Speaker 1 00:00:14 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 Tibetan culture. Tibet house is the Dai Lama's cultural center in America. All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 317, bliss, tantra and selflessness.
Speaker 4 00:01:20 We do live in reason. We walk and talk. We stand upright, we live in reason. It, it moves us around.
Speaker 4 00:01:30 So this inference of selflessness is no joke and it's not very difficult. I think everyone can understand it and it's crucial to tantra. So tundra uses by having recognized selflessness based on the realization of selflessness, thereby recognizing the constructiveness of all senses of self, the conventionality, conceptuality, relativity, imagin ability of all senses of self. The tundra practitioner then takes responsibility for their sense of self and recognizes that it is I, in fact, who construct my sense of self. It is not that my sense of self is sort of corresponding to an objective reality of self, cuz there is no objective objectively established self, intrinsically real self. So therefore it is I who shaped my sense of self. If I wanna have a sense of self as a, as a, as an inferior, messed up, paranoid, freaked out being, then I am constructing that self. If I want to have a self of being a Buddha, of being compassionate, then I can construct that
Speaker 1 00:02:36 Self.
Speaker 4 00:02:37 In the case of the tundra, the practice is, is to construct a Buddha self to imitate the feeling of being a Buddha meaning and what is the Buddha, but perfect wisdom and compassion, simultaneous perception of in total emptiness, total freedom with total goodwill towards all beings. Total responsibility for the happiness of all beings. Therefore, a total radiance, a bliss toward all beings. So the divine self is a self that radiates from a source of total freedom, total openness, radiates total bliss love in the to all beings in the form of total bliss. And in the time trick visualization. There are many ways of visualizing that in the sense of, you know, light rays radiating out from your heart center and suffusing all beings clearing away all darkness within them. Making them glow and radiate like rainbows and then making them feel joy. And then the energy of their joy radiating outward and light and coming back with those rays and re-energizing one's own bliss more and creating a circuit of endlessly mutually feeding bliss and radiating out to all other beings and radiating back from them.
Speaker 4 00:03:42 And then all this radiation pleases all Buddha whose pleasure radiates out as more light rays than rainbow light rays and radiates out more bliss and builds the diamond realm of the vibe arm Mandela of the world as seen from the point of view of enlightenment. So then those are imaginative visualizations, of course. Now here is where you see this is now the only reason this number three, the shifting of ordinary ego, sense of ordinary, uh, self-image, ordinary identity to Buddha identity in the process of tantric meditation. This is the reason, this is the only reason Tundra is esoteric. Tundra is not esoteric because they're doing some weird things in the back room. Anybody doing weird things in the back room is a corruptor of ttra tundra yogis. When they're really ready for it, they go downtown in the Yabu position and like Naropa did with his cons wrapped around him, well no, I shouldn't say only Naropa did.
Speaker 4 00:04:46 Mrs. Naropa did it too. <laugh> and they went downtown, they ran up and down in Bon Bernards all wrapped up. They just were so happy they stayed in sexual union all day and wandered round town like that. And the people thought this was extremely imprudent and impotent. And the Brahman priest came out and the local people said, this is creepy. These people are demons. They are like sick. They are, this is obscenity. And they burned them at the stake. The couple was not deterred by this and remained in the Abbi position and it put a giant pile of wood and it burned like a mountain of fire all night. And the next day the townspeople came back and they were still sitting there, but this time the fire had turned into a lotus and where the fire had burned was turned into a beautiful lotus lake.
Speaker 4 00:05:29 And they were sitting there radiating rainbow light rays having enjoyed the nice warm, sexy evening <laugh>. So then the townspeople sort of gave up and their emotional plague, as Wilhelm Reich would say, sort of bankrupt on themselves and they had to kind of open their own energy and at least allow other people to be, you know, totally open to bliss, which is what he was demonstrating in that. So there's no back room about the, the erotic level of tundra when it really comes on. When Buddhas decide it's time for that kind of a demonstration, they don't go sneaking into back rooms. They don't need you because they are capable of being burned at the stake while in the male female embrace and to just simply do the fires into a lotus lake. So you can see they're not at an ordinary, this is not an ordinary level of of being.
Speaker 4 00:06:24 It is a being that has understood the nature of quirks and understood the nature of energy. And in fact is constru is responsible for the construction of their body and is constructing it as an art form. Their body is a performance art. Their drawing breath is a performance art to open other beings to liberation. It's the ultimate, they are the ultimate artist in that their own body and their own breathing is art. It's not for their own sake. That is, they are not sitting there gulping air because they need the oxygen. If they're not sitting there gulping air because they need the oxygen, how much less are they running around in male female union because they have, uh, uncontrolled lusts for sex? No way. These people are totally beyond, although they can take these energies and use them at par as their bliss engine activators, but they have no desire.
Speaker 4 00:07:18 They're totally detached. They can be burnt because they can't burn them. That's why they, you know, that's Jesus is the same as that. You know, from a tre point of view, Jesus is just one of these people. And the whole point is not this crucifying. That's just a, that's just letting people have that, you know, letting the emotional plague people run out and ridge rigidly try to stop the world from vibrating and prevent this nice radiant person from radiating it, rip 'em apart. So he says, yeah, rip me apart. Okay, rip 'em apart. Then he gets up and wanders off in the rainbow form. And then they should realize they shouldn't go ripping people apart just because he make, they make them give them streamings or vibrations. So the whole point is the resurrection has nothing to do with this boring crucifixion. That's the stupidity of the people.
Speaker 4 00:08:03 It's not that he thought, oh great, I'm gonna go get crucified. This is, it's ridiculous. He's showing that even that doesn't bother him. He's showing that love is more powerful than that nasty business. That's the point. So the tore centers were always getting burned and all this stuff. <laugh> they were, then they would rise. But you know, if he was in India, he probably would've risen on the third day in embracing Mary Magdalene and flown off in this sky. Hell, why leave married there? Hang on. Probably did. And they probably didn't write it down. <laugh>, they cut it out of them was censored censor Mediterranean uptight? He probably did. I bet he and Mary Mag, they flew around <laugh>. I bet. Anything. So, but you see this thing of this divine self image, this Buddha self image. Buddha image. I'm am <unk>.
Speaker 4 00:09:01 It is I who am of the nature of the diamond of the reality of the diamond of the wisdom of voidness. It is I who am the <unk>. That's the mantra with upon which all tantric visualizations and all tongue meditations are based. That's great. That's a nice one. And that is why tres esoteric. That's the only reason I do, I'm sorry I got off into the holy thing and esoteric reason. Because if someone does not have the inference of selflessness clearly understood so that there is a control in their mind against getting totally caught up in any form of construction and they are brought for religious reasons or for magical reasons or in whatever context into a situation where they are felt that it's all right to feel I am Buddha, you know, I'm sort of the supreme energy of the universe. Clearly a person who come comes to that with the naive realism of personal identity intact will become a megalomaniac.
Speaker 4 00:10:20 They will have what called room called inflation to a, to a terminal degree. And they will hurt themselves. Therefore they will ruin their human life. They will hurt harm others, of course when others don't agree with them and they have nothing as a wound and they will like bang against the world. And that sense of alienated ego-driven self will become sort of armored up in this sort of diamond legitimacy and they'll become monsters, which the main point being they will hurt themselves. They'll waste their fabulous opportunity as a human being to learn to attain enlightenment.
Speaker 4 00:10:57 So that is why tundra's esoteric, if people were ready, Buddhas would teach tundra why it opened from the beginning would've taught tundra the very first minute under the bo tree who said, Hey, hey tantra, highest technology of the heart chakra for direct entry to buddhahood instantly for everybody but beans. They wouldn't have done 'em any good different beans. Oh wait, highest energy, chakra, heart, they would all gone nuts. So first you said, oh, suffering, confusion, your sense of self is distorted, diluted. See through it, understand it. And this is so important. If anything you remember from this introductory se survey in Buddhism. Buddhism sees the source of all suffering as ignorance and confusion. And therefore the beginning of Buddhism practice is not sitting on something, it is not getting some gimmick or saying some prayer or something like that. The beginning of practice of Buddhism is understanding something. This idea that it's some non-rational thing. You're gonna go sit and shut your mind off, throw your mind away and all this crap. It's a bunch of bullshit. The teachers who have taught that are bad teachers there, but beyond them, all the people they have confused and whose time they have wasted, whose human precious life moments they have wasted. You don't need Buddha to tell you to be stupid,
Speaker 4 00:12:26 Not to think. You are not thinking. And we have been stupid from time immemorial and all the Buddhas have said. So the Buddhas have come and the Buddhas said to us to help us understand what is going on, where we are going wrong, we can understand, we have to understand where we are going wrong, being non-conceptual, even if there is a stage of non-conceptual meditation, for example, where it can be helpful and useful. It is entered through a co of being non-conceptual. To practice non-conceptual, you have to have a concept of what is conceptuality and non conceptuality and therefore separate yourself and disidentify from your stream of conceptual realities. It's totally conceptual. So this idea that has been popularized to exploit naive people who are tired of being overeducated and thinking too much about I senseless thoughts such as, you know, two and two makes 5, 4, 3, 7, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, chemistry. And they're sick of thinking, just shut off your mind and just sit there and don't think ever anything and you'll be fine. This is a lie. Buddha is not achieve, buddhahood is not achieved by being lobotomized. The Buddha's third eye is not covering over a drill hole that he went and he chopped off his frontal lobes.
Speaker 4 00:13:58 Buddhas using his frontal lobes even better than anybody else. Buddha's frontal lobes are so overactive that he can predict all of being's future lives in specific detail without mixing them up. What they'll happen to them if they think and what will happen if they don't, and therefore he can help them into a better imagined universe, which he can imagine, which is a universe of enlightenment and perfection. When a Buddha thinks it changes the universe when a Buddha thinks it is a living being you. Or I think I wish someone would go to the gulf and takes that I'm saying, and strap him in a jacuzzi full of Vaseline and like give him a DMT suppository for a couple of weeks and then put him back in his tank, see which way he headings
Speaker 5 00:14:49 <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:14:51 But if Buddha thought that it would happen, three medical bods would arrive on Santa Bain's doorstep. Maybe they'd be feminine and all dressed up in Salame would go, oh, and put on his silk suit and wham, they'd have him whacked into a jacuzzi in about two minutes and the man would be surrendering within a half an hour. Unfortunately, Buddha is not doing that. I guess
Speaker 5 00:15:13 <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:15:15 So if you it, you know, don't, it's complicated of course, because certain understandings can be a misunderstandings. Ignorance is not a just a not knowing, it's a wrong knowing. But this, but we can understand that we have to understand what we're doing. We do not buy something in the store. You do not even buy a shirt unless you understand that it is of quality, that it is worth its price, that it will not be on sale in two days. That it is like not gonna fall apart in a week. That it is not made by slave labor that is not made by some creepy like communist dictator that is not made of human hair, that et cetera, et cetera. You investigate that shirt and you then you buy it or don't. Do you care more for your wardrobe than for your soul, for your enlightenment? Do you go off and just don't think and go, dad, do this and that practice because somebody looks cute, has a nice looking robe. Give me a break assured you could throw away. If it's a bad trip, it has fleas, you throw it away, take a bath. If you spend 10 years meditating in a wrong teaching, you have wasted precious human life. You earned yourself over hundreds of thousands of lives. You have thrown that away. That's beyond any amount of money, that time, that human lifetime life moments.
Speaker 4 00:16:47 You follow any old jerk who just says they have some certificate or something against your own intuition and against your common sense and, and you have wasted and you have harmed them
Speaker 4 00:17:01 Because teachers have a grave responsibility from in the Buddhist point of view because precisely understand sort of the educational nature of the Buddhist universe and especially the Buddhist human life form. If you understand that, then you understand that to teach is a grave, grave responsibility. And if you teach and in teaching lead people into wasting their human lives, it's the just as if you give people the dharma. If you can help people understand one verse of the president barita form as wilderness and voidness is form. Form is not other than voidness. Voidness is not other than form, for example. That is the greatest possible thing that you can do with your life. It is said is the greatest thing you can do for another being. It is said. But by that same token, if you wrongly teach them, then that is the most harmful possible thing you can do to a human being. Shooting them is better, at least they die with a sort of level of intact, you know, and then they'll be reborn in the same intact level. If they come to understand, let's say that form is nothingness and voidness is nothingness and that they should first obliterate their thought train and second they'll that, then they will then enter into a state of obliterated li liberation.
Speaker 4 00:18:26 And tell me if you have any of you who have practiced, if you have not ever caught yourself thinking that as you sat there deeply as the blows rained upon your back and as this and that took place and as this and the other happened, that maybe someday you might suddenly flip out and not be there and everything would be a white light or something and you wouldn't even be there. Suddenly finally, thank goodness and tell me that you weren't thinking that that's what your enlightenment experience was gonna be like somehow to disappear Scott, free from all connections. Tell me honestly that you never thought that's what you were doing. All right. I'll tell you, I thought I was doing that. I was sitting there g grading my teeth into bedden temples and different things waiting to disappear, wishing to, you know, pushing to disappear because I thought nirvana was a disappearance because I was taking nirvana, I was taking Kanan conceptuality, I was taking these things as corroborating my intrinsic American materialism, that the mind does not exist. That it's a illusion and that nothingness is the ground of reality. My, uh, the, my sort of embodiment of our cultural, modern existentialist soul death
Speaker 4 00:19:56 That we all worship according to some great Buddhist philosophers in Japan anyway, who think that that's all our, you know, since des Hart's time. So yeah, I hope that this makes sense to you, not because I don't know. I'm not saying that, you know, if I keep saying this enough times and loud enough or whatever, that I hope you remember that I said it, that would be useless and I hope you'll ha you know, I'd be happy to argue with anybody about it. But I hope that you can understand that. You should understand that your understanding is itself. It is your enlightenment in Aber Dharma. You know, there's seven omnipresent mental functions or five actually in, in the more usual system. And O two of those five, one of them is samati called Samma, and one of them is called Pria. And these are omnipresent in every being's mind. PR samari. That's not PR perk, that's not <unk> but it is concentration and it is insight is wisdom. It's little moments of it. It's the seed of what will be your Buddha. Now your Buddha wisdom and your Buddha samati, it's in our mind now. Anytime we can sort of focus and think for a minute ig and aim our mind at one thing or even think about not thinking and be one pointed without moving the thought for a moment. That's the samati. There are thought filled ones and thought empty ones.
Speaker 4 00:21:27 Anytime we have insight, we see through the surface of something we see it's inner structure we see beyond the previous thing. That's our wisdom. Our Nia our genius, everyone is a genius. And it's not always intuition that's not always reliable. Remember that the racist, you know, the nation of Islam or the nation of what those guys in Montana, you know, the Ku Klux Klan and these people, they have a big intuition that they're right. That white is great, they have a big intuition about whatever they have. They have intuition. God told 'em to God and kill infidels. So intuition just sort of urges impulses sense of can be very mistrustful and reality can be reasonable, but very counterintuitive.
Speaker 4 00:22:21 So I really hope so. Anyway. So back to tundra. And this is where, this is why it is esoteric. That's the only reason really. It is not because there's some gimmick, you know, there's a a secret thing, you know, a little thing, you get an initiation, a little feather, a little crystal, a little like tap on the head by this gorgio thatk, the special cup of tea, something, some manga, and you say that and zap your Buddha. And we wouldn't therefore want to give it to everybody before we charge them enough for some such bullshit that great teachers have total compassion. If there was such a thing, if there was a little mechanism or gimmick or one mantra or one practice or one mandala or one vision that just would just go buddhahood, they would have given it to everybody. They'd be out there like Moondog in Times Square spreading it because being who Israeli enlightened feels other beings as ignorant and they're coming to freedom and enlightenment is like, is them coming freedom to enlightenment. So what they're not withholding it, it's not a commodity, but it is esoteric because the misunderstanding that can take place about Buddha pride is very destructive. It leads to megalomania, leads to phonetic inflation,
Speaker 4 00:23:38 And in groups can lead to very dangerous kind of in-group fanaticism and destructiveness towards non-members of the group and so forth. It's very dangerous, that kind of pride. It leads to cross contempt on others, you know, that's the only reason though. Anyway. Having be having a Buddha, practicing the Buddha confidence, the Buddha pride, the Buddha identity is, is one of the great beauties of thunder. See the perception of the ordinary in tundra, in Tre practice of visualization practice, the first layer, which is imaginative practice. There's no sin, there's no evil, only the only evil, the only negative thing is the misperception of ordinariness, the mis investment of imagination in the routinized universe. So the perception of things as ordinary things is changed by the previsualization of the universe and the misperception of the self as an ordinary self is changed by the previsualization of the self as a Buddha self.
Speaker 4 00:24:32 And that's it, that's all it is there owes to it. Then fourth, of course, and this is now really the, the bottom line in tantra, the fourth characteristic of tundra is what is what is called the actual perfection stage yoga. And this is called, some people call completion stage or some people talk about great perfection or great completion. But all of these are really all included in the perfection stage. What is called perfection stage. The actual <unk> is the actual perfection stage yoga of the subtle body mind, which experiments in the literal sense experiences experiments with death between and rebirth states, and accelerates the deepening of the non-conceptual experience of voidness by mobilizing the subtle subjectivity of great bliss intuitive wisdom. And that means that finally, of course all this imagination and vision, self-image of the self as put an image of the world as a mandala is not at all a thing in itself.
Speaker 4 00:25:30 Remember that is all emptiness, that is visualized as a self-identity emptiness that is visualized as the mandala mandala. His diamond beams are nothing but emptiness. They're the wisdom of emptiness shaped into those forms. So the point of all of it is not at all to sit around in a purified world, in a sort of fantasy world, apart from the world, not at all. But the point of creating that environment, of anticipating the vision of Buddhahood is to then enter into the yogas of actually achieving buddhahood. And here's where the heavy retreat work comes in. Here's what mil where Milarapa went into caves for 40, 50, 60 years. Why Mel Repa didn't go to the bazaar and just start teaching wildly after like a little bit of visualization training or two or three years, why he went on for many years. Because this is then the, the level at which he was working, the level of the perfection stage.
Speaker 4 00:26:22 Because in this level, now I remember I said initially we said that the apocalyptic vehicle, the vehicle was the collapsing or the condensing, the compressing of millions of lifetimes into a single coarse body lifetime, right? What that means is that once the visualization has taken place, the Mandel has created the confidence cruises created. The world of death is perceived as the diah, the dream state. Uh, the bardo between state, between death and rebirth is perceived as the Samaya, the life state is perceived as the nemaiah visualized. So there's no nothing, there's, there's no disappear, there's no danger, there's no harm. It's a perfectly safe universe. The vi the creation stage is there to build. It's a safe self, it's a safe universe. One's inner sensitivity, one's inner chakras, one's inner emotions. When inner vulnerabilities can be totally open, therefore in such a safe, diamond guarded environment.
Speaker 4 00:27:19 But the purpose of that environment is not just a whole environment and sit around an environment. It is to open those inner sensibilities, to open those inner sensibilities. Then one has to begin to confront the inner instincts. Then one has to in fact learn to die. One does not die because it is within this special context framework. But one learns to die. One learns to dissolve the energies into the central channel to imitate the process of death or to rather, it's not quite imitation cuz its experience is to rehearse the process of death. To rehearse the process of arising in a between state body was as grown as a magic body. And to rehearse the process of being reborn in your own course body and return then into the course world and repeat the cycle to learn to die, to learn to sort of re-engineer yourself into a Buddha embodiment.
Speaker 4 00:28:18 So that then the great <unk> can be present in many bodies. I dunno if you've ever read the hundred thousand songs of Milli Repa, but Milpa, when he wanted two, he would appear in 13 different villages and teach two different disciples in different forms. Sometimes the disciple would appear as 50 people or so, 50 milpas to teasing one of his disciples and going, na, na. Now there was one time when Reba was really being arrogant and Milpa multiplied himself into a whole bunch of milli res and they all went, nah, <laugh> and this one guy, cause he was being arrogant with his teacher, you know, he thought he was a big scholar, you know, and so they, they are, they have achieved this emanation ability. And then the whole intercourse Tibet, the high technology country parex salons of this, of tantra of apocalyptic vehicle, the, it became such that so many people achieved these abilities of controlling the death and rebirth process that they were being reincarnated all over the place.
Speaker 4 00:29:14 You know, it was like really nerve wracking. You never know who would turn up in your womb. You know, you'd be out there, you have your fall in love, passion, get pregnant, and who might be there? You never know, you know, might be your former like, um, English teacher, you know, <laugh> might be the boyfriend you dumped off in the last life. Might be the girlfriend you dumped off in the last life. There they are. Or it might be Lama so-and-so. So you know, people were pretty like uptight about pregnant ladies cuz they didn't know Alma might be in there, you know, holding forth <laugh>. And uh, it became so much. Now whether or not, I mean this one can take a negative and say, oh, trilogy and blah, blah, blah, and whatever one's view is that can be that. But the point is, this was a culture that was a civilization that was based on people having been convinced as a whole that many people could and did attain this ability.
Speaker 4 00:30:06 It's like a, it's like in America, if we had a culture where, you know, we'd, you know, it's 150, 200 years from now, we had, you know, moon stations and colonies and space and this and that, and there was like thousands and thousands of astronauts who accomplished space voyages, you know, and you know, then they had a certain role and respect, you know, and they'd seen our planet from another angle and they would be some people apart in a way because they had not just been on this earth all the time. They had gone out of this reality and come back, you know, and they've been respected within our materialistic culture. Those are the brave ones who went into our space. So Tobe was a culture where people went into this inner space, were like astronauts of the perfection stage of dying and going out into these bodies, into other universes and into subtle universes and coming back into the body and then dying and coming back into another body, being reincarnated and carrying on in that work or in the multiple bodies.
Speaker 4 00:30:56 There are laas, were reincarnated in five bodies sometimes. And it was so, there was at least so much of it that the people widely thought it, it was considered like a commonplace possibility more or less. So that finally it got to be where you wouldn't vote for somebody unless they were reincarnation, couldn't get out there. Say, I'm honest, I went to law school, I won't cheat you, you know, I have a good record, I'd pay my taxes. No, you had to say, I've been reincarnated seven times. I always did compassionate work in those times, so I'll be a good governor. And they say, okay, you run calm. They don't want these young people who have only been around one life on the job training. They want people who have been down almost for at least seven or eight lives. Then, okay, we'll vote for that one. It's adorable idea. I think, don't you vote for me. I was Lincoln
Speaker 6 00:31:44 <laugh>. <laugh>
Speaker 4 00:31:51 Tibet was, therefore this was the greatness of the, of Tibetan. Tibetan was such a magical, I I don't mean to to go off into one of my favorite summers, although I gave a lecture at Penn University today. I was very triumphant, I was very happy about, I gave a very good lecture this morning, 11 o'clock at University of Pennsylvania for an hour and a half to the Davis actually I was lecturing the Davis. As some of you here a few academics. You may know that University of Pennsylvania is a nest of Sanskritist. And uh, we call 'em in the trade, we call 'em the Davis, you know, which means the gods, you know, the Brahman, gods, you know, and, uh, there's a lot of really, no, they're mostly Dutch or German or, you know, uh, uh, Swedish and some few Americans, French and sort of, you know, real like old time ologists, you know, in sank and they're doing Vedas and doing all this in the European philology and all this kind of thing.
Speaker 4 00:32:38 And I've known them 'em for years, you know, and they know me as this sort of, you know, you know, funny Buddhist, you know, and you know, the Davis always think about the Buddhist, they're kind of like concerned to them because they're Buddhists are so egalitarian and they're not into the caste system and they don't believe in creator gods. And they're kind of like, they were of course the, the spice of India. They were the, they were, when, when the only, when Buddhism was alive in India, was India really a jolly place. Once the Muslims came and destroyed the Buddhists, it was not a jolly place anymore. You know, it was the sort of Buddhism kind of introduced sort of like holes in the fabric of the Indian collective, like these little gaps and holes where individuals could slip through, you know, and women could get out and like attain enlightenment, things like that.
Speaker 4 00:33:18 So anyway, I've seen them over the years, you know, and then today they invited me in their seminar to give a talk on tantrum and Tibet. And, uh, we know something like that and just, uh, I just gave this talk about tantrum and Tibet a little bit in this vein, but yet a little more academic, you know. But what I, they really dropped it, you know, they dropped this kind of like, what is all this marginal Buddhism business and all these weird Tibetans? And you know, it was a real breakthrough actually. I was very pleased. Excuse me. I don't mean to say, but I really was delighted, <laugh>. It was something like talking to Brahma and Indra, something like that, you know, and getting them to remember which program they really have been on for 1500 years. No, really? Because Theologists like to pretend that I one end this one book on Indian philosophy that is so funny.
Speaker 4 00:34:04 It says, well, you know, the Indians are basically activists. You know, we are the, we are not this world negating, you know, passive, you know, nirvana, oblation seeking like the Buddhist and the Giants, you know, we are activists, bes, you know, we went out and we sacrificed cows and we fought wars and, and now we're doing again, we're ready to beat up Pakistan any minute. And uh, and then, you know, that Buddhism business and all that world negating and transcendent stuff that was just a momentary flirtation in Indian soul in our mainstream is activist activism. And this guy, sort of a neo western guy, you know, professor, you know, famous Indian professor, great intellectual. And on the very page where he says that in this book of philosophy, a philosophy, there's sort of a timeframe of the great Indian philosophers that he's talking about. And there's a couple in 400 bc these are Brahmans, you know, commentators on the betas.
Speaker 4 00:34:54 And then there's a couple in 880 and then a few more coming down to about 11, 1200. Then the Muslims wiped them out. So this brief flirtation of the Indian soul was from 400 BC to 800 ad a mere 1200 years, you know, <laugh> in which Buddhism was mainstream. India, there was no side issue. They were the establishment. They were the universities. The libraries. You know, that culture that Tibet has preserved and refined, and that makes Tibet such a fantastic thing. What it is, is not just Tibet, I mean, sure they're great, but what they have is the treasures of ancient India. Really the stuff, stuff. Indiana Jones really wants the elixirs, you know, the recipes for the elixirs, the, the inner high technology, you know, the moonshot instructions the Indians did. They were the great sages and scientists of ancient world. They were Indian science back when, you know, the Greeks, you know, with their olives and go cheese.
Speaker 4 00:36:02 The Indians were out there, you know, in between delicious dinners of mango and many things and vegetarians already long ago. And they were like, they decided that physics was like plebe, you know, chemistry. And these things were secondary. The powerful science was mind science, how to transform the mind, how to die and leave the body, come back in doing all this stuff. That's, that was India's thing, which we now today are just barely waking up to. We still don't. In fact, there's no funding at all. They give the only funding. The only place where there's some recognition of this power of the mind in reality is these few professors, a few doctors who are given grants by the National Institute of Health or something to run over to India. But you think they're given a grant to run over to India to figure out what an Indian yogi really thinks, or how Indian yogi is trained with our Western arrogance? No. Do you know what they do? Blood pressure. Not just blood pressure. My dear temperature, I knew this one guy, he claimed he had used a rectal thermometer on over a thousand yogis.
Speaker 8 00:37:06 <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:37:09 This is west, feeding East. Lemme tell you, OHK, let me see now when you're in Soma, let's see how much your temperature is. It's really terrible. And do we care what you, and then the gorge can lower his body temperature by 15 degrees in two minutes or something, you know? Oh, you know, then they go stick a couple more, but not, no. How does he do it? What is in his mind when he does it? No, that nothing, nothing. No interest. It's pre-modern. Anyway, that's, that's it. I'm sorry, but, so anyway, these four things are the, this, this is of the perfection stage yoga. This is, this is really what the tantra is really about. This is really it. And it's not such a remote thing. Actually, as I say, a whole culture is still, still alive in the middle of the most dreadful circumstance of being invaded in its homeland and holocaust, genocided in its homeland and eeking out, a living in the diaspora, running around here and there with nothing much to show, you know, nothing much to call home.
Speaker 4 00:38:08 And still it's thriving, it's joyous. Westerners who meet that culture in Nepal or in India, although they're refugees and although they're so poor, find great solace in meeting them. It's like a homecoming to the Westerners who come from this great land of wealth and confusion. And that's because it's a culture in which this inner science, inner knowledge was placed in the center of the culture. It was sort of the purp, the purpose of life. People were mindful of really what is the purpose of life? To learn to live and die before we die, without knowing how,
Speaker 4 00:38:46 Which would just be depressing, of course, if it was so terribly difficult. But since it isn't that terribly difficult, it's rather, it's rather cheerful, but it kind of, you know, I like a really that that review of the Dal Lama's book I thought was so great by that, that cardinal or bishop or whatever. He was in Milwaukee, where he said he used the line from Rka, he adapted the line from Rka, you know, the famous line, when Rka saw Michael Angels, David, he said, I must change my life. It was the last, you know, on seeing Michael saw as David, it's a poem of Rka. And his last thing was, I must change my life. You know, when he saw this sort of classical notion of man, you know, somehow presented by Michelangelo, he said, I must change my, some sort of spiritual thing about it, of breaking toward freedom that the Renaissance had, I must change my life.
Speaker 4 00:39:36 And, uh, he wrote, you know, the, the reviewers and said, we must change our lives. You know, but it definitely does come upon one, a sense of changing one's life cuz how much we do waste. Really? Tara was wonderful that way. He likes to sit with a group. Tauk used to do it where he would sit with a group and then he would, we would sit and we would sort of think together inventory our time hours we spent in the day that we have spent in the year that we have spent over, the decade that we have spent since youth. And what were those hours directed towards? How many hours were just to feed the body? How many hours were to house the body? How many hours we spent to transport the body here and there? How many hours was spent sleeping to rest the body?
Speaker 4 00:40:21 How many hours have we spent talking here, <laugh>? But anyway, when he added all up, how many hours were directed, were invested in that inner spiritual core, that place of generosity, justice, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom. Those hours that were invested in the diamond body of one's <unk> of one's freedom, of one's love and compassion. Measure them, you know, add them up. And it's, it's, it's scary really. <laugh>, it's a little, I mean, it's not scary, but it's, it's eg galvanizing actually when then how many hour hours are left in life before it ends? Of course, there's no certainty. It could be very few, it could be quite many. But at this rate, how much is likely to be directed in the direction of that which I will take with me, of that which will be real, which is really me. With what am I identifying? Am I really just living this life's purpose? And what is the use of investing too much effort in this life's purpose since it only ends the fruition of that investment ends with the end of this life, which could be any time. And considering that I already put millions of former lifetimes into creating this life as a magnificent human life, endowed with intelligence and compassion and, and born in a, in a, in a location, in proximity to the teachings of enlightenment of freedom,
Speaker 4 00:41:57 I have invested so much in that. Am I honoring the investment of all of my past lives that I put into that to be here now? Or am I wasting it just munching away here, it's snoozing away.
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