WEBVTT - Mandala: Memory Palace and Simulated Worlds 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From how stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:16.480 works dot com. Mind itself, this clear, void, all knowing, 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:22.320 all aware. It is like sky, primal clarity, voidness, indivisible 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:27.120 in the clarity of original intuitive wisdom. Just that determination 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:31.200 is reality. The reason is that all appearance and existence 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.919 is known as your own mind, and this mind itself 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:43.360 is realized space like in its intelligence and clarity. Hey, 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:45.080 welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:49.479 Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager. I am 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:52.760 I have a terrible memory. I'm gonna I'm gonna confess 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.360 something here. Okay, I don't know about you, and you 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.440 don't need to admit to this if you don't want to. 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:01.320 But when we after we record episodes, you know, we 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.840 build them a lot of research. We record episodes, A 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:08.319 lot of it just goes right out of my head. Um. 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.880 I retain the basics and the of the knowledge and 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:16.039 the ideas that we convey, but the very fine details 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:20.880 like names or locations of things I lose almost immediately. 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.479 Oh yeah, I'm I'm I'm very similar in that regard 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.560 off and tell people that I have approximate knowledge of 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:28.720 all things because they cover so many topics. I do 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.280 not retain all the details. I certainly don't retain the numbers, 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:36.959 but I retain the basic essence. So yeah, we discussed yeah, um, 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.040 but today's episode is about a topic, or it's tying 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:43.679 two topics together that I think could help us with 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.440 that if we if we really wanted to write. Although 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.080 I'm now starting to think of the podcast as being 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.360 sort of a portable memory unit as well. Yeah, or 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.560 even a mandola exactly one of the topics here today. 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:58.400 And that's why the quote at the top of the 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.680 episode here was m the Tibetan Book of the Dead, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.400 because though in order to unpack the idea of the mind, 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.040 although we have to discuss Tibetan Buddhism a little bit, 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.160 and and in doing that discuss Buddhism a little bit. 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:14.680 But from there, don't worry, we're gonna get into the 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:19.560 idea of the memory palace in uh Western and modern traditions, 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:21.800 as well as a little bit into the idea of 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.720 virtual worlds. Now, in putting this together, we look to 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.680 a number of different sources. One source that I particularly 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.840 enjoyed was Robert E. Fisher's Art of Tibet because Ultimately, 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.680 we're dealing with with an artistic tradition here, and it's 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.480 great to have some wonderful images to look at while 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:41.600 you're learning about it. So if you're if you want 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:45.080 to learn more about Tibetan art in general, uh, this 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:47.560 is worth picking up. You can find this online or 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.799 certainly at various museum stores. Yeah, I mean, I would 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:52.959 recommend to, like, if you're listening to this and you've 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:57.160 never seen a mandala before in in it's intriguing you, like, 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.680 go image search for them because they there's a lot 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:04.040 of variety first of all, but also just they're stunning. 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.280 There's and this is across there's so many different styles 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:09.680 of them too. That's one of the things we're going 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.240 to find out. Yeah, and we'll describe them in greater 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.359 detail later. But essentially, if you don't have one in 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:17.000 front of you right now, if you're not looking at 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.560 our our home page, then the mandola are are these 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:24.760 various Tibetan pieces, and they're also mandelas outside of Tibetan tradition, 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.040 where you have a figure at the center usually and 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:31.840 that figure is often a either a Buddha, buddhistattva or 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.639 a or a god or a goddess, and then there's 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:38.800 there's like concentric circles and they and even squares around them. 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.800 There's a lot of activity, their additional deities and figures 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:48.120 all just sort of flowing out from the central entity. Yeah. Yeah, 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.640 I mean I up until really, when you propose that 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.360 we do this episode, was familiar with them as sort 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.040 of just like the aesthetic trappings of Tibet or India, 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.480 especially from you know, my growing up overseas. I would 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.440 see stuff like this in Singapore occasionally, but like I 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:13.200 never realized how culturally and almost pneumonically important that they are. Yeah. 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.880 They I think I started learning about them in greater 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:19.320 detail a few years back when Emory University here in Atlanta, 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.400 they at least in the past, have always done Tibet 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.240 Week and they'll have some actual Tibetan monks come in 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.560 and make mandolas out of sand, out of colored sand, 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.960 which is this, you know, fabulous, you know, quintessentially Buddhist 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:35.720 practice of creating these wonderful works about art out of 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:38.440 individual pieces of sand and then you just destroy it 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:40.200 at the end. Yeah. I have some notes about that 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.640 that will go over later. The process is fascinating. All right, 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.760 So let's let's talk for just a minute about Buddhism 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.920 and the and the Tibetan version of Buddhism. So as ROBERTI. 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.840 Fisher explains in the Art of Tibet uh and and 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:56.760 this is also something that's come up in previous research 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.120 for me. I did a bit on sky burial for 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.040 House to Work few years ago and got to dive 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:07.680 into Tibetan history and Tibetan culture a little bit. Have 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:09.880 we have has stuffed abul your mind on the sky 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:12.320 burial episode, I don't know that we have. I feel 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.560 like Joe has also done research on that. Separate from this, Yeah, 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.680 it would be something worth it, uh tackling. There was 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.320 a recent War and Ellis comic that was all about 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:23.760 sky barrel. Yeah. I mean it's a fact. Just to 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.719 explain what we're talking about. It's an exposure burial where 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:30.000 one takes the body of the disease. There are a 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.039 few different burial practices Intobet, but this one is the 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:39.520 more famous because, especially to outsiders, it seems mccab that 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:41.880 they take the body, they break it down into pieces, 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.160 and then the vultures eat the pieces. But it is a. 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:49.720 This is a very remote region, very mountainous, there's just 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.120 not that much soil in which to plant a body. 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:55.599 So this is very much an option on the table, 0:05:55.680 --> 0:06:01.160 and it falls well in line with the older shamanistic 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:07.160 animistic traditions, like the pre uh pre Buddhism traditions of 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.240 the bat. Yeah, and there's a which is very much 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:12.119 connected to what we're going to be talking about today, 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:14.920 although we did not intend to bring up sky burial, 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:17.880 but yeah, like the idea that you're sort of giving 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:22.640 back to the ecosystem, to the universe. Yeah. So again, 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.240 it's a remote region, it's framed by some of the 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.320 world's highest mountains, and it served as quite a fascinating 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.680 I guess you could say an incubator for foreign religion influences, 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:36.239 most notably that of Buddhism, which came from several different 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.760 directions into Tibet in the seventh and twelfth centuries see. 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:42.880 And to put that at all in perspective, the historical 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:47.600 Buddha Sidharta Gattama or the Shakya Mooney Buddha would have 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:51.600 lived in the fifth century b c. And these foreign 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:56.120 influences flowed in on top of pre existing shamanistic bond 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:00.880 religious ideas in Tibet. The shamanistic part is going to 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.760 come back around is it's important for me, But I 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.560 want us to get through the Mandalis stuff first. I 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:10.520 think there's some interesting connections here between modern storytelling and 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:15.560 shamanistic thinking. Now, the incorporation of a foreign religion is 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.440 not an overnight sensation, as it's not just like Buddhism 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:21.280 came and said, all right, this is our jam. Now, 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.680 as Fisher points out, we see cycles of royal import 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:29.400 and support for Buddhism, along with periods of persecution. But 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:33.520 eventually we reach this uh, this period of the Second Diffusion, 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.520 a seminal period into Beetan Buddhism in the last quarter 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:40.400 of the tenth century. Now, at this point, I want 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.800 to challenge everyone to to think about religion a little 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.960 differently for the purposes of understanding to bit and Buddhism, 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:50.040 or at least to understand it as much as an 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.320 outsider ultimately can. I want you to think about religion 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:59.679 as technology now, not meaning to directly invoke scientology lingo 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:04.480 here or to advocate equal footing between science and technology 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.000 and religion, but rather I want you to think of 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:11.080 religion as a system of rights, beliefs, and mental programs 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:15.480 intended to bring about one or more particular ends. You know, 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:19.440 just think about why people engage with religion, right, They 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:24.160 want peace, happiness, liberation, salvation, elevation to a higher human form, 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:26.600 what have you. You know what that reminds me of 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:30.720 cyborg is m Yeah, very much so, which we've discussed 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:33.240 at length before. If you go back, we have an 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:37.679 episode from last year, I think last year on cyborgs. 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:41.199 But we definitely I think we don't. You definitely get 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.640 with the philosophy of and in a sense kind of 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:48.720 into the religious idea. Yeah. So consider that the Mahayana 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.560 branch of Buddhism one of the three main branches and 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.600 the largest today. Okay, let's consider this one. This is 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.079 the the great path, as opposed to the lesser path 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:04.160 of Theravada Buddhism, which originated in Sri Lanka. The Mahayana 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:08.760 way of Buddhism focuses on ordered monastic life and rights, 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:11.840 and it offers a rather long term technological solution to 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:16.240 life's problems, a contemplative and intellectual journey to enlightenment. They 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:20.800 can take eons to complete through endless rebirths across time, 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.880 until at last all livings, all living beings, might be 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:29.800 free from suffering. Sounds good, right, But then this is 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.560 where the esoteric forms of Buddhism in or the picture 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:38.319 in particular the the vadrariana or diamond vehicle or thunderbolt vehicle, 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.839 the tantric corpus of Buddhism. Okay, sometimes I've seen this 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:47.360 referred to as apocalyptic Buddhism. So if Mahayana Buddhism was 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.920 a to put this in sci fi terms, if it 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:54.120 was a generation ship, a generation starship trudging its way 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:59.920 endlessly across space towards a distant exoplanet, then the vadre 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.600 Yana Buddhism is a warp drive starship. It promises a 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.600 means of individual liberation from the wheel of suffering within 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.280 a single lifetime. I feel like this came up when 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:16.080 we were talking about um mummification of monks. Yeah, I 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.080 bet bet it did, because we talked a little bit 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.680 about the bodhistoft for the future. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:26.440 And that bodhisoft certainly plays into a Tibetan Tibetan culture 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.160 a bit as well. But the crazy thing about this 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.640 is that this UH, this this idea of esotery Buddhism 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.360 is it's it's not a mere shortcut approach. So it's 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:39.200 not one of these to to sort of try and 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:44.240 throw it into like modern Christian terms. It's not like, Okay, 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:46.040 I just love Jesus and everything's gonna be okay, don't 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:47.680 worry about any of the steps. It's not something like 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:49.680 that where it's like, hey, don't do all this work, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:54.000 just do this now. They're the approach here is is 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:58.400 is putting a tremendous amount of work into uh achieving 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.280 this end. The stakes are just as high, and the 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.920 amount of mental effort involved is staggering, entailing the study 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:10.760 and contemplation of of all these other roots, entailing additional rituals, 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.080 and the worship of two distinct pampions, the five Buddha 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:18.440 families of the celestial Buddhas UH each residing on one 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:22.160 of the pure lands, and the appropriated Hindu deities. So 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:26.400 you have all these different deities going on. It's um 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:27.839 like reading about it, I couldn't help but think of 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:29.839 it in terms of say a dungeons and dragons character 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:32.720 where you know, generally you just wanna you pick your 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.560 character class and you pursue it, and you you do 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.680 everything right, but you can dual class, you can multi class. 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.120 This would be like multi class in your dn D character. UH. 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.520 And and just setting out to achieve all of his 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:50.360 or her goals by just quadruple classing with wizard Presoorcerer Warlock, 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.840 all to just to take something that would normally take 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.160 lifetimes to achieve in a single lifetime. In the D 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.960 n D comparison, you're combining the arcane and the divine. 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:04.760 Fisher has a wonderful quote. I think that drives this home. 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:08.080 He says, belief in the awesome possibility of harnessing the 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:12.720 powers needed to achieve enlightenment in this existence inspired complex 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:17.680 and mysterious practices. Such secret doctrines, visualizations, and magical powers 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:20.160 were not things that could be easily spelled out in text, 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:24.320 and the Vadriana literature remains as complex and mysterious as 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:26.960 any of the world's religions. So, in other words, to 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:31.080 organize this vast system of beliefs and gods and ways 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.160 of thinking about life in the universe, UH, to make 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:39.480 it manageable, practitioners developed. Practitioners developed an enormous complex visual system, 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.480 an artistic tradition complete with a host of instruments, symbols, 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:48.040 and images. So all of this, if we take it 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:52.360 all together, it touches upon a lot of topics that 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:54.040 Robert and I have covered on stuff to blow your 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:56.559 mind in the last year. I'd say, like a theme 0:12:56.600 --> 0:13:02.920 that we've been working upon is mythology, archetypes, uh sort 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:08.040 of cultural resonance of those things and how they allow 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.600 us to make sense of the world. Right Like a 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:16.120 very practical, objective standpoint, human beings need all of this, 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:21.720 whether it's Buddhism or Christianity or jedi Ism, UH, to 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.640 help them make sense of how the world works. And 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:28.359 this form of Buddhism just presents a an incredibly complex 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.280 and esoteric answer to that question. And in doing so, 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.560 essentially the practitioner is saying, Look, you're gonna need to 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:37.200 look at a lot of charts, a lot of graphs, 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.720 a lot of pie. This is kind of the equivalent 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:43.760 would be like a really in depth power point presentation. 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:45.520 We have to look at a bunch of charts and 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:49.120 graphs to get the meaning of what's going on. These 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.360 various symbols and artistic conditions play into that as well, 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.800 and among these one finds the mandala. Yeah, why don't 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:58.240 we take a break and then we come back. We're 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.199 going to define the basics of the man end to 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:04.000 look for you so you can understand how we're going 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:12.040 from power point presentation to the art. Alright, we're back. 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:17.600 So the basics here of the mandola. So when you're saying, like, 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.480 what is it literally, I've seen some people say have circles, 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:24.160 some saying arc. I've also seen it translated as quote 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:29.640 an essence protecting environment. They're ultimately though, nothing short of 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:33.520 a representation of the entire sacred universe. Yeah. The way 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:35.640 that I've read about it is that it's a symbol 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.760 of the entire universe, and it can be represented anywhere. 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.200 It could be on a wall, or on paper or 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.680 in the sand, like we talked about earlier, or entirely 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:47.840 in your mind. Uh, And its purpose is to represent 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:53.040 an imaginary palace that is contemplated upon during meditation. Yeah. 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:54.880 They can be two D, they can be three D 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.800 in the form of a sculpture or even architecture, or 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.960 they can be this this mental instruct and ultimately, I 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:05.560 guess the physical representations are about creating the mental constructed mind. 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:09.760 I really like the way that Robert F. Thurman explained 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:12.280 it in his translation of the Tibetanan Book of the Dead, 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:14.840 which I read from from at the top of this episode. 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:19.840 He said, they are three dimensional perfected environments Buddha verses 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:23.359 or Buddha lands, created by the enlightenment of an individual 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.080 individual as a place that expresses his or her enlightenment. 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.480 They are realms through which other beings can be incorporated 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:34.880 into that enlightenment perspective. So since it's kind of like, 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.240 here's a here's a picture, here's a physical representation of 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:41.120 my head space that allows me to make sense of 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.320 the complexities of reality. Here, gaze into it and pour 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.480 this into your mind. So I may be stretching this 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:50.680 a little bit, but let me continue on from what 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.480 we were talking about with Dungeons and dragons are okay 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:56.960 to me? What this sounds like is world building in fiction, 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.920 like science fiction or fantasy. Right that you're you're creating 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.440 an alternative to the real world, and you're giving it 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:10.560 its own culture and deities and economy and locations. Right, 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.200 And the mandola uh sort of encapsulates all of those 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.480 in one artistic representation. Yeah, I think I think that's 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.520 a fair comparison, because when you think of a fantasy 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.560 book in particular, or done as in Dragons Module, you 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.680 inevitably think of maps and in number, and there's a 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:29.040 there's a lot of map like structure in these as 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.040 we'll get into the basic cosmology of the Buddhist universe 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.680 with its Holy Mountain at the center, like that's very 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:38.880 much a part of it. Uh. But yeah, ultimately, their 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:45.040 their symbolic expressions, they're teaching devices, their externalizations of complex theologies. 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:46.440 You know. Way you can think of them as thumb 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.000 drives of the gods, I guess. Yeah, Well, I mean 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:51.400 one of the things I read about Tibetan mandolas in 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.880 particular is that the deities within them, they're represented as 0:16:55.920 --> 0:17:00.480 embodying philosophical views. They serve as role models for us 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.600 to look at and remember, Okay, this is what has 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:08.080 come before me, these are the lessons learned by my ancestors. 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:10.760 What can I take from this to guide my life? 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:15.199 Getting entailed number of symbols and essentially metasymbols. Yeah, it 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:18.640 reminds me, Okay, this is what I think of this 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:23.240 idea that number one, culture is how we understand the world. Uh, 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:27.200 and number two, storytelling is our means of transmitting culture 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.240 to one another as human beings. And then third that 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:35.320 the arte types that are within such stories they teach 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:39.440 us lessons about the human experience from other people's perspectives. Right. 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.640 So this is where and I am sort of trying 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.320 to pull this together on my own. It's a little 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:46.960 bit of young and stuff from what we've talked about 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:52.960 mythology before, but I'm starting to see storytellers as modern shamans. 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.800 And the mandola seems to me like another expression of that. 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:01.240 It's just done with art instead of words. Yeah, I 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:05.840 think so words or sand even, Yeah, exactly. So we've 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:10.320 mentioned these sand mandolas. Um, the construction of them has 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.399 to be affirmed as a ritual, which is very shamanistic. Right. 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:17.240 In order for the mandala to transmit positive energy to 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:21.240 its viewers, it's drawn in a ceremony, and the ceremony 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:25.119 includes monks chanting and dancing. Uh. They use these metal 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:29.280 funnels that are called check per and apparently they vibrate 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.000 in such a way that it causes the colored sand 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.520 inside to flow out like a liquid. When they're making them. Yeah, 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:36.840 I want to say, they kind of tap them on 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.240 the side as they go with a little metal implement 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.879 and it causes the like almost the individual granules of 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.760 sand to come out, and they just make a line 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.040 with it. Yeah. And what's important to note about these 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.720 is they're not permanent. They're not meant to be permanent. 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:55.520 They're destroyed by these same monks. It serves as a 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.160 reminder that our lives are impermanent. Uh. And the sand 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:01.600 itself is rich turned to an urn, which is then 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.640 that sand is then placed in water. So they see 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:06.440 it again going back to what we were talking about 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:08.680 sky burial. They see this as a gift that goes 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:11.800 back into the environment, back into the universe. I see 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:14.520 some more accidental synchronicity between this episode and the other 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.240 episode we recorded this week that on Human Bound Human 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.680 flesh Bound books, because this, the creation of the sand 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:25.840 Mandola is an acceptance of impermanence, that anything that we 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.440 make is just not gonna last, whereas the flesh bound 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.320 book is more in the tradition of this will last forever, 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:36.600 This person's flesh will be will be immortalized in this 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:39.960 this tone well, or it's you know, I know that 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.680 I'll be gone and I will just become an object 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:45.440 at some point. So I want to give the parts 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.000 of my body uh to be used for other purposes, 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:53.800 such as holding these books of anatomy together object permanence. Uh. Now, 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:55.639 I do want to point out that the use of 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:59.280 art to convey complex religious ideas can be found many 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:03.520 other places. Well that the three faced Christs of medieval 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:07.320 art instantly come to mind. These were not super common, 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.359 but it was only a brief period of time, and 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.640 the Church eventually decided that they did not care for it. 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:16.679 But you have something like the Holy Trinity in Christian 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.480 Catholic traditions, how do you convey that to the lay person? Well, 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:22.960 one way is to have an image of Christ that 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:28.760 has three faces, essentially a monstrous Christ. But it tries 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:33.359 to encapsulate something that is very difficult to explain language. Yeah, 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:38.000 I'm thinking of these weird monsters from the Transformers called 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:39.760 the Quinto song. Oh yeah, I love the U They 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.159 had the three faces that rotated around. I wonder if 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:45.000 there's some connection there. I don't know, but if you 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.000 see that the picture of the three faced Christ, you 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:49.680 can't help but think of those guys, just no tentacles 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.119 now and then another example from Christian tradition will be 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.640 the crucifix and the cross itself. So think about this. 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:02.120 The prefrontal cortex as part of the mammalian brain. Uh, 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:05.879 this is responsible for relating symbols and abstract concepts. The 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:12.080 unconscious processing prior to perception usually takes around three hundred milliseconds, 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:15.520 So it's not that surprising that as a psychologist, Adam 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.920 Altar discovered Christians tend to behave more honestly, when they're 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.160 exposed to an image of the crucifix, even if they're 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:25.680 they have no conscious memory of having seen it, They're 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.040 just exposed to it and just the power of the 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:33.680 symbol helped inform their behavior. Literally, the power of Christ 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.080 compels you, yeah, or at least the power of Christian symbolism. Uh. 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:40.119 And in nine there was an experiment from the University 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:43.520 of Michigan that found that Christians felt less virtuous after 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.919 subliminal exposure to an image of Pope John Paul the Second. 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:50.280 And there have been some secular experiments with this as well, 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.119 people tending to think more creatively when exposed to the 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:57.399 Apple computer logo or an incandescent lightbulb. So that's just 0:21:57.720 --> 0:21:59.760 just a few examples to drive home just the power 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:04.560 of symbols, the power of non linguistic information, uh, even 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:06.879 into small examples, and if you roll it all up 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.240 into essentially a meta symbol, as we see in the Mandala, 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:14.000 you can see how this does really help to to 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:18.560 to form the mindset of the the younger Buddhist trying 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:21.119 to learn how to perceive reality. Yeah, I think that 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:23.600 this is just a version of that that we here 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.760 in the West maybe aren't as familiar with. How to 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:28.399 go back to what we said ere there about about 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.200 maps um the kind of mandol as we were talking 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.240 about here, it's an organized system that explains the cosmos 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:36.560 in terms of the body, in terms of a building, 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.520 in terms of the physical universe. So they referenced the 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:45.200 notion of the Buddhist cosmos as centered by Holy Mount Meru, 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:48.439 which is the home of gods and Buddhas, and surrounded 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:52.120 by seven oceans and seven concentric mountain ranges. And beyond 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:55.960 these ranges you find another ocean, islands that include human habitation, 0:22:56.000 --> 0:22:59.480 and finally a great wall of rock enclosing everything. Generally, 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:01.480 you know, square of shape because the image itself is 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:07.119 question interesting. So a mandola is spatial, it's symmetrical, and 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.639 it's the presentation of all of these ideas. Yeah, so 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:12.879 you've got an example here of sort of how you 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:15.919 would build out a mandala from the my understanding, as 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.160 you start at the center and you build going out. Yeah, 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:20.760 I don't. I think that's or at least that's the 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:22.439 way that I feel like we look at them, we 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:25.160 tend to process them. So you have a central deity, 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:28.840 you know, or Buddha or other figure. You have concentric 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:33.400 circles of guardian deities. You have square palace grounds featuring gateways, 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:36.680 you know, ways to get in and out, uh circle 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:42.399 of create cremation grounds representing the phenomenal world direction deities. 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:46.320 And then the outer walls oceans, barriers at the very 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:48.480