Nirvana: Not The Band

you feeling centered? Uh? No, I'm all whacka do Your shockers are all over the place. My shackras are all over the place, so much so that I couldn't think of anything. So all I did was repeat you. Well, you know, man, I have to say. While we were researching this, I was like this some beautiful stuff. It's very appealing. Yeah, actually it was. It's neat stuff, like I I was. I became calm in researching this. Yeah, that's a good thing. I think. Um this, you can

tie this in. We have a couple of related episodes, and we might as well as call this the uh Enlightenment. Sweet? How about that? I'd like that Karma from July and Reincarnation from July and Burning Man, the angriest people in yours. Uh yeah. And you know our our our buddy in New York, Rachel Grundy, as a Buddhist. Yeah yeah, and she's I talked to her about it so because I was like, you know, GRUNDI I've meditated some and it

really appeals to me. And like a true Buddhist, She's like, it's great, man, here, I'll send you some stuff, no press, you know, let's see you some pamphlets. Yeah, that's basically what she did. She wasn't like, you know, you should look at this. You know, it's a little uh, let's overbearing than other religions I found. I got you, you know what I mean. Now, Rachel Grundy does the literary pub crawl right if she still do that, I don't know she still does that. She used to, But we

can plug her band Coyote Love. How about that? There you go, And she just adopted the dogs of congratulations, congratulations to everybody. Um, that's the Buddhist way. That is so nirvana. I thought was the perfect way to cap off Karma and Reincarnation. Yeah, as the third part, and maybe we should do meditation. Maybe we should make it a four parter. Yeah, that could probably be interesting. I'm sure there's a lot of studies about the physiological effects

of it and all that. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, alright, alright, that's an it's agreed upon. Then, and then the what do you call it? The what suite? Uh? The Enlightenment sweet? The Enlightenment sweet, not to be confused with the Transidentalists or the Enlightenment episode man, which just doesn't factor into this at all. No, Okay, So, Chuck, we're talking Nirvan Anna. You have like a conception of it. I have a

conception of it. But in researching one of the things, and I also knew that Buddhists and Hindus share a lot of cosmology. I thought you're gonna say they hate each other. No, I don't get that impression. No, of course not, um, but they they are. Buddhism is a an offshoot of Hinduism. Yeah, it's a spinoff. It's the aftermatch. It is. It's the JOONI loves Chacci of religions. What else, maud? What was that? An offshoot of Mary Tyler more, Mary

Tyler Moore? Right, it's the Jefferson's Yeah from march Archie Bunker or absolutely, I could do this for at least thirty straight minutes. Yeah, we should do an episode on the spinoffs where we just say spinoff names and just hold thumbs up or down, and but we don't say people just guess what are we doing right now? It's the Threes company spinoff of Hogans here us. That's good. Okay, we're done, Yeah, we're done. Okay. I did not realize that,

I guess, is what I'm saying. I knew that they were related, I didn't realize that it was like a direct offshoot where basically the Buddha whose name whose original name was Siddartha gaua Tama. Did you know that actually Saddarta? Okay, so the h is silent gau tama. Nice. Yes, I actually looked at pronunciations or listened to them for this episode for once. I'm proud of you. I'm also a little ashamed because you did that and I didn't. That was all for Grundy. I was going. I was going

with the with the original status quo. It's just mangling words of foreign origin. Well, I'm trying to mix things up here, fifteen years in and scientific words to not just foreign ones. So, uh, you were talking about Saddharta gal Tama, right, he was born into as a Hindu a Hindu family and decided like, yeah, I'm not too hip on Hindoo. I think there's other ways to go. And there's Buddhism. Uh yeah, that's the quick version. YadA YadA, YadA. There's Buddhism. Yeah, this is fifth century b C. In

the age of course. And uh, like you said, he would later become the Buddha, which is not to be confused with Buddha. A Buddha exactly which you want to be a Buddha, Go do it, Chuck, you can do it. You couldn't be the Buddha because that's Saddharta's right, Yeah, but you could be a Buddha. I could be a layman's version, I believe, right, Okay, because like only monks

generally achieve the state of a Buddha. So in researching this, if you wanted to, you could be like Sion or a life I'm going to become a Buddhist monk and conceivably achieve nirvana in this lifetime. You could be because you're a human being. You're incarnated as a human being into this moral coil, and if you wanted to, you could go do it. But in researching this, yes, apparently it's typically left to the Buddhist monks because they're the

ones who are like, who at the time sign our life? Yeah, because you gotta drop out in a lot of ways, not entirely. I mean, Buddhist monks like still filter amongst the masses and all that. But um, for the most part, they're focusing a lot more on achieving nirvana than the average day to day person does, even like a day to day Buddhist or something. Yeah, it's not. It's not a part time job. You're not like, uh, sitting around on Netflix, like should I watch Oranges in New Black?

Or should I meditate for eight hours? You know? Can I do both? You can? By the way, that's called zoning out. So, uh, let's talk a little bit more about Siddharta's journey. Um, this is a five sixty three BC and modern day Nepal or what would be modern day Nepal. Does the way back machine go there? Yeah? You want to go? All right? It sounds like a lovely time. All right, here we are it's cold. It's lovely. You know, it's funny. I didn't take it as cold.

I thought we would be going back to like maybe spring, but yeah, it's really cold here right now. It's a good thing. You're wearing the ox hide, you know, lined with serpa. Uh so, see said Arta over there. And he is a rich dude, and he is very sheltered dude. And despite all these riches and uh, this lifestyle, he's very pampered. He's kind of I can see it in

his eyes. He is dissatisfied. He is dissatisfied. He was born into a ruling class, very powerful, like you said, rich family, and he's part of the idol rich, but he's part of the thinking idol rich. So he started to question his place in life, which is basically what you said. Right. Yeah, he starts to to mold this

over and like maybe there's more. Uh, it's a very long story, and we could spend hours talking about this, but I've seen a yeah, because like you can't do it part time, like I said, um, but I'm looking at him and basically I can tell that his disillusionment has has reached its apex, and it is culminated by him looking out in the window one day and he sees three things from his little palace window. He sees a decrepit old man, he sees a disease man, and

then he sees a corpse. And he's done, I guess so. And he's like, you know what, I'm I'm done with this life. Can't take it anymore. Even though I have my arranged wife, my cousin whom I married, I was forced to marry. I have a beautiful son whom I love. I'm going to leave them. I'm gonna leave all my possessions, and I'm going to go on a quest, a vision quest, if you will, to understand the true nature of life. And here I go right and back we are to the present day. So you can hang your ox hide

And that Sherpa on the coat wreck. Well, well there's more to this story. How do we have to go back? Yeah, we gotta go back. I gotta go on, short pants, put your put your pants back on. Uh so chuck. Here we are back again, And um said Arta is he's gone from a very rich, powerful family. He's decided to go on this vision quest. He thinks, well, I mean, if I was very dissatisfied, and I think it's kind of wrong to be as grossly rich as I was

the family I was born into. I'll just go the exact opposite route, and I'll become a hermit, a completely poverty stricken hermit who has not even a pot to pee in. Yeah, not even that, right. And he figures out that as he's um starving to death, that it's not leading to any kind of enlightenment. He's actually growing

increasingly uncomfortable. It's getting harder and harder for him to pay attention to enlightenment because you say he's hungry and hungrier um, And he realizes, wait a minute, maybe this isn't the right way to go. Maybe polar extremes are a little too extreme. Yeah, what if I die without achieving my goal? That would just have been a waste of life. Yeah, I would have been poverty stricken and great, But that doesn't lead to enlightenment clearly. So here comes

a stranger who's offering me a meal. I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna I'm gonna be poverty stricken no longer. And maybe I don't need to be rich, but I also don't need to be poverty stricken. I need to take this middle road to enlightenment. So I'm gonna kill that stranger, take all the food with a pigeonhammer. Oh wait, that's not the middle road. That's far from the middle road. That's kind of extreme as well. So he takes a

meal from a stranger. He figures out I think finally that like, okay, this is the way to do it, goes and sits under a tree. Um and achieved nirvana. He achieved omniscience. Yeah, there were three stages of that. He saw his past lives, all of them. He saw the past lives of all others, and he's like, I'm really starting to catch onto things here. Things are revealing themselves. And finally he identified the fore noble truths, which we'll talk about in a bit, but those were the three

stages under the tree. And in the end of it, he said, you know, and I gained a perfect understanding of the laws governing the cycle of birth and death. Like it's it's nirvana. Boom, it's nirvana, and nirvana we should probably say um. Once he achieved nirvana, he didn't say it's nirvana. No, he couldn't say much. Actually, one of the things that came across in research time and time again is that he very famously couldn't put it into words a description of what he experienced in this

new state of enlightenment that he was vibing in. It's like Catulu kind of. It was the unnameable, you know. Yeah, but everybody trusted him anyway. They said, this guy knows where it's at. We're going to start following his teachings. Yeah. In the In Sanskrit, nirvana means to extinguish, though in this case they're talking about extinguishing suffering and hatred and ignorance.

No good. So we'll talk about the buddhas um Uh path to enlightenment and his teachings that came out of this achievement of nirvana right after this and we're back. That's pretty funny put an ad in the middle of a Buddhism lesson. Well, we take all comers here with my friend. So if you achieve nirvana, what you're doing is you are breaking that cycle. Um. If you listen to our reincarnation podcast, the sam Sara is that cycle of reincarnation that you can be uh caught in or

stuck in. I guess and this is where karma and again we have a great episode on karma. Uh, karma comes into play because what you're doing is you're rewarded on your past actions um, in your current life and earlier lives. Right, does that makes sense? No? It makes sense? Yeah? Sure so? Uh And I love that this article says it's important to note that the law of karma isn't due to God's judgment over a person's behavior. Uh. And it's closer to Newton's law of motion. That makes more sense. Right,

For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah. So when like you, you know, step on a snail, you're just like, man, didn't mean to do that. It's gonna come back and bite me later on in another life. And you build up this karma or whatever. But when you uh reach nirvana, you stop accruing bad karma, that's right, You transcend it. Yeah. And when you transcend it, then all of a sudden, you can spend the rest of your life working off that karmic debt that you have

already accrued. Because that doesn't just go away paying down a credit card exactly. So. But it's like when you achieved nirvana, the credit cards cut up, so you're not adding to your your account any longer. But you still have some money that you owe and you're paying that off in this life or conceivably other lives following. But at some point your your golden ticket has been granted.

You have achieved nirvana. That's right. And when that happens, you are are you have escaped that some Sara, and you have achieved party nirvana. And that is uh the final stage that you find in the afterlife. Um. And in the case of Suddharta, he was eight years old when he passed, and he in a state of meditation, basically saying to his people around him, it's all good man, this is like, this is the goal. It was like a great way to pass, you know, yeah, like we

should all pass that way. Sure, tell him everybody it's all good. Yeah, pretty much like Waterson style. So he's going alright, alright, those for his last words, if I'm not mistaken. UM. So, when when one achieves nirvana, UM, and you escape the cycle ofst I'm sara. You Eventually, when you die and you work off your karmic debt and you're no longer reincarnated, you become you basically travel

to another to mention another realm. It's just something different that basically exists outside of space time, as modern Buddhists would say. Um, and you are kind of one with the universe. You just become a a selfless part of the universe. That sounds beautiful to me. So pot of Nirvana Day or just Nirvana Day is celebrated on February fift in East Asia. Uh, celebrations very evidently. I looked it up. Apparently some people just meditate, some people are

just reflective. A lot of times in monasteries of food is prepared and shared. But that is a February fifty Nirvana Day. So chuck. If you become a U, a Buddhist monk, and you achieve nirvana. Um. And let's say you're not a Buddhist monk, and you know, let's say you are. Okay, so you're a Buddhist mon I keep putting on these clothes and taking them off. You achieve nirvana. Um. You become a Buddha right, not again, not the Buddha,

but a Buddha like your which means an enlightened one. Right. Um. And if you say I have got some time and money, and I'm going to hire you a Buddha to lead me to nirvana. You're almost like a junior Buddha. Um, there's a different word form. They're called our hots. Uh yeah, our hit that's what I found. Yeah, okay, that's right. That's when you have a Buddha guide to guide you. Uh.

And you are not You're enlightened. You're just not omniscient. Yeah, not bad though, Yeah, big difference though not omniscient and omniscient. There's a pretty big difference between those two things, you know. So, um, when uh, the Buddha came back from his um and like, well what what? Once he achieved his enlightened state, he started trying to tell people like, you can be like this too, and here's how you do it. He said that there are it's very simple. There are just four

noble truths. It's all you need to know until you realize that the fourth noble truth mentions an eight full path and suddenly like it's exponentially more involved, but it's still fairly simple stuff. Yeah. He taught this for the last forty five years of his life. Number one is that life is suffering, and I think that was he was clued into that from his window that day. Yeah, it was the suffering that really made him go, like, man, this is life, that old guy, that dead body. If

this is life, who needs enemies? Oh? Good point. Uh. Number two, suffering is caused by ignorance of the true nature of the universe. So ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is no good no. And basically the true nature of the universe is that, um, we are made unhappy by wanting, by craving things, and that we can free ourselves from those things by overcoming them. That's right. That's number three.

You can end that suffering. Uh. And then number four is if you attach yourselves and follow the four I'm sorry, the Noble eightfold Path, not the four, then you're all set. You can overcome all that junk. It's like, just remember these four things and then these extra eight things. So the eight full Path and Noble eight full Path are the ideals um that guide you along the way, and they're broken down into three divisions. There's samas. The divisions

are samas. Oh no, the the the individual paths are called samas. Well. The first two are under the division of wisdom, right views, and right intention, and it's free samas are are frequently translated into right here in the Western English. Um, and it doesn't this article I read by this one guy said, like, that doesn't mean that the opposite of that is wrong. It's more right. It's

more like um, right in this sense means complete perfect hole. Yeah. Yeah, so the opposite of that would be incomplete and perfect, not whole. That makes sense rather than wrong, right, Yeah, I get it. Yeah. The second division is ethical conduct, and under there you have uh complete or right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Right, So, working for Goldman Sachs or clubbing baby Seals, you're gonna have trouble achieving Nirvana at this in those positions, I would say so

probably not. You're probably not seeking nirvana either, right, you know, yeah, uh so you're fine. What about podcasters? Podcasts are totally in there. We're somewhere between clubbing baby Seals and Golden Sacks. And then finally, concentration is the last division, and that is right effort, right mindedness, and right contemplation. Yeah, and the right mindedness is you know, being mindful, being aware. Right effort is like you're directing your effort towards these

good things. You're not being slack in your path to enlightenment. And then the last one, right contemplation, is um kind of difficult to understand. It's very least, it's difficult to explain. I found in rees reaching Um, but it's basically focusing your entire self on this, on the Eightfold Path and the four Noble Truths, and yeah, like you're you're really

directing all of your thoughts and energy into that. Yeah, And that's what I got from Grundy when I talked to her last time we were up there at the Bell House. She was it's just very soothing. She's just like, man, it's just it's just practice. You're like, it's a cycle. You're just continually trying to do the right thing. And that's like the simplest breakdown. But you know, if something bad happens and you don't, you start over and you try harder, which is like that sounds like really great

life principles, you know. So that's Buddhist thought. As far as achieving nirvana, goes Um and Hinduism is actually very closely related, but there are some major distinctions and we will talk all about that right after this. Okay, Chuckers, we're back Um. The Buddhists typically talk about nirvana as nirvana in Hinduism is usually referred to as moksha, but

they're basically talking about the same thing. It's this the highest plane of existence wherein you stop being reincarnated um, you have worked off your karmic debt and you reunite with the cosmos, with the universe. And in Hindu cosmology they're talking about Krishna, which is the godhead, which is the source of all things, and Krishna is very frequently Krishna incarnates in three um major deities in all deities and all Hindu all Hindu deities are extensions of Krishna.

But the big three are Brahma who's the creator, Vishnu he's who's the sustainer, and um Shiva, who's the destroyer. And when you die, when you achieve moksha, you go and get absorbed into Krishna again. Yeah. And the big difference that UM I think we found with between uh Buddha nirvana and Hindu nirvana or Buddhist nirvana, is that with Hindu you're working your way up through this cast system.

Eventually you start out by you have to be born through every type of organism that exists on the planet. You actually make it through under Hindu cosmology, eight million, four hundred thousand different species of animals before you even get to humanity. And then once you become a human, you can go through countless lives in different casts over and over again. But those casts are hierarchical, and you,

like you start, are working your way up. Yeah, that's called the varna, and you get that good karma you perform by performing duties in that cast, and then basically once you have it's almost like a graduation in the next life if you've done well to the next cast up. Yeah. And there's actually there's a lot of debate right now because um Gandhi was famously thrown out of his cast

the by Shaya. I believe it's the merchant class, and um he was thrown out of it because he championed for the rights of the lowest class, the sudra um, who basically we're responsible for um handling, picking up dead animals and taking care of the rest of the community's waste. And basically we're just generally mistreated by the higher casts. And so there's this question now in modern Hinduism like, does the cast system still fit? Is it's still appropriate?

But the thing is is if it's not a reflect shouldn't of say God's punishment? But something is physical, is like the second law of thermodynamics or motion. Sorry, um, that it's just a reaction to some other action you've took in the past life. Who are humans to say that the cast system is no longer appropriate. It's just part of the universe. But then if it turns out to human construct, well then it gets kind of ticklish,

right because it undermines this Hindu cosmology. So it's a weird place that modern Hinduism is in right now talking about whether or not to do away with the cast system. Interesting, what do you think I think that's up to Hindu? Good answer? Thanks? Uh So, I would imagine that Gandhi then in his next life was definitely in that next cast up. Huh. I would guess if he didn't just achieve moksha right then and there, here's a pretty good guy,

you're Gandhi. Well, just you can skip a few levels. Yeah, And that's the thing. Like, Um, the the highest classes, the Brahmin class and Hinduism, and they're the priestly class. They're like the Hindu or the Buddhist monks who go off and try to achieve nirvana. Their station in life is to achieve moksha. They've worked off their their um, the karmic debt to a tremendous degree, and like their focus in life is to get rid of the rest

of their karmic life. So they are not born again, right right the one below that is Casha tria, and that's the ruling warrior class. That's the one that Saddharta was born into. Apparently when he was like this is wrong. Yeah, we like anybody should be able to achieve enlightenment. Yeah, and that was one of the main reasons that Buddhism was born, right, was that he didn't he rejected that

cat system. The main reason, yes, um and so but within this, like if you're a Kesha tria, like you're you're working on your karmic debt because as far as you're concerned, if you can work off enough of it, you will be born the next life into the Brahmin class and then you can work really hard and get

out of that and end up achieving enlightenment. So there is like a hierarchical progression, And as you were saying, one of the main things that you're tasked with as a Hindu is dharma, which is responsibility to your cast, right like acting like a member of your cast rather than you know, acting out like Gandhi, I love it. Do you got anything else? Yeah, there's actually four tenants, just like the the eight what was it, the eight Noble, the Noble eight full path right, um, the the there's

like four in Hinduism. One of them is dharma, responsibility to basically your cast, society's rules, but more importantly like Christiana's rules, and also like um being having a responsibility and duty to your own calling in life and just like living like that, um Arthur is pursuing wealth because in Hinduism there's this idea it's like kind of like in Buddhism where you don't need to be super rich,

but you all, I shouldn't be poor either. And one of the things is, just like with Buddhism and Hinduism, you're trying to escape earthly desires and wants. One way to do that is to have the money to not have to worry about where your food is going to come from. Frees you up for a lot of time to contemplate and get towards enlightenment. Right. That's Arthur Comma is more fulfilling desires frequently, like sexual desires, that kind of stuff. But there's all sorts of like taboo and

constraint and all that kind of stuff. It's not like a free for all in Hinduism as far as sex goes, right. And then lastly there's moksha. Once you have moved past your earthly desires, you become free from delusion and realize that there there is There is no earthly self. There's just your connection to Krishna, and then you can be come in lighted, which is also called correct. Yes, pretty interesting stuff. Huh yeah, So that's Nirvana not the band,

not the band, man. I hope we pointed that out at the beginning of this or else everybody's really confused right now. Oh well, probably call it something like Nirvana not the band. There you go. If you want to know more about Nirvana not the band, you can type that word into the search bar at Houston works dot com. Since I said the search bar, it's time for a

listener mail. And if you want to know more about Nirvana the band, watch the great documentary montage of Heck, it's not called Nirvana the band Nope montage of Heck very well done, is it? Oh? It's great pressing. Um all right, I'm gonna call this our biggest fan in Uganda. Hey guys, my name is Joshua Quisinberry. UM A huge

possibly the biggest fan of your show. Uh. And I listened to every chance I get my wife's son and I live in from Paula, Uganda, where we run an NGO for children with severe special needs who have been abandoned. Orphan or used on the Nazi sabotage episode to spoke about the brilliant but poorly executed plan of the Germans

to infiltrate the US and called chaos. I wondered if you guys knew that wasn't an original idea by Hitler, but in fact, during World War One, Kaisville Helm number two had an entire sabotage ring running out of New York City that was responsible for numerous acts of terror, including blowing up attempting to blow up railroads, bridges, canals from the East Coast all the way to San Francisco

and Canada. Did not know that this is during the neutral period, our neutral period of nineteen fourteen, one of the largest and most devastating was blowing up a munitions depot on New Jersey's Black Tom Island. Apparently the blast was heard all the way in Philly and through shrapnel that actually damaged the arm and torch of Lady Liberty herself. What bring me, Kaiser Wilhelm uh uhid some of it? I do just want to kick his body? What was that? And I was figured that was you guys, will Is

that what I sound like to you? Yeah, you know, like I'm drunking about a throw up. Some of the other plots that were thankfully discovered, we're attaching and rudder bombs on chips. Another interesting one was trying to buy US passports from doc workers uh to smuggle more spies, and it was found out and ushered in putting photos on passports. I think I understand. I think so too,

so they couldn't be stolen and used anymore. Anyway. I thought you guys would find it fascinating that the Germans they were a little better at sabotage and would have made a better film in World War One. Wow, And that is Josh losing Mary. It's a lot, Josh. Thanks for the work you're doing out there and nice. Yeah. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know more about something we walked right past in a previous episode, we love to hear more stuff.

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