Talking about the Small Vehicle, the Sixth Patriarch expands the ideas of listening, seeing, to their larger sense. The Middle Vehicle is to understand the meaning of the Dharma, to understand all dharmas. Small, middle, and great vehicles are to help understand the stages, the growth from the center, like when you cut a tree you clearly see its history. Any argument about the “best way” is like cutting a tree and arguing about the rings. But the Sixth Patriarch’s way was very new. It didn’t belong to any of the three vehicles… not to possess anything… When I hold a book, it is my own understanding that I possess. If you think there is a great Dharma somewhere else, in a book, you cannot stay with it. When you see that you are in it, you stay… free from all impurities… When there is too much emphasis on “purity,” you cannot stay there. The Dharma is beyond the idea of “pure and impure.” It is the essence of pure and impure. Actually, an example is the face of a cut diamond. To be free from all impurities you will have to cut yourself and then you will die. To live as you are is the meaning of very best effort. This old manuscript prepares the middle way for us, to help us see ourselves in the right way. When you see the middle in you, you know you will find it in others. This conversation has many levels. My feeling of this discussion is of a large typhoon swallowing a small wind.