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 Dalai Lama's cultural center in America. All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 3 00:00:48 This is episode 326. Summer updates from Robert Thurman.
Speaker 4 00:01:20 Okay, hello everybody. Hi, this is me, Bob Thurman. In case some of you are just getting to meet me, other people, I think you know me. I have the call chakra mandala behind me, and I'm talking on a computer with a damaged screen, so I may blank out at any minute. But I wanted to talk to you today because it's rather a momentous day. I've had a momentous time since the solstice. I kind of feel we're still in the solstice. There are momentous things happening around the planet, and I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time. And also, I wanna start doing more podcasts again. I've been kind of, I don't know, on some kind of, not really vacation, not really retirement. I wanna be on retirement and I wanna be on vacation, but I'm just worrying about the world more than I should.
Speaker 4 00:02:30 And um, also I wanna do more work and communicate with more of you. And, uh, my wisdom is Bliss book, which I want to promote because I want many people to discover that fact. Actually I don't, I have a pension. I'm not really trying to make a fortune of money. I have a pen, but I really wanna distribute a book. And now, and then my publisher threatens to make the ebook really cheap or I can then send it out to lots of people. But that, you know, that I miss the window sometimes, you know? Anyway, this is me. And, um, that's a Karl Chaman the Wheel of Time, and that's a symbol of the Buddha presence in all times. So we are in the Buddha presence if we think that if we can open to that, and apparently they say, which I don't claim to have arrived there except for momentary flashes.
Speaker 4 00:03:27 They say, when we become Buddhas ourselves, which I'm sorry, everyone will have to do <laugh> because the uni, the infinite universe stuck in time and space is too boring. Ultimately, repeating things again and again, some of them suffering, some of them joyful and heavenly. But again and again repeating, it's so boring. It is much better to be a Buddha and to incarnate total love and compassion and bliss in all circumstances. And also be able to share that with every other kind of being everywhere. You know, that's what's really apparently most fun of all. And that's what I'm trying to introduce to folks in wisdom is bliss, the book and the ebook and the audible book. And, um, because I want them to kind of relax, even whenever it is, even in difficult circumstances in adversity, there's a way of understanding that it's not happening really.
Speaker 4 00:04:25 It's happening relatively. And then there are methods to get out of it and the method, the any negative part suffering, but those methods to get out of it function better when you kind of know that ultimately it's not happening. In other words, it's really happening relatively, but it's not really real happening in some absolute way. As my old original guru, one girl whom I mentioned for a purpose, uh, the wonderful Mongolian gentleman, uh, from lived from 1901 to 1983, just a marvelous hisc being human being and enlightened Buddha being. And, uh, so he had asked me, I think he's still around because enlightened beings are always there with, with, with or without a body cuz they're, they have become infinite. And so they, they have, there's a Tibetan convention. You don't mention the name of your, of your past, left the Body Guru without saying it's for a special teaching purpose to help others.
Speaker 4 00:05:30 You don't just randomly mention it because that attracts then they, they feel engaged and they feel you. They adopt your concerns. And maybe they'd rather not bother. Or rather they're already there and you, and you're showing unaware by calling them or something like that. Who knows? I don't, I don't pretend to, but I do claim to be able to share with you what, when you think about you can feel good here and now, and not in a moment that's a nothingness moment, disconnected from everything in the universe, sort of. But a everything moment where you're connected with everyone in a loving, joyful, blissful, ecstatic, even or orgasmic way, even without any sexuality involved, but orgasmic energy just everywhere around you, everywhere in the trees, you know, in the leaves, in the grass, in the ground, in the air, in the lights, in the building and everywhere.
Speaker 4 00:06:27 That's, that's the way to be, they say. And I'm hoping that's the case. I'm working on it. <laugh>, okay? So that's why I'm doing a podcast this morning. It's my podcast. And there's a number of points I wanna touch. And what first one is that I want wisdom is bliss to be shared with you all meaning, wisdom, meaning when you really know experientially, uh, what the nature of reality is, since the nature of reality is pure love and freedom and bliss, it's, it's a womb of freedom and bliss and compassion and, and love. That's what it is. And joy and, um, uh, you feel totally free at the same time, totally loving of every being and joyful and engaging with them, helping them feel that way through whatever channel they want through. If they wanna do it through Jesus, that's no problem. They won't do it through Krishna.
Speaker 4 00:07:31 That's no problem. They won't do it through any particular type of Buddha, female, male, non-binary. That's okay. If they wanna do Brahma, that's okay. The Dow, God, Yahweh, whatever it is, they it to feel that way. Because if we all feel free and happy, even in adversity, even maybe not perf a little suffering on the corner or something, but sort of inwardly happy because we know we can master it. We know we can be free of it. We know we can help others be free of theirs, and he helps them heal and so on. So we are happy, even though we might have like a stubbed toe or a sore knee or something. So when we, when everyone is like that, then everything can be worked out. There'd be no war. We wouldn't need to fight with the neighbor. We could share things, we could negotiate.
Speaker 4 00:08:23 We would wanna maybe not be, have any harm happen to us or anybody else, but we wouldn't have to fight over it because people would be reasonable and they, because actually the other great thing is one people, some people say, when you get into the, the vast now, including, it's not just beyond time and space, it's beyond being trapped in space and time in the way you feel when you feel you're a limited thing and there's infinite stuff around you. When you are all of time and space, you don't feel trapped in it. And that's fine. So it's not going beyond it in a way, it's encompassing all of it. It's embracing it all with love. That's what it really is. The beyond things describes the sensation of freeing yourself from feeling trapped, but in a way you don't stay in some boring situation also.
Speaker 4 00:09:10 That's beyond everything. You, you embrace everything. You're present everywhere. That's a great part. So you can look after your grandchildren and great-grandchildren and anybody like that, and your friends, great-grandchildren. And you can also fix things up for your ancestors in case they went out in a way where they remain trapped and got reborn in another trapped state. You can change the past too. You can go into the past and revise it, believe me, that's logically follows from the science underlying Buddha's discovery of freedom, compassion, indivisible, freedom, bliss, indivisible, clear light, freedom, bliss, indivisible, whatever, however you wanna call it. You know, transparency of softness, clear light seems to maybe like a blinding, open, empty space to us. That's not what it is. This is the blinding empty space with all of the beautiful things in it. That's the key. So it's just transparency of all of this is what it is.
Speaker 4 00:10:19 Okay? So that's the first thing I wanted to touch on. All right? It's just a little bit central idea. Behind wisdom is bliss. And I'm gonna start writing and CK finally, and I'm gonna start being more podcasts and I'm gonna go over details and I'm going to promote a central thing by sharing the different things and giving more commentary and more elucidation and fitting it in to what you're thinking and how you feel as best I can, you know, remotely I will do that. Okay? So that's one. And two, I'm unhappy that still some people are unhappy because they were influenced by the Chinese communist attack on his whole lama, where they took a one and a half hour long interaction, or maybe two hour long interaction in the, in the midst of thousands of people that his Holland has had with an Indian family and a class of school kids where there was one kid who was not in the class, but was the son of the, of the principal of the group, who then demanded a lot of tension from his holiness.
Speaker 4 00:11:28 And they finally got to the point that his holiness mimicked a Tibetan mother or grandfather when they've sort of given enough sweets and enough attention and enough cuddles and enough whatever it is to some demanding grandchild doesn't matter, or great-grandchild, doesn't matter. And then they say, well, what do you actually want? What do you want? Suck my, suck something off my tongue. You wanna suck my saliva off my tongue is what it literally says, you know, sort of thing. Which is an expression of a little bit the exasperation, but it is also extreme affection. It's like, I'm willing to let you do it for all that good. It'll do you sort of thing, you know, nothing abusive, sexual, you know, pre predatory, creepy. It is weird because he's not, his illness is not a grandfather, he is not a grand, he's not a mother. But in a way he, but he's the bod, divine Buddhist incarnation of divine bodh, satta of compassion.
Speaker 4 00:12:34 He's sort of may a Buddhist Jesus, if you will, you know. And so he's going all out with all beings by making this demonstration of total affection to everyone. And everyone who was present there months before the Chinese created this Chinese communist propaganda created this fake thing, briefed like ten second thing that's trying to make it look like he's being a predator of some kind. And people fell for this. And they're so easily disillusioned and so discouraged about great beings. I think even if Jesus was there, they were saying, oh, he's bleeding on people to molest them or something. Or he resurrected himself to go and molest children like the, like the weird priests do. And those poor priests are also very frustrated and messed up and they're awful and abusers and they should be punished and exposed. Of course, of course, of course. But on the other hand, they are pathetic creatures themselves.
Speaker 4 00:13:28 They need help, they need therapy. Actually. What they really need is to proper training as monastics, celibate monastics in order to not have a overflow of libido that makes them mistreat those boys and girls or whoever, whatever they do in their horrible parishes. But underneath, in, in hiding, by the way, never in public. So it's just simply absolutely wrong to do that. And I just wanted to say, I don't wanna go into it at total length about the complete open lovingness, wonderfulness wisdom. Even in his very elder years of his holiness the Dalai Lama, as one of the great beings on this planet, if the leaders of the planet would adopt him as their advisor, for example, we would be all doing great. The severe inequality of rich and poor would be solved. The violence of war would be solved, and the climate mitigation would be happening.
Speaker 4 00:14:22 Like the emergency it is without a problem. Everybody would be doing it. There would be no delay, no further nonsense. And um, you know, no brutalities anywhere, everyone would be really happy because it's very doable to fix up our planet because it's a beautiful place for us. It's made for us kind of in a sunny way through our, since we evolved within it, it fits us perfectly. And it's there. Look at that tree out there. It's like churning out the oxygen for me to blow hot air to my microphone, <laugh> and rant and rain. So therefore don't be so easily disillusioned by propaganda trick. And the key thing is there's one 13 minute video on YouTube and one 17 minute video on YouTube by the wonderful jigme, um, I'm sorry, his last name. I'm getting elderly, I can't remember last names, but Jigme, you can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 4 00:15:17 And it's called, I'm Fed up with people attacking our Dal lama. And um, something like that, you can find it easily. You go to the, the issue about Dal lama and you'll find it right away. And he shows it isn't just what he says, he shows the video of the whole event and where the boy first came in and the long thing that they engaged with and then afterwards how grateful he was and his mother and his grandfather who were all present and they were offering a coconut to his all this, which is Indian tradition to a holy man, et cetera, et cetera. So they then see that it was something that everyone enjoyed and this so and so. It was a little, as I said, weird that his holiness got so familial with the kid, like, like he was adopted him. But in a way that was subliminally by the way, the Indian media is not making us think about it at all.
Speaker 4 00:16:08 They're perfectly okay about it nowadays. They had their initial thing about it, but they realized it was a, it was a slander, a video slander, a doctorate video slander by the communists who always trying to say this wholeness is a bad guy even though he is a great guy. And, and uh, that's because the subliminal message to the Indians was, we Tibetans who are foreigners here in India, we are nevertheless your family. I am the grandparent of this child. I am relative brother and sister. When I say brothers and sisters, when I give a talk, I mean it to all of you. We are family. We don't have a tribal thing. If you're an alien, I'm an alien. You know, it was like a deep message like that. And it was loved in India and people are very happy. And I think in the West because of the Me too, the sex abusers and then also the Catholic issue of the massive coverups that have been going on for decades and the massive abuse that's going on.
Speaker 4 00:17:03 People are all too ready to be disillusioned and depressed. But that's why I wrote wisdom in Bliss because one of the reasons we do have wars in such a huge arms industry, all Western people and we've infected different other people with that, is that we are depressed and we're paranoid and we we're frightened of other people and we think therefore they must be doing bad things. We're quick to jump to being disillusioned about love and about compassion being more powerful. We're taught even the Roman Empire distorted Christianity by focusing on the crucified Jesus rather than the resurrected Jesus and the great teacher Jesus, who everybody loved and who loved everybody and who showed they couldn't kill him, even He showed that, but by the Romans wanted to focus on that cuz their, their subliminal message was, we killed you. You're a loving person and we are stronger with our violent control of the society and of the, of the world where emperors, where God, you know, Caesar is God.
Speaker 4 00:18:02 You know, that was their message, which distorted Christianity and made Christianity act like had to conquer everybody, which it doesn't have to do. Jesus wanted to liberate everybody from suffering. That was his job. Just like Buddha, just like Krishna, just like every decent spiritual teacher, like, like Dodo, Jing, Confucius, all of them, Pythagoras, Plato philosophers, teachers, they all just want people to be happy. They all want people to understand the world is for fit for you to be happy in, and especially you're happy when you people around you are happy. So you should not harm them and be ethical with them. And that enhances you as well, which is a bonus of be ethical and loving. So that's the second topic. Forget about that and cure yourself of the propaganda thing. If it still haunts you and watch the whole episode, it's only take you 20 minutes and it's worth it to rekindle your, your subliminal optimism that there might be one person on this planet who's truly the real thing that Jesus might be alive.
Speaker 4 00:19:11 And then that might encourage you to feel that Jesus already came back and He's already, and, and love is already more powerful than the weapon mongers, the oil mongers, the climate destroyers. And, and you don't have to wait for some violent Jesus to come and act like a Roman emperor conquering people. That's a wrong interpretation of that, of, uh, John of pet Moses' visions, okay? Which was actually an anti Roman empire diatribe of his that he had in his cave up there on Patmos, in the gn. Okay? All right, so that's the second point. Then the third point is, I'm just wanna express my praise of Joe Biden and Mr. Mo. I wanna switch from the sort of spiritual philosophical to the practical because they're all interconnected. I love the warm embrace I saw between Joe Biden and, uh, NA and, and uh, in the, in, uh, uh, uh, NADRA.
Speaker 4 00:20:19 That's it. Nadra Modi, both Biden and Modi have their faults. Every human being does, but they both preside over important democracies. And in democracies, in spite of some pink supremacists and some people who into violence have watched too many cowboy movies and things, uh, you know, we are free people here. We can say what we want. We can assemble as we want. We can work hard and we can su be successful and enjoy life and be, be ni and listen to our wives and be nice to our children and, and parents and so on. We can do that. And we have great marvel superhero movies, <laugh>, other kinds of nice theater and things. We, and we have a lot of great music. We are wonderful. And, and India is two, and India is four times bigger than us, at least more than four times bigger than us, more populous.
Speaker 4 00:21:15 It has 32 different languages, different countries, and it's very complicated. And also the, you know, Hindu fundamentalists have flaws, but in a way they're allowed to be Hindu. That's perfectly okay. That's their view of God, ultimate reality of the joy of power. That the joyful beings, the kind loving beings are more powerful than the bad guys. They have their own version of that and they're fine. They have to, I think, learn to get along with the still. They would be, I'm sure they were getting along better, not so bad with the Muslim brothers and sisters. And, and then the British colonialists nasally divided the country into India and Pakistan and Bangladesh in creating a permanent enmity of, uh, sort of religiously self-identified countries. And, uh, that's been very bad for them in their 75 years of freedom. And they, they must heal that and they will eventually.
Speaker 4 00:22:12 But anyway, the fact that we are, however, we're still in a global struggle between these dictatorship crazies, including corporate dictatorship, w wannabes, and, um, actual communist dictatorships and democracies, chaotic democracies and dictatorships with their lust for order and repression and boring nature of everything. And failure to invent anything useful or nice except what they rob from the free people because they suppress the free people. Cause the creative, artistic, wonderful, happy people don't like to be suppressed. So therefore they escape from those people and therefore they don't manufacture anything worth anything except what they rob from us. So the fact that the we two democracies plus the European Union democracies and others are struggling now to overcome the craziness of these dictatorships is really important. And India actually was very good in the Cold War, remaining neutral between us and the communist block in order to prevent a global conflagration they were doing.
Speaker 4 00:23:20 But they, they still remained in democracy. They didn't, they weren't neutral as a dictatorship. So now that the system, the situation has boiled down to who, which is more modern and more efficient, chaotic democracy or suppressed to autocracy and dictatorship, obviously the dictatorships are unstable because they need enemies, because their own people don't like to be suppressed. Cuz no human being including Chinese or Japanese or any culture or civilization. People don't wanna be suppressed. Women don't wanna be suppressed in a family. People don't wanna be suppressed in a nation and tribe and they're going to find freedom and then everything will work better. So it was a wonderful, I wanna embrace it and congratulate them and ask us all to reserve our judgment of their for laws, all of them, and support them in this ongoing struggle. And that that doesn't mean we are blind to their flaws.
Speaker 4 00:24:20 No, you know, once we, once we've achieved more in this struggle and the process of democracy is always try to correct craziness. Like for example, we currently have in America totally irrational and somewhat insane supreme court except for three reasonable people, but the majority is nuts. You know, they're a crazy day and they're paid and they're the paid things of the corporate autocrats paid employees of theirs. Okay? So that's the third thing. Now the fourth thing is SVA reini. And look what has happened. The Wagner group is marching on Moscow, the Russians autocracy is coming a part of the seams. And, uh, this will allow the Ukrainians more easily to free their territory within the nation state system. That's not the ultimate. And then once they're free, they have their territory back. I'm sure that there will be a so surge of generosity to free the Russian people from the nasty fighting that will be going on the sort of civil conflict.
Speaker 4 00:25:28 Let's pray. It's not a full last civil war lasting a long time. And there will in fact realize that there's no option for them either except to be Democrats. All the ones who left will go back and they'll make a modern democracy out of Russia and they won't need to control Siberia and all the, the non Russians people in the former Russia empire, don't forget that Russia's not a country, it's a former empire. And Russia itself is a big strong European country, actually west of the Euro Mountains and Siberia. Huge thing is many little nations there. And then the next job will be to prevent, protect them against Chinese attempt to swallow them all and become a big colonial empire in the, in the 21st century when empires are obsolete. So I just wanna draw your attention to that. Don't give up. Don't listen to foolish foreign policy people who are making a mistake of not recognizing that we need a, a proper free nation called Russia.
Speaker 4 00:26:31 We don't need one of the last leftover empires. British empire is gone, finished, you know, and American never in America. We've never had a decent empire. We've been aggressive and been stupid and been unethical. And we've, we have our faction in our country that want to actually revive the British empire, Anglo sort of types, but they, it is only half-hearted and most of us don't want that. We rebelled against it. After all, please remember, that's what our constitution and our revolution was about. And so we wanna support free people and we want everyone to be free because once everyone is free, then their local chaos is more subdued and they don't kill each other in, in terrible wars. And the defense industry will have to get into making better TVs and better airplanes. I can't talk now, stop beeping me. Oh God, she just wants to tell me there's a salad waiting, which is wonderful actually.
Speaker 4 00:27:33 Okay, I have to quit. I'm called that noise is my master's voice, which I'm happy to have and calling me to a nice lunch. And I just wanted to, these are the four things. So Slavo Ukraine is my fourth. Let us foresee them free, which will lead to seeing everyone free, the turkeys, the Tibetans, you know, the, every, every people that are suppressed under some sort of supposed government that's left over from an empire will be free and everyone will be happy then and will have no less, no more wars. So that's what I wanna say. That's what we should all pray about on this, this solstice in this different stages that I talk my four points, right? Wisdom is bliss, ignorance is not bliss. So find out everything, learn and study everything and you can, you can, you'll be a enlightened and two that are lamas are great being and take it as an example.
Speaker 4 00:28:30 And don't be dism dis confused by materialist propagandist, you know, people doing fake videos. And then three, uh, we have to, uh, uh, welcome the America, Indo American, uh, to democracy connection and brotherhood and sisterhood, and work in coordination with them against all our own faults and help them work on their own faults, which we both have lots of, but we are trying to be freely doing it. And finally, SVA Ukraine, that's the fourth one, okay? To summarize. So, so by the merit of this little chat with you, by the merit of your bearing with me, you know, or switching it off and it gets too much and turning it on later to see what happened. You know, by all of that, may everyone become deeply enlightened and understand what's going on, care clearly and critically and carefully, and enjoy the fact that it's all going to the good and it will be soon and quickly as possible and help to help everyone else find their own good sense and find their own deeper uncompressible free and loving nature. Okay? Okay. Bye. Okay, Justin. Thank you.
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