Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 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 Lama's control center in America, all best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 1 00:00:48 This is episode 264 for fund friendly facts, the four noble truths and Robert Thurman.
Speaker 2 00:01:14 Okay. Greetings everyone. This is, uh, Robert Terman, uh, professor emeritus at Columbia, uh, of Indo Tibetan Buddhist studies or Buddha allergy, as I prefer to call my academic profession biology, the study of enlightenment, the study of, um, and, uh, uh, I'm honored to speak to you today, uh, on the day of the, uh, at the Tibetan people celebrate as the two o'clock to Chen, the great, um, Memorial of the turning of the wheel of Dharma, the Buddha's first teaching in, uh, siren, not what is nowadays are not in those days. <inaudible> and I'm near one Nazi and I'm there. The Buddha walked, uh, had walked over several days all the way from Bodh Gaya, from where the Bodhi tree Bodhi Miranda was. And, uh, he, um, to teach his five, uh, companions who had been his companions in the mortification of the flesh in the six years of asceticism that he had spent before, deciding that that was too extreme in the opposite direction from the, the use of sensory indulgence central indulgence, that he had engaged in trying to have a counteractive counterbalance all the years of, uh, central pleasures.
Speaker 2 00:03:01 He had central modification and then rejected both of them as too extreme and decided to teach the middle way. And according to the grand vehicle, the great vehicle Diana sutras who's had, it's been 49 days teaching the blood Avatamsaka Susan, the, uh, which you talked to various deities in the Rupa Dow too, and the karma too. Um, and, um, but it's sounds from other world systems and who came to celebrate his, having a 10 perfect enlightenment of what then the grand vehicles way of seeing, uh, which was, um, uh, kept hidden from the general population in India by Buddhas, um, mandate for a hundred years until the time of Nagarjuna <inaudible> is that enough? Now I got named people and, um, because he wanted to ripen society by the big shoe and big Shuni order, uh, that he founded, um, based on the monastic teaching, um, that, um, emphasizing renunciation.
Speaker 2 00:04:22 And he didn't want to have the grand vehicle of teaching of non-duality of Samsara Nirvana to confuse this society and to get mixed up as a version of modernism, which he did not teach, he taught non-dualism, which is not the same as modernism. You could say, you know, we assign meaning to different terms, but then you could say that. So today in that celebration, I will teach about the forum in this brief talk. And behind me, there is the Mandela of the collar chakra, which is, um, I'm very fond of important to Indian tantra, which the Tibetans have been keeping very properly and assiduously over many years. And up on the right hand corner there, up in that corner, um, above my right side, and is a Nagarjuna, um, who, who was the one who brought forth the grand vehicle and the tantric vehicle in our Mahayana view, not in the view of contemporary, modern materialist historians, lower corner.
Speaker 2 00:05:37 I'm not going to point out all of them. The lower one is the Kalki, the Tibet and an Indian and Tibetan version okay. Of Kalki hu or Hindu as well. The familiar of it as the 10th, David Tara Vishnu, but the Buddhist think of him as a VAR, as an emanation of <inaudible> the, the wood it's not far off, who is symbolizes the power of enlightenment. And then the little picture I always keep on the other side and that side here over here, uh, the picture that I keep there is the picture of my trailer, uh, that, um, since in the dilemmas residents in dribble, Montessori and Tibet, and was not saved from destruction by having grain piled up in front of it, and it's in the building in which it sits. So it was sort of in a grainery and they didn't see it, or they would have destroyed it, of course.
Speaker 2 00:06:34 And, um, it's I said to be a tongue drove the, seeing it makes you liberate it. So it's a very positive vision of the future Buddha, the loving, but I might Trey up with, come again to India, again, to book Gaia, but he will be born in the Brahmin caste, actually not in the excited air class, the warrior cast, because the world will be more peaceful at that time. They say however many thousands of years in the future. I know when he really had their different versions of when that will be, and he will also teach, or as I like to call them the four friendly facts, the idea Satya, I prefer to call that the friendly fact, not really preferred, but I, I alternatively call it that. So to get people not so nervous about aria, what that means, actually the word aria, which is attached to their audio set Tiani, Tiani the four noble truths, as we know, normally translated.
Speaker 2 00:07:38 Uh, the aria that is translated is not, although the word is the English word, noble is like a class term for an upper class person. And I think aria was a term at that time for the three, uh, higher casts, you know, prom, uh, Brahman and shut it down. And Russia and Russia who were admitted to the Vedic coat. And therefore it meant noble in the class term. And perhaps just before that, in ancient Vedic times, it had meant noble racial term it's possible return of which two Richard was returned by the crazy Germans at their moment of craziness seven years ago, whenever it was. And, uh, but I used it for the Satya. He had another specific meaningful to him. It meant the opposite of a protect, uh, what I call it, an alienated individual or a separated individual, which work he took out of the Vedic classes system, those terms.
Speaker 2 00:08:40 But then he changed them to create a kind of new system, uh, the Buddhist system. And there, the protector now is the person who was here or separated, not in the sense of trying to go to church or kind of go of the ritual sacrificial ritual, but in the sense of separated from the universe, because that's an ordinary person like me, who thinks I'm separate from the world around me and from other people. And therefore I get involved in egotism thinking that I must only pursue my own self-interest and I get involved in struggling again. So universe thinking that somehow by doing so I will master it, perhaps if I become particularly and become like king, let's say, or head of a country or president or whatever other roles there are in different societies and become diluted and think I can master everything, which a few years in an office. And I realize I certainly can't.
Speaker 2 00:09:40 And of course the universe also there's time and space time means we get old, we die and born in lesser circumstances. Perhaps if we're not careful, we, we could get better circumstances, but nevertheless, whatever situation, when we are separated person a protect, or now we will not prevail, we'll be frustrated. We'll be living in stress temporarily. It'll be well fed temporarily, but well, temporarily we'll have good relations temporarily. We'll victorious to et cetera, but they will lose all of that always. And we will die, you know, we'll have temporarily be healthy, but we'll get sick and we'll die. So, so that's, uh, that's the first noble truth, but oh wait, well, I'm still just crossing normal. So that's protect Jenna separated person. And aria means in relation to that, someone who has become aware that they, and what is not them, the environment around them, the other people around them are not really different.
Speaker 2 00:10:50 They may lose early seem to be different, but actually they're all one they're all interconnected. And the boundaries between one and another are only arbitrarily drawn. And therefore it's not a situation of them against the universe because they are the universe. And of course that could be good or bad at this stage. I haven't explained that yet, but the point it is then it's not the completely unwinnable situation of you, the little person versus everything else. Sometimes everything else seems to be for you then that that's when you're back. But mostly it collapses at that situation is temporary. And that is actually called the suffering of change in the first friendly fact or Novo versus anyway. So are you, yeah. Then means someone who has had a visceral experience being the other person, being the world of having outside of their sense of boundary of I'm separate from it.
Speaker 2 00:11:49 Right. And it's just me versus it versus all of it and them how, and instead I'm one with all of it and we are, we me and other beings and we, and even the trees and the plants and the flowers and even death is still me. I'm not non death. You know, I'm not against life. Death is not against me. Death is something, it is a transition. No, it goes through. And it is part it's part of my being, it's all tied up in my bath pinning and actually it's, uh, it can be if I'm become conscious of it ahead of time, if I die ahead of time, by mentally understanding, by going out of my skin, you could say, by going out of my mind, out of my skin temporarily through meditation, meditation will experience through some sort of transcendental experience, which I given instructions of how by my teachers.
Speaker 2 00:12:44 Yeah. Then, then death becomes like a place for quantum leap for improving way of being one with everyone. And yet it loser only a little bit separate, you know, responsible for my own part of it and so forth. And, uh, to the level of the inconceivable level of becoming a Buddha, a perfectly enlightened, who is he? Who is the aria in the sense of noble and friendly because they only care for the welfare of others because they're fully satisfied themselves because of it, that vastness of feeling infinite and one with everything apparently involves the super bliss, a great place. Okay. So, so that's the meaning of aria, such a, that's why they're called Arias such that they don't mean they're for upper class class or upper class. People only, it means it's for people who are upper or they're better in a way they're higher.
Speaker 2 00:13:40 They're more friends because they are more friendly because they identify with other people because they know that they and other people are really in the same boat. We're all together in it. They even can emphasize completely with the other person and they can effectively share their bliss of wisdom of understanding with the other people that makes them aria. And then once the REO, then there's levels of how vast that sense of, of, of oneness is. And that they Supreme infinite level of it, the inconceivable liberation, what they call <inaudible> Nick inconceivable liberation level of it, or they are one week every other being, or gods humans, animals, you know, planets, whatever. It may be, everything. Okay. Well, that's what aria means. That's where these are called aria sat, yachts and, and the noble truth is okay. But remember, truth has several meanings and truth can mean a kind of propositional thing, like a verbal truth, like a dogma.
Speaker 2 00:14:45 I think that's, unfortunately what, but they're early translators of Buddhist thought put his texts. They thought the truth was like the credo of Buddhists. Did you have to believe the four noble truths in order to be a Buddhist? Yeah. Because other religions, you have to believe something, but actually Buddha wanted you to question everything and come to understand it for yourself without believing it without evidence. And if he didn't want any blind faith. So, so in a way, yeah, it's almost a little bit more scientific. Yeah. You found religions because Buddha, Buddha hood means, you know, everything. You don't just believe it, you know it, and that's the only way you're really one with it is when you know it, knowing it to the fullest level is where, you know, sort of like a cat scan. No, it's something, you know, you know, and by merging with it.
Speaker 2 00:15:35 So you kind of know it from inside out know cause you're, you're, you're, cloud-like, you're, uh, you're a, cloud-like being, you're not just some sort of person isolated away in a skin behind a set of senses that sort of just imagine some other things over there. It has a names for it and concepts for it, but okay. Actually, it doesn't merge with it and it doesn't feel it from within as an enlightened being done. Okay. So now the first of the novel shows when he met, so then after the gods and all sorts of other beings for 49 days, which in the grand vehicle, that's what he was doing. He wasn't just taking vacation if he didn't need one, because life was a vacation for him once enlightened, because he was totally Stressless, totally happy in time. That's why I put a hood is total happiness.
Speaker 2 00:16:29 And I love the guy because he, he said, hi, no everything sort of idea. I know everything infinitely. I know. Well, I'm so sorry. I can't explain it. Or at least I say about it. You can't just latch onto it. And that will be your salvation. You have to understand it. And, but the good news you can and the good news, can't just give you a dogma. You're going to hang on to it and know it. I can know it conceptually by believing in its proposition, I can give you instructions of how you can open it. And you're up your mind and open up your experience and your heart, and really know what you are, what the world is. And you have that about human beings have that ability because I was a brat prince. I was a spoiled brat prince by my dad who wanted me to be here conqueror.
Speaker 2 00:17:25 So he tried to make me really happy in my palace. And, uh, and so he spoiled me and then I really tortured myself, but none of it worked, but now I understand it. Okay. And you can too. That's a good note. Okay. So the first of the noble truth or, or a noble fact, and why you call that a noble, because if you were with other beings, you will have a noblesse or bleisure about them. You will feel responsible for them like a good king, like a good rule, or like a good politician. You will take responsibility for them and you will not oppress them. And that makes you noble. I mean, not in the good idea of what a normal was in the previous time. You know, you want to tack them as one and harm them, right? So he'll be friendly, genuinely friendly because you're genuinely care about them.
Speaker 2 00:18:20 That makes someone a genuine person, right. That's why I like to get a lot of friendly. And then I check the change truth into fact or reality <inaudible> reality. And what is, what is, you know, it's but is true. There's a way things are, you know, and the first one is what's called the noble truth of suffering. And a lot of misunderstanding has arisen because in fact, the previous Pope or two pops ago, um, one and a half or so ago, um, uh, they said, oh, they couldn't understand how anyone could ever be a Buddhist because they're being told that they can only suffer. And that's so sad and so bad. And it's really terrible. And I feel so sorry for them tonight. Nice sweet Pope, Pope John Paul, as written that chapter written for him in his doctrine of the faith calls. Um, uh, bye, bye.
Speaker 2 00:19:18 Benefit, Cardinal. Yeah. Or at the time, right? He said that, but that's totally wrong. Buddha doesn't want anybody. The whole point of Buddha's teaching is, you know, nobody knew needs to suffer, no human being, because they've already suffered a lot to get to be human. And they have given so much and they become so intelligent and so ability to empathize with others. And so social intelligence through marvelous language because they didn't attack each other right away, always. And they talked to each other and they chatted. They didn't eat each other. The minute they met it didn't need everyone. They meet like a lion or tiger. You know, they hung out and chatted and became so intelligent and altruistic basically. And social with a nice mom who gave birth to them and then fed them and show them what to altruistic life is life. So humans.
Speaker 2 00:20:14 And then that's how I built this huge brain that they can think all about all kinds of things and, and figure out what life is. And if they've evolved to that point to a greater deal of suffering. So what are those? I don't want anyone to suffer. He ultimately doesn't want any animals, any kinds of stuff and is sensitive being it doesn't send 10, but because sensitively doesn't want them to suffer. So the first friendly fact is since you can become enlightened and completely happy, then if you persist in a separated person and alienated individual who thinks they're the one apart from everything else, then you will, these, you will suffer. So this is in order to help you renounce lesser goals. Let's ground, let's make differences, less noble goals and your human life then becoming enlightened and becoming truly loving and becoming truly wise.
Speaker 2 00:21:13 That means, and we want to make a million dollars. You want to be a king. You want to conquer the world. You want to dominate this person, that person, when I have 25 children, you want to do, you want to have a million billion dollars or whatever you want to be famous, whatever things that separated individuals alienated individuals do in order to try to somehow convince themselves that they can master this impossible situation of me, the little me versus the potentially infinite universe, which is not exactly a practical problem. That's it now really, if you think about it, it isn't. And so it's not rocket science. <inaudible> great. It is simply friendly, factual thing to understand, and then help you shift your priorities. Okay? And then the second noble truth or friendly five, the cause of that suffering and deed, the causes that protect Jonah feeling you're separated.
Speaker 2 00:22:18 And that is a misunderstanding. So it is, is, and not merely ignorance. You know, some people live in sentence and the original language of India, either the colloquial version or the Sanskrit version of India. But that video doesn't just mean that you didn't count all the fish in the ocean, or you don't know how many atoms and the pin of it, a head of a pin, you know, that isn't it. That does not, what's causing you to suffer. What is causing you to suffer? Is it active, miss snowing? And it was, you think, you know, that you, the separate being and that everything else is different from you. You think, you know that you have fix the identity inside there that somehow, oh, it's suffering because it gets constantly bumped into, by relational things. You think, you know, others are different than you, and they're sort of out to get you, or, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 00:23:06 All these things are miss knowledge, a better word, a better translation of a video gloss as knowing what is not the case as if it were them being caught in illusion and delusion. Okay. That's the root cause. And then in the four noble truth to talk to his aesthetics, he wanted to shock them a bit since they were involved in self mortifying, probably saying lust, greed desire is the cause because, so of course the alien person just desires to be something here all the time, because they know in a way that it's impossible to thrive. And as a separated being, because ultimately sickness old age, death, even rebirth will cause suffering, losing your loved ones, finding the ones you don't be meeting the ones who don't like, et cetera. You know, they have lots of lists of suffering, tremendous numbers of lists. And so the point is that's the, those are the causes that miss knowing what the good news is.
Speaker 2 00:24:15 Then you see the four friendly facts are like a doctor's friendly diagnosis. He says, okay, you're suffering. I got it. Because I actually see the symptom and I can diagnose the cars, which is your or misunderstanding of what you are, where you are, what the world is, what is the purpose of your human embodiment? What is the best use of their human embodiment within the reality that you are in and you feel you're in and that you are. And, uh, and that day he knows this. You don't know what is the best way. And if you did, you wouldn't have to do that suffering. So that's, that's the good prognosis. So then the prognosis is the third friendly fact, the third noble truth. And that's my favorite one. And for us as it should be everyone's favorite running. That is the one that why people like Indian ancient, Indian people, various nations of India, the reason they fell in love with Buddha and they added Buddha to their culture.
Speaker 2 00:25:19 And they tolerated him having all of these people drop out from their productivity, working and there, the women from their childbearing and their household cleaning and cooking, and the men from conquering each other or doing this or building houses or whatever, they were ha they allowed these big shoes and picturing his, his men deacons to go around getting free lunch because he, they were rich enough was the richest part of Eurasia was ancient. By that time, it has a greatest river valley is alluvial valleys and the greatest agriculture and tremendous resources know jewels and iron and copper, and then, oh, incredible wonderful. The sub-continent pods, you know, the Indian plate pushing up to him. Aaliyah's revealing all the treasures of the earth and wonderful, great job in India. Okay. And everybody wants to go there. And Robin, they always did sad, you know, and a few of them settled down to do it, then the deed.
Speaker 2 00:26:22 Yeah. But anyway, they tolerated these men, deacons, the confusion China's data, and it wouldn't have one person getting a free lunch just like in America, today, or any industrial society. Welfare freelance for social socialist is considered horrible. Everybody has to work, work, work to prove their worth. But Buddha said, no, the human being has a huge as an evolutionary product of their own effort and they should be able to fully expand their understanding and replace misunderstanding with understanding Ms. Snowing, why is knowing wisdom, knowing that's the purpose of human life and all societies should be organized to uphold that as the great Moksha, the great deliberation of human beings. And that that's a reason for the huge push of the first mid first millennium BCE that we find in the Upanishads and in Jainism and Buddhism, the leader, the leading most intelligent beings became traumas.
Speaker 2 00:27:23 And they went to ashrams and they went to beyond that trims and Buddhas one who created a society-wide ashram of all the big shows and dictionaries, you know, the, the huddles, you know, the soundbite, uh, we didn't want them isolated, like, like a retreat. He wanted them only seven stone show away from the marketplace. So they'd have to beg the next days, brunch to eat before noon, the one meal a day, they asked for to eat that before noon, every day, they couldn't take two days worth of food. So they could be isolated. He wanted them inter interacting with people, but renouncing the ordinary productivity things, which the land could afford because of the wealth of India. And therefore the Indian people supported them. Basically. There was, some of them are grumpy about it now. And then there were sort of, there were those that were too many.
Speaker 2 00:28:12 Some of them weren't real proper pictures. Some were just using that to get free food, et cetera. They had their ups and downs about it, but they basically loved it. And the 16, 1700 years, it helped all the vision forms of Hinduism interacted with them beautifully and created the wonder of classical Indian civilization, the lead civilization of Indo Europe. Indeed, that's proven by the fact that <inaudible> and had following and Paris and things never marched out of India to try to conquer anybody else ever. They never did showing their superiority. And that sense non-violent right. So the third noble truth is Buddha's good news. You can be free of suffering. You can do it in this life. Even you can do it for all your lives. You can do it pins and everything. Nirvana is the real reality of everything actually, to some that was too much of a leap, a stretch at first to the majority of people, they wouldn't quite get that.
Speaker 2 00:29:24 So we let them think, well, Nirvana, somewhere else, and this world, you know, sort of not having it doesn't mean heaven, like a happy hunting ground or a heaven, or the realm of the ancestors. It's something beyond that. And we don't really say clearly what it is except by sort of negating and other things. And we don't say that it's nothing, but it's not the one of the foremost realms realm of nothing does realm of Dion, nothing consciousness of unconscious, the realm of infinite space. Remember the four out of Datto's AutoCAD. That two is the four formulas firms. It's not those. And it's not nothing, but he wouldn't quite say what it was, but he let them think it was some elsewhere for some time, because he knew they would discover that elsewhere is the deep nature of reader. It's the real nature of here that here is elsewhere then, but we think it is coming out of our miss knowing.
Speaker 2 00:30:21 So anyway, that was the good news. That was the prognosis of the friendly doctor of the friendly fact is you're going to be cured of suffering. You're going to be happy. You know, Westerners, stupidly and wrongly thought that when they discovered it that well, Asian people didn't conquer us. So therefore they're sort of backwards. No, they didn't come and kill us all and Rob us ourselves. So that takes them backward in their way. They thought know imperialist, right? And so therefore they must be their religions must be telling them, yeah, you should be suffering. So you're just suffer. So that's, that's why they got all completely obsessed with that to, to suffering or that fact of suffering for the unenlightened. Remember Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Remember that that's more pessimistic than whatever put it ever said. Even the suffering ignorant, miss knowing life is not worth living.
Speaker 2 00:31:19 He never said that human life is incredibly valuable. And it's very important because it's a life form that we've evolved to from having been many animal and all kinds of other things, even God's just lounging around in heavens. And finally, we got this beam right in the middle of the universe. Not that powerful, not that pleasurable. No, that also that terrible, horrible suffering, not that tortured by some lower state, not in hell. So we can think, and we know our vulnerability and we have a like understanding level we can have. And so we can go beyond human and God, any kind of separated being who thinks they're separate from others. Even if they're gods, he's still going to suffer because there'll be bigger gods who will beat them up. They'll be God to like, you know, well, not abortion. There will be people who are worshiped.
Speaker 2 00:32:10 So then there'll be a bed set. So it was a lot of, I think they're separate. I think the great Brummer somehow is very close because he, he, Lilly loves Buddha. He has Buddha to teach. He said, tell people, I didn't create this. I don't make them suffer. I asked them to not suffer. So please go tell him, it's not my responsibility. Only. I do my best for them all. And, but they have to do their part if they want to be free of suffering and you would tell them what to do. So then the fourth noble truth is the therapy. The friendly force friendly fact friendly doctor tells you, okay, here's the therapy. It is the path, the noble eightfold path, the friendly eightfold path. And that friendly fact goes all the way from correcting your worldview, your attitude, your theory of life, your belief, or view as there's T, as they say, in Sanskrit, they hold a belief, a view that which sort of focuses your way to see things, interpret them in a certain way and all the way to somebody realistic somebody and people go right view, right.
Speaker 2 00:33:17 Just right. Which is not wrong of course, but it's right at home. But I think better is realistic and unrealistic for, for, uh, you know, um, uh, unrealistic from BTR and for, uh, uh, uh, uh, some yak, some yards and for some yard, I think, uh, or summer, uh, realistic is better because right. It sort of makes you think, well, it's right. According to some rule. And when you're you follow the rule and you followed it is right. So that, again, it goes back into that kind of dogmatic religious thing. Like you're just supposed to do this cause it's right and that's wrong. And that's okay. But actually realistic and unrealistic goes beyond that. And it says your, your view will correspond with what is real. If that's realistic and unrealistic is what is, is being dominated by delusion and illusion. Illusion is real, which it isn't so realistic and unrealistic is really good.
Speaker 2 00:34:20 I think actually I got it from a guy named Alan Wallace, but then he dropped in his back and right, this and that and the other, he didn't really how realistic is choice a realistic one. But I always like to give people attribution. I don't pretend I invented it when somebody, you know, that's, that's, what's left of scholar, Lena in my emeritus, mine is giving proper attribution. Okay. And th the, the, the, the eightfold realistic path, uh, the friendly path, a noble path begins with a realistic view. And the realistic view is the view of, into relativity of relation. Now it's actually a Buddha's discovery of relativity actually like century millennium before Einstein. And the way he discovered it is that he discovered he looked totally thoroughly with like an atom smashing mine of sharp, somebody totally one pointed focus on even Adams, even subatomic particles.
Speaker 2 00:35:22 He smashed the Adams of seeming solid realities and discovered what he called Shunya tar, which means openness emptiness. We call it do people, generally it emptiness. I prefer voidness cause it's only two syllables, but that's not wrong. That's correct. But it's different from nothingness because there's no, when something is open when there's no courts or something, and it's just open doesn't mean it's nothing at all. Right? So it's not nothingness, it's not above a TA it's shunyata junior comes from Shri, which means to swell like a seed when it's moistened it swells up. And there's an empty space inside where the germ can pair fruition. Right. So what that is is it means that all relational things are empty or free of any non-relational absolute component. So to project absolute send to everything the way we have ritually do starting with, I think I'm absolute, you know, I hadn't made my separated entity.
Speaker 2 00:36:32 Yeah. Identity is absolute. That's fine. That's the start. And then we project them into everything. Absolute floor, absolute wall I've. So table absolute Adam, absolute subatomic particle. Absolutely. Just that they're starting with the cell phone. We think it's absolute. And in fact, the cell, the self is the self is absolutely relative. In a way you could say, I said, language will always be fallible. James were wonderful about that data. Let's say there may be, as in the sense that you can sort of say almost anything about anything in a certain context, but the more helpful one is too use innovation to break out of being stuck in any false attributions of absoluteness, to any thing that you think you can hold onto, because then you get stuck on it. Like you would get stuck in yourself and you think your episode, and then you're, you will find relations to be awkward, and you're not good at them.
Speaker 2 00:37:34 And you're not nice to people. And you're sorry. So your view is if you have relationality <inaudible> <inaudible> <inaudible>, that was the epitome of Buddhist teaching that there's sort of everything is causal, right? Therefore he knows how to interfere or sees the terminate causes a particular things. And that's what he advocates buddy. And he's a great vacation, or shramana going through an ashram is a great dropout, not an ascetic. He's not giving he's good. Now he's giving up suffering, not giving up, not giving up like great thing of having to like plant a garden, plant a farm and raise children, conquer and fighting battles. And to the old, terrible things that the laypeople have to do in societies is it, Astra is tired of that. He goes through our from he's a shramana okay. My house and how many, a data case swap. All right. So, so that's the four noble truths.
Speaker 2 00:38:45 And then there's realistic motivation. Once you, once you develop a relativistic view and a freedom view, combination of freedom and relationality, because within freedom, if nothing drew but relate and you only relate relationally, and then you get better at it because you realize that it is the absolute thing to do, and you don't worry about finding some frozen place outside of it all where you can just feel absolute, but because you can't feel of, because that's what it means. Non-relative so no relative being can feel it simple as that. So the openness of negation that negation can lead you to preface shader purification that is then opening to playing with relativity in a happy way, because it's based on the inner freedom. And I realize there's new. You're not being coerced into play. Okay. So in a way, but then in that kind of expression, I'm trying to express the inexpressible.
Speaker 2 00:39:46 So don't worry about it. All right. But once you do get a sort of more realistic view, then you get a realistic motivation of what to do with your moments, your limited number of moments of being a human being with a human intelligence, being awake and wishing to awaken further past the sleepwalking of just living out your ingrained narrative of your cultural indoctrination on your theoretical indoctrinations and conceptual network of your language and your culture and so forth. And you want to actually really feel and experience and, and embrace life and reality and others, and then you'll be happy. Okay? So that's your motivation is to become enlightened. And then realistic speech is very important because you might think since you can express the ultimate nature of things, I just better not to say anything or even learn anything, just shut down your whole brilliant, wonderful language, human thing, rock then Nobel speech, you know, then lightning speech, wrong speeches.
Speaker 2 00:40:48 Where are you educate yourself? So you need speech. So you have realistic speech though. And then you have realistic ethics. Coma, karma means biological theory of evolutionary ethics. It doesn't mean something mystical. It doesn't mean fate. It means it means action that we'll have, and we'll have influence on your fate, but that you have freedom to make choices and choose actions that will make your faith good. And you have the choice of making bad ones that will make your feet feel bad. So it's real responsibility of a realistically relative being to make choices where they evolve positively. So that's realistic ethics karma. And then within that, because we are social beings and, and even, uh, even a mendicant depends for lunch, for brunch on the generous person, the lay person, the farmer, the trader, or the restaurant owner or whatever it is, and the king and the generous king who supports free lunches.
Speaker 2 00:41:54 And, uh, so then you have realistic livelihood and then you don't want to kill anybody. So you don't prefer not to have any profession of killing violence. You don't go to as you know, but I thought that James were great, but the less practical and you can't farm because you plow will run over insects. So then that's a realistic livelihood. And then once you have realistic livelihood, I think you're up to six that's number six, I think view motivation, speech, ethics, livelihood. That's right. Once you have realistic creativity, I like to call it. It can be translated via effort, courage, vigor, some people translated, but it's all of those energy enterprise, your industry. You can give it any kind of thing, have some active career constructive and creative thing. But I think creativity is best because it especially means effort against spiritual laziness, evolutionary laziness.
Speaker 2 00:43:02 And that means positive toward the positive direction toward enlightenment zeal. People will use zealous being zealous, but I like creativity because you're agreeing creative to come to new understandings and new deeds of compassion to understandings wisdom. And so it's created a, the art of living, the art of helping others, the art of understanding, the scientific art of understanding. When in reality, all of these arts are, are what are in this creativity and that's the sixth one. And then the seventh one is realistic mindfulness, Smithy, remembrance, and remembering yourself, remembering your mind is working. We're remembering to be aware of how your mind is working, remembering to be in the present and not stuck in memories of past, not stuck in anticipations of the future and being right in that moment of seeing what's happening in your being in your mind to investigate reality, it's realistic remembrance or realistic mind.
Speaker 2 00:44:00 The fullness is actually as they like to translate it. Now, I don't know if it's the best word, so Murphy or <inaudible> and Polly's Murphy and Sanskrit. And that, that means you become aware of what's really happening. Now you try to see it as it is, and not just impose your life. You you'll notice that you will see it through labeling it, but then you try to go deeper than your label and mental label. And then, and then finally, when you're really good about that, and you'll notice the injure of everything in your mind, and you explored corners of the mind, which you might thought there were some sort of absolute entity in there forcing you to be a certain, certain way. You'll discover all kinds of that's all relationally constructed Italy. When you do that, then you want to focus on the deepest nature of everything.
Speaker 2 00:44:48 So then you come to some, the da means also thought inside. That means understanding the genius, actually the here, where that H you know, the aspirated dental D and R means double along means add something in, in some focus way. And some means total. So totally focused intelligence, some R D. And then, then that's when you really break through, and you combined with it, your awareness of how it's all working, it's relativity and the failure to discover any absolutely the relativity of the seeming absolutes, the emptiness of emptiness, as it can be called the freedom of freedom of being else, absolute thing, apart from the things you are free from. So it's only relational ultimately. And, uh, you put your samadhi in that, and then you have the right view. Then you have all your, then you fulfill all of them at once. So it isn't like you do want, and then leave it.
Speaker 2 00:45:54 They all come together. Uh, yeah. And that thing, but they go by that order of the reason they do people only think what is a Ms medicine occasionally, or they think that about Hinduism too, but that's wrong because the Indian people knew very well, that if you'd meditate a lot and you misunderstand what meditation is for, and you are still protect Jonah, you think I have, I have an absolute identity of yourself own separate from everything else. And if you think that, and then you meditated a lot, you were going to confirm your belief. So your view, your dish to your, or your out will be confirmed if you haven't critically analyze it and to become more realistic. And open-minded, as your view, if your view is wrapped unconsciously around a sense of self absoluteness, then your meditation will only make you feel more self-help and it will be even you'll, you'll become like, okay, dictatorial girl I'd have a cult and it will blow up in your face as they evolved that they all do eventually. And people that tired of being bossed around people want to be free. That's where they are. Okay. So thank you very much. I think I've gone a little too long. I'll find out the minute whether it is, and maybe you have to redo some part, but I thank you very much. It's a great honor to deliver this wonderful. Some of the other, your dialogue. Yeah. I look forward to meeting you all in person. Whenever that day can come and sort of our Mongola or trashy delay,
Speaker 1 00:47:39 Good fortune <inaudible> 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 distributed here at creative commons, no derivatives license, please feel free to share like, and post on your favorite social <inaudible>. And thanks for tuning in.
