Good evening. Good evening. Well, many of you have this compendium of Hokyō-samae study. I don't know, how many of you don't? Hmm. Well, how many of you do? That's pretty good. So that makes it easier for me to move around. I have a few copies. So, most commentators are included in here.

[01:21]

So, this is a big study, and what Charlie put it together, and you can see in the beginning, in the first couple of pages, how many commentators there are. So, we can't possibly study all this, and we shouldn't be expected to. But, part of this book includes commentaries on tosons, five positions, and part of this book includes sosons. five commentaries on Cao Cao, five positions. Deng Xiang and Cao Xiang.

[02:25]

Cao Xiang was Deng Xiang's In the lineage, we say un-go do-yo. Un-go was also Tozan's student. But un-go was not interested in the five ranks for one reason or another. But Cao Shang, Cao Zan, was. And so Cao Shang more or less continued and developed Tozan's teaching of the Five Rites. So, that complicates the commentaries in here because sometimes you think you're reading about Tozan, you're actually reading about Sozaku.

[03:27]

And the way that the book was put together was just as a compendium and not really perfected for publication, so you have to kind of understand how... Everything is really delineated so that you can find what you want, but you really have to work hard to find out how to do that. So he says things like C1 or C13 as reference. Where is that? Anyway, we can look at that. And I'll show you how to do that. So the first part of this book is really well put together. Almost the first half is devoted to word-by-word meaning of Haudenosaunee. It actually is character by character, word by word.

[04:33]

And if you just open it anywhere, page 6 for instance, 16. Open page 16. End page, it doesn't matter. 16 is one-sixth. Yours probably aren't marked, are they? So, you see the top line are the characters, right? And then, there are little numbers there that are referenced. And then, like the first character is ya, Y-E, which means night, dark. Then the second character is ma, which means half or middle. third character is Zane, which means upright, true, upright, correct, so forth. So, each character of the Hokyo Zanae is, the meaning, more or less, of each character is right there under the character.

[05:45]

Under that are the various ways that each person, each commentator has expressed what he thinks is the meaning of the sentence. And J.T. J.R. C.T. Those are the initials of commentators. So we go down to. To JR, it says, well, I'll say CT. It is bright just at midnight. It doesn't appear at dawn. And CF, in the middle of the night, is just when it's bright.

[06:48]

At dawn, it doesn't appear. And then to the right of that are some notes by various people. And then below that. are comments, are important comments. So if you see what that is, it's NW, right? That's me. So I have a lot of comments in this. Dark is one that's no boundaries. Purity and light is phenomena. Various existences and so forth. So, I'm one of the commentators here, and I'm going to comment too on the next page. I'm not trying to bring my attention to that, but... So, then when we get done with...

[07:52]

the meaning of each character, which is like on page 63 or 64, depending on what your numbers are. And then there are bibliographies, and then various commentaries. and very small and common terms. Now I ask you to look at page 77. The reason I do that is to bring us back to the beginning, more or less, of where we started. And I want to go over the circles again. and talk about this circle now.

[09:02]

As I explained before, it comes down to being Chinese and being familiar with the five classics in China, of which the I Ching is one. The five classics in China, the main literature of China. And Li Yuching seems to be one of those very ancient books of wisdom. So, being very familiar with that, Cao Zan uses those symbols to express his understanding in conjunction with the Five Rects. But for us to do that, I think it would take more study to really get the feeling for them. But we could do that. We could just kind of, at some point, we'll see. Maybe that would be a good idea, too.

[10:03]

Because there is some explanation in the commentaries, and we could look at that. But not today. So next to the I Ching on the left column, And as I said once before, circular forms were very commonly in use in those days for teachers to express to their students their understanding. Apparently, Chinese kind of disgusted words They can talk more in symbolic ways and poetic ways. So Chinese seems to be very... the expression is very poetic. So that's one reason why it's hard to translate, for one thing.

[11:07]

And especially Tang Dynasty Chinese, which is like us translating Chosun, Or something even more obscure, maybe. Because it did. So we have to use a lot of intuition and reason. That mixture of intuition and reason. And I think that's the way the Chinese think. Because you can translate Chinese in so many different ways because the directives are not there. The directives meaning the connecting words, the direction to understand it. So it really takes knowledge, not just knowledge of the language, but knowledge of the nuance. If you're glad you may know Chinese, I don't. I know that.

[12:08]

Raising the voice means something, and raising the voice again means something, and lowering the voice means something. So when we say something, we say, oh, Chinese very sing song. Well, that's right. They sing, and it's a song. That's absolutely right. So they sing, and they sing a song, instead of just talking. And inflection means everything. I had trouble listening to some foreign language, often foreign to me, because the inflections are different, even though all the words are right. And where we construct our sentence forms, As we're familiar with, you run a bunch of words together without commas and inflections in English, it's hard to understand what somebody is saying for me.

[13:12]

So I depend a lot on inflection for understanding language. So, using symbols was very common in China, and something concrete you could look at and deal with. So, Guishan and Yangshan, where Yangshan is Guishan's student. And Guishan gave us almost 100 circles, different circles, to illustrate the practice of the Dharma in various ways. I have some of those circles, which many years ago, when I was young novice, There was a Korean teacher, Dr. Seo, and he and I used to talk a lot.

[14:17]

And he published a book, which is not available, but I presented quite a number of those circles of Gwacheon. And sometimes it would be interesting to look at those. And then, of course, there are the ten ox-headed pictures, which are the most popular. So this is kind of in keeping with the spirit of the times, the five positions, which illustrate Doshan's, or Tozan's, teaching. So I don't want to go into Sozan's teachings. If you're still interested in this, you can go back to Sozan's teaching. It's much more complex.

[15:18]

I think maybe it wasn't Sozan's teaching so much that was the problem, but Sozan's teaching became very speculative and intellectualized, and that's the kind of problem here. That's why I want to try to keep it simple and express Tozan's understanding but our own understanding of Tozan's understanding and stay with that. I don't want to get too complicated. And I think Suzuki Hiroshi would approve of that. Dogen. in many places kind of dismissed the Five Ranks study. But, as I talked about last time, it is Genjo Koan. The heart of Genjo Koan is based on the Five Ranks.

[16:23]

So actually, Gogin talks a lot about the various things that appear in five ranks, and he does it in his own way. So, last time I presented Marizumi Roshi's commentary on the five ranks of practice, if you remember. Maybe not. But there are two kozans and sozans. presented two seemingly parallel teachings of the five ranks. I don't like to call them ranks.

[17:27]

Google, in the end, I think, was the one who coined the term ranks. But they're really five positions. So I'm going to try to say positions, but I always want to say five ranks, because it's like my language. the diagram at the top of the page. We have the meat chain on the left. And then we have the circles, the black and white circles. And then, on the right of that, circles, is the commentary. Not the commentary, but the kind of explanation. And then on the right of that, We have these shift, submission, achievement, collective achievement, and absolute achievement. Now, the explanation right next to the circles, I would call the understanding.

[18:40]

The study of understanding the absolute and the relative. That's what the circles are about. And next to those is called shift, submission, achievement, collective achievement, absolute achievement. You see that? That's called practice. So one is called understanding and the other is called practice. The five ranks of understanding and the five positions of understanding and the five positions of practice. Now, next to those is another list called host and guest. Host coming to light, guest returning to host, host coming to host.

[19:45]

I think that's Sozon, the way Sozon is known in Glitcher. And then, on the right of that, prince, minister, prince looking at minister, minister returning to prince, So it's pretty much the same thing, but using different nomenclature. So this is like the 9th century, where they had princes and ministers and knights and swords. So they're using the nomenclature of the stuff around them. So host and guest is the same as prince and minister. and the symbolic figures of authority and submission, actually.

[20:50]

So, of course, the prince, if you go to the far right, the prince stands for the absolute and the minister stands for the ordinary. And the prince looking at the minister, and the minister returning to the prince, and the prince and minister in harmony. So these are various aspects of the way we look at form and emptiness, or absolute and relative, or just various names for these positions. Okay, so the reason I show this page is so that we can get on the same page. No pun intended. So, last time we talked about the practice side.

[22:07]

which is the way Dhonian talks about the practice. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. That's called the shift. The shift from our ordinary life to A life of practice. Let me find it here for you. Oh yes, if you took a page, we have this chart. Well, I'll explain the chart.

[23:15]

Don't get five positions of the apparent and the real. Versus oppositions, one by one. This is also C. Hakuin and Verdu's section. Verdu was a scholar who published a lot of... He was the first scholar that I know of that published anything on the five ranks. And he has his own. And Hakuin is my favorite commentator on the Five Rings. How many of you remember studying Hakuin's commentary when we did this before? I remember you talking about it. But I don't remember it. Okay. Well, that would be the thing for us to study. So if you look at the left hand column going down, it says, don't show the titles of the five positions.

[24:19]

So we'll just go across and look at that. The apparent within the real, the real within the apparent, the coming from within the real, arriving in both, arriving in the apparent, and the attainment in both, which is called unity attained. Okay, so the first, the first position is a circle. If you go back, you see the first division is called the real containing the seeming. The real is absolutely our true nature.

[25:22]

And the seeming is what seems to be real. The Hokyo Zamae is, to some extent, based on the Sandokai. The Sandokai talks about the real, it talks about the dark and the light. So, Doshan is using the symbols which are in the Hokyo Zamae, the Sandokai, to So dark, as we know, is of the absolute, where there is no form or shape. And the light is where everything is illuminated, and all the forms and shapes stand out, individually.

[26:24]

turn off the lights, everything disappears. So that's what we call all one. And when you turn on the lights, you have differentiation of the whole meaning. So this is the dark, and this is the light. But light and dark are the same thing, even though they're different. Same and different. all in one and one in all. So, in the first position, the real containing the seeing, in other words, really in that circle, the dark should be mostly covering with a little bit of light, because the light is concealed within the dark. The differentiation, in other words, darkness or oneness is most prominent.

[27:34]

When you sit in zazen, that's the dark with a little bit of light, even though it's totally light. But symbolically, there's very little differentiation. There's differentiation, but it's not much. because there's no discrimination. So differentiation means discrimination. In the dark, there's no discrimination. But in the light, everything is discriminated. In other words, delinked. So I'm here, you're there, this post is there. That's individuation. But our fundamental nature is non-discriminated. It's concealed within non-discrimination. That's the first position. That's why it's mostly dark. The second position, the seeming composing the real.

[28:41]

That's where light is dominant and the real is in the background. Comprising, not composing. Comprising, yeah. I don't like those words either. I like hidden. I like hidden and concealed. So the light is concealed within the dark, and here the dark is concealed within the light. And then the third, the resurgence of the real. Resurgence, I don't know if that's a good word either, but you see that little black dot, the real, the absolute, the buddha nature, or dharmakaya. And it's surrounded by light.

[29:45]

So it's right in the center. So you can say the first one, the first position is form is emptiness. And the second position you can say emptiness is form. So those are the two fundamental There's two fundamental aspects of our nature. And the third one, but they're not active. They're simply fundamentals. So the third, the resurgence of the real, of the dark within the light, that's activation. It's the synthesis of those two aspects and the actualization in activity.

[31:08]

The fourth circle is the seemingly mixing, uniting, let's say, at the real. This is the position, everybody has a difference about it, my understanding is that it's the position where you're totally And you're really making a big effort to express your practice in the world. But it's really an understanding of total immersion in practice. So there's no backsliding,

[32:21]

It's like why a bodhisattva is born to do something and there's no way, nothing else to do. That's all there is to do, is to have bodhisattva practice. And the fifth one, which is integration of the real and the seen, that's the fifth one. This is beyond Bodhisattva, beyond Zen, beyond practice. It's such complete integration that you don't even think about what you're doing in that sense. But whatever you do, it's called perfection. is not the right word, but not complete.

[33:32]

So you're not even thinking about practice. It's just that whatever you do is practice without even thinking about it, because you can't do anything wrong. This is, I think, what Suzuki Doshu's attitude was, because he didn't try to teach us precepts. He didn't try to teach us much about Buddhism. He said, just trust your practice to direct you to do the right thing. It only works for someone who is at that level. So the rest of us have to study precepts and do all those things. rather than understanding, or study, or... It's talking about action.

[34:39]

It's talking about what you do, rather than what's happening internally. You know what I'm saying? Well, internally, at this point there's no external or internal. Right. Right, I understand that. But prior to that, these other points are about action. Development. Right. But they're not talking about internal development. They're talking about your way of acting in the world, or your commercial practice, for example, which is an action. rather than an eternal achievement. Do you know what I'm saying? I think I know what you're saying. Well, I think it's... I think it's being how you be.

[35:42]

And then you act out of how you be. So, many things are being. And there is no such thing as being-time. Time is being and being is time. What makes time-time is existence. And what makes existence-time... Time-time is existence and what makes existence-existence is time. So Suzuki Hiroshi gave some talk on this, and he always brought it back to now. There's nothing but now. There's nothing but this moment. And it sounds simple, but what is this moment? And what is the next moment? There is no next moment.

[36:45]

There's no past moment, there's only this moment. So this is very, you know, it sounds simple, but it's the most difficult thing to grasp, is this moment. Yeah. With the fourth rank, the seeming uniting with the real. You said that was kind of a Bodhisattva model. Does a Bodhisattva... The first position is forms emptiness. The second is emptiness is form. The third is resurgence of the real within form. In other words, being informed. You understand that there is no you. Because form and emptiness are synthesized. And you can't separate them in your mind.

[37:53]

Your understanding is that there is no separation. Even though form is form and emptiness is emptiness. In other words, even though they're one, they're independent. Form is form and emptiness is emptiness. Otherwise, it's still dualistic. When we're here, we're not thinking about emptiness, we're only thinking about form. But when you're doing Zazen, you're not thinking about form. Instead, sitting up straight. But I thought you said in the fourth, it's expressing totally your practice in the world? Yes. OK. My question is, in expressing, I'm trying to differentiate it from the fifth, in expressing your practice totally in the world, is there still some sense of self that you, in the background, that you're aware of?

[38:59]

A small self? Yes. So, in the fifth then, that sense is... No, it didn't happen. OK. That's what I want to know. More or less, right. More or less right. I mean, tentatively, we'll say that's right. We're going to stop in a minute for a stretch, but... I had a question. Now, my understanding is Charlie composed this chart, or was that actually taken directly from somebody's... you know, the way he's got the columns... I don't know. I can't say. I'm curious, the lines of the Hokyo Zanmai, like the heron in the moonlight, and all those metaphors, or the poetic images. I'm wondering if you might try those as well. The lines of the poem itself.

[40:01]

Oh, yeah. OK. Yeah. So for each one of these positions, circles, Tarzan had a poem to describe each one. And we'll get to that. So we just have to keep getting familiar and familiar and familiar with all this, so that when we talk about it we don't have to go back each time and expect Is it time to have a stretch? You can sit, stand. Yes.

[41:31]

That's a shame. That's awful. No, we can talk about it. Although he does that. Thank you.

[44:49]

Ron would like me to present Master Shinya's commentary on the Five Legs, which is quite different in some ways. Because it's so different, you know, I'd rather wing it a little bit.

[47:15]

Can you use the terms vexation and wisdom? Or non-attachment and attachment. Yeah, but that's okay. Wisdom would be the dark, but I think he reverses it. I'd rather kind of stay there. If you turn to page 111 On page 111, in the middle of the page, it says translations and commentaries. See that? Do you have enough light?

[48:19]

Okay. And then it says The two-way song are verses of a sequence of degrees in Dongxia, and that has page numbers and stuff. And then it has, page 121, 129, Dongxia's verses with Verdu's comments and some nuance and excerpts. You see that? Can you see that? And so this is a translation of the verses to go with each one of the circles. And then Verdi's Commentary. So there's one, two, three on this page. Okay, so I'm going to just read that so you get this idea of the verses and their meaning.

[49:26]

This is what Purdue believes their meaning is. So, number one. There is diversity in the midst of equality. Equality is used here to mean the absolute, the dark. And diversity means the light side. Right now we are in diversity. Anybody not get that? Okay, unity and diversity. So there is diversity in the midst of equality. Here is the poem of the verse. In the beginning, in the dead of night, at the small hours, and before the moon shines, do not be surprised that people, meaning, do not recognize each other.

[50:28]

And yet, they still harbor a faint memory of the fascination of the past day. So, what do you think that means? Without reading the commentaries. Well, let's get the picture. It's like the quiet of the night, around midnight. Everything is settled. And it's dark. There's not much activity. Just this dark stillness. And you begin to reminisce about something that you knew a long time ago. The vague memory of yesterday.

[51:41]

Yesterday means a long time ago. So it's like, you know there's something that you missed, that you're missing. When it's quiet like that, you know, when you're really active, you don't, because of the momentum of our life, we don't feel that something's missing, necessarily. But when you're all alone, it's suddenly dark, and still, and there's no movement, and you feel there's something that my movement has obscured, that's real deep. So, and it's like, and it's real familiar. Real familiar, except that you don't feel that familiarity very often. Until you do Zazen. So... In the beginning of a dead of night, at the small hours, and before the moon shines,

[52:58]

to not be surprised that people meeting do not recognize one another. So it's like you meet yourself but you don't recognize yourself. You don't recognize it even though it's there. So it's like it's always there but you don't recognize it until something. So, do not be surprised that people, that you actually, which is translated as you, you meet but are not recognizing the other. And yet, you still harbor a faint memory of the fascination, not fascination, fascination of the past age. So like maybe, before, when you're a child, you have it, but then because of our... when we start creating an ego or a self, we don't... we lose it.

[54:06]

So, this is like recognizing that innocence that you had when you were a very small child. So this is... you get... you get a feeling for your true self. Does that make sense? So there it is then. The pitch dark period of the dead of night is a lucid symbol of undifferentiated consciousness. Before consciousness means discrimination. This stage corresponds to a standpoint of noetic emptiness, the highest state of samadhi. The enlightened mind has reached the peak of total cessation of sensorial and intellectual functions.

[55:08]

But the stage of purity is neither final nor exclusive. It contains the seeds of past experiences. In the subliminal levels of consciousness, when the moon starts shining, the process of discrimination will be ready to appear. So when the moon starts shining, that means light's coming out, and then everything becomes... you start to see things. But before the moon appears, you don't see anything. You're in the utter darkness of your true self, undifferentiated. And then the moon comes and everything becomes differentiated. You see the differences? Well, I wonder about that. I mean, if this person is deep into noetic emptiness,

[56:11]

Why should he be bothered by a little thing like moonlight? Oh, he doesn't have to be bothered. How far should I say, rouse from his noetic emptiness by moonlight? Oh, because one should not get stuck in noetic emptiness. One of the major points is we should not get stuck in noetic emptiness. We have to, because of our human situation, if we get stuck in knowing emptiness, that's like being, it's called getting stuck in emptiness. So we rely upon the celestial bodies to rouse us out of this state? So let's do the bodies of your own mind. You have to remember this is metaphor, it's not... Metaforms.

[57:19]

Metaforms, yes. So, this is one side. There are five of these positions. So, don't get stuck in the first position. This is actually what Hockman is talking about all the time. Don't get stuck in any position. So, but this is, if we see this, you can see the five positions as a progression, or you can see it as each one reviewing reality from five different places. That's the way I like to see it. Although, I have no thoughts about it as a progression. And the reason why, when we went to page 77, let's go back to page 77, it can't look You see, down the middle, there are these 1, 2, [...] 3, 0, 5. See those? Those are the various ways that one can look at these five positions.

[58:22]

So from your question, the first and second are polarity. The reason they're polarity is because they're complementary, I would say. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. That's what the two first positions are representing. So you can see that 1 and 2 are a polarity, a static, actually. In 3, 4, and 5 are a progression. These are the activities which come out of the 2 of 1 and 2. And then 1 and 2 are a polarity, 3 is a pivot, and 4 and 5 is a polarity, or a complementary. And then you can see it as one and two are a polarity, two and three and four are polarity and five is all inclusive, total, totalistic.

[59:26]

Or you can see it as one, two, three, four, five progression. Or you can see it as one, two, three, four, five, no progression or polarity. And Bill and others mentioned. So. I like it as progression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. But I like it best as 1, 2 polarity. 3 is pivot, and 4 and 5 is not polarity, but complementary. Because this is the Vajra. Do you remember the Vajra? And the Vajra is number three. I mean, that's the handle, the middle. And to me it's like a mandala. I like to see it as a mandala. If it's a progression, like it's laid out here on top, that's a good way to explain it, but I like to see it as the third position.

[60:36]

the four positions revolving around the middle. But anyway, so I'm going to start again to read a little bit, read this commentary. And it is still hard working. The pitch dark period of the dead of night is a lucid symbol of undifferentiated consciousness. Undifferentiated consciousness means no differentiation. That's the dark. This stage is mostly dark. This stage corresponds to a standpoint of noetic emptiness, the highest state of samadhi. The enlightened mind has reached the peak of total creation, cessation. of sensorial and intellectual functions. So, you start thinking like, more or less. But this stage of pureness is neither final nor exclusive.

[61:38]

It just contains the seeds of past experiences. I don't know where you got that. There are subliminal levels of consciousness. When the moon starts shining, the process of discrimination will be ready to reappear, and that leads to the second circle, which is there is equality in the midst of diversity. So this is emptiness as form. Emptiness, so to speak, is hidden within form. The first is form is hidden within emptiness, this is emptiness is hidden within form. So although all this is form, emptiness is there as its fundamental. And the old woman who missed the dawn of a new day stands in front of her old mirror now. She sees her face with perfect clarity, and there is no further reality beyond this.

[62:43]

Stop turning your head again this way and that, and give credence to those reflections." There's a lot to say about that. There are many different commentaries on that. It's very poetic. So he says, Contrasting, contrary to the foregoing state, which was the first one, we find ourselves in the middle of the day with its multiplicity of objects, cares, and concerns. This represents the state of discrimination at its height. The very essence of things viewed as absolute emptiness is the equality that is inherently embedded in diversity. In the second stage, diversity is considered to be the proper platform on which to re-establish the absoluteness of relativity of things. So this perspective delves into absoluteness from the formal medium of relativity. Under the immediate

[63:46]

as intrinsically permeate each corner of relativity, it can be stated that there is equality in the midst of diversity. So this is like the horizontal and the vertical. There is more complexity, at least by rent, because when a fully developed understanding which Haku does present. They're connected to the 8 levels of consciousness, the 4 Wisdoms, and the Krakaya. But I'm not going to go into that now. First we should learn fundamentals, and then talk about Dhammakaya, Sambhogakaya and Manakaya, and the eight levels of consciousness, the five senses, the six senses of consciousness, Maharajyana, Manas and Alaya Rajyana, and how they correspond

[65:06]

to each other and to the five ranks. That's what makes the five ranks interesting. It kind of brings out the nature of how the five ranks are actually an expression of consciousness, the various levels of consciousness, and how consciousness when it's transformed, and how the three, dogmakaya, nirmanakaya, and sabhogakaya, relate to all this. It's kind of complex, but it's a wonderful logic when you understand it. So I'm going to go to the third. Is there any question about the second one, Charlie? Well, could you just, in your own words, describe the woman looking in the mirror?

[66:19]

Yeah. It's tricky. It's like she wakes up and she looks in the mirror. The real story is this. And every day she wakes up and looks in the mirror and sees herself. But one day she looked in the mirror and she didn't see herself. So she was looking around looking for her head. And the reason that she didn't see herself was because when she usually looks in the mirror, she sees something that she thinks is herself. But one day she woke up. Woke up, right? And she looked in the mirror and she didn't see that familiar thing that she called herself. So, in this circle the relative is dominant.

[67:28]

That's right. So why is this relative being dominant all of a sudden getting ready to wake up? Because she woke up to the fact that What she thought was simply a phenomenon was actually... She saw something hidden within. She saw that. The absence of it was irrelevant. But taking it more literally, it seems... Don't do that. Well, I mean, what it says is that it's not talking about her waking up. That may be a background story. But it's talking about she's looking at a reflection. And sort of the gist of it would seem like, in this case, we're not worrying about the absolute. We're looking about these particulars, a nose or a wrinkle or the color of her hair.

[68:34]

That said, don't even turn around not even thinking about the Absolute. You're just looking at these particular things that... Well, no. Because the Absolute is hidden within the relative. What you see as the relative is actually the Absolute. The relative is just the relative, that's right. But the relative, that Absolute is... When you see the relative, you see the Absolute. So you don't see the Absolute? You don't, right? So you see the relative but you don't see the absolute. You don't see it as the absolute. You can't see the absolute.

[69:47]

Well, the only way you can see the absolute is through the relative. You say what? The only way you can see the absolute is through the relative. Perfect. The only way you can see emptiness, if you try to find emptiness, you won't find it. The only way you can find emptiness is through the relative. Through form. This is the realm of form. We think that we can see the relative. When I'm looking at something, I'm saying, oh, I'm seeing this. What you see, what you see is, you see the relative. But what you see is the absolute. Expressed as the relative. Okay. I'm just trying to always reverse it so that we can go both directions. Yeah. But, you know, this is just this. Right? So, the problem that we have is that we fall into absolutes.

[70:57]

Even the absolute. Absolute. Just call it the absolute. It's not a very good word, you know. It's the essence and function. Essence and function. Essence is what we term as the act. But without its function, its function is the relative. It functions as things. 78? Yeah. Now here's Bill Powell's translation. At the beginning of the night's third watch, midnight, before the missing lights, don't be surprised to meet, yet not recognize, what is surely a familiar face from the past.

[72:23]

Then the second one, an old crony. I like to say, we say crony, but people say crone. What is it? It's crony. It's crony. An old crony. I'm talking about two different things. Crony is male, crone is female. Is that so? Yes. An old crone is a very old woman. I have a male friend, a male crony. An accomplice. Crony is gay, Blake. Not all chrome, ever just awakened, comes upon an ancient mirror. That which is clearly reflected in front of her face is none other than her own likeness. Don't lose sight of your own face and go chasing after your shadow. Okay, that's not good.

[73:27]

Clarice! Translation. A woman who has only slept encounters an ancient mirror. Clearly she sees her face. There is no other reality. Nevertheless, she still mistakes the reflection for her head. This is not a pipe. This is not a what? A pipe. You know, this is... This is part three. No, no, what? This is not a pipe. It's a famous painting in a... Oh, I did that. The surrealist painting. Art history. So, in other words, this is not a reflection. Um, well, it's not. That's what he's saying. Yeah, don't lose sight of it until she's okay. A woman who has overslept encounters an ancient mirror.

[74:32]

Clearly, she sees her face. There is no other reality. Nevertheless, she still mistakes the reflection. So the reflection here would be the relative. Because we could say the relative is a reflection of the absolute. So she doesn't quite see herself completely. But, let's look at Cleary Cleary. At dawn, an old woman encounters an ancient miracle. She sees a face. There is no other reality. Don't go on mistaking the image for the head. And Locke, Charles Locke says, at dawn an ignorant old woman finds an ancient mirror wherein she clearly sees a face which cannot be elsewhere.

[75:33]

No more will she reject her head by resting in its shadow. The old woman symbolizes antiquated prejudices. That's misogynistic. Well, that's the story. That's his story. We should say something to Dongshan. He got it from Dongshan? What do you mean? He got the story from Dongshan? Dongshan got the story from an old Chinese story. This is an old Chinese story that he's using to illustrate this particular I don't know what you call it. Physicians. So here's wounds. John Woo. The dog has come to the surprise of an old woman, and she chances upon an antique mirror in which she sees clearly and distinctly her own face, so different from all the images she had formed of herself.

[76:47]

From now on, she will no longer ignore her own head and grasp at its mere shadow. But it's really different, especially in the ending, from Cleary's first one. Yes. I mean, they're looking at the same Chinese characters they're coming up with. That's right. Except that Wu is Chinese. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean his translation is better, actually. Cleary's might be better. But I like that one, because it's so clear. That's because you like irrelevant. So, anyway, those are... I think that's... Can you get it? You get the fact that the Absolute is manifest in the relative.

[77:53]

But the antique mirror is like suddenly waking up to the reality of not being fooled by what she sees, which is called the seeing. translated as to see me. The relative is often translated as to see me. So in this case, she's not fooled by what seems to be what she always thought of as who she was. She's saying this from the side of differentiation. She's waking up to the realization of what differentiation really is. Not fooled by what seems to be in the light of day.

[79:06]

That's just the other side. So, we don't have time, do we? Anyway, I hope, you know, one of the problems we have is doing this once a month. The continuity gets kind of lost. You have to start over again and put it up to speed. Is that okay? Well, what are we going to go into? What we're going to go into is the next three. Just compare all these translations on the page. And I would say to read Huckabin's commentary. Huckabin's commentary is the whole thing. And we also will, Alexander will probably scan that. and it will have to be available by email sometime in the next month or so.

[80:24]

Also, do you want to mention about your schedule before the meeting? Okay. Well, theoretically, my plan was to go to India in the middle of the month, next month, or the rest of the month. In which case, We might schedule this for a different Thursday, but I don't know if that works. But if I don't go, we're just having class. And if you do go, we could do it on the first or second Thursday in May, because mid-May starts the practice period, so our third week of May. But we can email you what's going to happen. Well, I think that the thing is to make each class be its own, have a kind of complete thing, so that we don't have to have too much, you know, stop in the middle, look at this continuity, but we do have the continuity.

[81:44]

But if we know exactly what we're going to study, I wanted to get to Harkaway, but I wanted to get some basic stuff before we get to Harkaway. You know, there's some advantage in stretching it out, though. If we're doing stuff in between, you know, like maybe just exploring. As long as we can keep up the interest, it's fine. But, you know, sometimes the interest lags. Well, a number of people said they couldn't make it tonight. They didn't let me know if they had to be out of town or this or that. So it's not that they didn't care. They just couldn't make it.

[82:25]

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