Speaker 1: But the Catholics were saying they could pave your way
Speaker 1: to hell if you gave them money. So our scientists
Speaker 1: tell us that except they have freedom from hell, but
Speaker 1: they don't have heaven. They just have nothingness. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Bob Thurman, a professor
Speaker 1: of Indo Tibetan Buddhist studies in the Department of Religion
Speaker 1: at Columbia University. He's also the president of the Tibet
Speaker 1: House US, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and
Speaker 1: promotion of Tibetan civilization, and he is also the president
Speaker 1: of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. Bob is the
Speaker 1: author of many books, including the one him and Eric
Speaker 1: discuss here, Wisdom Is Bliss For Friendly Fun Facts that
Speaker 1: Can Change Your Life. Hi Bob, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, I'm very happy to be here with you again. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is a pleasure to have you back on. I
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it. We're going to be discussing your latest book,
Speaker 1: which is called Wisdom is Bliss for Friendly Fun Facts
Speaker 1: that Can Change Your Life. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: we'll start, like we always do, with a parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One it is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up his grandfather
Speaker 1: and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you
Speaker 1: do well. I think that's a lovely parable in the
Speaker 1: sense that it implies that you have the choice to
Speaker 1: choose which front to feed, and also, of course, even
Speaker 1: more basically, that everyone has both sides in their being,
Speaker 1: and and yet they're not doomed to follow the fierce
Speaker 1: fun or the angry one or follow the good one.
Speaker 1: In a way, they are presented as kind of equal,
Speaker 1: and that the one who you feel in your freedom
Speaker 1: as a free being, which we basically are, you can
Speaker 1: choose to strengthen the good one. And it doesn't sort
Speaker 1: of address the issue of do you want to kill
Speaker 1: off the bad one or do you want to change
Speaker 1: the bad one into being an ally of the good one?
Speaker 1: That cter, I mean, you could take it further, which
Speaker 1: he leaves the Grandpa. Grandpa leaves that open. But I
Speaker 1: like it in that sense that at least you know
Speaker 1: your own shadow side, and you choose to be the
Speaker 1: good one if if you're smart in a way. I
Speaker 1: think it would be nice if they continue their conversation,
Speaker 1: and if Grandpa had wisdom. I think maybe he would
Speaker 1: say how the good one would relate to the bad one,
Speaker 1: because of course it always is the danger. Even feed
Speaker 1: the good one, the bad one will attack it and
Speaker 1: destroy it. And he's sort of not addressing that because
Speaker 1: he's talking to a grandchild, apparently a young one. So
Speaker 1: he says he's called to helping him cultivate the awareness
Speaker 1: of his freedom and of the fact that he has
Speaker 1: a shadow side, but he he's not resolving the issue.
Speaker 1: I'm a happy ending person I always wanted actually as
Speaker 1: a child, which to me is a proof of former life,
Speaker 1: because I didn't do anything great in this life particularly,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty much like I've been hiding in my
Speaker 1: evory tower of the educational world. And I didn't do much.
Speaker 1: But I always didn't like tragedies. I mean, I couldn't
Speaker 1: understand them, but I didn't like ending with the tragedies.
Speaker 1: I wanted somewhere beyond the suffering of the tragic hero.
Speaker 1: And I didn't like movies that ended in misery. You know,
Speaker 1: I really didn't and our books or anything. I wanted
Speaker 1: a happy ending, and I still do. Well, that's interesting, No,
Speaker 1: but he has ever suggested that I can remember that
Speaker 1: somebody ought to write the rest of the Wolf story.
Speaker 1: That's a brilliant idea. I pulled this from near the
Speaker 1: end of your book because I thought it spoke so
Speaker 1: well to the parable. I'm just gonna read it to
Speaker 1: you and the listeners here because I think it's basically
Speaker 1: the parable. Uh, you wrote that means you read it
Speaker 1: all the way to the end. That's right. The Buddhist
Speaker 1: view is that the human being is completely malleable in
Speaker 1: their wiring. Any human being can become a saint and
Speaker 1: very easy going, and any human being can become quite
Speaker 1: evil and very very difficult if they go on the
Speaker 1: dark side, and all degrees in between. That's basically the
Speaker 1: Wolf parable. And then you say, actually, every human being
Speaker 1: is constantly changing all the time. If you don't become
Speaker 1: more conscious about how you change and what changes things
Speaker 1: and what influences you, and you do not choose what
Speaker 1: you allow to influence you by using your intelligent, discriminate nation,
Speaker 1: then you will probably be changed for the worst. That's wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, my wisdom is Bliss book about how it
Speaker 1: is to bliss energy, joy energy, that we're going to
Speaker 1: meet these challenges and we're gonna deal with the bad
Speaker 1: rules and we're gonna reinforce the good ones. And the
Speaker 1: issue of the how if you just kind of let
Speaker 1: yourself go and the stream, you will probably be conditioned
Speaker 1: towards the dark side. Our civilization, or would be civilization
Speaker 1: on the planet is based on fear to a great degree.
Speaker 1: For the last five thousand years, I would say it
Speaker 1: seems that there was a time when the women, the
Speaker 1: female side of the human team was stronger, if not dominant,
Speaker 1: and perhaps even dominant the simper thing called the civilization
Speaker 1: of the Goddess. If some archeologists do away, and there
Speaker 1: there was much less violence, and things were more peaceful,
Speaker 1: and there were less fortified cities, etcetera, etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: these are male people came off the great steps of Eurasia.
Speaker 1: This is I'm talking sort of Eurasia Center, because that's
Speaker 1: what we have the writing about. We don't really know
Speaker 1: about the Mayans and Aztecs except through European propaganda, so
Speaker 1: we don't know about the America's in the ancient times,
Speaker 1: so I'm not talking about that, but we don't know
Speaker 1: about Eurasia. So we've been conditioned to feel we need
Speaker 1: to depend on leaders. We've been terrified that reality is
Speaker 1: nature read in truth and flaw, that other beings are
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous, so we need to depend on the warrior
Speaker 1: king or the high priest. And we're sort of taught
Speaker 1: that ignorance is bliss because reality is very dangerous. And
Speaker 1: nowadays the version of it by the scientists is that
Speaker 1: we're this lonely crunch of features on this one only
Speaker 1: planet in this sort of vast universe of these stars,
Speaker 1: and although they look nice twinkling at night, they're hot
Speaker 1: and boiling and in between is a gulf of total
Speaker 1: death where you'd explode, you know, but if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a missile in man suit and it's our own
Speaker 1: thing is very fragile. But luckily, if we get all killed,
Speaker 1: if we wrecked the whole place, as we were obviously
Speaker 1: doing at the moment, there will just be nothing. So
Speaker 1: at least there's no hell. And so the you know,
Speaker 1: the the equivalent of the indulgence that Marton Luther was
Speaker 1: disturbed about in the time of the Reformation, that the
Speaker 1: Catholics were saying they could pave your way to hell
Speaker 1: if you gave them money. So our scientists tell us
Speaker 1: that except they have freedom from hell, but they don't
Speaker 1: have heaven. They just have nothingness. But at least it's
Speaker 1: anesthetic we don't have. You know, their promise us that
Speaker 1: we won't feel pain after death, you know, which is
Speaker 1: what we're really scared of. We tend to ourselves that
Speaker 1: we're scared of being annihilated, and the scientists reinforced that
Speaker 1: idea to make themselves feel much of But actually nobody
Speaker 1: is afraid of annihilation. When they're in serious pain. They
Speaker 1: seek it, actually they create it because it's anesthesia. And
Speaker 1: so this is a false dispensation that the science priesthood,
Speaker 1: the scientistic priesthood, not scientific, but scientistic priesthood, offers to
Speaker 1: the planet why we should follow their prescriptions about lack
Speaker 1: of spirituality and lack of seeking a higher sort of
Speaker 1: level in ourselves. So therefore they lead us into a
Speaker 1: kind of apathy about just following the currents in the culture.
Speaker 1: But you know how if at this moment we follow
Speaker 1: either the current of some religious fanatic culture where you
Speaker 1: were based on fear, create of hell. So you follow
Speaker 1: a certain god, either Hindu or Buddhist or Jewish or
Speaker 1: must and that god will save you when everybody else
Speaker 1: goes down the drain, and people who don't believe in
Speaker 1: that god, they will go down the drain. So you're
Speaker 1: in your isolated little cleek. So that's one side you
Speaker 1: can you can sort of put your blind faith in
Speaker 1: or the other side is who put your blind faith
Speaker 1: in annihilation? In anesthesia and nothingness, And you can just
Speaker 1: flow with the secular culture or one of the religious
Speaker 1: cultures and not take care of the situation and be
Speaker 1: responsible with the idea that you're going to be involved
Speaker 1: in it. Whatever you're just like, you will not abuse
Speaker 1: your body in use, usually because you want to live older,
Speaker 1: so you won't do things that will damage the body
Speaker 1: and make you suffer when you're older. And we do
Speaker 1: that as a practicality usually, and sometimes we don't know
Speaker 1: what's harming us when we're young, so we'll get into
Speaker 1: bad hatits, of course, but the point is basically we
Speaker 1: try not to because we look forward to a consequence.
Speaker 1: So similarly, if all the humans on this planet look
Speaker 1: forward to a consequence based on how they're living, they
Speaker 1: would not do anything harmful to other creatures. They would
Speaker 1: not be harmful to future generations by ricking the planet
Speaker 1: they would be much more responsible and less psychotic. So
Speaker 1: so that is what I'm sort of saying there, that
Speaker 1: the wisdom is bliss view and the main thing that
Speaker 1: that I feel the Buddha was trying to convey, But
Speaker 1: I also think it's what Jesus was trying to convey. Actually,
Speaker 1: all of them they did do that. Muhammad was trying
Speaker 1: to convey it. The great Jewish prophets in the many
Speaker 1: rate saintly rabbis conveyed, the Hindu great yogis and enlightened beings,
Speaker 1: the Daoists, etcetera. Every great spiritual founder conveyed to people
Speaker 1: that reality is good. And even the scientists at first,
Speaker 1: who thought that nature was God a gift to us,
Speaker 1: and if we studied nature, we would without dogma, and
Speaker 1: just by whatever we observed we would be able to
Speaker 1: manage well in this beautiful lineup which God gave us.
Speaker 1: They were quite religious, the early scientists, and that in
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment Western enlightened seventeenth century, they were not anti
Speaker 1: religion like the current one. But I don't blame the
Speaker 1: current ones for being anti religion in the sense that
Speaker 1: the religions have become very dogmatic Unfurtunately, they also become
Speaker 1: dogmatic that there's no spirituality, and that has doomed people
Speaker 1: to just follow their current unfortunately, you know, counting on
Speaker 1: no consequence of how they behaved. But what the great
Speaker 1: founders and teachers have told us East West spiritual scientific
Speaker 1: is reality is good and you get back what you
Speaker 1: put into it. You know, what goes around comes around
Speaker 1: those kind of statements, and so you've got to put
Speaker 1: good stuff out there. And the good stuff for us
Speaker 1: to put out there would be to listen to Granted
Speaker 1: Turnberg and to take care of our grandchildren's future and
Speaker 1: immediately turn off fossil fuel machinery, methane producing feed lots,
Speaker 1: bad agriculture, chemical agriculture, etcetera. All of this we would
Speaker 1: immediately stop, not just by fake stuff politicians tell you,
Speaker 1: but just turn it off right away. And then we
Speaker 1: use all our technological genius to create alternative energy sources,
Speaker 1: which we know how to do. Actually, ready, let's start
Speaker 1: sort of at the beginning of your book and talk
Speaker 1: about what you're referring to as four friendly fun facts.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you, Eric. That's quid, which are normally
Speaker 1: referred to as the four Noble truths of Buddhism. I
Speaker 1: love the fact that you've rephrased it is four friendly
Speaker 1: fun facts. First, let's start with why are you calling
Speaker 1: them that versus the four noble truths. Let's start with
Speaker 1: kind of why you're titled at that. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: the noble truth is not wrong, So it's not that
Speaker 1: I'm saying it's wrong, but I'm saying it has connotations
Speaker 1: about the early encounter with Buddha's teaching, Buddha's mission and
Speaker 1: movement by Western people. Noble is a class term, which
Speaker 1: Buddha changed from being a social class term to being
Speaker 1: a psychological class term, meaning and ignoble to him, or
Speaker 1: what he would call a commoner is someone who is
Speaker 1: very self preoccupied and self centered and who just sort
Speaker 1: of hardly aware of the existence of other people we
Speaker 1: might say narcissistic, as some psychologists might say. And therefore
Speaker 1: it's quite miserable because they're only in their own world
Speaker 1: and nobody else matters not much to them, and other
Speaker 1: people end up being not that far with him actually,
Speaker 1: because they just only always out to feed themselves. Talk
Speaker 1: about feed the one you feed. They just feed themselves.
Speaker 1: So then that's commoner. And then noble is someone who
Speaker 1: develops an awareness which can be done methodically through education.
Speaker 1: Some people have a natural are born with a stronger
Speaker 1: affinity for that, but everyone has both possibilities in the way,
Speaker 1: they're the good and the bad world, and the good
Speaker 1: one is the altruistic one, and that's very strengthened by
Speaker 1: an education where they really learned that actually other people
Speaker 1: are just as important as themselves, and in a way,
Speaker 1: if they don't realize the importance of the other they're
Speaker 1: not really recognizing their own importance. And they even realize
Speaker 1: they're more important when they realize they can do something
Speaker 1: for the many others that makes it more important to
Speaker 1: Altruism strengthens the sense of self worth actually naturally automatically.
Speaker 1: So it's really as a dinomalised to say, if you
Speaker 1: want to be successfully selfish, meaning get to have a
Speaker 1: good outcome, be more altruistic, because when you're when you
Speaker 1: care about others, the first person who gets happier is you,
Speaker 1: because once you're looking only at how happy you are,
Speaker 1: you're never satisfied. Yours want more, whereas when you look
Speaker 1: at others happiness a lot. There's a lot of things
Speaker 1: you can do for them all and then you forget
Speaker 1: about how unhappy you are and get better. So that's
Speaker 1: what noble means. Noble noble in his use of it,
Speaker 1: but is he's saying just by birth that doesn't give
Speaker 1: you altruism. Although a noble should have no bless oblige
Speaker 1: and take care of the people who depend on the
Speaker 1: noble person in a good society, they do, but actually
Speaker 1: often they don't, unfortunately. So noble is when you really
Speaker 1: feel the pulse of others as equal to your own
Speaker 1: in importance, and you become more we oriented than I oriented,
Speaker 1: and that makes you happier and healthier. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: what noble meant. And but then I'm saying, since we
Speaker 1: have a double connotation of noble as some sort of
Speaker 1: high faluting, it's not a person that friendly. Is a
Speaker 1: good definition for friendly, because your true friend is one
Speaker 1: who cares about you and you can rely on them
Speaker 1: because to them you are important, and that's a true friend.
Speaker 1: The word of truth is again not wrong. The words
Speaker 1: setiac can Mian truth, but truth has too manies. In English,
Speaker 1: one is reality itself and one is propositions about reality.
Speaker 1: You know, as I sort of said in different words
Speaker 1: before the third noble truth or the third friendly fact
Speaker 1: that the Buddha taught that it was the root of
Speaker 1: his whole popularity and usefulness. Is that the deepest level
Speaker 1: of reality, when you discover what it really is, you
Speaker 1: find that it is itself is good, it's nice, it's love,
Speaker 1: it's abundance, it's energy that can help you, not the destructive.
Speaker 1: And so you you should not have ultimate fear. You
Speaker 1: should be afraid of some temporarily damaging, a ruinous thing.
Speaker 1: When you something you feel is separate from you, like
Speaker 1: a scorpion is about to see you at its tail,
Speaker 1: you should be afraid of that. So fear can be useful.
Speaker 1: But the ultimate, the level of everything beyond sort of
Speaker 1: life and death, or maybe in the heart of life
Speaker 1: and death both is goodness, and it's a stronger force.
Speaker 1: And it's actually quite similar to what theists believe. But
Speaker 1: Buddha didn't necessarily think it was one person monopolizing that goodness.
Speaker 1: They think that same goodness is in the reality of
Speaker 1: every person and every even stone and object and planet
Speaker 1: and whatever. And it's the nature of the final reality.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's like the dark matter and the
Speaker 1: dark energy and the bright one three bright said dark,
Speaker 1: as we are told by the physicist nowadays. But it's
Speaker 1: not really that it's dark, is that it's transparent, so
Speaker 1: it's invisible. But that invisible reality is goodness. It's total goodness.
Speaker 1: And that's what the that's what nice monotheists believe because
Speaker 1: they think God is good. But the fanatic ones they
Speaker 1: don't care good or bad. They just think God is
Speaker 1: their God, and they think they can be bad in
Speaker 1: the name of God and and and the gods. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't really like it. According to Buddha, the gods
Speaker 1: are unhappy with that. So that's the reason I came
Speaker 1: to friendly facts because reality is friendly. It likes us.
Speaker 1: Whenever we let go to reality is better for us
Speaker 1: and we try to impose something on reality. I love that.
Speaker 1: And four friendly fun facts is great alliteration, Bob, it's
Speaker 1: great alliteration. It's fun to say for friendly fun facts.
Speaker 1: That's right. I could have added free freedom. That is
Speaker 1: the friendly freedom of reality too. You know, let's walk
Speaker 1: through what these four friendly fun facts are. I don't
Speaker 1: think we've done an episode where we really took a
Speaker 1: part and examined the four noble truths or in this
Speaker 1: case the four friendly fun facts. So this might be
Speaker 1: sort of a Buddhism one oh one here on what
Speaker 1: they are. So what is the first friendly fun fact?
Speaker 1: I just I can't get enough of saying it. First
Speaker 1: one is that if you continue not to take responsibility
Speaker 1: to understand your reality and the ultimate reality, which is
Speaker 1: your ultimate reality as well as the world. If you do,
Speaker 1: you will be stressed out, you will be frustrated, but
Speaker 1: it's still okay because you're going to find it and
Speaker 1: then actually anyway, because the knocks will get you to
Speaker 1: take it more seriously. You know the stressful life, and
Speaker 1: it's not as extreme as Socrates once said, the unexamined
Speaker 1: life is not worth living. It is definitely worth living,
Speaker 1: especially as a human. Humans are the luckiest of all
Speaker 1: the life from including more lucky than the gods. Would
Speaker 1: have certainly believed there were gods. He was not against
Speaker 1: a theism, but he just didn't say there was one
Speaker 1: that's completely in charge of it all. That's all. It
Speaker 1: didn't blame one perfecting or give one credit for everything.
Speaker 1: They're all helping or and there are few who are
Speaker 1: a little bit clumsy and harmful now, but they're there
Speaker 1: So the point is human is the best because we're vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and yet we have a kind of divine intelligence and
Speaker 1: we have a close to an enlightened intelligence, and so
Speaker 1: we can have a meaningful life. But even if we
Speaker 1: don't use it well and we just sort of follow
Speaker 1: the herd, we don't take the road less travel. Let's
Speaker 1: say it's readinitely worth living because life itself is a teacher.
Speaker 1: It will teach us. So one of my motives in
Speaker 1: the book was to counteract the atmosphere emerging from a
Speaker 1: lot of Buddhist teachings and teachers and misunderstandings of Buddhism
Speaker 1: that Buddha is very much emphasizing suffering and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to suffer, and if you don't suffer all the time,
Speaker 1: you're somehow being unrealistic. And that's very wrong. But in
Speaker 1: a way that reflects what other world scientific traditions kind
Speaker 1: of tell us that wisdom is being resigned to the
Speaker 1: basically inadequate level of life. It's a bad planet. Nature
Speaker 1: wants to eat us up. And you know, we're never
Speaker 1: going to be that happy, so being miserable is realistic
Speaker 1: or something like that, and and Buddha's against that it's
Speaker 1: just saying, if you don't find reality, which you're capable
Speaker 1: of finding and is right there in front of your face,
Speaker 1: In fact, it is in your face. But if you
Speaker 1: keep neglecting and living in denial of it, it will
Speaker 1: be stressful. That's the first friendly fact. Don't expect if
Speaker 1: you get to be president, if you even get to
Speaker 1: be God, if you get to be whatever you think
Speaker 1: is the ultimate state of a separate being from every
Speaker 1: other being, that it'll be. You'll be fine. That will
Speaker 1: be the limit. Then no, unless you see reality, you
Speaker 1: will continue to be, as you say, stressed or to
Speaker 1: suffer if we don't see reality. So number two second
Speaker 1: friendly fun fact. Now this is where friendliness gets stronger
Speaker 1: because you know what we can diagnose the cause of
Speaker 1: the stress, and it's very simple. You think that you
Speaker 1: are the main center of everything, and even you're told
Speaker 1: by some psychologies and some traditions, you should think that
Speaker 1: if that's what you're supposed to sink, and that's very
Speaker 1: very erroneous, and it's obviously futile situation. If I'm the
Speaker 1: most important team, I'm immediately paranoid because I realized nobody
Speaker 1: else agrees with me. They are On top of that,
Speaker 1: they have the temerity to think they are the most
Speaker 1: important things, and they know I don't agree with them.
Speaker 1: So it's a war of ale against all. As Hobbs said,
Speaker 1: you know the Western guy, and you lose, and you
Speaker 1: because there's so many of them, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: the most greatest, you're gonna lose. They're gonna bring you down.
Speaker 1: So it's not even rocket science, but it is a
Speaker 1: good diagnosis because it's not merely moralistic telling you you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be self centered. What it's saying is when you
Speaker 1: have a self centered element, because you're human and because
Speaker 1: your culture has made you like that, and when you
Speaker 1: were in previous lives as an animal and as a god,
Speaker 1: you are like that and whatever you were. But luckily
Speaker 1: it's a human You can become self reflective, and you
Speaker 1: can investigate yourself and quite easily discover that you're just
Speaker 1: one of the ones, you're not the one. As my
Speaker 1: old Mongolians, in a very simple way teacher used to say,
Speaker 1: it's correct that you're a reality. You're real. But the
Speaker 1: problem is each of us tends to think we're the
Speaker 1: really realist, and that's a mistake. Others are equally real,
Speaker 1: because again some people will misunderstand the Buddha's teaching as
Speaker 1: and our old spiritual teaching is you have to be
Speaker 1: somehow self destructive. You have to say, I don't even exist,
Speaker 1: and I'll be a martyred to destroy me, and then
Speaker 1: I'm then I'm saintly and that's quite wrong. Your ego
Speaker 1: is very useful. It should make you want to use
Speaker 1: your human life in the best way possible to be
Speaker 1: the best kind of being possible. And and that's a
Speaker 1: very easy to see what would be the best kind
Speaker 1: of being totally happy and totally loving, maximally capable of
Speaker 1: making others happy, although ultimately one of the things is
Speaker 1: you can't make any other person happy. They have to
Speaker 1: find that. You can only help them find their happiness
Speaker 1: in themselves. So that's the second noble truth is the diagnosis. Yes,
Speaker 1: And so it struck me when I was reading you know,
Speaker 1: you summarize these things at one point and you said,
Speaker 1: what's the cause of our confusion? We talked about not
Speaker 1: seeing reality and the first one, what's the cause the
Speaker 1: causes self centeredness? And it took me back because when
Speaker 1: I got sober in a way, back when There's a
Speaker 1: line in the A Big Book that says, the root
Speaker 1: of our problem is selfishness, self centeredness, And I was
Speaker 1: blown away by that. And again, I think what you
Speaker 1: say there is so important because if when we hear that,
Speaker 1: oftentimes we're told that in a moralizing way. You know,
Speaker 1: you're so selfish, you're so self centered. What I understood
Speaker 1: when I read that, I mean didn't fully understand. I've
Speaker 1: been trying to live my way into it for thirty years.
Speaker 1: But what hit me so clearly, and what you're saying
Speaker 1: is that that strategy is doomed to cause suffering because,
Speaker 1: like you said, I think I'm the most important thing
Speaker 1: in the world. You think you're the most important thing
Speaker 1: in the world. Everybody else thinks the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: and boom. We are always in misalignment. And when we
Speaker 1: can just loosen up on that a little bit, at
Speaker 1: whatever level, we're capable of slowly shedding that belief that
Speaker 1: we are the center of everything. Boy, does life get better? Right?
Speaker 1: That's from of all. I think you put that so beautifully,
Speaker 1: And you know the issue of addiction, it's so important,
Speaker 1: and the diagnosis involves analyzing the system of habitual what
Speaker 1: they call claisha Sansford word claisha, which people I also
Speaker 1: used to translate as affliction mental affliction because it's not
Speaker 1: only an emotion, it can also be some sort of
Speaker 1: rigid idea, you know, it can be a rigid concept
Speaker 1: as well as an emotion. But they're usually hatred delusion.
Speaker 1: Delusion is where their concepts come in. And then greed
Speaker 1: and jealousy and exaggerated pride, arrogance, and but those are
Speaker 1: mental addictions and their addictions because you know, when you
Speaker 1: feel weak in the situation somebody is making problems for you,
Speaker 1: then anger comes in your mind and it's in your
Speaker 1: own voice, and it tells you, well, they're pushing me
Speaker 1: around because I'm not strong enough. But if I get angry,
Speaker 1: that will make me stronger. And at first it feels
Speaker 1: like you're stronger when you're in a rage, but actually
Speaker 1: any martial arts guy would just toss you out the window,
Speaker 1: turning your old imbalanced fury against itself and you know,
Speaker 1: staying cool and just getting out of your way and
Speaker 1: then you go run into a wall. And so those
Speaker 1: are addictions. Meant we have mental addictions. The root of
Speaker 1: of of substance addictions. Which are so spectacular in our society, though,
Speaker 1: is that we are not given in our education a
Speaker 1: way of understanding mental addictions that we could easily understand.
Speaker 1: And they are the roots by when you get free
Speaker 1: of the ment all addictions and you realize, hey, anger,
Speaker 1: don't You're free to choose not to follow the dictator
Speaker 1: of the anger, not to follow the dictator of the greed,
Speaker 1: not to follow the jealousy, not to follow the arrogance,
Speaker 1: to follow the delusion. I'm free. I don't have to
Speaker 1: have this rigid idea. I don't have to hit that guy.
Speaker 1: I don't have to do this that. When we find
Speaker 1: that freedom in our mind, then we become a little
Speaker 1: bit immune to that, and then we will also not
Speaker 1: be trapped. You know. The four friendly facts are actually
Speaker 1: like you have a friendly doctor, but it's not like
Speaker 1: a prophet or religion or moralizer or a preacher. You
Speaker 1: couldn't preach. He said, I can't make you happy. I
Speaker 1: can't give you a formula that if you adopt it
Speaker 1: and keep repeating it to yourself you'll be fine. It
Speaker 1: won't help. You have to do it yourself. But I
Speaker 1: give you a good prognosis, and I'm giving you a
Speaker 1: good set of therapies, but you have to apply them yourself.
Speaker 1: I love that about them. It's like a doctor's sing.
Speaker 1: So that's the second note. Truth is the diagnosis, and
Speaker 1: the third is the prognosis, which I'm trying to deliver
Speaker 1: ahead of time to everybody. And that prognosis has not
Speaker 1: become a Buddhist or it's not become any particular new identity.
Speaker 1: Don't have strap on to your ego yet another identity.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm a Buddhist, I'm an American, I'm a male,
Speaker 1: I'm a white, I'm a black, I'm a female, I'm
Speaker 1: i'm a red, I'm a green. Whatever it is. None
Speaker 1: of those things will help. What it is is you
Speaker 1: have to try to relax and start on learning self
Speaker 1: and opening. And at one place where Buddha said, well,
Speaker 1: give him a little credibility, he asked for a little credibility,
Speaker 1: but the way he got it was by being so
Speaker 1: incredibly joyful himself. He was a special effect. He was
Speaker 1: like e t you know, the guy make a little
Speaker 1: et in the closet. He made a light with his
Speaker 1: fingertip and he looked really harmless, but he could do
Speaker 1: like magical things and so then that he had a
Speaker 1: little credibility with a little kid. He thought, this guy
Speaker 1: is really cool. I'm not going to expose him to
Speaker 1: the CIA or the surgeons or somebody who wants to
Speaker 1: dissecting to find out how he does the super normal thing.
Speaker 1: So Buddha showed form. They say he made himself, created himself.
Speaker 1: He himself was a work of art, and and he
Speaker 1: showed sort of just like you know, we fall in
Speaker 1: love with some wonderful singer or people identified with movie
Speaker 1: stars or an ancient time, some handsome prince or a
Speaker 1: beautiful queen or something, or your fairy godmothers. You know,
Speaker 1: I would have these kind of ideal beings and then
Speaker 1: that would give you like hope, Well someone can be
Speaker 1: like that. I can be like the type of idea
Speaker 1: by depending on them. But in this case, the being
Speaker 1: who's liked I just said, well, yes you could be
Speaker 1: like that, but I can't make you like that, and
Speaker 1: all need depending on me and thinking I'm cool would help.
Speaker 1: You have to find the coolness in yourself, and then
Speaker 1: their credibility. It is just there that he showed us
Speaker 1: a by example. He just like a good parent, you know,
Speaker 1: a good parent can tell a lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: the kids, but ultimately the kids will believe how the
Speaker 1: parents behaves. If the parent talks all moralistic stuff and
Speaker 1: then they have a foul temper. They're very greedy and
Speaker 1: only think about their money. They're stingy about gishing out allowance.
Speaker 1: They are like nasty, punishing people because we don't believe
Speaker 1: that people. We we look at some of how they act,
Speaker 1: you know, by their deeds. Jesus himself said, just like Buddha,
Speaker 1: by their deeds, he shall know them. And so Buddha
Speaker 1: was a high prince, could have been a king, had
Speaker 1: an army he was, you know, kings are always commanders
Speaker 1: in chief in the old societies. And he left it all,
Speaker 1: he gave it back. He said, I want to really
Speaker 1: discover what is real, and I want to really help people,
Speaker 1: not boss them around. So then the third novel Truth
Speaker 1: is the prognosis. We are on the brink of freedom,
Speaker 1: the brink of super intelligence, the brink of awareness of
Speaker 1: what we really are, and the minute we know it,
Speaker 1: we will be it and we'll feel totally great, and
Speaker 1: then we'll be so helpful to everyone we love, and
Speaker 1: we'll find out we love more people than we talk.
Speaker 1: So it's a really good prognosis. Okay, then the fourth
Speaker 1: novel truth. I used to say even and people used
Speaker 1: to say, well, just like the second is the cause
Speaker 1: of the first, the fourth is the cause of the third.
Speaker 1: Just like you go to the doctor you have a symptom,
Speaker 1: They recognize the symptom, diagnose the cause, and then you
Speaker 1: have a prognosis and that gives you hope you can
Speaker 1: cure it, and then he gives you the therapy. Those
Speaker 1: analogies only go so far because in this case, the truth,
Speaker 1: the good result already there, actually has always been there. Nirvana,
Speaker 1: it's the ultimate, it's the actual reality of life in
Speaker 1: the deepest teaching. When you first reach it, maybe you
Speaker 1: think it's something different from life, but then that could
Speaker 1: be a trap, and then you get separated in another way.
Speaker 1: So it's uncaused. Nothing causes it, and that's why. But
Speaker 1: I can't just put you on a train and you
Speaker 1: arrived there. So what the fourth is is the therapy
Speaker 1: of how you can open your own mind, not how
Speaker 1: you can believe something, but how you can open your
Speaker 1: own mind to find in your own self and in
Speaker 1: the world around you, this reality, which is the freedom
Speaker 1: and the bliss bliss, freedom indivisible. They will say they
Speaker 1: called freedom voidness or emptiness, any emptiness of any stuck
Speaker 1: thing or absolute thing, and that's the infold path, and
Speaker 1: that's what the real main substance of the book is.
Speaker 1: Just to do a quick summary. First noble truth the diagnosis,
Speaker 1: which is if you're confused about reality, you will suffer.
Speaker 1: Second truth being that the main thing that causes us
Speaker 1: to be confused about reality is our self centeredness, are
Speaker 1: thinking we're separate. The third noble truth is, hey, this
Speaker 1: can get better. You can fix this. There's a path,
Speaker 1: and the fourth noble truth lays out what that path is,
Speaker 1: which is often called the eightfold path. And we're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to go through the whole eightfold
Speaker 1: path because we're near out of time. But there's a
Speaker 1: couple of parts of it that I wanted to hit
Speaker 1: that I thought would be really interesting. And the first
Speaker 1: is I want to jump all away to number eight
Speaker 1: on the eighth fold path and use the term instead
Speaker 1: of using oftentimes we say that these things on the
Speaker 1: eighth fold path are like right speech, right livelihood. You
Speaker 1: use the word realistic, so realistic speech, realistic livelihood. But
Speaker 1: the last one is realistic Somadhi, which is often translated
Speaker 1: as sort of realistic meditation. But what's interesting is you
Speaker 1: write that you may have heard that Buddhism is basically
Speaker 1: or even only meditation, and that meditation is the most
Speaker 1: important thing you can do, and that learning is okay,
Speaker 1: but not really important. Practice we are told as meditation.
Speaker 1: Say more about that, because yeah, I think that is
Speaker 1: one of the messages that came through for me in
Speaker 1: twenty years of reading Buddhist books was practice, practice, practice, meditate, meditate, meditate,
Speaker 1: And if you're not doing that, then you're not really
Speaker 1: engaged in the path and you're saying something different. So
Speaker 1: talk to me, Bob. So a couple of things there.
Speaker 1: But first let me just say I know you didn't
Speaker 1: want to start at the beginning, and I won't completely
Speaker 1: accept simply to say that we have this tendency to
Speaker 1: what I call absolute tize things, and we project sort
Speaker 1: of essential and unvarying realities into things. So we think
Speaker 1: that the table is really a table, and we think
Speaker 1: that I am really me most importantly, And so you
Speaker 1: could take world view as belief. You could translate us
Speaker 1: belief and you could say, Bob, you're wrong, but it's
Speaker 1: a mis dogmatic and you have to believe something. But
Speaker 1: in a way, what is the realistic belief? For few,
Speaker 1: it is fundamentally nothing but a belief in causation, that
Speaker 1: things are a process of causation or relativity. It's a
Speaker 1: belief in relativity. And why that is so powerful is
Speaker 1: that this subliminal belief that we have that is the
Speaker 1: cause of you know, when you mentioned the cause, you
Speaker 1: said self centeredness was the cause because of confusion. But
Speaker 1: the confusion is the root of the self centeredness. In over,
Speaker 1: it's just an exaggerated sense of fixed self. That's the
Speaker 1: absolute you see, the relative self is a great thing
Speaker 1: and we need that, and that's often the Buddhist there
Speaker 1: is statement of selflessness, which is very important budd Of teaching.
Speaker 1: And he means by that not that you don't exist,
Speaker 1: which is the wrong way of understanding it. He means
Speaker 1: by that that you exist within only with a relative self.
Speaker 1: Yourself is into relative with everything. It's not the absolute thing.
Speaker 1: So you could be forgiven for being self centered. When
Speaker 1: you feel that yourself is the absolute, you follow me
Speaker 1: because that's the realest thing. So therefore I'm going to
Speaker 1: be focused on it. When you realize that you're a relative,
Speaker 1: then you still have to be focused on it to
Speaker 1: be responsible for yourself and compassionate for your relative self,
Speaker 1: which feels and synic experiences and and has happiness and
Speaker 1: has suffering when it's not fully aware of the deeper
Speaker 1: reality of things. So that's very very key. And now
Speaker 1: the other end, the last one, somebody is not really meditation,
Speaker 1: but somebody means is total concentration, sort of the most
Speaker 1: absolute a relative being can get by being very able
Speaker 1: to use their mind in one point of focus on
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So it's sort of almost like willpower.
Speaker 1: It's like it's realistic realization. It isn't really like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I realized that all the reality is this relativity, and
Speaker 1: I've realized that by analyzing and investigating it, which is
Speaker 1: the most important thing. That's how Buddha. I'm on learning
Speaker 1: all sorts of dogmas and cultural conditionings and even neural
Speaker 1: wrong wirings from culture. And so it's investigation is the
Speaker 1: real practice of Buddhism in fact, and the meditation part
Speaker 1: is a toolment that that's really really important. They're not
Speaker 1: wrong in saying that it is really important. But within
Speaker 1: the two types of meditation, one of them called you
Speaker 1: could say, critical, analytic or investigative meditation, and the other
Speaker 1: one one point of deep focus meditation, which is the
Speaker 1: Somadi one. The more important one is the investigation one.
Speaker 1: So the seventh realistic path is realistic mindfulness, which means
Speaker 1: opening the mind to what's going on in the mind
Speaker 1: and in the world and noticing that I don't have
Speaker 1: to be angry and I don't have to be depressed.
Speaker 1: That's one choice I could make, but I could also
Speaker 1: choose not to be because I become aware of the
Speaker 1: mechanisms of the mind and how the what I'm addicted
Speaker 1: to one of my habits, and I can then gradually
Speaker 1: undo those habits, replace them with more positive habits, more
Speaker 1: free habits. This mental freedom is the real thing. That
Speaker 1: is because reality, when we're fully free and fully open,
Speaker 1: we are our reality actually, and then we realize our
Speaker 1: reality is this one for loving and to connectedness, with
Speaker 1: everyone empty of that one being absoluted, this one being absolute,
Speaker 1: or anything rigidly this way or that way, and that's
Speaker 1: what's so great about We then can draw from wherever
Speaker 1: it's needed whatever it is to make any relative situation
Speaker 1: ultimately better. So the absoluteness spreads and smears itself over
Speaker 1: the whole of the relativity, including all of the beings,
Speaker 1: and so it's all one huge happiness. You could say,
Speaker 1: you know, and then the only thing that would stand
Speaker 1: out and it would be anybody persisting in unhappiness, and
Speaker 1: all everybody else would be all wanting to help them
Speaker 1: find it. That would be there more fun, that would
Speaker 1: be their realistic thing to do, would become almost automatic.
Speaker 1: So when you sort of real work through that inferentially
Speaker 1: to sort of realize that given beginning, less past, there's
Speaker 1: no first beginning, big bang genesis. Those are all cultural
Speaker 1: pretenses that we know where it also artists, so therefore
Speaker 1: we are in charge of you. They're sort of false
Speaker 1: certainties stuck on us, which attract our absoluteness and make
Speaker 1: us then subjected to the people who pretend to know this,
Speaker 1: because who would ever know the first p n A
Speaker 1: How could there be a beginning? The beginning means an
Speaker 1: ending of something before it. A limit means there's something
Speaker 1: on both sides of the limit, the limited thing here
Speaker 1: and then other things. So it's just completely a misuse
Speaker 1: of language to say, a beginning out of nothing. It's
Speaker 1: just thought of an assertion, meaningless, actually incoherent. But then
Speaker 1: if you get attached to it, you get really fanatical
Speaker 1: about it. It attracts our tendency to find security in
Speaker 1: being stuck somewhere, because once we think we're separate, as
Speaker 1: we've given reality, then we want to be really separated,
Speaker 1: so nothing else can bother us. What it was a scientist,
Speaker 1: as you know, to make a big fuss about it,
Speaker 1: and therefore he opened the door for us to discover
Speaker 1: the reality that we ourselves are, and we're related to.
Speaker 1: And what's precious about us is our ability to understand
Speaker 1: what we are by critical investigation and education and so on,
Speaker 1: and developing our powerful mind. And then once we have
Speaker 1: it focused towards freedom, then meditation comes and totally makes
Speaker 1: that a kind of power of freedom. If we meditate
Speaker 1: right away when we are stuck in all kinds of
Speaker 1: wrong views or unrealistic views, then it will heighten our
Speaker 1: entrapment in their unrealism. And that's why we've seen in
Speaker 1: the teachings of the Asian traditions or even in Western
Speaker 1: spiritualities actually, but they want to actually achieve something like
Speaker 1: Jones Town. You know, these cults, you know, but they
Speaker 1: think they're going to really meet Jesus or something. You know,
Speaker 1: They're not just going to think Jesus later, it's going
Speaker 1: to take care of it. They're going to really do something.
Speaker 1: Then you get these absolutistic behaviors by people, which is worse,
Speaker 1: and people meditate on them, and then they're practically will
Speaker 1: kill themselves and they'll do all terrible and they've hurt
Speaker 1: other people and they'll do terrible things that have g
Speaker 1: heads or crusades, or they'll be nasty to the Muslims,
Speaker 1: like like fanatic Buddhist Scott to be in Burma and
Speaker 1: in Sri Lanka, which shows you that even Buddhism as
Speaker 1: a religion can be falsely absolutistic. So the point there
Speaker 1: is and that it's a progression. When you are walking
Speaker 1: down the street and someone asks you, I'm broke, I'm
Speaker 1: a veteran. You know, I have no food I had eat,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you could give them a quarter,
Speaker 1: your mind will say all sorts of taste. Why are
Speaker 1: they doing this? Must be their own fault. I should
Speaker 1: turn them into the a s p c A or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You know that they should go to
Speaker 1: the shelter. If you go on welfare, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not doing that well, okay, but there
Speaker 1: could be practical Maybe it's somebod if there was a
Speaker 1: thousands of them and you only had two quarters. But
Speaker 1: if you could give a quarter where it's not the
Speaker 1: end of your own livelihood and you down't, then you
Speaker 1: are closing yourself. And that little gift is by doing
Speaker 1: that little gift, that's that's practicing Buddhism, talking yourself out
Speaker 1: of following the cultural thing. And there must be something
Speaker 1: wrong with them because they're poor and I don't have
Speaker 1: to I'll contaminate me even if I touched them instead.
Speaker 1: What nice they're giving me the opportunity to give them something.
Speaker 1: But the point is it's an it's an advantageous moment
Speaker 1: for you to be nice and be happy by doing that,
Speaker 1: And that's the practice of Buddhism. And then critically learning
Speaker 1: about reality and trying to critically eliminate the absolutes that
Speaker 1: are stuck everywhere by everyone who wants you to absolutely
Speaker 1: follow them in some way, and you will be more
Speaker 1: and more free gradually and then you learn. You know,
Speaker 1: I love that Cartola, the power now guy. I love
Speaker 1: him because his story was that he was talking himself
Speaker 1: into suicide, and he was hearing his own voice telling
Speaker 1: him the worthlessness of life, worthlessness of living, worthlessness of
Speaker 1: the world, and he should just threw himself in somehow,
Speaker 1: taking him right down that drain. And somewhere he found
Speaker 1: in his mind another voice say, why should I listen
Speaker 1: to you? Who you know? Which still was also his
Speaker 1: own voice. You know, he wasn't just hypnotized to follow
Speaker 1: the inner narrative that he was bound to, because he
Speaker 1: identified it as his thinking, and he found another voice
Speaker 1: in his mind that said, wait a minute, why am
Speaker 1: I listening only to this narrative? And he did it
Speaker 1: without a shrink, He did it without anybody else interrupting him.
Speaker 1: He found that that it was mindfulness that was hearing
Speaker 1: a deeper level of his own intuition, and so he
Speaker 1: got into his power of now to get away from
Speaker 1: negative thinking pattern. But but that's okay. That isn't the
Speaker 1: same ballpark as realistic mindfulness. What we call really it's
Speaker 1: actually called realistic memory or realistic awareness. Is the real
Speaker 1: literal translation of what we call mindfulness, and it means
Speaker 1: counting your blessings, actually observing what's really going on, and
Speaker 1: anybody who really observes, like right now when you draw
Speaker 1: a breath, and that's like the big meditative practice that
Speaker 1: people who sell as the main thing about m and
Speaker 1: it is a very important thing. I'm not against it
Speaker 1: at all, but when it's the only thing, then it's
Speaker 1: not making use of the whole prescription. It's just picking
Speaker 1: one pill in the prescription. And but the point is
Speaker 1: when you breathe, they just have your counting. But on
Speaker 1: the hand, when you breathe, who should you be thankful
Speaker 1: for all the plans? They are giving you this oxygen,
Speaker 1: and they are taking your carbon. If you didn't cut
Speaker 1: them all down and like put smoke, smoked them out
Speaker 1: with fires. They are giving you an oxygen and they
Speaker 1: love you. They have what you need, and you have
Speaker 1: what in heat carbon to make their leaves and plants
Speaker 1: and flowers and new seeds for the next generation. And
Speaker 1: they're giving you the oxygen and to live your human life.
Speaker 1: Take a deep breath, so all of those things going down,
Speaker 1: And then the realistic somebody is the concentrative side of meditation.
Speaker 1: The mindfulness is the analytic, investigative side of meditation. Both
Speaker 1: are crucially important, but the key is the wisdom, and
Speaker 1: it has said three types of wisdom. Wisdom born of learning.
Speaker 1: We are so arrogant as Westerners. We think we're the
Speaker 1: smartest people in the world that ever lived, because we
Speaker 1: can blow it up and we are writing here. That
Speaker 1: means we're smart. I think that thing means we're a
Speaker 1: little backward. Actually, we're irresponsible, actually, because we keep having
Speaker 1: all these ways of disconnecting and disconnecting from nature, disconnecting
Speaker 1: from life, and then we think disconnecting from death by
Speaker 1: making it into nothing. But it isn't bad. Death is
Speaker 1: just like falling asleep, having a bad nightmare and waking
Speaker 1: up on a bad day. If you had a previous
Speaker 1: bad day, you know when you went to sleep in
Speaker 1: a horrible temper, anger and frustration and paranoia, depression, that
Speaker 1: you were going to wake up in a bad way.
Speaker 1: Usually so wisdom board of learning, which is critical on
Speaker 1: learning of all sorts of dogmas. And then wisdom born
Speaker 1: of meditation as investigation like Descartes type of meditation like
Speaker 1: mindfulness analyzing different things. And finally wisdom born of concentrated
Speaker 1: and investigative combined on a single point to focus on
Speaker 1: the freedom, freedom embedded in relationality to wisdom and compassion, indivisible,
Speaker 1: wisdom and bliss indivisible. That'sity wonderful. I think that's a
Speaker 1: great place for us to wrap up. Bob. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show. I hope I
Speaker 1: have your spirit and energy when I am your age,
Speaker 1: I really do. Don't wait for my age. You have
Speaker 1: it already. I love. You're the one you're feeting and
Speaker 1: you're already doing it and uh and you know, helping
Speaker 1: people find the dark side, helping them feed the good will,
Speaker 1: but not to pretend there's no dark vote and you
Speaker 1: at the dark quote. And that's really wonderful. All right,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bob, take care, Thank you, bye bye. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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