We are sentient beings, but we are also not sentient beings at all, as all sentient beings are not sentient beings at all. In that same sense this Dharma lineage appears as Buddha Patriarchs. In Christian thinking they are called “god-men” or “men-gods.” Not God, not man. Maybe they are just a question mark, not because of unknowing, but because of really knowing the meaning of the unknown. When you see them as insentient, the forty become one. In time and space, you count forty Patriarch Buddhas. But it doesn’t mean just forty, it is infinity. Innumerable Buddhas are forty. Like when you count days, you mean number of welcomings of the sun. For the sun, it is always just one day. Counting is human work. It sounds strange when I say Shakyamuni Buddha is still living. People ask me, “Where does he live?” When I say the sun is still shining, you can feel how I feel Shakyamuni Buddha exists. Historically, he died about twenty-six centuries ago. One day, twenty-six centuries ago, he disappeared. But the sun, which is the same sun as now, also disappeared. Night came. The one who recognizes the existence of Buddha within himself, is the one who transmits the Dharma. Dharma is not separate from Buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha’s life was about eighty years. Before him, length of life was really different: The Buddha before Shakyamuni lived ten times as long as Shakyamuni, and the next one before him lived ten times longer, and so forth. It tells of a sense of time which is not two dimensional, but in infinite dimension, and Sakyamuni Buddha’s appearance as a human was in infinite dimension. So when you see this life in relation to Shakyamuni Buddha, you see twenty-six centuries. It’s a matter of faith. What Shakyamuni Buddha was, depends on each person. If you say the same sun shown yesterday, and the same moon came out last night, and you are the same person, but not the same person, as yesterday, then you understand what was Shakyamuni Buddha. In the same way the Dalai Lama is not only that historical figure, but in a more alive meaning, he is the whole of Tibetan Buddhism. And when Tibetan Buddhism exists, it is not just Tibetan Buddhism, it is the Buddhism of the world, in Tibet, in America. So Shakyamuni Buddha is counted as one of the past Buddhas, and from Mahakasyapa, the numbering of Patriarchs starts, down to Hui Neng. These are historical figures, and, at the same time, beyond historical figures. What makes this lineage? We spoke about the transmission of Dharma and the transmission of robe, which is the symbol of perfect Dharma. It expresses how we exist in this world. The meaning of practice will be found when we see ourselves in this kind of expression. We see both ideas: absolute existence and relative mundane existence. To be human is nothing but to be mundane. At the same time, without being one of humankind, the first principle, the absolute, cannot be realized.