Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful and some good trends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy him and find it useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. If that house is the Dalai Lamas control center in America, All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 270 Buddhism and the multi-verse
Speaker 3 00:01:15 And I'm going to Polly was a great quarter. Then that would be in that ancient culture, like a movie star, like Marilyn Monroe, or like, you know, Ava Gardner or whatever their local ones are today, you know? And so she had a place she lived at, she had a house in the suburbs, you know, belay area. And in this Bel air, she had a big garden outside it, mango Grove, but she got there first and she said, please come to my Grove. I have a place suitable for you and your 500 disciples. And the Buddha said, sure, I'll go there. And then the elder to the city were furious. They felt slighted. They thought, what is this? Religious person is staying with the famous theatrical lady or the great actress. You know, how can he do this in slightest? And they then were boycotting the Buddha.
Speaker 3 00:01:55 But again, this was the Buddhist way of sort of not discriminating about the world and not saying, you know, not making certain types of mundane discriminations, a certain type of non-duality is very subtly and symbolically suggested by the fact that he was staying in the Grove of Abra Bali, and that the elders of the city were boycotting him. And they were not going to see the Buddha because they were furious. Like the mayor consequences, you know, slight head. So to hell with this guy, you know, this guy thinks he's a Buddha. Um, you know, this guru is not, I'm not gonna deal with him. He doesn't come and stay in city hall thing. Then he couldn't be a good girl with his great big shoes. These are the great men deacons. They were 8,000 with him, all scenes, not 500, sorry, 8,000. She had a big garden.
Speaker 3 00:02:36 They were free from impurities and afflictions and all had a teen self-mastery. Their minds were entirely liberated by perfect knowledge. And they were common dignified, like Royal elephants. They had accomplished their work, done what they had to do, cast off their burdens, attain their goals and totally destroyed the bonds of existence. They all had a team, the utmost protection of every form of mind. I mean their own minds, of course, self control in that sense. So these are the great, very brief way of introducing the saints. But note that they're all saints, they are not said to be some sort of half-baked. So like they didn't figure it out or whatever, although later it will seem that they are being put down, but as introduced by our crusades, truly liberated, truly enlightened already. These characters, these great monks of, but a set of us. There were 32,000, it's getting bigger and bigger, great spiritual heroes who were universally acclaimed.
Speaker 3 00:03:31 They were dedicated through the penetrating activity of their great super knowledges and were sustained by the grace of the Buddha guardians of the city of Datarama. They upheld the true doctrine and there are great teaching teachings, resounded like lion, like the lion's roar throughout the 10 directions, without having to be asked, they were the natural, spiritual benefactors of all living beings. They maintained unbroken the succession of the three jewels, conquering, devils foes, and overwhelming all critics, their mindfulness intelligence realization, meditation, incantation, and eloquence, all were perfected. They were free of all observations and emotional involvements living in liberation without impediment. They were totally dedicated through the trend sentences of generosity, subdued, unwavering, and sincere morality, tolerance, effort, meditation, wisdom, skill, and liberative technique, commitment, power, and gnosis. They had a team, the intuitive tolerance of the ultimate incomprehensibility of all things. They turned the irreversible wheel of the Dharma.
Speaker 3 00:04:38 That means they talked to them. They were stemmed with the insignia of sine listening. This is worthy of, is it worth because this is about the attributes of the bodhisattva. It's what it's that for supposed to be like they were experts in knowing. And actually the whole teaching is also contained in the way in each of these things, which is the way these scriptures are. They were experts in knowing the spiritual faculties of all living beings. They were brave with a confidence that overalls all assemblies. They had gathered the great stores of merit and wisdom and their bodies. Beautiful without ornaments were adorned with all the auspicious signs and marks. These are certain signs, evolutionary signs of a certain stage of development. They were exalted in fame and the glory like the lofty summit of Mount Subaru, Mount Everest, their high resolve, as hard as diamond unbreakable in their face and the Buddha Dharma and the sunga that's the Buddha, the teaching, and the teacher of the teaching and the community.
Speaker 3 00:05:32 They showered forth. The rain of Ambrosia that is released by the light rays of the Juul of the teaching, which shines everywhere. That's nice. That's another toxic type of passage. They showered forth of the rain of Ambrosia that is released by the light rays of the Juul of the teaching, which shines everywhere. Their voices were perfect, indiction and resonance and versatile. In speaking all languages, they had penetrated the profound principle of relativity and had destroyed the persistence of the instinctual mental habits, underlying all convictions concerning finitude and infinitude they spoke fearlessly like lions sounding the thunder of the magnificent teaching unequal. They surpassed all measure. They were the best captains for the voyage of the discovery of the treasures of the Dharma, the stores of merit and wisdom. They were expert in the way of the dynamo, which is straight peaceful, subtle, gentle, hard to see and difficult to realize they were endowed with a wisdom that is able to understand the thoughts of living beings, as well as their comings and goings.
Speaker 3 00:06:41 They had been consecrated with the anointment of the Peerless gnosis of the Buddha with their high resolve. They approached the 10 powers, the four fearlessness and the 18 special qualities of the Buddha. They had crossed the terrifying abbess of the bad migrations. That means Hells prince, a loca. That's a kind of limbo and the animal incarnations, the terrifying abyss of the bad migrations. And yet they assumed reincarnation voluntarily in all migrations, they would go back to the Helen's of animal realms and so forth voluntarily for the sake of disciplining living beings, great Kings of medicine, understanding all the sicknesses of the passions. They could apply the medicine of the Dunham appropriately. They were inexhaustible minds of limitless virtues and they glorified innumerable Butterfields with this. Those are universes with the splendor of these virtues. They conferred a great benefit when seen, heard, or even approached were one to extol them for a numerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of aliens when still could not exhaust their mighty flooded virtues.
Speaker 3 00:07:46 So these are the body supplements, how they're sort of, you know, they're given a good pen of diary, but actually each element of that Pentagon of course tells something about the goal of the Mayan or what people are supposed to try to attain how it is I'd want. It's supposed to try to benefit living beings. Now this notion that each people have that there's this one world, that's my world. There's this mind society. We're the human beings. There's the one God who is our God. There's a little tease on that in the Indian context, because there are 10,000 gods there, you know, but each of those gods is a world creating God they've come from other worlds. They left off being the world, creator, omnipotent God of that world for the time being. And they come over here to the AMRAP, to garden to enjoy the teaching the ceremony.
Speaker 3 00:08:29 So there's a multiverse of universes. That's one of the first ways which the Buddhists used sort of cosmologically to help the people in these colors to expand their, their sense of reality of the cosmos. That is not just a one. So there are 10,000 gods anyway here who had come from different universities and so forth. And then there are 12,000 shock rods. This is the other God who is there Shakara means Indra. And that's the other big, important God in Indian civilization at the time of the Buddha is Indra. Who's the Vedic God and Indra is rather more like a kind of Yahweh figure in the old tribal sense. He's a tribal data, you know, like y'all way in the old Testament who know who was sort of there for his people, you know, is on a certain associated with a certain mountain. And he throws thunderbolts at the enemies of his tribe.
Speaker 3 00:09:15 And he's sort of there, you know, in a way that there is a certain threatened us, try them in the old Testament that people detect that is sort of behind the codification in Babylon, in the act during the XLH in the sixth century, the sea that is sort of underlying that to where Yahweh is not necessarily a universal God yet not claim to be universal, but he's the God of the Israelites. He's the God of those people. So there's actually different layers within the notion of Yahweh within, for example, Judaism Judaeo-Christian world. And one of those layers is the layer, the <inaudible> layer, which is a very Olympian type of God. In other words, like zoos, where he's the God of a particular people and he's, uh, you know, he protects them and they do perform sacrifices to him and et cetera. And he connects to their thing in particular.
Speaker 3 00:09:59 And in a way there's a sort of sense of other gods, the Babylonians having their gods and this and that. It's a later stage where the Hebrews then come to have a notion of a universal God. It is actually the nameless beyond all, everything who is actually the actual God of reality. And every nation should see it in Indian culture. Those two are from respectively in drawn Brahma. Indra is the old tribal God of the Vedic people. And Brahma, is this more like universal one, that's sort of an over God, you know, that's sort of almost formless, almost nameless, almost uncivilized bubble, you know, beyond therefore any particular tribe in a certain sense. So these are not separated within the west Asian university, usually except by mystics as the God of negative theology and the God of tribals theology, or they've got a positive theology, you could say that would be separated within the Judeo-Christian tradition, but in India, they are actually separated as different gods.
Speaker 3 00:10:52 So that, you know, for example, the people who into Brahma say would sit at Indra was just sort of an old fashioned idea. And it was just an aspect really of the real Godhead and see, and the invaded, they kind of gave up on Indra. The Vedic people did because Indra was so specifically related to the, I mean, Indira was blonde and blue eyes. Indra has blonde blue eyes he's after black people. And the big man, he actually is, you don't know that because in Hinduism they have the rig Veda sort of their old Testament and they don't, and they just chant it. They don't think of what it means, but actually a lot of the rig Veda has to do with, oh, Indra, go and step on our enemies please. And the black ones who the enemies are called the dark ones because the <inaudible> were dark skin and the Aryans were white skin.
Speaker 3 00:11:40 So he enjoys the original, you know, a little bit of a loony original honky, God, you know, dumping on the blacks in the Indus valley. It is true. That's why, but I didn't like the betas, but it was put down on the betas, the James to the whole movement of the fifth century BC, it was rejected the Vedas because the Vedas were specific to a particular concrete tribe, which by the Buddhist time had become to become more absorbed. Although the caste system was there still, they were very much, they were trying not to be absorbed by the caste system. They still were absorbed. Anyway, both of those gods appointed the old area and tribal gone, and the universalistic kind of transcendent, God volts were present. And also thousands of them were present in the sense that each universe has these different gods. There's like a multiverse, there's no one universe.
Speaker 3 00:12:28 And this is typical symbol. Again, of Buddhahood being an evolutionary reality and attainment beyond any level of power of divinity or humanity. And in a way closer to humanity than divinity humanity is exalted above divinity in an interesting way, actually by this idea, because Buddhahood comes out of humanity more than divinity the Lord Buddha, thus surrounded and venerated by these multitudes of many hundreds of thousands of living beings set up on a majestic lion throne and began to teach the Dharma. Now what, when you teach us the Dharma, the first thing that happens is these young, but a substance from the choppy city, these young from Vaishali come down and they make offerings to the Buddha. These are all young, the <inaudible> with 500, the chubby use each holding a precious parasol made of seven different kinds of jewels came forth from the city of vice challis and presented himself at the Grove of Emre poly, each approach to Buddha about as his feet, circumambulating him clockwise seven times and laid down his precious parasol and offering and withdrew to one side.
Speaker 3 00:13:39 So there's this mound of precious parasols sit down in front of the Buddha is the first thing that happens of the youth from that city. And because the older people are not coming this, you don't know this, but in fact, the reason is that the old ones don't come because they're mad because I stayed with this cortisone in her garden. I mean, he's among cause no hanky panky, but he stayed in the garden with his thousands among, so it's fairly safe staying, but still they were offended. The, the, the elders of the city were offended because all those Indian cities in those days maintained a certain kind of place like at the Tavern on the green, they would have a place in the middle of near their sort of park in the middle of town, you know, the sort of village common near the market there, which would be a kind of gymnasium in the Greek sense or a Parthenon sort of place where any wandering Sage could stay and be met by the citizens of the city and engage in a free debate with other wanderings citizens. It was a cultural tradition at that time, and that's where the Buddha was supposed to go. And he did sometimes go there too. It's just, he didn't have to go there at this time cause somebody else invited him first type of thing.
Speaker 3 00:14:48 As soon as all these questions parasols had been laid down suddenly by the miraculous power of the Lord, they were transformed into a single precious canopy. So great. Then it's formed a covering for this entire ability in the world, the galaxy, and this is kind of, this is like a planetarium. In other words, he created out of this Juul, parasols giant dome. That was like a kind of planetarium, but the way it's presented it encompassed the whole galaxy. You know, the dimensions get a little warped in this kind of visionary thing. So in the surface of that dome and the surface of the entire billion world galaxy was reflected in the interior of the great precious canopy where the total contact of the galaxy could be seen limitless mentions of suns moons and stellar bodies did that means different solar systems. Many of them, the realms of the gods dragons, demons, fairies, Titans, bird, people, horse people, certain people, as well as the realms of the four great Kings of the directions, all the mountain ranges of the world, Mount Everest, the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies, and so on all the great oceans rivers bays Tarrants streams and Springs, not only of course, the Rockies of this planet, but of innumerable planets within the galaxy.
Speaker 3 00:16:02 Finally, all the villages, suburbs, cities, capitals, provinces, and wildernesses, the whole ecology of the whole galaxy. All the different planets could all be seen in this sort of multimedia, multi projection, visionary canopy that he created around this entire vest assembling all of this could be clearly seen by everyone. And the voices of all the Buddhas of the 10 directions could be heard, proclaiming their teachings of the Dharma and all the worlds. The sounds reverberating in the space, nice that the great depressions canopy, so everybody had, in other words now, what is this vision? This is a vision of the unity of all life in a way, the interconnectedness like the ultimate calorical vision he creates as a symbol. And of course, again, bracket the question, forget about it. Is there such a thing as a being with such a miracle power as to be able to create a holographic like light show, like planetarium out of like some Juul is lying here as a miracle and over a 30,000 person assembly, or is it a literary symbol?
Speaker 3 00:17:03 It doesn't matter. The point is it is a visionary symbol of the interconnectedness of all life of the fact that every element, every species, every little plant, every piece of grass, every planet, every solar system, every star system, all totally interconnected in one finally beautifully interwoven exquisite pattern of life is what is the symbol that he's showing here showing people that in a way he is his message. And there was the symbol of the script. And this kind of scripture always shows that sort of gives a visual contemplative symbol of what the main impact of the teaching is. And of course the main impact of the teaching is non-dualism the absolute and the relative totally interconnected. Also relativity, as we understand it in a modern physical sense, the interpenetration interconnectedness of all things that therefore each person is somehow inextricably interconnected with all other persons and all other aspects of life.
Speaker 3 00:18:01 That life is one giant hole in a certain way, which even that's the expression whole of course, being somewhat misleading in the sense that it is infinite, infinite, it is boundless. It is limitless. It is not like one unit, but it is. And each being is completely, indivisibly a part of that in a certain sense, it communicates this as a vision and aesthetic experience for everyone that completely pulls them out of their own normal boundaries and makes them feel and realize their interconnectedness with everything. It's like an ultimate sort of ecological Buckminster fuller type of vision of being involved with the vision of this magnificent miracle effected by the supernatural power of the Lord. Buddha, the entire host was ecstatic and raptured astonished, delighted, satisfied, and filled with awe and pleasure.
Speaker 3 00:18:49 Now, these people are apparently gluttons for teaching because this is not enough. Naturally. As soon as this happens, the head of the boat itself has gives a long series of verses of praise, beautiful, poetic praises to the Buddha, which are very nice. Now when we see the world and I was so happy, oh, was a suburb and radiant fields leader, bull of men. We behold the revelation of your miracle, the suburban radiant fields of the <inaudible>. That's the name of the book, meaning the blissful one appear before us and your extensive spiritual teachings that lead to a mortality, make themselves heard throughout the whole reach of space. You give us the treasures of the Dharma, blah, blah, blah. He goes on about what the, how much he likes the Buddha's marvelous set of verses, but we have just skipped them in a, in a sentence. Um, even though of course, in any one of them, we could unpack them infinitely.
Speaker 3 00:19:39 You know, each one can be unfolded in endlessly in a way, but we're going to skip it because now we come to the main question of the Sutra after this verse of praise, these verses of praise, which are quite marvelous. I like this one where he says to the Buddha, he says this, you associated with living beings by frequenting their migrations, their states of life. Yet your mind is liberated from all migrations, just as the Lotus born of mud is not tinted thereby. So the Lotus of the Buddha preserves the realization of voidness you're a form of life. And yet you are also completely void this. You are emptiness. You are the absolute in that sense while being totally alive and relevant, you are absolute and relative interconnected, simultaneous, you nullify all signs in all things everywhere. You are not subject to any wish for anything at all these other what I noticed, the three doors of liberation, emptiness sign less this and wishlist.
Speaker 3 00:20:33 This, the miraculous power of the Buddha's is inconceivable. I bow to you who stand nowhere. Like infinite space is more of a thing where like Buddha, because Buddha is in a sense, a being that is the realization of the absolute avoidance of the uncreated of the infinite and so forth. At the same time as an embodied being it, it becomes he himself as a body, as a live being, isn't a sense of symbol of the absolute. And therefore it's like a being who, when one looks through one season to the ultimate one sees infinity through this being in a certain sense. So infinity infinity are completely reconciled that dichotomy within the body of the Buddha. That's what he's saying. So in other words, when I look at you, you become infinite and I see you as being nowhere and everywhere, like empty space. You see there's a wonderful vision in Hinduism, similar to this that I liked very much where Krishna, you know, maybe Krishna, if you knew the story, baby, Chris knew where baby crease now is.
Speaker 3 00:21:31 He's a real hazard, maybe Christian, I know he's steals yogurt. He's a yogurt teeth. And they say butter, but I say yogurt really more like it. But he goes, who would wanna eat so much better? You know, maybe, you know, anyway, and he's a little boy, he's a baby. And they tie him to this ox wheel wagon cart wheel because he's always stealing the yogurt. He seems to have a good appetite. Then he had one day has a nurse bit comes back and he has pulled this whole cart in a huge thing, like a, like a truck, you know, over to the kitchen. And he's gotten a giant VAT, this big of yogurt and this little baby, this big, and he's gobbled down the whole thing it's empty. And she kind of, not only is she mad, but she kind of freaks out, you know, like she looks at the little baby and the little stomach, and she looks at the giant thing of yogurt besides of what the truck that has pulled over on at the time, you know, and she thinks, wait a minute. And she says, now, now wait a minute. What's going on here? And she says, let me see now. And she looks into his mouth to see what happened to the yogurt. And then she sees the outer galaxies. You know, she sees the stars and the planets and the universe, and she sees like an infinity in a sense, she looks into his mouth. Oh no, I see a young Wednesday.
Speaker 3 00:22:41 Is it similar type of symbol, beautiful one within, within Hinduism. Anyway, this symbol of the Lotus. I only read this particularly more than once because it's very important. Symbol has various levels of interpretation, but the Lotus that you rose in the mud, and yet it's not tainted by the mud. The other usual symbol about the Lotus is, you know, a Lotus pad lies in the water and the leaf has a certain special relation to the surface tension of the water, where when the wind ripples, the water goes, the water will not flow up on the leaf. The leaf will curl back and then go back like this. So no drop of water will actually, except in turbulent time, we'll get onto the leaf of the Lotus will always be dry and it's just property of the load. So it can stay right on the surface tension of water and never become damped by the water.
Speaker 3 00:23:23 That's another symbol of lows. The loaders is a major symbol Nikita of course, the major Indian symbol, but it has different levels of interpretation. This level born of mud is not tinted. Thereby is one of the major symbols. Anyway. Now finishing has praise. The young Mushavi asks the Buddha. This question, he says, NACADA, which means Juul mind this young man shot me. He says, Lord, these 500 young, Chubbies just the local people are somebody. Shelly are truly on their way to unexcelled perfect enlightenment. And they have asked, what is the boat itself as purification of the Buddha fields. Please Lord, explain to them. The boat itself was purification of the Butterfield. Now isn't this interesting. He's not saying here in monastic, what does, what did they say when they mean, how do I teach enlightenment? How do I teach freedom? Well, sometimes of course, they just argue with the Buddha about something else. And then they come around to enlightenment. But the question is, how do I become free? How do I attain enlightenment? Isn't that the secret question, but not this time. He starts out saying they're on their wage on Excel. Perfect. Enlightenment. It wants a tenant. How do they purify the Buddha field? Another way you could trust that? How do they protect the universe?
Speaker 3 00:24:43 Then what they want to know is how to perfect the universe. This is the messianic question. How do I transform my whole universe? How do I create perfect the society? How do I bring the planets to perfection? How do I help everyone else to become perfect? You see it's the whole world is taken into. And the question is, how do we make the whole world in light? Not just the self I'm on the self is going, but how do we take the world with us? Does the <inaudible> question? In other words, it's a different kind of question. It's a very messianic kind of question. It's a world transforming question. It's a revolutionary question. Not at all. Just the religious question. Scientific question. How do we remake the world? Yeah, it's a Protestant ethic question. <inaudible>
Speaker 3 00:25:27 it's a world transforming question. Not at all a world negating or running away question. Oh, of course. It's negating the mess. It's negating bad plumbing. It's negating disease. It's negating ignorance. Sure. In that sense, it's world negating, but it is world affirming. It is world transforming. Basically the question, oh, goods says, but I'll tell you about it. Then he says, what is the world that you're perfecting since <inaudible> this concept? Bookshare tries the way of talking about the world under the sub, under the sort of aspect of enlightenment and the words, whereas the world might be a galaxy or a solar system or whatever, from some materialistic perspective, or it might be a world of suffering or a hell practically to somebody who's really depressed or has just lost a lot of member who has been through a Holocaust or something, or it might be this or that from point of view of a Buddha, a world is a field of Buddhahood field of enlightenment.
Speaker 3 00:26:20 It is like a magnetic field gravitational field of enlightenment. It is a field where in the power of Buddhahood is more powerful in a way. It is these thing that holds that field together. So they call it, they put a field, it also the metaphor, but a field also has the sense that the word Chet that our field just like in English is like in field of an agricultural field, you know, corn field, wheat field. So it's a kind of field where bullets can be grown in. Also in that sentence, there is a crop of Buddhists can grow there out of human beings, especially or living beings in general, but especially human beings are the best material for a crop of Buddhahood closest because they're closest to parenthood. According to this view of evolution, human life form is extremely closely evolved to protection. In fact, they say, I bought a seal of bodhisattvas is a field of living beings versus says, what is the university does not this planet and that star and that gas and that element and that mineral and that thing.
Speaker 3 00:27:13 It is human beings living means it's not just human living beings. It's a mud field of sentient beings is what a university is. Why so bodhisattva embraces it, but a field to the extent that he causes the development of living beings, he embraces it, but a field to the same extent that living beings become disciplined, he embraces it, but a field to the same extent that to entrance, into able to field living beings are introduced to the Buddha wisdom. He embraces a Buddha field to the same extent. That's your entrance into that? Buddha field living beings increase their holy spiritual faculties, spiritual faculties of living Misa their faith effort, mindfulness meditation, and wisdom, five spiritual faculties, which are consciously modeled on the five sense faculties. So that the person who practices it becomes spiritual sort of withdrawals, their total investment of their own self identity and life energy, which is usually into eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and touch, and body surface texture into this.
Speaker 3 00:28:13 We live totally identified with our sense receptors and that that energy is drawn away from that a little bit drawn into the sort of a spiritual inner area. And one's eyes become wisdom. One's nose becomes faith. One's tongue becomes mindfulness, et cetera. You know, in other words, you have five senses of a different spiritual type dealing with a spiritual what's a nice metaphor actually, but now he says one important thing. So that in other words, first of all, this notion of transforming the universe, because if a materialist would say, what is this crap transform? The universe perspective, Berlin purified, you'll never cure upside wait, then we can have good plumbing and this city or that city, maybe we can have scientific agriculture. We can control the weather. We can avoid the polar ice age. We can do this and that, you know, we can do a few things, have water purifying plans. We can do this. Stop hurricanes with technology, basically a little bit on a little planet, but even then, well, maybe we could colonize outer space when our son would grow cold. You know, and it's sort of a technological vision of doing this in a way it's very parallel to that vision actually, but that one is materialistically through technology, but the idea of perfect the whole universe, the whole galaxy we're all living beings are brought to Buddhahood and there's no more suffering, et cetera. There's a little bit extreme, I think, even to the technological optimist.
Speaker 3 00:29:32 So how could that be if the world has some sort of intrinsic objectivity as a process of material, things in which sort of tension and stress and death and other things like that are kind of inevitable things, part of the objective reality of the world? Well, the Buddha's answer is that's because there is no objective reality of the world. The world is a mind reality. It is a world of the minds of living beings. It is a mind field, the collective minefield of many living beings, which includes gods and subhuman animals as well as humans, and then various things in between angels and Titans and demons and, and weird kind of grizzly things underground and all, it's a whole incredible population of other species, as well as the oldest piece of animal kingdom. And it is the collective mind. The Sheila was the force that shapes worlds into different forms is not an objective material, sort of mechanical force. It is a force of the mind field of beings. This is a very profound and almost difficult teaching to understand, but they have a way of logically descending it's because of their notion of relativity and emptiness. Actually now he goes on with this description of the Buddha. Now he says one marvelous thing here, which actually is the railroad led to what I just said.
Speaker 3 00:30:48 For example, retinol kind of Juul. Mine should one wish to build an empty space. One might go ahead in spite of the fact that it is not possible to build or to adorn anything in empty space and just the same way should've brought us up, but who knows full well that all things are like empty space, wish to build a Buddha field in order to develop living beings. He might go ahead in spite of the fact that it is not possible to build or to adorn it, put a field in empty space. And this is a very interesting thing in the sense that on the other hand, he wants to say right away, you want to purify the borderlands. You want to build a universe of enlightenment of living beings. Firstly, you have to realize is that it is impossible to do that. All things are actually empty. What it means by that is in terms of your habitual false investment of intrinsic objectivity in all phenomenon.
Speaker 3 00:31:44 One's notion that that chair is really just a chair that this wall is that wall, that the world that I think I know that I have concepts for that corresponds to my labels. And what I've learned is really objectively what it seems to be to me. And it cannot be anything else. That's what is known as naive realism, perceptual and intellectual, and even instinctual that naive realism under that goal, that in a naive, realistic way, you're going to make a different world. Forget it. It's impossible. The world is like empty space. The world is, there is no such world that's like that. This is very key teaching. Do you understand it? We'll come back to it. Of course, it's the main matter of the fifth chapter, but do you understand this? For example, we know from Potter in science nowadays that an x-ray machine does not see that brick wall as like we see that brick wall, because we know from theories of physics, that that brick was mostly empty space.
Speaker 3 00:32:39 And even if we go to subatomic with little animals zipping around them, because we've got a subatomic physics where even the Adam is itself, mostly empty space with some charges and weird things inside that. And even that is, we don't know if that's even particles. It might be waves. We begin to realize that that was as far as science goes, as far as those who have really investigated that brick wall really thoroughly to find its ultimate nature of that brick wall, they've come up with an uncertainty as to whether it's that brick wall. In some sense, it is there for like empty space. It's a potential possibility. Probability could be anything that brick wall, but we don't see that we see it as a brick wall in and of itself. Don't worry. We don't think that we are in some respect, even indirectly, even through culture, to neurons, through DNA codes, through perceptual instincts and programming, through all kinds of elaborate things that we are collectively and individually, in some sense, constructing that brick wall.
Speaker 3 00:33:32 When we see it, we don't think that it seems to be in itself a brick wall. And of course that is our ignorance and we can even see that that is an ignorance. That's a miss knowledge. We don't just see. We know that it's a brick wall and on a brick wall, come on, come off. Don't tell me who'd been met some poor person. Not in drugs would run up the brick wall saying goodbye. I'm going to go through the wall crash. We go poor thing. If you went through it, we would say poor thing about ourself someday. But meanwhile, since we never seen that, usually we hear about it in India in ancient times, but we never see it. So we would say it hit, it hit the wall and bloody nose. Pathy we think that the wall is self constituted in and of itself as an intrinsically objective, intrinsically identifiable, intrinsically self substantial.
Speaker 3 00:34:21 There are many terms in Buddhist philosophy to express what that wall seems to contain. What we have actually invested into the wall. And we know by our own science sort of inferentially counter-intuitively against our intuition. We know that it is actually not a solid wall. It seems to be, I mean, nuclear radiation goes right through it. X-rays go through it. We know that sound goes to some degree, some kinds of walls. You don't have to have led wall to stop. Radiation goes through. We know that mostly empty, but of course, in our materials culture, we never think that that inferential knowledge, that the wall is like this buzzing zipping realm of waves and particles and probabilistic, quantum energies, and so forth that we as individual persons could come to experience it the way that our machines tell us it actually is this idea that the individual can be transformed in their perceptions to that degree is of course not available in materialist culture on under a materialist psychology, which tells us all that we are a certain kind of mechanical device that has very limited parameters of transformation.
Speaker 3 00:35:26 That is hardwired. That is like mechanically designed only to be in a certain way. The notion of hard wiring and soft wiring and programming. It's very different in the Buddhist worldview. They think that you can come to see things like a suffered in a subatomic reality. For example, you can be train yourself to see things, even if initially it's highly counter-intuitive, there's almost nothing you can train yourself to see or not to see. There's almost nothing in a negative sense to, you can only, you can come to see things. No, there's no limit to the degree of distortion in which you can come to see things also, and you are constantly transforming. We are constantly transforming our perceptions all the time. We are constantly either reinforcing one kind of perceptual habit or learning some other kind. And this, again, it comes back to this business of the everyday thing. Now the Buddha says, then he, after saying that it's impossible to build a boat, put a land, he didn't describe is what is it him? And he says that what he does is for example, in a passage like this, Buddha brought us up as Buddha field is a field of generosity. When do your teens enlightenment living beings who give away all their possessions will be born in his Butterfield.
Speaker 3 00:36:44 The itself was Butterfield is a field of morality. When your teens enlightenment living beings who follow the path of the 10 virtues, that's like the Buddhists 10 commandments not to kill, not to steal, et cetera. Very similar. Excellent. Seven out of 10 are the same. Interestingly seven out of the 10, the other three. Even there are ways you can match them, but they're a little different, uh, living beings to the big ones are the same, not killing and so on. Who follow the path of the 10 virtues with positive thoughts will be born in his Butterfield and so forth. In other words, the new universe comes out of virtue in every gift creates a sort of energy of selflessness. You know, when you parked with something, you sort of pry your own hand off that $5 bill or 20 cents or a hundred dollar bill, depending on which at where you point you become really hung up.
Speaker 3 00:37:28 We knew when it does pry off and sends it to the starving child here and there, or pays for this or gives to that when it does that, it creates a certain feel, a field of generosity. What is saying is that energy of self transcending of giving up something becomes a land. Ultimately each little one, you're talking about millions of years and millions of people, millions of people like opening that clutch tent around whatever it is, becomes a different world. This is not even, this is actually like, what is evolution, natural selection? What does that mean? How do you get the opposing thumb from the Buddhist vision of national natural selection? How do you get this marvelous hand that can play a typewriter and a piano and a computer and can do all kinds of things. This hand, it has like a lot of capacities.
Speaker 3 00:38:16 Remember is a miracle. All these different bones in here. It's like a totally unbelievable thing. This hand, how it has developed genetically has it developed by aggression by being a good hunter. So you can hold different weapons. That's how some people might say common Lorens and others would say, this is a Hunter's hand. Does it look like a very much of a Hunter's hand? Now, if I was a hunter, I mean, you know, I might drop my weapon someday, right? I'd like to have retractable claws be about a yard long will be poisoned tipped. Uh, maybe they could shoot to even like porcupine, you know, like bullets. I would like to have a hand like that. Myself. If I was a hunter, I would evolve a hand that would look something rather more like a, you know, like a lion's claw, a combination of a dragons, claw, lions, claws, snake, Fang.
Speaker 3 00:39:05 I don't know. I would like to handle I'd much prefer him like that. If I was just out to grab other animals and do them in just a little soft thing, the skin like gets hurt by almost anything. The nails are pathetic. You know, you ladies have to put on all kinds of long plastic things and harden them. They're always breaking. They're so irritable, irritating the nails, they, uh, they break the whole hand can be broken very easily. It's delicate, it's soft. It's not very strong. It has no armor plating, no scales, nothing to defend it. Is that a hand of a fierce ferocity? You think really? According to the Buddhist view, it is, this is a hand of generosity. The human hand has become flexible and multi moveable and this and that because of aliens of billions, of years, uh, billions of lifetimes in life forms, countless life forms of opening up of giving you gifts of touching of caressing, of touching something of, of helping something of trying out something different of playing even, you know, like playing, like doing weird exercises and playing gentleness in short, it is in itself an evolution of gentleness, Jen, every day for every little act of gentleness.
Speaker 3 00:40:14 And that sense created a certain field around what might have once been a alligator's claw, you know, or an insects like pincer, you know, or a lobsters. Uh, just one simple aggressive at clank. You know, lobster's claw after Ian's of like that claw, oh, let that little one go. You know, some lobster who was like lazy, altruistic lobster who had just grabbed some little fish thought it was too small. Throw that one back. Oh, that, that one, well, that's a cute color. Let it go. That little act of letting that one go had enough that day or felt in a good mood or wanting to like, you know, pay back the universe for having met a nice lady lobster or whatever in a moment of like carelessness, just let it go. That field of letting it go created a field where later there was a thing that instead of just being two claws, these things become separated into these fingers.
Speaker 3 00:41:04 It is that gift, that active, that gets created the field where then you eventually ended up with this millions of years later. And remember in the Buddhist sense of evolution, those millions of years and millions of lives are not just in a species. They're not just in the genetic continuum of matter material cells going through, you know, parent to offspring and so forth. There is that kind of continuity, but there's also the individual being attracted to these different life forms by themselves, gaining a different field of, so that have a lobster, could become a human it's. A lobster really made a big letting go. They might be reborn as a human. It was in one jump. Although there's other level of material, continuity's there somewhere. There's also this level of the individual continuity. Each individual has had billions of former lifetimes, trillions quadrillions, accomplice numbers.
Speaker 3 00:41:53 So in that context, then if you add up that in aggregate, the Bodhisattva's field of borderland is a field of generosity, the giving of many beings, a whole minefields beginning to develop giving. It's like if you teach giving in that sense, in an effective way, say you are a person who teaches a hundred million people on television. And somehow you managed to demonstrate, maybe you give up your salary, you actually send it to have Africa or something, or you take them all over to Africa and you, and you take your own hamburgers or you empty out the McDonald's and take it to Africa and feed these people. And you do it. We're a hundred billion people see the virtue and the joy and the pleasure of the giving in a certain way. Then you're creating an intense field of giving even greater than one gift could be right now, this whole field in the aggregate, over a millennia over billions of years over galactic evolutions and evolutions becomes the motherland.
Speaker 3 00:42:43 The stuff of the bull end is generosity. In other words, do you see what I mean? I'm just using generosity. As one example, wisdom is the same. He goes through all these different things that total dedication, wisdom, self restrained, virtue, uh, love, joy, compassionate, equanimity, uh, liberative technique and so forth. All of these things become, become the borderland beings who have embodied all these things, ultimately dwell in that bit of land in the borderlands. Even land is made of that. If you follow me, I think the Buddha's answer one who can say, but I think in one sense, the bullets saying here a, on some objective level, as a sort of generality, you can't say because there's not, there is no nothing to be found. It's impossible to improve or to prove everything is like empty space. You know, you can't say like, generally there is this or that mechanical thing going on.
Speaker 3 00:43:31 And because it's impossible and bought a sidebar, wills that in his book field or her Butterfield in his sphere, it's going to be improving because it's impossible that you can say objectively, therefore in the sphere of attention of that board itself. But however, small, it may be however big. It may be. It's definitely going to improve it, but that was, that was going to be totally dedicated to that improvement. And they, everything that they're involved with, they're going to insist that it's going to be in the teeth of the impossibility. They're going to insist that it's improving, you know, the famous Jessica of the dove, the female dove and the forest fire who lost her nest early on in the great forest fire. And she was so depressed by that. But then she saw all the other animals running and screaming away from the fire and losing their young and the deers and the buffaloes and the whole thing, you know, like panicked.
Speaker 3 00:44:18 And she then thought, well, what's the use? You know, she'd lost her eggs and young and everything. And her flock of birds who dove birds. And she then went to, she was running away, caught in the panic. She saw this lake on the way. And she said, oh, come on. What's the use? You know, who cares? So what, what is life worth when we just running like this and living and trampling on each other and letting our own young be destroyed. And she dives into the water of the lake until she's drenched with the water and flies over the forest fire and lets the water drip on the flames from her wings and then flies back to the lake and do this and did that until she got wore out and died actually in the magenta, but then was reborn in yet more effective form of putting out more fires, you know, because she was, became such a willpower towards just putting out this kind of suffering and forest fire that even though on that lifetime's objective level, it was so hopeless case useless.
Speaker 3 00:45:11 And then it says, we might say relatively useless in objective way, kind of useless. Like it's useless to build a border land in an objective way. And yet the love of the bodhisattva, the resolve that I'm going to see it go positive. I don't care what it is. Objective. I don't care what it looks like, what it looks like is Ms. Knowledge. Anyway, whether it looks going good or not good, it's going to be some kind of naive Ms. Knowledge. I'm going to make it good. What I can type thing. I'm going to fly into the teeth of the fire with my wings, chipping, you know, just like the Democrats, I'm going to fly against the media and fly against the seeming odds anyway, type of team. You know what I mean? They they're like they're going to croak at the polls, but they'll be reborn, but there is a cosmology which they usually leave in place more.
Speaker 3 00:45:56 Exoteric where it's getting worse. And the reason they leave that in place is that for people who are kind of getting started on the path, it is often better for them to focus on their own individual development on extricating themselves, from being caught up in sort of hopeless circumstances where they can't really be effective. And not only that, but they can't use their own life to really develop their own insight. It's better for them to kind of give up the outer progress for a time being and not be caught into a mechanical sort of illusion of external progress and think, well, hell I better just at least get myself together. It's all going to hell in a basket. I can't bother with it, you know, Callie. And so therefore that's why that's left that place as the exoteric thing. Because of course the first thing that people need is a certain healthy selfishness and certain healthy individualism to get really going to have to break away from.
Speaker 3 00:46:44 That's why the Buddha's life is this radical thing. He breaks out of all kinds of things. Even to the rather than almost nasty degree. He's like ruthless in a certain way, because if you don't get yourself a little bit enlightened, you're not going to be even effective. You know, you're not going to be able to help. So that's why the Kaleo cosmology goes along with monastic Buddhism, an individualistic Buddhism, the beginning level of Buddhism and is important because my logical thing to sort of see it, it's like a way of seeing it in this way that it's impossible to do anything about it. It's impossible to build an empty space. It's, that's how it has to be there as the ground level that upon that impossibility one can get into these kinds of midnight ethical wills, things like the dove flying into the flame, you know, like love insisting anyway, you know, even though they're sort of objective sense of impossibility, so they'll call you guys that objectively, it looks like the world is going down the drain, although it'll go back up again and then my trail will come.
Speaker 3 00:47:36 And so on within the Buddhist at least have ameliorated the collar UGA vision to that degree. But, uh, it's not let Netflix go. Totally whole-hog okay. Anyway, finally, now at the end of this discussion, the Buddha says the purity of the Butterfield reflects the purity of living beings. The purity of the living beings reflects the purity of his gnosis of his intuitive wisdom. The purity of his gnosis reflects the purity of his doctrine. The purity of his doctrine reflects the purity of his transcendental practice and the purity of his transcendental practice reflects the purity of his own mind. So the Buddha land ultimately will it's as if his mind is perfect. The borderline will be perfect. The mind is perfect. Perfect. He ends with that, right? Given this vision of the perfected universe
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