Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast.
I'm so grateful some good friends enabled me to present them to you.
If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet House US to help preserve culture.
Tibet House is the Dalai Lama's cultural center in America.
All best wishes. Have a great day.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: This is episode 341.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Okay. Hello everybody. How are you? Back to the podcast in the midst of it all, and I would like to introduce someone who I've wanted to podcast for a long time, although he's very elusive to that sort of thing. But this is Gandhin Thurman and he is the CEO of Tibet House US and Menla with its two facilities, one in the city, it's Cultural Embassy. There's preserving Tibetan culture and promoting it. And it's a medical sort of healing side of Tibetan culture in the country at Menla, a spa resort.
And he has been working for Tibet House since 1996, I think full time.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Where he.
And even before that, part time, as he may, as he say, as he says, where he organized single handedly, mainly the one year long project of organizing the Peacemaking Power of Nonviolence Conference, a huge blowout event with the Dalai Lama, Jose Ramos Horta and Rigoberto Menchu's sister, as it finally turned out, and then various, lots of other inner city workers and kids from reformed schools and from different dangerous areas in Los Angeles and San Francisco and Portland and Seattle and so on. Amazing. And with a lot of meditation teachers like Charlotte Hallsberg and Kornfield and Goldstein and some African drumming shaman teachers and others. It was an amazing event in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium where Nancy Pelosi first Metalai Lama and Gandhin was the one who. That's where he got his start with Tibet House. He decided, and I should also say Gandhi is our number one son, Nina, and my number one son in addition to all these accomplishments of his. So greetings, Gandhan. So glad to have you on board. How are you doing?
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Hi, dad.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Thank you. All right, good.
So, you know, I guess an opening question would be how do you see the Tibet House US and other Tibet Houses project in this day of sort of politically where sort of neo imperialism is trying to come back on the planet on its way. What do you think about.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Well, I think that of course, the authoritarian regimes that are currently making a run for relevance once again around the world, there's a handful of them out there attempting to assert some sort of benefits of that type of system against their history of having very short lived, miserable tenures over any given country.
And I would say that the thrust of history in general holds that empires could last for a long time. In the old days when people couldn't travel and they couldn't get any access to any information and they had no education, they had rights, they had no concept of opportunities, they were just caught very, very slow moving, solid survival, subsistence based machine.
And you could have long empires in those old days where conditions remained the same for centuries. But in the modern age, it seems that imperialism doesn't survive modernity for too long.
So you know, the Soviets had a good 80 year run, I guess you could say maybe less.
And China is doing what it can to hang in there and the British, French, all the old colonial empires are all gone, broken bits and pieces.
And now we have a few states, states trying to create little mini empires in their neighborhoods, I guess.
But in general, I would say that the lesson of history though there's doesn't, doesn't mitigate the dangers to individual people. But the lesson of history anyway is that peoples remain and empires fall.
And so you have for example, all the Baltic countries that reappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we'll see what happens with the stands that are still trapped with the Russian Federation. But, but in general it seems that, you know, authoritarian guns, extreme right wing governance doesn't, doesn't pass the smell test historically or in terms of duration. So it's very worrisome that we see this happening. But it's also on the flip side, it's still very encouraging that peoples outlast these political, political structures.
And you know, Tibet House's role, like the role of any NGO that brings attention to, you know, beleaguered and endangered peoples is important for that reason. It's just, it's good to participate in that process because there's something right about people surviving when, when foul political structures fall apart.
And in addition to that, the Tibetan case I think is interesting because they are pretty. Well, they have a lot of the accoutrements of modern civilization. You know, systems of literature, architecture, histories, language, etc, these are not, you know, the kinds of natives that we can't empathize with. They're, they're people whose exotic culture, you know, at least in structure mirrors our own in many ways and has interesting variations from what we consider normal as their norm. And so on that level, of course, I think the Tibetans are in better shape than many other cultures that are, you know, smaller cultures and smaller language groups and peoples that are being destroyed. And then finally, you know, Tibetans have, in addition to that, they have some unique contributions that can be made to numerous scientific, medical and personal systems of enhancement development to the mitigation of suffering and disease and these kinds of things from the medical system. So I think they have a lot of contributions that the politics of their situation and the humanitarian crisis ongoing of their situation has prevented us from accessing and exploiting as much as we'd like. And so Tibet House has a very important role to play in keeping access for Western people to those goods that were preserved and enhanced and refined and even in some cases invented by Tibetan people for the sake of sharing with their fellow human beings. So I think that there's, there's, there's a lot to do. It's outwardly somewhat obscure. There are a small number of people, it seems to us that the steamroller of the people rambling about their philosophies, of the strong, you know, are going to steamroll everyone and have their way and declare their usual 10,000 and 20,000 year dynasties and Reichs and God knows what else, but the fact of the matter is that they don't last. And so we can, we can, you know, count on the fact that we're serving a good function even if it's not well understood by people at all times. But we're trying to work on ways of making it better understood and ways of getting the salient points of Tibetan culture out there to people, you know, in an authentic and yet flexible way whereby it can be utilized by, by modern people. So I think, you know, Tibet has, as many peoples and cultures around the world does, has many things still to contribute to their ongoing story of the human race and, and the, and the benefit of the individual people making up that human race, male and female and otherwise.
So that would be my overall ideological take on matters. But as a practical matter, there's the, there's the issue of benefits and fundraisers and grants and different projects and so on and so forth. And we try to make those entertaining yet informative, yet authentic and yet saleable, which is quite an array of things to try to put together all at once.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Frankly. You know, you're making me. I just, you made me think of the. About 20, so maybe even 30 years ago when we were getting going at the Bed House, there was an organization based from Cambridge, I don't know if it was associated with Harvard, that was called Cultural Survival, and they had a newsletter or a magazine, but I never did know if they had a place or something. Like a museum or something. And then I have. I suddenly realized I haven't heard of anything about them for many decades, for some decades now. Have you ever heard. Have you heard them? Cultural survival were like a. It was like a general thing, not the specific institution.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Of course, as you'll recall, I was of a somewhat tender age at the time, so perhaps not trafficking and NGO mission statements in those days.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Well, they used to come by the Tibet House office. I remember, used to see it, you know, and I think I wrote an essay in it even once about how Tibet qualified as a cultural. That needed to survive, but it's kind of disappeared. And then the other thing that has always been amazing is, I don't know if you remember that, but Piko Iyer wrote a new. When he used to write for the Time magazine under previous management. Henry Lutzer Management. He once wrote a thing called a Holocaust Memorial before the Holocaust.
Right. And he referred. I don't know if he referred by name to Tibet House. I think he did.
He did that. He did. But, you know, he's not been able to find that. He doesn't remember it.
I've tried to locate the piece because I thought it was a really seminal piece before we were. We ourselves were sort of, you know, used to trying to explain it. And I tried once. He's a friend, and I love the guy and he writes great things, but he couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. I tried to look in Time archives and I couldn't find it. And so I don't know. I don't know if you ever found.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: We'll find Pico Ayers. I remember it was a. I think it was a review in conjunction with Wisdom and Compassion in London at the time. So it was some. It was something around that time, but again, before my time here at Tibet House, I think that was, you know, the early 90s, late 80s.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: But I do remember the article coming out. I remember the line about Tibet House being a little like, you know, characterizing the mission as a little like building the monument before rather than after the Holocaust.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: As a means of staving it off rather than never forgetting it.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I think that is a. That's one of the two first or three first or four furs about Tibet House, that its presence as a cultural embassy in some of the world's capitals. Not enough of them, actually, but some of them maybe might encourage some Chinese administration to think about not crushing the whole thing, which actually now and then they used to do. They had waves where they would try to crush everybody and make them only learn Chinese, which they're doing now. And then there are times when they don't do that and they kind of pretend they're really trying to save themselves.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Sure. Well, I think that there's a lot of consolidating of power by various people who are consumed with the quest for more power going on right now. Yes, as is their want. And, but, but I would say that the Tibetan cause is in some part due to Tibet House and other related institutions activities and also in, in larger part due to the Tibetans themselves. Perhaps the Tibetan issue and the Tibetan people are, have an outsized reputation compared to their size and, and the, and their issue. And I think that this is a testament to the, the efforts in the non violent resistance to the worst outcomes of their circumstances that they have employed and that people like us and others on their behalf have also employed, that is to say, leveraging knowledge and truth against, you know, oppression and eradication, as seems to be the case. So, you know, there's, there's good reason to be optimistic for the Tibetans already insofar as they're far better off. I believe, for example, they're not listed very highly in the endangered peoples of the Earth lists. You know, you could say that there may only be 8 million Tibetans tops, you know, that that currently lived on this earth right now, which is a tiny small number of people, relatively speaking.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: But they do not, but they're not, they're not as endangered as some of the people that we never even heard of. I see who are out there and, and their language, although it's being, you know, in a sense the Chinese kidnapping a million Chinese government, that is kidnapping a million Tibetan children to stuff into these state indoctrination schools in order to eradicate their language and their social relations to their own families as well as to their communities and to their homeland townships and whatnot ways of life. That this effort is a testament in fact to the enduring strength of the Tibetan cultural formation, I guess, for lack of a better word, you know, you don't put chains on people you don't fear, you know, however ridiculous the whole exercise might be.
So in that sense, I think that there is some reason for optimism. This is cold comfort, of course, to those who are still suffering directly the slings and arrows of the oppression, you know, put on them by the Chinese government, but within China, you know, in order to assimilate into a culture that won't have them because they're not them. So, you know, with a classic problem of identity politics is that they don't really want unity. They want to have fights between the atomized different identities out there, you know, where identities are barriers to community rather than mediums of exchange between members of community.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: And you know, mirroring a lot of the Buddhists path, frankly, you know, on a personal level. Hello.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Why do you think.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: I'm in the middle of the space? So sadly our innocent bystanders are going to be subjected to my various opinions.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yes. And also sometimes the, the, the camera loses you and it stalls if you hear your voice. But with the video stall.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Oh, well, I'm sorry. Nature of the beast here, I guess.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: All right. It's not really too, too troublesome. So that's really interesting.
So what do you see about the longer run about it? You know, I always tell people how you helped me in thinking about and getting upset about these dictatorial and authoritarian tendencies that we see very close to home now are besieging us every day.
But you also mentioned to me that it only took Hitler about 12 years to destroy his entire country, which I had never, you know, it's amazing. I had. You think that's obvious, but actually I had never seen it myself growing up. I was born in 1941. Growing up, even with that happening around and then the aftermath, you know, coming into teenage time, I had always thought of the damage he did to other countries and other people, but I had never sort of seen what. One of your points. You often mention the incompetence and the transitoriness of these authoritarian structures and the destructiveness to those who put them in power.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Actually, I think it could be said that authoritarian regimes in general have rapidly just fall apart really rapidly in violent bloody messes almost everywhere they've been deployed. Yeah, you know, they do have the. Because the, you know, the violence in these types of regimes is of course due to the weakness of their position. Meaning the force is used as a prop to hold people together and hold the system in place and uphold the ruling elites over the rest of the unwashed masses and so on and so forth. None of which is happening with anyone's consent and often with their, you know, aggressive resistance.
So these are not formations that anybody wants or work well or last for a long time. As I like to say, the only efficiency that these authoritarian regimes have is in destroying themselves and their country as rapidly as possible.
And you know, they, they take over. They take over usually in some contrived emergency and then they proceed to completely Flop and fail in every last respect.
Some of them, like Pol Pot's terrible regime, which, you know, they ended up torturing their entire population to death looking for the people who were making that horrible system not work, right? They. Because they couldn't. They couldn't say that, well, this was. Maybe this was a bad idea. Instead, they said, outside foreign powers are conspiring to keep our conservatopia alive and functioning. And so they then went to start interrogating and torturing people to try and find who was doing it, who was responsible. But it was, of course, them, themselves and their terrible ideas, which I believe. I think Pol Pot got an A from the Sorbonne for his demented plan to reinstitute subsistence agriculture in Cambodia in order to. And deprive everyone of property in order to build a glorious future, which is altogether disturbingly too familiar as we hear about how much pain we're supposed to endure and sacrifice for the great noble, glowing future of our formerly best economy in the world, for example. Yes, but anyway, and then it's always the bad people somewhere causing it not to work, when in fact it's just an unworkable system. So anyway, the point is that these, these aggressive. I mean, I've heard studies claim that. I've heard that there were studies where they tried to study democracy versus authoritarianism, or rather I should say democracy versus all the other systems in the world, which are the few ruling over the many. And they. That one was a psychological. Was an arrangement of people in a circle around someone in the center. And in one setup, the person in the center could get messages from everyone on the periphery, and they could communicate amongst themselves to anyone on the periphery and to the one in the center. And that was democracy, where information was freely flowing between all the parties. And then you had a circle with a guy in the center, and people on the periphery could only talk to the guy in the center. Feeding information into the center there. That centralized system was authoritarianism. And it determined that when circumstances remained stable and the same, such as in a war, for example, that really simplifies matter. There's a reason why authoritarians always start wars. It's not just distraction, it's not just aggrandizement of themselves and consolidation of their political power, but it also simplifies their job. They're no longer managing anything. There's that one disaster over there, and everything becomes subordinate to that. But anyway, they discovered that the efficiencies did occur when this. When the circumstances were stable, like in the old days, you could have A despot ruling for centuries because nothing was really changing. So it wasn't a very hard job being a desperate ruling for centuries. But, but when circumstances were, were changeable and fluid and complex, you really needed the input of all the parties involved and they needed to be able to consult with each other. And so you had a situation where democracy turns out to be more flexible, more adaptable to changing circumstances. Yes, again, it all is very amusing to me from the point of view of Buddhism's admonition to people that they learn to live with change because it's a part of life and it's a part of reality and it's on the personal level, of course, we have to constantly deal with change and they, But I do think that it does scale up even to, you know, matters of matters of state, ironically enough, although I am, as you know, I am not at all a fan of theocracy. So let's not go there. But, Right, right. But I do think that because it's another rule of many by the few, and that that system is gone from the modern world where people can communicate with each other freely and people can travel and people have options and opportunities and new challenges and so forth.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: So I think that those old systems, democracy being the only non, you know, domination of the few by the many system out there is definitely the way to go.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Right, right. I, I totally agree with you and so does the Dalai Lama, although I.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: I, I think it's probably one of the, one of his great achievements. It's, of course, sad and hard because it's only within the purview of diaspora, but not a lot of leaders willingly unforced, give up their powers, even if they're just nominal, to make way for a better system in the interests of their own people.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Yes, yes. When he did it in 2011, he said he had been forced by his own people's custom to make certain decisions that they should be making by election.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: And, but, and he had been trying over the decades in diaspora to get them to grok the idea of a, a loyal opposition when you lose an election that you go to war in the system you like, you work and then you try to win again with your idea, your view in the next election, because the, you know, people are not used to that when they do have somebody else imposing decisions upon them. Although I think one thing I do object to in the Tibetan studies world is where Tibetan scholars refer to old Tibet as a theocracy. And it's a little bit, maybe you could say, and maybe you will not agree with me, and that's. Of course, you're absolutely right. But theocracy is a Western thing based on the concept of a monotheistic omnipotent deity who presumably invest their power in the king or queen in a theocracy, you know, is actually maybe the Pope or somebody, you know. So they have both secular and religious power in that sense, like in the old days of the papal, the Vatican state. But in the case of Buddhism, Buddha is not a omnipotent creator deity. He's a very powerful, helpful, like a, Like a soccer coach.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: And he's, he's always telling people they have to do it themselves, they have to figure it out themselves, they have to study whatever even he says and don't listen to him if it doesn't make sense to them and blah, blah, blah. So in other words, this sort of. Although there was a hierarchy, it was a way of controlling local aristocratic warlord type of regional people in the plateau of Tibet was to have sort of a spiritual person who supposedly was representing the positive, whatever. But it wasn't really. It didn't have a big prison system, for example, didn't have a big police system.
Sure. It was not really what we think of as an inquisition toting and reliant theocracy, but if they wanted to say a Buddha crazy, maybe I would go with that. I would go with that. Whatever.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Well, I think I like to stick with what the Tibetans themselves called it, which was a sacred secular, non dual system.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Right. Where they actually often people translate as unified, but it's soon dao, and soon means the pair is coordinated. It's connected.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Right. They're complementing each other.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: They have a word for unified, but it's not unified, it's coordinated, you know.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Well, the point being that it isn't. It, you know, it fails the theocracy test in a sense because of course it's not the domination of one value set over the other.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: So the, the allegedly profane concerns of secular people are not utterly sidelined by the capricious idealism of the religious ones.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Right, right. And then that leads to this thing. I have a concept called intermodernity, which really maybe you might take up some sociology and do it. I should have really written a book about it. I've been promoting that thesis. And one of my colleagues once said, bob, that is a really great thesis. The thing about really good thesis is that they stand so well on their own without the benefit of it, without the need for any evidence, and which is the idea that Tibet in the 17th century did what we did in the west in the opposite, because in the west we went all secular with Protestantism, you know, and destroying all monasticism and so forth in northern Europe. And we. And all the sociologists, you know, Max Weber and people like that, which you read at Wesleyan there, you know, they make this thing about a unified life field where everything is just material production and material wealth, aggrandizement and so on and so on, and there's no sort of sacred thing that balances it anymore, you know, and it's just instrumental rationale they have a whole story about. So I've said in parallel to that, the Tibetan thing was it was all sacralized. It was also unified. I call it inner modernity or interior modernity, that external modernity or material modernity. And this one is interior modernity. And so everything is kind of sacred. And the key institution change is that in the northern European one, they dropped all the monasteries and came up with a lot of militarism and conquered the world actually, with a big population explosion of extra people who went out and conquered the places. Whereas Tibet, they. They gave up their conquering. In other words, they gradually demilitarized and their monastic universities became the central institution of the society. And for the. Among in the culture, all the sort of the enchantment of the Rambo, you know, the victorious Odysseus, you know, the. You know, the Hector, the Achilles, you.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Know, this was no heroic ideal, no.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Longer admired in that culture, which is unique almost, I think, on the planet. It may be one of the reasons. But I never properly. I'm sorry, I don't mean to just go off.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: That's okay.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: What I'm saying is that. That I never properly wrote it up as a source in sociological detail. I had all the evidence to do it. And I kind of. When I would verbally give a paper about it or something like that, people kind of take an interest. But I never really elaborate, you know, several times, several colleagues said, you know, you really should write that up as a book. So it's out there as a challenge, and then people will deal with it. And I never got around to it because of my translating focus. But it's. It would be a good thing to do.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: I think it sounds interesting. I mean, we've definitely had worse systems. So, you know, there's always that the bar is pretty low, I think. Which reminds me actually of a funny thing that Churchill once said about America finally entering World War II, you know, imminently going to enter World War II. Everyone was. All the British reporters were always asking him. Everyone was asking him, like, do you think the Americans are going to join? Do you think the Americans are going to join?
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Right. And he said, oh, I'm certain of it. I know that America will do the right. The Americans will do the right thing once they've tried everything else.
Very typical of him, echoing his commentary on democracy being the, The. The worst possible system on earth, except for all the other ones.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: I know that's also really great.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: No, he was a truly great one. But I love that idea of. I love that idea of process of elimination, getting to the, to the right way to do things.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: I know, I know.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Only through the failure of everything else. It does seem like a bit of a slog, but there you have it.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: I know, I know. Well, now listen. So, Gundan, by the way, you're sitting in the, in your. Your domain there, the Tibet house, with your colleagues, and I see some paintings behind you and some books, but maybe, I don't know, your camera, maybe you can't carry it around with you or something. You could show us around or.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: I, I don't know if I'm able. I don't want to do a tour right now. I'm kind of tied to the wall for various reasons.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: We could actually do one. I think I'd like to do a podcast where you do like a walking tour, like we were.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: We can do that. That's fine.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: It's like, like a history teacher from New Jersey with a class or something.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Yes, we can do that. We just have. We. We have classes that come through and we give tours, but we, we have been waiting to put one into the can.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Right. I love it. If you take us through, you know.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Showing the different things we have on display from the repatriation collection and the library and the various different displays we have of Tibetan ordinary objects as well as the fine art, too.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: We must do another podcast on that.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Sure. So sign me up.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So how, you know, and in your own story, maybe people be interested to know, like how come you got roped into working with your parents?
[00:33:45] Speaker B: I suppose it was pity mixed with a not insignificant dollop of. Of masochism.
But aside from that, aside from that angle on things, the, the sort of petty personal. There's this sort of bigger personal, which is that I've always respected the Tibetans, frankly, for their endurance under the circumstances that they have to live through.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: And for their.
What Aristotle would have called proper pride about their accomplishments, even humbled by Circumstances as they are now.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: And I've always been particularly and there. And so I, I find that incredibly worthy of respect and emulation. And so I'm happy to help them. And I think that it helps all of us that we do the right thing in whatever areas that we can. I, I don't think everyone should join Tibet House. Sorry, not a great sales pitch. I, I think I agree with the Dalai Lama that people should do what they feel, what they have a passion for, and what their karma, I guess, moves them to be inspired about and work on those problems. And that the solution of small problems here and there incrementally is the solution to a lot of big problems everywhere. So people doing the right thing and feeling right about the things that they're doing is, is, is good and important. Yeah. So in some ways what I do is a kind of somewhat self indulgent, you know, moral vanity of, of glomming on to the Tibetans and their very noble cause.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Of believing that people could see their way clear to not maintaining at great expense and cost, morally and financially and economically and socially terrible systems that don't make anybody particularly happy.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: You know, so I, I think, and I, and I've always had a sense that, you know, truth is valuable and so the idea that truth would be liberative for people, I think is really, is really great, you know, in all senses of the word.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: So I'm here because it's logical. I grew up and I gained a lot from observing and living around Tibetans and I respect them and I think that their Buddhist teachings are interesting. Those that I've dipped into here and there, though, I can't report to be any sort of expert or even a proper fanatic. But, but I do, I do respect them and I think that they have a lot more to contribute and I think we have a lot more to benefit from them.
So there's just that. And it's, it's just as well. There's all kinds of other. And, and there's great tie ins. You know, our methodology here, as I'm sure you know, but I'll share it with the listening audience, if there is any.
But, okay, I'll share it with them. Which is, our methodology here is to take out the salient points of Tibetan culture. You know, the idea is not for people to become Tibetans, and that's not my goal either, but to actually appreciate the things of value and of worth that they have created that have bearing on things that are germane to us.
So the impact of Tibetan inner science knowledge, for example, in our sciences, in terms of bioenergy, in terms of, you know, different transport, the possibly the interstitium being related to the inner channels and chakras, for example, the newly discovered organ, their, their insights into psychology, insights into yogic practices which conceivably not only cross over from the auto, you know, autonomic to the non autonomic systems in the body, but potentially, you know, do gene activation and other kinds of interesting, amazing things that we're just beginning to appreciate in our sciences. Never mind, never mind. Of course, their pharmacology in their medical system, which has numerous compounds that we've never heard of and tested or studied or thought about that may, that may flip all manner of different levers within, within the body and that stuff should be studied and there's tremendous advances and gains to be had just if we just go pure material level. Their, their compounds, their herbal compounds. As I understand it, their pharmacology is larger than both the Chinese and the Indian systems which are inputs into the Tibetan medical system.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: So they have a tremendous amount just right there of patented, full, usable knowledge. Although I will say that people not understanding the Asian system of body and energy, you know, the energy body in the Asian systems, is it probably a huge stumbling block to the systematic and appropriate and authentic assessment, scientifically speaking, of those, you know, Indian, Chinese, Tibetan medical systems.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Out there, you know, we keep trying to study it without its core principles and that's not ever going to work.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Well, no, it isn't. And of course the fact that in, to be a Tibetan medical certified person, you have to have so and so many course hours in compassion cultivation and things like that.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Well, that there, there's that too.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: The healer is considered so, so, so important. Look, the, the wisdom and insight about the diseases and so on.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Yes, well, they're more deliberate with their emotional intelligence as a component of, you know, intellectual intelligence.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: So, so I think that, you know, or rational intelligence, I don't know what the, the corresponding term is emotional intelligence.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Perfect. Yes.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: I guess intelligent quotient is what, it's what it's bouncing off of.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: But in any case, Dan Goldman's famous thing, it's great.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: It's totally great.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: And I think that the, and I think that I've always thought, I've always agreed with Nietzsche on that, that point that our human truths are not just mathematical expressions but in fact have a tremendous component of consciousness and intentionality and what emotion that is to say you know, complex thoughts is what emotion on some level is.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: And I've so I've always considered them to be uncontroversially integrated within the, within the Buddhist intellectual tradition.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: And I think that the deintegration of the so called soft sciences and emotion from logic and reason and mathematics and the so called hard sciences within our system, our educational and our intellectual system handed down from the Greeks, where we see, you know, these different capacities is different in kind rather than degree.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: Axiomatically, where reason is opposed to emotion and to ethics at all costs and at all times.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: I, I wonder at whether or not we're, we've already long since rubbed up against the limitations of those premises. Yes, I think that there's definitely something worthwhile to be had by engaging with recognizing different premises and different methodologies based on those premises of the Eastern philosophical and as I just said, the medical systems, for example, in education.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: You're making me think, you know, it's so interesting right now the government is using as an excuse the student protests on different university campuses. It's not their real motive, but they're using as an excuse to attack the university system.
And I'm reminded of the first time I was ever when I was trying to be a Buddhist monk at my youth and I was ever in a big monastery where thousands of monks were there during, and having tea, having just arrived and having tea during this sort of twilight or pre dinner debate session that monks all get engaged in in long rows, you know, where they, they argue points and they, and I was just thinking if they'd done that on the walk in Columbia University, even if they were arguing about emptiness and transcendence and God on God or life, whatever it would be, that probably the administration would call somebody to come in and shoot them because it would sound like they were having a riot. I thought there was a disturbance because the emotions of the students are encouraged after they've been learning all day and memorizing and learning and listening to a teacher. They then are debating the points that they've learned, how they reasonably understand it, and somebody challenging them and they're challenging the other one. And they have a very choreographed way of keeping the emotion where they don't come to blows or completely loses control. And yet they are, they are getting a much sharper understanding and intellectual reasoning power by bringing the emotion really strongly into it. And think what the voice raises and if the, whatever it is, they don't then think the other one is all angry and they get all emotionally like traumatized and so forth by that. And we just don't have that a little bit. And as you may remember from, I'm sure you remember from your college experience and I remember from mine in colleges and prep schools and things that, you know, that only happens like in a dorm room among some roommates who maybe have taken the same course or listen to the same lecture and then get very excited with each other in who got it right? You know, what did the professor mean? Or why was the professor wrong? Or whatever it was. But you don't really ever get that in the classroom. Even seminar type classroom. There's like a sort of mutedness of the emotion, you know, that is, that is unfortunate for learning.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: So that I think that this goes to the issue of what knowledge is for and what understanding is for. You know, we've come to the point now in recording our knowledge as a means of sharing it, we've gone past that into the realm now where we're actively contemplating having robots think thoughts based on our knowledge for us.
Meaning that, you know, we can. It's hard for people these days to have a discussion about anything because it immediately becomes tribal and polarized and, and angry. But not because, you know, right or wrong necessarily, but because people aren't practiced in debating ideas. And so what happens is that they identify with those few ideas that they're left with by not exchan and having open communication with others to develop a robust inventory of them. And so the few that they do have, they identify with. And therefore any criticism of an idea becomes a criticism ad hominem of the person. And so it immediately becomes an interpersonal emotional battle rather than in, you know, a hermeneutical exploration of truth. Right. A debate with the aim of discovering the truth. Right. Which is puristic debate.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: It all becomes aistic debate. Debate with the aim of winning.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: And I think that one thing that's interesting, talking about emotional intelligence and talking about the relative merits of different systems of social organization and government organization, one thing that really comes, really seems to be important these days is what is the purpose of knowledge? Of knowledge. People have very cynical now that if it doesn't lead directly to, you know, helping you live from hand to mouth for the rest of your life, it needs to be discarded or at best viewed as extremely suspect and indulgence of some kind, probably irrelevant at best and at worst, you know, leading you down some primrose path to, you know, non financial viability.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: And I think that, you know, even past and even past the guardrails of subsistence, you know, into actual death and starvation.
So, but the idea that knowledge, knowledge is to ennoble people, to be better able to deal with their circumstances, whatever they are, either high or low, seems to have been lost in this whole pursuit of the truth for its own sake. You know, I think that we need to bring back a little bit, you know, in line with what you've been talking about. Although I, I can't say I agree with all of them ideas, but, but in line with that, we need to bring back the idea that that knowledge in itself has a value insofar as it ennobles people. Yeah, and, and, and, and brings about all those interconnected ripple effects and benefits, you know, like a person reciting poetry for others, for example, you know, this kind of a thing, which we used to understand as an unqualified good, as something that ennobled the world. And education likewise, I think, was, and I believe liberal arts in particular was designed with the purpose of ennobling the noble people that went there to get it that it was not a trade school and not to make a classist, you know, odious comparison between the two. It's not the point necessarily, but that recognizing that people of leisure could use that to develop themselves so that their opportunities and their entitlements might be more beneficial rather than less to their fellow members of their society or country or generation. You have what have you. Yes. So I think in general, the Buddhist idea of you being the beneficiary of your education is really maybe should come back to some extent. And a little bit of that enlightened selfishness needs to be worked back into education so that we, we understand that the people going in have merit generically, and they're being better educated by being exposed to more and different ideas, whatever their various views on those ideas might be, is beneficial to us.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: You know, so as opposed to the idea that there's only one truth and that's the one truth and then everyone needs to conform. One truth that's told the one time by the one person and it applies to all things terrible, because there's only one being I've ever heard of for whom that would be true, and I haven't met him.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Who's that?
[00:48:58] Speaker B: God.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: All right.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: By definition.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: Well, by some definition, actually. Lately I've been softening up a little on God because I just appreciates it, I hope. I think he does. And he or she very good.
Because of the fact that God makes a huge fuss with whichever Whichever God it is in whichever community or culture or whatever makes a huge fuss about how people have to be ethical and they have to do good, they have to do the right thing in your turn.
And, and he wouldn't bother with that. If he was this omnipotent completely and everything was just, he was his, his game, everybody was in it like a completely will less chess piece in his game, he wouldn't bother with that. Why bother with that? In other words, he's trying to signal by teaching ethics that he needs help to make the world better, you know, by being so, so the people who project the definition that God is almighty and all powerful and therefore any little word that he said as an aside even can be then used to kill people, whatever, you know, just slavishly are themselves just creating a false one actually they're creating a idolatry and it's no good.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: You could argue that obedience, that, that blind obedience is not any form of following any good advice exactly, something like that, you know, because you're not actually applying it, you're just exactly doing it. Irregardless of whether it works or doesn't or is appropriate or isn't.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: So the ethical emphasis, even in some, in the monotheistic traditions, including the Indian ones, Shaiva Vaishnavai, where what can breed real fanaticism, that they just have to do exactly what they're told, but in fact by teaching them ethics that you have to not kill people, you have to tell the truth, you have to do this not, you know, means that, that God is not doing everything. So, and then I read this thing and I read for the like 9th time and finally listened to it a little bit or it popped up to me where it said that 10th stage bodhisattvas like to be gods in particular cultural settings because they can do more to help people short of being a Buddha, you know, and they have to kind of wait for their time to become, to go to the 11th stage, which is the Buddhahood supposedly. And I, I. And then you stop to think about it. And that's of course a non esoteric thing where you're not trying to be a Buddha right away in the immediate life for many, after many lives. They like being, serving communities as a God.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's a big, you know, power is a big responsibility, you know.
[00:52:00] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: The people who seek it seem to not understand this because if they did they wouldn't want it. But, but it's a huge responsibility. And that's why, you know, they, there's that sort of, you know, folk wisdom that the people who don't want power are the ones that it should be given to because they at least understand, you know, the tremendous obligation that it brings with it. You know, we've gone so far past understanding noblesse oblige, even though people want to, you know, institute the systems that required it.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, That's. That's a really, really difficult situation when we get into this thing about the other great thing. And, you know, Tibet was kind of very Buddhistic, and Buddhism was really the main thing that went on there. And that's, you know, people who think badly of it, who call it theocracy, they talk about that and even the burn tradition, which was from prior to the arrival of Indian teachings in Tibet 1500 years ago.
But they. They themselves are modeling them. They really are Buddhists, actually. They're. They. They want to be a Buddha. They just. They just have a little different history about it. And they say that they're teaching. Teaching came from a different source, but in a way, it ends up being the same teaching. But even in spite of that, even back as far as the 17th century, the 5th Dalai Lama gave land to Christian missionaries to have their mission there. And he gave two types of Muslims, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, one coming from China, one coming from Nepal. He gave them also land for their mosques and their communities. They were merchants, you know, and missionaries were not merchants, but they wanted to missionaries. So he gave them land and they sent missionaries. And the missionaries got a little frustrated because they didn't have a broad success, because people were pretty happy with Buddhism, most levels of people. So the present Dalai Lama took that all the way now. And as you rightly pointed out, he. He made the future Tibet a secular government, a secular state, so that no one religion is, you know, it's not establishing a religion. The state the people can establish for them.
[00:54:19] Speaker B: No state religion.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's really important. I think it's very ironic in America that we have what's called Christian nationalists here now. But. And the main spearhead of them are Baptists, and they are the ones who constantly wrote Madison and Jefferson and so on and Hamilton, like, don't let anybody control the government, any religious group, because, of course, they were nervous about the Puritans who were Congregationalists, and they were afraid that the European religious persecutions that had driven me would be reproduced here. And now they are the ones arguing for Christian or.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: The irony is that people. The irony is that the groups of people who are using Freedom of religion to take it away from everyone else.
[00:55:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. That's well put.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Well, it's just, you know, I mean, it's only in America where we won every, Every step forward we take, you know, the people who take that step for some reason just cannot resist pulling the ladder up after them as if we're done, no one else can come up.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: Whether it's waves of immigrants, you know, slowly gaining acceptance, you know, or it's. Or it's the religious groups, you know.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: I know that's true. Yeah.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: They're immigrants, you know, just. Just unconsciously moving from seeking freedom for themselves to seeking dominance over others and not understanding the difference between the two, you know.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: Yes. Hopefully we'll get there. I think we will. It's not as. You know, there's a. One other line. One other thing I thought was really fun. I recently saw, I don't know if you saw it, the 89 project. Did you ever see that? No, I had not seen it until just the other day. It was apparently a climate project, and apparently they partnered with journalistic institutions that still function all over the world. And they somehow did polling and they found that 89 of people, and including enclosed societies, they got in there because it seemed like an innocent question.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: 89 of the people on the planet really wish that the authorities of whatever their society is, would do more to mitigate climate disruptions and disasters, you know, but of that 89%, a majority think that no one else thinks like that.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:56:42] Speaker A: Words to. To. To. To extract that. That bias from within people, the whatever polling methodology they use, I didn't look at it too thoroughly, but whatever they use, they had to get around, like, not saying anything because of fear, you know, or something, you know, or because they felt they were, like, lonely in that they didn't know that another 88% will have thought the same way. So this seems to be a strategy of the. Of the status quo people is to promote somehow a feeling that everybody wants the status quo, you know, that they're, you know.
[00:57:16] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, no, no. We are definitely in the. We are in numerous. On numerous issues. We are in the case where exceptions are being made into the rule.
The public, if the public, if we did polling, not push polling, not partisan, not fake and not selected. You're only your loyalists and so on and so forth. But if you did general polling of the population, you would find that the general population is not insane. Actually, not nearly as insane as the weird extremists manipulating them into thinking that they're all at each other's throats and you know, that if we don't perform this atrocity, then that other atrocity is going to come down the pike at them and then watch out because, you know, then the third atrocity will be coming. It's hiding under your bed now, but it'll be there soon, you know, but yet another atrocity waiting in the closet. But all things being equal, people are actually pretty reasonable insane. So about things like, you know, not arresting people without charges, you know, not treating people as, you know, by their race instead of by their actions or their individual characteristics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, people are actually quite reasonable.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:58:35] Speaker B: On the basic issues.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: Right. Well, wonderful. G. Do you have any. I think we reached a kind of time.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: That sounds good. I'm sure everyone's sick of me here.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: Format, but I really definitely hope you we will come back and we can do a podcast where you're using an iPhone or something where you can go around and.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: We can see the Tibet House. I think that would be really great. And is there any final thing you'd like to say to end the podcast and if any.
[00:59:05] Speaker B: No, there's just my favorite, since I guess we've been Buddhist themed here. I'll just leave with my favorite Zen aphorism, which of course is there is nothing that is necessarily not an occasion for freedom.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: Okay.
That you get that. But that's the same thing.
[00:59:22] Speaker B: Well, I believe so. I can't really remember. I can't remember the. The wag who dished it out. But.
[00:59:28] Speaker A: Right, right. Well, the Dalai Lama has one. I maybe I don't think he got from Zen a little bit parallel where he says and you can always try to be compassionate whenever there's an occasion for it. And there's always an occasion for it. Sure. He says a thing like that.
[00:59:43] Speaker B: All kinds of good stuff.
[00:59:44] Speaker A: It is. Well, thank you very much, Gandhin.
[00:59:47] Speaker B: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, dad, on your podcast.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: My pleasure. Well, we'll do another one soon. Okay.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: And also. Oh yeah, I want to announce that we are planning a for the celebrated Dalai Lama's 90th birthday starting on in the birthday month of July this year. Once a month we're going to do some kind of seminar or it'll be a live stream, but it'll also be in person maybe at Tibet House in the city on the A chapter, each time one chapter of the Dalai Lama's favorite book, which is Shantideva's Guide to the enlightened way of life, or enlightening way of life, you know, the Bodhicarya avatara. And I think that's really going to be fun. And I am seeding, you know, ceding thing to you. And maybe we'll have some guest people like John Campbell, like I will invite some other people to also contribute chapter by chapter as we go along.
You know, we haven't planned it fully, but I wanted to announce.
[01:00:56] Speaker B: Let's work on that plan. I think at this looks. Looks like it could stand some further development.
[01:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it will. It will be further developed, but I think it's. It'll be a great way of celebrating his birthday year. And there we're imitating Tibetans who want to do things that they can do all year long during his 90 years.
[01:01:14] Speaker B: I understand. I'm actually, I actually for that I've been trying to think and focus on, you know, his. His Holiness's recommendation for teaching in the west of four noble Truths. Six perfections, four immeasurables.
[01:01:29] Speaker A: Right.
[01:01:30] Speaker B: In particular.
[01:01:32] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Well, we'll deal with. We'll try. Well, those are in there.
[01:01:36] Speaker B: You know, America is based on virtues, so it's good to focus on them too.
[01:01:40] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[01:01:41] Speaker B: Virtues and pragmatism, science.
[01:01:44] Speaker A: Well, I've never had your actual, you know, a formal reaction to my secularizing or Americanizing retranslation of the Four Noble Truths as the. For friendly fun facts, which I look forward to.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:01:59] Speaker A: Your critique of that. But I did build that book around it. The, the. The Buddha's. What is it? Oh, yeah. Wisdom is Bliss book. Yeah, There you go. Original title was Buddhas have More Fun. All right, I build that, so we'll get that as we go along. Thank you very much, everyone. And dedicate the merit of this to everyone becoming enlightened, to help everyone else become enlightened equally to themselves. Okay. All the best. Thank you, Ghana.
[01:02:29] Speaker B: Sure. Always happy. Take care.
[01:02:31] Speaker A: Okay, bye.
[01:02:48] Speaker B: The Bob Thurman Podcast is produced through Creative Commons. No derivatives license. Please be sure to like share and repost on your favorite social media platforms. And it's brought to you in part through the generous support of the Tibet House U.S. menlo membership community and listeners like you.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: To learn more about the benefits of.
[01:03:18] Speaker B: Tibet House membership, please visit our websites@th thus.org menlo.org and bobtherman.com Tashi Dalaik and thanks for tuning in.
