Select text to annotate, Click play in YouTube to begin
00:00:00
welcome to my bob thurman podcast i'm so grateful some good friends enabled me to present them to you if you enjoy them and find them useful please think of becoming a member of
00:00:13
tibet house u.s to help preserve tibetan culture cavett house is the dalai lama's cultural center in america all best wishes have a great day
00:00:27
this is episode 25 titled revealing your rainbow body okay can i say one thing yes please uh gucci for tantras why is it for tempers it could be four sutras
00:00:43
you know because there are texts right and buddhist wars have suitable now there is one llama the tarot i don't you probably never met him he was called from he was the abbott of buddha
00:00:55
monastery he passed away in the 80s he has a reincarnation who now in devil and los ling and he wants to answer the question somebody said what is tantra and it's the best answer i ever heard
00:01:08
somebody say what the word what tantra is which literally gella said rightly tundra means lineage or continuation in that sense it's sort of the root meaning of the word tantra
00:01:20
but what what he said was he said well you know in the basic practice of buddhism the whole purpose is to destroy the world built out of ignorance
00:01:32
the world of suffering so what wisdom does is it sees through being trapped trapped making a joke
00:01:44
trapped it's escaped from being trapped in the world of ignorance but then when you escape from the world of ignorance and you're trapped and you're no longer trapped and you're free
00:01:59
then there's the question of rebuilding a world with wisdom and a world made of wisdom like a rainbow world wisdom world rebuilding that world that's what tundra means
00:02:10
so the the real meaning of continuum or lineage or continuation is continuing the world now a beautiful world a world built out of wisdom
00:02:22
which means the realization of connection love and compassion love and compassion is not just a sentiment it comes out of wisdom of knowing that you're connected to other persons
00:02:34
and and so so therefore the four tantras are what buddha buddha's continuing after enlightenment and this is a very challenging thing for us in the west where we are taught
00:02:47
that the world doesn't work out the world sucks actually we're all depressed because we are taught that the world sucks in the religious people in the old days it sucked but later you'll be okay in
00:03:00
heaven you know if you're a good boy you know and jesus or buddha or muhammad or moses or god will take you in heaven but this world is just going to suck that's it there's no other way out of it
00:03:12
and in india they also have that idea and buddha was rebelled against that idea because he saw that the world actually the reality of the world is fine
00:03:24
it's from perfect it's freedom it's connection it's the interconnection of everyone it's happiness nirvana means happiness he saw that that's the reality of the world he called it dharma
00:03:36
the word dharma before buddha meant something like law religion something that holds you in a pattern holds you like traps you in a pattern where you can bear to live or something like that
00:03:49
but buddha said dharma means reality holds you in freedom from suffering he flipped the meaning into the opposite meaning where it holds you in freedom so reality holds you in freedom
00:04:01
so the whole the reason that the medical teaching is so effective is that it's born of buddha's enlightenment in the root tantra buddha in the different parts of the buddha's
00:04:15
mind different wisdoms are talking to himself he asks himself questions he teaches about the body the mind etc etc all this kind of thing so in in an empowerment
00:04:26
entering the tantra empowerment means connecting to a vision of the world of someone who understands it as perfectly okay
00:04:37
live or die up or down it'll be okay you know coma or awake or sleep it'll be okay ultimately it you you can make it not okay by
00:04:50
fighting with everything and by feeling frightened and being all kind of like it's all won't work and how can i get out of here and all this kind of thing but if you take refuge in
00:05:01
dharma with meaning reality itself on the assurance of the teacher who taught that reality is fine if you open yourself to it and the community of people who've been
00:05:13
living like that like you talk like a lot like people like that so then there's a continuation you then enter that kind of connection to that continuation and that's what tantra means it doesn't
00:05:26
mean this or that or something secret necessarily it in the ancient time or sometimes it was kept a little bit secret because the people who want to keep people trapped in a version of life
00:05:40
where they're expected to be miserable and therefore if they're going to get out of that misery they need these authorities they need these bosses to have to obey these bosses so they don't like someone
00:05:53
saying it's fine whatever you know without you boss it's okay and they don't like that they don't want people to feel that the reality is freedom rather than the reality is being bossed around by them
00:06:05
so they kept it secret from that kind of people because then otherwise they would punish someone who who was too happy as you all know in america for example if you're really happy
00:06:18
it's something illegal yeah right we're in a program like that if you know your roommate comes home your wife your husband your friend your son even comes home and says dad
00:06:30
i'm just so happy no reason at all but i'm just completely happy is dad happy no dad was worried what happened did you drink did you take a drug are you freaked out are you having a
00:06:41
psychotic episode what's wrong with you that's what we think yeah so that for that it was sort of a little bit secret you know tantra had this tendency of hearing about esoteric you know secret because it just goes against the grain
00:06:55
of the of our backward world where we are supposed you know where we think where we're taught to expect to be miserable and therefore we feel safe when we are and if we ever feel really happy we
00:07:07
think something's going to go wrong and then we get nervous you know we're programmed like that so this you talking you can take the heart drop or heart essence or heart teaching of the the great turquoise roof
00:07:20
rainbow body guy it's really a wonderful privilege and therefore i bugged yellow again was not promoting himself to do this but i requested him very earnestly to do this even if i'm not ready quite
00:07:33
and i don't know i am not prepared well enough and maybe i shouldn't do even but it's just to connect to this tradition and to connect menlo what menlo represents as an effort in
00:07:44
the world this polluted world to try to like bring people back to nature as you put it you know and remember they say nature red in tooth and claw like get away that's why they're all getting away from nature because the nature is so dangerous and
00:07:58
horrible right meanwhile we have like a jungle in our stomachs and if and if it's not functioning lushly that jungle of our microbiome we're going to be really in trouble you
00:08:10
know we depend upon the nature in our gut right billions of of genes and animals in our gut so so that's the thing and it's imagine
00:08:23
if anybody claimed today you went down to mount sinai hospital or beth israel hospital or the national institute of health whatever you say oh somebody fully understood everything about how the body and mind works life
00:08:36
and death and rebirth it's totally understood a matter of just learning about it and it'll it worked fine what would they do they would give you some chemical to calm you down
00:08:49
because you'd be considered demented and they thrive on the idea that nobody will ever find out so but they can learn a little more and therefore give them a big grant and then send them off to do some research even
00:09:02
though the principle is that they'll never find out what it's all about and then actually to show that it's really important what they're doing they sacrifice animals like just like an ancient priest you
00:09:15
know has their animal sacrifice you know they don't sacrifice they're sacrificing up a storm of animals and to show that it's really important they can take life you know that really shows how sad it is you know
00:09:28
frankly i think i'm the better i like peta they try to stop them from doing all that sort of thing they don't you know they don't really the human being is it's already understood you don't have to do that you just just eat some good
00:09:41
food just laugh breathe have your shoulder blades like the eagle wings like the allah says breathe and then and then if you if
00:09:53
you're gonna get if you get a coma know how to do power and then do soul ejection press the ejection seat boom you go up and you're caught by amitabha the cha the chinese have
00:10:05
wonderful paintings of the pure land and the pure land i mean the particular one that's very famous in buddhism the western paradise called sukhavati the blissful land this power here is called mahasuka great
00:10:18
bliss spa suka means bliss and uh sukha vati you know possessing place where amitabha the buddha boundless light is dwelling or amitayus boundless life but he has two big bodhisattvas one big
00:10:32
strong one and one compassionate one have a look at teshwar and they have these great paintings and avalokiteshvara has in his hand big hand he has a lotus but he's like yogi berra he's like a
00:10:45
catcher in a baseball game and then they show paintings of streams of souls of beings that have died on earth and and i will look this far as like a catcher mitt and he's going to catch them on the lotus
00:10:57
you know he's going to catch that soul and then put it in the pure land right so catching you know like that it's really sweet they have these in these caves and china
00:11:09
everywhere and uh and the chinese confucian minister in ancient times they wrote memorial to the emperors and they said mr emperor your majesty
00:11:20
this pure land buddhist view of asukabiti of the universe under the power of compassion is very dangerous when those farmers they go and they see in the cave painting the beautiful
00:11:33
palace of amitabha and his beautiful golden body with rainbow light rays and now the lotus is everybody sitting on lotuses in these pure lands when they come back out and they go downtown and they're to the market and
00:11:46
they look at your palace it'll look like a rat check and they're not going to work for you all day and feel dedicated devoted to you so you better keep those buddhists out of here telling them that telling
00:11:58
everybody that life is all right and there's this blissful blissful world emperor of life you know of the in the infinite life you know they really tried to warn and born those emperors
00:12:10
don't let them in here because it's just two cut rainbow bodies every peasant can have rainbow bar they're not going to bend over and plant rice all day long in your field your majesty so that's we're still in that sort of
00:12:22
situation so this is we're very lucky in marvels to have gala here and to receive even though we might not fully be ready to understand and be able to do everything to get a connection to the tradition growing out of
00:12:36
the vision of the wondrousness and beauty of nature and life against our preconception that it's a mess right is that okay again yes is that all
00:12:49
right what okay so so um anyway so that so that's the word tantra you know so instead of you you could say tantra can mean
00:13:03
technological continuum based on wisdom and then you know mentioned that this empowerment thing is page 81 which is very good because what it is is it for example there are the five poisons not just
00:13:17
three but although two of them are kind of combinations so you have ignorance delusion or confusion you know you have desire lust and attachment and greed
00:13:28
and you have anger and hatred and then you have pride and you have jealousy which are kind of connected with the different ones you know sort of mixture like desire and anger jealousy is sort
00:13:41
of a mixture of desire and anger and pride is ignorance you know kind of the pride of ordinariness that's like i'm so great even my ordinary itself is great even without being enlightened kind of that kind of wrong pride now those are
00:13:54
however are energies in the world and they were they're sort of bad right they're supposed to be bad in the regular buddhism when you get started you think of them
00:14:06
as traps and you learn to re release yourself from them you replace ignorance with wisdom you replace desire with detachment you replace anger with with um
00:14:18
love your tolerance and then love you replace pride with humility you replace jealousy with also love and so on and and you kind of sort of subdue them so they don't drive you
00:14:31
but then when you get sort of calm about them and then you get connected to this idea of that reality is all good you know they call it all universally good
00:14:43
you then take those energies and you turn them into wisdoms so ignorance becomes mirror wisdom that's something very very beautiful and brilliant for example
00:14:56
you know when i see the floor the floor seems to me to have intrinsic objectivity it's like a thing in itself out there
00:15:06
right and i my perception of it seems to me to be sort of an absolutely correct thing the word floor my concept of floor sort of goes and bounces off the absolute substantiality of the floor
00:15:19
and uh and i'm completely different from the floor and not connected to it when i walk on it i am but it's something totally different from me right subject object both are kind of absolute difference
00:15:32
right that's it then that's that's what ignorance is because actually the floor you know and even in scientists will tell you it looks like a solid floor but it's actually molecules atoms the atom
00:15:46
itself is mostly emptiness there's a nucleus in there and electrons spinning around then if you throw the if you throw one of the boards here into one of those electronic accelerators it will dissolve and completely disappear
00:15:58
and although some people in france will jump up and down and say they found a higgs boson and the higgs boson is why the thing is solid they'll try to pretend that but then the immediate said well we don't really know and we got to do some more
00:16:10
research so give us another 20 billion to make a bigger electron saying and then maybe we'll find dark energy and dark matter which we can't see it we don't know where it is but it's 97 of the universe
00:16:22
so so our ignorance sees it in this as if it was absolutely just a floor and my subject i'm a person who's completely different from a floor but the fact that i see it even seeing it
00:16:34
wrongly and i feel about myself like i'm an absolute thing of my mind that's apart from it wrongly that mirrors to me my connection to it
00:16:46
because i'm seeing it and even mistaking it for its true nature not seeing it in relativity so even our ignorant perception of the self and of the world mirrors
00:16:58
our ultimate interconnectedness to it if you follow me and that's called mirror wisdom and in a way the world is in a state of mirror wisdom i think because you know people thought nature was just out there and they could abuse
00:17:11
it and throw crap in it and misuse it and he'll mine it and pollute it and do everything and what's happening now is you know the power of the technology of the human cleverness magnified in this
00:17:23
way is such that nature is like rebelling and the human being is becoming responsible for shaping nature which is a complete startling idea that just happened to people on mass but undo
00:17:36
that but but and you don't know that but now all mass people are learning that that you know what you put in comes out you're connected to it you are nature so you can't destroy it or you'll destroy
00:17:47
yourself so that's mirroring the reality of interconnection actually and uh for example the pope in his lardato see his recent encyclical about the environment he's going on
00:18:01
about interconnection whereas christian theology is well known that ultimately you know god is separated absolute you know apart from everything and and you know makes it makes it out of nothing
00:18:13
and the universe is nothing except god and all this kind of thing so there's actually a big disconnection in the theology usually but he's totally broken out of that which is what's so amazing about him actually so ignorance becomes ignorance itself
00:18:28
mirrors wisdom so because it's called the mirror-like wisdom then desire uh you know lust becomes discriminating wisdom or diploma
00:18:41
nicely i think it's individuating wisdom so it's a ruby color you know the mirror wisdom is a white diamond type color and the ruby color is this like desire becomes like a red ruby
00:18:54
energy and it becomes and it's it's like it's seeing the beauty of things and seeing them in their specific specificity you know discriminating between this and that and the other and that becomes
00:19:07
desire becomes that or individuating wisdom and anger well i've heard that last then pride becomes uh topaz golden color
00:19:18
and it becomes the wisdom of equality and jealousy this is a really good one which is green like the green eyed monster that's an interesting you know in the west they call it green eyed monster when you're jealous so jealousy
00:19:30
is a green color and then that becomes all accomplishing wisdom because jealousy is where you feel separate from another person's happiness so you resent their happiness and you feel why is it in my happiness
00:19:43
right right when your friend comes home and they're really happy for no reason and you're really worried what happened to them and what did they do and there's something going wrong with them and this and that and finally if they convince you that it's perfectly all right they
00:19:55
just naturally just do feel happy for no particular reason it's welling up out of their hearts then the last thing that we feel now is well what about me why don't i feel like that
00:20:08
which is the kind of jealousy the begrudging of something and and but but when you overcome that anything is possible then you're really living interconnectedness other beings happiness is your happiness people can
00:20:21
really work together minds can connect and do things together and therefore there's nothing you miracles can happen so that's called the all-accomplishing or the wonder working wisdom and the final one is hatred anger and
00:20:35
anger is like destructive you know wants to just destroy things but anger actually is connected to bile in the liver it's also connected to intelligence critical intelligence to analyze things
00:20:47
take them apart to find out how they work and how they tick so it's connected with critical analytical intelligence and what and therefore anger about the world of entrapment and the world of
00:21:01
insufficiency and the world of misery of self and other looks to see why is it like that and analyzes everything and when it does everything dissolves under critical analysis
00:21:13
if you've deeply analyzed whatever it is down to the molecule and the subatomic energy and the wave particle thing you know the quantum people have reached there finally buddha reached there in his mind thousands of years ago
00:21:26
and what happens is you come up with ultimate reality perfection wisdom because everything you analyze disappears and then but then the disappearance disappears
00:21:39
because that's not a thing apart from you a disappearance you can't just disappear or disappear into disappearance so when disappearance disappears you're there as everything it is everything you know
00:21:52
nothing void freedom does not impede the existence of all kind of interrelated things but when you have seen it disappear in a way where it's not it's not substantially like it seemed to
00:22:04
be as if everything is totally different from everything else you then have a feeling of oneness with all of it within again seeing some sort of differentiation but now it's a new way of seeing that differentiation where
00:22:16
everything is perfect so the idea of ultimate reality perfection wisdom is almost that's the most the highest and most powerful wisdom so an unexcelled yoga tantra yoga tantra unsurpassable yoga tantra
00:22:31
the blue deep blue energy of the of the seeing through everything and the perfection of everything is actually which is color of medicine buddha that is the color sapphire color is the color
00:22:43
of the of the anger transmuted into ultimate reality perfection anger hatred so then even all seemingly previously
00:22:55
seemingly negative things seem totally positive and that of course is a weird thing just to talk about what is the buddha state you know and this is really important and the tibetans particularly kept us
00:23:08
alive in what's called non-dualism from from the great masters of india likes to say he's not a member of this or that tibetan sect he is the
00:23:20
heir of the 17th great masters or pundits of of nalanda university the great monastic university in india there were many of them but the most famous one was nalanda people came from all over the world who
00:23:31
attended his classes and teachings and he always says that and that is this what i'm trying to say is this a lot of mystical and spiritual things people
00:23:43
project from their sense of separate self you know the idea that there's an absolute self in there that's apart from all of this and it's a real problem why i'm here involved in this so a lot of these sort of mystic states
00:23:56
and mystic self-obliterations even the dualistic form of buddhism is still a kind of self-centered thing where it's all one it's what i call the cheap oneness
00:24:08
it's all one and it all disappeared into the one and i'm all alone and i'm everything but actually i'm not even here so nobody's here we're it's all one it's easy to be one because there's nobody here
00:24:21
so it's a great space and i'm not there and neither are you so we don't have to worry about a thing it's like this escapist idea of almost like ultimate psychotic experience actually
00:24:34
disappearing as if you as if that was a state separate from having previously been there as a as a relational being but then the the tibetans
00:24:47
their intelligence is so great their understanding of the buddha's teaching is so fantastic that obviously that state of what's called space like echo pois samadi where everything seems to disappear ultimate
00:25:01
reality perfection is that all like unpleasant things disappear but then the last thing to disappear is the state of disappearance when the state of disappearances appears what's left
00:25:13
everything but now you're it's both all the same different bunch of things and you're one with the whole thing it's all you
00:25:25
so imagine what a weird state that must be but that's very important when buddha attains blissful freedom he must perceive all other beings
00:25:37
as indivisible from that blissful freedom or he would be abandoning them if you follow me which would break his vow as the bodhisattva i won't attain iran until all beings are free of
00:25:49
suffering so believe it or not buddha 2500 years ago saw everyone in the world including us in the future because they see all space and time is completely permeated by this oneness
00:26:02
it's not just a spatial oneness it's a temporal oneness as well this realization and so shakib munible is right here with us and shaking many buddha sees us as made
00:26:13
out of that bliss just a form an individuated discriminating wisdom perceived form in a sea of bliss and then the complexity comes where
00:26:26
he's also aware that we still don't see ourselves like that so then and he's frustrated buddha is like a frustrated mother who can't
00:26:39
just hug the child into feeling okay because the child if you give that child a big hug it will get all mad you know if you try to if you hug a paranoid
00:26:50
paranoia they'll think you're trying to smother them and they'll resist even more and get more freaked out the only way is by teaching them by getting them or in some way teaching
00:27:03
or making a joke or opening the door for them or whatever it is in whatever form it is getting them to open their own mind and heart to their own reality because only you can understand your own
00:27:16
reality no one else can understand it for you they can give you all reasons teachings experiences hens who teach you to breathe give you nutmeg to sleep and and
00:27:28
chilly to wake up but you have to do it yourself so then that's the compassion universal compassion that's how that wisdom becomes a compassion so the enlightenment is this complex
00:27:41
state of ultimate reality perfection and yet the discriminating ruby with the rainbow ruby wisdom of seeing how the other being is like
00:27:52
managed to take themselves as a bunch of mental physical verbal bliss and turn themselves into a theater of dissatisfaction a theater feeling isolated and alienated and separated and not being not feeling
00:28:05
they're part of it they are just a drop in an ocean of bliss and then that compassion then makes the buddha teach and actually there's a very extravagant thing that that the buddhists have
00:28:19
which makes them which is really strange where they say that when you feel like that when you have that realization you can be many beings simultaneously you can be
00:28:30
i love the matrix you see the matrix movie did you all see all of them or you got tired of all the shooting which is very adolescent which is in it but if you saw all of theirs we're seeing nevertheless in spite of all that silly shooting
00:28:42
because later on right he multiplies himself in many bodies right that matrix guy does because he knows how the structure of it works at the same time as he's an individual being in it he also then he could be many then
00:28:54
even the bad guy learns that right and then the two of them are multiplying struggling with each other and how does he defeat the bad guy the one thing the bad guy can't do is the bad guy can't be him
00:29:07
whereas he can be the bad guy so when the bad guy puts his fist in his chest to make the neo into another reflection of himself instead he turns into neil
00:29:19
he becomes a better guy you know i can't explain it but it was brilliant i love the wachowski brothers they're totally great so what's next brother and sister now actually one of them is his sister that she had a
00:29:32
sex change the wachowski brothers now there's one as her sister name is lana so so that's that's this this thing where all even anything bad becomes good
00:29:47
it's transmuted by wisdom into goodness so everything is good and that on that basis that that that is done that wisdom doesn't is the same actually as the
00:29:59
compassion for others still feeling that it's bad it doesn't abandon them into saying well i see you as cool if you don't tough luck which some there's some sort of mystical not so-called non-dualisms that are like
00:30:12
that but this is not like that i see you as perfectly good and i'm with you until you you come into seeing it yourself completely with you all the time and that's what telechakra
00:30:25
is when buddha buddha's manifestation is kala chakra who is called time wheel but real means machine like we say about a car you know nice wheels you know that means your machine so time machine but not a machine going around
00:30:38
in time like time was a an abstract medium but time itself becomes a machine meaning an evolutionary machine and the buddha shapes your evolutionary destiny so you
00:30:50
can reach your own understanding in the optimal best possible way it's what it symbolizes card chakra it symbolizes buddha's vow to never abandon other beings in suffering but to stay
00:31:03
with them all the time so anyway but that's a big shock to us you know it is a big shock of the idea that a someone does fully understand the world life death absolute relative whatever it is
00:31:15
that they taught us how to do it and that we can understand it ourselves and then on top of that we have to we cannot graduate into into our own
00:31:27
reality or bliss unless we understand it and we can't believing in it is helpful can be at some stage helpful but even it can be turned wrong but just mere belief with no reason
00:31:39
finally you have to underst experience and understand and you won't experience it without understanding it so ever and everyone can and if we don't have time in this life we can do it in another life once we
00:31:52
connect to the stream leading there in a way leading there means leading here you know because we're already here actually but but when we feel we're not then we have to go somewhere we feel
00:32:03
like we're going somewhere else okay i talked for 20 more minutes almost any question it's amazing isn't it that there could be such a being it's like i call enlightenment the state
00:32:18
of the ultimate cognitive dissonance tolerance tolerance of cognitive dissonance where you're sort of everything is bliss and yet you're specifically and minutely
00:32:29
aware of every single little bit that others are still suffering totally aware of that and completely compassionately committed to turning it to bliss in the only way you can which is to help them do it because you can't force them
00:32:43
to do that and you know there's one thing where the evidence even in tarawata buddhism who they don't like this they go oh come on no nirvana is out there we're leaving put a left here's having para nirvana behind me that means final nirvana they
00:32:56
translate paris final which is a mistranslation party doesn't mean final it means total doesn't mean final party there are words for final in sanskrit but it's not putty party means total
00:33:09
and they said that's apparently when he left town there's no buddha around like we just have to do our best that's what terabyte people will tell you so they don't necessarily get this but um
00:33:21
but on the other hand when they sort of when they do disappear they have the disappearing experience then unfortunately they reappear because anything that is a new understanding
00:33:32
you go to a different place that's only a relational experience that cannot be the absolute the absolute is just realizing where you've always been there can there be no change about it it
00:33:46
and so we have to have always been there if it's here you know and it's here but there was something else i wanted to say about but i lost track of it i fell off into the something there's something else i wanted to say about it
00:33:57
which was good but we'll have to wait until it comes it finds me again questions oh yeah it's no it's just on a simple
00:34:12
level it's on a simple level that we you know that that in that case we can then feel a kind of confidence and it less it can lessen our anxiety
00:34:24
and in a way it's a kind of refuge that somehow reality is filled with the good and you know voltaire remember he ridiculed in his book candide
00:34:36
you know the the the christians the theistic attempt to sort of reassure people that ultimately god will take care of it and they'll be all right if they behave themselves of course there's that silly thing about eternal damnation
00:34:48
which is just completely senseless and uh and the buddha would consider the idea that a loving god would would save eternal damnation for anybody to be a really rude idea about
00:35:01
god you know if he's omnipotent and he's loving like how can anybody even the worst person cannot possibly suffer internally that's ridiculous totally stupid
00:35:12
you know it's a it's a horrible model for bad policing and a nasty justice system with too many people in jail it's really bad and uh
00:35:25
but but for us it's a shock the idea that we really we could be all right it takes away a certain excuse then it's only up to us to learn more about ourselves and the world even little by little oh yeah and i was
00:35:37
going to say oh i know in the terrible yes when buddha was under the tree everybody knows the story before attaining enlightenment it's in every version before he realizes nirvana which they call the freedom from contamination
00:35:50
final freedom from contamination he remembers infinite previous lives of himself he remembers his beginning list previous lives and then he becomes aware of all other beings into previous lives so he has
00:36:03
those two realizations his own and others and then he attains nirvana now what's so fascinating about that is why don't we remember all our infinite
00:36:15
previous lives we experienced them but why don't you remember how you felt when you burned yourself in the kitchen when you broke your ankle when you because it's painful you don't want to remember it
00:36:28
so the fact that he developed the ability to remember infinite lives and deaths means that he realized he'd always been in nirvana and all of it was a play of bliss
00:36:40
so he revised his memory so that he wasn't in agony even when he was in hell because even the hell was his own stupidity of contorting himself into some sense of isolation and alienation
00:36:53
and separation in some extreme manner but the whole time he was never apart from nirvana and when he can realize when he knows that then he's fearlessly remembers without there's no
00:37:05
because there's been a way that counteracts the pain he realizes he was in pain then but he's no longer in pain now when he remembers it right and then he's able to see all other beings pain that same way so in a
00:37:17
way those two realizations although they don't put it like that in because they're not emphasizing universal compassion you know but actually if you remembered infinite previous lives and everybody else's
00:37:30
infinite previous lives we've been going at a baby infinite numbers of times you've been my mom i've been your mom we've been we've been enemies too you know
00:37:42
so we're completely entangled we have been beginninglessly and we remain completely untangled so that's a precursor to realizing buddha's realization that he is every being
00:37:54
he she it whatever whatever it is it is every being do you follow me that's what that is so that shows precisely that this nirvana is not a separation of any kind
00:38:05
it is it is an expansion to embrace everything like you identify with your child at when it's at the breast you know when it first comes out you feel it is you you know of course i guess when it's
00:38:18
in there unless it kicks too much you identify with it then when you're in love you identify with the beloved people in the team can identify with the whole team or buddies in war identify with the people in the platoon
00:38:31
so that human ability shows how close we are to buddhahood where we can identify completely and feel we are the other even in a family you're in the kitchen and somebody's chopping onions and you're like washing something and then they cut themselves and everybody in the
00:38:44
whole room goes like that even though only one person actually had the nerve hit you know and so that buddha like feels like that of all beings it's able to because he
00:38:58
sees all of that even the seemingly painful thing as a bliss he feels at the same time as a bliss at the same time he's aware they don't feel it that way so his compassion enfolds them as best he can to lead them toward where they
00:39:10
become also free of that without leaving the world without abandoning anybody so therefore keeping his bodies up for the bodhisattva vow
00:39:24
right the voice of a vow is i will not seek a separate piece for myself we will all find it together type of thing right but then some people take time like you
00:39:35
can't take a a flower seed put it in the ground soil fertilize everything then just take the top of the seed and pull it into a rose bush you destroy the seed you know so things have their own
00:39:49
organic like patterns of growth and evolutionary development but you can sure have you can speed it up with like high-tech teaching you can
00:40:12
you
End of transcript