Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet House, us to help preserve Tibetan culture. Tibet House is the Dai Lama's cultural center in America. All this wishes have a great day.
Speaker 3 00:00:48 This is episode 310. Life, Love and Enlightenment.
Speaker 0 00:00:59 Oh,
Speaker 4 00:01:20 Hello everybody. Everybody. Happy post Halloween Day, although it's still holy, everything <laugh> and here in Woodstock, it is just incredibly beautiful. I mean, beautiful. It could be beautiful summer day. It is Indian, what we call Indian. Some are native, Native people. Summers, they're not Indians. Actually news flash to Columbus. They're not Indians. They are the native people here. I live here, They're the Americans, but they don't hold the Turtle Islanders. Okay? So Turtle Island, summer day. And I'm really, really happy because I have confidence that we will win this election. We will hold the Congress and we will therefore be able to continue to move more strongly toward healing the environment by honoring Mother Gaia who needs honor. She's very well able to take care of us. She has been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years, and she will continue to do so, but we have to stop abusing her.
Speaker 4 00:02:36 And her skin includes this thin shell of atmosphere that, that, that, uh, that guard's life on earth and makes it possible for we, for us and the planets and the, and the plants to exchange our oxygen and carbon and to breathe beautifully and to, and to enjoy life, both of us. So we mustn't over abuse the planets, plants, and the planet. And we mustn't blotch mother earth's atmospheric skin anymore than we have. And we have to, you know, we have to move growth back into growth of quality instead of quantity. And we have to have quality of life, quality of earth, quality of soil, Josh, quality of, uh, water, quality of air quality of temperature, of fire, okay? And quality of space. And we have room for everybody in it. We don't have to go down to like sacrifice a few billion, like some deep ecologists.
Speaker 4 00:03:49 Think who I think we are all bad, but we have to, uh, get more reasonable. Okay? So that's the thing. I'm moving around my think. I love the mandala behind me. That mandala is the mandala of time, of the wheel of time, of time as a life machine. A love machine, not a destruction and a domination and an exploitation machine, but of life as a joy machine, okay? And, and that's what we, we therefore that's helpful. We need to reside in such a residence, which is open boundaried and invites every being, all being seen, including all animals. Not just humans, but the humans want doing the inviting of the animals because humans, although we do too much eat them, we are capable of not eating the animals mostly. You know, nothing is perfect in the relative world cuz it's relative <laugh>. Anyway, I'm in a happy mood, but I've been really tense for months worrying that we would, or people would be confused by, by other people who are confused and behaving in a semi demonic manner and that we wouldn't act responsibly, uh, right now where we, when we need to and we're going to.
Speaker 4 00:05:18 And now somehow I feel that we are going to, and I'm pretty confident, but that doesn't mean don't get out and vote. Don't take other people to help them vote. Don't speak out in coffee shops to get people confused, straightened out. Defend anybody who's being beaten by crazy people. And, um, and be, um, don't, don't go after them. Just defend if dis defend anything they may do. And, uh, let's pray that Putin besides life is more important than, than power at all costs, at the cost of death, okay? And withdraws and, uh, then that the Ukrainians are generous and still allow Russians to go to the beach in, in a DeTar crimee <laugh>, which I think they will be. He's a comedian. He likes, he would, doesn't mind having a good healthy Russian audience as well as an Ukrainian one, and thereby heal the deep bitterness that has grown up between them because of Mr. Putin's mis misdirected and misguided and mis motivated invasion.
Speaker 4 00:06:35 All right? So, um, I wanna talk today about love and life and how enlightenment is not owned by Buddhism as a religion. It is not also attained merely by a belief believe other than the very basic human belief. In reality, the belief that a baby has as it approaches the nipple of the mother's breast, he or she baby approaches the she nipple of the mother's breast. That it will deliver nourishing milk <laugh> that reality has nourishment, tastiness, lovingness in store for it. Okay? That's a belief, that's trust. That's, that's what the great Eric Erickson, wonderful psychoanalyst, psychological theorist who was a teacher of mine. And of course that I I I aced it mentally, but I didn't properly take it except I do remember basic trust at the, in the stages of personality development in reality leading to what, what my beloved Lisa Miller, Dr. Lisa Miller calls spiritual wellness.
Speaker 4 00:08:13 That is key. But that's not belief in Buddhism. It's not belief in Christ or Christianity either. It's not belief in Moses or Judaism either. It's not belief in Krishna and Hinduism either. It's not belief in the dow either, but it's the core thing that all of those things are pointing at. Yes. And then the secularist, secular humanist who abandoned mostly Christianity, maybe also a punitive form of Judaism that they locally encountered. Uh, maybe there were some Muslim scientists who we don't know about because they got purged by a punitive form of Islam that had been dominated by Calebs rulers, you know, military leaders rather than women or true scholars who would, should have been the ones to control the direction of the collection of moham, brilliantly inspired medium, medium mystic teaching delivered by the gods for sure delivered from or through his heart of love for sure.
Speaker 4 00:09:28 Okay? But although, okay, so they wanted to escape from that punitive thing. And they said, We're not gonna believe any of that. We're not gonna believe in God. We're gonna believe in the goodness of man, of humans and woman. And we are going to find out what nature is because we have a confidence that if we learn to attune with nature in the right way, there's enough food, enough energy, enough space, and enough love, enough comfort, and enough shelter for all everyone, okay? And of course, very imperfectly, like all the others, all imperfectly implemented, and then some fanatics who just think they can become not who transferred that absolute, that people they'd had previously about God that was presented them as being too punitive and therefore not trustworthy, harmful, transferred that to nothingness, which they made into a thing and a place and like an absolute substance almost, where you could go in and escape from relationships and therefore you wouldn't have to have any reaction to the way you related to others and to the world.
Speaker 4 00:10:48 So all these imperfect forms of trust to be replaced by the basic trust of in reality itself, and the quest, therefore to discover that reality. And if you wanna call that reality God, then the quest to know God, not just believe what some people in a church or some people in a, in a government or in a, in a, in a social community tell you it God is you don't have to follow some conformity. And if you believe in nature, then no nature and don't, and don't go crazy and believe in nothing. That's the one thing. Believing in nothing is a really waste of belief because it's not a thing you can believe in because it isn't there, okay? Nobody ever said Gods were not there, you know, And anybody who thinks it's only one God, if it's only one, then it doesn't relate to anybody.
Speaker 4 00:11:49 It is everything. So that's like the clear light, the infinite loving nature of reality. The infinite energy, it equals mc squared. So E is infinite energy. Infinite energy doesn't blow you up. Infinite energy is you. It's not, it's already in, you're immersed in it. So it can't blow you up. Doesn't want to, doesn't need to. It's only near infinite energy that can harm other kinds of things if misdirected by those who don't understand it, and who are angry with somebody who use it for destruction. Okay? And then they make weird contraption that releases some energy in atoms that is trapped in atoms actually. And even that is, is not necessarily cause energy can never really be trapped, but yet it's available to all cells and all life. And it is the life energy in everything. That trust goes beyond any set of names and concepts and religious identities or personal identities or impersonal identities, but it's you and it's me, and it's all that is between us and it's everyone else, and we're all equal together in it. So we could really take care of each other.
Speaker 4 00:13:22 So that's what I'm talking about. And I'm talking about Buddha's honoring Buddha, however, not Buddhism, but Buddha. But we can honor all iss too. But, but not with that absolute honoring, the absolute honor is to Buddha the sense that Buddha, what Buddha means is the complete scientist, the scientists who came to know reality, which others have come to, and then they have gotten attached to a theory about it, and then they get dogmatic and then they are incomplete. The complete one came to know it and said to everyone, you can know it as well as me. It is you, it is me. And it is reliable. Therefore, for you, you can trust yourself at that deepest level of yourself being over reality, beyond your little identity, separate from reality. Your real self is something beyond reality. It's a selfless self in that sense. And you can trust that and it is yours, but you share it with everyone.
Speaker 4 00:14:35 And since it has infinite power and infinite space and infinite energy, an infinite nurture, and therefore meaning infinite love, it's shareable without diminishing your infinite enjoyment of it. How about that beyond any expectation you may have had surprising, amazing grace, how sweet it is. That's, that's why people love Jesus, because Jesus opens the door to them to amazing grace, because Jesus was a Buddha, meaning he knew God, he knew reality, he knew that he was you and therefore you are all right. It isn't that he saved you and you weren't all right. He, he knew you were already alright. As my beloved friend, the Reverend Michael Beckwith, who I, I love at a distance cuz I never get to LA to see him. You're right already is what he lets you know. You don't have to dominate the government, you don't have to have onward Christian soldiers that is a de basement of Jesus's vision to go and dominate some other people and make them recite the same words that you recite. Jesus was beyond words. He was beyond words. He was beyond words.
Speaker 4 00:16:11 Actually, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. You know, his last words, which people took as a sign of show of agony, which he knew it could be taken like that and that would also be all right for some in the sense that sort of the being beyond that they believed was beyond them shared in their agony. So, and they couldn't have believed that their, their agony is illusory and they can find in themselves in the middle of whatever circumstance, freedom from that agony. They, they couldn't have believed that level of knowing reality. And so at least they could feel go beyond their suspicion that the power of the universe, that reality could have made them so miserable in that what they believed was reality. Like a person, like an authority, like a super king, like a super God, a super, super priest that that being was willing to share their suffering. So that is the one main way of understanding that elany, you know, Lama sa lama means, it doesn't mean lama lama, apparently Hebrew means why Lama, I'm not sure why that syllables can mean why in a language, but they say it does. And <inaudible>, again, I wonder if you could, that you forsaken me. I don't think it may have all those pronouns in it. So may just simply be the word abandonment.
Speaker 4 00:18:01 Uh, and maybe I'm abandoned. And if, and maybe there's no have you or no, you know, the, the sort of personal transness of that may not be there. It may not, may it be, may may be interpreted as how I can even abandon this. In other words, if it's a moment of death where he is actually going into death because he knows he can come back from it. But in a way, by sharing a human partial perspective, he's also ready to give up that knowing. So he just says he abandons a sense of separate self and Aloy, Oh God, oh God, God, God is that his meeting with the infinite energy, which is beyond the personality of a personal God, but which is reality, which is all. And it flooded within himself. So he discovered his huge self, his God self actually, that he is God, His unity, where there is no death because his infinite life.
Speaker 4 00:19:31 So can you read that as a cry of triumph? We didn't, I didn't hear him shouted. I don't know if he was mad about it. When you say why have you fore me is like blaming, that's like a blame. That's an accusation. But which, you know, and some people hear it, that's echoing what they feel. They think there's an ultimate being out there that has, has like dished them out such and such a horrible lot. They've just been beaten up, they've been tortured, they've been raped, they've been, they have amputated, they've been on their way to death, which they think their body was their only life. They're all shut in in their sense of separate individuality. And they're, and yet they're being divided. So they are complaining. So he's echoing that, but maybe he's not complaining, he's after all is gone. So maybe he's just giving it up. Like I'm, I'm giving up the y I don't need the Y lama, I just don't know Hebrew. I must study it grammar.
Speaker 4 00:20:35 You know exactly what each of those syllables really means. I'm sure in the Kabbalah they have another reading. I have, I have to look it up. I have 14 volumes of the zohar. I'm gonna look it up. I'm sorry for my ignorance. But uh, when he left, he just said, you know, everything is impermanent. Work out your own freedom with diligence is one version or be cool might be another one. And goodbye from this body that you think is, is the freedom that is actually already also yours. And that's what, that was the gift. Par nirvana doesn't mean final nirvana, it means total nirvana. That is the Buddhas way more powerfully sharing his blis freedom, indivisible state of being beyond actually the illusion of him being a separated body. His final, his complete way of thorough way of doing that is more complete merger with you all through time and space. Not just the PEs around him, but all beings for time and space was to leave his body. So therefore break the illusion that you are thinking that the enlightenment over there in that person and not in me.
Speaker 4 00:22:07 That they, again, the two ways of understanding it, the non-dual way, which is the deep reality belief way and the dualistic way, which is the relational sort of not quite perfect reality, needing a little room for improvement way <laugh>, you know, the great zen saying of of Suzuki ro oh of course reality is perfect. Well there's always a little room for improvement in any particular relative situation. And Buddha scientist way where he says, Yes, I know reality, I experience it. I I have merged with it. I know it thoroughly in that sense that I'm one with it. Like a cat scan knows the structure of your nervous system. You know, they didn't yet have that. He could have referred to that since he knows all time. The ultimate scientist can and does.
Speaker 4 00:23:12 But he said, I can't express it because language will not capture it. You have to go beyond dualistic lang binary, dualistic language. Yes and no, you know, here and there, you and me, I and thou, you have to go beyond that to know it and saying so that as a scientist, that means, that doesn't mean don't be a scientist somehow just lobotomize yourself where you can't speak and then you'll know it. No, because even you have only the seeds of language like the lesser animals than human to fully as they've all been human, they're fully capable of bud hood and they're going to be bud hood. And they, but they, and they have the, the essence of bud hood within them of being the greatest scientist. Every gorilla does, every lizard does definitely that was part of the satisfaction of that, of that knowledge.
Speaker 4 00:24:14 They're not just there for us, although we are all there for each other in another way. But, but we, all of us would prefer not to be be for each other in the way that others should eat us <laugh>. We'd rather just enjoy sharing infinite available energy with each other. So nobody goes hungry and nobody gets eaten. That would be better. That's the little room for improvement there. So, so that's the thing. So, so the scientist then says what that is, is saying that no language can comprehend it, which also means no math can measure it. You know, no geometry, no math, no, no idea can encapsulate it. Open mind, ultimate open mind going beyond my mind and mind joining with all minds without abandoning my mind as a contributor. That's a scientist. So therefore we can have theories, we can use language to create vectors, to open doors for others and more doors for ourselves if we're not, if we're not the complete perfect scientist that is a Buddha yet.
Speaker 4 00:25:45 So it's just Pop Perry, it's like Buddha anticipates Carl popper's methodology of science that all theory also call laws of nature. All theory, which includes laws of nature. They are really theories, they are hypotheses, you know, there are approximations awaiting, they're supported by much experience, experiment, data, evidence, measurement, and, but they are awaiting also falsification by further experience and data and measurement and experience beyond data and measurement in a way even open to surprise, open to the unexpected, open to grace. That's the true scientist. And the idea that there was a perfect one is not a put down of everybody else, it's a promise. It's in the, it's in the, the nature of reality that the living particles within that reality, if we call our, are in our, you know, elusive and ineffable self particles thinking we are particles ignorantly perhaps or miss knowingly, but there's room for us to still, that is, we're still infused. It's like very simple. You can get it very simply. Your finite being. We all are, but we're also infinite because infinity can't be excluded from within our boundaries. Infinity is within us without invading us. It's automatically in us because we, it's a concept for that which cannot be bounded, therefore it has to be everywhere, Okay? So in a way there's no where for it because it's, it's, it's everywhere and there's no when for it because it's also every when it's infinite in time as well as space.
Speaker 4 00:27:38 And that's what we are also that. So we're both that and the other, which is paradoxical. It's contradictory and therefore language will bump up on one side or another of it, but can't catch it can only open to it. Okay? So that's where we are. But within that being there where we are can therefore include with our partial knowledge, knowing that it's not being fanatic and rigid and super righteous and thinking we only know and we are only right and be angry with those who question and criticize us. Even if they do it with a good intention for us, we still can be angry and avoid the benefit and we can be practical. And being practical means there's really, it's a no brainer. This election we're facing. An election that is critical for all life on earth is one really is because misgovernance and misguided governance has jeopardized all life on earth at a place where even this most simple minded person almost can see it.
Speaker 4 00:29:01 Although certain more stubborn, simple minded people are telling people Don't look a wonderful film. You should all go see don't lu up. There's this, there's this asteroid herling to destroy all life, but the political leaders to solve their own power and things even temporary up to death are telling everybody don't look at it. And because then they're only recklessly able to do that cuz they assume that after death they won't be there cuz they'll be nothing because they think nothing is something. So they're willing to risk destruction for a complete illusion, said nothing will save them. It will anesthetize the pain of the destruction of their life form that life form of theirs. And then their life form will be strangling in a place with no planet to land on.
Speaker 4 00:29:58 Uh, and maybe a long journey. Although the, the subtle mind, the sole mind can travel at faster than light speed. And there's zillions of other planets, of course, which would be completely irrational to demand and insist that we know that infinity cannot contain other better and worse zones of life. Everything is possible. Anything is possible. That's part of the, the knowledge, but the loving energy of it all is such that anything that everything be good is also possible ultimately. So, so there can be some temporary people seeing something bad and doing something bad that the ultimate goodness is the power and the reality of it. It's also possible. All right, So the no-brainer is one guy, very fallible guy, did a lot of mistaken things, knows that they were, is trying to undo them. But anybody wants to do help us and use our collective will, which is our government to help us.
Speaker 4 00:31:21 And the other guys don't wanna do that. They wanna stop all help. They wanna, they pretend that our collective will is misled and they are owned by a few people who think they, we just don't wanna pay taxes. They don't wanna, they don't wanna be part of the collective will. Somehow they'll do it better later if our collective will can't do it. It's blocked from doing it. So one wants to help, one wants to harm <laugh>. It's just very simple. One wants to destroy our collective will in our, which is our democratic government. They've, they've shown they did it. They tried to wreck the building in which its business should be conducted though it's been blocked from being conducted for almost 40 years. Somebody was supposedly in charge of it who said, it's the problem. This thing I'm in charge of is your problem. So I'm in charge of it in the process of getting rid of it.
Speaker 4 00:32:18 That was Ronald Reagan. Let's face it, the government is the problem, not the solution. He said, of course that's wrong. The government is our perspective lore, Thomas Payne, Reed Thomas Jefferson, the governed. It is our sharing of our little piece of the crown of sovereignty, of the crown of authority, of the crown of power, the shadowed crown of the English dictator tyrant king mper. And those charts, we then however, recollect them temporarily around an administration with three branches. We're independent of each other to check each other. But now we are in a situation where they have com comprised. One of them has been destroyed. It's just part of the, of the minority party trying to block the government. And the other one is trying to somehow renew itself. And that's obvious. So we have within the executive and the legislative, we have those who wanna make it run.
Speaker 4 00:33:28 We have a, an executive who also undo many wrong things that he did as part of the legislative for 40 years, knows how everything works, was corrupted by it may not, didn't actually, it never got super rich. It wasn't as fully corrupted by it as the oligarchs and the libertarians who now want to destroy it so they can rule whatever sphere of ruling, cross whoever's in their way, which is what that ends up as. When, when the libertarians anarchists take over, rich anarchists take over, it ends up in a dictatorship. It doesn't take dictatorships long to destroy whatever country they are ruling and running nowadays. So it's obvious it's a no brainer, you know, for all their imperfections. And also, you know, the syllogism that some Princeton friend of mine, Princeton graduate friend of mine, could never quite face lesser of evils equal less evil.
Speaker 4 00:34:37 Okay? And more good, more opening to the good. And it's easy to see that if you trust the overall reality and you, you don't absolute ize any theory about its evilness and your fear and your paranoia and your suspicion and hatred of others and so forth. All of this, would you become a victim to all of those things when you won't open your mind to being bigger than yourself, to your spiritual wellness, not necessarily your religious faith, your, that can be a bad fanatic, unfortunate type of thing. If it's connected to some sort of authority structure, social authority, you know, fallible authority, social authority. There's no infallible rulers of organizations. So that's where you can know that for the, at a glance at history. Okay? So go in hand and exercise your freedom to get more freedom. I know you're going to, I know your heart is moved that way. You're fed up with this violence and anger and suspicion and lies and you don't even know some of the lies are not true. But you know that quality of the liar, you can tell that they're just just trying to like egg you on and egging themselves on. They don't know what they're saying. You can see it. The glaze look in their eyes when they shot and scream angrily and your heart knows it.
Speaker 4 00:36:16 Okay? So that's my cast today. That's all I wanted to say. I wanted to cheer everyone up. You know, I might as well promote my book, which is Wisdom is Bliss. And I never had a book tour, or maybe I'll start one now because it was published still during the tail end of C by my wonderful beloved publisher, Hay House International. And it's called Wisdom is Bliss. The four friendly, fun facts that can change your life. And I think they can actually, and I'm, I'm only grateful to the venerable girl, his holiness capture river and his holiness to d lama. And after that, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Yawe, Moham, uh, Aria, na latu, Confucius, you know, Wang, whatever, all of them. I'm really grateful to all of them for trying to help people find happiness. I really am. So be happy. And another subtitle of it is Cheer Up Folks, because reality has amazing grace in store for you.
Speaker 4 00:37:56 Whatever the way you might, wherever you might choose to look for it. If you look hard enough and don't listen to other people's definition necessarily of it, it's there for you. The amazing grace for sure. A hundred percent <laugh>, okay? All money home. The Tibetans have a wonderful, the wonderful nice almost to be genocide, sadly, but who will love it will fail. But there's, there's some foolish people trying people of Tibet, which are not Tibetans, you know, they're called Boan Boan, the name of their country is Bo or Bur and they're really boan. And so those buran, I think in English they call themselves bura because the ba means a person, you know, but person a bur. But, but if we anize it, it might be boan. I think I look forward to when we will be calling them when they have their nation free.
Speaker 4 00:39:03 Even in the close federation with the Grand United States of East Asia or United States of China, if they insist on the name of that silly empire 2,200 years ago, made by a vicious emperor who thought his empire would last for two for 10,000 years and it lasted for 25. Cuz that's what dictators do. They don't last cause nobody wants one. So they can take the United States of China, but better would be United States of East Asia. And then in that way they would, uh, they would be, have a better name. You know, you know, Cause really their own name for themselves, you know, is Joan Gu, the central country. But actually everyone is an eccentric country in the modern time. They're, we're all central. Every being is central. So there is no central country. It's kind of an old fashioned term. And they are wonderful, big creative, vast mass of people in the east of Asia, which they also use that term.
Speaker 4 00:40:14 So that United States of East Asia, like the eu, you know, they could be the au the Asian Union, okay? And they would be one of the states, one of the big ones like Germany is in Europe. And they let the others be free is federated. And then everyone will be happy. And that will happen inevitably. A dictator, any dictator can try to conquer everybody around them. They all fall, they'll destroy their a lot of lives, they'll destroy them. Their own country love what Mr. Putin is doing. They'll destroy their own place. But eventually some leader will emerge, who will realize he will open the doors, who will, who will, who will live beyond his own imperial self. And he will realize like the ancient, some of the ancient emperors did, actually the successful ones, they'll call themselves chan, which means you are humble servant, which is what a president true president knows, she or he is to the people that I am your humble servant. I am not your dictator. I am not seeking special privilege over you. I am not. I I'm your servant.
Speaker 4 00:41:25 And the ancient Confucius taught them to say Chan not war, but chan, the war is also good. But Chan means you are servant. How can such a person enslave others? They cannot. And they know that in their China heart of the Chinese person that is also known, that freedom also resides in their heart, each one of them. And so everything will work out. But why wait so long in la, so long in these sort of egotistical fantasies? No need. And we vote for you, for your freedom, You burdens and you Mongolians and you Chinese, and your mentors and yours and your Koreans, everyone and new Japanese. Okay?
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