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 Dial Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 306, developing Bohi, Cheeta and the spirit of enlightenment.
Speaker 4 00:01:21 So now how do we get this compassion, this pita, the will to enlightenment or as I prefer to call it the spirit of enlightenment, the mind of enlightenment. People say, But I like spirit. There are two kinds of this spirit of enlightenment. One is called the aspiring mind or spirit of enlightenment, which is like the wish. I wish I could be a Buddha perfectly enlightened, being perfectly blissful and perfectly aware so as to be able to help all other beings become perfectly blissful and perfectly aware. I want to be happy and I want to be happy in such a way that I can make all other beings happy. It's somehow based on the acknowledgement that I can't really be happy, not perfectly happy. If anybody else is unhappy, you know, I can see a, I see of bliss and blah blah blah and it's only virtual reality. Their unhappiness, it still is their unhappiness to them and I am them. And therefore my happiness is incomplete. No one is completely happy until everyone is completely happy. Therefore, the Buddhas are compelled to be inexorably present to all of us. Their vows are still operative, that they will not be perfectly happy until all beings are perfectly happy. You're not excused.
Speaker 4 00:02:52 You still have to worry about me. We can think that way. Their body service don't mind. In a way they do escape it because as I say, they have that other vision that is a deeper vision where they see we're already there in a certain way. Time is not a reality in this sort of concrete way of being. 1, 2, 3, 4, all moments of time are interpre in all moments of time in the enlightened vision, envision this moment contains every instant of past president and future of all beings. If I had the wisdom to see it, if I was a Buddha, the future is here now. The past is still here now.
Speaker 4 00:03:35 So in a sense, one has escaped. One is really free. We don't wanna deprecate the nirvana of the Buddhist. But then the amazing inconceivable thing is how that nirvana is embodied in a present that seems to be caught in a specific flow of time and space with specific limited beings. That is truly the miracle of what is known the near mon higher the emanation body of the Buddha. But you become a Buddha, not only do you not have an end of life, but you become able to become present to manifest presence as emanation, as incarnation to infinite numbers of being simultaneously. Your will of perfect compassion at that time can be perfectly present to everyone. The best way of course to be present to them for their sake is as a teacher. Because the best way that they achieve happiness is not just by some sal, some palliative applied from without, but by their own understanding, opening them from within to their actual own reality.
Speaker 4 00:04:42 So they have their independent freedom themselves. That's where they say there's a lovely statement in Aang, my trails ornament of the scriptures of the universal vehicle, the my tray of the future Buddha, where he says there is not one Buddha and there are not many Buddhas. Buddhas are neither one nor many. You can't say there are many Buddhas because old Buddhas are one in their body of reality. They share the same body of reality, which is infinite and absolute. But you can't say there is only one Buddha because each individual being evolves to Buddhahood and enjoys their own communion with all other Buddhas in oneness. But they enjoy it individually. So in their form bodies, in their beatific bodies, each Buddha is distinct so that your but hood doesn't somehow subsume my but hood. Shakia moon's. But hood doesn't prevent us from the joy of our own but hood, even though when we achieve our own but hood, we realize we are one with Shakia muni, we are the same being as shamo, yet we individually enjoy being the same being each of us isn't lovely.
Speaker 4 00:05:57 Now there are two major precepts in the Tibetan tradition coming both from the Buddha. One is called the sevenfold cause and effect, precept of mother recognition. And the other one is called the exchange of self and other. And the current person who is sort of the main holder of this line is his holiness the Lama. If you wanna know what animates his wholeness, the Lama's common religion of kindness as he calls it, basic human religion. Not any particular religion, but the basic love that is even beyond religion cetera. That is all the teaching of Shante Dev, the pension Lama put those together in an 11 step process. So that's what we're gonna learn today. And the first of the 11 steps is called the meditation of equanimity.
Speaker 4 00:06:57 And we already did it in a way, and we do it every time we enter the refuge field. Remember where we are, I wanna say one thing about meditating. I tend to say, let's go into meditative mode. And then I go on and I ran and I wave for several hours and people are thinking they're supposed to be sitting rigidly without moving and getting aches and pains. And I don't mean that and I apologize, I get to move around cause I'm talking, you know, so I don't notice and I forget. But you could be lying down as long as you weren't asleep or even asleep, maybe you'd subliminally learn it very well. You could be sitting up, you could move around. When I say meditation together, sometimes we'll really sort of officially kind of meditate. But mostly we are learning, we're thinking and we are in this presence of the Juul wish granting gem tree. And it's radiation and it's beautiful, luminous, rainbow like jewel energies. So we are sort of in that. That's all. And you can be relaxed, shift around, change your position. If something aches, don't worry about it.
Speaker 4 00:07:59 Now we to look at equanimity equality. In a certain sense, all beings are equal from the Buddhist point of view because all beings have the Buddha soul. Not that there's some little fixed little golden platinum Buddha sitting somewhere in a little vacuum chamber somewhere in their heart, but in the sense that they're all free. Freedom is their nature of reality and therefore they're all free of being fixated in any particular structure of ignorance and suffering. And therefore they have the evolutionary potential to achieve bud hood perfection of evolution, the full opening of all of their abilities, compassionate and intelligent abilities. And given the infinite time that we all have to spend here in life, since we can never get away from awareness, it's continuity. They all will inevitably become Buddhas. Just a matter of when in their own timelines, in their own perception of time.
Speaker 4 00:09:00 In Buddha's perception of time, since the future moment is all present, they already have all attained enlightenment, but he's aware also that it makes a huge difference to them in their timeline, whether it's sooner or later. And therefore the Buddha, he and or she because they're female Buddhas, the Buddhas make tremendous effort even in their blissful leisure. They make tremendous effort to help beings accelerate their progress and their evolution toward budha. Similarly, particularly in relation to us. Remember the beings around us on the bluff overlooking the jewel lake, The beings who are looking at us, the ones we love now are those who are nice to us now are those who are kind to us, who do things for us, who make us happy and therefore we love them. If they started being systematically nasty to us, we would not like them so much and sooner and later we could become their enemies and therefore just temporarily just because of our own self-centeredness.
Speaker 4 00:10:08 We like those people who are nice to us. We think they're so great and we're so attached and so love with them. Similarly, the ones who we don't know's because of our ignorance, they could be the nicest beings in the world. They'll all be Buddhas, which will be when they will be the nicest beings in the world. We just simply don't know about them. So we don't care about them and the beings we hate, it's because they're nasty to us because they are mean. They have heard us, they've injured us, they've insulted us, they've deprived us, they've been ungrateful to us. But that's because of our self-centered thing. We can't take a little abuse. We like then create some sort of notion of some real implacable evil in someone who's a little mean to us. We create that, invest that in them paranoid. In fact, those who we now hate have been our loved ones in the past.
Speaker 4 00:11:00 Those who we now love have been our enemies in the past. Those who we don't know have been both enemies and loved ones. And therefore, if we truly loved all of them and if we truly understood their full vastness of each being, that each being is capable of total malevolence as well as total benevolence. And each being has been that way in many previous lives because we've all been connected with all beings infinite numbers of times, then we would realize that they're all equally related beings and we might as well positively think of them as all ones that we care about. Cause after all, if even our worst enemy was really happy, that is to say not happy by some achieving some vengeance on somebody which is never satisfying. That's where you then have to get more vengeance on the next one. But if they were really contented and happy, really felt all their organ orgasmic energy flowing within and this and that, would they'd be nice to me?
Speaker 4 00:12:01 They'd stop being my enemy. So I really want them to be happy actually. Especially we want our enemies to be satisfied and happy because they, they'll leave us alone and they might even be nice to us then they'll suddenly seem nice to us. And the ones we don't know, we certainly want them to be happy so they won't become enemies, they'll be happy and therefore be nice, share their happiness and the loved ones, we already want them to be happy. So this equanimity is the foundation of the spirit of enlightenment because the great love, the universal love and the universal compassion, that is the thing we are seeking to conceive today, to generate today. The new soul we seek to give birth to today must be universal. It must orient itself towards all beings. Cannot leave a single one out. Even Hitler, Jen, k Sadam, Hussain, ghi, any person you wanna think of as the most evil person, you want them to be happy, you want them to be Buddha or you don't have the great love and you don't have the great compassion. You can't get it if you exclude anyone. So that is the first step of the 11th step process. The step of perfect equanimity.
Speaker 4 00:13:22 The second step then is very powerful and profound. It is called the step of mother recognition. It is based on coming into an awareness of the infinity of life. It is essential to have the vision of the continuity of life. It doesn't have to be any precise exact version of trans migration or reincarnation or whatever. Christianity was born in a climate of trans migration of souls. That was a mainstream idea that was commonly accepted and it was only formally banned in Christianity in the fourth century. Judaism still has that idea and Jewish rabbis will argue about this rabbis, reincarnation of that rabbi and so forth, the trans migration of this or that rabbi. So they also believe in the continuity of souls. And although the theistic religions believe that the souls are created by God in a way they sort of preexist the theologians in them talk of their preexistence of those souls in the infinity and eternity of God.
Speaker 4 00:14:29 So they don't even say really that the souls just had a first beginning at some point. That's just a way of talking. God creates them. But anything God creates preexistent infinitely in himself in a theistic view, if we deeply view what is God the creator, it is an infinity of being. You cannot say that God didn't know about the world in his mind before he created it. So in a sense it always preexisted in his mind God didn't know about you before he created you. You can't say that. So you always preexisted in God's mind. I don't know what you were doing there <laugh>, but only God does. But the Buddhist have you existing in the world in different forms. Beginning listly, the concept of a first beginning is fruitless. It's an egocentric attempt to ratify our own sense of finiteness and sort of project it into the world and feel the world as just as finite as we are.
Speaker 4 00:15:21 So therefore we have some sort of importance in that world. In fact, if we open to the perspective of beginning lessness, then in a way we can kind of realize our infinite Tess ality and that same sense our infinity because of the vastness of our previous existence. Whether it was in God's mind if we're a theist or whether as a Buddhist, an evolutionist. It was in the ocean of evolutionary forms in this and that universe before this big bang, another big bang. And before that, another big bang. Since there's an infinite succession of universes in different phases in the inverse, the essence of the realistic versus the unrealistic is the vision of the infinity of causality. That every cause has its effect. Every effect comes from a cause and therefore there is no un caused effect and there is no affectless cause that therefore everything is interconnected infinitely and therefore we have been here infinitely, we will be here infinitely.
Speaker 4 00:16:29 Buddhism is not dogmatic in its verbal formulations about relative reality. They're always open to further development because freedom means that all descriptions of relative reality are hypotheses awaiting further evidence to be proven or disproven. They're not dogmatic laws but the law of the infinite connectedness of everything is as close as you can get to a law of nature. However, and that is crucial because compassion depends upon it. You and I have been living here together in this world and in other worlds since beginningless time. That means infinitely you and I have been related to each other in every single conceivable way. And you means all of you, all your infinite numbers of beans, you are the microbe who's crawling around my intestine. Now as an egocentrically driven being, a delusion driven being, you have infinitely been that. I have infinitely been that I was a micro in your intestine, but we also were human beings together.
Speaker 4 00:17:39 Infinite times we were enemies. Infinite times we killed each other. Infinite times we fought with each other. Infant times we didn't know each other. Infinite times we were related intimately, infinite times. And most important, the most altruistic way in which we relate to each other in sort of normal biology is when I was your mother at that time, I let you live inside my body. I fed you with my blood and my vitamins and my calcium and then I gave birth you with a great labor and then I fed you with my breast and my milk and I did that for you an infinite number of times. You did the same for me an infinite number of times. All of you did infinite number of times you gave me the human life. It's like you sacrificed your life. For me, which is the most altruistic thing in our normal legal egocentric self versus other universe that someone can do for another is give their life for them and it's a much even easier just to die for them like a father does in a war as the soldier or something that's quick and easy then you're born again off back at the clubhouse.
Speaker 4 00:18:51 But the mother gives her life. It's a daily investment. So the point is all of you did that for me. We all did that for you. Infinite numbers of times, this is the meditation of mother recognition. It's impossible of course if you only identify yourself, even your continuity self, your relative self as birth to death end of it, of course you have not been related to all beings. You had one mother deeply meditate on this. Take it in connection with your mother of this life. If you had trouble with your mother of this life on the personality level, try to go back to remember being at the warm breast held in the loving cradle of the arms and then try to see all the beings as your mother. This really works by the way. I did do this mother one and I got to this point where I would really have trouble in the subway because you get this weird dejavu thing with people.
Speaker 4 00:19:55 You meditate on the mother recognition and you see a person and they look like you met them. And you know how you sometimes look at someone and you both, you don't wanna look away in case you do know them. You don't wanna be rude cuz you can't remember if you've met them or not and you, you don't want to come onto them if you didn't know them and then they'll think you're weird. So imagine you're in the subway walking and suddenly everybody looks like your mother or something and you're kind of dejavu on everybody. It's sort of hard to get through the sea of faces cuz everyone looks like a familiar face, familiarization every living being becomes familiar through the recognition of the mother.
Speaker 4 00:20:35 Third step, remembering the kindness of the mother. And if you had trouble with your mother, if your mother handed you over to a governance, doesn't matter. And if you think of yourself as someone no one ever was kind to cuz you came from a difficult family, you're still wrong. However difficult your family, you wouldn't be alive today if they didn't clean you, feed you, care for you, keep your blanket on, cure your colds, you would not be alive even though maybe you're a little demanded because they were harsh with you, perhaps you still are alive. And that took effort and they gave you that effort. Point is go back and remember your childhood in the wish granting gem tree, luminous energy, radiant jewel, light field. You can quickly remember your infancy. Tears will come to your eyes, hairs on the back of your neck will rise. You'll feel so sentimental how kind my mother was to me. And then you diffuse that sentimental feeling of dependency of the small child and diffuse that to every being is giving you the kucik and delighting in you and seeking your happiness and your comfort and your satisfaction and your pleasure. All they're living for looking at you with loving eyes and you feel hackles rise in the back of your neck.
Speaker 4 00:21:59 After we get the sentimental feeling in tears come to eyes, we move to the fourth step, which is the step of repayment, of kindness, of gratitude. We have had equanimity, mother recognition, remembering of kindness and then gratitude for the kindness wish to repay it. And here we reflect on how we want to repay all these mother beings kindness, how we want them to be happy and comfortable and not to suffer. And now that we know that the real way not to suffer is not just to grow up in a self-centered life, although that is a relative comfort. The real way is to achieve enlightenment and realize their selflessness and their true reality and their freedom and achieve the deep upwelling, inner bliss of freedom. And that's what we wanna, we want to be their mother of enlightenment. Now the mother of all mothers, we want them to be free.
Speaker 4 00:22:49 That is how we will repay their infinite kindness. And that is therefore the fourth step of gratitude and repaying their kindness. This then leads to the fifth step in this system, the equal exchange of self. Another. And we begin to add in here in the fifth step the idea that what do all beings want? We go back to the equality in a way of the of self and other of myself and all my mothers. Now that I want to repay them, I then think of my equality with them. And I think that they want happiness just as I want happiness. We're just the same. We don't want to suffer whether they're my enemy or they're my unknown person or my friend, they simply don't wanna suffer and they want to be happy and that's what I want. And then suddenly I realized there are so many more of them than there are of me. And also realized that I have been looking for my own happiness all since beginningless time. And I have remained this egocentric being, seeking my own happiness, preoccupied with my own state of what can I do? What can I get? How great am I? How much have I got? How happy am I? And it's never been satisfactory all this time.
Speaker 4 00:24:04 If I think back when I have thought of others happiness, I temporarily at least didn't worry about how unhappy I was. And at that time I realized that their happiness is more germane to me than my happiness. So I realize I'm gonna try something new here. I'm gonna switch self preoccupation for being preoccupied with them. I'm going to extend my mother gratitude repayment to them by being their mother, meaning thinking only of their happiness like a mother does. I'm going to adopt them as my children all beings, and I'm going to exchange self preoccupation for other preoccupation. It won't hurt me. Also at this point to think of the fact that the self preoccupation I have been engaged in since beginning this time has not produced self-satisfaction, not our lasting one, even as a human being, which relatively is a marvelous state of existence relative to so many other life forms.
Speaker 4 00:25:07 Even as a human being endowed with liberty and opportunity, which is the most wonderful evolutionary moment in a being's career, even that one is not really satisfying. And when I think of how satisfied am I'm never satisfied. I'm restlessly dissatisfied at all times. And that's pursuing the wish to be self satisfied. Therefore, it's pursuing the motive and the drive of self preoccupation being driven by that. So it doesn't hurt to think that that drive of self preoccupation has led me down every single time. And all I do is slave for my self preoccupation. I try to go out and get what my self preoccupation tells me I need and want. And it's never good and never enough and it never satisfies for more than a second. And even it doesn't satisfy a second when I'm thinking of how much it satisfies.
Speaker 4 00:26:01 So it doesn't hurt to put a little enlightened self interest into this creation of altruism at this point and to exchange self for others it said to switch, become other rather than self that is received, become a preoccupied and cherish the happiness of others rather than cherishing the happiness of self. So then I move on to the sixth step, which is the step of universal love. And in this step I will all my happiness to them, I think of them having happiness and the cause of happiness. And I look at them, my mother beings, all my mothers from the point of view of seeing them into happiness.
Speaker 4 00:26:51 And when I see them into happiness and I look for their happiness, all the beings, they look so lovely and beautiful to me because beings who are happy are beautiful. Beauty in a being in fact is happiness in that being a being that is unhappy is not beautiful. Even if objectively they have this or that proportion or this or that cheekbone or this or that, whatever, there's something dull and something downcast and something no luster and they are not beautiful when they're angry. For example, the most seemingly well proportion proportioned, endowed person looks ugly. And therefore the beauty inner being is the being's happiness. And therefore, when I look at the being's happiness, they look beautiful. This is the stage where I visualize all my mother beings as happy and beautiful in a way I let myself fall in love with them. Therefore, being in love with someone is when we want their happiness.
Speaker 4 00:27:45 It is not when we want to possess them for our happiness that's possessiveness and desire. But when we really in love with them is when we want their happiness, we forget about our happiness and then therefore ironically we get very happy. Cause we don't reflect on how happy we are. It's when we forget about how happy we are that we've become happy. And that's why people like to be in love. Because when they're in love, then they just only focus on the beauty and the happiness of the other. And the moments when they stop to think if their love is required, that's when they feel dissatisfied, that's when they feel unhappy. So this was the sixth step, the step of great love, universal love.
Speaker 4 00:28:30 Then the seventh step is universal compassion. Universal compassion then involves my looking at the beings, having been in love with them a little bit withdrawing from just being in love with them and seeing them as lovely and happy in the sort of the rosy view of the lover, seeing the happiness of the beloved and the beauty of the beloved and becomes more realistic, more like the doctor who looks at the health of the beloved and who sees well how happy really is the beloved are all the beloved mother beings. And when I look at them and then I realize they don't have the mind of transcendence, they are preoccupied with their own self fulfillment too much. They are chasing illusions of being happy. They are filled with the paranoid feeling of being the one, the self that is unappreciated by the universe. They're struggling with the universe.
Speaker 4 00:29:26 They are born infinitely again and again in unhappy lives and suffering and being eaten by other beings and consumed and exploited by them and abused by them. And even when they're gods, they just indulge themselves and waste their time and then they're terrified when they must die as god's. And I use my meditation that we did yesterday of the suffering of all the different states of egocentric life in the universe. And I see that my mothers are always falling into those states endlessly. They wish their own happiness, but they act only to develop their own unhappiness. They're selfish, they're self-centered, and they're confused and they're angry and impatient and irritated and they never really have happiness. So I see that my beloved, in fact all my beloved mothers are not happy. And when I feel that, then I say this is intolerable. They must be free of this suffering that they have and they must have the cause of the freedom from that suffering. And when I feel that way deeply and intensely, this is the universal compassion. Compassion and love therefore are like two sides of a coin. The love wants to reach out and give my love to them, give my happiness to them, make them happy from my happiness. The compassion wants to reach out and take away their suffering from them and bring their suffering upon me from them.
Speaker 4 00:30:45 So they're like two sides of a coin, love and compassion. Once you really see the being as your mother, you really feel kin and familiar with all beings, then your way of connecting is through love. You will your happiness to them through compassion, you will their suffering to you and you turn it into bliss and send it back as happiness. This is how you have the connection of love and compassion. The eighth step is thinking of the disadvantages of cherishing the self as opposed to cherishing others. And how this self cherishing habit and self preoccupation habit has led one endlessly and beginning endlessly. In the some soic, egocentric life states of endless frustration of endless unfulfillment, of constant struggle with the universe. And the ninth stage is the stage of thinking of the advantages of other cherishing and realizing how others really are the source of all of one's happiness.
Speaker 4 00:31:47 For example, whenever one is really happy, it is because of the love of others. Whenever one does something and gives to others, one feels happy. Whenever one develops higher ethical sensitivity, it is because one thinks of others. Whenever one develops the greater strength of tolerance in patients, it's when others irritate one-on one learns to overcome that when thinks about what is one, like about what one has, one has a ring that one loves, someone else made it, somebody else found it. And mind the diamond, somebody else fashioned it into a beautiful ring. When one has clothes, this comes from fabric that someone else created, some mother living being if it's wool, they grew that on their bodies as their fur, which was then sh from them. And then they wove the wool and then they made the cloth and then they sewed it into the thing.
Speaker 4 00:32:35 And then if one has food, it's because some farmers prepared it and somebody cooked it and somebody shipped it in a truck and drove it there and stayed awake in the truck, et cetera, et cetera. Everything about our life comes from others. Our language, if we enjoy poetry and words, it is because of language. And language comes from others who communicated in previous generations even our body comes from the cells of parents. They develop genes over billions of life experiences of billions and billions of other beings. And so this body comes from others, our mind comes from others, our speech comes from others. There's actually nothing about us that doesn't somehow come from others. Therefore they make it possible for us to also to become Buddhas without others, to be compassionate for. We couldn't have compassion without others suffering. We would never feel compassion without developing compassion.
Speaker 4 00:33:23 We couldn't evolve to the state of. But hood wisdom alone would leave us too crescent and too complacent and we would never evolve the magnificent embodiment, the great giant butterfly, multiple butterfly embodiment of but hood and the bliss of but hood we would never have if it wasn't for our communion with others. And therefore, there's the tremendous advantage in living, fully aware of the real source of our happiness, which is others. They are like the wishful fulfilling gem tree. We think of a wishful fulfilling gem tree when we think of some exalted others, some mentors, the Buddha, the budva, Jesus marry the goddess, the gods. We think of them as some others who are powerful and happy and able to make us happy and so forth. And so we have the jewel lights flowing from them and we're in the wish granting gem tree. But actually ordinary living beings are a wish granting gem tree.
Speaker 4 00:34:16 In fact, if we reflect upon it, because we only become wealthy, for example, karmically and evolutionarily by giving gifts. And if there was no one to receive the gift, we would not be able to develop generosity in giving and we would not be able to evolve wealth and and substance. We only become ethical by thinking of others and thinking how our acts affect them and imagining how they are developing empathy and sensitivity. And therefore, through ethics we developed a human life form. And without patience, we couldn't develop beauty in which is the root of beauty. It is the true source of beauty. Being beautiful or handsome is being patient in many, many lives. And you could never be patient if there weren't others who make you irritated, who injure you and harm you and therefore others who bug are like a wish granting gem. And we couldn't have creativity and effort and enterprise if there weren't others to spur us on to do these wonderful things like become a Buddha for their sake.
Speaker 4 00:35:11 And we couldn't have meditation and concentration even because we wouldn't have others to distract us and from which we wanted to like move away to develop concentration. And finally, we couldn't have wisdom of selflessness without others because no one would be there to teach us of selflessness. Those like Nagar, Juna and Buddha and others who had realized the great teaching of selflessness. And so the ninth state is the stage of reflecting on the advantages, therefore of only thinking of the happiness of others. Finally, of course there is the enlightened self-interest component. Only when we focus on the happiness of others and accomplish the happiness of others, do we really feel happy. If we really think about life is when we are lifted out of ourself and exalted in some way through our orientation toward others, that we are really happy whenever we pre occupy with ourselves, we are really unhappy.
Speaker 4 00:36:06 How happy am I? As soon as I think that I feel unhappy because it's never enough. And when I'm only thinking of how happy are they? Oh, it's great there, a little happy. I ignore my unhappiness. I forget about my little aches and wounds and pains and I feel perfectly happy directly or indirectly. So that's the ninth stage. And now we come to the 10th step, which is the step which I call messianic resolve or high resolve, overflowing mind, overflowing inspiration. And this is the stage where we basically cultivate the Messiah complex or the Messiahs complex, the feminine, where we reflect that I can't bear these mothers to suffer. I am only preoccupied with their happiness. I must accomplish their happiness. How can I accomplish their happiness? The Buddhas are already Buddhas. They have already accomplished buddhahood. They supposedly therefore should be accomplishing these beings happiness. Maybe on some level they will come to pass, you know, who am I to say? But anyway, it looks to me like they're still not happy and therefore I can't just rest content thinking, well, there's some other Buddhas out there who will take care of it. I myself must help them become happy. I myself must help them become free of suffering. It is my job to make them free of suffering and achieve happiness. It is my job to do it. I will be the one to save them.
Speaker 4 00:37:49 I vow to be the one to save them. I will not rest in all my future lives until I save them. And here is where we have to have the sense of the infinite future. When you have developed and cultivated even ou materialists who think of it only as a material process, please cultivate past the next big crunch, the next big bang, and feel that the cells and the energies will go on. And in some sense that will be you. So you'll have time to do this because if you think of death as an automatic oblation, death has a self-centered nirvana in that sense, unrealistic nirvana. If you think of that, then you can't feel the messianic resolution. You have to think that the messianic vow to save all beings from suffering is only insane because you wouldn't have time. But if you are intertwined with all beings, if the matter of the universe or in the buddhi sense, all the intertwined lives of the living individual beings, the souls intertwined of the beings go on infinitely into the future.
Speaker 4 00:38:49 Then we'll be interacting with each other again and again will be in each other's faces again and again. Sooner or later I will be there in such a way and I will interact with you in such a way. And I will love you in such a way. And I will be compassionate with you in such a way that I will enable you to achieve happiness and the cause of happiness. I will become a Buddha who will be able to help you do that. I have infinite time, we're gonna be locked together in this infinite universe, me with all my infinite mother beings, and therefore I might as well optimize our infinite interconnectedness. Why not? If you're gonna be infinitely there with people, you can't get away from them, why not be there with them in the best possible way where you and they are totally focused on each other's happiness rather than totally in conflict with each other. And therefore you optimize that situation. You become Buddha. They become Buddha. And here we then think of the three ways of becoming a Buddha. It is said like a shepherd, like a pilot or a ferryboat man or like a king or a queen.
Speaker 4 00:39:53 And the shepherd is the one who herds the flock into the pasture and then comes in last and closes the gate. So that's where you like make the vow that you will not become free of all suffering and enlightened and so forth until you've helped all beings become that. The second one is like a fair boat. You'll all arrive at the other shore of freedom from suffering together, although you're piloting the ship. And the third one is the king. You actually will be crowned king. You will take the responsibility of the king. That is you will first become a Buddha, and then as a Buddha, you will establish all of them in Buddhahood. And of these three metaphors that is said analogies, that is said that emotionally the Buddha Sava prefers the first where they go last into permanent bliss, into exquisite, constantly transforming, but eternal bliss last and become a bud last.
Speaker 4 00:40:47 So emotionally, that's the superior. Second best is to be the fairman of fairy person. And third best is to be the king or queen from the point of view of the compassion dedication. But from the point of view of realistic methodology, of course the last is the best. So that brings to the 11th step. And the 11th step is the recognition that it takes a Buddha to help other beings to become free and enlightened with a being fully free and enlightened myself. How could I possibly help others to become fully free and enlightened effectively through the last stages of the process? At least I might help them inspire them, share with them some inspiration, but to really help them accomplish it, I have to be a Buddha myself. Therefore, the 11th step is I will become a Buddha for the sake of all living beings out of my preoccupation with their happiness.
Speaker 4 00:41:44 Because being a Buddha is the only way to effectively assure the accomplishment of their happiness. It is said that the 10th step, the step of messianic resolution, which western psychology, of course, based on the limited length of life of the individual and the oblation of the individual at death considers like a form of dimentia. You know, the Messiah complex is like a form of dimentia. And when you meditate on the messianic resolution, the high intention, the magnificent intention, so to speak, to save all beings, you should feel an intensity like a mad person, like a madman, a person who can't bear sort of conventional wisdom. Well later they'll get enlightened. Uh, well, sometime they'll be shala will come in the future or the budha land, they'll go to EMBAs budha land or heaven, new Jerusalem will come later, et cetera. No, the Messianic resolution is like an apocalyptic madness where now we have to achieve bud hood to be able to help them become free of suffering in the cause of suffering.
Speaker 4 00:42:51 Now, I can't bear my mother's dwelling in this suffering. I can't bear those of my mothers who have fallen to the hells. I can't bear those who have fallen to the preta lo of hunger and thirst. I can't bear those who have fallen the animal realm of one eating another. I can't bear those who have fallen in the human realms of mutual conflict, mutual exploitation, mutual destruction. I can't bear them to waste their time idling in the heavenly realms of self-indulgence and idle pursuits of ultimately unsatisfactory pleasures. I must help them become Buddha now, become free of suffering and have the cause of the freedom from suffering now. And therefore, you must feel that like a kind of a mad person, mad woman or madman where you're not content with sort of conventional institutionalized measures, so to speak. But then that madness sort of gets channeled into the vow to become a Buddha for the sake and calms by remembering that many beings, in fact, infinite numbers of beings already are Buddhas and have already felt this kind of messianic intolerance of the suffering of others and have gone to that intensity and that determined this and have become Buddhas for the sake of beings and are doing maximum effort for their sake.
Speaker 4 00:44:10 And so it's not that there's still in an infinite frame of reference, there's always more to be added to maximum. There's no finite maximum. So I will add mine to that and I will bring those beings I have karma connection to and I will accelerate their progress to enlightenment by becoming a Buddha myself.
Speaker 4 00:44:31 When we reflect this way, the Buddhas and the bud and the prophets and the gods and the goddesses and the angels and Jesus and Mary and Mohamed and LA and Confucius and Krishna and Cita and Raa and Uma and Shva and Rama and Plato and Socrates, PGOs, Newton, Decar, Galileo, all of them shining happy in the refuge tree, glistening and glowing that we have had even the simulation, even the imagination of having this magnificent new outlook on life, this new will, this new spirit, they radiate more diamond, ruby, emerald, jewel light raise to us. We fill up and glow with this light energy. It radiates from us to all the beings around us in the burst of fabulous connection and dedication and gratitude and encouragement.
Speaker 4 00:45:32 That is said. There are 22 similes of this moment in our evolutionary life. Many of us may have already achieved this in previous lives, have given birth to the spirit of enlightenment, what's called the conception of the spirit of enlightenment, which this 11 step process is designed to help us do and infallibly will do if we do each step carefully and thoroughly. It is like a moment in the evolution of a being that is like birth. This is really the second birth in Buddhism. This is to be born again in the family of the Buddhas. As a child, as a daughter or a son of the Buddhas, I like to say it's like suddenly living with your heart turned inside out hard on your sleeve, we say in English, but sort of it's an inside out hard on your sleeve, <laugh>. Normally the heart is closed in on itself.
Speaker 4 00:46:23 It beats for my own self, my own blood, oxygen, life, pleasure, profit, fame, whatever. My own self reoccupation drives my life and the life of all beings. And even we say that's natural. And even there are theories of biology that say it's inevitable and no one cannot be like that. There is no such state beyond that. But Buddha biology, Buddha evolution, the Buddhist science of biology, E, which is a science, it's not a religious thing, it's a scientific thing, claim this is completely false. The human being is the being, in fact whose heart sort of inside outsider almost at the turning point anyway, naturally because of our empathy, because of our ability, because of our bearing of the young within our bodies, all mammals in a way. But then humans as the most self reflective of mammals. When you have your young within, you realize that the boundary of self, another the skin is a permeable thing.
Speaker 4 00:47:16 And the reason we have language is that we can inhabit each other's minds. We can think in each other's minds by talking to each other. We can embrace the mind of another in our mind by listening to what they say, by communicating. Our communication is a way of entering each other's minds. So we are at that boundary between self and other. That is our strength as a human, our social strength in fact, that we can live in others and through others of course, we can pervert that into racism and group and fanaticism and what have you. In intolerance of outgroup people. We can prefer that opportunity comes from that. And when we conceive the spirit of enlightenment, the will to enlightenment in the spirit of enlightenment, that is when we fulfill our humanness to its ultimate extent. Because then we actually acknowledge that we live empathetically and we live cherishing the happiness of others.
Speaker 4 00:48:11 Whether it's our family, our community, our nation, our race, our species, all living beings, all living beings on all planets. This changes completely. All of our future lives. Our vast infinite future infinitely changes with disorientation change because we suddenly are all the beings by at least spirit, by at least will we imitate the actual awareness of a perfect Buddha where he or she feels themselves as all the other beings, every bit as much as feeling within their own particular skin of any particular emanation that they have. In fact, they get so much into this cloud-like multiple embodiment possibility that they can be many being simultaneously and still feel themselves the other beings that are not them in some sense because they feel they are not them. They are isolating themselves in a way, really they are them. All other beings are Buddhas, but their sense of alienation is honored but doesn't force them.
Speaker 4 00:49:12 You gotta be me, <laugh>, they're them. But they will only be happy when they feel they are all other beings. So the spirit of enlightenment is not just um, sentimental, I wish I, oh, I wanted this. Oh, I'll save all bes. If you really are believing that it's impossible, no one can take a bonus, a vow without the infinite sense of infinite continuity of life, an infinite connectedness of life. Because you can't mean that you're gonna save all beings if you have only a short time until your death. You can't mean it. You can say it in a zen center, you can say it in an arma center, you can say it in church, but you can't mean that because you don't believe it's possible.
Speaker 4 00:49:52 This turning inside out of the heart. It is simply realistic within the awareness, however much you can expand with critical effort, your awareness of being vast and continuous and also interwoven with others vastly and continuously. Once you feel that then to live for those others and to embrace them and adopt them as your body is only realistic. But it's called at this stage of spirit of enlightenment. It isn't enlightenment because it's a matter of vow, it's a matter of will. It's not yet a matter of full awareness, full realization. But it is a realization too in a way. It has the infinity of the realization, even in the vow.
Speaker 4 00:50:43 The spirit of enlightenment has two forms. One is called the aspiring spirit. That is a wish, that is an aspiration, that is a will and that we've gone through today. And even now we can even have that if we think it's possible, if we have the sense of the continuity of life and the vastness of it, at least to spend disbelief that it is possible. And then we have that inspiration. Actually we have the spirit of enlightenment and as an inspiration to have it as a what is called the venturing spirit of enlightenment or the activated spirit of enlightenment, which is a really great thing to have because once we have that, even when we're not thinking that way, we are getting the benefit as if we think in that way we make a vow, we actually take the vow. I will become a Buddha for the sake of all beings to establish them in happiness and to provide them with the causes of happiness.
Speaker 4 00:51:40 And we do that in a formal ceremony so that it becomes like a real promise in a vow. And we shouldn't do that of course, until we're sure we can keep that. And that's where we will begin. In the next session, we will look at the issue of taking that vow of really embarking on the whole new infinity of life. Life as a budva life within the Buddha family life as a child, as a son or daughter of the Buddha, of all the Buddha, which is our new clan, our new family, our new race, the Buddha race. You could say that we can join in this second birth through conceiving the spirit of enlightenment, combining the exchange of self, another teaching with the sevenfold mother, recognition, teaching and implementing it and practicing it, and then finally performing it as we have done today together as an Oman in this sort of rapid form.
Speaker 4 00:52:40 Remember that each one of the steps in the 11 steps, you could spend a month, a year you could spend a lifetime on, but although the boats would be unhappy to waste so much time, maybe a week would be good or a day on each one. And we've done them all in a session to just begin the process or refresh the process if many of us have already done this type of thing or similar type of thing to refresh that process. So now that we've done that, the beings in the wish granting gem tree refuge field or overjoyed, they're so overjoyed, in fact, they can't stand it anymore, and they melt just total into light. And the whole refuge field just becomes a splash of light of J diamond, emerald, ruby sapphire topaz. Light flows down from the refuge tree and the refuge tree itself melts into light and the lake at the top of the world melts into light in the island and the bluff and all dissolves into us.
Speaker 4 00:53:38 And we become one with the refuge field, with all the mentor beings, the enlightened beings. And then we feel really terrific and buoyant and illuminated and insightful, and inspired, enthusiastic. And then we dedicate all of that benefit and merit from contemplating this to all living beings. We right away invest the merit and the virtue of it with them. We give it away to them. It's that we give this happiness to them and we melt into light. And as light, we merge one by one individually in every way with all of these beings and become indivisible from all of the living beings, friends, enemies, unknown beings. And then at a certain moment they wonder like, where the heck did they all go? And then we arise again from space in our ordinary self, ordinary body, mind, complex, ordinary environment setting. Having concluded the third session of the Tibet's Wish granting Gem Tree retreat,
Speaker 2 00:54:51 The Bob Thurman podcast is produced under creative Comments, no derivatives license. Please be sure to like, share and repost on your favorite social media platforms. This recording is an excerpt from the Jewel Tree of Tibet, available through Sounds True Music for the Bob Thurman podcast is generously supplied by Tensing Showga. To learn more about the work and music of Tensing Showga, please visit his
[email protected]. Thanks for tuning in and Tasha Deek.
