Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 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 Dal Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 1 00:00:26 This is episode 24, titled the ethics of enlightened self-interest.
Speaker 0 00:00:34 Now in, in, uh, Buddhist ethics. There's a tenfold, there's something called the tenfold path of, of, uh, positive action and a tenfold path of negative action. The sort of ethical precepts are arranged like that. And usually the word Kuah in Sanskrit KU, that means path of karma, which is Kuah. And usually people translate KLA as virtuous or non-virtuous and Tibet and ING, but actually the word Kuah in Sanskrit doesn't mean virtuous. It means skillful and unskillful, which is odd. Why would we called ethical action, skillful or unskillful? Why was that? The Gawa doesn't quite get that connotation in Tibetan as like KVA, GAA and KBA don't really fit. So they picked the, some aspect of the word Kah, but not the skillful aspect. You know, like tab. He is op PA KK, which is also from Kah. You know, now what is skillful about it?
Speaker 0 00:01:44 This is so interesting. It took me years to sort of think of this. Actually, I must say, well, if you are an evolutionary being, and if your evolution does depend on the true choices that you make as a conscious person, and you're not a helpless victim of Darwin marks or Freud, but you have actually conscious choice on your path, then you can choose skillfully or unskillfully to have a good outcome, right? In other words, if you go right or left, if you are right, you get to where you're going left, you get lost in the woods, right? That's skillful or unskillful, right. Which is a completely different idea than being good or bad. Do you follow me? You know, daddy is gonna punish you, you know, in a religious or theistic ethical system, God tells you do this and you get punished. If you don't and you get rewarded, if you do so that's good or bad right or wrong right now, all right or wrong can go to either way.
Speaker 0 00:02:45 All right, now the tenfold path of skillful and I translate karma as evolutionary action because karma is not any action. It is motivated action, which is done out of conscious motivation and choice, and which therefore gives a, a reaction or a, an effect to the actor in addition to whatever they act upon. So if you act a certain way, you know, like that kind of principle you can see in Western Proverbs, like who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. So that's evolutionary action. In other words, you're a killer. You, you, you know, Arnold you're macho, you're Rambo, and then you become more like a killer, you know, stronger, more, more harsh, less sensitive to others, more ruthless, you know, like house of cards. I don't know if any of you ever saw house of cards, but the beginning first session of house of cards, the guy strangled the dog as supposedly a nice thing, cuz it's gonna be a problem to take it to the vet.
Speaker 0 00:03:46 Remember there's a dog whining. He's been hit by heart and he strangled it. It's just to let you know what the program is about. It was like Clinton in 1992 in order to deal with, um, with the right wingers who think of old Democrats as liberal whims, he rushed back to Arkansas and executed a couple of, of, of death row prisoners. Remember that? Mm-hmm <affirmative> he just went back and pulled the lever on a couple, just to kind of keep up with the Texans, you know, who are executing people, just a political thing. Clinton is kind of like, he feel, I feel you're paying yet.
Speaker 2 00:04:20 <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:04:22 So, so, so that's so that's so I call it evolutionary action in the sense that it's action that gives an effect on the actor. Now there, so there'd be three physical ones, four verbal ones and three mental ones. The path of skillful positive or negative evolutionary action, or it's like a plus or minus right now again, remember the, what is the goal of evolution from Buddha's point of view? Well, Budha is a happy camper he's he says, wow, I'm cool. I have, you know, Chu GOK, you know, sub Selma Chu, you know, I have found a, a reality, like an Elixia of imortality ZY, you know, like aha Davies actually. Aha. DVY helped him. I think <laugh> deal with the devil and which is profound, peaceful, luminous without complication or elaboration and uncreate. That's the reality I have discovered. He said, then he says, if I tell anybody about it, they won't get it.
Speaker 0 00:05:38 So I'm gonna just hang out in the forest, Urdu, Ney. He says, because if I show it to anybody, they won't get it. So I'm gonna stay at Menlo and hang out by myself in the forest. That's what he said, right? <laugh> he was four years. Yeah. Long four years. No, he was earning 49 days. He stayed 49 days. Remember he stayed there, but he was just playing coy. You know, he was waiting for God to come and ask him to go teach. Actually, if you look at the story, bra comes down and says, oh, come on, but go teach people. And then he sh the God creates a vision for Budha of a bunch of Lotus pond and then rainfall on the Lotus pond. And then some Lotus is sort of bloom and some don't. And so he said, people are like these Lotus.
Speaker 0 00:06:28 And when the rain of the Dharma falls on them, the teaching that is then some will bloom, some will bloom later and all this. So the big, they have a big thing where the God comes and makes him teach, you know, bra and bra wants him to teach cuz bras, tired of being blamed for bad things happening to people. So, so that he's Omni who think he's omnipotent you. So, uh, so, so, so that's what he says. Right? So, um, so he's happy, but why, because he had an experience of being vastly expanded, where he identified with the entire universe, with all beings and somehow he doesn't think that's a nightmare. He didn't experience as a horrible thing. Like, you know, you had a headache yesterday. If I was bud, I would've had the headache with you that would've been, oh, I don't wanna have that headache.
Speaker 0 00:07:16 I, through a headache here, have a pill or take some nutmeg or whatever, you know, <laugh> so, but Budha somehow, because he felt he saw beings as blissful. Like I said, the other day, you know, as he said, he didn't mind identifying with all beans. In fact, that's the ideal way to be. There's no problem with self and other because everybody is yourself. And then you really see their highest potential in them. And then you also are, have the energy because of the bliss and the vastness of the universe to do whatever it takes to try to help them get there as quick as possible. So it's really not a problem. Whereas he remembered when he was prince SUTA and he was supposed to be the great prince and he realized other people were annoyed about it, or he freaked out. He couldn't do anything.
Speaker 0 00:07:59 His wife wasn't really happy. His husband, father, he couldn't satisfy people. And life was very difficult when he was like a self-enclosed person shutting in himself and different from others and worried about what to do for them in a good sense. Maybe afraid of them in a bad sense, right? Like the ordinary person's way of being with when they feel different from the universe. So to him, evolution means expanding from a very isolated alienated person, individual in the real sort of physical sense of undividable cuz you're absolutely there. You're like an, a Tom Adam being and you're just always there. And then you're different from everything else. And it's all sweeping you off here and there. And you're never gonna manage, which is the truth of suffering and the cause of suffering of you being isolated and thinking you are the absolute center and separate center of everything.
Speaker 0 00:08:50 And then the rest of it, not agree with that. Right? So we wanna evolve from that to where you are vast bliss and you can even Inc everybody else in that bliss, that's ultimate peak of evolution. Let's call it as far as he saw it. He may be crazy. I don't know. I'm not about myself. So I don't know, but that's what he sense. That's what it's defined as. So if you see it like that, you know, look at a, a beetle, you know, look at a little bug on the earth, you know, or even one of those bacterias, it's like a little packed man going around, packing around, munching something in front of it and being munched by something behind it. And you know, Chila chia. We say the animal suffering is one eating another, you know? And uh, and you're just really different from other things and you eat what you can in front of you, but then you're eating from behind and there's a lot more eating than you can eat.
Speaker 0 00:09:46 You know? So that's really, your whole existence is like that. That's a very low evolution, right? Then you get much more complicated. You, you start attracting cells and bacteria that kind of get along in your stomach. They like each other. They have a party down there as long as you don't poison them too much. And then they build you up and then they come and make a brain. And then the brain you can see about others. And then you become a mammal and then a mammal, the females and the Mamal do a really weird thing, which is they invite an actual, other strange person in there. <laugh> and they're suddenly, oh, what I thought I was here? What, who are you? <laugh> you know, it's a, it is a stranger at first, right? Remember may west. I always depend on the kindness of strangers, every human being depend on the kindness of strangers because you even, you fall in love with that mom in the Bardo from Buddhist point of view, she's a stranger.
Speaker 0 00:10:39 She's kind of cute when she's having an orgasm, but normally she might be a little dangerous and then you're suddenly in her belly. And then she said, oh, who are you? You might be, you know, Hitler in there who knows <laugh> you know what I'm saying? But that's a Mamal is already has therefore, especially the female realizes that the envelope of the skin does not define self another. She has like another heart's lesson in that mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Male. There was no idea about that. Really. They just run around. So here and there, get off my toe. Let's let's get out of my belly. So male. So, so that's why males are more backward in an evolutionary sense from Buddhist real deep medical point of view, Keala was hinting at it about all the women doctors and everything. And dial Lama has hinted at you.
Speaker 0 00:11:31 Dial Lama said since we can't have a war anymore in this world that it's and women are less inclined to violence than men. I think maybe I should reincarnate as a woman. He said, and all Tibetan male Chauvin has got, oh, oh no, we can't do that. Dar is a woman. No, no, <laugh> they really Tibetans are still a little chauvinist, many of them. And then the DMA was in Rome when he said that at least one time, he said a number of times, but one famous time in Rome or in Leno, I think in Italy. So when he said it, he said, and in that case, he said, I'll be much more attractive. And he went like that. <laugh> he made a modeling gesture. <laugh> in Leno, you know, near pizza out. Yeah. So I think that's great. I gotta put that in a comic book.
Speaker 0 00:12:16 Actually. I forgot to put that scene in. So, okay. So, so finally get to be a mammal. And then among mammals finally get to be a human being. Who's very confused about what they are. Human beings. The greatness of human being is not that there are violent hunters, you know, come out of the paleon if they and beat up the Neanderthals and the whole legend of the militaristic America promoted by, you know, the biologists in MIT and places like that, to try to convince us that we are really violent automatically. And therefore the Russians will get us unless we keep paying for the Pentagon. That's all built. Baloney. The human being is a chicken. No, we are chickens in the sense of chicken shit, sorry we speak bluntly. We are, and we don't have armored skin like a rhino. We don't have a big horn.
Speaker 0 00:13:06 We don't spit poison like a snake. We don't have big fangs. Even. We couldn't go toe to toe with a tiger or any animal more or less. Tarsan occasionally manages, but that's in the movies. And we really are like soft. You know, we have soft skin and wimpy fingernails. You break them all the time, you know, and no Fang except those vampires in Hollywood. And so why, because we are social interconnecting, we are helpless infants for a decade, then helpless adolescents who think we're omnipotent for a decade. Then we are in our twenties trying to pay our student debt in this terrible. So we're very, very like that, but we're very sensitive on the other hand and we're intelligent. We can empathize with another person. We have highly developed what they call mirror neurons to empathize with others. You know, the Italians again, discover these mirror neurons.
Speaker 0 00:13:57 Did you know that? Cause they were doing some monkey experiments with labs, making monkeys, do things with electrodes on their heads. You know, the horrible things they do and to see what happens in the brain, you know, and then they had a monkey who was on the bench. You know, he was like out of the game and he was sitting on the bench, but they left electrodes on. Somehow they put new electrodes on the new monkey was jumping around. So then they noticed that the monkey who was watching the other monkey, the brain was having him do all the things the monkey was doing mirroring, but you know, mentally imitating whatever the other monkey was doing. So then from that, they discovered the empathy neurons, the mirror, neuro what they call mirror neuro or natural compassion. In other words, you know, it's really very cool Italians did that.
Speaker 0 00:14:38 You know <laugh> and to your smart being Rome, there are many Italians. What, there are many Italians. They're good. Good. So, so I think your children are practically half Italian now. Right? They are <laugh> so, uh, which is good. So my point is, and then the human, therefore, if your evolutionary goal is to expand, to be able to identify with the universe in a visceral sense of such identification, while also being able to tolerate the differences as well, in order to maneuver in helpful manner within the universe, in that multiple bodies, actually, even it's such an extravagant vision of evolution. You know, it's a thought being almost, you could say like Budha becomes, um, then, then E what is skillful evolution is whatever expands your sense in ability to identify you follow and whatever contracts your ability to identify is unskillful. Okay. Now go to the first skillful path of evolutionary action and unskillful path of evolution.
Speaker 0 00:15:40 Action. What is the first one killing or saving life? When you kill another being, what are you saying? I don't identify with you and your possession of your body, or if I'm a materialist, all you are is your body. And that's not part of my world. I don't need it unless I'm going to eat you or use your skin from my shoes or my hat or whatever, you know, use you in some way. But otherwise you're not in my world. I don't care about you. I don't identify with you. You follow me. Mm-hmm <affirmative> whereas I save your life. And then, oh, you're part of my world and your life is part of my world. And if I think you're a spiritual being your possession of your body here in relation to me is part of my world. So if I've I've identified with you, you follow me so saving more and more lives.
Speaker 0 00:16:26 I expand my sense of community communion with li other lives. It expands, I kill and I contract away from them. And the more I kill where I don't identify with you, I don't about you. I don't with you. The more I do that, the more I assume other being want to do that to me. And the more paranoid Enlo off I become and alienated did I become, do you follow me? It's very simple expansion or contraction of a sense of connection. Do you follow? Yeah, there was a deer just leaped over there. It ran up there. There are a lot of TAed deer around here and they come and they fall. What do you call it? Deka. They fall when you know, female deer gives the thing, the males don't come here much, but the females come in the spring and they have forms and they like to eat the vegan leftovers.
Speaker 0 00:17:16 <laugh> they're vegan deer anyway. Okay. Do you get it? Isn't it simple? So, so that's, that's what it is. And then second one is taking what is not given to you versus giving gifts, being detached is the first thing about property and then giving gifts to others. What, especially giving something you like that you care about, which therefore you have to like do a little process of prying your possessiveness, open to give something you care about <laugh> so, so therefore that's again, expanding to connect to the receiver of what you give and, uh, or clutching in and grabbing it more. You see, then the third one is using sexuality, harmfully or positively. So what is skillful sexuality? I mean, being a good lover might be skillful sexuality actually. But the main thing is you're not doing something harmful and often in many societies that's just trade relates to adultery.
Speaker 0 00:18:19 But the only reason that it's made to be adultery is that because, you know, they're in, in, uh, monogamous societies, then that causes violence and conflict and people kill each other and have passion crimes. And then do you know what I mean? Then the husband comes and finds the wife in bed and kills. Other wife comes, finds the husband in bed and then they die or they divorce or, you know, it's horrible thing. And so that's unskillful and it breaks, uh, and then children suffer and, and or sometimes it sometimes not, but it's, it's a, it's a it's. So there's a circumstantial thing about it. Um, you know, people have different ideas and there are different cultures. Tibet was unusual and unique actually in that it was one of the few poly Andras cultures in the world. There's a little bit polygamous too, but, but they, they, they felt that every woman should have her own house and hearth.
Speaker 0 00:19:10 So there shouldn't be two wives in one house usually, but some Kuda or merchant who had a household in somewhere in the Chinese border and somewhere in the Indian border or in central Tibet and who was months here, and months here, they could have two families if they were wealthy enough, but then some woman in, and because the brothers didn't wanna split up some very scarce land in a river valley, some woman could marry two brothers or three brothers or an uncle and a nephew and things like that. And so you have the males getting along in one house with one woman. And I don't know, I don't know about the rotation systems. I don't really know how they work <laugh> but anyway, they manage that without the males killing each other, which is, um, interesting social event, you know? And, uh, there are few, very few societies that where that can happen on the planet as far as anthropologists go, but Tibet was one of them.
Speaker 0 00:20:00 And then of course you're monastic either male or female in Tibet is supposed to be, is celibate if they are, or unless they're fake. And most of them were. And that was actually interesting population control device, in fact, and therefore Tibet never became overpopulated, which it can't be because of the fragile nature of its ecology. And, um, but, and which in general, therefore, the monasticism is a very valuable social institution, surprisingly for Protestants don't think so, but actually it is, but nevermind that we won't get into that. So, but my point is, so the sexuality one is really important as one of, as the third physical one about expansion and contraction, skillful and unskillful, because of course, in, in sexuality of mammals, uh, you know, the it's a time when the boundary of self and other normally does melt, at least, hopefully for people who can manage, you know, they kind of, you know, they give up their sense of self.
Speaker 0 00:20:59 They have a transcended moment orgasm, even though it is not as powerful as YOIC orgasm, orga, heart orgasm, or brain orgasm or throat orgasm, but still genitally or organized orgasm as Freud would call it is still quite powerful. The central channel, the energies go into toward the tip of the central channel at the base of the central channel in, in genitally organized orgasm and human beings kind of melt. And there is a sense in lovers of identifying with the other. So it's an expansion of self in a natural biological manner. And it, of course it leads to, in the case of human MD, that expansion of the self that happens to the female where somebody else, some stranger comes in the door and hangs out for 10 months, it has to be taken care of for 20, 30 years. <laugh>, it's quite a, quite a thing of being melting down, you know?
Speaker 0 00:21:51 So, so to use that occasion for some person where some situation where the other is being just used and being harmed, and there's no sensitivity to the needs or the reality of the other is therefore very unskillful it's abusing one of the central moments that humans build on to discover a larger sense of community and a sense of thing, and kind of controlling it in a manipulative and other, uh, you know, and self-centered selfish way if you follow me. So therefore it's highly unskillful and, uh, you can see lower animals. For example, people sometimes romanticize lower animals, um, that lower that human in the sense, just in sense of sensitivity, they are totally soul Barry. This is the difference, you know, and the theistic, uh, Western Abrahamic tree traditions, they have this idea that animals don't have soul. They have no Budha nature. They have no body Chita.
Speaker 0 00:22:47 They have no Chita period. You know, they're just robots. So therefore you can eat them and use them. They're just like machines, but the Buddhist, while they can be not so great with animals and they consider them less capable than humans, but they, they do know they soul, all animals were humans. Remember of the past is infinite in the Buddhist evolutionary theory. So every animal has been human and then they deteriorated to that state where they they're more isolated in their sense of being. And, you know, for example, then you're at this boundary of self another, how do, where does language come from? And the ability to communicate, you don't have language. I used to jokingly say, the reason humans have language is that when you don't eat someone, the minute you meet them, you have you chat first. <laugh>, you know, and animal just clump, chomp, you know, or chomped on.
Speaker 0 00:23:42 And there's no time to chat, but the human is like hiding in a cave from one of those predators or something. And then they're having to listen to their wives. You know, that Neal guys, like I think the end, the anal disappeared in New York. Cause they didn't listen to their wives <laugh> they were like watching Rambo movies. And then the other ones were like more female directed. So they're more skillful, the homo, whatever we call ourselves, you know? So the, the, the modern one. So, um, so then you come to speech, which is this amazing thing where we connect our minds by imagining the other person means something that we relate to through a language, although it's never exact. And you know, each person has their own individual way of understanding things. And the communication is imperfect, but still it's this marvelous group, mind to language, which goes through space and time.
Speaker 0 00:24:33 Like you can read what Buddha said as remembered and transmitted, of course, to many things as text critical scholars will tell you, but nevertheless, you can read, you can, you can therefore share Buddha's mind through Sutra, you know, and he, but he's not talking to you directly. You think he's talking to some live person in front of him, but still you get some value from that. And, you know, we can read books of Newton if we're a scientists, you know, and, and so speech CR connects human beings in a group mind, uh, for over time and space in a most amazing way, and really does, is based on the transcendence of the self, other difference, imperfect all imperfect as it may be. Therefore they do say in spite of what people think about mystics, that there's a famous verse of all the deeds of a Buddha, enlightened being the deed of speech is the most important.
Speaker 0 00:25:23 It is Supreme. Therefore the wise person always praises Buddhas for their speech. You know, there's a, and I forgot the, my memory is terrible. Okay. So then, so, so those three physical are therefore total secular ethics from the scientific view of evolution naturally, meaning that what you do in this life will affect your coming life. The way you are. There's a Tibetan proverb, either forget the Tibetan language for it, but there's VE Bramer. Who says, if you want to know your previous life, you don't need to go to a, to a shaman or a soothsayer. Look at your body in this life. It is the register of your skillful or unskillful actions in previous lives. And therefore being a human, you can just hooray. I'm a human. I have a fantastic set of previous lives to have become this incredibly complex entity and have this instrument of a human embodiment.
Speaker 0 00:26:20 And the mind that would want such an embodiment is, you know, is amazing achievement evolutionarily because that animal, you know, the animal who just jumps on food in front of it, you know, it has to have it, uh, a sort of empathetic sense. It's like the, the lion lioness lion are too lazy to hunt, but the lioness who sees the zebras going by, and then seeing the pregnant zebra remembers being pregnant subliminally of course, and kind of restrains jumping on that one, even though that one would be more juicy and the embryo, oh, that could be really no tough. You know, everything would be delicious about that. That'd be like eating like veal, you know, like, like uncured, whatever. So don't, don't gimme this crap that those anthropologists do like, or those zoologists that, oh, they're waiting for the hurt to increase so they can eat more.
Speaker 0 00:27:16 That's PS. She has a subliminal thing. Well, okay, I'll eat the stringy old creepy one. So then that, because that one's a mother, like I am occasionally, so there's a tiny flicker of empathy and UN self-centeredness of just following my appetite. Do you follow me? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And from that tiny thing over many lives, it can evolve toward being a human being a less violent, less predatory being. And how difficult is that many lions will not have that they'll eat whatever it is. But the one that said, oh, you know, I remember I just had like five puppies or whatever they have, you know, Cubs, five Cubs, you know, and that one is having Cubs. You know, that's zebra doesn't think verbally it's instinctual, but that's an instinct for opening for going toward more identifying with other, you follow me. Mm-hmm <affirmative> if that's the E if that's what evolution is, you see with the mind jumping from embodiment to embodiment and picking embodiments that fit the attitude of the mind, do you follow me?
Speaker 0 00:28:20 Mm-hmm <affirmative> being and skillful, expanding that attitude toward ever greater pleasure, ever greater happiness of the more sensitive, more interconnected, more social being like the human being. You follow me, mm-hmm <affirmative> and final reaching its coma, climax, and being a Buddha where you really feel the bliss of everything you follow me. It's an amazing vision of evolution. So then speech telling the truth versus lying. If you tell the truth, you're just being a transparent to the other that you're speaking to. This is reality. As I understand it, I mean, you may not, it not be correct what you're saying, but as far as your concern, it's the truth. So you're just being an open door for others to learn more about reality. You lie, you're creating a false reality and en trapping that person that you lied in a false reality and actually en trapping yourself in it, where you have to, you know, what pathological liar was, has to remember which ly I told the who and what is very creates like a whole bunch of confusion in a Liar's mind.
Speaker 0 00:29:19 Whereas truth is just being more open to reality. And reality of course, is that the most natural way of being is to be connected to everything. Because when you open to everything, you find that as deep as nature is clear light of the void, which is bliss actually. So, so they're telling the truth versus lying, right? And then the second one is, um, uh, bearing, you know, creating conflict between others, with speech, you know, how people will sometimes, oh, you know, so, and so you think he's your friend, but actually that person doesn't like you and they, so me that you are like, eh, and then, oh, so then you won't be friends anymore. But, but that means I'm your good friend, you know, people do that. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's slandering, you know? Yeah. And so that's again, creating conflict among others. The opposite is, you know, so, and so maybe they did a little bad thing to you, but, you know, they're kind of nice.
Speaker 0 00:30:14 And they told me they liked you and you you're very cute here. They liked your shoes that you wore yesterday. <laugh> whatever. And then making them friends with each other. So expanding, reconciling, speaking peacefully, or speaking, creating conflict, right. And again, that's all in the line of expanding your communion with others, your community, with others, or contracting it, lying and sparing for slandering, creating conflict without between others, with the idea that that's aggrandizing yourself. And then third one is speaking harshly using speech abusively to wound people and out of anger, et cetera, or domineering and speaking harshly versus speaking sweetly. So that's, again, when you speak sweetly, other people like you singing a song, you'll become a rockstar. You speak sweetly enough. Eventually you'll sing like Bob Dylan, people will like, you know, you can put out a record <laugh> and, uh, and, and then, so that's the third one.
Speaker 0 00:31:09 And the fourth one is speaking, meaninglessly babbling, senselessly versus speaking, meaningfully and educationally and elevating others, expanding their understanding, or just babbling when you don't know what you're talking about. And you know, that's like the Western one is Blay, right? They are the main things to talk about God or not talk about God. So Blaser me is the big one, but in the Buddhist one, it isn't a matter of blessing. It's a matter of being meaningful and, and helpful in speaking, or just wasting the privilege of being listened to by another human being another person and thereby in a sense, they're opening their mind to your thought and then just leading them off in some useless way, into some complete, very relevant thing. Do you follow me? So that's, those are four skillful and unskillful things of speech. And then there's three of mine. And the first of the mind, they rarely parallel the three of the body in a way, but they're mental.
Speaker 0 00:32:07 And the three of the mind are being greedy about wanting other people's stuff and want, you know, being greedy period or being detached and open about stuff. You know, so that's like this taking what is not given versus stealing, you know, taking versus not versus giving. You know, that's a generosity thing, but in the mind, then there's being, uh, angry and hateful and malicious and thinking of scheming, how to harm someone versus being loving. Uh, there's a, waystation from hatred to love, which is tolerance being, you know, hatred then being not UN hating and tolerant of whatever annoys you, and then finally loving even the people that annoy you. So that that's a second one. And third one is the real is being realistic in your view of reality, or being open to reality, openminded versus being unrealistic and clinging to stupid ideas like that.
Speaker 0 00:33:03 You are nothing or that anybody else is nothing, you know, or, you know, where's the most stupid one, but there are a lot of other stupid ideas, various kinds of absolute as we call it in making isn't that absolute thing that you become a fanatic about. And, uh, they're unrealistic unscientific, unpractical, insensible ideas that we get stuck on. And so those are the three mental ones. So mentally open, mentally loving, mentally generous versus mentally close, mentally hating and mentally greedy, right. Which is your three poisons again, right? And they fit with the physical action. And then this is the horrible thing about Buddhist, evolutionary, Buddhist, evolutionary biological theory. And this is why Buddhist wanna meditate is why Buddhi consider psychology, the inner science to be the queen of, of sciences. Because those mental things are the most evolutionarily, powerful, more even than physical. That is to say, if your mind is shut down in some sort of fanatical way and filled with violent hatred and filled with greed, then that will send you in a bad future life in a bad direction.
Speaker 0 00:34:22 Cuz you want an embodiment that will embody violence like a Cobra. You know, you might look nice to a Cobra egg, a Mrs. Cobra might look really cute to you. <laugh> you could just go, you know, and then no one will bother you or, or a crocodile or something with a big, big arm around you. You know? So you want to be em, embodied that violence will want to embody itself in a mechanism and biological mechanism that will suit violence. Greed. You'll be some like Jabba the hut. <laugh> you wanna be like Jabba the hut or somebody who's been eating big Mac all their life or drink Coca-Cola, you know, or if you're greed, you know, and if you're shut down, then I don't know what you become. You become like, I don't know. I never mind, I won't break names. You've become a Republican.
Speaker 0 00:35:11 No, <laugh> all Republicans are magnificent human beings actually. And they, and they, therefore they're shutting down, carrying their gun, doing all this stuff. Being racist is all really wasting that human potential that they have to be completely yogis and enlightened. You really? We should go grab boner. I, I insist on calling him boner <laugh> John boner and drag him to the yoga center. Really get him to like stretch. Okay. Stretch downward dog. How about getting the house of representatives into doing downward dog? All of them. Wouldn't that be great? That would be good. They would immediately start funding all kind of yoga centers. That really great. Anyway. Okay. So the point is therefore given, and also by the way, former and future life in case anybody doesn't know, read the near death experience. Literature read the Ian Stevenson literature from the university of Virginia Institute where he studied over 40 years, 50 years, the children remembering previous lives and documented cases, thousands of them, the archive there, but there's 10, 15 books about them picking out outstanding cases, but there's archives of thousands of them.
Speaker 0 00:36:40 He has a successor named Miller who calls has a book called life after life. About the memories of children who is running that Institute Institute was founded by a donation of the Chester, Carl and the founder, the inventor of Xerox and the founder of the Xerox company years and years ago in the fifties, I think, or sixties. And there's huge evidence then read the Buddhist Jataka literature. The, the literature where Buddha himself told at least 500, probably thousands of stories of his own memories of previous lives, how he interacted with various people that he interacts with in the life that we know of as the life of Buddha. And he illustrates things that happened to them by what happened in previous lives, read the early books. At least of Brian Weiss called many lives, many masters about the, who was a Yale psychiatrist who then had a, who then was in Miami central hospital, psychiatry, head of division or something, and had a patient who only was able to overcome her problems by remembering interactions with family members in previous lives, through hypnosis se sessions.
Speaker 0 00:37:47 And then he became convinced of that. And then more and more, he does that. His name is Brian Weiss. He's become a kind of pop guy. Now some of his later ones are really a little bit out there, but, but they're very good. The, the literature of Michael Newton called journey of souls or destiny of souls, who talks about the many patients that told him about not only previous lives that they had, but also previous Bardo experiences that they had amazing two books. He wrote. He's retired now for thousands of interviews with patients where they, where he prodded them to tell him, well, when you died out of that life, into this life, what happened in between? And then he pulls together a kind of composite picture. It's a little different from our Bardot, but interesting actually how he, he goes to this. Um, but nevermind, I won't, I won't go to detail, but we read those things because you not only need to theoretically become critical of the idea that any continuum of energy, which is yours consciousness at its course and subtle levels would become nothing.
Speaker 0 00:38:49 That's an incoherent unscientific statement that any continuum can be nothing or that any continuum can come from. Nothing is a similarly irrational and incoherent statement because nothing is not a place. Therefore it is not a source and it's not a destination. And in fact, it doesn't relate to anything else because it's nothing it's not, there it's even their term, nothing doesn't refer to anything. There's no reference of the word. It's just anion okay. Nothing. So in addition to that, and then thinking that, okay, there's probably a continuum and then it's probably con beginningless and probably endless. So then this is the really big shift. This is a bigger shift it's related to the great <inaudible> shift, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. He's a friend of mine that his being the power of now, you know, being in the moment and not anticipating everything you're worried about in the future and not constantly broody over things you remember in the past, you know, wonderful yoga that he teaches.
Speaker 0 00:39:56 But as I pointed out to him and I, I don't know if he's written anything to a, he agreed with me. If a person is brainwashed by materialism and think that there deepest state is nothingness, the be here now means sort of temporarily be in nothingness. So it feels like a little release, but it's a false palliative. It's like a false tranquilizer because you're not in nothingness. And even when you're not thinking about pastor future, future, it's gonna happen. It's gonna come after you past is influencing you. So in a way there's a be here now where the now is an infinity and it contains all the seeds of your future, your, your mental now, and therefore you are gonna be very clear that your now is gonna be joy, happiness, bliss, counting its blessings. You, you know, the tiniest baby step increment of improving of the now, like, you know that now having a nice flower rather than a creepy one becomes infinitely important.
Speaker 0 00:41:01 There's a wonderful verse that Samma Raja Sutra, the king of Soma Sutra that says, who understands cause and effect evolutionary cause and effect will understand emptiness or voidness because, and if you understand causality really deeply, you will understand that cause and effect are empty of any absolute cause hood and the effect of any absolute effect hood or they couldn't didn't relate to each other. Relational means everything. It fits in everything else. And it always changes. So if you really analyze causality, you get rid of this tendency. We have to what technically it's called hypothesizing, where you insist that for this to be a cup, there has to be a real cupness in it. Like Plato said, you know, it has to have an essential cup hood rather than it's just a relational arrangement temporarily of very changeable elements that holds water temporarily. Right? But we tend to ratify things into having absolute essences and especially because we ratify ourself as being an absolute thing.
Speaker 0 00:42:15 And so when we understand real causality, we understand emptiness, but then this is the beautiful kicker understanding emptiness doesn't mean you just go off and stare at the space or become a mystic and leave the world and stop worrying about your aunt or your child or your relative or your problem. It means that you become minutely concerned with every tiny detail when you really understand emptiness, that's strange kicker that's non-dualism because why, you know, like our favorite example, Shante Davis has a great verse. He says forever in my life. If someone comes to ask me where's the bathroom, right? Or he says, where's something, I don't know the bathroom, but I was just thinking, look that I will never point with one finger and say, there's the bathroom. I'll never do that. Because when I do that, it's like, I'm bossing that person. I'm asserting.
Speaker 0 00:43:19 I know you don't, I'm kind of being authoritarian about it, you know? And, and, and it's like, it is cutting off my relationship to that person. What I will do is I will take my whole hand all the fingers. And I will like, like when you invite an honored guest, please come in and sit down or something with my hand, I will say, there's the bathroom. And I will think someday now I'm inviting them to the bathroom someday. I will invite them to bud hood, to BLIS, void, invisible, to Nirvana, to freedom. I will someday the same being, I will meet them. Sometimes some might, I will invite them to bud hood. That's the kind of that's that's because he understood causality from that. He understood emptiness that every, that there's no fixed thing in anything it's all constantly moving. And then from that, he understood the importance of the difference in relating to a total stranger of sort of bossing them and staying apart from them.
Speaker 0 00:44:17 Like, yeah, I know you don't know where you are. Yeah. You know, there sort of thing versus you're my guest go, go to the bathroom. You're my, you're my honored guest. You are part of a community and I invite you to go there. Isn't that? It's so beautiful. Isn't it very great. So nice, amazing. It's just total realism. It's not some religious. You have to do that because God said so or Buddha said, so it's because the more you connect to others and the more skillfully and the more helpfully and the more kindly and lovingly, the better you are evolving toward being, and the more you will be happy and the more, and they will also be more happy, but you will be more happy you follow me. So, so, so therefore, when, when Thomas Nagle, the great Thomas Nael NYU philosopher calls for a theory of biological evolution, that of course accounts for genetic things genomes not only of the person, but also of the, the bio, all the bacteria, the, the millions of billions of beings that are inside us.
Speaker 0 00:45:28 But, uh, so that's fine. Keep that up, keep that up. That's the mother's genes and the father's genes, the chromosome and blah, blah, the whole thing. That's all great. But there must be a way for the mind for that third gene, which is the spiritual gene, the mental gene, the soul gene of the person. And it's so helpful, like a parent, you know, doesn't feel they made this baby. And therefore it's like my product. Therefore, the father, you have to go and be a lawyer, cuz I'm a lawyer or the mother, you have to be an actress. Cause I'm an actress. Or you know, the way people behave, you know, you have to go work in the factory. In some other country, you have to be a child. Laborer. You have to be sold off here. Cuz you're my product. They can't do that. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:46:14 They provided the host body. But that being brought in its own thing from the past. And similarly, when the adolescents stands up and says, this is my life, I didn't ask to be born in this family. That's what they say in Fairfax. Yes. I'm gonna do what I want. And you say, yes, you did listen. We were just making love one night and you just showed up and you crowded in there, man. But now it's all right. We set you. We love you. We like you. You're part of you're love child. But you know, you asked to deal with us, so deal with us. But of course you're yourself. So each sign has a little something to say <laugh> it is very cool. I like you very much. Now that means, you know, as Donald DOMA said, if somebody discovers, Hey, nothing is very productive.
Speaker 0 00:47:03 There's a lot of Americans come out of nothing. They're all gonna be nothing later. Send, dial Lama telegram. If you have the proof fine, no problem. But meanwhile, this is a really, this already is a great description of biology that actually includes, you know, another thing about modern philosophers, even the great Stein, even the later Stein who was one of my absolute favorites, philosophical investigations, et cetera. He thinks that he thought that ethics is just a personal choice, whatever you want. You know, there's no reason to do anything ethical or unethical except what you gonna get away with or not get away with. In other words, and he, science thinks that's, you know, a naturalistic ethics that there's sort of a, they think that's creeping back toward theism and nature. God is telling you, so you have to do it because God knows what nature is cetera.
Speaker 0 00:47:51 So they, they, they, they wanna say that can't be scientific ethics. It's just choice in a culture and it's not relevant. Whereas if there is a reason of enlightened self-interest for the evolving being to act altruistically, for example, that's fine. You know, there's a big thing in psychology, big debate of some psychologists saying there is no altruism at all because everybody who does something, alistic they have like a little reward in it for themselves. You know, they feel better or whatever it is. So therefore there's no altruism that they have a big, you know, that's their big argument, you know? And then the other one say, oh yes, there is because they didn't think about themselves kind thing. But that's so stupid. You know, point is, you know, as the dollar says, if you're gonna be selfish successfully, meaning get happy. Cuz that's what you want.
Speaker 0 00:48:40 Be a wise selfish. It makes the pressure like that. Um, grammatically says be a wise selfish person, meaning be a skillful selfish person. Skillful selfish person is unselfish because that makes them happier. And it makes others happier. Others like them are nicer to them. They're gonna have a better life. People will come to their funeral and they'll like them, right? If they go around being super selfish, nobody will like them and they'll have a miserable life. So it, it may, it's a right. That is enlightened self-interest and evolutionary. Self-interest in making an internalizing ethical behavior and doing it because of course it benefits another person. It's what they call other the ethicists, which is a field in, in religious studies. It's other regarding action. Yes. And it helps others rather than harms them. But it also helps you evolutionarily. So you have a motive to do it, a double motive and uh, it makes, gives a reason to be ethical. In other words, based on science.
