Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob 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 is the Dalai Lamas cultural center in America, All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 282 facing death to live more fully.
Speaker 4 00:01:14 Our job today in the new year is to, uh, to help people love their lives by learning to love their death, because you know, people say life is great and there is this terrible thing. You know, I have that I have had the experience, which, which you had been spared so far of being in academia for 50 years, dealing with people who had the idea that very entrenched and it still is the major idea. Actually, even, even in Asia, there's a big idea in non-Buddhist circles, that Buddhism is life rejecting. That Buddhism hates life. And they're like, you know, the Pope in his book two books ago, he wrote that he couldn't understand how people could be Buddhist. And to accept that everything is just misery, you know, he had, he had taken the wrong understanding this, I think maybe Benedict had done it, who probably wrote that chapter for him, for John Paul, that people, you know, the first noble truth is that is the inevitable thing that put us just rubbing our nose in.
Speaker 4 00:02:32 But that is what people think, you know, but the point is as long as we're so scared of death, when I was trying to grab a quick lunch before I'm coming up to turn this on, because I became preoccupied in something and forgot to eat breakfast or lunch this morning, um, someone, so where are you going? Well, I'm going to go do this thing on death and a whole I'm so scared of death. The lady said she was sleeping and I had to, I spent a minute or two to urge her not to be so scared. Although the fear of what might come after death as Hamlet rightly said is what one is really scared of. Not tell because actually people don't know what it is anyway. So I decided this would be the topic. How could we possibly consider death to be a good thing?
Speaker 4 00:03:31 Well, because we think we should consider life is a good thing. Well, high and people go, they raise their glass and they go no Haim to life. And yet death is part of life. So if death is bad, then life sucks. And then you get crazy people who try all kinds of ways to be mortal. For example, the chief engineer of Google is waiting in 2045. He takes, he takes a half a pound of supplements every day, uh, in order to stay alive until 2045, because he predicts at that time, the singularity will occur or AI will make it possible that everyone alive at that time can download into an immortal machine and then remain in that, you know, I guess parked replaceable, titanium and behold. I always joke that, you know, cool, how come he hasn't watched the dialects in doctor who he doesn't realize how awful that would be, but nevermind before it is, death is a good thing.
Speaker 4 00:04:37 And therefore life is a good thing because death is part of life. That's the main thing. So here, but then our attitude about it has very much to do with what do we think of happening after death when we leave this course body, but from some scientific point of course, body, even modern point of view it's course because the scientists tell us for me of atoms and molecules and subatomic particles, which then generate RNA DNA and then some cells and et cetera, et cetera. And finally we human. And so the more subtle body is the body at that deep level, that quantum level that they don't know what it is. So their options about what will happen after a one there's nothing happens. So we just become nothing. Okay. And then the second one, the religious option is heaven or hell, depending on the will of a God, depending on one's attitude toward that card.
Speaker 4 00:05:34 And one's deeds, according to the rules set forth by that gun. And that's the second option. The third option is the inner scientific option. What I called, which rules out nothing as, as insane and not incoherent and can't happen possibly cause nothing doesn't happen. Nothing doesn't happen. That's the whole point, what it means, the word it happen. It would be dependence on, uh, some sort of, um, scientifically you could depend on a highly compassionate beings like Avalokiteshvara or tower art or Jesus or Krishna or somebody who would help you. And that could be part of the inner scientific view, like in the book of the dead book of the natural liberation through hearing in the, between or the so-called. Well, who's the dad. They tell those who are undeveloped contemplative plea to rely on the Lord of great compassion. And that's a scientific idea that there would be that because of the idea of the beginning of this ness of life, it says life has been beginning all beings.
Speaker 4 00:06:40 There has been infinite amount of time and therefore cannot exclude the fact that many of them have become perfectly enlightened and perfectly compassionate and Omni competent beings, perhaps not omnipotent, but Omni competent. And those on the competent piece are there to help one. And in times of helplessness, when binded may maybe unprepared as going through a death through the being blasted into the vast bliss energy of the universe and now, and then being frightened. So creating within that place, some sort of terrible fear, we're saying create some terribly scared and compressed and constricted embodiment. And to help point in that time, there really be it's, it's logical that there should be limitless numbers of TAROS and ever look at their scars or Jesus's or whatever, not just one. You know, the idea of there being just one is cooked up by far a Tarion religion.
Speaker 4 00:07:35 They'd want people to only believe in them and not believe in the goodness of the universe. So in the scientific one, you have that option B is to just depend on someone like that. And then see though the best option and ours that we like to encourage people toward is to become an expert Yogi or yoga name, meaning yoking yourself to death, actually you're your life to death, the highest level of yoga, because what death does by removing you from all sorts of, you know, eludes a restructures, it brings you into reality itself. And then this is a really hard thing for us to, to encompass ourselves or to really make real to ourselves. Because we were brought up in authoritarian cultures that have terrorized us by making us think that nature or reality is bad and it's dangerous and it will hurt us. And so we must hide from it in some way, or, and or we must resort to them the high priest or the president or the king, or some sort of political authority, social equality, because there are because it's dangerous.
Speaker 4 00:08:46 So we are, we're very ingrained with that idea, nature red in tooth and claw, you know, it was a whole elaborate destruction of our planet by trying to make a different place because we think the planet is no good. And, um, you know, our whole culture built on God. I don't wish I don't call it civilization. I call it kind of backward cultural. And so it's very hard for us to imagine that reality is good, but death is when we come smack up against that reality. And then the only thing that isn't good when we smack up it is that we are not ready to open wide. Let go. As, as Andrew said so eloquently and let go completely and just be in that goodness. No, we're scared. We think maybe it seems good. At first we get a rush and we go down a tunnel and we feel blessed or something.
Speaker 4 00:09:37 But then we were conditioned to feel when we feel blessed, there's going to be a horrible price to pay for that. And something terrible will happen to ours. We don't open to it. So we create a kind of shell. We resist to follow the full river that Maslow talked about and what you said, Andrew. And, and we then create a situation of stress for ourselves. I was suffering by, and then that we carried out then on into some other embodiment because we only feel safe, but we haven't bodied that boundary that makes us different from what isn't ours, so that we can sort of fended off and or consume it. One of the other so that we won't, we're not trust, boundary less, which may be the way of being death, dead and alive at the same time, which is Buddha hood, no Buddha, Buddha hood means you're constantly vast and wide open.
Speaker 4 00:10:28 And yet you were aware of all the illusory realities too. And they are also indivisible from your wide openness. So you really enjoy all of them and you will become in front of life. This is the one thing is that when we say death, death is good or death is great. People was the desk terribly morbid. And then these people who have given up so good life and the first class worries, they have succumb to the biggest problem. And they're just seeking extinction. I needed people. Wrongly take Nirvana means extinction, which it doesn't. It means extinction of suffering, not instinction of life, not instinction of you. It means extinction of suffering in the doulas. He put his teaching of the great Sutra on mindfulness of the focus of mindfulness, the very last thing. And that's so true about the Nirvana. He says, where is this there?
Speaker 4 00:11:27 What it says? And then he says, well, when you were free of this fearful craving, it's all the good teams in life. He said, he doesn't say it somewhere out of life. It's somewhere in some state, other than life, which is what we wrongly think death is. He says it's in all the good things because right, you can't really enjoy the good things unless you're able to die. The French are so smart. You know, what are they call an orgasm mall, the little desk, because you know, you don't do it. Doesn't last forever. They're not that good at orgasms. They're good, but not that quick. So it's just a little one for enlightenment is the big debts, whatever. Then everything is orgasm. Even cooking. Dinner is sarcasm. Even seeing a mountain in front of you is orgasm. Even being in any body is orgasm, even connecting with the being who is suffering is who orgasm, which is you find that they have that capacity in themselves to fully let go.
Speaker 4 00:12:33 And there. And that capacity is what cures them of their suffering. So, you know, you, you therefore finding them yourself, which is complete oh wide open bliss. And then you were able to kind of reflect to them embodiments or whatever it is, the emanation body that's, what's called. You're able to have millions of bodies. You can be embodied in a million ways, not just one detail body running around in one little Tesla could be a fleet all over the universe like star Trek. You know, you can beam into everyone, every place with an embodiment that will help because you're not omnipotent. And you can force suffering beings to let go of their suffering and to experience the joy of meeting the mother. I'm so glad you read that. You know, the mother clear light means reality itself. It is. That is death. The mother is also you death seen in a positive way as the foundation, as the substance of life, actually, because there is no nothing you see when you think you're where you're going to just be annihilated and nothing.
Speaker 4 00:13:44 And I realized it's what, another thing, Andrew, you know what? I realized that in a way they're kind of deep to materialists because you know, they, you know, when you say that you you're free of what never was born, you become aware of being what was important, therefore cannot die. So therefore that's why they say you're already nothing to people. That's why materialism is such a diabolical destructive world. Why it's destroying the planet and why people who really convinced themselves of it were able to kill a million people and dropping a bomb. And it's nothing to them because everything is nothing else. So they're not really harming everybody. Cause the beings already nothing. There's just the illusion of having flesh and blood bushes. They call it the epi phenomenon of the nervous system, the brain. But really they know that your consciousness is as an illusion.
Speaker 4 00:14:36 And you're really nothing. They don't know that nothing is illusion is their problem, you know, but the point is, they're clever enough to know that you, when you, what you really are is what you already are. So we know that everyone already is in Nirvana, but they put it's ignorance of that fact that makes them suffer. And then you can omnipotence cannot force them to give up their ignorance. They are the ones who have to open beyond it with wisdom. So what they reach should be, we should be very cautious and careful to make sure that you're clear that the mother clear light is the loving mother and she and her loving mother wants you to have everything. And when you have everything, you, you even enjoy death and you enjoy all kinds of life and you realize death does not destroy life. Death makes life possible.
Speaker 4 00:15:32 That's why it's something great. There could be no life. If there was no deaths, you, in other words, life is lost. Everything interrelating and nothing is being something totally unrelated to anything else and for something to be. And yet unrelated to anything else is simply an incoherent expression. Because to be you interconnect to be European with everything and in a way, ultimately you are everything. And so the great death of enlightenment is where you become dark body of reality, meaning you become obese. So you would be me. I would be you. We would all be Michaels. Even the picture of Michael standing there in front of the Tiger's nest. So, so, so the third option is really great. So that the third option is where we become yogis. And you can use every yoke ourselves to Nirvana. And, and remember now when you go to a rock concert, when you were younger, maybe, or maybe you still too, and you, and it's really fantastic.
Speaker 4 00:16:37 And they really do. They, they, they get into the heart, the musicians and they just give right out, it comes right through them like a medium reality and energy and love and life. And you would just go away. And then when someone says, how was it? You say I was totally blown away. Okay. So, so say the mobster when they blow them away, bang, they kill them. So point is, but when you say I was blown away, you don't think you were killed, but what was killed was your sense of dissatisfaction? Your sense of, am I going to have fun? Is it going to be enough fun? Did I have fun yesterday? And if I have fun, when I have problem later, oh, all kinds of our fear of life. So fear of death is fear of life. Not fear of death, even if you think it's nothing, it's how can you be afraid of nothing?
Speaker 4 00:17:28 I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of nothing. That means you not afraid. And if your fear of, if your fear of hell, then you're just swallowing a version of God as a father who is not a mother, as someone who is mean and sadistic, and has a nasty situation waiting for people who don't do the right thing in a flatter, in the right way, which is projecting some statistics, ridiculous personality, like the personality of some narcissistic, crazy ruler, God, that's a really bad thing to do. So, so, so here's the point? No. So now why do we have options? We have to skip any some, I have some more things in here, but I'm going to skip them. So, cause I want to keep it in your same 27 minutes, which I will do. And you know, so, you know, death is, and re-introduction to everybody.
Speaker 4 00:18:19 When they hit death, they hit their bone. Buddhahood they become embraced by the mother of total goodness, someone degree in a total bliss explosion. And they feel when they get there, they, they have totally open because they don't have any closing bodies that's grabbing. They leave that behind and they're totally open for split second. And she is always totally open and she introduces them to day are as invested as she is. And that they're totally good and everything is blissful and good, including all life and all the other beings. And then they carry with them this ignorance, which reinforced by being terrorized by human cultures and they, and they think well, but it seems great, but there must be something waiting outside, wherever it is or beyond the seeming infinity, there must be some nasty thing that will get me. So then they quash it down and they push off that mother and they say, I'm going to be a fierce, tough rhinoceros, or I'm going to be a, I'm going to be a rich human and cut my poodle properly.
Speaker 4 00:19:27 Or I'm going to whatever, I'll be a poodle and be taken care of nicely by some first-class lady, whatever they have stupidly fantasizing is a good way to be short of being everything short of being total happiness as an ending, and then the encumbrance that all beginnings. So then when you become a Yogi in life, so, and then this is where human beings we are shaped. We are in a planet that is beautifully shaped by very powerful, enlightened beings. They can create it, but they take the what, what our ignorance mutual ignorance between us and the gods and the demons have some kind of swirling, pounding energy of various degrees. Of course, that's an fineness and they shape different mandarins Buddha labs. This is the borderline called meaning tolerable made by Buddha. And in doubt, they create a theory. They shape things where it becomes possible for animals to become Manimal mammals and mammals, to be humans and humans, to stop short from becoming God's pleasure, gods or formless formulas, or a form for pure form girls and stay vulnerable humans dying frequently to evolve more, do more powerfully.
Speaker 4 00:20:48 And you get the YouTube to really follow the aim of becoming everything that everybody ever wanted, which is what Buddhahood is. It's where you want of total bliss and happiness. And then you become the agent of what everybody else wants effortlessly, because you love them all so much. You realize you love everything. You love all beads and you, you don't have to be Buddhist either go to Nanette. I said the most beautiful thing I found it yesterday. He said that that what it is is we're all evolving in such a way. And the, the one, you know, their own sound, you know, the, the mother energy, he puts it in, you know, the translators always make he, he, he, because they're all monotheists, but actually he doesn't use a gender pronoun according to some trends you feminists translators, which I think is very good. And so they want everything to do this, but what they do is that they, they nurture life in their homes to, in order to fashion, deans of incomparable beauty, that is so where would the bees themselves will evolve and fashion themselves into beings of incomparable, beauty of conceivable, unexpected, stylish, and beauty, which is what Buddhists are, are beings that you just see them.
Speaker 4 00:22:09 And they just, you just completely realize life is good because something is that beautiful, you know, and that's what they are, you know? And, uh, and, and not, I post like that, you know, and he was in this real violent place where the Hindus and Muslims were fighting in this 15th century, early 16th century. And he never fought back in any way. And he just sang songs to that bar as they're about to kill him. And then when they would hear his song, they would just leave him alone and let them hang out and sing more songs. Even Barbara or the Concor who conquered India, the mogul didn't kill her and let her know that she tried to have him in around the, around the pallets, but he refused. He went out to sing the, in the woods, like palaces that much incomparable beauty. So Nirvana is beauty because it doesn't abandon Samsara it only destroys suffering.
Speaker 4 00:23:04 It doesn't destroy life. And the reality of life is it's driven by bliss and bliss. And therefore, since death is in the encounter with bliss, bliss, that is too powerful to be held exclusively in any body. It's a bit because it's everything. And only when you are everything, but your body is everything. Can you really experience that please? And luckily when you experienced it, it automatically flows to everyone else. So not only do you get whatever happened to you ever wanted, you become the agent of other beings, happy endings, and you never do not abandon him. You know? And, and the Kala chakra, I particularly am fond of because it's a form that he showed while he was teaching that there is no this and no that on both your pig boats, your heap peak, it's more graphic than just vulture. It's vulture heap. Like when vultures make a heap around the carcass, you know, they heaped themselves up because they were trying to get at that flesh grim there's no, this, no that no nothing, you know, but at the same time, it south India, he was manifested as this being who was time made of time.
Speaker 4 00:24:23 And he wanted to encourage people who love the Bhagavad Gita. But of course, they're scared of seeing the ultimate powers. They think of as God, as time to destroyer. And he wanted to show time times the savior times, giving you the time to unfold to where you can finally have the courage to be everything with no boundaries at all. And, and, and open to all beings suffering and therefore freeing themselves in, you know, spontaneously lungi drover truth from their suffering. He wanted them to see that. So he had this weird being who's red, white, and blue, and he has these white arms and red arms and black arms front is black. By the way, black is right in the middle. It's the noblest one. And then there's white. Then there's red in the middle of that and white and then goals and a little bit cold.
Speaker 4 00:25:15 And it's snare is hiding there. And then Mrs. Mrs. Carla chakra is golden. And it's such a beautiful thing because it's proves it's sort of an artistic way, of course, proving to proving poetically. You know, not necessarily in rigorous logic because it's beyond rigorous logical, please do right up in the face of it, proving that he became by coming. Buddha did not abandon a single suffering being because his enlightenment is not only everywhere in space, infinite space, but in eternal time. And therefore he's present when someone who is a cockroach or an amoeba ended up being a being in 2,500 years ago was going to be a Buddha themself in some other life and planet and whatever, maybe, or even on the same one in some other time. And that he would be there at that time, which to him was right now. So it's a moment that doesn't exclude past and future.
Speaker 4 00:26:14 It contains all past and future. And especially, you know, contains is to the compassion, your presence, winds, the beings, as they evolve through time, you, the time you uphold for them, you see to it, they evolve as quickly as possible. You optimize their path of evolution because you have the competency to do it. You don't have omnipotence to blast them into your moment as their moment, because their moment is excluding your fullness of your moment, their cat. They can't imagine being in every moment themselves, they've shut down their, their, their sense of having been in their own infinite paths because they suffered in that past. And therefore they're very, should they narrow their awareness in Tucson as little as possible that they can control around themselves. So how could they possibly be an older, their potential futures, but you are, and therefore you are seeing to it.
Speaker 4 00:27:13 You're the, you're the, you're the signpost at the crossroad that says this way, not that way, unless they're the type of person who likes to do opposite of this typo in that case, they say it that way, knowing you will go this way. Cause they know they know you because they feel one with you. You know what a Buddha is. So anyway, so that's so, so, so, so used it, I loved it where you ended up and that was so great, Andrew. So I'm going to end up at the same place with you. You know, the death of death you talk about and that's, that is it. And even you, there's a form of Manjushri who is the male form of the God of wisdom. You know, who, who can matter if it manifests a form for Yama because he loves Yammer. Cause he loves Dez and Yama.
Speaker 4 00:28:02 The God of death, Yamaha is death, which is called , which means the killer of death. Or as I like to say it in modern post James Cameron universe, the Terminator, the exterminator of determinator, determinator, exterminated you know, and so that's what love, love destroys a notion of death, that it is the opposite of life. And thereby death becomes the reinforcer of life and the expander of life. And then the mother of life, actually, in fact, and this is, this is the happy ending. That way. This is what the death of death means, eternal life and be Ty yous and be titles. And, and they, all of us here at this new year, do what we can do to become yogis and yoga needs, uh, to discover how to do it. And a very first place you could start would be to study with Andrew holler check, as I tried to do, but I'm a bad student has had to become lucid in your dreams because if you can become lucid in your dreams, which you can do, and Andrew knows how to teach you, uh, you can, you will be able to identify yourself and a more subtle form of level of embodiment where you can actually be more than you are in your court when you were constricted by your flesh and blood corresponding, which is important that you're constricted by it.
Speaker 4 00:29:37 It doesn't mean you should go and just live as a dream, but you begin to realize that your sense of boundary is in the, in the course body as though sort of a dream, you're also in a Pardot and you'll be able to let go more, which means be more generous, be more empathetic with others and ethical, be more tolerant of others bothering you and so forth and not angry and not hating them and so on and be more wise and be a better yoga and yoga Annie. And so dream yoga is a way to really be a Yogi and then really convince yourself that your consciousness can function in ways beyond the five senses that materialism teaches us. As all we can do is be in our five senses. Meanwhile, we're also running around all the time daydreaming and we're in 10 different experiences of the past.
Speaker 4 00:30:22 Also Peter and also heartburn, half of our brain and half of him anticipating all the horrible things that might happen to us. And we're hardly in the moment, which if it keeps going by, you know, between past and future, and it's really hard to get into, unless you, it incorporates everything, that sort of thing. Um, um, millions of people have become as enlightened as Buddha in the mind, although the check-in Mooney put out there or the past three Buddhas in Cherokee money being the fourth. And, um, and those beings who have become that enlightened in the mind have therefore been able to travel through time, the way it does. And therefore they have verified that Buddha did what is said that he did, and they have supported those things, even though some of the things he did would seem to materialize to be miraculous. But on the other hand to them to have an all knowing consciousness is also impossible.
Speaker 4 00:31:25 And they think that there's no such thing as a higher consciousness than them than the material. At least if you get your PhD, then you're all-knowing or something, that's what they take. And since Buddha didn't have a PhD from Harvard there, sure. He wasn't really enlightened as they think they are, but that's ridiculous actually. So for that sense, we think it is true. And there are stories that are true and there are stories that are untrue. There are fake news stories for sure. And where that story is true in the sense of what truth is now. Now there is one thing that we should say in Buddhist science, uh, there is no relative truth or truth about any relative matter, such as the presence of a Buddha. That is absolutely true. The only thing that is absolutely true is that there is no absolute truth that is relevant to relative beings.
Speaker 4 00:32:23 So it's not like the truth of Buddha say is dogmatic like is out of some absoluteness. It's a relative story, it's a relative truth. But out of all of relative truth, it is the greatest show on earth has the name of his autobiography as Lalita Vista in Sanskrit means the greatest show on earth, not PT burdens, but PT, Buddhists. And, and, uh, and it's the greatest show because it's the best example of someone who had all kinds of first class problems. Cause he was the king of a wealthy kingdom with a harem and a loving wife and her heirs and her loving parents and blah, blah, blah. And, and yet he felt that was not enough. He wanted a bigger problem. He wanted to solve a bigger problem, not only for himself, but for all beings. And then the example that you said of doing that, of dropping out of letting go of, of, of concrete deaths in the way that he did as a Yogi and or yoga, et cetera, and sharing that with other beings in a long and productive lifetime, and then even passing away from that party, but staying with the living beings for thousands of years, as you still is.
Speaker 4 00:33:39 And that story is the best relational story in that it inspire has inspired hundreds of millions of people to lead a very excellent life. And so it has, you know, C series or all the waiting just prove and sometimes put, it does say there's no such thing as when that would be helpful to someone. He says that there's no Buddha, you know, don't think there's a Buddha or you're a Buddha. He says, if you will really open your own mind, you know, he will say, oh, he will say different things. He was in was not a dogmatist, but nevertheless, that's still the greatest show on earth. And therefore it has relational truth that is beneficial, elegant, and better than any alternative within relational illusory reality because illusory reality is magic. It's beauty, it's freedom, it's joy, it's happy ending. So just because we say illusory, that doesn't mean that there's a better one that's elsewhere.
Speaker 4 00:34:37 The absolute one is that relativity. And when you know that, then you live, it is a mat in a way in a, in a path of beauty. And that's a better story. However, the thing about former beginning of those former lives and endless future lives in this illusionary world, that is not just as in a way as it's a scientific theory based on evidence and observation and memory of people and also observation of yoga, yoga. Hi. So scientists, what I call Psychonauts, which is what we should all try to be in this new year Psychonauts, you know, and, uh, so it's not just a story and therefore, anything you say will be true. You know what, if you could say it like, you know, fake news thing, you can create alternative facts and alternative realities. That's not the case in the case of former future life.
Speaker 4 00:35:26 And it will, it's just a matter of time before the material, the science will finally get off their thing about there's no evidence for it. And it's obvious. Everything is nothing. When they finally really pushed up against a wall of, okay, well show me nothing. Just show it to us. If you cheat, you only agree with what you can experience or experiment. So please show us nothing. And of course they'll not be able to do that. They never have and never will be. We know just right away by common sense, there is no size thing. So you can't show it. So when they finally get that to their heads, then, then it will become a scientific thing. Now all of the scientific theories also are also in a way just stories and look at the present one, the standard model, big bang, and oh yeah, they're also great. They get billions of dollars. They make the machines and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they can block the world and they are doing that actually. Okay. But then they say to themselves, 97% dark energy, dark matter in order for our standard model to work. But meanwhile, we don't know what it is cause we didn't see it yet because it's still work.
Speaker 4 00:36:34 We'll talk about a story, give me a break, but nevermind. But that's good. That's the main, same scientific. So they want to explore more. So when they explore more, they're going to find it for two former and future lives. So that's again, the more elegant two alternatives are more impossible. That's the best working hypothesis has a story. Okay. Non-dogmatic story is multiple lives. So go ahead. Now figure out what to do about your future one, because you're going to have one, it's a great Sasaki Roshi. And I know there was some people who 50 years afterwards complained about some of his manifestations, but he was a truly great person. I have no doubt. I sort of saw a little bit of a corner of it, myself with him. But beautiful story is told about him that when he was about six or seven, he went to dab it.
Speaker 4 00:37:25 Family took him to the Abbot of the Zen center nearby wherever he was in Japan. And the whole bunch of young kids were being brought in to be candidates to join the monastery. And the Abbot asked them all one question, um, one at a time, but you know, so they didn't know what Ellen had said, but they asked them how old is, was the Buddha I guess was, or is, I don't even know whether past tense or present tense, but how old was the Buddha? And I don't know whether it was when he was enlightened or whatever. Maybe some people thought that was it. And they would sit through your 40. So we did a little kid's zone, like 7, 8, 9, 10. And when they asked him dad, he looked up, he talked for a minute and he looked at, it happened. He said, well, he just was all desire.
Speaker 4 00:38:13 And he was admitted to this monastery, whatever it eight, eight under 10, you know, single digit said, well, he's just as old as me. Fantastic. It just reminded me of that. I did love that, man. He wasn't really something. I don't know if you've ever met him. I did not. Did not have Leonard Leonard Cohen died 108 or so 107. And you know, some, some complaints that were when he was 50 per they waited until he was a hundred to come out with quite a bit too bad. What we long for is we long for the great mother. We long for males and females, they alone, whether we're male or female, it isn't that it isn't a sexy, it's not a binary thing. It's a, we, everyone longs for the great embrace of bliss, blissful embrace in safety and security and joy and warms and whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 4 00:39:15 That's what everybody really longs for. And um, and then when we feel a little of that, then we want others. Then we also long for others who also experienced that. So then we made, we might long to know what happened to so-and-so, who we love. So once we really feel embraced by love a hundred percent, then we suddenly discover we are love ourselves. Then we long for the others to have a similar saying. So that's, that leads us to Buddhahood. So that's the best thing to tell us. The best thing is to long for enlightenment in order to long for enlightenment and realize that it comes down only for a wish for your own blessed, but also wish for everyone's place. You know, love them to truly have love. You really have to love everybody else. You know, because like you are made up of being interconnected with everybody else.
Speaker 4 00:40:06 You know, you had a mother, you had a father, you had ancestors. And actually where you are now is because of all your interactions with infinite numbers of beings. And so, uh, to successfully love yourself, you have to love everyone. Really. Ultimately, if you hate this one and that one, you're going to be hating some part of yourself because whatever, whatever, whatever they are, it's your image of them in yourself that you're hating. So, so, uh, so that means Buddhahood. So that means this now and put it into context of the new year yoga and retreat that we're having altogether, then we should, we should, in order to love Buddhahood you have to imagine what I've heard in order to imagine you have to study what, how Buddhahood has been presented by those who presented, like you read the flower ornament Sutra, but that's not an 84,000, but that's in Shambhala publication.
Speaker 4 00:41:03 It's a publication. It's not online. It didn't make it e-book, but they should, but they didn't yet. But, uh, you know, read the beauty of the universe for you could find incredible beauty, you know, you can read it there. What Buddha's mother Maya DAV experienced when Buddha was in her womb because in the Indian tradition, which is touched by this, this science, this inner science, but I had a way ahead of Western west region and east far Eastern Asian societies. Uh, they allow this incredible, imagine it to, to picture and by the Buddha's mother, how she fell, can you imagine mother Mary, who had had a, you know, immaculate conception, divine being conceived, a child in her. And, uh, Joseph was just there as an attendant, you know, but a divine painted it and how it must have failed to have a divine being and your normal pregnant ladies who are healthy, they feel very blissful in that they have like a wonderful thing as they know anyone who has done that knows.
Speaker 4 00:42:11 And anyone who's reading companion of someone in that state knows. And imagine if you had a divine being of overtly, I mean, in a way all beings are divine in some sense, but you had an overtly one or you much, it must've been great, but did we get to hear what Mary thought not really they did cause they, they didn't allow this kind of wonderful, beautiful imagination in the more authoritarian militarized women suppressing societies of the west. So, uh, west Asia, you know, burst Eurasia. So, so this is what we must do. We must study. And we must realize that given an infinite future of every being and also a beginning let's pass of every being, it is inconceivable that some beings, in fact, countless, possibly beings have discovered their optimal way of being. And of course the optimal way of being is to be fully in the Bray embrace of the great mother, clear light wisdom, vision bliss for indivisible bliss, freedom and divisible fully in that while being fully engaged, with helping to liberate and to heal and to free all of the beings that you love and realizing there's no limit to the beings that you love and be able to do that limitlessly and in a way effortlessly, because it's the energy of, of the infinite life that, that, uh, that flows through you.
Speaker 4 00:43:45 So you just become a channel. Like I become a firehose channel of that and that some be many beings wouldn't have already achieved that you, you can't miss and you could open your imagination to it. And then when you do, then that's what you want to long for. You want to learn for deal that you can be, you want to be all that you can be for every being that you love and the more you love, the better it is. And the more love there is. And imagine the joy, you know, when you have a few kids and you give them Christmas presents and you know, when they think Santa brought them and so on and they just all really flipped out to have them, and they've heard they have some moments of joy before things start breaking or whatever it is. And you feel so great at that time.
Speaker 4 00:44:32 Imagine if you have the ability to give such gifts to every be just the thing they want it because you know what they want because you feel you're in their mind in a way in a noninvasive, non bias. And what is great about that is like, it's like a very theistic. It is. We could say it's almost theistic about Buddhahood, but not monotheistic or create, or is saying the trouble. And the trader theistic. People get like that to media, like Jesus or preach now or something. But the problem when they attribute to creation to such a BA who they project as being a kind of individual being like themselves, like absolute individual, is that then subconsciously they feel blame for all toward that B they can't have full faith in that'd be because they are suffering. And so naturally if there's an omnipotent being who could stop your suffering and doesn't, you are pissed off at that piece somewhere inside your mind, you feel blamed.
Speaker 4 00:45:36 You will inevitably blame. They will tell you, oh, it's for your own good. Like with daddy's banks, you in some old fashioned home, he says, this hurts me more than it hurts you. But, you know, I knew I might hurt their hand if there's bank you too hard. But to actually it hurts you more in fact. And so you, so that's the problem with that versus in this case, since they never claimed his omnipotence, because each being has two freedoms, Hells, ultimately, but to tremendous help, they can receive of course, but ultimately you have to open your own lock the door, which is locked from the inside. You got to do the one on the inside, can pull that bolt and open that door. Someone outside cannot do it. They can blow the door up, but then that would hurt you, but they can unlock it gently.
Speaker 4 00:46:26 You can only do that inside. So, so there on the competent, I like to say not unlimited so we can have faith in that. And, uh, w the Fe that phase will be supported by the logic of infinity, which of course goes beyond the narrow limitation on logic. And it leads to the logic of love, which goes beyond like, you know, dualism, what was into merger, you know? Okay. So I dunno if that answered the question, because I forgot the question, but that's, but that's, that's what we need to do. So, you know, is that I'm always saying the takeaway is to takes away of anything that I try to get involved with one you're here forever. You've been here forever. You've been everything and done every that. So now is the time you could decide to really become lucid about all of it. And, okay, so that's one.
Speaker 4 00:47:23 And so then you could long for that long for your own Buddhahood for the sake of all that you love. And then, okay. So, and then the second thing is which critics to that is envisioned reality itself as pure goodness, so that when you sort of let it all hang out, when you let it all go, you can trust you be received by the great mother. You will not be punished. Even you've been naughty or whatever. She will forgive. Mama will forgive her beloved. She will. And that's the, that's the thing, the great mother. And so you don't want to see it as a vicious, punishing reality, this reality, a dangerous punishing around you want to see it as, but then within that, if you keep up being stupid yourself, then you should be afraid of that. And you're, you're, you're pushing off, was a great mother, you know, pushing away and being, and treating her badly.
Speaker 4 00:48:27 And so that you should be afraid of the consequences of that. That's all you should do right now, but you should not be afraid of reality. So therefore, if you have the longing for perfection and for Buddhahood, and for being one with the university in a positive way, without destroying anyone, but free them all with you, if you want a loan for that, the idea that the university is like that, and that is the stronger force that you're aligning with through that morning. And therefore it becomes optimistic that you can make it and you can do it. It might take you many lives. It might take you who knows partake. You can do it. And you, then you become motivated. And then you keep your new year's resolution of longing for enlightenment, that there is a way of seeing every try, like, uh, where a Buddhism is a kind of psychotherapy.
Speaker 4 00:49:18 And, uh, the four noble truths are like a psychotherapeutic diagnosis. So th the unenlightened and ignorant person is somewhat psychotic. In fact, living in an alternative reality, they are living in alternative facts about the centrality of their own egotism and their own absolute or fixated self. And, uh, there's a reason for that. So then there's a diagnosis of the cause of that, uh, how they get into that, uh, travel, why they're in that trap, et cetera, their ignorance and so forth, which is not just an, uh, non knowing, but a, a, um, you know, it is a wrong knowing as if it was real or, you know, making something illusory into something real and, or trying to vainly. And then the prognosis is Nirvana that taken freedom. So I was from this, and then the therapy is the four paths. And, um, and the difference in Buddhist psychotherapy and the modern one is that the unconscious, those bad habits that, that Loma mentioned, uh, are considered intolerable for a healthy person because of the reality of the future life coming up of the, of the endlessness and the continuity of life.
Speaker 4 00:50:36 Because if you live controlled by drives, coming out of the unconscious, the 80 natures, the natural thoughts or whatever you want to call them, there are priorities in the unconscious mind. Uh, then Dale drive you places. You won't be happy when you arrive because they're, they're major components. I mean, the major categories of which all 80 of them, and that you can make 800, but they're traditional inside about 80 of them. Uh, they are hatred. They are greed, lost and greed. They are hatred and anger, and they are delusion and confusion and stupefaction. And so those are the three main categories of those of the unconscious. And you can't be driven after death toward whatever next life you're going to have, uh, by those, because they are not reliable. Guys, just like when you are live just completely driven by impulsive reactions, to what happens to you.
Speaker 4 00:51:34 You are, you get in a bad way. You cause harm, you are frustrated and dissatisfied and you are completely in the wrong lane. You know, you're driving the wrong lane. You know, you're driving out on the right side of the road in England and you know, we're going to have a collision. So, so you don't have a good life when you don't become conscious of that. And you don't definitely don't have a good death at which will then lead you to another negative life. So you must do it. Now, you must take control of your greed, your, uh, your hatred, your bitterness, your anger, your resentment, and you must take control of your convictions, which are actually, you PO you know, it seems you think, you know, for sure what this, this, that, and the you're really you, and then you're not the other, and all those.
Speaker 4 00:52:23 And, you know, you have to be open to the possibility that they're wrong. You have to develop your critical wisdom and to, of course, to do psychotherapy, uh, in depth to actually become conscious of your unconscious, to become lucid about the drives in your unconscious, which is completely lucid about everything at every super subtle level, then you need to meditate. You need to practice. You need to look into yourself and amazingly you have the tools and the equipment to do so because you a human being, and that's the most amazing creature of incomparable beauty, no matter which kind you are. And that's really the real beauty of the human being is you can understand yourself and you can enter into your subtler areas of yourself, but to do that, you need, you need, you need concentration. You need study though, your meditation without study will not be helpful.
Speaker 4 00:53:20 He will just deepen whatever bad habits you have actually, which is what we've in these cults or people who've meditated a lot become actually more egotistical. And then they demand to be the girl because they, they are, they become, you know, psychopathic CLI egotistical. So therefore they somehow convinced others that they're, that they're right. That they're the greatest, you know, like, like again, we've had such a wonderful demonstration of all this on TV for the last four years, like nonstop of how difficult it is to beat, to lose it that way, and then your hatred and anger and so on. So, so, uh, so those are the paths to study about, and then to practice them and to, and to meditate.
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