Episode Transcript
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 3 00:00:48 This is episode 324 Easter 2023.
Speaker 4 00:01:20 Hi there everybody. Very nice to talk to you today on the cusp of Easter, which is the day that Christians all 1.5 billion of them of different kinds, very different, celebrate the resurrection of their Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, incidentally, who was a rabbi <laugh>, which some of them with, with when they're, since there's lingering anti-Semitism in all, and I, you know, worse than lingering in some cases, in many communities that purport to be Christian, they really have to become a little more realistic, even if you believe that, and the omnipotent deity, who you believe to be omnipotent. And others, people like me who I've like to think of myself as a Christian actually, although I'm also a more, a little bit more prominently a Buddhist, but I like to th still think of myself as a Christian because I don't think these things should be so exclusive.
Speaker 4 00:02:35 Maybe we don't need, we, you know, it's what Allen Ginsburg was famously said, I'm not a Buddhist, I'm a practitioner. <laugh>, which was, uh, a wonderful statement in the spirit of Emperor Ashoka even thousands of years ago in India, who said, it's not a matter of your denomination, it's a matter of how you behave. Whether you try to follow the teaching of whatever dispensation, whatever, whatever the great teacher taught. If you behave in such a way as to sort of be following that teaching, then you can say, well, Jesus likes me, or Buddha likes me. You know, if you, if you think that somehow just by being nominally that, and then you, you are nasty, you, you try to conquer your neighboring country and drop bombs on children and babies and ladies and, and who are delivering babies and, and workers and oh civilians as, as well as uh, people who didn't necessarily wanna be soldiers to oppose you and have your own soldiers killed senselessly just to sort of change the name on some piece of property, like to fit your sort of ego.
Speaker 4 00:03:54 I mean, and then you say you are, then you go to church and neck Pius and think Jesus likes that in the, in the gospel. Jesus specifically says He doesn't like that. He said, he mentioned particularly in the future, there will be those, when I'm on the right hand of the Father. I mean, I'm just paraphrasing. Don't get me if I'm, if I get right hand left mixed up, I think right hand of the Father, uh, people will come to me and say, Lord, Lord, we did great de some power in your name and therefore let us into heaven. And I will say, get gone. Evil doer. I know ye not because he didn't do what I said to do, which is give your neighbor your code when they ask for your shirt or vice versa shirt, when they ask for your code and your code, you know, uh, turn the other cheek if somebody irritates you.
Speaker 4 00:04:52 Be loving and kind and generous and gentle and charitable. Not violent and nasty and ferocious, you know, and, and murderous, you know. So that's the thing is let's all be CREs. Let's all rise with the resurrected one Jesus. And, and the, and the guy who taught that whe whether he be the son of God or whether he be an emanation, an enlightened being, a Buddha who is channeling the infinite energy of goodness that permeates all cultures, whether Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhists or Hindu or Daoist or secular humanist, all culture, all reality is imbed with total love total. That's Buddha's discovery. Hundred, 500 years before, uh, dear Jesus was born of God and Mary, or whomever I'm sure he was, I'm sure he was, was a kind of divine being, no doubt, because why love is divine. Compassion is divine and it's more powerful than death and violence and murder.
Speaker 4 00:06:07 That's the message. And therefore he threw himself onto the Roman electric chair. Please don't think the crucifix is holy. It's a execution machine of the nasty Roman empire, you know, of imperialist enterprise. And they would execute people in such a way as to frighten and terrify others to be then subordinate to their domineering, uh, edicts and, uh, and their economic policies of enriching themselves at the, at the, at the expense of the Israelis and the expense of the Egyptians and the expense of a lot of other places they conquered for a while until the, the subjects rose up, you know? But, uh, so it's, that's not a holy thing. The guy was holy. He threw himself on that electric chair and then he was killed as far as anybody he thought. And then he rose up in his, uh, magical, enlightened body with the power of love shaped into a body, similar to the body that was ravaged and wrecked and poked with a spear and bled out and, and, you know, the joints rich ripped apart, nails hammered through the hands and feet.
Speaker 4 00:07:29 I mean, come on, nasty form of execution, public execution. And he rose from that to show you can't kill love. That's what you celebrate this Easter. And it's associated, of course, with indigenous cultures celebrating the return of spring in, in temperate climates, celebrating the return of the season of growth, a season of abundance, season of plentitude, you know, the spring and summer and fall to the harvest, you know, of, of life sustaining wonderful plants, which themselves are spawned by the divine love, what we call the clear light of the void, which we, we feel from a scientific perspective is greater than any one being, but it is actually the energy that makes Yahweh God, Jehovah is a God. Sure he is. It makes, uh, Krishna a God. It makes shnu a God. It makes, uh, Mrs. Vishnu and Mrs. Krishna a God, Mrs. Yahweh, that is the shaina makes her a goddess, the great mother goddess, because they all just channel the infinite energy of the universe, which is how, which is the, the energy of life.
Speaker 4 00:08:48 It's the energy of bliss that every being feels. It's the energy of health. It's what makes you want to connect to things. It makes what makes the cells in your body want to connect to other things, to other cells to make a nice, complicated, amazing instrument of sensitivity that is a human being or a chimpanzee, actually, they're pretty nice too. But you know, they, and they're less harmful than us when we go bad cuz they're less, you know, they don't have language. They, they can't do math in the same way to the same level. They can't remember what their own chimpanzee scientists discovered hundreds of years ago, and therefore make either wonderful energy machines or horrible destruction machines like nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs, you know, like whatever, you know, which we do, you know, but they're 97% similar to us otherwise, except we have more fun actually, because we have greater sensitivity.
Speaker 4 00:09:53 And we can become Jane Olds and love those chimpanzees and those gorillas and, and take care of them and not send them into extinction by cutting down all their forests greedily to grow more. Whatever that we can sell in the market, you know, you know, just for our immediate, uh, aggrandizement and, you know, the, and the sister, even those of us who are not Christian, you know, primarily denominationally. We should, we can still celebrate with them. The arisal, the, the triumph of love over hatred, violence and domination. Love and freedom. So, you know, the real, that's real freedom. A being that can throw their body into the mall of execution by the domineering emperor and his minions, and then show everybody that they walk and talk. <laugh> all healed happy head for the flowery houseboat in Kashmir or wherever he went, <laugh>, and I'm sure returned many time in many bodies and is everywhere in a subtle form behind every being inspired Tolstoy to teach that Russian patriarch a lesson about violence and how he's a, he is betraying Jesus's message in blessing.
Speaker 4 00:11:21 A genocidal invasion, like launched by that puny dictator who's destroyed his destroying his empire rather than aggrandizing it. He's just pushed Finland and Sweden into nato, which is a purely defensive organization. Nato, it could be abused, it might have been by our own cia, bad people. Nobody's saying America's so super innocent. But we do have the thread where so far we've backed away from our conquest. We, maybe some corporations did some nasty economic deals, you know, but, but we didn't occupy and invade whenever we did. We got repel like just now. We had to leave. We're only staying in Iraq to defend the Kurds from the nasty, uh, joke on another stupid dictator. We are in a moment in the planet where we're about to have a kind of culture that Jesus would love, Buddha would love, Krishna does love, they all love election, not wood.
Speaker 4 00:12:25 They do love it because they such beings. You can't kill them. They never leave. They may abandon a particular body for the time being to not not appear to sort of want to dominate us. Cuz actually they want us to be free and make our own choices and live freely ourselves so they don't lurk there forever. And, and say, do what I say, you know, not what I do. So the routine, they don't do that. They do, they show us what to do ourselves, give of ourselves, open our hearts to others. That's what they show us and that's what they want us to do. So they don't hang around and that they, they they teach us the flow, the changeability in turn, I mean permanence, you know, but there's something that is permanent and that is the power of love. It because it grows from freedom because we are totally free and we are in a len field of total abundant energy to fulfill every need that can formulate itself instead of big bangs and huge fires and flames.
Speaker 4 00:13:36 But those fires and flames are furnaces which make wonderful things. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen that can support plants. And then plants can support animals and animals can have in sensitivity and can enjoy being supported. And then it can, they can forge out of fiery furnaces of like suns and stars. It can push some planet out and have it be nice and cool, not too cool, not too hard. Have like a little thing. Some beings can shape that shape. The, the molecules and the atoms, uh, by their love Mother Earth. She's a goddess. And she's also a <unk>. She's also a savior being a Buddha. She's not just a goddess. Like something higher and bigger than us. Cuz if we tend to think goddesses are something better than humans, actually goddesses really appreciate humans because humans are, have an intelligence that is like the divine, but they're more vulnerable.
Speaker 4 00:14:39 We, we feel pain. We we're scared we can make li we can be descend back into lower life forms and suffer badly for zillions of lifetimes. We have already done so many times because we've had no beginning in our sensitivity. We're part of the beginningless sensitivity of that infinite energy working up, you know, the sort of desire to have someone appreciate it, someone to enjoy that love, you know, the, a lover wants a beloved and that's us. And it's just a generic thing. It isn't like one omni God. And, and by the way, none of them are omnipotent. Like we are not omnipotent. We can have a tantrum as a baby and demand of breasts even when it's dried of milk and the nipple soar. And mom wants to take a break and she has also a perfectly good bottle or some m but we might want breast, eh?
Speaker 4 00:15:38 Yeah, yeah. And then we can shout and scream and have a thing and we can, mom will feel her omnipotent maybe. And, and you know, maybe milk will generate itself from her glands, her loving glands. But actually we are not omni nnt. We learn. And god's, there's no such thing as one being, one being sort of separate from other things. Who controls everybody else and has their responsibility for all of them. And everybody else is unfree. That's a mean idea. Everyone is free. You know, the pantheistic heresy, you, you, you know, monotheistic theologians of which there are some in India, they had monotheisms, they did, there's can be a, a version of Revisionism. Of krishnam that's monotheistic. A version of Shaivism that's monotheistic in Buddhist time. Burm a version of brennaman where Prma was a monotheistic creator. That is to say omnipotent and everybody else subservient, but they, but the real, but they always say even there, those gods, they're scriptures, they're whatever utterances, however humans interpret them.
Speaker 4 00:16:49 Cuz the humans always have to listen to them to put 'em in human language so we can follow them or understand them. They always say, we help those who help themselves. They always say that. They don't say, okay, I'm taking care of the whole thing. Just relax. Anything you do anyway, I'll fix it up. Go be mean. Go jump on the lake, throw somebody else in the lake, you know, whatever vibe to be king. Kill everybody in your way. No, they don't like that. They say, you better be nice. What you do will determine how you will enjoy this wonderful field of, of abundance, which is the life field, the clear light, the crystal field of love and joy. And you can, the more you are loving in that and the less egotistical and so on, although you can, you can be egotistical about how loving you are, how generous you are, how, how self restraining you are, how, how kind you are.
Speaker 4 00:17:46 You can be egotistical about that. That's a good, good egotism. It's a good kind. You can be egotistical to be a savior for others. Save them, help them. There's so many, I was just reading time magazines, wonderful Women of the year, incredible women in Iran trying to help with a terrible mullets in the name of Alman. The compassionate God wants to kill them since assassins to kill them cuz they don't wanna wear ed scarf, they don't wanna be suppressed by the men that's sick. Aah doesn't like it. They're not gonna last. That kind of a government, aah, will not like that. Aah, liked Mohamed. Mohamed liked women. He was kind to them. He really wasn't lustful, he was kind, he was responsible. He wanted them. He knew that they should be happy. They are equal to a men. Actually this men dominating women is wrong.
Speaker 4 00:18:42 It makes for boring life. It's a boring position. <laugh>, it's no good. They have to be equal to each one, free each one to choose to love the other. That way they'll be make each other happy that way because they'll restrain any excessive self involvement and they'll be genuinely loving and in a way selfless in their, in their union and kind and, and and but, and ex and share their own bliss and not be dominated not to have any bliss. That's really stupid <laugh>, you know, to treat people like that. So we are anyway, we are in a time in the planet where everybody of everything, if they knew how wonderful Jesus is, they would love him. That doesn't mean they would necessarily have to be Christian. If they were in a Muslim culture, they might prefer to do that. The Muslims kind of have a point when they say that the Christians became a bit idolatrous in the sense of they said, well, okay, it's only him and oh, nobody else.
Speaker 4 00:19:57 And that, and even it's so irrational in the sense of if you believe God is omnipotent, how come he only had one child, only one in that child was only male and he only in one place only had a 30 year old, 33 year lifespan. And if so, if other people didn't meet that one, they were doomed to hell forever. Give me a break. And they, they claim they know that and they're definite about it. And if you disagree, you would get burned at the stake. That's just cuckoo. That's, that is the domineering nature of political Roman emperors obfuscating and, and distorting the great liberating teaching of the loving Jesus. And in a way, I think the loving Yahweh was, I think Jehovah, Yahweh. I think he was truly loving too. Imagine and the great, uh, great Jewish mystics like Isaiah and these people, not necessarily the domineering head, you know, official of this and that bureaucratic institution, religious institution, but the, the, the mystical, what the ones we call mystical, because in past the do nature of violence was so intense on this planet last few thousand years that someone who said, no, wait, everything is fine.
Speaker 4 00:21:23 Love dominates. Not, not violence. Love is more powerful than violence. Love can go, goes true and beyond and laughs at death. Love does. And therefore, but that, that voice there was mystical, which means hidden only, it only means hidden. It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean unavailable to the masses. It means hidden. Because somehow those domineering people don't want people to feel free to make their own decisions, to follow their bliss in their life. They want them to go and be one of them members of the army follow be one of the troops, one of the, the servants in the household, one of the slaves. They don't want people to be free and no slavery, et cetera, right? But that's not, Jesus is not like Jesus didn't promote slavery, Buddha didn't promote slavery. The greater punishing teachers did not approach slavery. The Confucius did not approve slavery.
Speaker 4 00:22:25 They didn't, there were some people had slaves at that time and they didn't approve violent killing the masters and then making the slaves masters of other people because of getting that way by violence. So they didn't formulate violent revolutions leading to worse kind of dictators than the previous ones. No, they, they advocated a love revolution, which is a cool, peaceful, gentle, kindness revolution showing by magical ways almost what we normally think of as magical, the dominating power, the liberating power of love, which is what we celebrate, what the world should celebrate with the deer Pope Francis, may he have a good lungs, may he practice a little chum. You know, I have difficult lungs because I'm too sedentary typing, sitting in chairs. I didn't catch that. And, uh, try again. That's okay. You be, be happy, okay? But please don't interrupt while I'm doing this.
Speaker 4 00:23:31 All right? Try to be happy. Okay? Bye. And, uh, until we speak again, that's all right. We will. And, uh, you know, that's what, that's Easter. Now don't think that means that we are saying that Dear Vladimir Zelensky and his brave, humorous, loving people are not allowed to defend themselves against a genocidal lunatic, a madman. And because they're also actually defending the Russians, because actually the Russians, mostly, they don't want to be thrown into some trench and kill their brothers and sisters who are the Ukrainians. Let let the Ukrainians be free in their own country with their own slightly different culture and language. But another slavi, people of close, closely related, many Russians and Ukrainians intermarried, therefore many hybrid UK Ukraine, Russians, and each con, each culture contributing to the wonderful carpet, worldwide carpet of beautiful human cultures, loving love, celebrating cultures where people dance and they get married and they, they uphold the bride and groom and they, they're kind and educate the children and they don't want them to go get killed fighting another one. Only some mad man, some crazy person who thinks they have to have some more things. And so they need some slaves to go out and get themselves skilled, to get themselves bigger territory or something, or a bigger imperial name. That's how we've been behaving for thousands of years. But that is not the human way to behave. No.
Speaker 4 00:25:23 And we will soon see this because that madman is destroying the Russian empire. Finally, you know, the, so the communists destroyed the czar, but then they come continued a Soviet empire, then he backed off from the Soviet Empire when they lost kgb, guys did. And kgb, Looney Looney who had used the KGB to domineer the poor Russian people as the Soviet, the dictatorship of the dictatorship, the stupidity of the Marxist system of thinking you're gonna have a dictatorship that will really be for the people. Haha, the dictator always is for the dictator. Human beings are too fallible for that. She's in pain. Take a listen to that. Confucius taught a way of being an emperor where you're not imperialist actually in a way, but you're keeping down the Robert Barrons was his theory, you know, and you're there really are for the people. But then they always, that only lasts like, uh, the very well, like one or one out of 10 of the, of the emperor managed that and didn't get locked up in Arum.
Speaker 4 00:26:31 But anyway, he had a good theory, Confucius, he was, he was, you know, you should try to study that you Chinese dictators and stop acting like gangsters on your poll bureau and so on. And suppressing everybody's and suppressing the creativity of your people and their love and their joy and their freedom. Now the human being needs freedom to bring out their intelligence and their creativity and their love and create things of beauty to share with each other, to have happy society. The whole political science thing in the, in the backward militarized countries, universities like our American ones as well, that, you know, a government monopolizes the use of violence in its territory. That's the legitimacy of a government know the legitimacy government is they support the freedom of the people. They make violence unnecessary by sharing with intelligence and organizing things. Is there something else?
Speaker 4 00:27:33 Organizing or please, please organizing things that in such a way that, that people can adapt and deal with their beautiful planet, which wants to give them food, give them vegetables, give them fruits and flowers and herbs and medicines and water. Clean water and smooth clean air. And that's what we are adapt perfectly. This is a place for us to enjoy love and compassion and that's what governments are there to guarantee. And of course, for few last few thousand years with the boys in charge and the women, somehow somebody came up with the idea of suppressing the women and therefore people have not been happy and therefore they've surrendered to sort of fascistic, imperialism and militarism. And then, you know, consumerism, that's a kind of internal thing, but I'm not sure a way of economic, and please, please, please don't, don't interrupt me. I asked, that's what I asked.
Speaker 4 00:28:37 Okay, but you're, it's nice that you're recording me. Okay? So, so that's what we are celebrating, that's what I'm talking about. And now you say, well, but to defend yourself, you're being violent. Yes. Not all the Ukrainians are a hundred percent saints. However, it is more saintly to defend yourself than it is to invade and violate another. And there e even the, the genes and the Buddhist of India have a theory. There's no holy war theory. Absolutely not. Uh, holy aggression is not the case. But there is a holy defense theory or a legitimate ethical defense theory based on the idea of minimizing violence, which is that if you are a nation of people trying to be happy and have a good life and not necessarily bristling with arms and not threatening anybody else, and you're invaded by someone who is invading you, and you have the strength to resist that and push them out, you should.
Speaker 4 00:29:43 Because if they do invade you, they, you have the experience, they do genocide on you. They nearly do. And they try to assimilate you and they try to pretend they didn't. So they try to make you like them. And they do ethne side, it's the word I invented. It should be, it's the first step. It's a kind form of genocide. It's eth ethnic side. Take away your culture. You know, your language, your traditions, your way of finding love and sharing love your own way, you know, and being creative and be an artist of life, you know, whichever one wants to be. And uh, all women are, and even some men want be, and everyone should be young and old. And then so by, if, if therefore you can eject them and you have the means to do it, you should. And then you don't counter invade you then make a kind of security provision and a treaty where they won't invade again again and you won't invade them.
Speaker 4 00:30:44 And then there should be peace. You try to make peace. You shouldn't do it if you're so weak, that by your resistance would be suicidal and then they'd just be more quickly genocidal on you that you shouldn't do. So the sort of suicide defense you shouldn't do. But if you can legitimately do so, you have an ethical license. Because the rule is, you know, the nonviolence is a very powerful way of living. And it, its rule is always to minimize violence in a strategic, intelligent way. And of course it's a slippery slope. And some people pretend they're minimizing by invading and dominating. Like, you know, like Putin lied to everybody and pretended that everybody was a Nazi in the Ukraine and blah blah, you know, and NATO was attacking him and this kind of thing, which he wasn't. But in a way, everybody in the Russian Federation, which is just still, it's the third step, you know, there was the czar Zaist empire, then there was the Soviet Empire, then there was the Russian Federation of the, the remnants of the Soviet Empire having lost Eastern Europe, which they had been colonizing and imperial and lost a lot of the central Asian republics that chose to be and lost Ukraine, which chose to be free, which is a big country with 45, 50 million people.
Speaker 4 00:32:03 They'd have more people if you weren't killing them. And uh, and many Russians would immigrate there, immigrate there and would be accepted cuz they can quickly learn the Ukrainian language and fall in love with the Ukrainian and vice versa. So they would increase their population. And you would not be diminishing your population by having all your Russian soldiers forcibly, dragooned and killed. Luckily, a lot of your creative people left knowing you were nuts, Mr. P and you shouldn't behave like that.
Speaker 4 00:32:42 So I wanna say, you know, one thing that I want, I want, first of all, you know, I have over here on a, another screen on the heart sutra, which is the heart of the Buddhas teaching, which is a very appropriate for cel time celebrating Jesus actually in the world. Cuz Buddha and Jesus are, it is, they're just, they're a love bundle. They're the love team <laugh>. They really, they really are Krishna too. And even Confucius Confucius, little stiff stuffy in his day because of the chauvinism of the, that era of the Joe Dynasty Chinese. But he was, he was really lover, loving, lover, loving guy too. Mancha especially, you know, <inaudible>, many of the Chinese philosophers of that Accalade were like that. Z and Persia, you know, pys in Italy, you know, and then the Presocratics in Greece and many great rabbis I'm sure in Israel before Jesus, I have no doubt.
Speaker 4 00:33:47 And, and people everywhere in the world, there's always good people in every culture and society and, uh, so the heart, but the message of the heart church, you know, matter is voidness. Voidness is matter so deep, it's so wonderful and it really is the source of the love. Why? Because it's the discovery of relativity as a scientific, it is not religious. Now, this is, is scientific. The Buddha was, the Indians were very advanced culture in Eurasia. And the ancient time, they sort of went less into the imperialism mass, whatever it is, than anybody else. Cause they were in the richest economy. In fact, everybody was always trying to conquer India, actually, including the Vadk people. They were always trying to conquer India cuz it was a big, they had like 2000 varieties of mangoes. Believe me, when you don't have like, you know, uh, cherry, cherry Garcia yet, and you have mangoes and you mix them with milk, that's best you can do in the world.
Speaker 4 00:34:52 Yet they had apricots. Nice thing in other apples in other cultures, but mangoes, man mangoes. So anyway, so point is, uh, they discovered that there is no absolute outside this world that has given orders to people and controls them and is pushing them to behave according to some dogmas and some doctrinaire indoctrinate doctrines. You must do this and that cause I say so and some omnipotent absolute who's trying to domineer you. The scientists discovered that already. What the secular is too, although they've sneakily set up a new absolute, which is no good, which is nothingness and void is almost close. It sounds like nothingness, but it isn't. Voidness means it's void of any non-relative. Absolute. That's what voidness means. So it's actually freedom. Freedom also is negation reality is free of a non, any non-relative absolutes. Why? Because that's what a absolute means. It means it doesn't relate.
Speaker 4 00:36:11 So therefore the absolute is not embedded in the relative. The concept of the absolute is an emptiness then is the concept of the absolute that that bu that Buddhist science, that inner Indian inner science came up with to free the people for liberation by saying that nobody who gives you orders has an absolute backing in that order. Some people may, you know, your wife may say, bring home some rice deer for dinner. And that's kind of relatively absolute because the kids have to be fed as do you, as does she. So you go out and buy some rice. So that's relatively absolute. If you're a good father and husband and provider, she's actually in charge because she, she's the cook, she's the, she's the one who knows what everybody needs. She's the one who's dedicated to it. She's more advanced evolutionarily to be there in service to other beings more easily than someone who kind of tends to think I'm, I'm so important, which is a little bit the male delusion, right? And leading to the military thing, you know, and, uh, and sometimes males are very important and helpful sure, but not the most. And uh, so boyness just means that boyness is like the womb of love and the great <unk> I know who your wife is. Ka we're interrupting again, please. Peace. Silent while I'm talking.
Speaker 4 00:37:51 You know, voidness, the womb of compassion and compassion means that you can't bear others suffering, which is part of love. You want other beloved to be happy. You can't bear that they suffer. It's not greed. You wanna possess them. It's, you want them to be happy and you are free to do so. And then you are free to try to help heal their suffering. That's the compassion side of the coin, you know? And, uh, that's what, that's it's scientific discovery of freedom meant in history. And we were at the time on the planet when we can really listen finally to Jesus love thy neighbor as thyself. And actually lo, only when you love your neighbor can you really love yourself, because that means you are one of the good guys when you love your neighbor. So then you'll really know, you can say, I'm good, but I'm domineering different and grabbing profit and manipulating others and using them as my tools for my own pleasure.
Speaker 4 00:38:48 But that's not real love. So, you know, that's not good actually. So then you don't actually love yourself, so you have to love yourself and others together. So this is key, you know, maybe I'm a little longer today, but I I I wanna do this. So you have to understand that means what, what the absolute and the relative are the same thing, actually logically, scientifically speaking. But that doesn't mean the absolute is only the relative or the relative is only the absolute in some dualistic way, it sort of more means the relative is the, is only the absolute actually, and the absolute, it, it, it, it means that changes in the relative therefore should have your absolute focus. And that's why you wanna be loving. Because it isn't that there's some outside absolute who says, well, in this case you should kill the person. Don't love them, kill the animal, don't love it, do this and that.
Speaker 4 00:39:51 But you, it is not the thing you like to do and it likes you to do to it. It isn't the thing, you know, chop down all the trees so you can be rich. But even though then the, the air gets bad, you know, and animals who live in the trees can't live, you know, because there's some absolute thing that you should be, that money is absolute, you know, for example. So emptiness means voidness means there are no such Es that override the sensitivity of good relationality, of loving relationality. That's the key thing. So in fact, Jesus saying, turn the other cheek, love thy neighbor, love the enemy is scientifically based. And that's what people don't, you know, that's what people do understand a little better from the Indian traditions, jism, Hinduism, Buddhism, et cetera, various other ones which didn't, which eroded their militarism from way back actually, although sometimes it's a defend it itself, little internal squabbling.
Speaker 4 00:40:54 But basically they didn't go out to congregate the world. The emperor who could have in the era of the Roman empire was Ashoka, who had an empire and who as a, as a youth did conquer viciously something as third century before the common era. Bce E was, was Ashoka. Then he just sent dharma emissaries teaching the dharma of love, love dharma. He sent them to Turkey, to Syria, to Egypt, to, he didn't, you know, China was harder to get to in those days, but they eventually went there after his time and India was ahead. Therefore, it has always been ahead of this inner science, the science of the heart of the mind, you know, not necessarily only materialists, they're good in botany and good in some kinds of materialist thing, but they were not, that was not their focus because they realized that the mind is what control is the c p U of life.
Speaker 4 00:41:52 And then within minds of all different kinds of animals, the human one is sort of equal to the divine one in a way can become equal to the divine one. Becau, and that's fine by the divine one. They were humans ones too. Everyone has beginningless life. But it, because of the vulnerability of the human, the human wants to make sure that they fully understand things and then become fully loving of those things. So matter is freedom. Freedom is matter. It's really critical. And it doesn't critique theistic. It's not atheistic at all. It doesn't critique gods, but just says that Gods, no matter how powerful, are not omnipotent and gods are intelligent enough to know they want their subjects there, that their dependence to find their own freedom and take their own responsibility because the, the one God is no one. God is powerful enough to control in invented reality.
Speaker 4 00:42:57 Therefore they too need science and they support scientists. So it's a little more complicated. It's not theism or atheism, it is theism. It's not monotheism or atheism. It's a, I call it in invented theism in the sense of everything is divine. Everyone should be divine as they can within whatever form they have. And then e, everyone will enjoy heaven. And then those beings that are not quite capable, they have like too awkward, the type of body to be fully loving like reptiles, you know, they only lay eggs, you know, they're love making, forget about it, you know, et cetera. And then other kinds of creatures that have weird reproductive energies and they can't enjoy, you know, bliss of union of mammals and things, which is very high and desire realm deities and things, which is very high kind of way of getting close to the infinite energy even as an individual, which is our goal.
Speaker 4 00:43:59 And that's another long story. I know we've gotten long and, uh, my, my better 15 16th is called me and is waiting for me for something which I will discover. And I wish you all a very happy Easter Christian or non-Christian. And uh, I know you will not accept me as one unless you're an enlightened Christian. There's a few actually, almost high bishop patriarchs types who still like us. And the popes like that Aamas too, you know, and we can get along and nobody's saying you shouldn't be Christian. That's the way you get enlightened. We don't want you to switch to be Buddhist. We don't want isms the writing us up. We want dharma, which means reality. It means reality and teachings that lead us to understand reality, which when we do, we will be loving and we will understand the holiness of reality itself.
Speaker 4 00:45:00 Actually we will understand that and therefore we will extend our appreciation of it to all other life forms in this world. And that's what Jesus was showing. He was showing you Roman emperor, you cannot control us loving rabbis and loving beings. You can kill us, but you cannot kill us because we will rise again with the power of love. That's his teaching. And it's a wonderful teaching for any, anybody of any religion in cooling, any secular humanist, even though they're trying to find a potion, a material potion that will make you able to defy death, you know, fine, the potion is in you, is in life actually. It's the life force itself that, that true love enables a human being to find without necessarily having to manufacture a product out of something somewhere. It's this, it's life on this planet. This planet is a vast medicine for life. That's why we're alive on it. It's a miracle. Miracle medicine is Mother Earth. Gaia produces this for us and we should enjoy it and not harm her and not over, uh, pollute and destroy her. We should listen to the Oracles like Greta, who expressed the voice of the planet, you know? Okay. Happy Easter. Okay, all the best. Thank you so much. In case you've managed to listen to this.
Speaker 3 00:46:50 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 to the generous support of the Tibet House, US Menlo membership community, and listeners like you. To learn more about the benefits of Tibet House membership, please visit our websites, bus.org, men org and bob thurman com. And thanks for tuning in.
