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 best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 3 00:00:48 This is episode 318, sang and the Wheel of Dharma.
Speaker 1 00:01:19 Today we're gonna focus mainly on the sang, the community and aspects of Buddhism relating to the community. And we'll also probably, and we, but we can mix round. But anyway, that's sort of the main theme of the day is the sang. Once therefore, by the end of today, we will have concluded, uh, survey of what are called the three jewels of Buddhism, Buddha Mana, the teacher, the teaching and the community that tries to put it into practice. And, uh, so we'll be getting on it. We'll be doing well when we get those three, the three jewels. So today, this today is Sanga de Okay? Now the whole, the turning of the wheel of Dharma image is, it is a famous image. As you know, the, the image of Buddhism in, in sort of general popular form is the wheel. You know, when you have like world religion counters and they have the Buddhist image, it's the wheel, you know, like Christianity is the cross and thou warism is the yin yang and so on.
Speaker 1 00:02:12 Buddhism is the wheel. And, uh, the wheel has two, has another symbolism in Indian, uh, history where it's the symbol of a king and of royal power and authority. And it's the chariot wheel, which, uh, because the Indian civilization was sort of founded by the conquest of India, by these, uh, chariot driving warriors from Central Asia. And so the idea of the king's wheel of authority and wheel of the power of a king is sort of a worldly image, is another really wonderful wheel in Indian mythology. And here I'm digressing a little from your question, but I can't resist it, which is called a wheel turning king. It's a particular type of king who, when they're born, uh, over the palace, when they're born, first born, uh, a giant wheel comes out space and parks. There like a close encounter sort of wheel. This is inden myth.
Speaker 1 00:03:06 And if it's the top, the best kind of such a king, it's a golden one. And then there's a silver one, and then a brass one, and then an iron one for as the, as the, you know, the history in the king's merit decays in later ages. And this wheel, this is the ultimate, uh, wheel. And that king, when he is coronated it, it comes there all as he grows up this wheel, you know, and everybody around the world gets nervous because this is a wheel turning king. And so then when he's coronated, he thinks of another country throughout the world and he thinks, Hey, that country didn't surrender to me <laugh>. And when he thinks that the wheel goes in parks over that country, and then they quickly send an mission embassy and they say, Hey, we are part of your kingdom <laugh>. And this way he unifies the whole world without any war, without any struggle.
Speaker 1 00:03:53 And of course, he has the merit to have such a wheel according to the Indian myth, because he has a virtuous disposition. And he teaches the path of tenfold positive action, which I did. I outline for you the 10 positive karmas and the 10 negative karmas. I think I did already, did I do that? Not to kill, not to steal, et cetera. So he, he runs the country according to those tenfold law of karma. He's non-violent and so on. So it's very good that everybody surrenders and it becomes a unified planet. And once the planet is unified like that, people live for 20,000 year lifespans and things like that. And they, the earth produces food naturally, and you don't have to cultivate it. And there's never any scarcity. They have really a very elaborate and beautiful descriptions of kind of golden eras in the past.
Speaker 1 00:04:39 The Indian mythology does. Now, when the Buddha left the kingdom, as of Prince therefore, and went to attain Buddhahood upon obtaining Buddhahood, he did not return to a particular kingdom. However, he was invested with in the myth the God Brahma came down from his heaven where he dwells one of the higher heavens in the form realm, realm of pure forms. And he brought this traditional thing called the Wheel of Dharma, which is a royal wheel. And this wheel, he keeps there in between Buddhas being on earth, the, the Brahma of that universe that is sort of the, the super God of that universe keeps the wheel of the Buddha. And then when a Buddha changes buddhahood, he brings the wheel down and gives it to the brother, says, now go turn the wheel. Cuz now you become a Buddha and you better and you better do this.
Speaker 1 00:05:24 It's sort of a formality in Buddhist cosmology. And, and, uh, so what's interesting about it that what actually sets very well with my theme today about the Sangha is that therefore the Buddha, although people have thought of Buddhism as sort of abandoning the plane of social, social activism, let us say, or social activity and sort of leaving and being renunciated and aesthetic and so on. And, and because Buddha in fact did not go back and assume his own throne. He had a kingdom, he had his own own throne, he had a right to it, but he didn't go back and take back his own kingdom, small city, state kingdom, in a time when there were 20 or 30 such kingdoms in India. Uh, instead he remained an aesthetic, a property less formally property, less aesthetic. However, he used the symbol of royal power. And then they, and then in the literature, there are many examples where it said that his, the wheel of dharma is so much more powerful than the wheel of Kingdom.
Speaker 1 00:06:23 And in a way it's the wheel of the super kingdom. It's the wheel of the empire of the dharma in a way. And so in a, he, in a way, he appropriated the symbol of social authority and political power even. But he transposed it on a different plane, which has been read by people, uh, even within Buddhism and even within India history and in Indian ancient China as sort of Buddhism's abdicating of the sort of ground of social reality. But my argument about the sunga I will present to you is it's not at all abdicating. In fact, he is completely entering the plane of social reality. And he was in fact, therefore a kind of king of a real type, not on a social level, not on a political level of having an army and so on, but on the level of really conquering people's hearts, of providing the society way of conquering their barm, of spreading from civilization to civilization. And now finally, even it's become planetary in a way, always in a very visible and mysterious way. Though, for example, Buddhism has become very important in the West today. It's become quite an important strand in the last century in the West. Uh, and but it did that in the same process of having its institutional infrastructure or basis in the East destroyed.
Speaker 1 00:07:44 So somehow it doesn't, it doesn't depend on a number of buildings and statues and things in a funny way, but that's, that's good for it. Now, before I go back on into the sun yard, just to finish your other aspect of your question, you said wish and desire wish and a desire is the same thing. And of course there are good desires and bad desires, and therefore a translation of one of the main poisons of the, of the samsara as desire is not a very good translation. It's really, greed is a better translation. Sort of excessive exaggerated desire and or desire for a wrong thing is, is a destructive desire. You know, a desire for poison is d deadly, for example, you know, and, uh, so, uh, but, but when beings are, when I say when, when I interpret the wheel of Dharma as a kind of, uh, a water wheel, like a water wheel running on a river, the current that it runs on is not the Buddha's desire to do anything in the world.
Speaker 1 00:08:38 A Buddha has no desire to do anything in the world, in a way no wish to do anything on his own, because to aha, apparently by definition the world seems a perfected place. The world seems an absolutely like incredible reality is the most incredibly blissful, fabulous, perfect thing all by itself without anybody messing with it. That, that you could even imagine. Buddha is just, that's why Buddha is grinning all the time. He just is completely flipped out about how amazingly exquisite and perfect and beautiful reality is. At the same time, he is not insensitive to the fact that many of the beings who are occupying that reality, according to their own view, at least are thinking that it's a miserable situation. And so since to him, it's perfectly fine. He has this sort of stamina to deal with all of their different versions of why it's miserable and try to get them to understand what a great place it is and get them to understand their own original face, as they say, invent their own inheritance, their heritage of enlightenment in a way.
Speaker 1 00:09:47 And he's able to do it because he doesn't need to do it. He's able to do it. Now the, the beings who need things are the living beings, and he responds to their needs in that way. And so the wheel of Dharma turns, you know, they have this paradox is like in Zen, they say, you know, from the time he enter came enlightenment till the time he left the earth, the Buddha for the, during that 45 years, 44 years or 45 years, the Buddha never said a single word. The Buddha was not doing anything actually. But in a way, the Buddha's sort of presence was sort of responding exactly to the needs of living beings. Actually, I was talking about this earlier today. This relates to the way we discussed the Buddha. I believe we did it two weeks ago in this class of where a Buddha is a type of being that is multicentric, right? It's not egocentric. So when you achieve Buddhahood, you are not any more attached to your own point of view, to your own way of organizing reality than you are to anybody else's. You're free of any particular mode of organizing it. So for example, a Buddha who relates to a specific being when, when I'm in front of the Buddha, the Buddha is the Buddha is in a way totally the whole field of him and me.
Speaker 1 00:11:02 I am just over sort of here, you know, I'm aware that there's an object over there. It's talking and talking says it's, people say it's a Buddha and is doing these things and, but I'm really over here and it's over there, you see? But a budha is just as much over here as over there. So, and in the other hand, he's just so much over there is over here. So that's why a Buddha is so perfectly capable. And anywhere a Buddha is is just a gas to a Buddha. Buddha doesn't care where he is, he can be in a garbage can. He's just as happy garbage can is the blissful nirvana to a Buddha. It's full of jewel lotus and everything. I mean, there's no, every atom of the garbage can has millions of universes, of pure lands and whatever. It just no problem. But so the Buddha in that state from that sort of position, feeling me exactly as I'm seeing him at the same time, and then knowing all of my dissatisfactions and my confusions and my knots and my locks and my pains can then manifest like a sort of interactive, giant interactive cat scan feels every pain in my body and mind sees all my past history and sees all my possible future histories and totally interacts like saying words that like produce effects in my brain, you know, that, that my concepts to this and that making gestures, showing forms is completely like there like, like wrapped up with me in an, in a, in a chamber where advances my evolution to the optimal degree.
Speaker 1 00:12:29 Now of course, that woulda still not omnipotent because you see the Buddha doesn't just sort of explode and then I become a bliss because the Buddha exploded in a bliss and the whole universe is sort of nuked to bliss by, by a Buddha. This is a mistake that would be an omnipotent type of thing. Because in fact, I can't get bliss from outside. I can only get bliss by realizing my own selflessness, by realizing my own emptiness. No one. But you can realize your emptiness, you know, no one, but you can enjoy your meal. I mean, we could force feed you, you know, make, you know, like the force feed Greece to make Pat Fargo. We could stuff food down, but we, we still couldn't enjoy your meal. We could prepare a delicious meal, but you have to enjoy it. So similarly, no one can enjoy my Buddha cannot enjoy my buddhahood.
Speaker 1 00:13:18 Actually he can, he can enjoy my Buddha, but he can't enjoy it unless I enjoy it, right? And I can only enjoy it by understanding something by my own activity of understanding or my own, you know, transcendence of activity, of understanding whatever we say it understanding is. So in that plane on that, if, if we were, if we remember that image of a Buddha as a completely altruistic being who has this multicentric way of being is a kind of field of being that is yet capable of organizing specific centers to interact with others in a beneficial way on the basis of complete presence in the other, in all of their body and mind. So as to be completely accurate and optimally efficient in that interaction. Efficient measured in terms of producing happiness for the other. And by that metaphor then the wheel of dharma is a kind of like a machine metaphor, ancient machine chuck, the word chuck line, sk means a machine also wheel, just like we say, you know, where my wheels, you know's a guy in Detroit, you know, new set of wheels means his car. So the the wheel images like this machine that just like interacts with people's sense of insufficiency and turns it into a feeling of sufficiency.
Speaker 1 00:14:38 Okay? And similarly, the Buddha's whole founding of a community, and this is again the theme of the day, that's why I'm just gonna say one more thing here. The whole founding of the community was like a social machine that the Buddha created in ancient India that has been running ever since in the midst of all the planetary civilizations in a certain way, in a way that is normally not discerned by anybody. People didn't notice. They thought, you know, great sociologists thought that the Buddhists were just depressed because they thought everything was suffering. So they sort of like just opted out, you know, jump off the planet into nirvana or something and didn't bother with the societies left them as they were, which is a completely superficial misunderstanding, which I hope to prove today. Among other things, yes,
Speaker 4 00:15:21 Or enlighten or
Speaker 1 00:15:26 It is, uh, many all things to all people <laugh> to one who feels that they don't have it. It is a goal and uh, it is considered the optimal goal. The sum bonham sort of thing. Is it a ta-da? Yeah, there is various TAs along the way, apparently, but to one who has it, it is a process in a way or I don't know, you can, it can be said to be a process, it can said to be non-processed. Anything you say about it, about the sum bono, anything you say about the actual reality is fine to say can open up a certain perspective and can be useful to say. And there are things more and less useful to say, of course. Doesn't mean they're all equally useful, but none of them will exhaust the subject. None of them will capture the matter. Not only about buddhahood, about anything we, we, anything we say about that nail and that stare there will not exhaust that nail and that stare reality is elusive to concepts, formula, dogma, any mathematics, anything.
Speaker 1 00:16:27 And it's always some sort of inconceivability in reality beyond any concept of it, which is why it is, you know, why it behooves us to try to escape from the situation of having our concepts projected into reality. And in a way therefore just really living in our own mind in the world of our own conceptual construction, which is something given to us by our culture, which has many good aspects to it. But finally, it's not really our own individual thing, it's something imprinted upon us by a sort of, uh, historical process that, uh, we can improve upon. Definitely. So, you know, it is both things, but, but when, when first hears about, it's a very important goal. The very it is said that a very important moment in ascension being's life in Buddhist biology, you could say it's something like, it's like a quantum leap in the individual evolution of any living being when they suddenly realize that there's another way of being than their own egocentrically driven way.
Speaker 1 00:17:28 And that that other way of being is infinitely superior and that it really is something that is totally satisfying to themselves and others and is a complete wish fulfillment and that they can achieve it. Others have achieved it who were just like them before. Apparently. When these, this concatenation of insights awakens in an individual's imagination and understanding, it's a revolutionary thing because then suddenly there is a fantastic goal in their life, not in just life lives. There is a way to really succeed in all that they could possibly dream of beyond even their dreams of succeeding, succeed in evolution. I'm saying, you know, a real goal to evolution beyond godhood, even actually greater than being God.
Speaker 1 00:18:16 And uh, that's when what it's called the conceiving of the spirit of enlightenment, the conception, that moment is called the conception of the will to enlightenment sometimes, sometimes the conception of the spirit of enlightenment. And uh, it's an incredible moment apparently. People really flip out <laugh>. And one of the rea, one of the reasons I, in this discussions, I harp so much upon the issue of materialism and the issue of oblivion at death, which is an accepted stereotypical image in our culture, which we have grown comfortable with, is that that completely blocks that aspiration, that idea, because it is simply irrational to assume that you can go through such an evolution in the next however many years. Even if you have a hundred left, it's irrational. You can't change even your body. You know, you can't even, you know, you can maybe learn to lift 500 pounds, but you can't lift 10 tons in any one life in any few years.
Speaker 1 00:19:13 And if all of your momentum and all of the, all of that progress is destroyed at death by spiritual annihilation at death, then there's no possibility. And furthermore, to take up a resolve to develop a situation and become a being that can satisfy all beings, that can meet the needs of all beings, not only on not all human beings, on even this city or this country or this planet, but all beings throughout the multiverse, in all dimensions. To do that in the next 5,000, 500 years in one life is of course absurd. It's a, it's a, it's the, it's kind of, it's a, it's a, would be a disease. A psychologist would call it a messianic complex. You know, this person's gonna save the world. Oh great, give him some Thorazine. It's what they'd say. But from the point of view of being locked into a boundless continuum of life, if one knows all the various, if one has a vivid imagination to know all the various possible situations one can have in life, not only as a human being, but as all kinds of subhuman beings, the, the, it's a dangerous, frightening prospect to be embedded forever in a process of life.
Speaker 1 00:20:24 In fact, if you, if one really thinks about it and because there's so many more negative, apparently so many more negative situations and painful situations, when one looks at it offhand, then there are favorable situations. But if that seemed to be not enough, a matter of obstru belief, but some sort of a matter of common sense to one where one felt boundlessly committed, boundlessly tied in with the consequences of everything then to resolve, to make that spend that infinite amount of time creating the optimal situation for oneself and others is highly rational. It's not a, I mean it, that's why it's called the conception of the spirit of enlightenment. It's an inspiration. At the same time, it's a totally rational decision. If we are here forever, we have no recourse. But to make this an optimal way of being here, I was talking to some students earlier today about how someone was questioning and it says, well how concrete is that really in a Buddhist society in the life of a Buddhist?
Speaker 1 00:21:20 How concrete is that? Well, it's very concrete. I was realizing because not that, not necessarily to every Buddhist, but mostly because you know, the way you and I relate to people, you know, we, we have people, even people we are closely related to for a long time. At some point well just kiss off, forget it, get out of my face. You know, and we have a sense that we can really get rid of somebody, you know, saying we can bomb him. He can just go away, die. Well, death really gets rid of them, but we can kill them. Although we can just tell 'em off or move to another city and not make our phone unlisted or whatever. You know, if it's an old flame or something we don't want to have bothered with, we can get rid of anybody you see. But in a Buddhist cannot get rid of anybody.
Speaker 1 00:22:08 Everybody has been their mother, everybody's going to be their mother again, their worst enemy, if they could still go on into some sort, is going to be their mother again, have total power over them as their mother, smack them on their little butts. So there's no getting. So therefore, if they're having an enemy interaction with somebody, there's like a strong, much stronger impulse, a much stronger compulsion in a way to try to optimize the interaction. The idea that you can just sort of shoot them when you get rid of them is not so present. You die. But they come back, you see, they reborn and come back. The famous Buddhist story about in this light about Shai Putta, no, I don't think we Shai Puter was, it was Mogo, I think who's clairvoyant who went to get lunch in a household somewhere and got really came back all depressed and didn't have any lunch.
Speaker 1 00:22:59 And of course they can't eat until the next morning if they missed lunch in Buddhist monk. And uh, and they said, what happened, Margo, you look, uh, pale, you didn't get any food, you look unhappy. He said, yeah, I lost my appetite. He said, well, why? Well, Samara, he was going, Samara al as Samsara, Halas Samaras, they said, and then they pressed him. What happened? What happened? Finally, he said, well, I went to this house and there was this guy sitting there and he was eating his father. And they said, what do you mean eating his father? Well, his father had died two years before and had been reborn as a fish in the lake because the father was a fisherman. He used to catch the fish in the lake all the time. So he was reborn as a fish in the lake. And this guy had just caught the father's fish and had fried him with breadcrumbs and with lemon <laugh>, I was eating filet of dad <laugh> and he was beating his mother.
Speaker 1 00:23:51 What do you mean? He was beating his mother? And then there was a dog yapping at his feet who wanted some of the fish, and he was smacking on the dog, get away from here, you lousy, old thing. And that was his mother who had died and been reborn as this dog. And he was cuddling his enemy, his worst enemy. And this his arch enemy, this guy who he'd like killed sometime before and you know, had vowed eternal revenge. All this had been reborn as his son and was sitting on his lap just waiting his biting his time, <laugh> until adolescence, uh, the end of him <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:24:27 So this was guy, this guy was going, you know, because he had this, apparently it's not a very difficult thing to develop, the ability to be aware of other people's former lives in your own. It's not that difficult, apparently. I mean, to a certain degree, only a Buddha can really know like millions of future lives. But, uh, decent yogis who have developed this way get to know that fairly well easily. And he knew that. So he was, you know, instead of trying to get lunch, he was trying not to have his tevo as turn on. He was just going there to get some lunch, you know, and then he suddenly saw all these people in their other incarnations and how demented was their way of relating to each other, and it made him sad. So he lost his appetite, <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:25:05 So the point is that this mode of interaction where you're committed forever in a way to the consequences of your actions is a different way of interacting. And it accounts for differences in the ethics and in the civilizations that have been touched strongly by Buddhism over many, many centuries. Why? They're in a more gentle in some respects, although none of them, none of them can be claimed to have been really conquered by it or have really embodied it yet, although some have gotten closer than others. Like when the proto is about to munch up some protozoic food, which would be some maybe human or some other submolecular animal, or maybe it would munch down two or three universes in a submolecular animal. We don't know what a proto is really doing. You know, protos might be something like those animals in dune, they might be creeping around in some other medium.
Speaker 1 00:25:50 But anyway, when a protozoa is about to took munch on some other bunch of creatures that are its victims in the dog eat dog level of the animal realm, all the protozoa can do is somewhere in the, in that the protozoa sort of like, has a kind of impulse. Somehow they might be distracted or in some way notice that today's dinner is cute and they sort of might not munch on this one and then munch on the next one. And that little gap of sort of letting go of one, of letting one life go, you see of one piece of protozoa food, of being generous, of giving up a little something of its normal munching, you know, not eating the estro las, that little tiny fragment of a saving a life and a and a is enough to sort of evolve it into some other higher form.
Speaker 1 00:26:42 But there's almost no free will. It's almost totally automatized in those levels of reality. And that is why the Buddha said, he said, imagine the old war turtle who lives millions of years in the bottom of the ocean and who surfaces once every hundred years for a gupa air at the, in the vast seven oceans. And imagine a golden yolk that is floating somewhere in the vast seven oceans all around, all around for century after century. As often as that turtle will come up by accident with its head through the hole of the yoke of the golden yoke that is floating randomly throughout the seven oceans. That is how often a living being that has fallen below the human level will be able to return to the precious jewel of a human life endowed with intelligence, leisure and opportunity. Do you, do you dig that? I
Speaker 5 00:27:44 I
Speaker 1 00:27:47 Do you realize how often that will be? That's confusing. Confusing. It's terrifying is what it is. <laugh>, if you really thought that you might be locked into zing around for a long, infinitely, practically infinitely long periods of time before again having the opportunity of being a human with intelligence, if you lose this be this life of you being human with intelligence without learning how not to be a protozoa for sure, without learning how not to be attracted to Zah hood, for sure have no zah inclinations in your unconscious, not a single one left, be sure you would be nailed to the, the z unconscious examination program from now until death did part you from that program. And that is why in the Buddhist civilizations, the people get really intent upon going through their unconscious and getting re not just zah, you know, lions and tigers. I mean there's much more gassy seeming forms of animals and they really take the human life seriously.
Speaker 1 00:28:55 They feel it is ab you take, if you take, this is two basic themes of Buddhist meditation, very important ones the theme of the extreme preciousness of the human life form. And as someone who is a scientific person, actually can really figure that out very nicely by matching it up with, you know, the sort of Carl Sagan type of, of hit, you know, that he has when he thinks about all of the animals and the bloodstream, the tremendous complexity it took to evolve the human being. If you combine that from the materialist biologist's point of view with the sort of idea of a, of an individual coming from big meaningless aons of the lifetimes after lifetimes and struggling through up that chain as an individual, if you, if you gain that appreciation of therefore what a total jewel of an opportunity is this brief life, combine it with the meditation on the immediacy of death, how death could strike us any second.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 We could walk out there and the flag pole could fall on our head. The building could collapse right now the a bomb could be sent by some mad general from the Ukraine, you know, any second, you know, so we could all die in any minute. You combine the fragility and immediacy of death with the total ness of the human life and the great difficulty of recovering the human life if lost without being sure of how to go through death. Cuz it's not that hard to learn how to die and how to make sure you don't be reborn as azo. If you combine those two, you will become an intense practitioner. There's no question. That's where people like Milpa come from. People like Milpa, they have this incredible energy, they don't get it because they're naturally energetic or they're naturally hyper. And Milpa was a lazy slob.
Speaker 1 00:30:38 He was, his mother had kicked them downstairs cuz he was drinking and singing songs even though his uncle had stolen her land. She was pissed off. You know, if you remember the life of Mil Re he was wandering and drinking. He was like that, you know, singing songs. He liked to sing in Barss, you know, mil rep. But he developed this tremendous effort, this tremendous diligence by these considerations by, by meditating on these considerations. And that's a very effective, those are a very effective meditations. Of course, they can't begin even though, see that we modern people are totally relaxed. We have this full security that this is it, this one life that's all we have to worry about. And that that makes us totally lazy spiritually, a hundred percent spiritually lazy because we will die and there will be nothing. So, I mean it's, that's rational.
Speaker 1 00:31:25 If that's true, why do anything you see? But at sadly, according to this tradition and those enlightenment persons, those of us who think we're gonna get SCO free into nice, quiet, calm, cozy oblivion are due for a rude shock. The universe is know such no thing. Anyway, all this business like Ji think where the moon is going to eat us a bunch of bologna from the buzz point of view, there's no mechanism, there's no higher beings, we're going to eat our enlightenment or our unen enlightenment or, I mean, it's just completely wrong. We can stay ignorant, idiots as long as we like. And of course we won't like it, you know, for most of the time. But we can do it. There's no automatic also, there is no automatic going up. We can more likely to devolve from this human plane that we have hit more likely if we're not, if we don't use it wisely because there's so many things tempting us.
Speaker 1 00:32:20 Like we, our one lama used to live with us used to totally freak out when Ms. Piggy would get up there, you know, the great beloved, beloved Muppets, he would freak out totally. He would say this guy, he doesn't know what he's doing to these children of all these people all over the world, he's glamorizing this animal existence in a certain way. You know, Mickey Mouse and, and all these great things is terrible. And people are seeing it in this imagery and they're thinking, oh, wouldn't I love to be a piggy? You know, wouldn't I like to be a little like furry, like weird thing children might die, they might be run over by a car and they'd be reborns as pig by therians. You know, they're like being driven into Miss Piggy by Miss Piggy imagery. You know, he used to really freak. He used to think this is terrible.
Speaker 1 00:33:01 Oh man, PE he start praying, you know, <laugh>, oh man, Tara Tark, he was thinking about all these poor little Californian kids daring at Miss Piggy and being reborn in some pig yard. Karma means evolution. It's just like Darwinian evolution. Exactly the same thing. Some of my colleagues get all mad at me by evolution, Darwinian, of course it's not Darwinian evolution because Darwinian evolution is a material evolution of genes, you know, down through a race or a species, you know, that mutate in certain ways. And then personally, because the individual personalities are simply the illusions of each in individual who inhabits that continuum. And there's really no individual continuity down that. So it's not Darwinian evolution, but it is an ind an individual evolution. Life after embedded in material evolution, life after life of a spiritual kind. It's a spiritual evolution. And the reason, for example, the crying shame about it for a Buddhist, why is poor Lama was practically weeping thinking about the people losing their human life and being attracted to the animal realm by these things.
Speaker 1 00:34:08 Uh, because to get to be a human, every single person here has practiced incredibly heroic feats of generosity. Every being here in millions of lifetimes of being different kinds of animals has given their actual life for other animals. Not just, you know, given a little piece of mango fruit, but given their life. Many times, every being here has done great deeds of justice and sharing and fairness and kindness. Every being here has tolerated injuries of others in a saintly manner as on various levels of life. And its cultivated, generosity, justice and tolerance to extreme degree cultivated wisdom of reality, concentration, heroic effort, millions of lifetimes, and has earned therefore this nearly god-like embodiment of the human being. Mind with that, this incredible intelligence we have the ability to actually go into our own instincts and reprogram them totally, which we can easily do this blown about biogram, how you can't change the survival.
Speaker 1 00:35:16 It's such crazy. I mean, these guys write this and get tenure. I'm writing about how it's all wired, it's all programmed, uh, in, in, in institutions on a planet that is just about to blow itself up, where people just didn't like nothing better than to run into the light brigade and give it three weeks of boot trade. They take heroin by the hundreds of thousands and like speedball themselves out the la I mean, human beings are completely malleable, completely reprogrammable, they're, and yet, and they have the intelligence to control their own programming to p fully understand it and rewire it and rero it, which is amazing actually. And not to do that, having earned it. And there, for example, nonviolence in Buddhism, if you're a Buddhist ruler, to send individual out to die over some real estate, some point of honor, some point of this or point of that is unthinkable because you are taking away a life that that person earned themself.
Speaker 1 00:36:19 And nation didn't give him a life, their parents don't own their life. They earned this human life out from inconceivable amount of effort that they did. If you kill them before they know how to be reborn, when they might fall into lower li state of life, their protozoa, they're gonna die and die in protozoa battles. You know, they're gonna go to the protozoa Iraq 4 million times. You didn't just take away life this time, but millions of times. So that is why when Buddhism, as it infiltrated these different countries where it never fully did because the kings of the different countries, the rulers, the authorities, the priests, high priests would tend to kind of try to keep it controlled. You know, people liked it, especially women. But then there were authorities would always keep it down and then it would be crushed out or smothered under here and there.
Speaker 1 00:37:09 Tibet and Mongolia were the two places. It was still finally going strong towards the end, and then the communists got that. But when it becomes a powerful part of a people sensibility, the people tend to become mon island. They, they tend to become unable, unwilling to use force because they see they're not fighting for the purpose of this life. You see, the use of the human life is for the human individual's achievement of a situation that can benefit them and others for many, many lives. From the Buddhist point of view, you see this earth is a platform. Now you say what? So, so in a way it has no purpose. On the other hand, I want us to come back to your original question about purpose. So the universe has no purpose in itself. That's something that the reason that we're always wondering why, why isn't I, why is this? Is because we come from this authoritarian culture, from authoritarian family structures where it's supposed to be some daddy is supposed to know or some mommy supposed to do it for this reason, and it's all supposed to fit completely unmis instantly together. But in other cultures, they don't have a big why like that. They do have a, why am I here? How did it happen? But what is the purpose? They don't indulge in that.
Speaker 1 00:38:19 But you can make a purpose. The person who conceives the spirit of enlightenment, the person who gets an idea that there is a, there is a way of being perfected. There is a conclusion, there is a success of evolution and I can achieve it. And many millions and infinite numbers of beings have achieved that. I can also infinitely not achieve it. If I just keep messing around and being blown hither and tether helplessly, I can do that too. But if I work to achieve it, I can achieve it. And if I achieve it, I can be of infinite benefit to everyone I care about. I can help them with everything they need. And then that becomes your great purpose and it becomes the great purpose in the universe. And, but as each individual awakens to that a Buddha, the, the interesting thing is once a Buddha has become a Buddha, the reason a Buddha can be of such great benefit to beings is a Buddha sees the universe as perfected perfect as it is.
Speaker 1 00:39:16 So he has no purpose for it. Buddha has no scheme for us. You see, he sees us as just fine. We are engaging in the theater of suffering. But it is an, it is an elusory show. It's just our own fabrication. It has not real reality. It doesn't mean we don't get really caught up in it, but it's not real. It's not as real, at least as an enlightened vision of us. Every cell of our being, every atom of the protozoa, while the protozoa is zing around having this miserable time slurping on this and dreaming of protozoa heaven, every atom of the protozoa contains budha lands and it's ecstatic, filled with ecstasy from a Buddhas vision. Buddha sees a protozoas dancing jewel, subatomic bliss, contusions, contortions, whatever.
Speaker 1 00:40:12 At the same time is aware that a protozoa as way of organizing that is on the basis of protozoa theater protozoa habits is some sort of munch, munch thing. But then luckily that munch, munch is less real than a pure field of infinite bliss. So we can make a purpose like that, but decided that we have to sort of sit around and wait for us to find out someone else's purpose is a suppression of our own freedom. Actually it's an ideological confusion from the Buddhist point of view and deprives of deprives us in a, in another way. Of course it protects us from the fear of really being faced with responsibility. Total freedom has the corresponding other side of the coin of total responsibility. If we are free to, to create an infinite positive horizon, we are free to degenerate an infinitely negative situation if we let ourselves go.
Speaker 1 00:41:12 Right? Freedom carries that danger in it. Theoretically, SVA means, uh, warrior toward enlightenment, hero or heroin for enlightenment, enlightenment, hero or heroin. And it means anyone who has had that conception that I mentioned earlier who has had the will to enlightenment, by having that notion of there is such a thing, realization they can achieve that thing and then devoting themselves to doing so. And there are various stages of that. It can be just a wish, which is unstable, then it becomes a kind of vow and then that becomes stable. But even then they can be confused and the many things they can forget that they took it in previous life. And there's all kinds of like permutations of that in the process of evolution. But basically that's what a buddhi is. Now there are Buddhas who've make vow that after I become a Buddha I, I will of course reign as a Buddha and teach the Dharma and you know, I'll man maintain a Buddha land somewhere where I'll be a Buddha in that land or many Buddha lands. But also I will be reborn as a Buddhi many places and I'll find the Buddhas in those places and I will lead the assemblies to to those Buddhas. And I'll ask them the hard questions and I'll do this that <unk> for example is such a buddhi.
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