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 Dai Lama's cultural center in America. All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 3 00:00:48 This is episode 321, understanding transcendence and freedom from absolutism.
Speaker 1 00:01:19 The transcendent exists but the transcendent is empty of being the transcendent in any the intrinsic manner. The transcendent is not therefore an objectifiable place outside of the objectifiable world. The transcendent is a condition of being in the world in touch with its reality, free of the habitual process of reification, of isolated, intrinsically established entities within reality. Here we come up to the idea, in other words, of emptiness, voidness, shta, which sounds frightening when we say voidness emptiness, which is intended to sound frightening, supposed to be. It is frightening because it means that our sense of solidity, of fullness, our sense of grasping onto things as being solid to our grasp, our sense of specially grasping onto ourself as being solid to our sense of self is our greatest obstacle in life. It is what causes our entrapment in suffering. It's what makes us harm ourselves and others.
Speaker 1 00:02:21 Freedom from that is the key to personal freedom, bliss. And it's also the key to altruism, true altruism, true involvement in relational interconnection with other beings. Because you see what happens now, what happens to the person who seeks freedom in the realization of selflessness when in realizing their selflessness, in enjoying ecstatically nirvana, their critical wisdom is not content with settling down and being in a situation outside of suffering and disconnected from the world. And instead, what they become disconnected from is being disconnected from being locked into a, into a self that is isolated by being intrinsically established. That is isolated from relation. In other words, who is it who realizes selflessness, which self, in fact a fully relational self? That realization of selflessness itself, therefore is empty of itself, is no absolute is itself a relational happening. A person who does that, who has been striving for the absolute with all of that absolutist energy, when that absolute dis energy reaches its goal, what happens?
Speaker 1 00:03:36 It collides with itself in a certain way becomes free of itself. And where does that person's absolutism go? You felt apart from the universe, right? You feel like you are something special and different and there's some disconnection between you and you feel a little alienated when you're depressed, you feel marvelously expanded when you're, when you're elated, but you feel somehow separated because there's a solid you that is something apart from the world, right? This is how we've started. We've looked hard for that and indeed we've looked for it in a solid way as absolutely as we feel is absolute there. We've looked absolutely for our absolute self. We have failed to find that absolute self, and we are armed philosophically by transcendent wisdom, not to find the lack of finding as a real nothing. And therefore that absolute seeking is tying and twisting around looking for itself. Cuz when you go into the depth of that, remember you're looking for yourself, but then you are doing the looking, so then you're looking at yourself, looking for yourself, looking for yourself, looking for yourself, looking at yourself, right? You're into this tight turning like a dog chasing its tail in the deepest core of your mind, sustained by and by one point in concentration through meditative adept being a meditatively apt. And then when that finally explodes, when you finally see through that front and back somehow when that sort of cycle dissolves, where are you left?
Speaker 1 00:05:04 As long as you felt like that your real you was this isolated self, you're intending to be left isolated from the world that because you feel detached inside. So you project the goal as a detachment, the ultimate detachment, and this language in the monastic dualistic Buddhism like that, although Buddha always backs off and they're really gonna pin us down, well then is there this nirvana? I say no. Well, we didn't quite say that. He says, not quite did I say that? Oh, sometimes I don't talk when you ask me questions like that. He, Buddha always slipped out of really legitimating that. But he let these people think it so that they would be striving so that their, their self-centeredness in its pure spiritual absolutist form would feel it was striving for a most glorious reification of the actual state of the inner psyche of being self-centered around an absolute self. But then when you realize that the absolute self is nothing but selflessness, and when you viscerally realize that when yourself there is like a explosion of your heart basically, or something deeper than the heart, the center of the heart itself, your soul explodes or something like that. And when your soul explodes, what is left? That is absolute. Where are you?
Speaker 1 00:06:27 You are here in the network of interconnectedness, your relative self. That's the self that's been there all along. Part and process of this. And yet relatively distinguishable, if for certain reasons and purposes is realized suddenly that there is no absolute separation. There is no absolute self, there is no absolute other. The full force of that absolutism then goes towards what then. Therefore there you are, you are totally interconnected with all other beings and yet your own inner self by being free of this, not a nodding away from the world is totally happy, totally flipped out the out the, the innermost knot has been flung open and you're just full of energy and yet and totally connected everyone else, most of everyone else is feeling what? All locked up in their own cycle of self-seeking and self-serving and self-centering and self-protecting and self fearing and way short of real pleasure of real being open and therefore seeking little greedy pleasures that they're trying to fill it into this tight little center stuff.
Speaker 1 00:07:33 Some more stuff in or fight some more stuff off. But none of it is satisfactory because there's no space to really swallow the stuff <laugh>, it's full of the self. So then when you're there and you're, you are distinguishing from everybody else and everybody else feels all knotted up, what do you want to do? You want tonot them. Your whole absolute energy goes into feeling their feeling and trying to improve their feeling, trying to open them up. That is the key concept of the universal vehicle. Great love, a universal love and universal compassion. It is not some sort of sentimental idea. Oh, how, oh, I love people. I like to do something for people. It is a feeling of being totally connected with them, feeling their suffering and therefore being nothing but a drive out of that. Totally open Ni Vanai is the center centerless center to completely help them free of their suffering to become a nirvana centerless center.
Speaker 1 00:08:35 Now, it's unfortunately not that easy because people like they're not, they're used to it. If you run up to somebody that says, I wanna rip your heart open <laugh>, what do you think they're gonna say? Ooh, get outta my heart. Don't mess with my heart. I'm just fine here. You can't pressure, pressure somebody to open themselves. You cannot pressure someone who thinks they're an absolute self to be selfless. If you did, the best you would get would be that they would think that their self was nothing and they would become an nihilists. The only way that you can realize selflessness is to internally realize it yourself. And the only way you can realize it yourself, although ironically they say the only way you can realize it yourself, however, is to hear about it from someone who has realized it themselves. There is something to do with a living tradition here. That's a very interesting point. It's very, it's a, it's a double, it's a quadruple bind kind of idea. A person who has realized selflessness and yet is there as a conventional self, somehow is able to communicate to a person who is, thinks that they can only be alive by having clinging onto this absolute self. Subliminally can only that way communicate that in fact, not only can you be alive, but you can live better selflessly. In fact, it's to what you really want. The only way to live is to live selflessly.
Speaker 1 00:09:58 As Shanti Davis says, the all, every single happiness in this world in fact comes from desiring the happiness of another. Every single suffering in this world comes from desiring one's own happiness. He has this statement, very challenging statement. Everyone disagrees when they hear it. What I'm happy when I go out for number one, <laugh> according letter, not according to the mahna, when we are out for number one, we are always unhappy because number one never gets enough. Number one, never can have enough, never can enjoy enough, never can be safe enough when it's one number one versus number. Everybody else, the number one is <unk> one versus infinite. Number number one never wins. If one desires the happiness of all others, there's infinite energy in that. And ironically forgetting number one, number one gets happy.
Speaker 1 00:10:58 This is a different argument and we'll come to it later. I'm just saying that, I'm just illustrating for you. I hope I made clear. This is where the universal vehicle arises in this inside of non-duality, in this pushing of wisdom beyond personal selflessness to understand objective selflessness and then objective selflessness issues forth simultaneously. When you realize full emptiness, then you become completely full of interconnectedness with other beings and you then become totally committed to compassion. You become a being of a vehicle of compassion. And then your every deed and act is an act of compassion and love and act of compassion. And love doesn't always just mean some sort of soupy business where you go around staring at people and going, oh, I love everybody. Not at all. Because some people are not benefited by you going and staring at them saying you love them.
Speaker 1 00:11:46 Some people are only benefited by a swift kick. In fact, some people are benefited by firmness, some people are benefited by ignoring them. Perhaps some people are benefited. People are at different stages of different needs. And finally, people are only ultimately benefited by being taught effectively, where they themselves understand their own freedom. That is the final benefit. All other kind of benefiting, of giving gifts, feeding, sharing, saving, protecting, those are all temporary and all very good. But the greatest gift is the gift of dma because what's called the gift of dma. But what you cannot really be given in the one way, but it is whatever methods, techniques, strategies, devices, stories, parables, riddles, meditation, techniques, philosophies, psychologies, sutras, whatever it is that illustrates to people dma. So they can then enter themselves DMA and realize their own dma, their own truth, their own reality, their own or as it is put in <unk> their own truth of truthfulness, their freedom in truthfulness. Cause another synonym for emptiness is truthfulness, the truth of truthfulness, scary sort of thing. Because see, the intrinsic reality habit thinks to everything is a truth. This is true, that's true. This is a true step behind the true me truth is a freedom from this atory habit pattern of the diluted self,
Speaker 1 00:13:21 So therefore nirvana and fur. So therefore, this non-duality was expressed in the mah as the non-duality of nirvana and samsara the way it was. The classical statement of it was in Nagarjuna, a little bit negational in tenor, which is the way that kind of statements are not to lead to some sort of reification of samsara, but it is that whatever the limit of samsara are, the limit of nirvana, the limit of nirvana is the limit of samsara. The two are therefore coex extensive. Another way it's expressed is do not think he Una says to another, to in a letter to a king, he says, do not think you're majesty that you should practice along and then someday through nirvana, you will disappear from the world. Do not think that nirvana is being selflessly in the world because there is, if you are selfless, it is a different world. Really. The your perception is different. The whole thing is different.
Speaker 1 00:14:16 Okay, so this is, that's an introduction. This is an introduction, therefore, so the non-duality of Samsara Nirvana meant that the person who became, who realized nirvana became free of self-centeredness, therefore became part of the miraculous magical network of universal relativity and a being of total love and compassion to all other beings, and therefore a being of liberative technique for all other being a manifestor of liberative technique for the liberation of all other beings with every breath, so to speak. Such a person is said to be a person realizing the non-duality of nirvana and samsara while in nirvana, subjectively totally present to all beings in samsara. That means, and therefore a node of liberation within samsara, a doorway of liberation within Samsara,
Speaker 1 00:15:04 Right? I think that's clear. So this is where nondual, and then with the same paralleling that non-duality, the Buddhist socially in Indian history, the Buddhist monasteries became universities keeping the monastic core, the place of asylum for the person who gets really tied up in the est thing of seeking their own absolute freedom. Which is very crucial because you, because you can't therefore say to people, well, because the Buddha is nirvana, samsara, non duly, you therefore should just stay in your samsara slave away and do whatever it is. And you can just say, well, for according to Buddha, I'm in Nirvana. So even if I feel like it, like I'm just being oppressed, doesn't matter because Buddha thinks I'm in nirvana, that's no good. So therefore, the person who is still tied up, locked up of self versus the world needs still the monastic individualistic vehicle needs the open centers, the monastic escape.
Speaker 1 00:15:58 Although now the sort of escape cycle is much faster because simultaneously with going to that self, that escape, that retreat sort of thing, the sort of sense that that is still in the world, that is, you know, the sense that that is a place out of the world is sort of a little diminished, conceptually critiqued from the beginning. The cycle is faster, but even that helps you get liberated personally, not hurt you. Because if you feel, for example, if you go to get, I'm gonna get liberated, I'm gonna achieve nirvana, and you're doing it not just because I'm sick of suffering and I want to be free in my life, but you do it because I'm sick of suffering and I want to be free of my life and I'm sick of everybody else suffering and I want to be free so I can help them be free.
Speaker 1 00:16:38 It gives you a much more powerful energy even to liberate yourself, just like the runner, you know, who's running, uh, the Herald, who's going to warn the city of invasion by the enemy, saving all their relatives and friends. They can sometimes run like 50 miles, you know, instead of, but if they're just running to win their own marathon, maybe they can go and make 20. You have a much different energy when you feel that you're being a hero or heroine for the whole world. When your, your success is linked with everyone's success. You follow me? So this is where something becomes universal vehicle has to do with that motivation, with that scope, with the birth of that mind that embraces all beings as your own, as yourself, as your mother, as your blood, as your flesh and blood,
Speaker 1 00:17:26 Which is the <unk> mind. Now <unk> which is a <unk> this kind of idea is brought up again and again, and the whole is a wonderful suture, not just because I translated it. The original is wonderful. It was tremendously popular in India, tremendously popular in China and Japan. It was like, you know, this book may have been read more by more people since there's always been more people on the planet than China and Japan. They may have in China particularly, they may have been read by more people than any book in the world. Actually in his Chinese, three Chinese versions that it had, that circulated foren, ent, you know, 18th centuries. And it was totally loved. They loved it. Everybody knows him like it in Tibet it was translated to Tibetan two, but they were not so far, they didn't know it so well because in Tibet they, they, they had these living llamas.
Speaker 1 00:18:13 They didn't really read scriptures in the same way. They had this living tradition of a certain kind. They went straight to a certain thing. They didn't use scriptures also, they didn't have a lot of lay lay people. They were all monks. Now <unk> begins with this wonderful thing where all of the young people of uh, of uh, the city vice Shali, the New York of the day came to see the Buddha and they brought these jewel parasols, they put it at the feet of the Buddha, circumambulate him clockwise seven times, and each laid down his precious parasol in offering and withdrew to one sign. As soon as all these precious parasols had been laid down, suddenly by the miraculous power of the Lord that is Shak budah, they were transformed into a single precious canopy. So great that it formed a covering for this entire billion world galaxy.
Speaker 1 00:19:01 The surface of the entire billion world galaxy was reflected in the interior of the great precious canopy where the total content of this galaxy could be seen limitless mansions of sons moons and stellar bodies, the realms of the gods, dragons, demons, ferries, titans, eagles, centar, and great serpents, as well as the realms of the four great kings, the king of then all these mountain ranges, cities, streams, brooks, et cetera. And the voices of all the Buddhas of the 10 directions throughout the universe could be heard proclaiming their teachings of the dharma in all the worlds, the sounds reverberating in the space beneath the great precious canopy. I sort of understood, it's like a kind of planetarium or something. He created like this vast planetarium. There were thousands of people there around him in this assembly, and he created this huge thing out of these jewel parasols, like a jewel dome all around them in which they could see the whole universe like, you know, stars, you know, uh, uh, crocodiles, you know, like those Walt Disney movies, you know, and the, uh, gorillas and s and uh, inside the womb and Muli Monte cellular animals and, and great space creatures.
Speaker 1 00:20:13 They could see all this inside and all interconnected with everything. So his first vision in a way was this vision of non-duality, of the inconceivable interconnectedness and inter penetration of all things. It was like a symbolic, miraculous vision that he granted to everybody in the very beginning of the text. And then of course they praise him and, uh, always he does some sort of miraculous performance, which is just meant to be a symbol, really. And, uh, if it's a literary event, if we, we read this as a literary creation, it's meant, meant to be a symbol of the interconnectedness you see,
Speaker 1 00:20:52 And then they ask the first question of the so afterafter a along verses of praise, which are very nice, but the important point is the question. They say, Lord, these 500 young la chak, these, that's like New Yorkers. The people in the town in the city are truly on their way to unex the perfect enlightenment. That is, they've already decided to become enlightened. You see here he is not just, he doesn't have to start teaching them with this, all the suffering. Every egocentric thing is suffering. The cause of suffering is addictive mental states and emotions and ignorance and karma, ignorant driven action. And the the cessation of suffering is nirvana and the path of cessation of such the eightfold path. You know, the basic thing, he doesn't have to teach these people that they're already unto enlightenment. Not only that, but by saying they're already unto on their way to unex excel, perfect enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:21:38 That means they're all already but suffers. They've already conceived. They're all heroes and heroes to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all beings. They have conceived of their interconnectedness. They have, they are engaged in the, in the, in the messianic magnificent mad enterprise of transforming the entire universe. Every single one has determined that I will not rest until I have saved all beings, until all beings have become free. Through my EF effort, through my teaching, through my demonstration, through my own enlightenment, all beings have become enlightened. That's a wild ambition. Do you realize that it's really something magnificent? And again, as I've said before, again, look where the multiple life vision of the Buddhist comes in without the multiple life vision. Of course not the magnificence. It's, it's an asinine <laugh>. The buddhi vaal would be asinine if you only had a life to live. There's no way you can save all beings in only one life.
Speaker 1 00:22:40 There's no way you can become a Buddha without extremely unusual methods in only one life or being an extremely unusual person in only one life. And even those people who in through tantra, they say just some of you may have heard that already, they say can attain bud hood in one life, that's actually kind of fake. Actually, those beings do not attain bud hood only in one life they do in one what is called coarse body life, but on the subtle plane they die in are reborn millions of times. Milarepa in his cave, who is a Tibetan who has pointed to as having attained Buddhahood in one life through the esoteric and sublime and magnificent tantras that meant one coarse body life as Milarepa. In fact, in those many years he spent in those caves in the Himalayas, he died trillions of times. He even like, you know, created in the billion bodies all at once and went to different universes and died trillion times once an hour when he got really good.
Speaker 1 00:23:38 So he's, there's no, there's no dodging evolution. He evolved, he went through the magnificent panorama of the evolution of lives, but he did it in the tan. You do it like in a dream like realm of subtle R reality really fast. It's like mil living million times in split second, but really living, really dying. Not just like thinking about doing it, like running the film at incredible speed, but that's just a footnote. Mainly the resolve of the boes is to do it over billions and billions of lives through many different universes. Nevermind how many universes evolve. Even the universe blows up. There's other universes simultaneously. There's no one universe that's a misconception, a misuse of language, a misuse of mathematics. There's endless numbers of universes. Infinite one universe rise and falls. Another one is when one is falling, one is rising, one is rising, one is falling. They think they've seen to the end of space. That's nonsense. All they see is the inside of a black velvet bag <laugh> in which our little bag of stars is, is is being held by a shaman in another universe are brilliant scientists with their brilliant telescopes. Yeah, they're nice white coats.
Speaker 1 00:24:55 So, so with, it's only realistic to have that magnificent ambition and aspiration within the context of seeing as a matter of fact, not as a matter of mystic idea but as a matter of rational fact, as a matter of common sense that you are in it for the duration, you're in it for billions of lives anyway. We are all in it together for billions of lives. So therefore let's make that billions of lives magnificent. Let's have a goal that is magnificent. Let's all be Buddhas fantastic everyone. Be Buddha, not just one, be Buddha, all be Buddha. Apparently being Buddha is quite fantastic job description, really worth it. Good salary too.
Speaker 1 00:25:45 But so here the question they already have conceived that he says these 500 young Chavez are truly on their way to Unex excel perfect enlightenment. And they have asked, what is the Buddhi Ava's purification of the Buddha field? Please Lord explain to them the Buddhi Ava's purification of the Buddha field. The word Buddha field, BUDK is something like Buddha verse universe of a Buddha. According to a Buddha, it's the sphere of existence that a Buddha perceives. So when you, when you become a Buddha, you will have a certain universe in which your job will be to be the Buddha of that universe. That universe will be designed by you so that all the beings interconnected with you, who have not yet become Buddhas themselves are stationed in the optimal situation to quickly become Buddhas themselves and have their own Buddha fields.
Speaker 1 00:26:40 It's a kind of idea like that the Buddha fields. So what they're asking is, but it means the universe therefore. So it means that the question of the mah is not how can I attain enlightenment? The question of the mah of the universal vehicle is how can I transform the universe? How can I perfect the universe? How can I purify the universe? This is where you see it is the root of a social teaching, a universalist teaching. This is not where some people will be save to leave the others. The whole universe has to be transformed. Not only people, all animals, all sentient life and not only on one planet, in one solar system, in one galaxy, in the whole universe. Mindful though of course that their universe is within a multi universal, multi-dimensional reality. And in a way the process is endless. Everything becomes endless. The beings become endless. The Buddhas become endless. The universe becomes endless. It isn't a neat package. Really unfortunate.
Speaker 1 00:27:43 The very good Lord replied. So then the Buddha says, good, good young man. Your question to the Buddha about the purification of the Buddha field is the question to the Tata. That's the name of the Buddha. Tata means one who has gone to transcendence. That is one who is transcended. Tata means it's the name of the Buddha being who is there and yet has transcended who is there and yet is beyond there. So when you meet a being like that, you are also there and beyond there. <unk> that's why people really flipped out. But we've discussed this already, but they really enjoyed meeting a Buddha. They have a symbolic thing where they say that a Buddha has this extra brain scoop on the head. You know, it's a big huge dome on the head in sculptures. You see it. And of course our historians say, oh, he had a lot of hair, that was his hairdo.
Speaker 1 00:28:31 Or others say, well some snails curled up there and they were like parked up there. Little snail grip, which is nonsense. It means that it has to do with the convention that no one could ever see the top of the Buddha's head. Even brown ma couldn't see the top of his head. It was like his head was open totally. It was like went, it was like a pillar axis muni. It went beyond the universe top of his head. You know, it was like the ultimate cone head <laugh>. The open cone just like sort of went out, went off. You know, the brain was like one with the universe or something, you know, mais idea. But this is boiled down an art into sort of a dome like shape on top of a Buddha's head.
Speaker 1 00:29:13 So that means <unk> one who has gone to suchness, gone to the transcendent about the purification of the Butterfield is indeed good. Therefore, young man listened well and remember I will explain to you the purification of the Buddha field of the Buddhi. Very good replied, Lord replied, Ratna and the 500 Chave and they set themselves to listen. The Buddha said, noble sons, a Buddha field of budva is a field of living beings. Why? So a budva embraces a budha field to the same extent that he causes the development of living beings. He embraces a Butterfield to the same extent that living beings become disciplined. He embraces a Butterfield to the same extent that through entrance into the Buddha field, living beings are introduced to the Buddha wisdom. He embraces the Buddha field to the same extent that through entrance into that budha field, living beings increase their holy spiritual faculties, faith, mindfulness, samati wisdom, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:30:15 The spiritual faculties. Why so noble child, a Buddha field of Bova Springs from the aims of living beings. This is very important. We think that a universe is like, you know, they're doing the big bang theory. They have all this matter. They have planets, they have sars and suns and moons and things like that, and they think the universe is some sort of material place. It's a facility, you know, it's a thing. It has like stars and gases and elements and things. And then there are pe, there are, they're living being sort of within that mysteriously in some way on a couple of little planets, little kind of fuzzball, little biosphere is here and there, mainly a sort of empty, cold, dark thing full of material elements and a lot of dark spaces. But here he says, that's not a universe is not that a universe to a Buddha and AK is a field of living beings. It's an intersubjective mind field of sein to beings. The material stuff is all just some kind of static in between the minds of the beings. It is minds of beings. That really is what creates the manifold, the Buddha field. This is a very strange claim, but this is his claim.
Speaker 1 00:31:31 So that is why a bud embraces a Buddha verse. To the extent that the beings minds open into enlightenment, the being's minds are developed or ripened, evolve, become free. To that extent, the bud field is embraced or that is the ordinary universe becomes a bud averse. To the extent that the being's minds are free within, it's what he says. It's not a matter of changing a material facility, you know, like landscaping the planet or the galaxy to create more parking lots or something. It's a matter of changing the minds of beings over life after life after life.
Speaker 1 00:32:06 For example, rod, he says that the main interlocutor, he says, should one wish to build an empty space, one might go ahead in spite of the fact that it is not possible to build or to adorn anything in empty space in just the same way. Should <unk> who knows full well that all things are like empty space, wish to build a Butterfield in order to develop living beings, he might go ahead in spite of the fact that it is not possible to develop, to build or to adorn a Butterfield in empty space. That's another very important thing. So the, the mission of the Buddha Buddhi who wants to be Buddha and transform the universe is not a sort of materialistic mission because all things are empty, all things are transformable. After all other beings have already obtained Buddhahood. This universe already is the Buddha verse of many Buddhas.
Speaker 1 00:32:55 So it is not like we can suddenly just sort of share, we'll take planet earth and we'll do that to it and we'll do this to the sun. It's not like it's a matter of everything is empty space. It's a matter of realizing how it is a Buddha field and contributing to the Buddha solution and not the non Buddha problem. The way, in a way, the solution is already affected. It's already hinting at something strange about this motivation because you see com, the motivation of compassion is to transform the universe so that it is perfect, but the critical intelligence of wisdom says, but wait, my perception of imperfection itself is part of the problem. So I'm not gonna go into a thing of just sort of naively accepting the apparent ignorant reality of this bud averse and reifying a supposed beautified, perfected, purified reality of some other bud averse and think, I'm gonna push this one from here to there.
Speaker 1 00:33:49 You see? Because that would be operating only on compassion, and compassion by itself will not succeed. Compassion has to be always connected with wisdom. So we are on a world of shared image of an ignorant and unsatisfactory world. But remember, we share this world with infinite numbers of Buddhas to whom this is an exquisite, glorious world. Everything is perfect. We are in our perfect situations, each of us to learn and evolve and develop and become enlightened and to realize the perfection and to contribute to helping others realize the perfection from a Buddhas point of view, supposedly our point of view collides with those points of view, which is the preferable point of view. Well unfortunately, since we don't really know what is a Buddha, we don't necessarily believe there is any such thing as a Buddha. We do know we are here and we definitely think we know what's going on.
Speaker 1 00:34:44 We prefer our crappy world. Unfortunately, we're totally stuck in it. We complain and moan and groan when we die, we are gonna howl. When we really sick, we howl. When we break something, we howl. When someone else dies, we howl. And yet we really stick to this reality. Therefore, we should stick to this reality. Cism is not saying we should go into a fantasy world, but we should be aware that this reality, in fact is our fantasy. It's our routinized fantasy, in fact. But it takes a little effort to really realize that cuz we think we compromised that fantasy in apparent objectivity of themes to really realize it takes a great effort. Conceptually. It's fairly easy to prove it actually. So anyway, this is what he says. Then he goes on, the book goes on, I won't read the whole passage, but he goes on for several pages, beautiful pages where he describes this Buddha land and how in the Buddha land everyone is totally generous just to show the ideal, you know, for example, look at the subject of wealth, the ordinary world, there's never enough, right?
Speaker 1 00:35:51 It's a world of terrible scarcity. Right now, 40,000 children die. Is it a day? I think it's a day. 40,000 children die more or less. Starvation, malnutrition this un thing on children, they were publishing their statistic. 40,000 and small children are dying a day right here with us. In our room, in our house, in our planet, we sort of, all of us are half broken. Indent <laugh>. We, when we become yuppies, we get more in debt. It's odd, we work hard, we make money, then we get more in debt. 40,000 children are starving a day to death, and yet, and therefore we all feel rationally and reasonably it seems within the way we perceive this world that we should really save our money. We should kind of put it a little bit aside. We can't give our money to those 40,000 if they die too bad.
Speaker 1 00:36:43 If they all didn't die, maybe they'd all be so many people we'd all starve to death. Don't pretend. We don't all think that somehow our compassion, our agony, our scream of pain when we see something on the news of 40,000 dying is immediately muted by the fact that, well gee, but if I gave them all my food, I was starved to death. Maybe it's a mercy. They're gone now. They don't have to go through seven communist revolutions in 14 gulags and 2000 nuclear wars and 11 invasions. They're just dying quick. But then another next day and then another next day. So in short, it's a planet where everyone hoards everything to themselves, fears to g lose on anything and nobody has enough. Now contrast that with a planet where nobody cares whether they have anything. Everybody wants to give everything they have to everybody else all the time.
Speaker 1 00:37:40 I'm not saying they do. That would be really messy. It would sort of be like Indian holy, you know, the holiday of holy in India, there's this holiday where everybody goes berserk and they cancel a cast system for the day and women also get after the men. They go around and beat them up and sticks and people go around and dump paint on each other all day. You sort of have to drop out and put on your old clothes and they, those who lucky drink a glass of bung. They sort of get stoned or or beer or whatever they have so that they sort of won't mine so much because old boundaries are transgressed in that day more. I mean, they don't have orgies, but they, they throw stuff on each other, they insult each other. They have this like incredible day. Now, if we were all going around actually trying to give everything we had to everybody else all the time, it would be real mess like that.
Speaker 1 00:38:25 People would be tearing off their shirts, you know, and throwing them on you and you'd all be throwing your shirts on me and I would be just would really be a mess. But if we all felt like it, all the, the time without contriving, without having to see 40,000 people starving to death a day. But we just felt like giving everything the, what we felt was the most fun thing to do with anything we had was to give it away. That was like our, our openness of mind, our sense of the nature of the openness of reality was such that we wanted to see things move around and everybody was like that. On a world like that, would anybody be lacking of anything?
Speaker 1 00:39:06 Could do you really think, how many metric tons of wheated are stored here and there? How many warehouses, full of cheese are stored here and there? Years of land are spent growing? Nothing much coffee. How many acres of land are not even cultivated? How many, how much grain is fed to cows? Do you really think if everyone on this planet only lived to give things to others, there could possibly be any want. Even if we had 10 billion people on the planet, of course there wouldn't be 10 billion people because everyone would be everybody else's children. People wouldn't really want to necessarily have that many of their own, and particularly if they saw it as a matter of leading to some sort of scarcity people would and do when they gain wealth. But people feel satisfied they don't have children. You know, the cause of the population explosion is not scarcity.
Speaker 1 00:40:01 I mean it is. It is scarcity. Scarcity is the cause of it. It's not some sort of other mindless thing. People with wealth, that one proven cure of population growth, absolutely proven. They don't have to have a study. Nobody should have to have a Nobel Prize. It's so obvious and so silly and nobody mentions it, but it's proven it works is wealth itself. Any country that gets wealth, people become educated in that country, their population starts to drop. Any country that is poor has a massive population growth. They're staring everybody in the face on this planet. And what do they do? They give billions of dollars. They don't give them food. Oh no, that wouldn't be good for them, that they get indulgent. No, they, they spend a study on some man maniac scientists here in New York probably to think of what sort of weird chemicals they can drop. They're inject into their testicles or something, or how they can run around and give them transitions. Radios to do a little snipping <laugh> like they do here and there in China. They run and start sniping anytime they can.
Speaker 1 00:41:14 But no, give wealth. Oh no. Oh, that'll be crazy. Then we wouldn't have enough. And yet any time, that's the only thing that ever worked in Sweden. They'd pay you like $5,000 to have a child, anybody's willing to go through the trouble and they give you lifetime babysitting, lifetime free education and they still have to pay you, you five grand. You know, mama just delivers. Oh, there it is, boom, gimme five grand. It just like a prize. Like winning the lottery in Sweden. They're so desperate for population. They're going, going down. Population in this country is down anywhere where people have, anyway, that's the side trip. But anyway, about the Buddha land, he describes the land wear. The bods have been practicing generosity for so long by the time they come to the Buddha land, every being in that land wants nothing but to give everything they own to every other person and even so much so that they don't even have a concept of property. And therefore every being in the land is endlessly wealthy.
Speaker 1 00:42:12 How wealthy would you be if every other citizen of New York wished to give you everything they owned? You would be incredibly wealthy, wouldn't you? You realize that. And if everybody in New York had every, everybody else in New York wanted to give them everything they owned naturally, you know, you would get, you know, you wouldn't want the accountants to get so rich. You wouldn't want, things would end up not being so transferred. Things would just sort of be out there, you know, share. You wouldn't be dumping things on each other, dumping bags of money on each other's heads all day long.
Speaker 1 00:42:48 So that's, that's, that's the two different lands. In other words. One is the Berlin land and one is the other land. So anyway, he goes on with that sort thing about nobody kills anybody in that land. Nobody does anything negative, et cetera. At that point, he ends up by saying the purity of his Butterfield reflects the purity of living beings. The purity of the living beings reflects the purity of his wisdom. The purity of his wisdom reflects the purity of his teaching. The purity of his teaching reflects the purity of his transcendental practice and the purity of his transcendental practice reflects the purity of his own mind. So this is his conclusion in the several long, uh, sermon about what is the Buddha land, the purification of the Buddha field by the Budk. And now there upon magical influenced by the Buddha, the venerable Shari Pra, who is the foremost monk.
Speaker 1 00:43:37 He's a saint, he's the head monk, had this thought, if the Buddha field is pure only to the extent that the mind of the Buddha is pure, then in other words, if it's a mind switch, finally then when Shai Buddha was engaged in the career of the Buddhi, then in other words, this Buddha here in front of me, his mind must have been impure otherwise. How could this Buddha field appear to be so impure? Which is pretty good. That's good thought. I mean, it's very logical, right? He <unk> the world looks like shit to him actually. He says later it looks like shit to me. It doesn't look like no Buddha land to me. It looks like shit. He said. So if the world looks like that and the Buddha said the Buddha land as pure as the Buddhist's mind was pure, then this Buddha, this guy is supposed to be a Buddha.
Speaker 1 00:44:22 Then his mind must have been like, shit, Mr. Puter is like clinking, clinking, clinking. He just, you know, he gets it. He thinks it true, but he's too polite to say it and he's too, too, too reverent of the Buddha. Buddha has this big golden Buddha with a no top on his head and all this, you know, I mean, you don't lightly say, Hey man, your mind is is full of a dumpy there, you know? So he doesn't say, he just thinks it, but unfortunately for him, the Buddha knows what he's thinking. See, this is a terrible <laugh>. Actually the Buddha made him think that. He says even they're sort of saving face here. So Buddha says, what do you think? Then the Buddha knowing telepathically the thought of the venerable sh put said to him, what do you think sh pra, what do you think?
Speaker 1 00:45:01 Is it because the sun and moon are impure that those blinds from birth do not see them? Shk knew he'd had it now, but he's in here. He replied, no, Lord, it is not. So the fault lies with those blind from birth and not with the sun and moon the Buddha declared. In the same way, Shai pra the fact that some living beings do not behold the splendid display of virtues of the Buddha field, of the Tata that is the Buddha is due to their own ignorance. It is not the fault of the Tata Shai pra, the Bud Buddha field of the Tata is pure, but you do not see it.
Speaker 1 00:45:36 This is, this is very challenging, this is very interesting. Then in between Brahma comes, that's God the creator of God in the Indian pantheon. And he comes and he says, he skulls sha puter, he chimes in, you know, he's up in the sky in this assembly. It's like, God, you know, like in in the West, if this was happening, Yahweh would suddenly speak out with thunder. You know, you'd see clouds and things. Yahweh would look down and say, Shacha, you're pretty stupid that you see his berlins impure. I see shamans really great, better than the highest heaven. Actually his Berlin is more pure than the highest heaven. So God leans over, lends a little authority. <laugh> the Indian God, that's a funny one. But it's very significant because it's the creator God you see in that culture by those who are theistic in that culture. Buddhist do not believe he's a creator God. He's just kind of like a wizard of Oz, type of figure. Very powerful God. But nobody creates the other people. They create themselves. You know,
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