Robert Thurman- Buddhism and the Dalai Lama

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 m

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Robert Thurman, Professor of Indio Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University and the president of tibet House US, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the Tibetan civilization. The New York Times recently hailed him as the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. Robert is the first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk and is a personal friend of the

Dalai Lama for forty years. He is a passionate advocate and spokesperson for the truth regarding the current Tibet China situation. Robert is the author of many books on tibet Buddhism, art, politics, and culture, including The Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead in a Revolution, The Jewel Tree of Tibet, and Why the Dalai Lama Matters. His latest book is a graphic biography of the doal A Lama called Man of Peace, The Illustrated Life Story of the doal A

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other things. And finally, one you feed dot Net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in eating your Good Wolf. Thanks again for listening. And here's the interview with Robert Thurman. Hi, Bob, welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric, nice to talk to you.

I'm excited to have you on and talk about You are one of the leading Buddhist scholars in the West, and so I've been familiar with your work for a long time, and you have a new book out called Man of Peace, The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. So we'll come back and cover all that in just a minute. But we're gonna start like

we normally do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One 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 for a second and he thinks about it, and he looks up. He says, well, grandfather, which wolf wins?

And the grandfather said, is 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. That means that one should definitely not feed the bad one and feed the good one. And the ideal, though you know is in the Buddhist world at least, I think in lots of spiritual tradition, is not just the Buddhist one. I think the best thing to feed the good wolf with is the bad wolf, and then you don't have to worry about that so

much anymore. And also the good wolf gets the energy that before the bad wolf had. It's really difficult to be the good will or to let the good wolf function if the bad wolf is always nagging and nipping

at it and and crippling it. And I think Western culture too much has the attitude that it always has to be a balance, and even it has the culture that the good wolf is really nice, but the bad wolf is stronger, and even like modern psychology, Freudian and otherwise tend to reinforce that by the idea that the conscious mind is weak and it's small, it's the tip of the iceberg, and the unconscious mind is much more powerful and pushes your impulse is to do things that

you can't control and just have to live with that. Whereas the Buddhist plan is and other spiritual traditions I would argue, is to be the good one and starve the bad one or consume the bad one, where is even better than just starving the bad one and turn the bad one's energies into the energy is a good one. So you really really have the one wolf, and that's

a good one. And that's what enlightenment is somehow, where you're just the one good wolf, and maybe you just seas being a wolf actually, and you become like I don't know what, toothless friendly dog, you know, like you're nice pet dog. You know, happy dog, loyal and faithful and friendly, but to keep the strength of the bad wolf so that other people's bad wolves or general bad things you can defend against them, you can help them

become free of those and so forth. And I think that the one nice news that Buddha had was that the human being is capable of becoming a good wolf. It's not a matter that the bad wolf will always win and always overcome. That goodness is more powerful ultimately, and I can give a reasoning for that, but just that in short, that's what That's what I would say. And so that goodness is often referred to as Buddha nature, Buddha nature, it's just one aspect of that. That's a

way of referring to goodness. And of course buddhahood is Buddha nature in full, you could say, fully realized. And you know, you do hear some people give a version of Buddhism where but it's sort of Buddha nature or you know, enlightenment means sort of you know, busting your hump to try to get away into some nirvana. Imagine that somewhere else. And then enlignment is just being resigned.

You're just being here and dealing with it. I know some people who pretend to be Buddhist experts and they say, well, you're always dealing with the devil no matter what, and so on and so on in yourself, you know, and actually that's not accurate. We do have the capacity to become wholly good. And the reason being good is the good is more powerful. Is that the good is that which you do for others. It is fundamentally altruism, love

and compassion, you know, which sourced by from wisdom. And since there's so many others and they have so much need, that's a huge energy that it draws on. And whereas the bad is based on selfishness and the way you're just doing your own will and seeking your own pleasure and success, and you have a lesser drive because there's only one of you. And so therefore the good is more strong, you know, when you're motivated for the good for others, and you have more power than those who

are selfish. Excellent. Let's talk about enlightenment for a moment. It is a concept that is very much at the heart of Buddhism. And there's a lot of people who I would say these days tend to think of enlightenment is something that doesn't really happen for most people. What's what's your view on that? I mean, is enlightenment something that that that we can be looking for in this lifetime? I think so perfect enlightenment of Buddhood might take most

of us a while. Although the good thing about it, which I can at least I console myself about, since I still have failed to get it, fully, I have had a few hints, and I think I understand sort of the logistics of it to some extent from having staid it. Because the enlightened people leave a map, you know, they leave it. They have a great, excellent science of the whole of enlightenment and unenlightenment. So my consolation is that when you get it, you kind of realize you

always had it. So the sense of not having it and trying to go find it is is based on your ignorance. Unfortunate, however, that ignorance is so powerful and strong that you have to go as far as you have to go in order to find it. And but you can, and you will, and some will in this life,

although that's exceptional. Uh. And even if it happens in this life to someone, it means they have developed tremendously in many previous lives, which Buddhists would say, even to have become human means you have become very close to enlightenment. You have evolved from all kinds of other life forms that we've all been from, beginning with time, where the human one is a particular balance. And our great virtue

as a human is that we're very deep programmable and reprogrammable. Unfortunately, that means if we reprogram ourselves towards the negative, we can become worse than most any other animal. But if we try to reprogram ourselves deep programming that as negativity is those bad wolves inside ourselves into a really the awesome great Megabuddha wolf, then we are really capable of

doing it. So that's why education is so important for the human because the human is completely not exactly blank slate, but it's tending in the very very good direction and very very malleable and mutable. Let's say, and so we can mutate, you know, we can mutate into the butterfly where the proverbial cocoon, you know, and we com mutate into the butterfly pretty pretty easily, but it might take us a few human lives, even in the most esoteric,

most accelerated way. And here's the rest of the interview with Robert Thurman. In your case, you said you've had a couple of hints towards enlightenment. I think that was the word you used, or small taste. Tell me about

what that's been like. Well, I'll tell you something that I'm particularly happy with an excited about nowadays, because I just finished editing a book of a student of mine, Chinese student who Chinese American student, but who spends a lot of time in China, and who is a great translator, has become has a PhD from our university, and had a lot of studies himself before that, and he translated for his thesis a book on the Buddha nature channeled in a way by the future Buddha of Maitrea, according

to the tradition, through a master and Indian master named Asanga in the fourth fifth century, and then commented on by a great Tibetan lama during the World Renaissance of the fifteenth century in a brilliant manner. And you know, before that, I knew there were two ways of understanding the Buddha nature, and one was that it was just a kind of notion of the mind, you know, the intelligent and lightened mind, that somehow we have a seat

of inside. And it was sort of taught by Buddha to reassure those who are habituated to feeling they have a sort of structured self and they're secure with the self and so on, to think that there was some kind of self like structure, Buddha structure inside themselves. And then the more sophisticated one is where the Buddha nature is just emptiness. It is a sort of ultimate reality and everything it has the ultimate rally. We're all empty

in some way, and therefore that's the Buddha nature. And I had I had sort of those in my mind. And then when I read did this book, because my student has been living in China for a decade or so, we had to finish his English version. He translated the same book into Chinese and we had to finished English version. So I had to kind of very much redo the English and do a sort of thoroughly which I had not here, and did a part of it in a thesis that I had gone over. And then I realized

this beautiful idea. What a Buddha is is someone who identifies, has come to identify in a vis old manner, with the entire universe, including all the sensitive beings in that universe. So technically, for Buddha to become a Buddha and meaning fulfilled his or her Buddhist about not to depart into enlightenment into nirvana until everyone is free of suffering. He

couldn't have left any of us behind. So what that means is that he completely thinks he's me and you to anybody who retained Buddha, and actually there's infinite numbers of them, but the recent historical one and Shakimoni from years ago. So he thinks he's you, Eric, and me Bob, and plus everybody else and plus your dog there at beautiful Na. He thinks he's that, and in doing so, he's capable of that because he experiences us on two levels.

On one, he sees us as made of what it's called clear light of bliss, you know, the feeling of vast expansion into sort of ultimate space of reality, and feel thing that all reality is configurations of bliss. At the same time, he doesn't ignore that we experience ourselves as an isolated entity looking out from our senses into an environment that is often threatening and dissatisfactory and problematic and frightened and anxious, and occasionally triumphant and content, but

but always on the edge kind of. So he experienced us both ways. And therefore, since he sees that our reality is this bliss, he automatically knows what it is he needs to manifest to us that will open the door to us to find out our actual nature and drop our ignorance. Because the part of us that thinks we are separate from everything and we can't deal with it and it's overwhelming to us is our ignorant. It's it's our misnowing. It's better than say, ignorant, our misknowing part.

So if that's the case, then Buddha nature, that its so called emptiness or Buddha nature, is not just a vacuum. But what it is is the Buddha's mind in us, which is our deeper reality than our mind in us. And when we become a Buddha, we suddenly realize we're one with all the Buddhas. And however, unfortunately, because of the compassion all other beings, even the non buddhas the idea that my Buddha and nature and yours to Eric and the dogs is the Buddha's mind in us what's

called his dharma kaiah, his reality body. And because of that, you know, since the Buddha experienced us as pure love is made of love, but then realizes we don't feel that, so then he automatically that love overflows in such a way that he wants to manifest to us whatever encourages. And actually it is believed by Tibetans particularly. I'm not

sure the Indians had that believe before. Maybe they did, but you know, out of the Indian tradition, the Tibetans believed that the future Buddha, it's my tread manifest now in the form of dogs, fits with your wolf thing, because the dog is originally like from wolf's stock, and yet a dog just loves us. They trust us, We trust them and feel comfortable with them. We reach out

and we pat them. So it's the idea that it's kind of a nature that we might be afraid of on a subconscious level, you know, because like in Game of Thrones sort of thing, they might devour us in jail if we were thrown in with some hungry ones, but actually they don't, and they will die for us, actually, and they will give themselves for us. And so it's like that, that's the future Buddha, that's the Buddha's mind

in the dog. You know, there was the way. So therefore, Tibetans kind of horrified by any culture like the Chinese that eats dogs. They really freaks them out, you know, I'm horrified. Also, on the other hand, unfortunately, kind of hypocritically, they didn't exactly have an a s p c A in the Buddhist monasteries, and they collected these dogs and they fed them with what they could, but there were

so many dogs they became kind of feral. And it's so you know, future to bed the monastery will have to have an a spc A bench outside the monastery definitely, you know. And I had a friend, Chilling, who was one of the Channlemen Square students, democratic students who escaped and who got awards and ran around and she always had this mutt. It's lovely nice mud. I'm sorry I forgot them nuts name, very nice female dog always used to bring with her even to ceremonies that you and

everywhere she consisted. And the reason she said she had that is that now you know, made them eat all the dogs because they didn't want to waste food on dogs. So then and birds and everything. So Chinese lacked pets, and then they got into this thing of you know, class struggle and cultural revolutions, so kids would turn in parents and parents kids and uncles and cousins, and so they kind of really lost trust for many decades and

they're just kind of recovering it now, you know. Althowise they made them kind of really paranoid, and the dog she felt, you know. So we had a kind of plan of a dog a vacation program for China in those days after Chenna Men in the nineties, of how to take thousands of dogs from all our pounds. First we would have to inject them so their meat tasted terrible, and second take them over there and they allow people

to pet them and so on. Yeah, we necessarily a plan like that, which unfortunately we couldn't have, but I think it naturally got implemented in a way. I think they have pets now, luckily, and they're cheering up. You know, Chinese are very much cheering up. I think animals, at least for me, have been a way to learn to love in a way that is easier to a dog for whatever reason. And then that for me is translated then into being able to do it better with humans.

Right exactly, Let's talk about your latest It's a graphic I won't say novel, I'll say a graphic biography of the Dalai Lama's life. We don't have time to go into a lot of it, but it really covers a couple of key things. One is the development of Tibet, what has happened in Tibet over the years with China, the Dalai Lama's role in that, the things he's tried to do, the peacemaking, and then it's also talks a

lot about his internal spiritual development. It's that latter part that I'd like to spend a few minutes on, which is more kind of where our show focuses on. You know, what can people do in their own lives to live a better life. And I'd like to talk about a term that is used a lot in the book you talk about over and for it was sort of an esoteric teaching that the Dalai Lama brought out to the rest of the world. And I don't know if I'm

gonna say this right, but I'm gonna try Kala Chakra chakra. Yeah, we all have time. Yeah, tell me a little bit about that teaching, because it looks like it was this very remote, esoteric teaching. And yet now he has had these Kala Chakra teachings or ceremonies for hundreds of thousands

of people across the pl that's right. He's done at the thirty or four times and the Grand Initiations it is called sometimes for five six hundred thousand people, a lot of people from around the world, as well as as there was hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, of those who were in exile, those who were ethnic already originally Indian citizens in the Himalayan area and uh in a

couple of eras. Especially during the eighties when things were looser, quite a few could come out of Tibet just for that. But now they are prevented at the moment, the way things have been since two thousand eight. So um, the thing about that is, you know, the title Man of Peace. The reason we give it that title is because he has walked the talk in his he's really reached. But he did that. He wanted to do that from the beginning, but he really reached that gradually to really really be

able to do it. As he has effectively of responding to kind of cultural genocide and certainly in colonial occupation, annexation, invasion, all of that, he's responded that non violently. He has refused to make them an enemy, to call in for

invasion and this and that or counter invasion. His brothers did for a while against his advice and wishes, since he doesn't have like total power over what the Tibetans do, But he said that would be doomed, it wouldn't work, and he didn't want to do it, and so forth, and it was he never called the whole country kind of to rise, and he asked them to respond heroically peacefully. And so that makes him kind of a man of peace. And one of the things I've always tried to do

in my previous book before that's something called white. That Allama matters is that at this time on the planet, we have two major things threatening us, and one of them is this kind of industrial militarism where the weapons are so powerful no one can win a war, and an escalated war among the powers would cause the destruction

of everything or or right for sure. And then we have industrial consumerism, which is like pumping out all kinds of you know, carbon and climate change and wreaking the environment in an in another way for profit and money, but especially on the military side. You know, since we could all imagine if all the money is spent on weapons and militarism today were spent on quality of life for all the people today, they really wouldn't be much problem and people wouldn't really feel they had to go

invade someone else because they'd all be wealthy enough. But people then always say about the Dalament, well, great, he's a man of peace. But isn't that completely unrealistic? You know.

It's like with with this basic thing that is that I've mentioned at the beginning with the wolves, that we in the world's culture now in materialism, following pretty much on the Western colonial power and its culture, Abrahamic religions culture has this idea that the good is weaker than the than the bad, and therefore you have to arm or you're going to be done for. And everyone has to be armed to the teeth basically to protect yourself. And so they say, well, then he's not like that.

Tibet got wasted because they demilitarized in the seventeenth century, etcetera. And well, yes, true, but after the seventeenth century to the twentieth they did really well, and then the British invaded, and then the Chinese reinvaded, the Manchus at first, and then the Nationalists and then the Communists finally, and then they did get wasted. Yes, but before that, thousand years earlier, before Buddhism, they were wasting other people like a typical conqueror.

So in a way, they just made a choice to be vulnerable in order to have a blissful, beautiful society with spiritual value, love and compassion and joyfulness at the center of the culture. And so, yes, it's been sixty years, he's still the twists are still suffering. And so now we have to live up to the power of peace. We have to manifest that we have to dialogue with the enemy. We have to find a way to get along with everybody. And we can do that, and and

we have to do that. I don't know, talk and snack. I think talk and share a snack, you know, break bread, together, as the great teachers of humanity have been trying to tell us for three thousand years. You know, that's what the human destiny has to be, by our own free will. We have to choose that, and we have to do it, and we have the power to do it. So he as a man of peace, you know, which actually is the word that you know, Prince of peace is the

word used for Jesus, you know. But then in the problem with that for Christians is that they then they sort of have this image blazing into their head by Constantine, the Roman emperor, that Jesus God wasted and Caesar remained in power, you know. So he was nice with the sermon on the Mount, but it's not practical advice, whereas now in the twentieth century it is practical advice. Buddha gave the same advice five hundred years ago and also wasn't fully listened to, and a lot of other old

basically all the holy teachers have done. So Mohammed, people only think Muslims are universally violent and jadis, and that is untrue. Mohammed defended himself against the Meccans for a long time. Then when he won that thing, because of the power of his charisma and of his of his idea of Islam. Have let yourself go and give yourself to the universe. You know, Islam means to surrender, you know, surrender your ego. Uh. He then walked into Mecca unarmed.

Maybe you know, you could say, well, the Mecans were afraid his arm If they killed him, his army would punish them. But basically he still made himself vulnerable. And he walked in to do pilgrimage with his former enemies unarmed, and then they they became his friends. And then you developed the power of Islam, which spread rapidly around the world. So all the great spiritual teachers have taught this, and all of us and the and the kings and the

leaders and the high priests have not listened. And they've turned those religions into battle standards and banners that they've carried into battle, you know, for Jesus, you know. And Jesus never said bomb dyne enemy. He never said take the sword of myne enemy. He said love dyne enemy, you know. And so did Buddha. And it's time we

listen now. And so the color chakra is this amazing thing which is part of a prophecy that Shambalah it's magic country that's somewhere eventually becomes the sort of global culture.

It doesn't mean people all become Buddhist at all. It doesn't mean that people become Shambalans at all, But it just means that within the terms of each culture, people find the good side, and they find the good wolf in the teachings, and they and they enjoy life and they love each other and it's much more happy planet. In relation to that, it's the word chakra, like in English, who means a wheel, but like in English, wheel can

stand for a machine. So Buddha's way of not abandoning beings to his own enlightenment and there was not attaining a nirvana freedom from suffering on his own separately from beings, is that he sees all future moments and destinies of beings, apparently in his enlightenment experience. It has stated in all

versions of his enlightenment. He sees his entanglement with all beings from many infinite previous lives, and then he sees all their future possible destinies, how they can make choices that will help them and once will harm them, and he puts his energy out of compassion to try to shape the world in such a way that it will lead them, give them the optimal evolutionary path to their

own fulfillment and enlightenment. And to him those future moments are just as real as the present moment years ago

under the tree when he achieved full enlightenment. So, in other words, the illusion of time being these separate moments is no longer afflicted by and and his compassion enables him to be with us as we evolved life after life, all the beings do into the to a state of where we find that same understanding of reality as a bliss freedom, indivisible, as Buddhists would say, at the deepest level.

So the College chakra is the most vivid, symbolic and yogic expression of that sort of vision of the Buddha operating in history to optimize the planet, not abandon it to some dark age and some horrible you know, corruption and self destruction and things, but to see to it that it evolves, although it doesn't look like it on the surface with its holocaust and world wars and craziness, but basically, the sensitivity of the humans and ultimately of

the older beings is such that they're more and more sensitive, and more and more well educated, more and more aware of each other. Look at Facebook, we have a kind of global brain through the Internet nowadays, where we know everything that happens to everybody else. And and our compassion, natural sensitivity and compassion empathy gets us to like the other beings that used to be very alien to us. And so that's that's sort of the cow chakra legend.

It kind of benign, you know, New Age revelation thing, you know, like Book of Revelation, but not there is a little violence, but that's the violence we are now having, but it's sort of self destructs the destructiveness and then everything goes well. Human beings a great opportunity to use that human intelligence to really enjoy life and bring such enjoyment to all the other creatures in the universe. That's why he has specially done that College chakra all around.

It's been like a mass prayer to see the positive possibility of human evolution and the human history also on this planet. And uh, and that's why he does that. Excellent, thank you for that explanation. That's very helpful. Well, thank you Bob for your time. It's been great talking with you. I've enjoyed it. I really liked the book. I'm glad you guys got it done. I know it took you a long time. And uh, thanks for all your work with Buddhism and the Tibet House. Thank you, Eric and

I have a great time. Okay you too, Okay to care alright. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support