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 00:00:49 This is episode 319. Tara and women in the Buddhist sang
Speaker 1 00:01:19 The mother, Tara, the mother got us. Tara is such a buddhi sufferer. She's totally a Buddha, really, but she said that, that the Buddhist countries, at least on this planet, that many planets are full of male chauvinist. So a, after Imma Buddha, I want to go around as a female buddhi and like crad these morons into achieving buddhahood faster. So she's the very dynamic, uh, as she's known as the, the emanation of the dynamic miraculous activity of all Buddhas. She is a Buddha, but she's a Buddha. So that's why I say sometimes Buddhas and Buddhas are hard to distinguish because some Buddhas like to be Buddhas after they're Buddhas. See, after you're Buddha, apparently you can be a many forms of life. See, Buddhahood is not a sort of getting out of life. Like, like the dualistic notion of nirvana is thought to be in certain areas of Buddhism.
Speaker 1 00:02:08 Buddhahood is, is achieving this total wisdom of this multicentric, you know, trans egocentric way of being, as I mentioned on the one hand. And on the other hand, it's this total perfection of compassion where you're able to try to be a benefit to as many beings that you want to be as benefit as many beings as you want. So you have kind of an infinite life force. You can be million beings at once or un countless numbers at once, supposedly. I know that's a very strange sounding, but this is, you can kind of see it, you know, if compassion means attunement to the suffering of others, and a Buddha is so attuned to the suffering of infinite numbers of others, it's like this overwhelming will to respond to all this suffering. It would sort of make you explode into many embodiments where you would be able to respond each one in an effective way.
Speaker 1 00:02:55 And you don't even have to be a living. Being Buddha can emanate as a bridge, as a building, as an island, as a continent, as a planet. Buddha could be the planet earth from the Buddhist point of view. <unk> could be a Buddha because there were some beings who were, some, some beings who were disembodied. They were sitting around in some meditation, heavens having no material bodies, and they were all stultified and Stu fired and lost all language, lost all poetry, lost all intelligence. They were just like, duh, sitting in some like realm of absolute nothing. This is something. And the Buddha came along and said, oh, we gotta make these people get back to sort of middle way in between samati and hard reality between wisdom and compassion. And they whacked himself into a planet and threw these people down onto it. I mean, for the boys' point of view, you could see it that way.
Speaker 1 00:03:41 Karma simply means action. That's all it means, you know, to act and acting is karma action. Now it gets to mean particularly that type of action that is either meritorious or sinful that modifies your evolutionary stage, either positively or negatively bringing you happiness or suffering, right? And the unenlightened person who has the r fails to understand the nature of reality and sees it as intrinsically real really in certain ways and feels like alienated from it and is themselves versus the universe and et cetera, which we've discussed already. Somewhat every kind of action that they do is somehow binding in this sort of network of causality that is karma. And then they're, but some are less binding. Like when that person hoards things, for example, they get more bound, they're more making real. They're sort of, uh, in chain men in karma when they give things away, they're sort of training themselves.
Speaker 1 00:04:40 They need substantiality of things by letting them go through their fingers and then developing generosity. So the good and bad karmas, you know, virtue and sin are sort of arranged on the plane of leading toward openness or leading towards greater and greater closure and solidification. And, uh, now when you achieve enlightenment because you see through the apparent mode of things existing as if they were things in themselves, you are free of being bound to any reactionary element within that karma. On the other hand, in a way, you're not necessarily free of relativity because of your own compassion. Is there still as a causality that now your causality is, you are interconnecting yourself with the lives of other beings? You're still there part of an infinite web of relativity in a certain way, but the way you there is almost impossible to describe because you're both simultaneously there and you're simultaneously totally free of it.
Speaker 1 00:05:43 So they say Buddhahood is inconceivable. You can't, in a way, you can't explain it, seen through any particular perspective on it as being intrinsically real. And yet the subjectivity that's saw through that and enjoys that release is somehow part of all of that anyway. And yet because of being sort of aware of the deepest reality of it in the most totally effective, most totally compassionate manner. So what you become when you become a Buddha is you become, in a way the force of love in the universe because millions of other beings have become Buddhas. They're also a force, the force of love, and you become indistinguishable from them in a way. Although you never wanna say that you become a one Buddha with all Buddhas, all Buddhas are just one Buddha, because then this love would not have the ability of being enjoyed individually. So there you are part of a one, but yet you are also many in your individual ways of expressing that love to the infinite numbers of beings who need to have it expressed to them.
Speaker 1 00:06:40 So you're, in other words, then you use karma, then karma becomes your miraculous activity to make other beings happy and free them from negative compulsive karma. But karma's just action just means causation or action basically. 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 encounters and they have the Buddhist image, it's the wheel, you know, like Christianity is the cross and Taoism is the yin yang and so on. 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, or the most recent wave of Indian civilization, the conquest of India by these, uh, chariot driving warriors from Central Asia.
Speaker 1 00:07:41 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, which is called a wheel. Turning king is 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 outta space and parks there like a close encounter sort of wheel. This is inden myth. 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?
Speaker 1 00:08:28 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 he thinks that the wheel goes in parks over that country. And then they quickly send an mission, an embassy, and they say, Hey, we are part of your kingdom <laugh>. And this way he unifies the whole world without any war, without, without any struggle. 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.
Speaker 1 00:09:20 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 very elaborate and beautiful descriptions of kind of golden eras in the past. 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.
Speaker 1 00:10:09 And this wheel he brought, he keeps there in between Buddhas being on earth. The, the Brahma of that universe that is sort of the, 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 Buddha, says, now go turn the wheel. Cuz now you become a Buddha and you better and you better do this. It's sort of a formality in Buddhist cosmology. So therefore, but what's interesting about it and what actually sets very well with my theme today about the Sunga 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.
Speaker 1 00:10:57 He had a kingdom, he had his 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. 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 and uh, even within Buddhism and even within India history and Indian ancient China as sort of Buddhism's abdicating of the sort of ground of social reality.
Speaker 1 00:11:53 But my argument about the sun guys, 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 barbarism, 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 imp 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 00:12:45 So somehow it doesn't, it doesn't depend on a number of buildings and statures and things in a funny way that's, that's going for it. Now, before I go back on into the second ground, just to finish your other aspect of your question, you said wish and desire, wish and desire is the same thing. And of course there are good desires and bad desires and therefore 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. Really what determines how well you die is how well you live. And this kind of book really you should read when you live and then you should behave yourself and train yourself and develop such and such a mind. And if you don't do that, you practically, it's nearly hopeless.
Speaker 1 00:13:27 However, as a better than nothing, let someone come and read it and then maybe, maybe this and that thing will get you and you'll be caught in this and that plane and you'll be helped in this and that thing. But even then, when you're caught on such, such a plane by one of those deities, that doesn't mean you attain enlightenment. Just means they save you from falling into these horrible situations and then they get you into a plane where you have another shot, kind of another life where you can go to these different realms where you can do it. The idea that you would merge with the one Buddha and attain Buddhahood and all that is like they basically say almost no one, you know, the one who really could do that, the one who already had memorized this whole process and had already rehearsed it a hundred thousand times.
Speaker 1 00:14:02 What you do in yoga, the real way of using the bardo is you learn to meditate in such way where you go through the death process in your life. If you've been a jerk and an idiot and gone out and shot a lot of people and raised taxes and been a nasty moronic ruler of people and destroyed a lot of lives, then you can, they can read you the book of that blue in the face and it won't help you because you've been accumulating sin for a billion years. You have like huge weight of it. Oh you killed people. Oh my goodness. Tremendous tons of it. Uh, luckily though, you, you have also such a great virtuous to be reborn as a human being. So even if you realize these things that you know two weeks before you die, if you really can shift your mind and gain understanding, then you can really change.
Speaker 1 00:14:43 But just by someone saying something and even if you can really hear the book of the Dead, but you have to understand it's not just hearing some book, you have to gain some kind of understanding of selflessness and that there can be drastic change. Certainly as I said Aja chat, when he died, he fell into hell, but he bounced right out and attained our headship in the heaven of Tushi. He was lucky enough to have been reborn in a realm where he interacted with the Buddha even though he was nasty in the way he was interacting and he was misled by this very nasty guy who misled a lot of people. I was attempted to deal with this wonderful suta, I wanna call it your attention. It's called the fruits of the homeless life. And in it this king <unk> sat, as they call him in poly, was asking the Buddha like, why do you go and have a homeless life?
Speaker 1 00:15:31 Why do you renounce the world and go and lead the homeless life Buddha? Why do people do that? And then the Buddha has a set of Socratic dialogue with him where he says, well did you ask anybody else this question? He said Yes. And he talks about these six other swamis, you know, teachers, masters that he had asked his question and what answers they gave. And Buddha makes him tell 'em what all the answers they gave. And then he reveals that he had not been satisfied with any of their answers. So then the Buddha gives an answer of why you lead the homeless life and what is the fruit of the homeless life and it's marvelous and it ends up, you know, the fruit of the homeless life is attaining freedom from evolution, freedom from freedom from karma, enlightenment, you know, and but the way he does it is just really brilliant.
Speaker 1 00:16:06 There's this whole passage in here that I particularly like six wrong answers and then the Buddha gives the right answer. There's one aspect of this answer that I totally adore. He goes through all these sammas that the monk learns how to do and uh, he describes now you see, he finally, this monk has developed all these sammas and then he's realized the nature of his material body. And then he says, A man with good a citizen now sir, he says, uh, and he with mind concentrated, having gained Imperturbability applies a directive mind to the production of a mind made body. This is on page 1 0 4 if you have the book and out of this body he produces another body having a form mind made complete in all its limbs and faculties. It is just as if a man were to draw out a re from its sheath.
Speaker 1 00:16:55 He might think this is the reed, this is the sheath. Reid and sheath are different now. The Reid has been pulled from the sheath or if or as if a man were to draw a sword from the scabbard. He might think this is the sword, this is the scabbard sword of the sab. Scabbard are different now. The sword has been drawn from the scabbard or as if a man were to draw a snake from its old skin. He might think this is the snake, this is the skin. Snake and skin are different now the snake has been drawn from its skin in the same way a monk with mind concentrated. And there's a whole long thing he's abbreviating here about different samati realms that he has. But what he means by mind concentrated directs his mind to the production of a mind made body. He draws that body out of his body, having formed mind, made complete with all its limbs and faculties.
Speaker 1 00:17:38 This is a fruit of the homeless life, more excellent and more perfect than the former ones. And he with mind concentrated applies and directs his mind to the various supernormal powers. He then enjoys different powers being one, he becomes many, being many. He becomes one. He appears and disappears. He passes through fences, walls and mountains, unhindered as if through air. He sinks into the ground and emerges from it as if it were water. He walks on the water without breaking the surface as if on land he flies cross-legged through the sky like a bird with wings. He even touches and strokes with his hand, the sun and moon, mighty and powerful as they are. And he travels in the manmade body as far as the Brahma world, just as a skilled potter or his assistant can make from well prepared clay, whatever kind of bowl he likes or just as a skilled ivory carver or his assistant can produce from well prepared ivory.
Speaker 1 00:18:27 Any object he likes or just as a skilled goldsmith or his assistant can make any gold article he likes. So the monk with mine concentrated and enjoys various supernormal powers and this is a fruit of the homeless life, more excellent and perfect than the former ones. So what I particularly love about that is then he talks about how this mine made body is created with a new set of faculties. For example, right now our energy, our spiritual energy is in what is mainly resides in what is called a sixth consciousness, a mental consciousness. Usually it's sort of in the heart area which coordinates all the input data of the five sense consciousnesses, which are eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body surface. You know, tactile those five senses. And we're completely invested in that. We cannot get away from it when we fall asleep from the border's point of view.
Speaker 1 00:19:11 The reason we need to fall asleep is we get so sick of being subjected to our senses and having to respond all the time to sense simuli. We get overtired with it and overwhelmed with it and we withdraw from it into our mind itself. The sixth sense, the sixth consciousness. And then we can go out in the way of the body through the through dream in that sixth consciousness. But we can't control that process at all. It's completely involuntary. And in fact the degree to which we cannot control it can indicate to us that when we die we are liable to any sort of dream. The imagery that might be around from our karma, from our unconscious could just drag us any old dream, any old wear. And then that dream would concretize in a new embodiment without us being able to do a thing about it.
Speaker 1 00:19:52 If we cannot do a thing about our dreams in this life, if we have no lucidity and no control in our dreaming, in our normal state, what he's saying here, the fruit of the homeless life, why people drop out and join the sunga. Now I'm coming to the sunga, why people drop out and join the sunga. Why people do this and don't put it on the floors. Bad luck. Why people do this to, you know, spend their whole life devoted like that. In other words, it's not because they, they don't like sex, it's not because they don't like good food. It's not because they don't like living in a family. It's not because they don't like fancy clothes, it's because they realize that the real as sexual thing in life to do is to find out, to get away from being subjected to these five senses and to learn to use this inner energy directly to sort of be able to control that.
Speaker 1 00:20:35 You see how he says he can just draw the mind right out. Like you take a read out of its stripper, read out or take a snake out of its skin. That means that the person has the ability to dis-identify from all the sense data, go into the central realm there where where you would dream while awake while meditating. And within that then go into those norm. Those powers are nothing fly around in the man. Like it's like really living as a dream consciously. That's really nothing. It's not important but he's just, he's giving it to the king because it's something the king admires. And so it's another fruit you see. And then next the real thing is he then develops the what's called the divine eye, the ability to know all sorts of things far away. The divine ear, the ability to hear what people are saying, oh, millions of miles away, the knowledge of others' minds.
Speaker 1 00:21:15 The ability to read others' minds, the knowledge of former and future lives of self and others and the knowledge of of the ability to do those magical transformations. And then the sixth one, the knowledge of the process of liberation, of becoming free totally from any sort of bond. And these become the news six faculties that a person has, you see. So in other words, they take their mind out of the old sexes and then they create a new body which has this knowledge of former lives, knowledge of others' minds, knowledge of how to terminate defilements and help others become free and so forth. And then that really is what creates a buddhahood. That is really what creates a buddhahood. So you see the person who really concentrates on that, who gives up all this waste of time, of earning car and house and fancy clothes and cocktail parties and all of this nonsense waste of the human life doing something that any robot can do and puts their full concentration in this, they quickly and easily achieve the ability to actually just get right out of their body, put their body into a different mode, find out how to like relate to other beings, totally change the whole orientation towards the universe and therefore death is nothing to such a person.
Speaker 1 00:22:20 Death is just the process of going in and out. What I love about it particularly is this is a hi sutra supposed to be just our hat, supposed to be just nirvana. We don't do that. That's all ma. All this thing about buddhahood and different bodies, you know, that's that whole theology of mayana. You might hear from some hiana people from some term, you know, monastically oriented only people, Southern Buddhist. And we're not into Buddhahood. Being in our hat is enough. But here you have this idea of creating this new level of subtle being where the mind itself has the ability to transform reality and where you are in fact free and able to do what you want in reality. And therefore naturally what you do is you benefit other beings cuz you have no selfish desires at all. So that's what I think is most now.
Speaker 1 00:23:02 Now the Buddha, when he started to teach, he taught his first five disciples in Sarna in the Deer park in Sarnat. And he talked to them for about 10 minutes and they attained sainthood, one of their leader did and the others in about an hour later, all attained sainthood. When they attained sainthood they said to the bud, wow, you know, this is great. We are finally reached our goal. We are so pleased. Because they realized freedom, you see, they understood not just some sort of good feeling, they really knew what was going on and they really were free. They said this is fabulous but that's great, we are just, we are with you type of thing. And then he said to them, a hiku. And when he said <unk> their hair flew off, which was a lot of funky hair they had, they were these like these Sid Indian sas, you know, they had this long matted locks down to their lane and then their beards flew off and their clothes flew off and they had these orange robes and they were clean-shaven.
Speaker 1 00:23:52 And then for about five years, every time somebody would see the light with the body, he would just go <unk> which means come here Mandiant. And they would become instantly ordained and they, and they, he had this like talk about a cat scan. The guy was like a portable shaving machine. Instantly the hair was totally gone <laugh>. And so there was no problem of rules and regulations and whatever the order. And he said, monks, you are now part of the sang the community. Now the word <unk> was a word at the time that referred to the assembly in the Republican kingdom that they had before the empire time because this was the time of city states that were Republican in structure in India, for the most part it was the assembly of elders who made all the decisions and the kings were in a way elected by them, could be demoted by them.
Speaker 1 00:24:35 And it was very kind of a democratic thing. And in the Buddhist life he praises, that's why modern Buddhist countries, Buddhist writers, you know, are into democracy because the Buddhist said that those kingdoms where everybody decides things and they do things in a certain way and they discuss and debate until everybody agrees on things and they operate by consensus will be strong kingdom. And those that one idiot decides to do what he wants or will not be strong king. So some guys a word taken from that and the social sphere and it came to mean this community outside of the community. And then after a while he admitted women to this community. There is a story that he was resistant to admitting women and that he had to be asked three times by Ananda. And then he admitted them and he said when he did admit them that this would make Buddhism harder to take for the society he was in.
Speaker 1 00:25:18 But after all they could do it if they really wanted type of thing. They didn't need it as much as the men cuz they weren't as hung up. But if they really wanted to, they could do it. And it's true, it may be true because one of the big problems that Buddhism had both in India and China, was that women were so desperate to be nuns that they kept freaking out the people in the kingdoms and they, because they like to be nuns. This are no, doesn't sit well with America where we think being liberated means something, this and that. And but actually in those traditional societies, the women just love to get out of like 15 childbirths and working in the rise fields and being beaten around by all these horrible patriarchs and grand few, grand few powerful grandmothers. And the one time in life when they get powers, when they're like a fierce old grandmother, they really dropped out of this with great facility.
Speaker 1 00:26:04 And it was great laity and it was a constant pattern in Buddhist history where they, where nuns existed in societies where they existed, that the orders of the nuns became immensely powerful and immensely numerous. And there are records of kings all the time, like big edicts, like we are only, we have a quota of 500 nuns a month and no more type of thing. You know, they really freaking out. And then in China, by the trillions, the nuns would come and uh, they, and they were obtaining sainthood and our hat hood and enlightenment all over the place. And women were really dedicated and they were more pressed in the society so they, they could see more of the reality and they were less inflated on various illusions about the greatness of the normal egocentric life. And, but of course men did too. And they, and these orders grew enormously in all the kingdoms.
Speaker 1 00:26:47 Now coming back to the thing, so Buddhas usually understood as sort of fitting in the Indian aesthetic tradition. And you know, life is like a difficult, society is a mess and there's nothing to be done for it. And everyone should just get out of the world and attain nirvana. And it's sort of wrongly understood that way. But actually he founded this institution, which if he had just gone back to his own kingdom, okay, he could have ordained everybody in his kingdom and said, let's all be like enlightened and meditate and that'll be nice. And what would've happened is all the aggressive neighboring kings would've come and conquered his kingdom in about five minutes and he, and he and his guys would've, you know, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere. So it's not going to his kingdom. He was able to spread his movement and his community in all of the kingdoms and people flocked to become monks.
Speaker 1 00:27:29 He sent the monks out to him. He said, go to the four directions, proclaim the good news, the doorway to nirvana is open. Anybody who wants to really look into the nature of life can find out the solution, can gain freedom, can gain extinction of all their suffering, can become wise and compassionate and they can live as my community. And he went through every king and he said, behave yourself, support my people. Anybody who is a sincere seeker should be supported already they supported a lot of aesthetics in India, but they had never supported orders that had big monasteries where they sort of like took people and they'd never had orders of nuns, females, and they never had orders of lower cast people either. But somehow Buddha went and all these kings gave them central park, they gave him all these things, you know, I don't know how he did it.
Speaker 1 00:28:14 Really, it's like a miracle. It's like some guy in, uh, India at that time was not a happy little yogi country. India was a slave society. They had slaves, they had untouchables, they had color bars, you know, black and white people. And they were very nasty about it. The veic injunctions are nasty about the lower cast people coming to your sacrifice. If they wandered in when you were doing rituals, you wasted them just like any enslave in the south who tried to come into church. So what the Buddha did is the equivalent of like, you know, a young general son from Atlanta, Georgia or something, goes to Yale or something, comes up to Columbia, gets some newfangled ideas, goes back there in 1838 or something, shaves his head and puts on an orange robe downtown Atlanta and says, dad, we're gonna have ourselves a free place here.
Speaker 1 00:28:57 We're gonna meditate, we're gonna obtain enlightenment. And anybody who wants to come, you let him come. And we're coming over to the jeweler, planter's place every day at lunchtime with the bowl and you give us lunch Dad <laugh>. Now what would happen to that guy? He'd be fried on a rail, he would be running out, they, you know, they'd give him, if they had a psychiatrist or shock therapy, they'd do that. If not they'd kill him. And a slave who came to join, they'd kill somehow India, which was a rigid place. They were killing each other violently during Buddha's own time. He somehow prevailed by pretending that this was a sort of order of people who were leaving the world and they wouldn't bother the people in the ordinary society. So here you have the town, you have to do this visually. See this visually, you know, here you have the Indian society and here's the king's palace, you know, and here's the marketplace and here's the Brahman temple.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 And then there's all these peasants out here laboring away on the fields. And then there's artisans and servant casts all living all around this. And these are the three things going on in the society. And this one guy leaves the king's palace, goes out in the jungle for a while, comes back and asks for the park here on the edge of this town. He asks for the biggest park in town, they give it to him. He then has people coming from the merchant cast, people coming from the priest, cast people coming from the royal cast, people coming from the peasant cast, women coming there. And as soon as they come in here, they're equal. Totally. All of their cast divisions are totally dropped. They are totally to be venerated by every single priest, king and merchant. If the guy is an untouchable and he's an our hat, he's venerated by the king and this thing, and there's a nuy over this side and a monk monastery over this side.
Speaker 1 00:30:32 And sometimes when they're going on basic real heavy retreats, meditation, they go further into hermitages. But mostly they live into suburbs. And every day they go into the marketplace and they say, give me lunch. And people fall all over themselves to give them lunch. And they're not even allowed to say thank you. If you're a monk or a nun. Even today in Thailand, you go out with your lunch, somebody gives you lunch and say, oh thanks. They hit you with a spoon. They say, you just wasted my merit from giving the lunch. You're no good monk by thanking me, you're building up my ego and now you have paid me back. So it wasn't a gift, so I lost my merit. So shut up and don't say anything. Take the lunch and get out. So you go, you don't say a word, you just take the lunch.
Speaker 1 00:31:07 You know, you don't even, you know, then they really get the merit cause they've given it, you see, without being thanked, you see? So this is a revolutionary engine is what I'm saying. The sung this total revolutionary engine and it's a, it's a social revolution of real power because on the other hand they say, oh yeah, you'll be king. I'm just leaving myself. I'm not gonna be king. Sure priest, you do your priestly stuff. But although the one intervention here really strong from the beginning was no more cows laing, no more animal sacrifice of neic alters. This is stupid and this is no good. And there was a active criticism of that. The bud up really dumped on that. And probably his movement was a major aspect in stopping the sacrifice of animals. And actually these guys, in a sociological sense in the history of India, these folks in the merchant quarter who were sort of beginning to do serious trade and they were sick of the warriors with their little Trojan wars and things and they're tired of the priests with their greed for big offerings of cows and wealth and you know, sort of rich wheels tell the gods to prosper you and you know, you better give us a lot of offerings.
Speaker 1 00:32:09 They were sick of them, the priest, and they wanted some sort of legitimacy and upward mobility and, and around them were various artisans who were moving into being merchants. So there, this was a whole huge large area of strong energy, the mercantile area. And they found a lot to be desired in this movement and they were major supporters. And so this sun got thing, therefore now basically he invented what we call today monasticism. And this really is the monastic option. And we take it for granted nowadays. And many of us, because our, the Protestant domination of our society, we think of it as something sort of almost obsolete and unnecessary, but it, we, we cannot conceive of what an amazing intervention this was in the society of those days. Plato never got near or anything like that. Confucius, neither Zora Aston, neither people, there were few places like the scenes and so on, but they were, they were not monastic.
Speaker 1 00:33:00 They had families then and so on. But there were a few communities that would withdraw and there were ashram communities in India that would withdraw. But the idea of an institution where anybody from any walk of life, male or female could retire upon deciding there was some higher evolution they wanted to use their life for as an individual and be supported by the society with tax deductions, with free food, with free space and real estate. And honor and respect is almost inconceivable how he did it. Because I mean, because today you couldn't do it in New York. Look at this open center. They have, they have some kind of tax deduction, but you know, they don't have any real support. They're trying to, they're trying to create a space for people to open up their lives, to open up their mind. Do you see Mayor Dinkins or Cox deciding, hey, open center is a priority.
Speaker 1 00:33:49 We have the fire department, police department, yeah, we should really encourage the open center. There should be open centers every 10 blocks. People need to open their minds and hearts. That's what life is for. Can you, everyone who wants to go to open center should have a scholarship. Good luck in New York, we're supposed to be modern in advance into liberal ideas. The monastic thing is basically a useless thing from the point of view of the forces in society. People don't produce wealth, they don't work, they don't labor. The original Buddhist Mons were not allowed to do any work, nothing to distract them from the goal of achieving enlightenment. Therefore, in accepting that indus causing people capitalizing on the social conditions, which were better in India than anywhere else in Eurasia, it wasn't just his miraculous power. He also picked India. They say because there was a better or it happened felicitously in India, if we don't wanna see it in that way because India was the most advanced society of the time and was the wealthiest.
Speaker 1 00:34:44 So they could afford to have more people liberating themselves. They didn't have to have everybody like in the trenches defending against the Spartans or whoever it was next door. So this free institution of freedom really is what it is. Before Buddhas time, everyone existed for the collectivity, the king actually, it was very insignificant that he was a king cuz you know, the king of a society is always, you know, a heavy lies the head that wears the crown. The king has the duty of serving the whole people in the Asian kingdoms, the king would refer to themselves with the sort of very diminutive pronoun as sort of everyone's servant. And the king had the least personal sort of freedom they had to, they were responsible to everyone in a way in the kingdom to protect them and so on. So they were the most binging actually the uh, the responsibility bound them most strongly to the whole.
Speaker 1 00:35:29 And their individual needs and desires were submerged most in the whole. But everybody was submerged in the whole. There was no concept of individualism or individual liberation in Vak. India, absolutely none. You would win battles. There was a concept of success, concept of achieving power, wealth, fame, progeny, but no concept of liberation at all. It was just a life was like one big cosmic cycle. You stayed in it and you tried to go up in it rather than down. That was it. Suddenly you have the individual's aim of achieving freedom from everything is the paramount aim of the whole society, the very purpose of the society. Within 200 years. By the time of Ashoka, after the Buddhas time, the great emperor Ashoka, the whole society sort of in the person of the emperor by his edict, took up the responsibility of saying, our purpose as a society is the liberation of our individuals.
Speaker 1 00:36:19 Therefore the institutions that enable them to seek liberation are our most important institutions. That would be like in America, the government coming out of their congressional caucus and saying, the universities are the most important institutions in this country and we are gonna cancel, we should cancel most of the defense budget and cancel most of every other budget and we should make our whole budget. 80% of our budget should be education and everybody in the country should have lifelong education. And everyone, every production in the country, all its productivity and all its wealth should be devoted to the educating of every individual in the country. Can you imagine that happening here, <laugh>? Well actually it would better happen here to a greater degree. It does happen more in those more successful countries like Germany and Japan and Sweden. They realize that their greatest resource is to human beings and of course resource that's that talker than using them to produce.
Speaker 1 00:37:13 But nobody even in the modern world recognizes that the, the purpose of the society is the whole place to be free. Our purpose in learning of the open center is not to go out and get richer and do more and produce more in the society. Our purpose here is for <inaudible> to be free to liberate something in ourselves that in fact is the purpose of life. Education is not to go. So then we can be an executive or a lawyer. Truly speaking, education, the purpose of life is to be educated because what you learn in your life as a human goes beyond your life. What you earn does not go beyond your life. What you own does not go beyond your life. Your body, your health does not go beyond your life, your clothes, your wardrobe definitely doesn't go beyond your life. But what you learn in your inner mind, in that subtle mind that can be pulled out like the reed, it can be pulled out like the sword out of its sheath.
Speaker 1 00:38:08 That is what goes beyond your life. So that is what you should invest your time in. The little teeny bit of Buddhist manasas in that exists in America are a few refugees who are basically by the hospitality of America with its pluralism and so forth, living in their own culture, but in America, because there's some communists or some weird business going on in their own country. Then we have a few like centers where people call themselves monks, but they have four children, <laugh> and they have two wives, at least one or two or three husbands or something. I mean, they're not monks, they're maybe priests but they're not monks. And nobody will support a monastery
Speaker 1 00:38:45 Because people are in a monastery are useless people, they don't do anything. They're just, they're praying or meditating. Well that doesn't true. So even people who are monks or live a monster, they say, see we have weekend seminars. We help the neighborhood. They're trying to show their service. But acceptance of monasticism by a society, which from the point of view of the <unk> means that means freedom in a society. Americans shout and scream about freedom, but we, Americans are not really implement freedom on a social level. Americans do not admire freedom on a social level. They're afraid of freedom on a social level. You, I could go to India and bring back five or six Indian sadhus who are really free because India is a country that admires freedom on a social level. I don't care. They have a few generals. They have this and that they uh, they have a social freedom there. I'm bring some guys six foot, three painted blue stark naked. There are things hanging around carrying a trident march up and down with a little pot in their hand and walk into any store, electronic store and say lunch and the the merchant rushes to give them lunch happily. And the yuppies will sit in the cafe while the solders sits across the street by a tree eating the same lunch for free.
Speaker 1 00:39:58 And here a guy be arrested in one minute,
Speaker 4 00:40:01 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:40:01 Might have cow shit in his hair. Really good one has like a beautiful cfi, like more punk than anybody made of cow shit. <laugh> shoes, like punk cow shit, all painted blue, start naked, usually well hung. That's a free country, not this scrapper suit and tie. And you gotta walk through the lights and on and off and any deviance, Thorazine shoot 'em up, put 'em away. This we don't admire little liberal arts that have the pre-med programs, the pre-law programs interfering in the poor little four years. Did a few yuppies have to try to like open up their sensitivity and learn to listen to D you know,
Speaker 4 00:40:41 <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:40:42 There's no narration for freedom in this country and monks are useless parasites. Then you go to a movie like name of the Rose or some borja business, you think God, a bunch of must all be homosexuals or weird or something. And we don't like monks. We're Protestants. We all work. We produce a bombs
Speaker 4 00:40:58 <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:40:59 It's not a free country. So how did Budd a thousand, how did India 2,500 years ago have this institution monism where we Americans, we think we're so generous, we think we're so free and so modern, we are not generous enough to support our community of 20, 30 people who are nothing other than achieve liberation. We think that they're weird, they must be cult. They're no good, they don't produce. We're just like the communists in that sense. The communists of course burn thousands of monasteries burned thousands of monks and nuns and they all this big thing of their parasites and they don't support, they don't do anything for anybody. Brainwash all the people. As soon as they stop doing it, the people be built to monasteries right away because the monasteries, this engine, this machine, this wheel of Dharma social wheel of dharma that Buddha created called the Sangha, the community is the bastion of the individual's freedom in all of these societies that tend so strongly to collectivism and where the state always tries to take over everybody's total energy and the women are slaves producing 20 children in a life, you know of whom six will live in the traditional times and the men after work in some field or fight in some battle or just do something all the time.
Speaker 1 00:42:08 And there's no allowance to be free. That's a AIC society. It's a tribal. People say tribal is backward. We are developed, we are not developed. We're total tribal. We're not really individualistic. We pretend that's we are not individualistic. We think we're so individualist, we are not. We are very conformist. The dollar lama as an authority in Tibet has been a male so far. But the do lama has been not just in Abk, has not just incarnated in the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Now, okay, let's back up on this. So there the do Lama is a woman, has been a woman plenty of times. It may be like hundreds of women. Right now Lama is likely at least 500 women right this minute. I don't mean he's not consorting with him, he's a good monk. I'm saying he is 500 women probably in different countries if he's really avalo.
Speaker 1 00:43:02 Alote has a thousand arms, thousand eyes, thousand faces, million forms. It is pure, compassionate, embodiment of compassion. Let's not just say that the Awar is just the $1 Army. He would never say that he's just a simple Buddhist monk. But now just go back, okay, where is the powerful nuns nowadays? Where is the Buddhism nowadays? Buddhism has been totally destroyed in the last century, more or less. In China, there were a million. You go to Taiwan right now and if you don't watch the traffic lights, you can be run down by herds of nuns, gray nuns zooming along or copying the SU trials or meditating. I mean there are a lot of nuns in Taiwan and in China there was a lot of nuns. It was the one avenue of true liberation for a woman in China, unless she was very high class or an empress or something. Otherwise, pretty slavery oriented in fact. But you see Buddhism, what happened to Buddhism in India as soon as the Muslims came in. India, goodbye Buddhism, goodbye monks and nuns.
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