Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:14 Welcome to my mom's Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful and 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. If that house has the dog control center in America, all best wishes have a great day. This is episode 247, exploring the myth, mystery and sciences of the land of snow.
Speaker 1 00:01:13 This one is a bell and it has a handle. And this is a <inaudible>, which is a little sector, like thing like this. And when you started to is intended to lead your mind to embrace reality, and reality is considered to be something like a great mother, not for other creative Gar creator, God, there are <inaudible>, but there no creator in their worldview, their myth. And this bell is the sound and the symbol for this, for the clear light of the void, which is the deeper nature of reality. According to Indian insight, originally from Chamonix Buddha in front of 500 years ago, who came to an understanding of reality. He thought he met with gods. You know, the people who analyze religions have trouble with him because he did meet with the gods of the era. The one who had his time was thought to be very many, the creator, various other ones who are something like maybe arcane Jones or other right gods of different types in India of his era, 2,500 years ago or 2,600 years ago. And that God, instead of telling him be my profit, because I I'm powerful, I can save everybody. Like would usual religion, founder that God said, Hey, let's say
Speaker 2 00:03:08 I created it all. Don't blame me.
Speaker 1 00:03:13 I'm really powerful. And actually I was first person around when this university we arose and I came from previous years and I was the first more, very powerful being here, but I didn't create the whole thing. So, but I'm not even quite sure how it happens, but I can tell I am clairvoyant kind of a number because I'm zillion years old and I know you're going to figure it out and you have figured it out. Actually then later he told them, and I want you to tell the human beings that I love them and I do the best for them. And I don't mind if they respect and Revere me when they're going, when things are happy for them. But when horrible things happen to them, which do happen, I don't want to be blamed. I didn't create it all. I'm not responsible. I Buddha you tell them, you explain that we're all in it together.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 And there's a causation of what happens to us. And, uh, the word is for a ritual act in Buddha's world was karma, which actually means an action. But the people of his day believed that they were God's discard. Some of them thought he was a creator <inaudible> and some sort, they were plurals plurality of creator types, but they all considered that they were the power of the world, of the universe. And therefore you had to perform rituals to coerce them or entice them or propitiate them, meaning make them feel close to you or please them to favor you and your goals in life, which were success, longevity, power, prosperity, and victory in battle because they were fighting occasionally. And, um, that will come to you to making the right ritual offerings to the gods and Buddha Buddha. When he refused to participate in that society, in which he would have been a King, uh, he told his dad look, uh, I want to help beings.
Speaker 1 00:05:34 Like I was raised to a King is supposed to help their subjects and has saved them from their troubles. And, uh, but, but the King can't do that. That's the wrong job for job description for a King, because what they need help with their problems or people are sickness old age, death, pain, those are their problems and can help them with that. They can do Colomy health, education and welfare. They can help protect them against plagues if they care to, or they can do something like that. But that's not their biggest problem. Their problem is that the King had helped them with death had helped them with the existential issue of what is life thing doesn't do that. So his father had said, Oh, leave that to the priest. That's what the high priest is. Do they do rituals for the gods? And then the gods take care of it.
Speaker 1 00:06:25 I bought, it said, well, if the gods are taking care of it, they're doing a crappy job, but they're coming up with sex. And I think I can do better. He said, you know, he was, he was 29, actually. He'd already been married. He had a son and he said, yeah, I'm going to go and find out how things really work. What is the real cause of things? What is how to produce really better effects, how to improve the world, how to save the world. And I'm going to become, truly know how to do it, what human life is about.
Speaker 1 00:06:58 And he went off and he spent six years studying meditating, learning everything he could. And finally, one morning he said, Eureka. I understand that. I really do. Wow. I knew I could. He said, I feel good. And I knew that I would. That's what he said. And he gave a bunch of teachings about how everyone should feel good if they knew what they would say, knew what their reality was. If they knew how to count their blessings. And he announced the discovery of what he called Nirvana and Nirvana is not a name of it is the name of many restaurants around the world. He used to be a really nice one in New York, on central park, South overlooking the park called Nirvana. South Indian cooking was really good, but Nirvana means a state free of suffering. It doesn't mean the extinction of life as people have misunderstood it because people are so depressed about life because they're sensitive and there's a lot of pain in life and people.
Speaker 1 00:08:08 And they're taught a lot of unrealistic teachings. Like for example, that you're supposed to feel pain. If you're sort of resigned to suffering, living in the Valley of the shadow Valley of the shadow of the Aspen pain and suffering and blah, blah, blah, that that's supposed to be realistic. And you're supposed to be resigned to that. And then if you do that and you still prayed to the forces, that powers that be outside yourself, they'll install you in the choir up there with Beatrice and Dante and Peter Sellers where you'll be singing hymns after you die. But they'd be a life you should be miserable. And if you're not, and, and we all believe that we all bought that. Look at you. If your roommate comes back to your house or room, I don't know where you are. I know you're doing remote learning at UCLA. If your roommate come back one day and they say, wow,
Speaker 3 00:09:02 I feel good. Or, or,
Speaker 1 00:09:04 Or, or it's all right. You know, what's his name? The blind one. Really lovely one. You know what I mean? Raymont Ray, but Ray Charles, and like so happy. And then you say, well, what's happened to you? What are you doing? They say, well, I don't know.
Speaker 3 00:09:17 I'm just so happy. I just did that. I ran into boot. It's really not licensed. I love it.
Speaker 1 00:09:25 How do you feel about that? What do you first think? Did you say, or did you drink? What are you smoking or did you take, are you in trouble? What's worse. When is the crash coming Tom down to here, having Librium, have a tranquilizer, take a Prozac, be cool, go to sleep. Don't you. And if you feel like that, you sort of hide it because you know, people might think you're crazy or soon, right? We're conditioned like that. And Buddha said no way. The human life is a product of an evolution, not just of a species that every human has out there going as an individual who has had infinite, previous existences is all different lifeforms. And they like Darwin. They have struggled to improve their intelligence and their sensitivity and their, and their knowledge and their, especially that intelligence. So they know what's real.
Speaker 1 00:10:26 So they don't get eaten up and they do this and that. And actually the more intelligent final intelligence means you have to cooperate with others. You have to have compassion for them better to be a mammal, better, to be born by a mom. Even if a tiger is better than a lizard, when mom's just lay you as an egg and leave you in the sand, some words they take off the ocean. Well, six to one, half a dozen to another. Whether you going to make the ocean when the egg cracks, the mom is not there to look out for you. So it's better to be in a mom and mom's are insanely altruistic giving free space without rent squatter's rights in their belly for nine, 10 months. Mammo moms are amazing. So that's why they do. You know, that's not all, it's not automatic. Which guy is about to do that. Whatever guys know about that, even let me out of here. Hello? Somebody talking to you down there. No, I don't want
Speaker 3 00:11:24 Chocolate
Speaker 1 00:11:29 Affecting your diet and everything. So then human among the compassionate animals. It's the most compassionate one. They can be most vicious because they are so smart. We're so smart. We can make nuclear weapons, obliterate the planet, but we are also really can or capable of extreme pleasure. We're capable of extreme sensitivity altruism, and actually were capable of awakening. To reality. The human brain is able to understand the real. The scientists tell you, you can understand the real, the religious people tell you only God does you can't. That's why I didn't like them. When I was a kid in school, like you, I refused. What are you talking about? If human beings are unable to understand the world, then you don't understand the world. And how come you're telling me with a conviction that I can understand that that's what I used to say to the pastors and the professors and science.
Speaker 1 00:12:27 They didn't, they don't understand. They always pretend they're going to understand after the next round of billion dollar funding, but then they say, the more you learn, the more you don't know, that's what they say. And that's what we're supposed to accept. And that's not the Tibet myth. If you will. Now about lift, you know, Peter asked me to talk about myth. Myth has two meanings. One is a narrative that predict creates meaning around something that societies use to explain things and to feel meaningful in the way they live. And some of them are sensible and some of them are sense less, but they're, they're like a narrative. You know, if you, if you have trouble in life and you go to a shrink to shrinks talking through what that is, is challah is changing your narrative. You had a myth that your parents caused all your trouble by behavior by passing on their problems to you.
Speaker 1 00:13:21 And, uh, and often you will be blaming the parents for awhile. As you create your transference with that therapist who creates a new parent parenting for you, and then he changes the narrative, or she changes the narrative for you. And you come up with a plausible reason of why you're the way you are. And then you're able to go ahead. So like an individual has a narrative about what life is about. Cultures have a narrative. And so missing that concept is not really the other meaning of myth is a false idea. I just looked up in the dictionary, something that isn't true, myth fact, you know, missing it's like fact and fiction fact versus myth. So myth is like fiction, but you know, it's questionable whether in true science, for example, Buddhist science from ancient time, there is no absolute description of the nature of reality.
Speaker 1 00:14:14 That's why I love Buddha. He's so great, but has sat there after the seven years of Syria, he'd been educated also before that to be a King, you know, so he was very knowledgeable, very capable. And then he spent six years in internal investigation, you could say, and, uh, to combine traveling all over the universe and figure it out. And then he said, wow, I understand everything. And it is really great. And I love it. And I have good news for you for you. Unfortunately, my news doesn't include an explanation because I can't really explain it to you, but I've understood it because it's an explicable it's, it's beyond our tech categories of explanation. So therefore there's no dogma. I'm giving you that you can just hold on to that dogma. Then that theory will save you if you believe it. So I'm not asking you to believe anything.
Speaker 1 00:15:06 What I'm saying is I can help you find a way of experiencing life beyond any description of it beyond even a poet's way of evoking, different aspects of it, which poets are a better deeper, because they don't pretend they're nail it down in some sure-fire dogmatic way of explaining it. They just can find some kind of way of improving our way of experiencing, you know, poets. Are there other dollars legislators of mankind? You know, that famous statement of Shelley, I believe. And so that was Buddha. So there's no dogmas in Buddhist science in the sense that reality defies description, but you can provide a curriculum, a way of study and in a way of deconditioning yourself from the way your brain wants in your society to accept the authoritarian models of society that you're given like Buddha was given an authoritarian one where he had to obey his father and be a King.
Speaker 1 00:16:10 When the father wanted to abdicate, he had to obey the priest who told him what God wanted, and he had to follow that and he rebelled against that. And he said, that doesn't make sense to me. It's a thought your authority is based on your ignorance. Therefore, I can't accept it. I'm going to find out for myself what reality is. And the actually he discovered that reality is this is what this bell stands for. Hold the clear light of the void. And let me just say what that clear light is. First of all, I can't say what it is. So everything I would say, you could say the opposite. However, what I can say, it could be helpful. If you can help you open your mind to thinking in such a way and trying to experience directly something yourself. So it could be helpful to you, but I'm not saying that just anywhere I see as what it will be, but it's something paradoxical. Just imagine that what reality is, is an infinite energy. It's not the base of reality. If you experience, experiment yourself, what you think reality is based on our materialist culture, how you're educated and brought up. What do you think if you reduce everything to the, to the absolute reduction is, and what you end up with in your mind, if you sit down and take everything apart, analyze it, the sect, it take everything that you see apart and everything that you sink apart. What do you end up with?
Speaker 1 00:17:38 Nothing. And that means nothing as like a blank stork space, like the one between the stars. You know, the one that if the guy gets out for a space walk without the Michelin man suit, he explodes because there's no pressure there because supposedly it's nothing. So when they, when they look for where the, and then the quantum people, but they look down at the micro thing, they said at the company Hagen, after a few beers in Copenhagen, good Danish peers, they said, you can't get down and pinpoint an irreducible, particle subatomic particle. You can, you get down to that micro level and your active observation interferes with it. There's nothing objective there. So in a way, everything dissolves under analysis and you end up with nothing. And that's what we think is real news flash. There is no nothing, but you don't find something you're looking for.
Speaker 1 00:18:35 You don't find nothing. It's just an expression. You just don't find what you're looking for. And you don't find nothing cause nothing isn't there to be found, right? So you can't go to nothing. So any of you who think that just by dying, you get out of all the problems and you just become nothing and you don't have that headache anymore. You don't have that chamber embarrassment that then whatever it is, that's wrong because you're a continuum of energy and the energy is never destroyed. And your awareness, it's a very subtle continuum of energy. So what you think your awareness is? Somebody brings lightning flashes inside your brain, little mini lightenings goes, zip, zip, zip, zip zap. And you remember your name and you know how, who you voted for you do, right? That's energy. So this never destroyed once it's not in the brain.
Speaker 1 00:19:27 It goes somewhere else. When you dream, where is it? You think it's all just only inside the brain, you can be in Paris or an outer space, or have a siphon three, you know where you are, people dream actually. And they talk to other people in dreams. And then the other people notice that in some cultures they can communicate with other people who are also dreaming. And, uh, so my point is just imagine that, in fact, the base reality is infinite energy. Now, what would it, what would infinite energy be like? It would be completely quiescent witnessed it because it's infinite. So it would have nothing to do. Think about that. That's a paradox that doesn't make sense in a way, but it also it's logical. The energy is completely inexhaustible and infinite and therefore, and it's everywhere. And it is everything you could say.
Speaker 1 00:20:22 Like it's the substance of everything, but it doesn't do it itself. Doesn't create the things, but anybody who's creating things can draw on it without it being exhausted. That's we call that the clear light of the void and in the clear light is the light light. But it's clear. The clarity part is more important than it's for you. Another translation would be provides what I would be transparency. Okay. But in a way, then that fits with theistic people thinking God is love. You know, they think that I will love him, or God is love, you know, in, in John's gospel or Krishna the loving God, you know, et cetera. You know that they're loved because what is love, love is defined in at least in Sanskrit. And it should be, I think in Greece of the wish for the happiness of the beloved. So love is joy and delight in the happiness of the, of the beloved Reid and selfish, selfish desire is not really love in that sense.
Speaker 1 00:21:31 It's just because it's one's own happiness when it's seeking and using someone else for that purpose. And we, we sometimes do call that love too, but, but love to love is considered love. And the love that there. And if you have infinite energy that is infinitely drawable by anybody that needs energy, then that's the equivalent of love. It's whatever you need. Just take it. And that's reality. That's Nirvana. That's the reality. The Buddha discovered clear light at the boy. That's why he smiled. That's why he was happy. He didn't discover suffering as people. And if you hear, but somebody will say, Oh yeah, put it in. It's covered separate. That's ridiculous. Doesn't take a Buddha to discover suffering, just stop your toe. And you know about suffering. You don't have to be in light, but to be able to discover that reality is basically positive.
Speaker 1 00:22:24 It's basically love. It's basically abundance of energy and that energy is free and it's totally available. Everybody knows how to access it. And not only that, but we ourselves touch it. Did you ever wonder why you feel refreshed in the morning when you sleep at night? You know, you're really exhausted. You had to take exams, you had to work all day. You had to take care of five children to this, that the other had to be president. You had to do some horrible job and you go pass out and you just don't want to think about it after 16 hours of it or 18 or whatever it is after three, all nighters, for example. And then you wake up and you wow. Are ready to go. Well, where did that energy come from? Did that come from the dark? Nothing that you, you think you're ratifying when you fall asleep, that the base of reality is nothing.
Speaker 1 00:23:20 No, nothing would have nothing to give you. You should feel exactly as you felt when you fell asleep, but you feel better. Why somewhere energies coming to the cells of your body? Where does it come from? According to Buddha it's because when you get your consciousness out of the way, by being unconscious, by voluntarily sleeping and opening your boundary too, because actually when you're sad, unconscious, whatever can happen. You have no control. That's why some people get nervous when they can't sleep. But you are used to waking up feeling better. So you want to sleep when you're tired, right? And where does that energy come from? From the clear light of the void, the void also is not a, nothing. People are only wrong. The void is the fact that all relative things lack any non-relative component that is, this use your identity. You don't have an identity,
Speaker 3 00:24:14 Meaning a fixed essential thing.
Speaker 1 00:24:19 You like a bar code, like a little mini among colors that you like, like, whatever it might be, you, you don't have like your name, like Bob there's no Bob engraves on my heart chakra or my brain somewhere. Some neuron there's Bob. Bob is there like one of those things you wear it
Speaker 3 00:24:36 High school, right? Cynthia there isn't it not as thick
Speaker 1 00:24:42 People changed their name now you're Cynthia. Now you're Cindy now you're you don't like the name anymore. You get divorced and you say, I'm going to be Rebecca. I'm going to become, I want to call myself Kabel and I'm going to change my name to camera.
Speaker 3 00:24:55 You might say,
Speaker 1 00:24:57 So there is nothing that's about us that stays the same. We are constantly living, changing. Every cell in our body is replaced within some short period of time. That's great. What scientists have discovered. I love scientists, except I don't like the dogmas about materialism, but otherwise with refusal to look at something more subtle, but you know what I discovered recently, I was conversation with the physicist. Do you know, did you ever hear of a photon? You know what? That is, a photon is supposed to be a particle of light so that you explain seeing the, and the, in the gallery view here of the zoom, you see the other faces and everything. By the fact that there's light, they're illuminated and photons bounce off them and they're home they're in Los Angeles or wherever they are come to the camera, come through the camera, transmitted in some unconceivable manner. And they then are broadcast and show up on my screen. And those are all a bunch of photons. And then they interact with the optical neurons in the nerves, in the little subatomic particles. And then it goes <inaudible>. And then my, my bringing up in my memory bank, I pick up an image of what pier looked like last time I saw him, which was a very different shirt than the one he's wearing now, but I cannot recognize the shirt he's wearing he cow. And I say, Oh, Peter Sellers
Speaker 3 00:26:19 With a big
Speaker 1 00:26:20 Grin on his face. All right, those are all photons, but did you know something? But this physicist told me, actually, photons are pure myth.
Speaker 3 00:26:28 They're a fiction, boy,
Speaker 1 00:26:30 What speed of light? Why science theory speed of light is that it's a kind of absolute parameter. Did you know what do you know that limit? You know why? Because at the speed of light, as opposed to photon, it's mass invalid. So therefore it can't go any faster, cause it's already everywhere. Therefore, when it's a part of though, it's not right, because it's not up to speed. And it's just actually an analogy that they use to try to account for this weird fact, that light can be differentiated into different colors and things. And we can perceive things and structure and organize, you know, what is the buzzing blooming? Confusion of waves are part of it. They don't know what it is really. They don't. And they add besides which it's all surrounded by dark matter and energy, which luckily it's not nothing it's just dark and there. They haven't seen that yet, but they're just on the brink of understanding the nature of reality.
Speaker 4 00:27:32 Sure.
Speaker 1 00:27:35 So my point is this light is like that in a way, I understand it's touching the clear light in the sense of an infinite presence, infinite maths, which is light. And it's at a speed, which seems like a speech was relatively. But if it's already everywhere, it's not, there's no speed. It doesn't even move. And that is at the deepest level of sub. I have a new expression for it. Not subatomic. I call it sub particulate energy. Do you like that? Expression, sub particulate, no particles. This is Buddhist science, just pure waves through our energy infinitely everywhere. And if you become conscious at that level, that's being, that's your a Buddha and, and being conscious at that level without losing the ability to be conscious that every other structured level within rife, structured by people who are operating under the delusion, that we are all operating on.
Speaker 1 00:28:38 I assume, unless one of you is a Buddha, which I know Peter might be. I don't know. He has a Buddha smile for sure. I think he's actually changed his cheeks and his jaw to encompass his marvelous smile. Look at that. I can't quite, I can't even my mouth will not, uh, cheeks are not that mobile. I have to work to achieve a Peter cellar smile. Really? I'm not flattery Peter. It's a really out there smile. And my point is that a that's a Buddha smile and that's a smile of someone who subtly knows clear light. They know that their cheek is made of light. They know that their organs, their heart is made of light. The tree is made of light. Everything is it's sub particular energy that shapes itself. It comes into constructs the particles and makes up seemingly solid thing. The tree is not solid.
Speaker 1 00:29:32 The screen is not solid. Even the scientists will tell you. It's like Adam. And what is adamant has a nucleus and electron out in the bleachers someplace, mostly empty space. And then again, nothing in this empty space they're supposed to take, but there's never less, never nothing. Space is not nothing either. It's, it's something, you know, cosmic rays go through space sound goes across space. It's not nothing. It's a medium for waves. And so are we. And then we can reach that when we go into flow, how many of you have ever been in a flow state? Some of you jogging running through yoga hard. It's hard to do it meditating, but meditation can achieve flow state. So very much so, but it still takes effort because mind is always moving and distracting itself. So to go up the concentration to which flow state sitting still is very difficult, but sometimes running people do it or people who are great musicians, artists singing, playing their thing, losing themselves, or even writers when they lose themselves in the writing.
Speaker 1 00:30:35 Sometimes that happens to me. I'm a translator. And I, I, I love the Sanskrit books that I translate and I get up in the morning and I get to work. And then I've made a page and a half or even a few lines, some really difficult one. And I look upstairs and do this and that literally then Sally, dear, come help accept her. I'm not making it by myself the day it's called like that. Just time finish. Cause I get into a flow state with it. So the point is flow is where it's at know. Did you ever think that, you know, the material is scientists make a big fuss about mind? Burn burn does not matter. So we can't do with mind. No, no, no, no. Everything is matter. We're not going to look at my rock and look at ourselves with her. We're not going to exam.
Speaker 1 00:31:23 We're going to look at our microscope that we use to examine things, but we're not looking at the mind with which we decide to look through the microscope. When we're looking at that, that was just a brain brain is tricking us into thinking. We have a mind that they're so ridiculous. Real. It really is. Ridiculous. People want light is everywhere. That's why I said, it's an absolute for a materialist. And actually beyond the speed of light, there's different kinds of light at different speeds. It's only the mind subpar particular to mind, which is pure energy can reach, which is Buddha enlightened energy. Okay. So, so that's the thing. So, so the Tibetan myth, if you will, which is just a model of reality and they are, they are stake. They give you the caveat that whatever they say about it just tomorrow. So they're not saying myth is false and there's some sort of material fact that is true.
Speaker 1 00:32:17 They're saying that reality is indescribable, but it is experienceable that is you. And you do it every day. By the way, you know, sometimes you, when you have an extraordinary experience, I bet every one of you is having you wouldn't be in Peter's course. If you weren't into the arts, probably in some way, I hope film, which is the great art, the great teaching of our era and the future. You know, you make a documentary that's better than 10 hours of lecture. You know, you really show people what it is. You're trying to point, you're trying to get across. So you're into art. So you know that when you really do something great, that's really beautiful is when you give yourself to it and you're not calculating, is this cute? Or they like it in this carousel. It can do that. When you're doing that, you maybe that's where you can prepare and pump yourself up. But once you really delivery, you lose it like Joe Cocker.
Speaker 5 00:33:12 Yeah. You, uh, so,
Speaker 1 00:33:16 Well, it's like having epileptic fit practice. He just gave him the body to it. Hip hop artists are like that. James Brown, uh, you know, gray, you know, what's his name, all the wonderful artists. They, they, they lose themselves. They don't know what they're going to say next, but they really on, and that's why they have this impact. That's why the person who listens somehow they get out of their sort of, Oh yeah, I'm listening to this music. And it's like that. And he's famous and assets top of the chart and all this kind of stuff around things, these concepts around the experience. And sometimes you break through and you just feel the thing and you, and you realize that what you feel, you know, people can describe it or you might someone say, well, how was it? And you'll say a bunch of things, but you can't really convey what you encountered in the, in the event.
Speaker 1 00:34:09 So that in fact, even our ordinary experience transcends any description of our ordinary experience. And enlightenment is very much like that. And the enlightenment is simply noticing that and cultivating a way of freeing or experience from being in trapped in our bank of concepts. Because those bank of concepts force our experience to fit with what we expect it to be. So therefore we in prison of what we're allowed to experience because we have to identify and label it and we quickly do that ourselves. So when we, so we co what, what brings you down, you know, when you really grooving some, any experience is when something pops up in your mind, how great was it? Oh, Oh. Was how much fun was that? Oh, how good was it? Oh, was it good? Oh, and that's excellent. And it sucks after that. And then you're dissatisfied discontented and you could have been better.
Speaker 1 00:35:10 I know I'd rather see the real girl. I'm not going to go look at this poster of those crows, flying around the haystack and pronounce and flipping out and feeling the hot sun and promos and the crows. And thinking about just losing myself in the South of France with mr. Vango. No, no, because I'm going to be thinking about highlight and see the real one in the museum. I want to, you know what I mean? I'm comparing it to many things then I forgot about. So, so boarder achieved a level of what I call cognitive dissonance, embracing, reconciling experience, where he could hold the two opposite sides of a duality of things simultaneously, and actually see the depth and complexity of the things beyond just a bunch of alternatives. What's called non dual experience. And the Tibetan world is based on that, based on that is the fulfillment of the human potential.
Speaker 1 00:36:10 That's where wisdom becomes love. Wisdom becomes. It's not just a love of wisdom. Wisdom is the love of everyone, of our love, our whole life, the love of even in animal life. You know, I used to be annoyed with my mother because she considered inanimate objects. We're aligned and we will be walking home from a party on a Christmas Eve or a Thanksgiving or something at some friend's place. And she would see the junk have broken, slightly chipped up broken plaster, statue of Venus de Milo or something. And she would make me and my brothers and my dad carry it home. And then she tasted to make us whole it over to some guy. And he put, we fixed it up and then she'd give it to somebody. She had so much stuff. He had to give it to somebody else, but you'd pass away. People called me up and said, well, Betsy loaned me a fireplace mantle piece, which I've enjoying
Speaker 6 00:37:06 In the last 30 years. Would you like to have it back now? I'm living in Baltimore. I said, no, are you kidding? She wants you to have,
Speaker 1 00:37:14 And she just called it a loan to make sure you take care of it. And I used to think that was so crazy, but she was so wise, so stupid trees and plants and houses and objects they're alive. They're wonderful. The reality is beautiful and it's very worthy of respect. Like just like old people and all animals or animals have souls and minds too. Don't fall for that crap. Okay. So that's the Tibetan thing. So this sector is a symbol of compassion. So the European union of wisdom and compassion is this where you hold them across like that. You're saying that means wisdom and compassion. And when you look at that, this one then represents what they call your magic body. Because when you become fully enlightened, you're aware of every cell of your body, your awareness is in all your cells of your body, not just in your verbalizing brain and image imagery, it's your whole being those things, your hands, your legs, your feet.
Speaker 1 00:38:18 Now, you know, you've got snow and, and you also know, and you can also be on the verbal level as well, but, uh, that's your magic. And this is your, your wisdom, knowing the clear light where you're, you're one with the flows, the flow reality of the universe or of the Buddha verse. It's not really a universe. It's an infinity verse. It's not a multi versatile. You would say it in failovers okay. So let's now let's meditate together. Okay. Let's do a ritual right now. The only way to understand it and it's do it so meditate, you know where you're going to take, you should sit up straight if you can. And if you're in a chair, it's okay, just cross your ankles. You don't have to pop into a Lotus posture unless you feel like it, you know, where you cross your legs like that in your lap, you put your hands flat one on another and touch your thumb tips. And you tuck your chin a little bit, let your shoulders come back. So you have good posture. And at first it might feel a little stressful, but actually the reason for doing it so that your nose should be directly above your belly button.
Speaker 1 00:39:30 If they were aligned, if you're, if they're a plumb line tacked onto the tip of your nose, it should touch the belly button. And that's a perfectly poised setting position. And your eyes are half closed, not closed and not wide open. There they're limited, but you can see out of just under the lids, sort of around the tip of your nose or a little in front of, if you have a small lows tip of your nose, if you have a long nose like Cyrano the tip of your tongue, and in order to create a very boring visual field so that you will learn to inhabit your heart, not always your forehead and not always think that you're sort of, you're running face first through the universe. You drop your awareness to be centered at the heart and the chest. You know, not at the beating heart, but in the middle of the heart, in the middle of the chest. As you know, that's the reason for the posture. And when you need to sit for a long time, you know, road does philosopher, you know, the thinker, Sierra, you know, that thing like this, you could tell, he couldn't be thinking in that posture for a very long time without having serious eye Anika. You know, it's really, that's a lack of meditation in Western philosophy. Believe me, the guy's like it looks constipated. He needs Alexa. It doesn't need to think read philosophy anyway, nevermind actually tease him.
Speaker 1 00:40:59 Okay. So now, now I meditate now the, what you do and you meditate, you withdraw your awareness within your body. You let your mind settle at the heart and the ms. Center of your chest a little bit toward the back, but not inside the spine. And just in front of the spine, like you had a kind of nexus there it's like your control center or something like that. It's not a fixed thing, but you're just sort of trying to try to withdraw. They're get out of your being at the register point of your visual field, withdraw from your visual consciousness. That's why you leave your eyes half open. So they make a boring visual field is seeing the sort of ground in front of you type of thing. And you learn to feel present and awake without being backing up. You're ever, you know, being totally involved in your visual field, which is where we spend most of our waking time.
Speaker 1 00:42:03 Okay. So you do that. Okay. Then you imagine melting all your sense, perceptions, just letting go of everything almost as if you were falling asleep and withdrawing into your heart center in a kind of cool resting place, but don't fall asleep. Just imagine that. And that's called imagine, seeing through all structures and going into open space and just being in the center of that open space, and then from being in that open space, reconstruct your mind and body in some ideal way. Imagine that you're feeling the best you've ever felt, even though you're still sitting still, you're kind of in a completely poised alert, flow state, and that you're looking at your, at the world, from the forehead in your mind's eye, not from your regular eyes and you're in whatever you think of as your ideal place, whether it's sitting on top of Mount Tahmoh Pius, looking at the view case you're in San Francisco or sitting somewhere, or you'd like to be in the mountains or somewhere you once visited.
Speaker 1 00:43:38 I always think of myself as being in Tibet, South of the mountain called Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, looking southward toward a bunch of snow peaks that are even higher than Mount Kailash, but not much 27, 8,000 feet. And then with the beautiful round Lake in front of me, sitting on a grassy bluff over the round Lake, that's what I always visualize and imagine myself. But anyway, you just imagine your favorite place to be, and you're sitting there. And then imagine that the beings that you most admire in life are sitting up there in a tree. That's the Juul tree. You will look supposedly looked at that. That's the jewel tree to bet the jewel tree of Tibet. It's like a giant Jack in the Beanstalk tree. It kind of grows out of a little Island in the middle of the Lake and suddenly it's there.
Speaker 1 00:44:31 And it goes way up into the heavens bigger than a Redwood tree. And in the tree, there are different like Juul, bubbles and their Thrones in them. And then all of those Thrones are sitting, whoever you love the most. If you're a deep monotheists, God is sitting there. If you're an Jesus, if you're a Christian or Moses or rabbi Hillel, or my mama D is a rabbi Akiva. If you're Jewish or the messengers of Allah, be better, not put Muhammad in a, supposed to take them in a physical body, but there's someone called El chitter. That is Sophie's house. It was like a angel and the Muslims had angels, but not too many. There was worried about a Donald tree, but anyway, think of some representative of our lot. There can't think of Allah as having a body or even Muhammad. They got upset, but Krishna, if you're into Hindu in some more than mother got us put out through our portraits.
Speaker 1 00:45:32 If you have any live teachers who have meant the world to you, take of them as being there. And they're just like Obi wan Kenobi after a Jedi master, after he dies in the star Wars, trilogies, you know, cardiology is whatever it is and that they're all sitting there smiling at you and say, Luke, trust the force or whatever your name is. Trust the force. And they are radiating light rays like Jedi energy to you. And it's filling you up with energy. So you hit, <inaudible> like as if it was flow state to sit and you feel like a kind of inner calm and peace welling up within you, not from any outer source, but somehow by the encouragement and the blessing and the energy of all of these, these refuge beings, these beings who are kind of a little bit your protectors and your inspires and your, your, your, your refuge beans, your loved ones. If you like, you can put them there too. Who love you.
Speaker 1 00:46:41 They're all there in the sort of Astro body form blessing you. And then imagine that all of the other beings, all your friends and even your enemies and your neutral people that you don't know, but you see them in a vast crowd. Hold the people in the street who've been celebrating the last days of the freedom from lunacy, Pamela, Jo, and you imagine they're all there. And they're looking at you, they're, they're in some subtle body form, and they're looking at your subtle meditative body. And they see you as sort of reflecting the light of all the enlightened beings. You're thinking about. You could have Jesus and Mary, if you're a Christian there, you can have angel Gabriel, anybody, you know, whoever whoever's means something to you a lot, you imagine them there. And actually, if they are really caring and powerful and enlightened beings, they are there because they are present to everyone.
Speaker 1 00:47:40 The more enlightened to be is the more infinite their embodiments are and the more in countless and numerable, they are a such event and legend myth in the good sense for me is that the compassion being the good guys are way stronger than Caesar. The good guys are not victims of Caesar. No way. They are more powerful than sheer seizure. Wonderful, legendary kind of story. But the great adept who a must sit down, agreed at a partner. Samba w went to Tibet. He was invited by the Tibet emperor, who was a conqueror. And when he met him at the borderline, the emperor came out with his entourage, his generals and the Nobles and people Sharmane. And he met this guy who was coming, walking out the mountain paths. And then when he met, the guy said, Oh, hello. Oh, you're a damper. Yeah. Nice. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:48:33 I'm coming to how many to accept your invitation. And then the generals and the courtiers were mad, the bodyguards of the emperor. And they said, you have to borrow the emperor. And he said, no, I don't. I never bound him for us. He said, and for hers, I see him for a surprise. And for like dust motes glittering in the sun, I don't about him for us. And they were very angry and they were threatening him with a capital offense, not about emperor. It's a really, and then he said, he'd be nice. Your bowel to you guys. And he waved his head like this. And flames came out of the tips of his fingers and they all duct to avoid the flames. So they bow to him. It would say, you can say it's a legend, but actually they think the people in the Jewish and think it's a true story.
Speaker 1 00:49:20 And that there are magical beings who have such abilities, but they don't show them off just for the heck of it. He had to do that to get, to change their attitude about how military might makes, right. And that's where power lies. And he was saying power lies in knowing and being a flow, being a being who lives in flow, because there's infinite energy. You can tap for a special purpose if we don't do it just to fool around, but you do it. Maybe sometimes we need miracle. And sometimes we do. So we, we live America is a country of miracles. We live in a planet full of oligarchs, dictators, and tyrants. And we almost going that way ourselves. And we now had a miracle really.
Speaker 1 00:50:08 And people are freaked out about it. Some people's okay, I'm sorry. That's a digression. So you're meditating. Okay. And you're in this ideal situation. Now in this ideal situation, you think about how lucky you are to be a human being. That's the first theme to think about you count your blessings. You are not only a major human being with full intelligence and all your senses and your health. Uh, relatively speaking with a few, maybe aches and pains here and there. But basically you are like that. Or you wouldn't be here. Alertly here in the zoom with us and you into, we were seeking to do something meaningful and beautiful in life because you love art and you even, or you're seeking education. You're not just seeking education just to get X credential. That's an aspect. Of course, it might be necessary for livelihood, but you are seeking to really develop your abilities and your insight and your sensibility and your ability to appreciate and to create and, and, and what to create.
Speaker 1 00:51:18 What, what is it, what's it all about? What is life about? What do people really love? What do I love and how can I communicate that to others? To see the beauties that I see in the world. And that's for you. That's what kind of amazing being that you are. And that was not any accident you did not have that did not just roll out of some gene. That is not, you know, your mom and dad, maybe not doing that. Maybe he's a lawyer and she's a, she's a mom, you know, or she's a school teacher. I don't know what, but they're not doing what you're trying to do. And they, but they want you to do something more than what they did, because they know that you, they, you came with you, you came from somewhere into their, into mom's womb. And then dad been bothered here for awhile.
Speaker 1 00:52:06 And then she gave birth to you. And then she nursed you for years. And she's new. You are somebody special. Did you come with your own karma? You know, which is not a ritual in a church. It's a right of life. It's a right of putting your seal on life, embracing it, sharing your love with you, living beings. That's what you're here for. And sharing it in a way of kindling, their positive energies and their happiness and their blissfulness from your kindling, like a candle, like a light, a hundred candles without extinguishing itself. That's what you're here for. And your parents know that. So they supported you and they still do.
Speaker 1 00:52:57 Even if they are gone probably a year young, they are, they are, they will, they support from heaven or wherever they are. And next life, they leave behind something to support. But the point is you evolves and you evolve from much lesser forms of life, capable of much less, much less reach deep, programmable and reprogrammable by the great karma of causation. Put it took the word karma out of the ritual of the high priests of his day. And he made karma mean evolutionary causes of action. So you are, you, you act generously. You, you, you learn to enjoy giving. You learn to open your, you have a hand like this because in a previous life you gave gifts. That's why your hand open like that. So nice. And it doesn't have vicious clause unless you attach some false fingernail to look like a cloying person, but otherwise you have will pick to figure now, as you couldn't really claw anything and break them, break a nail, and you have very soft fingertips to sense and to caress and to feel a tenderness and to also play piano or guitar, or do coconut flavor things with it.
Speaker 1 00:54:16 But it really comes from me a hand. It comes from generosity of previous lives. And it's the open hand of giving, giving a gift and generosity and ethicality and what is it, the color? It isn't just following rules. As a calorie is living with empathy where you will imagine being the other persons you relate to, and you know how you you're there for experience for through there, by putting yourself in their shoes, looking out of their eyes, you experienced what you do, how it affects them. And so ethicality means you don't want to be harmful to them when something really displeases them or hurts them. You don't want to be like that. And that's where ethicality comes from. It comes from empathy. It doesn't just come from. Somebody told you, you had to do this for that. That's a, that's a kind of ethics and following rules, but that's not a real one real ones. The real ones is internal. Is it your human sensitivity to others? Have we have, we have the ability to identify all that. We have, what they call mirror neurons, you know, even chimpanzees also do they discover it in monkeys in the laboratory and where else, but Italia
Speaker 1 00:55:26 And pathetic mirror neurons. Anyway,
Speaker 3 00:55:30 Hey, Hey,
Speaker 1 00:55:33 It's a neurological lab. Someone came, they saw that the monkey's brain who was watching the other monkey, the monkey who had been in the previous experiment, that when he was watching the other monkey goes to whatever loops they're supposed to do with electronics on their head. The one that they hadn't disconnected yet, they realized that his brain was going through all the exact things that the monkey that was looping, the loop was doing a lot. He was sitting still. So from that, they discovered what they call mirror neurons, which is why we model ourselves, which is why film, for example, is such a powerful medium, which is why some really bad, violent films are dangerous and who they play them in high tension neighborhoods and stressed and tend to have fights and gang problems and violence. After watching a movie, let's say, model the mirror, neurons want a fire by making that person act like whoever was, you know, this whether or not vigilante action or whatever it is. So, you know, there's real responsibility and being a great teacher through the art of film.
Speaker 1 00:56:38 So this is what you meditate. And then when you're meditating on how great you are, this is where you begin because you don't respect yourself enough. It's just surprising. People say, Oh, Americans are so, yeah, proud and arrogant. This and that. No, th th even the worst ones who act the worst kind of narcissistic, pathological arrogance, which we've all been watching all the time and the whole media for four years now, when they are like that, because they actually have no self regard at all. They have, they're broken by a very sad upbringing. If you read the sisters book, the psychiatric sisters, more terrible situation. And so you don't have a good opinion of herself because you think you're just, what does the material scientists say? You're 85 cents worth of cheap chemicals in a bag of water. That's what a human being is. You have, you don't really have a mind.
Speaker 1 00:57:34 It certainly don't have a soul. That stuff about being reborn, having future life. He wrote in pesto, that's all mythologies, superstition. That's ridiculous. We all know that you just come to nothing, actually, you already nothing, because you don't have a mind. It's just, the brain is tricking you into thinking that you are it's epi phenomenon. That's what they tell you. That's how you're brought up. And if you're still in a religious family, so you're brought up to think you're a seller. And you know, you have a little spark of God in there. That's a little better because at least there's a spark of God. Put your center in your bad news and you'd better not have too much fun on set you on a retreat or something. No. So point is, do you reflect on those narratives that you have in your mind, the myths of your worthlessness that you have in your mind that make you feel meaningless, that you're alive?
Speaker 0 00:58:50 The Bob Thurman podcast is brought to you in part, through the generous support of the Tibet house, us Menlo membership, community, and listeners like you, and is produced here at creative commons, no derivatives share a like license. Please feel free to share and repost on your favorite social media. Thanks for tuning in.
