Episode Transcript
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 Dial Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 307, the Buddhas Enlightment, Buddhism 1 0 1.
Speaker 1 00:01:21 Now, how many, how many of you really, uh, need basic Buddhism? I mean, how, how, how many have never heard anything at all about Buddhism,
Speaker 1 00:01:30 About four or five <laugh> and the others are the others, therefore, must be really advanced, right? Practicing beginner's mind or something, right, of discovering, rediscovering things. It's also, of course, it's the greatest challenge to try to teach basic Buddhism. It's like difficult, advanced and sort of nice. You can be sort of narrow and think that you're, you're doing something really great, basic. You have to sort of start from everywhere. So everyone is, uh, just a few who have never heard about them, bud, but those who have never, never heard about Buddhism. You know, who the Buddha was. And, uh, of course what a Buddha was is another question. None of us know that we have to worry about that. But, uh, the i, this is a course which, um, it helps if people can read something and that helps our discussions. And the first thing that I wanted people to read was this work here, which, uh, uh, called thus have I heard is from wisdom publications.
Speaker 1 00:02:30 But these are some of the early Buddhist <inaudible>, as they call 'em, more scriptures. And, uh, they purport to be the recording of some of the discourse of the Buddha. Another good anthology, if you have trouble obtaining that is something called the World of the Buddha by, um, Lucian Strick. Okay, M Walsh, who is the translator of, Thus have I heard, Thus have I heard is the way in which all Buddhist scriptures begin. That's the title. And the other good anthology that I recommend very much is by a guy named Strick, which is World of the Buddha to get started with. And, uh, when those two books are enough, really to get a sense of early, what I call early monastic Buddhism, which is where we begin. Although, uh, the concept of which was early and which was late, is kind of controversial as, as we'll say.
Speaker 1 00:03:27 In other words, different Buddhist countries have different versions of Buddhist history, this kind of thing. So that's the kind of complication that we have to deal with when we deal with Buddhism. So perhaps we should start with, um, some of the historical facts for those, as we should start with those who are really new. Um, it was a prince named Suta who lived in India in the, uh, sixth century bc who, uh, was dissatisfied with his life as a prince and renounced that and went out, uh, when he was 29, uh, at the time when he had a son around. At that time, his first child had a son, and then he left and went out to attain Buddhahood. He was just about to be crowned the king of the country. And his father was very annoyed with him because the father, according to Indian social practice of those days when the, when you became a grandfather, you were allowed to retire from the world and go, and, uh, that was your retirement pension plan was the grandson.
Speaker 1 00:04:26 So, uh, when just when the grandfather was about to abdicate and let the son take over, administering the kingdom that they were king of, uh, the son comes over and says, Dad, I don't want to be king. I'm going out to obtain enlightenment. So the father was very bugged about that. He said, What do you mean you're gonna attend enlighten? I'm gonna go attend enlightenment. I'm the father. I've been working in our old age. We go out and are able to reflect on the eternal verities, and we get to attend enlightenment, and you have to work and run the kingdom. And later we'll hear about enlightenment. No, I'm sorry, dad, I'm going ahead of time. I'm going, You have your grandson. You just have to be relaxed and I'm gonna go get enlightenment. So he left. And in a way, his leaving was very rebellious and very unkind in a way.
Speaker 1 00:05:12 His wife was very upset with him. His son was an infant, so he couldn't be upset. But later he was somewhat upset and his father was shattered and heartbroken. You know, his mother, uh, was not, She had passed away years earlier. And, uh, it was, and then all the father sent the priests of the household and the local intellectuals and the lawyers and the ministers, the psychiatrists, everything they sent after. But uh, and, and they had all the arguments on their side. This is really silly. You owe a debt to society. You owe a debt to your parents. Why are you doing this? You have everything to live for. Why are you renouncing the world? Why are you cutting off your, the hairdo beautiful blue hair he had with jewels and, uh, your lovely wife and your palaces? So no, nothing could sage the bud.
Speaker 1 00:06:03 I'm gonna take enlightenment, but what is that? They said, Well, he said, Really, I'm not sure what it is he had to say before he was enlightened. But if I'm gonna be responsible for other people as a king is supposed to be, I would like to be able to truly help other people, and I'm sorry, dad, but helping them with the national defense, the economy and ritual state ceremonies doesn't really help them because their real problems, as I see it, are suffering, aging, dying. These are their real problems. And you know, how do you help them with that? That he said, Oh, come off it. We don't worry about that. We just rule a country. They go to the priests for that. What do you think the priest can help them? Well, no, they do some mumbo jumbo and sacrifice to the gods, but then no, then people have to sort of accept it.
Speaker 1 00:06:53 That's just the way it is. That's not good enough said Buda. There must be some meaning to human life, some point to it all other than just living from birth to death and then being reborn and living again to death and then reborn and living again to death, especially to human life. Human life seems to be really something very special, and there must be a better reason. And I'm gonna find out. And our arrest is not of any interest to me. Even his horse died. No, the horse actually croaked went home and just laid down and died. He was so sad. The bud ass horse, really big white horse he had called pac, no one else could ride it. The horse took him off to where he cut off his hair and took off his princely garments and put on this cemetery shroud, orange saffron patchwork robe.
Speaker 1 00:07:41 And then the horse heaved a big sigh and a Wii and laid down and died. It's very sad, really. So then he went out. It was very not religious. Therefore, you have to understand there was nothing religious about it. People think Buddhism is a big religion, and it's called a world religion, and there's some aspect of truth to that. But the Buddha was not really being religious. The religion would've had him follow the priest of his family and worship the gods and hang, you know, hang in there in the conventional society of his time. That's what religion wanted him to do. It was a reality quest, you know, I would say sort of an adolescent freak out. But he was 29, you know? So then he went out, he meditated for six years, very hard. He went to one guru in an ashram, and the guru said that, uh, he had a great soma in which he achieved the peak of the, of the world, which was the realm of absolute nothingness.
Speaker 1 00:08:37 It was a sort of existentialist swee that he had. He said that if you follow my teaching, you can realize the realm of absolute nothingness. That is the visceral existential, experiential soma of total nothingness. So the budh said, That sounds interesting, How do you do it? And he's sad, and he meditated and ashra there. And by five o'clock in the afternoon, he had achieved that Soma <laugh>. It was a very quick learner. And he achieved that soma. And the guru said, My son, you've done really well. I want you to take over my ashram. You're my successor. I anointed you my dharma air. I buta said, I'm sorry, but that samati is peanuts. That's nothing. What, what's the use of that? I can't be in air. I'm sorry, I have to find something else. That's nothing. That's easy. And it's not the nirvana, it's not liberation.
Speaker 1 00:09:26 It's just a big soma. So then he went to the next ashra, and the man that Ashra said, Oh, that, yeah, that guy, you right to leave him. He had a very coarse soma, very crude. We, through our teaching, you could achieve the realm beyond consciousness and unconsciousness even more far out. So the but went, okay, fine. And then by two in the afternoon, he achieved that one again. He was offered the ASRA again. He said, Forget it, This is too boring. It's nothing. He left that, and he came back. And, um, then he left all the gurus. He said, Apparently this, this is the greatest us around, the greatest guru, but these people don't know. So then he went off and he practiced a cism. He ate a grain of rice a day it had said for six years. And there's some wonderful sculptures of the Buddha from later eras showing him looking like the Christ a little bit, actually.
Speaker 1 00:10:16 They're the sort of the most Christian type of Buddhas that you see. He looks very, very racked and tortured. His ribs are all sticking out, you know, you can see his backbone through his stomach was treated on it like that. He looks really like, really like a skeleton. It's some amazing sculpture, particularly one marvelous the Gandara. People with the Greco Roman techniques in the, a few centuries later made really fantastic aesthetic. Buddhas Buddha sculptures. And there's a famous, uh, there's some things happened. His mother came to him from heaven and said, My son, why are you ruining your life on top of having destroyed your household, You're now ruining your body and you're gonna die. He said, No, don't worry, mom, I won't die. Not only that, but I promise to come and teach you in heaven as soon as I changed enlightment. So she side and she went back to heaven.
Speaker 1 00:10:57 Finally, when he was 35 years old, he renounced a cynicism. He decided that also wasn't really very, uh, useful. You know, he'd done all these somas and tremendous, like, he developed tremendous, what they call in India, tapas generated sort of psychic heat and kind of almost magical power. And he decided that also was useless. It was still a sort of preoccupation with mental states and with meditation and with, with spiritual yoga and things like that. And that was not still the way. So he, at that time, it has said that this cow hurt us, came and offered him food, which he ate. And the moment he ate this food, he turned, he filled out completely. That's a myth, you know, a story. And he turned golden. He completely started radiating golden light. And immediately his friends, he had these five aesthetics who were living with him, and they had completely dumped on him.
Speaker 1 00:11:46 They said, Ah, is a cta, was his name at that time. Cta. CTA is a cop out. He has no guts, no more. He didn't do a cism. He ate food given to him by a woman. So they said, Let's leave. And they left him, abandoned him. And then he went, took a bath, first bath in six years. And, uh, he cleaned his garments. And then he sat down under this tree and he said, in a place called the Diamond, uh, throne, uh, still there in place nowadays called Bo Gaia. And he sat down under this Bodhi tree or fiig kind of giant fig tree. And he said, I won't move from here until I have obtained Unha perfect enlightenment. And, uh, he sat there and he sat through a night in a day, apparently, during which time the devil came to see him, uh, Satan, or actually the prototype of Satan Scholars say they didn't have Satan in the old days in the West Asia, you know, in the ju in the, in the, the Palestine area.
Speaker 1 00:12:45 They, uh, they borrowed him from India. He, he, but he had a Satan in India for some reason. His name was Mara, what's his name. And Mara came, and Mara first sent great armies to attack him and threw boulders and dropped Mount Everest on his head and did all his things. And he ignored all of that. Apparently he was armed against it by his like, deep meditative ability. And the next Mara sent his daughters 12,000 goddesses to PR around and tried to get him attracted by fear, wasn't gonna do it, then lust would do it. And he, they didn't appeal to him apparently. And so, but he was friendly to everybody, but he didn't budge. So then finally Mara came to him and tried to out with him in a dialogue. And he said, uh, you know, what is all this fuss about being an unex excelled, perfect Buddha?
Speaker 1 00:13:33 I mean, what is this? Are you gonna say, you're telling me you're gonna save the world or something? I mean, aren't you a little bit self important, aren't you? A little bit arrogant. I mean, what is this? You know, I'm gonna be a budha. I'm gonna know everything. I mean, what's your right to be a budha? What right are you gonna proclaim that you are the budha? Said, Mara said to him, like, Aren't, you know, sort of catch him with the sin of pride, right? Was the idea. So the Budo responded, he said, Well actually Mara, you're quite a cheerful looking demonn devil there, aren't you? I mean, you have really nice horns. Actually, Mara and India doesn't have horns. He's very elegant. He's kind of like a giant Cuban type of figure. And he has a bow of flowers, arrows, he shoots people, they fall passionate in love, and he has a pleasure, Paris.
Speaker 1 00:14:17 He doesn't live in underworld. So he is a little different in India. No, a little more sexy, you know, than the ju Christian one. And, uh, but he said, Anyway, you're the king of the Mars. You're the top full tempter in the universe. And how did you get to be a top full tempter? And uh, I'll tell you how you did, said the Budha, because the Budha had achieved the knowledge of all beings former and future lives already during that night. You know? And he said one time when you were in hell and you were a lowly sort of, you know, demonn garbage collector type, you know, one of the low demons, you were torturing some people along with your buddy, you know, sticking pitchforks in them, whatever. You know, at that time you were working the underworld and you had a mo and you were drinking from your canteen between shifts of torturing people.
Speaker 1 00:15:00 And you noticed one of your buddies was thirsty. His canteen had run out. So without a, actually a selfish thought about or trying to sell it to him or anything, you actually gave him a drink. Tiny thimble, full of water like that you said, Here, have a drink your friend. And from that single act of generosity, of altruistic generosity, the merit has built up slowly. Where now you're the king of the devils. So Mara was impressed. He said, You, you know that, you know, because Mara being a God also had this kind of clairvoyance. And he said, um, and then Buddha said, Now just you did that one deed and I'm in the Buddha. And I did millions of deeds like that in previous lives in some life. I gave my whole country away to people some lives. I gave my my body to be eaten by cannibals in some lives.
Speaker 1 00:15:44 I gave vast wealth. I gave my children, my wife, my husband, by, you know, I mean I gave away everything so many times and I did so many virtuous actions that this has built up to the degree where now in fact, it's allowed, I have the right to be a Bud app. So then Mara said, Well, who's your witness? You're just claiming that, but how can you prove it? You remember, you are my witness cuz you knew my deed. Mara said, But who's your witness? So the Buddha then touches the ground. He said, Earth is my mother, Earth is my witness. He said, Because all these lives I lived on Mother Earth on at her breast. So he touched the ground. If you know those statues of the Buddha sitting, they show his right hand, usually like this over his knee. He's not scratching really.
Speaker 1 00:16:29 He's touching the ground. And then Mother Earth jumps up in the form of 16 emanations of mother, mother Earth jump out standing in the trees and they begin to recite the former lives of the Buddhas called Vitech alive, you know? And as soon as Mara began to sort of a multimedia show actually, where the Buddha was a deer, and he fed himself to this hunter. And when the Buddha was elephant, he gave his teeth to that hunter when the Budha was a person, he did this and they recite all these lives of the Budha and previous lives, his sort of evolutionary history. And then Mara disappeared, and then he attained Buddhahood, then he manifested Buddhahood. So this is the thing now. So, uh, what is called Buddhahood or enlightenment is a kind of, is not therefore to be confused as some sort of new idea or simple sort of one insight that somebody gets.
Speaker 1 00:17:19 Buddhahood is a kind of evolutionary achievement or fulfillment according to the Buddhist view. That sort of is a culmination of a being's whole history in life. You know, starting from when they were alligators and bugs and things like that. And then they work up and up life and life and life and finally they get to be human and from human life with certain type of fortunate human life. They then can achieve enlightenment and not just mental enlightenment, but even physically become this kind of a being called a perfect bud up. It's sort of an unbelievable thing. Now, a Buddhist, uh, real, a real Buddhist, I mean, it doesn't mean necessarily a nominal Buddhist. There are many nominal Buddhist who say I'm a Buddhist. They go to a Buddhist church. They have a right to say it in a way as a sort of membership of some sort in some culture or other.
Speaker 1 00:18:06 But a real Buddhist practicing Buddhist definitely is living in a reality that goes way back behind the birth in this life and goes way forward beyond the death in this life. And therefore, without Willy wishing to and not necessarily in this center of their consciousness, they automatically take into consideration the impact of a deed or a statement or a thought in that future life. Now, it doesn't have to be so completely focused, like for example, we might do something now in terms of our after retirement or 10 years, hence some projected time in this life that we would have. And we would, maybe the main thing would be what would happen at the moment we'd be concentrating on, but it would be part of our horizon is the point. So a Buddhist lives like that part of the resident. And where this kind of thing comes into a crunch is like today, I had a student in a class I gave earlier at college who said, as we were talking about that came up after class and said, Now what should I do if someone was trying to kill me from according to Buddhism, Should I kill them or should I not kill them?
Speaker 1 00:19:12 Type of thing. And uh, you have to say from the Buddhist point of view, it's not an open and closed question. It's a complicated question. And the only way I could answer it was to say that it would, it more than whether you live or die is how you are living or dying. That would be important. In the Buddhist case, you might actually stop someone, some, some maniac killer who you know is not only kill you, but many other people. You might stop them, you try and do it without killing them, but you might stop them forcefully if in do you could do so without being angry with them and perfectly lovingly and really with the major intention and, uh, of saving them from killing a lot of people starting with you.
Speaker 1 00:19:55 But if in order to kill them, the only way you could somehow be patient and loving would be to just be vulnerable and you're unable to react energetically without becoming filled with hate, then maybe you'd better let 'em run over you, if possible, pretend to be dead so they leave you alone, you know, or something, but you better you. Other words, it's the point is that whatever the exact case and whatever the exact judgment, which you can't make totally in general, the major thrust is the quality of your life. Are you living as an open being of being of generosity, being of justice, being of tolerance and patience and love? Or are you living as an being of hate and anger? If you, if you turn into a being of hate and anger then, and that's the only way you can save your life, then you have not saved the important thing you've lost your mind to save your life from the Buddhist point of view by being, giving it over to hate and so on.
Speaker 1 00:20:53 And that might be deleterious for you might, somebody else might come and kill you in a minute later. Steamroll might run over you. You die as a ball of hate and anger and violence, and then you're reborn in a terrible manner from, this is from the Buddhist point of view. Anyway, I'm just saying this is realistic to a Buddhist and the enterprise of enlightenment in a way is realistic to a Buddhist only in terms of this larger framework than the framework of this life. So really that's where we start. And even if we feel that it's realistic that there is a former in future life, it's very important to continually examine whether we are really thinking about that in the sense of how we are living our life. Are we really only thinking about is our horizon only sort of this body of this life?
Speaker 1 00:21:36 Is that really what we are identifying with this body of this life being, you know, our sense fields, You know what we see, what we hear very much identifying with our senses and our sensory stimuli seeking present wounds and avoiding unpleasant wounds and identifying completely with ourselves as a sensor, so to speak. So this is, that's a real beginning point in the context of enlightenment. So therefore, the enlightenment idea is the idea. Now this relates also to the fact that the consciousness that we normally have is only a partial type of conscious. Usually we think that we are awake when we are awake and we feel that we're not asleep when we're not asleep. And we feel that a consciousness that we have when we are awake is an adequate consciousness, and that's the only one there is. And therefore we assume, well Buddha, when Buddha's asleep is asleep, a budha is asleep, he or she is asleep. When a budha is awake, they're awake and they're just like us, but maybe they know more things or something like that. They had another few more insights. But in fact, uh, the enlightenment, the idea of enlightenment is that there's a type of being awake that is so totally different from the way in which we are awake, that it makes the way we are awake seem like sleep. It relates to the way we are awake as our present ness relates to being asleep.
Speaker 1 00:23:00 And this again, is not something that's obvious or really easy for us to imagine. I think we kind of think that, uh, enlightenment, but enlightenment is also sort of insight. So we should, it's not that it is not insight. So, and that it is not that we should assume that, you know, we are not enlightened at all. If we are not sort of buzzing all the time or something like that, or seeing out of the back of our head or something like that. We should not over reify it in a way, just something totally alien from our consciousness. Everyone has perfect wisdom in their mind per, in their intelligence in a way is where their enlightenment lies in a sort of seed form. It is said in your real intelligence that sort of gains insight into things and sees the things more deeply. Something like that penetrates the service of things and sees their deeper reality.
Speaker 1 00:23:49 So it's not that there's something so different from that, that it's just some unimaginable weird thing, but it's just quantitatively so magnified that it's almost different. So that gives the basic thing. So then Buda team is perfect enlightenment supposedly. And what he mainly said about that enlightenment was, aha, I have discovered a reality now that is like an Alexia immortality. I no longer fear death. I see that others need not fear death. I see that others can transform themselves and become enlightened. I'm actually, it's really very delightful. Although in a way maybe it'll be hard for them to do it. And I'm actually so cheerful myself that maybe I don't need to bother to let them know about it. He kind of made a few statements like that <laugh>, he didn't sort of jump up and say, I've gotta go out and let people know.
Speaker 1 00:24:40 He did kind of sit for as well. It's just fantastic the way I see reality now. It's like an elix immortality. It is reality is profound, peaceful undiscussable, uh, luminous, clear light and uncreate. It's just reality. It's just freedom. This is it. I feel I'm totally free. And actually I see all beings as free. He even saw. And really nobody has a problem sort of, and everything is fine. And even I don't even go need to tell 'em. They actually everything is okay. He had this kind of a vision like that. Even people were okay as they were, even though they were thinking they were miserable. He saw everything as perfect in a certain way. So he had a, it wasn't, I wouldn't say selfish, but he had a lazy thought. It is said. Although some people say it wasn't truly a lazy thought, it was just a, it was a trick.
Speaker 1 00:25:34 It was his first trick as a teacher because he wanted to distinguish himself from those who, you know, jump up with as being filled with a mission. You know, with a huge agenda. I'm gonna like turn everybody on and make them change and do something, you know. Instead, he wanted it clear that the nature of the reality that he had seen was such that everyone in fact was fully in it. Which is a different kind of starting point that does distinguish Buddhism when it's really taught. Now you may have met Buddhist teachers who harp on how stupid you are, <laugh> I have and it's useful. I am stupid. That's good when someone tells me how stupid I am, and uh, it helps me. And doesn't have to be a formal Buddhist master, actually, often informal Buddhist master, such as one's wife or children. They can also tell you that it can be very helpful.
Speaker 1 00:26:29 But on the other hand, uh, the great starting point about the Buddha was this starting point that he said, I I don't need to tell anybody about it. Everyone is fine. Everything is perfect, profound, There's no problems. Reality is really trouble free. Everyone is perfectly well. People are sitting, they say, I feel awful. I'm terrible. Well, yeah, but you're, you're actually perfectly well. In other words, his starting point was actually sort of like that. And it is said that in his time, the myth is that, you know, from that, all of these tigers and lions came and sat around him and they kind of like heard, you know, And then people, when they would meet him, they would just flip out, you know, and they would feel perfectly well even their many stories like that. His presence was like a presence of everybody being perfectly well from that time.
Speaker 1 00:27:24 Whether or not he did say anything, You know, one of my favorites, his first lay disciple was this young guy named Yaha, who was a banker, banker's son, a young banker, a young ypi actually. And he'd been out having a picnic with some cortisone with his buddies. And he had been rolled, you know, he'd gotten drunk and falling asleep. They slipped him a mickey and he hit and he has down to his underwear, his watch, his Rolex was gone, keys to his Corvette or bmw, excuse me, and his, everything was gone and he had nothing. And he was running all around in the forest saying, Did anybody see these girls, you know, with my things and some jewels and was really mad? And he was hung over and he was a little bit still like this, you. And in the middle of it, he ran into the Buddhas camp where the Buddha was sitting with the monks, you know, And he comes running and you gotta see some girls running around here, he says, And the Buddha says, Is that really what you want?
Speaker 1 00:28:16 Some girls? Are you really looking for girls? What is it that you really want? Type of thing. You wanna find true bliss, lasting bliss, et cetera. He gives her like, like half a sort of mini lecture. The guy is deeply locked in Soma. And two hours later the guy's parents come looking for him and the Buddha puts a magical screen around him where he is invisible so they won't disturb him. Cuz he's deep in the soma, You know what he really, the meaning of life and all this. And he has tea with the parents. And at the moment that after they're just having tea, the parents suddenly the guy attained enlightenment, he attained freedom. He saw through his whole game, he saw he achieved blitz of Nirvana and suddenly he became visible to his parents. They thought he needed to be deprogrammed, but they didn't have anybody to hire to do that.
Speaker 1 00:29:02 But no, they were really appreciative because he was truly blessed for me. He was radiant, he was like completely flipped out. You know, he wasn't just spouting some message if somebody told him and selling them a, a flower on the street. He was, he was just completely transformed from having been hungover. I love it because he was so pissed off and chasing these girls who'd rolled him and he was hung over. He was a totally yuppy, He had no interest in anything just in the Buddhas field. Suddenly reality shifted for him. Totally. And there are so many anecdote accounts of this, how people came to the Buddha and how this happened to them because his field was like that. It was a field in which everyone felt totally right. And I feel this is really important as a starting point type of thing. It's the distinction from sort of saying, now it doesn't mean that he didn't sometimes say that people, well, you got a long way to go and all this, there are certain types of teaching that are like that, but there was an underlying bottom line, underlying message that everything was already, It's like a doctor.
Speaker 1 00:30:03 If you visit a doctor and the doctor can only see your sickness, it's not likely you'll get very well. If you visit a doctor and the doctor sees your wellness without failing to see how it's being blocked by something and then removes the block, then you can fall into the wellness somehow. I mean it, it's much more direct the route. If the doctor just sees your sickness, only then pretty much you'll stay with the sickness, for example. Now, okay, then the Budha did that <inaudible>. So now going back to the story, he then after a while, the different gods came and said, Buddha, you better go teach and all this. And he said, All right, I'll teach people, it'll be a hard road. People are stubborn, but I'll go teach them. Okay? So then he did that and uh, then he thought, Who shall I teach?
Speaker 1 00:30:51 He thought, I'll teach those two sws in there, two ashrams, they'll be my first students cuz they were my teachers. But then he, he was clairvoyant, apparently TAing such enlightenment, you become on the way perfectly clairvoyant and you can know form your lives, things like that. He saw, they had both died, so that won't help. So then he said, Oh, I'll go find the five aesthetics I was living with, you know, whoever repudiated me because I start, started eating food. So, and they were over here. So he went over to see them. And uh, when he saw them, then he taught them the four noble truths. The famous for noble truths, which you have to know is sort of basic. Let's basic Budd. It's usually said to be basic Buddhism. And the first of the four noble truths is the truth of suffering. And that's the one that has given Buddhism such a bad rap in the world.
Speaker 1 00:31:36 Now, why people think the Buddhist or a bunch of depress oils is because of this truth of suffering. Oh no, A Budd said everything is suffering. Oh, I don't like that. I enjoy broms and Beethoven and jazz and whatever. I hate that people think that way. And the Westerners when they first went, Oh bud is, Asians are so pessimistic, they don't care about life. They think it's all suffering, it's just terrible. And this is sort of, but the point is the four noble truths are a set of axioms. They're not even truths really, because they're not true. The reason they're called noble truths is they're not true for an ignoble person. <laugh> for a person who is not noble, which I'll explain what he means by noble, but a person who has not achieved a certain level of enlightenment, all things are not suffering. You know, they think, you know, when I have a ice cream, I think it's not suffering. I enjoy it. I think it's happiness. But for an enlightened person, even that is kind of suffering, they're aware that it's suffering as appreciated by compared to the bliss of enlightenment in a sense. So there are four axioms, and the four axioms are that all things are all contaminated. Things are suffering. A special expression, contaminated is very important. What causes them to be suffering is that they are created by addictions. I think the best translation is really for clash, has really addictions and actions dominated by addict, driven by addictions, addictive actions.
Speaker 1 00:33:03 The third noble truth is that there is a freedom from such a suffering. Freedom is announced from such a suffering. It's a possible, it's present. And the fourth truth is there is a path to that freedom out of the suffering to that freedom, to that perfect bliss. So if you take the four as a whole, which people tended not to do is the problem. You see that the real announcement of the Buddha that he really, the real, the real announcement that he made in the world was freedom, nirvana, happiness. That's why he was happy. He was very happy guy. He's wild. And he said everything's alright. And then the flowers bloomed out of season. And I mean, it was really quite an experience to hang around with the Budha. People used to run after him. They used to have carriage races to get to see him when he would go to a town since he had the principal that when he would go visit a town and he walked everywhere, the first person to invite him to stay in their yard or wherever they, he would accept their invitation from whoever they were, man or woman, high or low ca whatever cast he would accept the first invitation.
Speaker 1 00:34:10 And so people, they would race, when they would hear Budha was coming, they would have races from like, you know, like gold rush. They'd racing after the budha, they'd come charging out of town to see the budha, and then he would go with whoever first invited him without discriminating. And uh, he announced, he said, The gates to nirvana to freedom are flung open. I have discovered the path where human beings eventually can free themselves from suffering, by discovering the causes of their suffering, by putting a stop to those causes and by contributing to the causes of their freedom, every being can become free. This is the good news type of thing. So, and that's really why Buddhism caught on. You could say, you know, it had a most amazing experience Buddhism did. It never was spread by a military crusade.
Speaker 1 00:35:04 Uh, it believed totally in nonviolence, it eroded different countries that lived it as far as their, you know, sort of defense strategy. It was in a way bad for countries politically Buddhism. It created, uh, a large, um, uh, surplus group of people who were do non-productive economically who were monks and nuns who just were, what are you doing enlightenment, Plant some rice. No, I won't plant any rice. Give me free lunch. Oh, okay, here's free lunch. If you don't gimme free lunch. I won't eat. I'm gonna say enlightenment. Thousands and thousands of monks and nuns started doing this in all these countries. So it's a wonder, it's actually amazing that it's spread so widely throughout Asia. It's partially attributed to the wealth of Asia in those ancient days. But in general, it is amazing. It's because there was such a happiness radiating from the people who discovered it, from the men who taught it, from the men and women who succeeded and taught it, and the fact that this could be achieved.
Speaker 1 00:36:02 So in a way, relatively easily was at the core of it now. And he, he worked for 45 years in his life and he taught a lot of different teachings and, uh, many even levels of teachings. And he taught sort of, uh, individual renunciation type of teachings for people to sort of drop out of society and become monks and nuns. He taught Messianic type of social gospel type of save the world and get out and rebuild society and ethics, sort of general social ethics type of teaching. He's known as the Mayana and he taught esoteric kind of magical teaching. He's known as the Arianna according to the Mayan belief. I mean, there's not unanimity in the Buddhist world about it, but I think it can be proven. He taught all of those different types of teachings. He was someone who was what they call Tibetan gang, La de Deba.
Speaker 1 00:36:47 He taught whatever was appropriate to tame whomsoever. One of his great names was what one of my favorite names, human tamer. He was supreme tamer of humans. And you might wonder, why do you need to tame humans? Aren't humans quite tame? In fact, aren't they boring and too tame? Obviously we might think that, but I don't think, no, we won't think that we had enough fights with our brothers and sisters and humans are not very tame from the Buddhist point of view. A human being who can be taken over by anger, greed, jealousy, pride, and delusion to the degree of destroying other beings and so forth fairly easily or destroying themselves is not. Tame is a kind of wild beast. A a human being who is able to control their negative attitudes and habits and emotions such as anger, hate, greed, et cetera. This is a tame human being from the Buddhist point of view.
Speaker 1 00:37:55 Okay, let's come back now that's gives us sort of a little sense of, of it how it worked. This was the same timeline you when Socrates was in, in Greece, Zoro, ster and Puria, approximately Confucius in China. Za and you knew Socrates was given hemlock for just even suggesting to people should drop out and think about the eternal verities, you know, they poisoned him, the tyrant of Athens. Confucius never had a job he had to teach in his little house. He never had open center. He could go and teach in the, the Duke of the town. King would close down into sort of open center in China because he wanted every military person in in business. He wanted women producing children and planting rice. And in no bologna about this philosophy stuff. And nowhere on new Asia did anybody tolerate these kind of same kind of people, which confusions was just like Buddha really trying the same thing.
Speaker 1 00:38:43 And so was Soaries. So was Isaiah in, uh, in the Judaic world and so was so Austria in the Iranian world, and uh, they, the kings would bust them immediately, somehow in India, Buddha was able to start this vast movement because of the greatness of India. But now I wanna come back to the core of it, though. I think that's very important. Now, what is the core? Now another way he called his core insight, or sort of the real axis upon which his universe changed, transformed itself during the time of unex excelled perfect enlightenment. He called it selflessness. Anma, his famous expression, he realized this thing called anma. Now, the word asthma means self, and it can mean soul in a way. And, uh, sometimes, and so it has been translated soullessness. And there's many people thought that the Buddhist had no soul. And this was very puzzling because the Buddhist believe in form and future life.
Speaker 1 00:39:40 And if there's no soul to be reborn, what, how can they be foreign in future life? So in fact, they do believe in a soul. And it's not correct to call this soul, but self is good. Selflessness was his insight. Now, what does that mean? Selflessness? This does, do you think it meant that what the Buddha realized was that he wasn't there at all? But this is what people do think. Actually, I think a lot of people sit around a lot of zen monasteries making a big strain and a big effort waiting for themselves to disappear. And they love it when some roshi comes and wax them on the head or whatever, and anyway, insults them because they feel guilty, because they still feel they're there. <laugh>, I'm sure that this is the case actually, because they think selfishness means I should have a big experience of disappearing. And once, if I can only disappear, I would be enlightened. And what the bud did was somehow obliterated himself and said, Hey, there's no self. I'm not here. Isn't that great? There's no problems. And then why? But then we must wonder, well, why was he walking around? Why did the Indians listen to someone who wasn't there? Why would you listen to someone who was not there? Hey, I'm not here. Okay, if you're not here, shut up. You know, don't talk.
Speaker 1 00:41:00 I mean, that's foolish, but people for, for no, for for centuries. Now, not only Westerners, but people in, uh, cultures where Buddhism existed, who were antagonists to Buddhism. You know, some Confucian priest in China, or some Bram and priest in India, or some Muslim who encountered it in Malaysia or, you know, and then Westerners, when they encountered it, they thought, that's basically what it boiled down to some sort of self oblating, oriental, you know, pessimism. And then all of what I found out was that he was like, wasn't there? And that was it. That was, that was the big deal. And I mean, and everyone else just sort of get euthanasia, sort of big euthanasia movement. But that's really insulting to the intelligence of vast numbers of human beings, that they would be so delighted and fascinated that it would produce such a magnificent art. And so many fantastic institutions and so many enlightened saints just discovering that they weren't there. Give me a break. Every psycho thinks they're not there. They go and stab people through shower curtains. They don't create Buddhist Mona.
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