Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:14 Welcome to my mom's Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful and some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture control center in America. Have a great day. This is episode 253 sovereign in the middle lane.
Speaker 1 00:01:14 You know, the people nowadays who are, uh, resisting the social isolation, social distancing, and who want to just get out and run to the bowling alley or the movie theater or whatever it is, you know, and don't want to wear a mask. And I didn't do that. I think these are the people who are afraid to be responsible for what happens in the world. Um, I think that the Corona virus is a wonderful opportunity actually, as tragic as it is for anyone who in an untimely way passes away because their lungs collapse or whatever kidneys fail or whatever it is. But I actually have very high percentage of those people are people who are already being poisoned by a bad food system, sorry, by a bad air system, by a bad water system, you know, by the industrializing pollution of the world, uh, they were already badly weakened and they are the ones whose immune system then had a complete freak out and who most of the most who died, there were some things that we don't understand.
Speaker 1 00:02:33 And some of those who, who maybe not have that that's always considered in the Bardo traditions, Indian and Japan traditions, the untimely death of someone who has a lot more to get done with their precious human embodiment is always considered very tragic. It isn't that everyone welcomes death, um, until you have to, I mean, there have all kinds of longevity. Yoga is and longevity practices, and there are many dips in the Buddha's history that they claimed. They lived a hundred years, 50 years, 200 years, whatever, without antibiotics, you know, without whatever, just on the basis of understanding the interaction of the deeper way of mind and body of, of, of the will, the human will and the human in a way, uh, mental control of the material of the world, you know, like there was a wonderful in the <inaudible> my favorite and my favorite texts are, there's a thing where some young people from young yuppie is actually from a very wealthy city where he's teaching in the suburbs.
Speaker 1 00:03:42 Uh, they come out and they say, Oh, Buddha, it's so great to see you. We, we, we already, we want to go to like where we want to be, but it's hard for us. We understand there's a, we're working on it to develop our wisdom. And so on, one thing we can't figure out is how do you change the world? How do you make the world a better world? How do you do that? We can't figure that out. And then the Buddha says, well, actually it's impossible to make a beautiful world, but, but in a way you do it anyway. And the reason you do is that what the world actually is, is the intersubjective mind field of living beings. So beings are all intertwined with each other in a way that kind of absolutely. And so the more loving you become and the more you can help others to become more loving and cheer them up and so forth through the processes of life and death and rebirth and so forth and Bardos, or with different kinds of orders, then you have changed the world.
Speaker 1 00:04:43 And that's how you build it into like a Buddha world, meaning a world where everyone is there for everyone else, you know? And then he gives a long speech about how, um, he has done that himself to become a Buddha. He changed the whole world. He says, then one of his top disciples, um, you know, who is into the idea that Nirvana is somewhere else, which was one version of what I was teaching to some people. And he says, how can that be? If you, if this Buddha was doing, making this world perfect for everybody, how come he failed? Here's it still sucks. You know, he was looking at the world and then the Buddha says, really, you think that's the case, a sharp food chart, his favorite disciple, one of his favorite disciples of the Teravata version of teaching is yeah, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 00:05:35 I'm sorry, but it's just terrible. And then versus, well, let me show you what it really is. And then he does a thing where he puts his toe on the ground temporarily. He picks up his foot. Buddha does puts his toe on the ground and suddenly everyone in the huge audience sees themselves in the perfect place for themselves. There are full happiness, there are full awareness, there are full compassion and love. And they realized that what they had thought of as a struggle and an adequacy and imperfection was had to do with what they have inside themselves, that they are working on. And yeah, but it was perfect for them. It gave them the best momentum, the best challenge to develop themselves perfectly. And that is a very powerful theme in the Indian. Uh, and it actually it's in all the traditions, you know, for example, take the Irish, wake Irish. When someone dies, they do not move around. I mean, someone might a bit, but basically they have a big part of, they all get drunk or they're like, terrific. In Butan. Uh, I was with Sam keen, a guy named Sam Keenan. He was interviewing a Jesuit priest who had been in Butan for 40 years, became an honor or a citizen of Bhutan. And then Sam asked him, how many people did you convert to Christianity? And the guy said, zero,
Speaker 2 00:07:03 Sam was shocked.
Speaker 1 00:07:07 You mean, how can that be? You know? Cause he was thinking how it's so great, you know, superior to be, to believe in Jesus, you know, it hadn't, and it is great to believe it is, but maybe not superior. So then, then they said, well, why not? And he asked him, why didn't you convert people? He says, well, because I came to realize that they're all living with the Holy ghost already. They didn't need to convert to some other version of it. They were already living with it. He says, well, what do you mean by that? And then you killed the story that you had a dear friend who was a village chief, but not a big Lama, not anybody, just a local, those shapes. Or he lived in his little, little chapel that he had that's government, a lot of that. And he was very friendly with a guy and they would bring him food and things and he would visit them and have dinner with them and their village.
Speaker 1 00:07:59 And then the guy got old and he said, well, you know, I'm going to pass away soon. So I want to advise you to our last dinner and I'll let you know and call you in due course. So then, okay. Waiting for that. And then he gets a call and then he goes and goes to the village and the guy has already died, but his body is tied up in his chair, chair of the village, chief. And there's a plate in front of him. And so the people who are serving the guests are making it come from the department. Chief who's already dead actually by Dan and Sam, I also was mystified by it a little bit. Sam was completed and said, that means that they are living in the Holy ghost. And the sense of the Shakina, you know, the, the compassion of the, of the day, even then even they're dead.
Speaker 1 00:08:51 They don't accept that at some bad cause they're on into heavenly awareness, you know, in a way the spiritual traditions, all of them, there's one thing, you know, people often say, and even a Buddhist nutritionist say the one thing that you really we do in life alone is you die alone. No, that's true. In order to help you reduce your attachment to objects and things, you know, when you die, you leave behind your bank account, you leave behind your possessions, you leave your shirts, you leave your actual body of your skeleton, you leave it all behind. And uh, so, and you're all in relationships. You leave behind the say, but actually in the deeper vision, there's no alone. Yeah. Because the Bargo shows that they're all of these amazingly enlightened beings who can live on a subtle plane. And that's one thing we'll be working on a lot during this retreat, getting to be aware of ourselves in our subtle body forms, which is the one that we take with us toward, through the truth of the Bardo pest bounce off the clear light, and then go into the, between safe have before we decided to take rebirth if we decide to take her.
Speaker 1 00:10:04 So, so that now the Bardo that we're in now and the Corona to shift here as a little bit in the Corona virus thing. And here I must give a great shout out to a man named Charles Eisenstein, who again is not a Buddhist particularly, but he has an essay that you can find on his website called the coronation, which is so extraordinary. I could not believe it is such a great essay and it is so it is so empowering and so well completely staying minnow, relentlessly fixed on the problems, but yet, yeah, it's completely empowering and wonderful. It's like Buddha's teaching without mention a Buddha and he's not a Buddhist. I doubt it's terrific because he's, he shows how one reason we can't stop the catastrophe that is happening to the planet of which this Corona thing is a tiny little preliminary prolong really compared to, you know, when we go full scale melting, hang on ice melting of the Tibet and Himalayan glaciers, melting of the Arctic ice melting of the South at Arctic shelf and raising of the oceans by 15 feet and this kind of thing, that's, this is nothing.
Speaker 1 00:11:22 And all the type foods and 130 degrees and 110 degrees at night, even in so many parts of the world, huge droughts and floods. I mean, we're really looking at it. Uh, the, um, you know, what the misunderstanding of the book of revelations people interpreted as the prediction, but that's not what it is because we're not going to have this happen. We're not going to do it. Yeah. It's threatening us. Which, which we, where does it, we don't do anything as everyone thinks we can't do anything. There's nothing we can do. I have many a time in a large audience giving a lecture about Buddhist ethics and the world crisis. It was one of my typical titles. And, um, I then asked them, I say, how many of you think we really will stay within 1.5 degrees centigrade, two or three or four degrees Fahrenheit, temperature, Raj will really change to renewable energy, real really get off the, the petroleum addiction and all that.
Speaker 1 00:12:22 All the elements of society that connect to it, like even agriculture on the food system. How many of you think will succeed in doing that? And there's a few quick hands. And then what I say, come on really, really well. And then they kind of go down, you know, had the PR and the presumption is no, we won't be able to do anything about it. It will just overtake us. So what, what, uh, Charles says, well, I've always thought this is why I'm so thrilled to see it. Of course he confirmed from his own perspective. Or I was thinking is that people just feel powerless. They don't vote because they think that doesn't matter if I vote or not, they're all stupid. They won't change anything. Anyway, people don't go out locally and vote. They don't speak up when things are happening there, they don't really put themselves on the line about things.
Speaker 1 00:13:17 And they think that they feel helpless. And actually that authoritarian society that is so militarized as our society, the American run, for example, know that we have a huge amount of R and D goes into sort of our Rambo notion. And then that's why we have Rambo police that do that are over rough on people. And because once you are like that to the outer world, you're going to be like that to your inner self. And, and, um, they want everyone to feel powerless so they can push them around, order them around, brainwash them, get them to be consumers of whatever, useless thing that they don't need. Another one out. And to get them to pay for this huge, uh, violent military apparatus instead of taking care of our infrastructure and our, and our on a cold people who are so deprived are essential people.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 So what the Corona has done is it has showed us since for six months, we have cut our fossil fuel pollution by 17% worldwide. Suddenly just cut it just by staying home. And if we go back out, we can choose to go right back to the catastrophe. If we want to act like it's not happening, but we can also realize, gee whiz, our personal reaction to the situation is capable of this kind of huge change. And there must be a way we can have a middle way between going back to the old normal and unrealistically jumping to a new normal that we can't bring everyone with us and sort of doing a middle way on really deciding we have the sovereign genie. So he says, when you have a CRA coronation, what you do is you're giving back your own sovereignty, that your choices make a difference.
Speaker 1 00:15:10 And therefore, even in the littlest thing, you can choose to bike over somewhere. You can choose to take a subway or a bus. You can choose to wear a mask or enough, or you can gun down there and some filthy motor thing. You can, these choices make a huge difference and we know what needs to be done actually. And we don't listen to nonsense and, uh, we, we will be able to do it. And so this has been a kind of, um, the Corona on the career, Kirk current agent with the fact of our own empowerment. And when you're empowered, you also have to be responsible. You since what you do matters, you can't just do whatever you have to do, work counts, what's positive for yourself and for others. And then you're going to be so happy. Do you know what I mean? And, uh, and you're looking at the partner, you know, I remember I said that in Tibetan for the Indian <inaudible>, who is the author of the Tibetan, so-called, it's not really called the book of the dead it's because there are no dead people.
Speaker 1 00:16:19 Nobody's dead. Everybody just lives in different ways. And there's an endless continuum of life, but it's called the book of natural liberation by learning the meaning of life in the between, and how to navigate and the purpose of life and how to navigate the betweens. And we were all in a vitrine all the time, actually, what we decided to do and what we think and how we see things, even when we don't even say anything about it, that affects the world. We inter resonate with other people. We created vibes with them. And so if we really know that how powerful we are, we know it's our duty to cheer up.
Speaker 3 00:17:03 Yeah, Bob, I mean, you're, you're, you're pinging on so many really completely poignant, powerful and applicable points that point out the larger scope of the Bartels and what you said. I just love it because this idea of coronation, of course, and in Tibetan lingo, of course, and ABI shaker along and empowerment. So what, what really, what, what you're alluding to is, is the foundational type of empowerment that this tradition is a non-theistic theistic tradition really begets is that it's fundamentally a transfer of power back to its rightful source, which is within us. And so what I'm struck with here is this, you know, we, we in fact have this kind of, um, unfortunate powerless relationship to the materialistic world, because in fact, we impute the, to be materialism, but what's so beautiful here, Bob is that if, if we make in fact this kind of transition of identity, so we start with ourselves and when we make this transition into ourselves, a number of things happen. One is the farther down the rabbit hole. You go, two things happen. Um, the more you disappear in, the more collective the experience becomes. And so for when we go deep within ourselves, you know, we'll find nothing. That's what we find when we die. But simultaneously by becoming nothing, of course we become everything. And so this may seem somewhat theoretical. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:18:24 Luckily that's a big key thing just right there. Just let me, let me celebrate what you said. Great thing about nothing is it's nothing. So you can't stay there. You just disappears the minute. It appears you have an expectation that there was something like nothing as you're letting go of all the, some things you're used to, but I'm lucky thing is that the nothing is not there. So you don't get stuck there. That's really, really key. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:18:54 Yeah. And then, so the, the other thing that happens with this kind of, um, inner empowerment, this, this, this transformation or transfer of power back to its rifle source is that then in fact, this, this sense of powerlessness, I mean, we only feel ineffectual because we've unwittingly subscribed to the cult of scientific materialism and reductionism, where are the high priests where the arbiters of truth in the modern age are our scientists. And I have nothing whatsoever, um, against science. I mean, I, I studied physics, I adore science and the scientific method, but the by-product the near enemy of scientific reductionism in materialism. That's the problem. And
Speaker 1 00:19:37 It's no longer scientific. It becomes a dogma. It's a belief like high priests of the cult of materialism.
Speaker 3 00:19:43 Exactly, exactly. So we are all unfortunately unwitting and witting subscribers and the cult of scientific materialism. And so what we have to do is, is fundamentally detoxify deconstruct from that worldview. Reinhabited the power to realize that the world is not made of matter. The world is made of a, whatever you want this ineffable matrix called heart mind spirit, or as Minger repor, Jay beautifully talks about the world is now made of love. It's not made of matter. And so matters. Just a funny limited way of looking at the world. And so when we understand the kind of, um, almost plasticity of the phenomenal world and that we ha we are the ones that create the worlds that we perceive, that's tremendously empowering. Then, then we realize we have so much more power than we can imagine. And the reason I tossed this into the next Bob is because this has real applicability in the Bardos, especially let's get real practical here when someone dies.
Speaker 3 00:20:44 I mean, when someone passes away, we like, Oh, you know, I, what can I do? I can't really do much, well, death may be the end of a body. Death is not the end of a relationship. It's not the end-all-be-all mindstream. And so therefore, as you know, one of the tremendous gifts of the Bartle literature is equipping us with these incredibly sophisticated practices that are not only a profound benefit to us. And this is really important that we're when we engage in these practices, we're not just doing it for ourselves, we're doing it for all manifestations central. Again, we're doing it for the cosmos, but it's tremendous, um, nutrition for your spirit in your heart. And so I have to throw this into the mix so that people realize this is not just a metaphysical mumbo jumbo. I mean, these teachings when they're taken to heart have tremendous practical application.
Speaker 1 00:21:39 Yes. That's one thing you're absolutely right. You know, the one thing I'd like to add is that the power of the mind is always expressed through bodies. You know, form is emptiness. Emptiness is form, you know, so actually Buddhist science also is not that dogmatic with mental listic reductionism, right? That's why this holiness, for example, is so happy with scientists. He likes them. He knows they're are too dogmatic about their materialism, but in the other hand, they've discovered all kinds of wonderful thing by that reductionism, as long as they're considering continuing to be open-minded and not closing around some dog mother, all there is, is the matter you, in other words, you know, there's, in other words, they, they are open to exploring the more subtle planes and realms of the mind or the mind and matter interact. And actually there is some Buddhists scientists use the mind and very reductionistically and say, it's all, it's all created by mind.
Speaker 1 00:22:41 You Sage in Buddhism is very strong. That one, and there was huge school, the yoga Charlo school in India that did that, but the most you considered the most sophisticated, but a scientific thing is that mind and matter are always injure woven. They're kind of magical and illusory, and you can go all the way in one direction, all the way into another. And finally, there is no dogma. Finally, it's just wonderful duty, magical, wonderful things. And, uh, and so one of the great things is, for example, Buddha is they create bodies, but they're called nirmanakaya emanation bodies. And they, they, instead of just hanging out somewhere in some Buddha world, a mind field that is somehow disembodied, they manifest as people like take not hon, just as people like Sharon Saulsbury, they manifest like you, they manifest like all kinds of people like <inaudible>. And, uh, they, uh, in to help people then they, and some, and they manifest like no Martha Graham or, you know, um, uh, some of those wonderful seniors, you know, what's her name.
Speaker 1 00:23:57 Uh, I loved her fighting temptations on I'm. I'm a big fan of some of the rock and roll singers and they are beautiful people. They're so beautiful. And that itself is a creation of love. And, you know, mother create beautiful beings all the time. And then they get upset when the warmongering males go around and blow them all up and act or Island about it. That's really, that's really what we have to also stop doing. You know, we really do, you know, that thing about the climate that, um, of all the climate pollution that has been placed by industrialization in the atmosphere since 1850 people don't realize half of it has been placed there since 2000, the year, 2000. So in 20 years, by the, by the doubling down of these addicts, you know, controlling them addicts, they have doubled the amount of pollution and then danger in the, you know, there's dangerous cloud that hovers over the world, making people sick and unhealthy and susceptible to viruses.
Speaker 1 00:25:09 You know, we have tons like a billion viruses in our microbiome, all of us, but viruses can be helpful actually. But then sometimes they're a little hard. We can't, again, digest them because of a weakness of our, we, our system has been weakened by this, this corruption. I was thinking there's a wonderful person I saw, by the way, it's wonderful what we can discover online to also also, I'm very particularly happy that this thing we're going to embark upon with everybody is happening because, you know, if we were, everybody had to drive to meet us and then they wouldn't be polluting, exhaust view is very expensive and all kind of thing. And here we can, we can really, if people do how much fun the Bartow was and how exciting decades we could have a, a thousand people without any problem, or, and, uh, they all teach here, they would create a cheery vibration about normal and, um, instead of like moaning and groaning all the time, you know, and, uh, and they're angels, well, you know, there's tons of subtle body to adapt to, but is that helping out beings who die and are reborn helping them through the Bardo process, but the Western people also have angels and the Hindus also have angels and Satos and all kinds of people, the Taoists have good morals, you know, every, every culture has.
Speaker 1 00:26:35 But anyway, I'm remembering this wonderful lady called Lyla Johnston, who is another ho I wonder, I think her father's Navajo mother is Cheyenne, and she's went to Stanford and she's cheap, really identity politics. And I don't know what all that spiritual person and she was talking about, you know, deep ecology people sure do this thing. Like, Oh, the earth is so much better off without to humans cause you were causing so much disaster. And she said, actually, where we native people have been close to the needs of the earth, mother earth and father sky. We have been coast to that for a long time. And we have cultivated our forest and we have kept our waters clean and we've done this and dad, you know, and we try not to over overeat the animals and the wild animals. We'll let them around on the, on the steps and prairies and things.
Speaker 1 00:27:29 We don't put them in feedlots. And so actually, if the humans disappeared, we native people would be missed by mother. She would miss us because we take care of her or we, and she gave an example of the Northwest Pacific people who went out laboriously by hand and they planted kelp in the off shore. And they planted huge forest of kelp. And this created the herrings, a space for the herrings. And then the herrings, they fed the salmon and the salmon. They felt the killer right up to the killer whales. And there was all this prosperity and joy and the ocean, you know, of course some people got munched up and they moved from this fish body to that fish body. But, but still had, that was maybe there was pain there, but say when the spirit separates from the chorus body and goes into the subtle plane, it's not, the pain is over.
Speaker 1 00:28:21 And so we're going to understand all these processes. And anyway, she said that, then she said, we're not savages to people who wreck mother earth, you have to admit are behaving savagely who don't care for the rivers. They don't care for the animals. They know they're extinguishing the animals. They don't care for the soil. They don't care for the air. That's Savage. Yeah. Yeah. And she did it, but without anger, she didn't say it in a, in a violent way, like, Oh yeah, they'd be happy to get rid of them. No, she meant that. I know that Navajo in the hope, you know, I liked that they're waiting for the, what they call the white brother primarily to shape up and listen to the red brother and a black brother and the yellow brother have all those colors. And the green buttons, I think are the purposes is it has to be a green one. I think those are the purposes.
Speaker 1 00:29:16 Anyway, I never would have met such a person because I'm too busy. I can't go to Santa Fe and find the Navajo and there, although I wish I did have time to do it, I will maybe try it. I'll take a train out there and we'll take a plane. So Gretta Timberg will not be upset. I'm going to go on a train when I go seriously. But I don't know if I have to go to India. I don't really have a boat. I don't have a boat. She has a great boat. You know, that sailboat, that's close to the Prince of Monaco. He lent her that boat. Yeah. Maybe you can read your grit.
Speaker 3 00:29:52 So Bob, I have a question for, you know, you have been involved you're, you're, you're in such a unique position, your stature, your longevity, the scope of what you've studied, who you practice with it. I mean, honestly, it it's so inspiring and so breathtaking, but I want to ask you what, in terms of the Bardo teachings that you've spent so many years working with and translating, talk to us a little bit about how these teachings have touched you, um, how would they change you and, you know, have there, have there, in fact, been some surprises when you dive into this,
Speaker 1 00:30:30 I was like, wait, you know, I had a kind of struggle with my publisher because I said, I didn't want to call it the book of the dead, because what I discovered was there are no dead people. There's no such thing as a dead person, they continue to live. You know, all those guys who to talk to your relative, who died and tell you where they hit the cat food, you know, that sort of thing, a lot of this. And they, of course they that's their subtle, uh, they may be reborn even, but they, everyone has a kind of more celestial, subtle form that stays connected. There are different versions like that. And um, so the death, what we call death is just like, um, you know, it's like the transition, that's all, it's where the body, this is something I will go into in detail tomorrow, uh, in my time in afternoon, which you may already touch on your head at that time.
Speaker 1 00:31:28 Cause you were fully familiar with it. Part two, you know, there is the foundation of the world is not nothingness. Luckily or nothingness is not the space within which the world takes place because luckily nothing is nothing. And it is not emptiness. The famous Buddhist concept of emptiness, the Buddhist concept of emptiness or avoidance, or even you could call it freedom is the place where everything takes place. And in fact it is nothing but all the things taking place, it's the non-duality of relativity and freedom. So there is no sort of absolute apart from all the interrelated things, which is then what generates the power of love, because love is led everything, interrelated, being the best possible way of interrelating, which is everything is there for everything else. And that's what love is giving everything is generosity, giving, giving itself to everything else. It's like John Belushi's food fight universe.
Speaker 1 00:32:29 Where are you? Instead of saying, I want my chocolate, I want my chocolate. I want more sub-areas and you can have, and if I give you some, I won't get enough targets instead that everybody is, Oh, here I have some chocolate and they're throwing it at each other. And then actually, although they don't grab it to themselves, everybody else has chocolate on. So it creates an abundance because there's so many or other people who are giving you a chocolate, then you can even bump it in. You're kind of give it away too. And then in between you kind of get smeared on your and food. Do you know an animal house or whatever that film was, you know, where everybody's showing everything that's based on abundance and the world is incredibly abundant, Oh, this is, this is, this is Buddha's vision for us. You know, people too, too carried away by the first and second noble truth, although they are noble. And they're very true, I'm there necessarily to face them suffering and the cause of suffering to understand it. But the real great gift of the Buddha was the third noble truth, which is the freedom from suffering, which is a sort of minimalist way of saying happiness, you know, saying freedom from suffering. It means happiness. So the Buddha was happy. That's why he smile. He didn't smile because Nan, yeah, you're all going to suffer. It's a ridiculous misunderstanding of what I was teaching. There was very widespread. It was widespread in Asia.
Speaker 1 00:33:58 So, so, so that's, that's why I'm so grateful to his holiness, the Dalai Lama to my old Mongolian <inaudible> multi teacher and to all the great live on set I've known is that they gradually, the wholly enabled me the, like the terrible poor wasp porn in new I'm impoverished Gentry in New York city and some most unreal place almost in the world as far as nature goes and yet very real as human way. And, uh, and cheered me up. I'm so grateful for that. And we all, we all need this cheery up and, um, and, uh, this is key because you can't even help anyone out of their suffering or even yourself out. Or if you don't cheer yourself up and see the bright side, see the silver lining, see the coronation, you know, that's the thing that personally to me, suddenly, the idea of you who is there's no dead people.
Speaker 1 00:35:02 Then the second thing I really learned, well, of course, the reason that we are all denial of death in our culture is because we're, so we're still backward culture. We're a military culture, a military culture, the bosses, no trust culture. They don't want the people to be confronting their death, living with death in the face of death because people live in the face of death. They demand equality life. They are not going to be pushed around or go off and fight for no another oil, well somewhere, or go fight for another few acres on some border or something. No way. They're not going to do that. They're going to demand quality life, starting with their level and starting with their neighbors and starting with the beautiful nature around them. And they're going to demand that as, as Elizabeth Kubler Ross, the great, the great pioneer of the, the hospice movement that many of you all with us to hear, I'm sure, fully aware of it. Elizabeth Kubler, Ross. I love that. What she said. She said in all, I've been with 10,000 people and help them die. And my career as a psychologist, dealing with this and not one of them ever told me that they deeply regret it spends another day at the office.
Speaker 1 00:36:21 However, when, when the authorities and the society want to insulate, everybody can have them stuck at their, at their butcher shop, you know, or they're a meat packing factory or something. And whether or not it kills them, you know, then they don't want them to know about this. They want them just to keep, uh, to do what I have to do. Whatever you order me. They don't want to say, well, this could kill me. And I actually enjoy my life. So I'm not going to do that. Then they become unmanageable, which is good. Human being is such a great thing. They should not be bossed around by idiots. They should assert themselves to be sensible. Of course they can. Everyone can be bossed around by their wives. Males need to be bossed around by their wives. We all do definitely moms. Why their daughters, males need to be more surround brothers by their sisters, um, for the female boss.
Speaker 1 00:37:15 That's for sure, but, but not by governments and moronic or presidents or prime ministers or, or whatever, oligarchs. This is silly. They're not even happy themselves. You show me a happy billionaire and I will show you one who's most focused on giving it away. That's right. That's the only happy one. The one who was more of them is complete victim. Yeah. Fear because everyone else is trying to get away from them and they didn't anymore. And it's like, they're no way are they like, you know, maybe they drink a more expensive thing or they eat more meat, et cetera. And then they get a better brand of cancer. But, but, but my, my bottom line is shorter. Skipped version of Buddhism is engaged. Realism. Buddhism is realism because if it was some artificial way of enjoying life, then it would be part of the problem.
Speaker 1 00:38:15 But what it is is it's discovering dead reality is joy. Yeah. That's, that's what Buddha hasn't been given proper credit for her. I am interviewing that. You know, that's my mission. If you will, is that a Buddha teaching the third noble truth and is even most basic teaching is that happiness is the more real reality. 10, the losery unhappiness and ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is the cause of suffering and wisdom is bliss. You know that when you new reality, then you realize reality is there for you. Yeah. And you can't get lost. There's no nothing. So you can't just become nothing and suffering is just when you don't understand how to interact or you're just too awkward. You're too socially awkward. You're too physically awkward. You're too, you're too metaphysically, awkward. You bang into things and doesn't harm things. And you, instead of tuning in and smoothly, you know, making them sharing joy through things, you know, but, uh, I do want to leave people in this, even in this introductory session with, um, something that we cherish very much as men law, you know, at Mandela mountain retreat and spa resort, uh, where we would be meeting Andrew if we were not like we're being coronated at home.
Speaker 1 00:39:47 Right. And, uh, and that is that, uh, we can enjoy dying every night when we fall asleep. Right. That's right. And we, we, because when you fall asleep, you go down. If you try to stay aware, but now don't do it where you can't fall asleep. You know, you've got to be trying to be so mindful that you will get all nervous, but you know, try to notice the stages of kind of letting go of your sight sense. You know, you're focused on our visual field or audio fields, et cetera, right? Putting put in a Kubota quiet room, we turn the lights off, et cetera. So we try to shut down our normal self identification with our sensory apparatus. And we start calling a soft, nice bed and budgets, et cetera. And then, and then I think when we, we leave on examined our materialist worldview, we sort of think then when you blank out, you go unconscious.
Speaker 1 00:40:43 That that is the deep state that that's the deepest state and that, and then that confirms in our mind subliminally that when we die, that's where we're going into this dark state. And, you know, cemeteries are called heavenly Raz 10, you know, the law, the sleep law laws of sleep, or, you know, and, but that's completely fake. And that's wrong from the Bardo point of view from the Virto point of view, which we'll talk much more about, um, you, there is a place when you're not demanding to be a boundary being when you let go of consciousness, which may seem like you're going into a nothing state, but, you know, by inference actually by a common sense, but there is no nothing sacred. You will just, you wake up in the morning and you also lying in the bed comfortably and so forth, and someone can wake you up easily if they make a noise in the hallway or something.
Speaker 1 00:41:44 So, so it's not nothing, it's just a kind of a simulation of nothing. And then where you, and if you, if it was all there was, you would not feel refreshed in the morning at all, because there would be nothing would give you nothing. It wouldn't give you a new energy, a healing of some sore muscle or a new kind of a new hunger to have a good breakfast and get up and meditate or whatever. And so you're must be lying in a bed of the positive energy because you feel energy, your cells are energized by this sleeping. And this is what we call the clear light of the void, which is what the void is, is clear light. It's not a dark, nothing. It's not in a way clear light is clear though. It's like transparency because there's not a bright light. There's other bright lights.
Speaker 1 00:42:37 It's a light beyond dark and light. I know it's complicated. We'll talk a lot more about it. But I just think as a yoga that we do, when we have our retreats admin, like we would be doing this at our introductory admin law, which is the sleep yoga where you sort of prime yourself to think as you're falling asleep, as you relishing falling asleep, because you're tired that I'm not going to be lying in nutting. I'm going to merge with clear light and loving energy of the foundation of the universe. And that, that's a really great thing. I think that's a really cheer yoga. And in a way, then you can, you can rehearse the death process by going through that unconscious letting go and realizing that you didn't die because you fell asleep. Cause there was no nothing to stay in. Even when you were unconscious, instead you pop up feeling better. And that gift comes from, you can say, it comes from God, comes from Jesus, comes from Avalokiteshvara. But basically it's clear light of the void. We call it, you know, whatever you like, you know, it's
Speaker 3 00:43:48 Fantastic. And that's one of the things obviously that we will be playing around with these so-called nocturnal meditations, which Bob, I also noticed, um, plays Bartow yoga within the schema of nocturnal meditation and very specifically, um, dream yoga, sleep, yoga, you know, capital cocktail, rent, the Che who I'm sure, you know, um, in his book, in his book, he goes so far as to say the dream yoga came about principally as a way to prepare for death. And so absolutely in addition to the sleep yoga, we will be also, I'll be offering, uh, some, some, uh, teachings around dream Elgol together because I mean, even, even Pablo somebody is, you know, and then in the Bardo teachings of natural liberation, it's, uh, obviously an archetypical number, not a literal number, but he goes so far as to say that if we can maintain lucidity in the dream state seven times, that's the archetype number, then that proficiency will transfer into acidity in the Bartow state. And that this is really,
Speaker 1 00:44:46 Yes, absolutely. It's really worth
Speaker 3 00:44:48 Throwing into the mix because just like, just like in the dream state, you know, it's like if you're in a usual non lucid dream, if you don't wake up and take control of the mindscape dreamscape, what does well, your habits, your karma, and this is beautiful because, you know, trunk Burma J once was asked, what is it that reincarnates? And you probably know Bob, he said in his inimitable way, your bad habits. And so in exactly the same way with this is what we can discover in the dream state that, um, what constitutes a so-called problematic trajectory through the Bardos is in fact, I not lucid bar to experience, but it was a dream. The great news is with, with a moment of lucidity, it's like they say in the Tibet book of the dead recognition and liberation are simultaneous one moment of insight, the tables are instantly turned and you now have, um, uh, control over a situation that previously had complete control over you. And so the transformation of daytime lucidity into some nighttime lucidity, and then at the bar, the lucidity is going to be a central narrative of what we're working with here, because
Speaker 1 00:46:01 Do you know my dear friend, Dr. Neeta of course I took his course with you guys. That's right. But he tells the most wonderful story in case some of the folks here haven't, haven't heard that story. I love that story too. He really caught my heart, but that story is a story about a guy who has a Tibetan guy who was like a patient. And he was having, he got very, uh, healthy and was getting very nervous because he kept having a nightmare. And in the nightmare, some sort of demonic character was chasing him and he was desperately running away from this character. And so the, it wasn't exactly lucid. I think it was a moment of lucidity, but anyway, his teacher, I don't know if it was getting on himself or if he was recounting a story from another teacher, I'm not sure at the Ella NIDA.
Speaker 1 00:46:47 So, but he said, the teacher told this guy, look, you're never going to stop having that dream. And it's ruining your health and you're not sleeping because you're afraid you're going to have the dream. So what you must do is keep determining it before you fall asleep, you're going to finally turn and face that demon stop running away. Okay. So they go ahead and tries and keep trying, trying, trying, and finally, after the next 10 nightmares, I finally got sick of it. It finally turns around in the dream state and confronts the demonic character and says, why are you chasing the dream? And the guy says, I don't know, is your dream man. That's what we're after. That's what we're after. And then the other grape thing, that's, you know, don't worry about this barter or not. In other words, lucid dreaming is their goal and it can come about lucid Bardo.
Speaker 1 00:47:50 And of course the ultimate is lucid waking, right? And be awake while aware that you're awake. And that's mindfulness. That's the famous, what everyone tells, you know, Smithy, SETI, you know that all everybody's doing it like madly Emad, fad. Now it is, which is great. It's a great fit. That's the attempt to lose lucidly weight. At first, it's sort of strange. You feel self-conscious, you kind of like watch yourself do this. And dad brought, you reminded isn't it. But after a while you get where you're lucidly waking, and this gives you more freedom and you become less reactive and more happy. So that's when you were living life as a Bardo because we in the life Largo birth to death flight, and I'm on my to have murmur has been enriched this evening by spending it with Andrew, how would check at all new other nice people?
Speaker 0 00:49:04 The Bob Thurman podcast is brought to you in part through the generous support of the Tibet house, us Menlo membership, community, and listeners like you. And it's released under a creative commons, no derivatives license, please be sure to share like, and post on your favorite social media platforms. Thanks for tuning in.
