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 Dalai Lama's cultural center in America. All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 329, the first turning of the Wheel of Dharma.
Speaker 4 00:01:20 Greetings, how are you all today? Today is the <inaudible> in Tibetan, which means the fourth date of the sixth, uh, literally. But it is fourth day of the sixth month lunar month. And that is the day in the Tibetan calendar when they celebrate the first turning of the wheel of Dharma, which a Buddha did when he came to Sarna. Uh, outside of RNAi, I don't know if it was called sa or not at that time. Maybe it was called Rishi Patna, which means the place where all the sages fell <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:02:07 But that was referred to some incident before him. They didn't come falling rainy down on him. He was one of the Rishi himself. But anyway, that's what it's called. Rishi Ana in the deer grove, Ana, the deer grove, uh, grove of deer. And you can, which you can still go there and see the stupa that is built on that site. And so the Tibetan calendar, I don't think it's in any other Buddhist country on that particular day. I don't know for sure, actually. Uh, I don't know for sure. Actually, sorry about my hair. It's a little unruly today. So, um, it's a wonderful day. And what does it mean to turn the wheel of the Dharma? So like, in a way that's a wheel behind me, the mandala of the Cala Chakra, the wheel of thyme. But a mandala itself is within a wheel in a way, a circle, a sphere.
Speaker 4 00:03:08 And, um, the wheel of, um, royalty in ancient India was the chariot wheel of a king. So it became a symbol of the power of military power of a king. And, uh, in the kind of, um, military based culture of that time, of the VAs culture coming from the conquest, gradual conquest and the domination of the, of the harapan civilization by the, uh, Indo Ian people, as they were called, the sort of, uh, lighter skinned whitey, aggressive whitey coming from the, coming from the, uh, central Asia. They were nomads. So that's what made them tougher, was that they were nomads. Nomads always tend to be tougher than sedentary people because they have a harder life and they have to herd animals, and they push, have to push them around and occasionally slaughter them because the animals harvest the protein from the grasses, which the human stomach cannot ha, cannot, uh, absorb properly.
Speaker 4 00:04:22 And, uh, then in the form of meat they eat it. But, uh, they're very careful with their animals. They're not horrible like modern feed, feed lots, treating them like nothing. They're cause they know that their animals are their life source. Uh, the, you know, the Tibetan with their yaks, you know, the Vedic inan people with their cattle and their herds. And uh, but in India, which was a very rich agricultural place, uh, they didn't really noize that much. And, um, although the Indians were not so paranoid about nomads like the Chinese were, that they built a huge wall to keep the nomads away. They didn't do that. And they were like local small herds, but they also didn't, uh, it wasn't, uh, economically viable to eat meat. They didn't need animals to harvest grass cuz they could grow crops. And it was incredibly wealthy. The Indian subcontinent, its agricultural land because the rivers coming from Himalayas are so rich in, in a mineral that they replenish the harvesting area very beautifully every year.
Speaker 4 00:05:36 And so for that reason, uh, it was not necessary to, uh, to, uh, you know, to have to have animals in between you and the solar energy in plants. Okay, I'm not excusing. And the Buddhist certainly, and the Janes, even more than the Buddhist, were very intense about the life of plants and were not into wanting, I mean, life of animals and didn't wanna kill animals for food. And they did it as a whole. They did it even without vegan theory of veganism. <laugh>, they did milk cows. They were, they, they, they used, uh, milk products, cheese and milk. And the cow was like holy therefore considered holy for milking. Uh, and they plowed, but they didn't herd just plain herd animals to graze so much. They let them graze to live, but, but they didn't, uh, didn't rely on meat. So therefore, by the third century of the common era, the emperor Ashoka under the inspiration of Jainism and Buddhism was, uh, publishing, uh, pamphlets in India saying, uh, better not eat meat. And we're trying not to eat it in the palace. That's un it's unkind to kill animals and better not. So, although that was not the case with the Vedic, uh, documents, they weren't caring about that and they did sacrifice in their rituals. But, um, in the, um, post enlightenment revolution, mid first millennium axial age India, they generally automatically went toward vegetarianism, which they still maintain great to a greater extent today, wonderfully for the planet, I think, and for their own environment.
Speaker 4 00:07:30 So what is the, what is the, so the turning of the wheel and the sim taking the symbol of the wheel for an enlightened being is a way, it's making a statement that the spiritual, the scientific, uh, knowing of reality, the knower of reality, the realistic person who is truly realistic because of knowing truly what is reality? What is the meaning of human life? What is the purpose of human life? What is the privilege of being a human if you have become one? And what is the opportunity as a human of learning to become a superhuman, which is an enlightened being, a hi BofA or Buddha. What is the opportunity? What that gonna be like for you? And for those who in your circle of, of connection, it will be wonderful actually is the, is the, is the discovery of Buddhist science. Reality itself is wonderful.
Speaker 4 00:08:31 Uh, uh, reality conjuress up planets like this where living beings can enjoy life and be kind to each other and be loving. And reality is that in a way it is that love, which means it is that abundance of energy. It's such an abundance of inexhaustible energy, reality that it can sustain life indefinitely. And a being who understands the whole process of life, which includes death and their and rebirth and renewing. Ch includes the knowledge of change and death and rebirth and renewing. And that life is bigger than any particular form of life. You know, even each individual's life can become infinite. It is already connected to the infinite in, in a sense, in a, in a real sense. And it can become consciously so and once consciously. So it has aligned with love in the form of an infinite energy that can therefore give whatever is needed to infinite beings.
Speaker 4 00:09:36 That's the nature of reality. As that's what Buddha discovered as the nature of reality. He did not discover a safety zone that you can escape to and leave the arena of life. That's a misunderstanding of the Buddha's discovery. Actually, he allowed that misunderstanding, of course, even in his own school, uh, by teaching a dualistic version that there's nirvana elsewhere from Samsara, which is still alive today. And many Buddhas still embrace that because some beings, it's too much for them and can lead to misunderstanding to be told or to try to imagine, or it goes beyond their imagination. Ability to think of themselves in the difficulties and adversities and vicissitudes of living includes, includes dying, includes being sick, includes banging into things and having them bang into you and uh, and people and having them bother you includes all those things. But how could that be a zone of infinite love?
Speaker 4 00:10:41 How on earth could that be possible? And so that's beyond their imagination. And if they wrongly interpreted such an assurance, they might decide that they can be nasty or do anything they want because it won't matter cuz it's all love <laugh>, even they destroy you. That's love though. They torture you, that's love. And they can come up with crazy ideas cuz human beings are very clever. So what is the turning of the wheel of dharma? So, so the wheel of Dharma therefore rules life. It is, it is that which brings beings to deeper awareness of life, of what their life really is and thereby enables them to enjoy it in a deepest sense to the fullest. And once they do, or even as they advance toward that, they automatically become a source of enjoyment, a source of goodness, a source of love to others. And, uh, and therefore they create like a node of ever expanding happiness around themselves, which the human being has the opportunity to do better than other animals.
Speaker 4 00:11:56 Actually, the other animals cannot really embrace, mostly except within their own little family and, uh, how big. And they can, and their family can't ever be that big because of the, of the, of their lack of imagination. Actually you could say they don't have the brain yet to have developed such an imagination. How come we have it? Because of our past life, generosity, ethicality tolerance, creativity, ability to concentrate and ability to open ourselves to be more aware of a larger reality and be free and to enjoy freedom. So the turning of the wheel of Dharma, where the Buddha taught the four, uh, noble truths as the aria, Satya as they're called, the word aria, had come from the racial self-identification of the dominant people in India at that time who had come from nomadic Central Asia about over several thousand years. They migrated gradually. And they, and some of them who were smart <laugh>, prevailed upon the beings who were doing agriculture in the river valleys down toward the bottom of Eurasia like the Persians, you know, the people at the Tigris Euphrates, the what are now the Iraqi, the Iranians and the Iraqis now.
Speaker 4 00:13:28 Uh, but then they were different other being hit, you know, other people and Egypt and uh, India was the big prize. They went toward the Yellow River in China also. Yangzi was too jungley probably for them, for their chariots, but they could go down the Yellow River. And uh, India was the Indus Ganges, but especially the Indus Valley first. That was their big, uh, alluvium where they could, a lot of people could be supported. A lot of agriculture could happen. So the area was a racial term originally, but by the time of Buddha, since they'd been there for several thousand years by then, uh, it became a, a class term, meaning the noble class, the higher class, the twice born class you could say they are, yes. And uh, it was no longer a racial term there. And so when Buddha said, this is the aria, Satya, he took the word just like they took, he took the wheel, uh, which was symbol of royal authority based on violence, the wheel of the chariot.
Speaker 4 00:14:38 He took that wheel of the discus wheel, which was a weapon like a, a Frisbee with a sharp edge on it, wheel weapon, which you flung at your enemy to cut their head off like a discus, you know, uh, and um, so there, that's a wheel weapon. And uh, the chariot wheel was the chariot was the big wheel that enabled them to overwhelm the, um, sedentary people and, uh, as a, like a tank, you know? And they had horses, they lived with them. And um, so, uh, just like that is the case. So he took the word aria, which meant higher class person noble with those all its associations of something positive in a social caste system, uh, just in a worldly way. Uh, and he associated with the higher consciousness person, aria, meaning there through various etymologies and so on, one who has no enemy.
Speaker 4 00:15:43 And therefore one has realized that the other and the self are not rigidly separated and had had that first level of enlightenment where you realize you fully empathize with others and therefore you become automatically friendly to them and more loving to them. And that he called that aria. So he shifted What was noble was not by where you were born, what cast you were born in, but what made you noble was your openness toward others and your sensitivity of how they feel, and therefore your reluctance and restraining of yourself and harming them or bothering them, and instead being good to them and kind to them and loving to them, okay? Because it's a process of developing an openness of consciousness, an emptiness, let's say, and an openness and a freedom of consciousness, right? The famous, what you sometimes call selflessness of the self, selflessness of the self is an openness of the self, an awareness of its changeability, of its relativity and, and being freeing oneself of the, of the rigidity of feeling that one had an absolute self.
Speaker 4 00:16:57 That's, and therefore it was a problem about how do you relate to anybody else or anything else. So the cure to that is the realization of the selfless self, the cure to the absolute self, to the intrinsic self. Okay? So that was the wheel of, and that leads you to be loving and compassionate and empathy does right and openness. So that was his for Aria, Satya Noble truths. And so, um, we have called them, but when we think of them as noble, no, I'm, I'm coming to him now, my own book was because I feel sad about my book, uh, because it was published during Covid. I never did a book tour and not many people have read it, in my opinion, not enough people. And that is this book, this is the Wisdom is bliss book, is it showing left, right, reversed, backwards, that's it. And there I renamed the four noble truths. Of course I'm not changing it. There's nothing wrong with the four noble truth. It's correct translation, but I'm renaming it for our times because we think of noble people in a class sense as snobs as some sort of ho to people, what the Germans call Hne, high nosed people, you know, nose in the air, we English, have a expression their nose up in the air, you know, <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:18:31 And uh, so that doesn't really have that much of a positive connotation. It's still a little bit, but not enough. And, um, what we like are friend friendly people are pleasant people, nice people, right? So these are the four friendly, i I call 'em friendly. And then truth, uh, the western translators of Buddhism who were insisting it was just a religion for some backward people, they needed truth in religion because religion is just a belief they thought. And because that's what, uh, when you believe something that isn't strictly rational, you can only believe it cuz you can't verify that belief. Uh, like an absolute God created the universe rather than a relative one is working on it along with all the other relative beings who live in it. We all working together on it, which more reasonable or relative gods are reasonable but not absolute ones.
Speaker 4 00:19:27 So point is belief is not the main thing. So what do we, what do we have a thing that we can believe in, but it's not so sort of highfaluting facts, you know? And these are four facts. So they're four friendly facts. And even when we know these facts and when we recognize them, we will be happy. So I even call them fun facts <laugh>. So I call 'em the four fun facts, the four friendly fun facts of, and I think that's what people should understand about Buddhism. I really do. I think people should understand that people should have fun. That life had to be fun. They should ever vote for somebody who doesn't seem like fun. I saw somebody yesterday at a hearing in Congress who, who's pretending to run for office, who's like tortured obviously is. He looks like this, he looks so unhappy.
Speaker 4 00:20:33 Just like the, the other guy who used to pretend to be, he had a lot of Ians, he was an actor, right? In a in business show, the other guy. But now he looks very angry all the time. So people should take the clue, don't owe anybody who's angry and who's looks unhappy and is miserable, has a flowering, scouring expression cuz that's the way they're gonna behave. And don't give them power over you. Don't give your precious royal jewel of in, in Thomas Payne's wonderful symbol, don't give your precious fragment, shard of the royal crown to anybody who looks mad. <laugh>, who's mad at you, who mad at, at everybody else because they'll, they'll treat you badly. So don't do it. Please use your common sense. Don't let them fool you with slogans and and fake news. Please. You know, they should be semi cheery. They could be serious, but in a way where they have a happy tone about it and they're kind of have, they have a sense of humor.
Speaker 4 00:21:52 You know, that's the kind of people only with someone with a sense of humor. Okay? I'm sorry, that's a digression. But that is dharma teaching on the other hand, okay, that is politics. The realm of politics and the realm of dharma and spirituality are one realm. And we need spirituality in our teachers. Not fake ideological conformity and fanaticism and persecution of people, of other beliefs. No an open-minded, but a sense of living for something greater. And uh, and especially a leader who is gonna take responsibility for you, should be loving toward you, should want you to do well and want you to thrive and want to help you. Otherwise, then, then they are not leading you, then they won't be helpful, right? Okay. So, so back to now. I, I did an earlier podcast on the preface of the book and the for chapter one is the Buddha path.
Speaker 4 00:23:00 And this book is, and the dharma is about getting real, very good Bob. Um, I forget what I write. So when I reread it, I talk to myself while having fun along the way. Get real, while having fun along the way. That's key. Maybe you're surprised to hear that things like Buddha, enlightened persons enlightenment, spirituality, or wisdom have anything to do with reality that's already a shock cuz you think it's some spiritual thing, but actually it's a scientific thing. Enlighten means you know what is real, what the facts are about life and death, which is part of life. You Sicily sleep is part of your day. It's not the opposite of being your waking time, your waking time, your sleeping time, your dreaming time, they're all part of your day. So your life, your death, and your between lives, state is all part of life, okay?
Speaker 4 00:24:04 You live in all of those conditions and you're gonna live forever by the way, that should cheer you up at first. <laugh>, you're going to live forever. Ray <inaudible>, relax. You don't need to download it yourself into a robot. If you, if there's really great robots to be downloaded in, you can, but instead you're gonna download yourself through the, between state into another nice brilliant human body, maybe female, maybe having more fun next life. Not, not such like anxious male <laugh> maybe, or maybe another male, maybe human, hopefully not a, like a miserable crocodile or an elephant or something. Or deer being eaten by lions or a lion looking for a deer to eat. No, you're gonna be human again and you can maybe get a job with Google. And if you do a really smart way, you can create a way of inheriting your options, your stock options that you have as a chief engineer, okay?
Speaker 4 00:25:11 And you don't need that robot. But, but making great robots is also helpful because then it could give more people freedom from labor and just meaningful, meaningless, kind of just doing, moving some wrench, tightening a bolt somewhere. And then they can become enlightened and highly educated, highly aware, highly sensitive, highly loving, highly empathetic, highly kind. And they can spend their time doing that, learning that, okay? So first of all, all these things have anything to do with reality. That's a shock. I, I'm acknowledging people might be you. And also you might think reality because governments and spirituality is, and religious systems have been trying to tell you that reality is scary and horrible and therefore that you need them to save you. That's what, what, that's what they, they've been brainwashing, terrorizing all of us for thousands of years. That is really scary. Reality is, and we need them.
Speaker 4 00:26:17 You might think reality is dreadful, joy is all too rare and fun is childish. While the spiritual life is supposed to be terribly serious. <laugh>, that is not a bad paragraph, Bob. Now let me start right off. Since my life has had a lot to do with Buddhism, I have had this in this life and previous lives also. I think that's, that's why I gravitated toward it in this life. And I'm sure many of you also know about enlightenment. It doesn't have to be, actually, I'm sorry I used the word Buddhism, but I put it in quotes, scare quotes because then people automatically think it's a religion. And I'm, it's not the religious part that helped me actually. Although it's, I have fun with it nowadays, but it's not what helped me. What helped me was the scientific part of it, kind of because I was wanting to know reality.
Speaker 4 00:27:14 And you do too. You really do. And you should in all part. You know, you do. When you get to a to a street crossing, you're happy that you know what a red light means and a green light means. And a yellow light means you're very, that's very lucky for you. And you wanna know that. You don't wanna just believe maybe green light means stop and red light means go. Cause that's what somebody told me. No, you don't wanna do that. You wanna know for sure green, red, yellow, what they mean, okay? Because then you can get across the street safely. So in your spiritual life, you should also know what is real, what is life and death? What is God? Who is God? Which, how many gods are there? What is a human? What are you, not only who, but what are you? What is a human?
Speaker 4 00:28:04 So lemme start right off, since my life has had a lot to do with Buddhism, which seems highly religious. Yeah. Cause I put it in quotes by saying that what I am going to share with you is not the religion of Buddhism, quote Buddhism unquote, but the experience of quote Buddhism, <laugh> unquote, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the full release into joy that happens when we come face-to-face with the real reality. That's a real reality of what life really is. It's bliss and wisdom is knowing it. And therefore the title wisdom is bliss. Okay? That's really good. You know, they say that you understand a book or a theory if you can understand, you have to understand any 1, 1, 1 word, one sentence, and then you understand all of it. And conversely, to understand all of it, you have to understand each word, each sentence. So the really good one is sort of, it's pregnant with the full meaning in every word should be like that.
Speaker 4 00:29:20 There should, there's no throwaway, should not be any throwaway in a book. There's not getting to the main point budda, the full release into joy that happens when we come face to face with the real reality. Or our goal here is not to believe in Buddhism unquote, not to be religious unquote, not to join a cult or subscribe to a theory. Our goal is to gain the clarity of mindful awareness and the joy of real freedom. Freedom that is realistic freedom based on the realization that reality is free. It's not charging you for the energy it gives you. It's, well, it's charging you up with the energy, but it's not asking you to pay. It's just giving it. And if you know what it is more and you're more open to it, it it's ready to give in exhaustively no matter what our religion, belief system or cultural membership.
Speaker 4 00:30:34 So here, the joy of real freedom, you can find in any religion, any belief system or cultural membership. In other words, if you, if once you know it, you see it everywhere, you find it everywhere, that's a wonderful thing. So in the DMAs famous words, you know, you should keep, you keep your culture, you keep your grandmother's religion as long as your grandma wants you to <laugh> and you make them happy that way. And then you infuse that with what if you understand something new, okay? Or your grandmother's secularism, if that's what makes her happy. And you infuse that with something spiritual, you find the spiritual side of that humanism is the spiritual side of secularism, of materialism, humanism, right?
Speaker 4 00:31:31 And yes, I call that deep experience of the face-to-face with true reality. A Buddhism somehow because it's a, it's an opening, it's not a grabbing on something, it's not a locking yourself in any kind of place. It's an opening to, that's the only way you can know reality. Real reality is to be wide open to everything infinitely open. Actually amazingly <laugh> don't freak out, you are infinite, right? Because infinity permeates you, your finiteness. So that duality of finite infinite is not absolute, it's just a relation, it express relation and relationally by our relational concepts, even our concept for the non relational, it's a relational concept, right? You know that. And yes, I pur purposely associated with an orgasm. I'm right up front the blissful transport that every animal approaches with fear and trembly yet craves as a peak experience of life. Isn't that so? Here I align myself with the great Wilhelm Reich who wrote a brilliant book, the Function of the Orgasm that is really hard to find.
Speaker 4 00:32:58 Although he was a disciple of Freud, he was a major psychologist, but he was radical for our uptight Euro-American societies and even Asian ones. He was, of course, everyone makes a fuss about finding happiness or joy. But few make a virtue out of fun enlightenment, quote unquote smacks of 17th and 18th century intellectuals like De Kart and Voltaire, and the serious business of facing the universe dismembering nature with scientific analysis. To be clear what I mean with this term, enlightenment includes that as well. But more importantly, it is the blissful fun of life with wisdom and love. It is an extraordinary state of awareness, which we will all definitely get to amazingly soon. So that's all, that's all I can do in a short podcast is like less than two pages to <inaudible>. That's, that's my little extra nudge to the wheel of Dharma <laugh> on Wheel of Dharma Day for more nudges on Wheel of Dharma, de please look up dalai lama.com and see his holiness, enjoying being in laak and giving some teachings, friendly teachings to huge crowd of Ladakhis and other people who've come from everywhere.
Speaker 4 00:34:35 Unfortunately, Tibetans who wanna pour over the border between, uh, Chinese occupied Tibet and India occupied Tibet are probably blocked from doing so by the Chinese. But there's still a lot of, uh, Tibetans in in, in, uh, lada and spit and around the world. And then Westerners and lots of people will be there in that high altitude in the summer, luckily out of the floods in the heat. And watch him enjoy that. That's one thing. And another thing to go to thus.org, you know, at thus.org, which is the men website of Tibet House, and also go to menlo.org, uh, sometimes thus menlo.org. But menlo.org, which is thus thus means Tibet house us so menlo.org, um, and see all the programs that are there and especially anybody who's doing hide meditation, don't miss Lelo <inaudible> giving some teachings at Menlo with me and, uh, Michelle Lowe and uh, doing some yoga teaching in between and, uh, and joy.
Speaker 4 00:35:52 Come see us. And there are many other things that happen there. And at thus in the city, the city center house, city center and um, many other retreat places and centers and yoga centers all over the US and the world. And do go somewhere to some of them and turn the wheel of dharma your south, which means show that the spiritual effort to discover reality, enjoy reality. Know what it is, experience it, open yourself to it is really how to cheer your yourself up. How to help the world, how to clear your mind and feel better and be better with everybody else and therefore make things fine. Look at that wonderful picture that is a picture of the might future Budha mare. You see his face, isn't he sweet? I really like him. That's the one that's in the Dal Lama's residence in Lasa, which was hidden behind big sheaves of grain and therefore was not destroyed completely when the Chinese communists were destroying everything during the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 00:37:11 And uh, and therefore then was cleaned out and it was a little bit, you know, refurbished and you can still see it there in Tibet. And we want his wholeness to be able to go and see it. It's a sort of positive symbol because it's the Buddha who will come in the future when things are ready for a Buddha and when people wouldn't dissect him like the ET or something <laugh> cuz he had weird powers. Okay? So that's, it is, that's when you recite mantra hum, like, which means jewel and lotus in union, which is wisdom and compassion. Compassion and wisdom in union, which is the sort of savior mantra of the Ra or LoRa, the wonderful, uh, incarnation of compassion that uh, many of them actually female and male all over the world who are there to help us. Lot of help around, okay? Visible and invisible angels and people. Okay? So happy fourth of the sixth liter month, I can't say 4th of July. It's also the fourth, fourth of the sixth. Happy fourth of the sixth. And please enjoy things and turn your wheel of dharma. That is your reality wheel, your teaching wheel, your learning wheel, okay?
Speaker 4 00:38:43 All the best dedicate the merit to quickly all of us becoming really real and really happy and helping, therefore, being, therefore capable of helping others become really real and really happy and not unhappy like people at war and they know are terrible. There's no point on that. Everybody now knows it's all over the planet. It's on the internet. Happiness is everywhere. You don't have to get real of somebody else for you to be happy. It's completely terrible mistake. Let's not have let it happen now. Let's have the century of happiness that our dear teacher, our lovely guru lama, promise us all humans if they will just take a break and deal with reality. Okay, bye. Thank you. Thank you Justin, my engineer, my wonderful, faithful, loyal, clever Justin Stone Diaz. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:40:07 The Bob Thurman podcast is produced through a creative commons node derivatives license. Please be sure to like, share and repost on your favorite social media platforms and it's brought to you in part to the generous support of the Tibet House, US Menlo membership community and listeners like you. To learn more about the benefits of Tibet House membership, please visit our websites, menlo org and Bob Thur.
