between the two writers. Yes, it's right. It's just one way of talking. One person talks about one way and another person talks about the other way. So it's not something that it's not controversial and it's not something that I want to argue about or talk about right now. We're talking about this way. We want to talk about it the other way we can, but there's not enough time. This clarifies the first position is sometimes called guest within the house.

[36:36]

Well, this is also sometimes it's reversed. Depends on who's talking about it. Yes. So the real within the seeming means the host within the guest. This is the host position. The real containing the seeming means that the real is dominant. If you want to illustrate it, if you look at Zazen. In Zazen, this is the host position. Because the seeming is subsumed into the real. So, this is where the balance is that worldly activity is at a minimum and hindering incidents.

[37:56]

the Absolute is dominant. This is like, if you look at the moon, I think it's like phases of the moon. That's the way, if you look at them, they're obviously phases of the moon. And so, sometimes the moon is full, and sometimes the moon is disappearing. And it goes through all these different phases. But it's still the moon. Right? So, in Zazen, of course, everything is there. But there are times when one phase of the moon is dominant and the rest is hidden. So here we have, in Zazen, the dark is dominant and the light is hidden. The light being the comparative world. There is no discrimination in Zazen. Discrimination is at a minimum.

[38:59]

So the discriminating world is the world of light. The non-discriminating world is the world of dark. You once gave a lecture on this some years ago. You used waves and water, which I found really helpful. Well, yes. Waves and water. The dark is like the water. And the waves are like the light. So just to use the other way, the other expression, which is common, then could you just say which is host and which is guest? Yes. Which is host. Host is dark. Guest is light. So the first one is actually the guest. But I haven't gotten over there yet. So I'm just kind of going down the I'm going down to. The line here, the host contagion, if you look at the end, yes, there's host, guest, host, guest, host, host position, guest position, host coming to light, guest returning to host, and host in host.

[40:26]

And that's how the poem ends. It's called the host within the host. Right. Host within the host. So we use those, I like using those terminology. The one in the middle, in between those, in between where it says the real containing the seeming, and then it says shift, well that line going down vertically is a different way of talking about it. They're talking about the five positions. So I'll talk about that later. But the host position is the dark. The guest position is the light. So we use those terms. That's good terminology. So my true nature is, my fundamental nature is the host and my worldly nature is the guest.

[41:37]

The host is dark and the guest is light. Our activity takes place in the light, but our fundamental nature is the dark. You don't see your fundamental nature. You act in the world of light. So, there's a balance of how you, the fundamental Buddhist understanding is the interplay between my worldly life and my fundamental life. You know, as Ksitigaraj said, we're half Buddha and half ordinary.

[42:43]

But Buddha is ordinary, and ordinary is Buddha. But what is the balance between those? I mean, what is the balance between those two things that are one thing? The seeming. The seeming is like they're separate. That's why he calls it the real and the seeming. So each one of these circles, which has the balance of dark and light, illustrates or helps us to realize How we're constantly balancing our life within these two sides, which are not two sides, but seemingly two sides. How we work within, how we realize the oneness of our activity, our separateness, and the separateness of our oneness. OK.

[44:05]

When everybody gets too feisty, half of the other half is the plane. Here's the middle. And then. A total watcher would have this at the other end. So the easy way to explain this is the real containing the seeming is like forms in. The seeming containing the real is emptiness is form. You've heard that many times.

[45:11]

So, another way to look at this is that the real is called emptiness and the seeming is called form. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. That's the basis. So if we understand the basic characteristic, which is form is emptiness and emptiness is form, then we can see how that plays out in the other three circles. The other three circles are expressions of how to deal with formless emptiness and emptiness of form. So that's why A, on the far right, contains both of those two. Formless emptiness and emptiness of form. That's the first two. The real containing the seeming.

[46:12]

The seeming containing the real. emptiness containing it as an expression. Emptiness is form, and form is emptiness. But when you say those two, is it, it's like when you say form is emptiness, you're really saying form is So, when we sit Zazen, form is emptiness. And when we get up, emptiness is form. So, within form is emptiness. Within emptiness is form. So, Zazen is great dynamic activity within emptiness.

[47:19]

And when we get up, emptiness is great dynamic activity within form. So it's not one or the other. It's a matter of what is dominant and what is hidden. And if you look at the turning of the moon, of the seasons of the moon, you realize that sometimes the moon is mostly dark and just a sliver of light. And sometimes it's mostly light with a sliver of dark. Sometimes it's a full moon. Sometimes it's no moon. There is a little quote here that I'm going to read you. The Tsao-tung, or the Tso-tung school, concept of mind is not that of a passive mind, but a passive mind in dynamic function, which is what we're always talking about all the time. The central line of the trigram, li, is passive, and that is the ruling Chong Wei,

[48:26]

In a trigram. I don't want to talk too much about this, but however, out of this passive core evolves the dynamic total lead trigram with active lines above and below. So the passive and active are always in combination. Active and passive, always in combination. So, passive is really the fundamental, in this case, the ocean. And active is the waves. But they're one thing, even though they look like two things. So, it's kind of the way you stretch it, you know, the way you shape it and stretch it. It's like gold and golden objects. This is a very old illustration that gold is just malleable, but we make various tangible objects out of it.

[49:38]

But then we also melt them down into gold, into malleable lump again. So our fundamental nature is this lump. You can call it anything you want. That's what this is talking about. It's illustrating this understanding. So, the first two positions, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. That's the fundamental. That's the basis on which everything interacts. That's the way the fundamental upon which we enter our active life is interfused with our passive life, or our fundamental nature. They're not two things, but our active life is the way emptiness expresses itself as form.

[50:46]

And form is the expression of emptiness. It's very simple. And those are the first two, of the guest and the host. Then the third one, resurgence of the real. That's the position that illustrates The real being the dark, the little dark button inside the white circle means that the fundamental or stillness is there within the activity. Stillness is, and so this is where activity begins. The first two are the basis. The third one is the activity.

[51:51]

So, this is kind of like a triangle. It's like the basic form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. And then, because of that, there can be dynamic activity. But within that dynamic activity is the still basis. It's like the still place within the whirlwind. Within the cyclone, there's a perfectly still place. And the cyclone is our busy life. And within the cyclone of our busy life is the still place. That's how we... People say, well, how do I take Zazen into my daily life? That's how you do it. Because in all of our activity, there's a still place no matter what's happening. And that still place is called Our refuge.

[52:53]

Now, how's that different from the seeming containing the real? It's not different. It's a different aspect. It's the active aspect, because the theory containing the real is the fundamental. And so the fundamental is always being expressed. Those two aspects are always being expressed in all three of the other. And so this is the expression of that. latent aspect. This is the active aspect. But you say in all activity, there's stillness. So that's in all activities, the seeming contains stillness. That's right. So how is that different than the resurgence of the real, meaning that there's a still point within every activity? Well, resurgence just means the active principle. Because the first one is simply illustrates.

[54:10]

That's right. Would it not be the case like the first two are sort of. there's a practice, there's something you do, and then it's like... Um, that's actually my question.

[55:24]

So, yeah, we got around to it. I'm in the tornado and I'm angry or I'm greedy. How? How do I go to the still place? How do you do that? How? Truly, truly. I'll tell you how. I'll tell you how you do that. I'll tell you the way I did it. I don't know how you should do it, but I can tell you the way I did it. I sat through Sashin after Sashin when I was young in total pain throughout seven days. Heartache, you know, back hurting, legs hurting. How am I going to get through this? How am I going to get through this? Just breathing. Just going to that still place. That's how I found it. I don't know how else you can find it, but that's how I found it. Because the only way I could get through was to find that. And then you were able to carry that with you.

[56:25]

Like if the guy's giving you a ticket and you're just going back to paying your meter and you get mad, how do you find a still place in that moment? I guess that's my question. Yeah, yeah. I understand what you're saying. You carry it to a certain place and then you let go. You get carried by your emotions to a certain place. But then you let it go. How? Because you don't need it. Because you'd rather... I'll tell you why. Because you'd rather feel the peacefulness within yourself than the anger. So it's a choice. You can have that choice. Absolutely. You'd rather feel the... Why do I need that when I can have this? So what I'm hearing from how you're describing your practice, I think it's directly, we're doing this now, right?

[57:30]

We have the bliss obsession, which is perhaps the seeming within the real. We have the difficulty pain of it, which is the real, which is perceiving, containing the real. This is partly where Shringen talks about it as well. The second circle you're concentrating on your vexations. And those two, as fundamental, are the developmental practice of what we're doing. And when you've gone far enough with that, then you actually have some space of choice to choose. Right. So the way we express that is, your problem is your treasure. Your vexation is your treasure.

[58:31]

That's called practice. Without vexation, there's no practice. So you're lucky. other problems as well, the ones I illustrated. I've always approached them as practice. If I simply approach them as, what am I ever going to do? That's real vexation. But when you approach them as practice, it has a different quality and a different flavor. And you're able to save yourself. Along these lines, when I was going through something like you were describing, I had built a song with you, and I was having a lot of pain, and I was saying, so I'm just going to dedicate it to this practice, and I remember you saying, oh, that's fine, just don't expect it to take the pain away.

[59:44]

And that was really key for me. So, it's like the first, the way I remember you saying it with the water analogy is, no waves without water, first position. No water without waves, second position. And the third position is, waves are water and water are waves. So, the pain and the practice, it's all interrelated. Right, so the third one in a way is like, how do you find your place within the vexation of your life? How do you really maintain that center? Just back to what you were saying about having a choice, or your interpretation of having a choice. There are a few areas in my life where I've

[60:48]

had to learn some lessons. Things come up and there was no way around it. And it's in those areas where the easy way just is not appealing. Or what seems like the easy way is just there's no reason to do it because I know where it goes. And so then I have the choice of not doing that habit, saying, I've got to do that. We can't always, even though we make a choice, it doesn't always mean that we will be happy with that. But at some point we get tired of being vexed unless we like it.

[61:50]

That's one problem. I don't want to go too far with that, but there's something about enjoying our vexations. So we have to be careful of that too. But if we really know how to forced to find that. We won't usually find it. You have to have some intense opportunity. So, you know, whatever it is that you have is an opportunity. And if you use it, that's how we learn to appreciate our practice.

[62:54]

I can remember when I was having so much pain and vexation, I don't use that word very often, vexation, and finding that still place in myself, and I just wanted to run back to Suzuki Hiroshi and throw myself at his feet. in gratitude for never letting me get away with not seeing my vexation all the way through and finding that place. He always said, don't move, don't move. And then when we all wanted to move at the end, oh here's the bell, we will sit 10 minutes more. Or walk out of the room. Five minutes before the bill. It's like when you can't leave and you can't stay.

[64:21]

That's where you have to go to that place. So the resurgence of the. And that's that's just a phrase. Right. Research. It's more like. flowing into activity and with the real at the center of your dynamic activity. The still point within the... Centering on the real? Centering on the real. I like that. Centering on the real. Concentric. Even though we wobble. You know, this is also called the upright and the inclined.

[65:25]

You can call the real the upright. The upright is where there are no vibrations. The upright is where there are no vibrations. So, it's just total stillness. but charged with potential. And then when the upright leans over, activity begins. Because it's off-centered. It's eccentric. As soon as there's a little bit of movement, then there's eccentricity. And then the whirlwind begins. It's like spinning a top. You know, when you spin a top, it falls on the floor, and it looks like it's standing still. But when you touch it, it spins across the floor.

[66:30]

Like that. So, and Zazen is like that. It's like a spinning top. It looks like there's no movement, but there's great dynamic activity going on all the time in stillness. and stillness. So you have tremendous energy because you're totally enveloped in potential energy. And then when you get off the cushion, that's the incline. And then all this activity begins. But you don't lose that Or that stillness. Stillness is your basic nature that is always with you. It's everywhere.

[67:32]

It's ubiquitous. I just learned the meaning of that word. Ubiquitous. Meaning it's everywhere. Right? Yeah. Your nature is ubiquitous. the energy's potential or movement, and it's not expressed yet. It's not yet expressed, right? But it's also compressed. You know, after you're sitting Zazine on the third day, you know, and you can just feel the energy in the room. It's just like tremendous energy, but there's no movement. And then if something funny happens, you burst out laughing and you can't stop. Because you've opened a spout in the well, in the wall, you know, and all this energy comes spewing out. And I remember in the early days, people don't do that so much anymore, but in the early days when somebody did something

[68:41]

pent up and contained. And then when there's a little tear in the fabric, that's how you know how much energy you're actually containing unawares. So when you leave, that becomes diffused. But in the moment, there's containment. of a sort if you stay present while you're in action. That's right, that's right. So you're diffusing the energy and it's being put to use. So there's just two sides of the same activity. One is containment and the other is diffusion. So containment is the dark, and dissemination is the light.

[69:49]

So we should be careful how we disseminate our energy, which is called practice. So the dark or the stillness is called wisdom. And the energy, the diffusion, is called compassion. And compassion is the activity of wisdom. So activity is the The light is the activity of the dark, and the dark is the activity of itself, of the light. It's the essence of the light.

[70:53]

Okay. So, if we look at the fourth circle, the seeming uniting with the real, Shing-Yen uses that in the same way that the Oxfordian pictures would use it, you know, completely disappeared. Which is, I can't argue with that. But this is called a guest returning to host. The way I have understood it is that this is where you're totally involved in the world. This is where you're without even, well, This is called doing the work of the Dharma.

[72:13]

Compassionate action. You are totally ego-less and all of your work is for compassionate action. I have a question. I know we don't want to spend a lot of time on Shen Yang. But there's something he said that really struck me. He said, this isn't a white circle. This is a circle with nothing in it. Right. So it's not like it's the white in the upper diagram in the thoracic. It's a completely empty circle. Does that fit with your... That's OK. That's OK, but it doesn't fit with what you're talking about right now. Well, I don't know if it's or not. Oh, OK. But, yeah, it's without boundaries. Yeah, it's boundless activity. Is it the merit body? Sorry to bring up a totally foreign concept.

[73:16]

Yeah, I think that's right. So it's boundless activity. It's like Sambhogakaya. These five positions are also associated with the eight levels of consciousness and the three dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. So, it's not such a small subject because it involves all of those aspects and corresponds. So, this circle, or fourth boundless circle, is the compassionate bodhisattva activity, of which the other three, the preceding three circles are the basis.

[74:23]

If you want to look at it in a progressive way, you don't have to. And the fifth integration of the real and the seeming is a dark circle, which is, this is the absolute, the host realm, the host within the host. This is illustrated as Like an old, an old man, like me, an old man, you know, who's kind of slobbering at the mountain, and everybody knows, and he's sitting by the fire, you know, and he doesn't, it's an illustration, like, not having anything to do, you know, no Zen, no practice, beyond all of the practice, beyond Zen, beyond practice, beyond doing anything, but everything he does,

[75:35]

transforms the world around it. That's the way this is sometimes characterized. Nothing more to do. Totally one with the host within the host, so that there's not even any any black or white. or host. It's like no guest or host. It's just simply non-activity and non-thinking. No guest or host. And so this is the intermutability that is the final intermutability. No guest or host. Is there practice? Or practice?

[76:37]

No practice. No gist, no host, no practice. But everything is practice. Because there's no opposites, you can't say there's practice or no practice. There's neither practice nor no practice. There's neither this nor that. There's no duality. There's no light or dark. There's no enlightenment or delusion. No compassion or non-compassion? No wisdom, no compassion. No wisdom, no compassion, yeah. It's kind of death. Gone. Gone. But, well, this is called... How does the man who has died the great death come back to life? So, this is reminding me of my father-in-law in Alzheimer's. I mean, he just sat there.

[77:38]

Well, there's a difference between that and Alzheimer's. The difference is the one hand doesn't have their faculties. The other one does. Well, then what is Alzheimer's? But then if you're saying it's practice, there's awareness and it sounds like this is not awareness. No, this is total awareness. No, Alzheimer's is lack of awareness. This is total awareness, total awareness that there's no need beyond. But you wouldn't know the difference because you're not discriminating. You wouldn't know the difference. I mean, what is in this position? Well, you can call it anything you want. I mean, it's just a name, but I think you wouldn't know the difference. No, because one is less the faculties.

[78:43]

The other is. It's like the finished product. Also, the fruits of his labor are beneficial fruits of Alzheimer's. Yeah. Questionable. Yeah. Well, leaving aside Alzheimer's, which isn't a disease and it's just a garbage. term that's used instead of synopsis in order not to be so offensive. There's this interesting couple of sentences on 107 of Shen Yen, and leaving aside the question of what stage it is, I thought it was interesting. It says, wisdom disappears because it can manifest only in the world of samsara, in the realm of phenomena. When there is total stillness, there can be no wisdom. The wisdom of the, I'm not going to say which level, is known as fundamental or root wisdom.

[79:45]

Yeah. All of those terms that we use are actually dualistic. So, this is the stage where completion, total Nondoing. We'll wait. It's called. We'll wait. Nondoing. It's time to end up. OK, Bob, in your talk on the water and waves. I think the stage four was fairly wet. And stage five was foolish person just playing and splashing in the ocean. Yeah, I think that's good. James. What's outside these circles? What's outside these circles?

[80:49]

There's no inside or outside. Why do we call them circles instead of something else? In order to understand. If you don't have a boundary, you can't talk about something. So we put boundaries around things in order to talk about them. And we give them names. James. Are you James? You're not James, but we give you a designation as James in order to identify something called James. Well, I think that when we when we return. What I want to do is walk you through Huckabee's commentary on the five positions, which is the culmination of commentaries on the five positions as far as I'm concerned.

[82:02]

And I don't think I'm going to add it or what it's. I think. Go in there. Go in. Go inside.

[82:14]

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