Bob Thurman on How to Find Bliss

or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Bob Thurman, a professor of Indo Tibetan Buddhist studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. He's also the president of the Tibet House US, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and he is also the president of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. Bob is the author of many books, including the one him and Eric discuss here, Wisdom Is Bliss For Friendly Fun Facts that

Can Change Your Life. Hi Bob, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, I'm very happy to be here with you again. Yes, it is a pleasure to have you back on. I greatly appreciate it. We're going to be discussing your latest book, which is called Wisdom is Bliss for Friendly Fun Facts that Can Change Your Life. But before we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

a battle. One it is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you

do well. I think that's a lovely parable in the sense that it implies that you have the choice to choose which front to feed, and also, of course, even more basically, that everyone has both sides in their being, and and yet they're not doomed to follow the fierce fun or the angry one or follow the good one. In a way, they are presented as kind of equal, and that the one who you feel in your freedom as a free being, which we basically are, you can

choose to strengthen the good one. And it doesn't sort of address the issue of do you want to kill off the bad one or do you want to change the bad one into being an ally of the good one? That cter, I mean, you could take it further, which he leaves the Grandpa. Grandpa leaves that open. But I like it in that sense that at least you know your own shadow side, and you choose to be the good one if if you're smart in a way. I think it would be nice if they continue their conversation,

and if Grandpa had wisdom. I think maybe he would say how the good one would relate to the bad one, because of course it always is the danger. Even feed the good one, the bad one will attack it and destroy it. And he's sort of not addressing that because he's talking to a grandchild, apparently a young one. So he says he's called to helping him cultivate the awareness of his freedom and of the fact that he has a shadow side, but he he's not resolving the issue.

I'm a happy ending person I always wanted actually as a child, which to me is a proof of former life, because I didn't do anything great in this life particularly, and I'm pretty much like I've been hiding in my evory tower of the educational world. And I didn't do much. But I always didn't like tragedies. I mean, I couldn't understand them, but I didn't like ending with the tragedies. I wanted somewhere beyond the suffering of the tragic hero.

And I didn't like movies that ended in misery. You know, I really didn't and our books or anything. I wanted a happy ending, and I still do. Well, that's interesting, No, but he has ever suggested that I can remember that somebody ought to write the rest of the Wolf story. That's a brilliant idea. I pulled this from near the end of your book because I thought it spoke so well to the parable. I'm just gonna read it to you and the listeners here because I think it's basically

the parable. Uh, you wrote that means you read it all the way to the end. That's right. The Buddhist view is that the human being is completely malleable in their wiring. Any human being can become a saint and very easy going, and any human being can become quite evil and very very difficult if they go on the dark side, and all degrees in between. That's basically the Wolf parable. And then you say, actually, every human being

is constantly changing all the time. If you don't become more conscious about how you change and what changes things and what influences you, and you do not choose what you allow to influence you by using your intelligent, discriminate nation, then you will probably be changed for the worst. That's wonderful. Well, you know, my wisdom is Bliss book about how it is to bliss energy, joy energy, that we're going to meet these challenges and we're gonna deal with the bad

rules and we're gonna reinforce the good ones. And the issue of the how if you just kind of let yourself go and the stream, you will probably be conditioned towards the dark side. Our civilization, or would be civilization on the planet is based on fear to a great degree. For the last five thousand years, I would say it seems that there was a time when the women, the female side of the human team was stronger, if not dominant, and perhaps even dominant the simper thing called the civilization

of the Goddess. If some archeologists do away, and there there was much less violence, and things were more peaceful, and there were less fortified cities, etcetera, etcetera. And then these are male people came off the great steps of Eurasia. This is I'm talking sort of Eurasia Center, because that's

what we have the writing about. We don't really know about the Mayans and Aztecs except through European propaganda, so we don't know about the America's in the ancient times, so I'm not talking about that, but we don't know about Eurasia. So we've been conditioned to feel we need to depend on leaders. We've been terrified that reality is nature read in truth and flaw, that other beings are potentially dangerous, so we need to depend on the warrior

king or the high priest. And we're sort of taught that ignorance is bliss because reality is very dangerous. And nowadays the version of it by the scientists is that we're this lonely crunch of features on this one only planet in this sort of vast universe of these stars, and although they look nice twinkling at night, they're hot and boiling and in between is a gulf of total death where you'd explode, you know, but if you didn't have a missile in man suit and it's our own

thing is very fragile. But luckily, if we get all killed, if we wrecked the whole place, as we were obviously doing at the moment, there will just be nothing. So at least there's no hell. And so the you know, the the equivalent of the indulgence that Marton Luther was disturbed about in the time of the Reformation, that the Catholics were saying they could pave your way to hell if you gave them money. So our scientists tell us that except they have freedom from hell, but they don't

have heaven. They just have nothingness. But at least it's anesthetic we don't have. You know, their promise us that we won't feel pain after death, you know, which is what we're really scared of. We tend to ourselves that we're scared of being annihilated, and the scientists reinforced that idea to make themselves feel much of But actually nobody is afraid of annihilation. When they're in serious pain. They

seek it, actually they create it because it's anesthesia. And so this is a false dispensation that the science priesthood, the scientistic priesthood, not scientific, but scientistic priesthood, offers to the planet why we should follow their prescriptions about lack of spirituality and lack of seeking a higher sort of level in ourselves. So therefore they lead us into a kind of apathy about just following the currents in the culture.

But you know how if at this moment we follow either the current of some religious fanatic culture where you were based on fear, create of hell. So you follow a certain god, either Hindu or Buddhist or Jewish or must and that god will save you when everybody else goes down the drain, and people who don't believe in that god, they will go down the drain. So you're

in your isolated little cleek. So that's one side you can you can sort of put your blind faith in or the other side is who put your blind faith in annihilation? In anesthesia and nothingness, And you can just flow with the secular culture or one of the religious cultures and not take care of the situation and be responsible with the idea that you're going to be involved

in it. Whatever you're just like, you will not abuse your body in use, usually because you want to live older, so you won't do things that will damage the body and make you suffer when you're older. And we do that as a practicality usually, and sometimes we don't know what's harming us when we're young, so we'll get into bad hatits, of course, but the point is basically we try not to because we look forward to a consequence.

So similarly, if all the humans on this planet look forward to a consequence based on how they're living, they would not do anything harmful to other creatures. They would not be harmful to future generations by ricking the planet they would be much more responsible and less psychotic. So so that is what I'm sort of saying there, that the wisdom is bliss view and the main thing that that I feel the Buddha was trying to convey, But I also think it's what Jesus was trying to convey. Actually,

all of them they did do that. Muhammad was trying to convey it. The great Jewish prophets in the many rate saintly rabbis conveyed, the Hindu great yogis and enlightened beings, the Daoists, etcetera. Every great spiritual founder conveyed to people

that reality is good. And even the scientists at first, who thought that nature was God a gift to us, and if we studied nature, we would without dogma, and just by whatever we observed we would be able to manage well in this beautiful lineup which God gave us. They were quite religious, the early scientists, and that in the Enlightenment Western enlightened seventeenth century, they were not anti

religion like the current one. But I don't blame the current ones for being anti religion in the sense that the religions have become very dogmatic Unfurtunately, they also become dogmatic that there's no spirituality, and that has doomed people to just follow their current unfortunately, you know, counting on no consequence of how they behaved. But what the great founders and teachers have told us East West spiritual scientific is reality is good and you get back what you

put into it. You know, what goes around comes around those kind of statements, and so you've got to put good stuff out there. And the good stuff for us to put out there would be to listen to Granted Turnberg and to take care of our grandchildren's future and immediately turn off fossil fuel machinery, methane producing feed lots, bad agriculture, chemical agriculture, etcetera. All of this we would immediately stop, not just by fake stuff politicians tell you,

but just turn it off right away. And then we use all our technological genius to create alternative energy sources, which we know how to do. Actually, ready, let's start sort of at the beginning of your book and talk about what you're referring to as four friendly fun facts. All right, thank you, Eric. That's quid, which are normally referred to as the four Noble truths of Buddhism. I love the fact that you've rephrased it is four friendly fun facts. First, let's start with why are you calling

them that versus the four noble truths. Let's start with kind of why you're titled at that. Well, you know, the noble truth is not wrong, So it's not that I'm saying it's wrong, but I'm saying it has connotations about the early encounter with Buddha's teaching, Buddha's mission and

movement by Western people. Noble is a class term, which Buddha changed from being a social class term to being a psychological class term, meaning and ignoble to him, or what he would call a commoner is someone who is very self preoccupied and self centered and who just sort of hardly aware of the existence of other people we

might say narcissistic, as some psychologists might say. And therefore it's quite miserable because they're only in their own world and nobody else matters not much to them, and other people end up being not that far with him actually, because they just only always out to feed themselves. Talk about feed the one you feed. They just feed themselves. So then that's commoner. And then noble is someone who develops an awareness which can be done methodically through education.

Some people have a natural are born with a stronger affinity for that, but everyone has both possibilities in the way, they're the good and the bad world, and the good one is the altruistic one, and that's very strengthened by an education where they really learned that actually other people are just as important as themselves, and in a way, if they don't realize the importance of the other they're

not really recognizing their own importance. And they even realize they're more important when they realize they can do something for the many others that makes it more important to Altruism strengthens the sense of self worth actually naturally automatically.

So it's really as a dinomalised to say, if you want to be successfully selfish, meaning get to have a good outcome, be more altruistic, because when you're when you care about others, the first person who gets happier is you, because once you're looking only at how happy you are, you're never satisfied. Yours want more, whereas when you look at others happiness a lot. There's a lot of things you can do for them all and then you forget about how unhappy you are and get better. So that's

what noble means. Noble noble in his use of it, but is he's saying just by birth that doesn't give you altruism. Although a noble should have no bless oblige and take care of the people who depend on the noble person in a good society, they do, but actually often they don't, unfortunately. So noble is when you really feel the pulse of others as equal to your own in importance, and you become more we oriented than I oriented, and that makes you happier and healthier. Okay, so that's

what noble meant. And but then I'm saying, since we have a double connotation of noble as some sort of high faluting, it's not a person that friendly. Is a good definition for friendly, because your true friend is one who cares about you and you can rely on them because to them you are important, and that's a true friend. The word of truth is again not wrong. The words setiac can Mian truth, but truth has too manies. In English, one is reality itself and one is propositions about reality.

You know, as I sort of said in different words before the third noble truth or the third friendly fact that the Buddha taught that it was the root of his whole popularity and usefulness. Is that the deepest level of reality, when you discover what it really is, you find that it is itself is good, it's nice, it's love, it's abundance, it's energy that can help you, not the destructive.

And so you you should not have ultimate fear. You should be afraid of some temporarily damaging, a ruinous thing. When you something you feel is separate from you, like a scorpion is about to see you at its tail, you should be afraid of that. So fear can be useful. But the ultimate, the level of everything beyond sort of life and death, or maybe in the heart of life and death both is goodness, and it's a stronger force.

And it's actually quite similar to what theists believe. But Buddha didn't necessarily think it was one person monopolizing that goodness. They think that same goodness is in the reality of every person and every even stone and object and planet and whatever. And it's the nature of the final reality. In a way, it's like the dark matter and the dark energy and the bright one three bright said dark,

as we are told by the physicist nowadays. But it's not really that it's dark, is that it's transparent, so it's invisible. But that invisible reality is goodness. It's total goodness. And that's what the that's what nice monotheists believe because they think God is good. But the fanatic ones they don't care good or bad. They just think God is their God, and they think they can be bad in the name of God and and and the gods. Actually, I don't really like it. According to Buddha, the gods

are unhappy with that. So that's the reason I came to friendly facts because reality is friendly. It likes us. Whenever we let go to reality is better for us and we try to impose something on reality. I love that. And four friendly fun facts is great alliteration, Bob, it's great alliteration. It's fun to say for friendly fun facts. That's right. I could have added free freedom. That is the friendly freedom of reality too. You know, let's walk

through what these four friendly fun facts are. I don't think we've done an episode where we really took a part and examined the four noble truths or in this case the four friendly fun facts. So this might be sort of a Buddhism one oh one here on what they are. So what is the first friendly fun fact? I just I can't get enough of saying it. First one is that if you continue not to take responsibility to understand your reality and the ultimate reality, which is

your ultimate reality as well as the world. If you do, you will be stressed out, you will be frustrated, but it's still okay because you're going to find it and then actually anyway, because the knocks will get you to take it more seriously. You know the stressful life, and it's not as extreme as Socrates once said, the unexamined life is not worth living. It is definitely worth living, especially as a human. Humans are the luckiest of all the life from including more lucky than the gods. Would

have certainly believed there were gods. He was not against a theism, but he just didn't say there was one that's completely in charge of it all. That's all. It didn't blame one perfecting or give one credit for everything. They're all helping or and there are few who are a little bit clumsy and harmful now, but they're there So the point is human is the best because we're vulnerable, and yet we have a kind of divine intelligence and we have a close to an enlightened intelligence, and so

we can have a meaningful life. But even if we don't use it well and we just sort of follow the herd, we don't take the road less travel. Let's say it's readinitely worth living because life itself is a teacher. It will teach us. So one of my motives in the book was to counteract the atmosphere emerging from a lot of Buddhist teachings and teachers and misunderstandings of Buddhism that Buddha is very much emphasizing suffering and you're supposed to suffer, and if you don't suffer all the time,

you're somehow being unrealistic. And that's very wrong. But in a way that reflects what other world scientific traditions kind of tell us that wisdom is being resigned to the basically inadequate level of life. It's a bad planet. Nature

wants to eat us up. And you know, we're never going to be that happy, so being miserable is realistic or something like that, and and Buddha's against that it's just saying, if you don't find reality, which you're capable of finding and is right there in front of your face, In fact, it is in your face. But if you keep neglecting and living in denial of it, it will

be stressful. That's the first friendly fact. Don't expect if you get to be president, if you even get to be God, if you get to be whatever you think is the ultimate state of a separate being from every other being, that it'll be. You'll be fine. That will be the limit. Then no, unless you see reality, you will continue to be, as you say, stressed or to suffer if we don't see reality. So number two second

friendly fun fact. Now this is where friendliness gets stronger because you know what we can diagnose the cause of the stress, and it's very simple. You think that you are the main center of everything, and even you're told by some psychologies and some traditions, you should think that if that's what you're supposed to sink, and that's very very erroneous, and it's obviously futile situation. If I'm the most important team, I'm immediately paranoid because I realized nobody

else agrees with me. They are On top of that, they have the temerity to think they are the most important things, and they know I don't agree with them. So it's a war of ale against all. As Hobbs said, you know the Western guy, and you lose, and you because there's so many of them, you know, if you're the most greatest, you're gonna lose. They're gonna bring you down. So it's not even rocket science, but it is a good diagnosis because it's not merely moralistic telling you you

shouldn't be self centered. What it's saying is when you have a self centered element, because you're human and because your culture has made you like that, and when you were in previous lives as an animal and as a god, you are like that and whatever you were. But luckily it's a human You can become self reflective, and you can investigate yourself and quite easily discover that you're just one of the ones, you're not the one. As my old Mongolians, in a very simple way teacher used to say,

it's correct that you're a reality. You're real. But the problem is each of us tends to think we're the really realist, and that's a mistake. Others are equally real, because again some people will misunderstand the Buddha's teaching as and our old spiritual teaching is you have to be somehow self destructive. You have to say, I don't even exist, and I'll be a martyred to destroy me, and then I'm then I'm saintly and that's quite wrong. Your ego

is very useful. It should make you want to use your human life in the best way possible to be the best kind of being possible. And and that's a very easy to see what would be the best kind of being totally happy and totally loving, maximally capable of making others happy, although ultimately one of the things is you can't make any other person happy. They have to find that. You can only help them find their happiness

in themselves. So that's the second noble truth is the diagnosis. Yes, And so it struck me when I was reading you know, you summarize these things at one point and you said, what's the cause of our confusion? We talked about not seeing reality and the first one, what's the cause the causes self centeredness? And it took me back because when I got sober in a way, back when There's a line in the A Big Book that says, the root of our problem is selfishness, self centeredness, And I was

blown away by that. And again, I think what you say there is so important because if when we hear that, oftentimes we're told that in a moralizing way. You know, you're so selfish, you're so self centered. What I understood when I read that, I mean didn't fully understand. I've been trying to live my way into it for thirty years. But what hit me so clearly, and what you're saying is that that strategy is doomed to cause suffering because, like you said, I think I'm the most important thing

in the world. You think you're the most important thing in the world. Everybody else thinks the exact same thing, and boom. We are always in misalignment. And when we can just loosen up on that a little bit, at whatever level, we're capable of slowly shedding that belief that we are the center of everything. Boy, does life get better? Right?

That's from of all. I think you put that so beautifully, And you know the issue of addiction, it's so important, and the diagnosis involves analyzing the system of habitual what they call claisha Sansford word claisha, which people I also used to translate as affliction mental affliction because it's not only an emotion, it can also be some sort of rigid idea, you know, it can be a rigid concept as well as an emotion. But they're usually hatred delusion.

Delusion is where their concepts come in. And then greed and jealousy and exaggerated pride, arrogance, and but those are mental addictions and their addictions because you know, when you feel weak in the situation somebody is making problems for you, then anger comes in your mind and it's in your own voice, and it tells you, well, they're pushing me around because I'm not strong enough. But if I get angry,

that will make me stronger. And at first it feels like you're stronger when you're in a rage, but actually any martial arts guy would just toss you out the window, turning your old imbalanced fury against itself and you know, staying cool and just getting out of your way and then you go run into a wall. And so those are addictions. Meant we have mental addictions. The root of

of of substance addictions. Which are so spectacular in our society, though, is that we are not given in our education a way of understanding mental addictions that we could easily understand. And they are the roots by when you get free of the ment all addictions and you realize, hey, anger, don't You're free to choose not to follow the dictator of the anger, not to follow the dictator of the greed, not to follow the jealousy, not to follow the arrogance,

to follow the delusion. I'm free. I don't have to have this rigid idea. I don't have to hit that guy. I don't have to do this that. When we find that freedom in our mind, then we become a little bit immune to that, and then we will also not be trapped. You know. The four friendly facts are actually like you have a friendly doctor, but it's not like a prophet or religion or moralizer or a preacher. You

couldn't preach. He said, I can't make you happy. I can't give you a formula that if you adopt it and keep repeating it to yourself you'll be fine. It won't help. You have to do it yourself. But I give you a good prognosis, and I'm giving you a good set of therapies, but you have to apply them yourself. I love that about them. It's like a doctor's sing. So that's the second note. Truth is the diagnosis, and the third is the prognosis, which I'm trying to deliver

ahead of time to everybody. And that prognosis has not become a Buddhist or it's not become any particular new identity. Don't have strap on to your ego yet another identity. Oh I'm a Buddhist, I'm an American, I'm a male, I'm a white, I'm a black, I'm a female, I'm i'm a red, I'm a green. Whatever it is. None of those things will help. What it is is you have to try to relax and start on learning self

and opening. And at one place where Buddha said, well, give him a little credibility, he asked for a little credibility, but the way he got it was by being so incredibly joyful himself. He was a special effect. He was like e t you know, the guy make a little et in the closet. He made a light with his fingertip and he looked really harmless, but he could do like magical things and so then that he had a little credibility with a little kid. He thought, this guy

is really cool. I'm not going to expose him to the CIA or the surgeons or somebody who wants to dissecting to find out how he does the super normal thing. So Buddha showed form. They say he made himself, created himself. He himself was a work of art, and and he showed sort of just like you know, we fall in love with some wonderful singer or people identified with movie stars or an ancient time, some handsome prince or a

beautiful queen or something, or your fairy godmothers. You know, I would have these kind of ideal beings and then that would give you like hope, Well someone can be like that. I can be like the type of idea by depending on them. But in this case, the being who's liked I just said, well, yes you could be like that, but I can't make you like that, and all need depending on me and thinking I'm cool would help. You have to find the coolness in yourself, and then

their credibility. It is just there that he showed us a by example. He just like a good parent, you know, a good parent can tell a lot of stuff to the kids, but ultimately the kids will believe how the parents behaves. If the parent talks all moralistic stuff and then they have a foul temper. They're very greedy and only think about their money. They're stingy about gishing out allowance. They are like nasty, punishing people because we don't believe

that people. We we look at some of how they act, you know, by their deeds. Jesus himself said, just like Buddha, by their deeds, he shall know them. And so Buddha was a high prince, could have been a king, had an army he was, you know, kings are always commanders in chief in the old societies. And he left it all, he gave it back. He said, I want to really discover what is real, and I want to really help people, not boss them around. So then the third novel Truth

is the prognosis. We are on the brink of freedom, the brink of super intelligence, the brink of awareness of what we really are, and the minute we know it, we will be it and we'll feel totally great, and then we'll be so helpful to everyone we love, and we'll find out we love more people than we talk. So it's a really good prognosis. Okay, then the fourth

novel truth. I used to say even and people used to say, well, just like the second is the cause of the first, the fourth is the cause of the third. Just like you go to the doctor you have a symptom, They recognize the symptom, diagnose the cause, and then you have a prognosis and that gives you hope you can cure it, and then he gives you the therapy. Those analogies only go so far because in this case, the truth,

the good result already there, actually has always been there. Nirvana, it's the ultimate, it's the actual reality of life in the deepest teaching. When you first reach it, maybe you think it's something different from life, but then that could be a trap, and then you get separated in another way. So it's uncaused. Nothing causes it, and that's why. But I can't just put you on a train and you

arrived there. So what the fourth is is the therapy of how you can open your own mind, not how you can believe something, but how you can open your own mind to find in your own self and in the world around you, this reality, which is the freedom and the bliss bliss, freedom indivisible. They will say they called freedom voidness or emptiness, any emptiness of any stuck thing or absolute thing, and that's the infold path, and that's what the real main substance of the book is.

Just to do a quick summary. First noble truth the diagnosis, which is if you're confused about reality, you will suffer. Second truth being that the main thing that causes us to be confused about reality is our self centeredness, are thinking we're separate. The third noble truth is, hey, this can get better. You can fix this. There's a path, and the fourth noble truth lays out what that path is,

which is often called the eightfold path. And we're not going to be able to go through the whole eightfold path because we're near out of time. But there's a couple of parts of it that I wanted to hit that I thought would be really interesting. And the first is I want to jump all away to number eight on the eighth fold path and use the term instead of using oftentimes we say that these things on the eighth fold path are like right speech, right livelihood. You

use the word realistic, so realistic speech, realistic livelihood. But the last one is realistic Somadhi, which is often translated as sort of realistic meditation. But what's interesting is you write that you may have heard that Buddhism is basically or even only meditation, and that meditation is the most important thing you can do, and that learning is okay, but not really important. Practice we are told as meditation.

Say more about that, because yeah, I think that is one of the messages that came through for me in twenty years of reading Buddhist books was practice, practice, practice, meditate, meditate, meditate, And if you're not doing that, then you're not really engaged in the path and you're saying something different. So talk to me, Bob. So a couple of things there.

But first let me just say I know you didn't want to start at the beginning, and I won't completely accept simply to say that we have this tendency to what I call absolute tize things, and we project sort of essential and unvarying realities into things. So we think that the table is really a table, and we think that I am really me most importantly, And so you could take world view as belief. You could translate us belief and you could say, Bob, you're wrong, but it's

a mis dogmatic and you have to believe something. But in a way, what is the realistic belief? For few, it is fundamentally nothing but a belief in causation, that things are a process of causation or relativity. It's a belief in relativity. And why that is so powerful is that this subliminal belief that we have that is the cause of you know, when you mentioned the cause, you said self centeredness was the cause because of confusion. But

the confusion is the root of the self centeredness. In over, it's just an exaggerated sense of fixed self. That's the absolute you see, the relative self is a great thing and we need that, and that's often the Buddhist there is statement of selflessness, which is very important budd Of teaching. And he means by that not that you don't exist, which is the wrong way of understanding it. He means by that that you exist within only with a relative self.

Yourself is into relative with everything. It's not the absolute thing. So you could be forgiven for being self centered. When you feel that yourself is the absolute, you follow me because that's the realest thing. So therefore I'm going to

be focused on it. When you realize that you're a relative, then you still have to be focused on it to be responsible for yourself and compassionate for your relative self, which feels and synic experiences and and has happiness and has suffering when it's not fully aware of the deeper

reality of things. So that's very very key. And now the other end, the last one, somebody is not really meditation, but somebody means is total concentration, sort of the most absolute a relative being can get by being very able to use their mind in one point of focus on whatever it is. So it's sort of almost like willpower.

It's like it's realistic realization. It isn't really like, Okay, I realized that all the reality is this relativity, and I've realized that by analyzing and investigating it, which is the most important thing. That's how Buddha. I'm on learning all sorts of dogmas and cultural conditionings and even neural wrong wirings from culture. And so it's investigation is the real practice of Buddhism in fact, and the meditation part is a toolment that that's really really important. They're not

wrong in saying that it is really important. But within the two types of meditation, one of them called you could say, critical, analytic or investigative meditation, and the other one one point of deep focus meditation, which is the Somadi one. The more important one is the investigation one.

So the seventh realistic path is realistic mindfulness, which means opening the mind to what's going on in the mind and in the world and noticing that I don't have to be angry and I don't have to be depressed. That's one choice I could make, but I could also choose not to be because I become aware of the mechanisms of the mind and how the what I'm addicted to one of my habits, and I can then gradually undo those habits, replace them with more positive habits, more

free habits. This mental freedom is the real thing. That is because reality, when we're fully free and fully open, we are our reality actually, and then we realize our reality is this one for loving and to connectedness, with everyone empty of that one being absoluted, this one being absolute, or anything rigidly this way or that way, and that's what's so great about We then can draw from wherever it's needed whatever it is to make any relative situation

ultimately better. So the absoluteness spreads and smears itself over the whole of the relativity, including all of the beings, and so it's all one huge happiness. You could say, you know, and then the only thing that would stand out and it would be anybody persisting in unhappiness, and all everybody else would be all wanting to help them find it. That would be there more fun, that would be their realistic thing to do, would become almost automatic.

So when you sort of real work through that inferentially to sort of realize that given beginning, less past, there's no first beginning, big bang genesis. Those are all cultural pretenses that we know where it also artists, so therefore we are in charge of you. They're sort of false certainties stuck on us, which attract our absoluteness and make us then subjected to the people who pretend to know this, because who would ever know the first p n A

How could there be a beginning? The beginning means an ending of something before it. A limit means there's something on both sides of the limit, the limited thing here and then other things. So it's just completely a misuse of language to say, a beginning out of nothing. It's just thought of an assertion, meaningless, actually incoherent. But then if you get attached to it, you get really fanatical

about it. It attracts our tendency to find security in being stuck somewhere, because once we think we're separate, as we've given reality, then we want to be really separated, so nothing else can bother us. What it was a scientist, as you know, to make a big fuss about it, and therefore he opened the door for us to discover the reality that we ourselves are, and we're related to.

And what's precious about us is our ability to understand what we are by critical investigation and education and so on, and developing our powerful mind. And then once we have it focused towards freedom, then meditation comes and totally makes that a kind of power of freedom. If we meditate right away when we are stuck in all kinds of wrong views or unrealistic views, then it will heighten our

entrapment in their unrealism. And that's why we've seen in the teachings of the Asian traditions or even in Western spiritualities actually, but they want to actually achieve something like Jones Town. You know, these cults, you know, but they think they're going to really meet Jesus or something. You know, They're not just going to think Jesus later, it's going to take care of it. They're going to really do something.

Then you get these absolutistic behaviors by people, which is worse, and people meditate on them, and then they're practically will kill themselves and they'll do all terrible and they've hurt other people and they'll do terrible things that have g heads or crusades, or they'll be nasty to the Muslims, like like fanatic Buddhist Scott to be in Burma and in Sri Lanka, which shows you that even Buddhism as a religion can be falsely absolutistic. So the point there

is and that it's a progression. When you are walking down the street and someone asks you, I'm broke, I'm a veteran. You know, I have no food I had eat, you know, and then you could give them a quarter, your mind will say all sorts of taste. Why are they doing this? Must be their own fault. I should turn them into the a s p c A or whatever it is. You know that they should go to the shelter. If you go on welfare, you know, and

I don't. I'm not doing that well, okay, but there could be practical Maybe it's somebod if there was a thousands of them and you only had two quarters. But if you could give a quarter where it's not the end of your own livelihood and you down't, then you are closing yourself. And that little gift is by doing that little gift, that's that's practicing Buddhism, talking yourself out

of following the cultural thing. And there must be something wrong with them because they're poor and I don't have to I'll contaminate me even if I touched them instead. What nice they're giving me the opportunity to give them something. But the point is it's an it's an advantageous moment for you to be nice and be happy by doing that,

And that's the practice of Buddhism. And then critically learning about reality and trying to critically eliminate the absolutes that are stuck everywhere by everyone who wants you to absolutely follow them in some way, and you will be more and more free gradually and then you learn. You know,

I love that Cartola, the power now guy. I love him because his story was that he was talking himself into suicide, and he was hearing his own voice telling him the worthlessness of life, worthlessness of living, worthlessness of the world, and he should just threw himself in somehow, taking him right down that drain. And somewhere he found in his mind another voice say, why should I listen to you? Who you know? Which still was also his

own voice. You know, he wasn't just hypnotized to follow the inner narrative that he was bound to, because he identified it as his thinking, and he found another voice in his mind that said, wait a minute, why am I listening only to this narrative? And he did it without a shrink, He did it without anybody else interrupting him. He found that that it was mindfulness that was hearing a deeper level of his own intuition, and so he got into his power of now to get away from

negative thinking pattern. But but that's okay. That isn't the same ballpark as realistic mindfulness. What we call really it's actually called realistic memory or realistic awareness. Is the real literal translation of what we call mindfulness, and it means counting your blessings, actually observing what's really going on, and anybody who really observes, like right now when you draw a breath, and that's like the big meditative practice that people who sell as the main thing about m and

it is a very important thing. I'm not against it at all, but when it's the only thing, then it's not making use of the whole prescription. It's just picking one pill in the prescription. And but the point is when you breathe, they just have your counting. But on the hand, when you breathe, who should you be thankful for all the plans? They are giving you this oxygen, and they are taking your carbon. If you didn't cut them all down and like put smoke, smoked them out

with fires. They are giving you an oxygen and they love you. They have what you need, and you have what in heat carbon to make their leaves and plants and flowers and new seeds for the next generation. And they're giving you the oxygen and to live your human life. Take a deep breath, so all of those things going down, And then the realistic somebody is the concentrative side of meditation.

The mindfulness is the analytic, investigative side of meditation. Both are crucially important, but the key is the wisdom, and it has said three types of wisdom. Wisdom born of learning. We are so arrogant as Westerners. We think we're the smartest people in the world that ever lived, because we can blow it up and we are writing here. That means we're smart. I think that thing means we're a

little backward. Actually, we're irresponsible, actually, because we keep having all these ways of disconnecting and disconnecting from nature, disconnecting from life, and then we think disconnecting from death by making it into nothing. But it isn't bad. Death is just like falling asleep, having a bad nightmare and waking

up on a bad day. If you had a previous bad day, you know when you went to sleep in a horrible temper, anger and frustration and paranoia, depression, that you were going to wake up in a bad way. Usually so wisdom board of learning, which is critical on learning of all sorts of dogmas. And then wisdom born of meditation as investigation like Descartes type of meditation like

mindfulness analyzing different things. And finally wisdom born of concentrated and investigative combined on a single point to focus on the freedom, freedom embedded in relationality to wisdom and compassion, indivisible, wisdom and bliss indivisible. That'sity wonderful. I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. Bob. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope I have your spirit and energy when I am your age, I really do. Don't wait for my age. You have

it already. I love. You're the one you're feeting and you're already doing it and uh and you know, helping people find the dark side, helping them feed the good will, but not to pretend there's no dark vote and you at the dark quote. And that's really wonderful. All right, Thank you, Bob, take care, Thank you, bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

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