thanks for tuning in to jin and tantra please like subscribe and share in the second part of our interview with professor robert thurman we ask him about enlightenment what is it how can it be described his response covers a wide range of ideas and philosophies but he describes enlightenment as an evolutionary goal the highest potential for the human platform as he describes it a culmination of all the cultures who believe in it ultimately amongst other things it's liberation with happiness as a freedom from suffering he then goes into a discussion on the three bodies of a buddha reality enjoyment and emanation and what that means theoretically and practically from his perspective although this view is shared by many in a tradition professor thurman states that it is just a theory a means to express the inexpressible and that the only sure thing is freedom professor thurman concludes by saying that miracles are always possible and reality is totally comprehensible bob thurman known in academic circles as professor robert a f thurman is a talented popularizer of the buddhist teachings and the first westerner tibetan buddhist monk ordained by his holiness the dalai lama a charismatic speaker and author of many books on tibetan buddhism art politics and culture bob was named by the new york times as a leading american expert on tibetan buddhism and was awarded the prestigious padma shri award in 2020 for his help in recovering india's ancient buddhist heritage time magazine chose him as one of the most 25 influential americans in 1997 describing him as a larger-than-life scholar activist destined to convey the dharma the precious teachings of shakyamuni buddha from asia to america professor thurman served as a json kappa professor of the indo-tibetan buddhist studies in the department of religion at colombia for over 30 years until 2020. a very popular professor students always felt his classes were life changing bob is a founder and active president of tibet house us a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of tibetan culture and of the american institute of buddhist studies a non-profit affiliated with the center for buddhist studies at columbia university and dedicated to the publication and translations of important artistic and scientific tibetan treatises his own teachings and searching for enlightenment began when he was a university student at harvard after an accident which he lost the use of an eye bob left school with on a spiritual quest throughout europe the middle east and asia he found his way to india where he first saw his holiness the dalai lama in after learning tibetan and studying buddhism bob became a tibetan buddhist monk and the first westerner to be some years later however he offered up his robes when he realized he could be more effective in the american equivalent of a monastery the university returning to harvard to finish his phd as a part of his long-term commitment to the tibetan cause at the request of his holiness the dalai lama bob co-founded the tibet house u.s with tenzing teton richard gere and philip glass a non-profit organization based in new york city and dedicated to the preservation and renaissance of the tibetan culture inspired by his long time good friend the dalai lama bob takes us along with him into an expanded vision of the world through the prisma of tibetan buddhism he shares with us the sense of refuge in the dharma which unfailingly helps us clear away the shrouds of fear and confusion sustains us with the cheerfulness of an enriched present and opens the door to a path of realistic hope for a peaceful kind and wise future we are very grateful to have robert thurman join us enjoy the episode welcome to jyn and tantra spirituality with a twist the podcast that takes tantrism buddhism taoism sutheasm cabalism shamanism chinese medicine and all of the other isms we've been influenced by and blends them into a tall crisp cool cocktail your spirit has been longing for you to get together now isn't that refreshing i want you to get together okay now what do you want to know on tanzania yeah thank you so much for sharing your life and i guess this is the tantra part so you know we've had different people talking about different aspects of this you know we had professor newland on and he sort of is uh talking about uh you know emptiness was one of the main things he talked about we've had different people talking about different things but for you we thought it would be really interesting for you to talk about first of all what is enlightenment as a as a starting thing i remember when back in the day there was this magazine called what is enlightenment and you would read it and you think yeah maybe someone will say this yeah yeah yeah he finally interviewed me but he was annoyed with me not accepting some of his things so then he really then he made a cartoon but you know that out of it but what that had was a wonderful side effect that my kids loved so he was giving you uh and they never wanted to really hear anything much from me and that plan he was this kind of [...] guru who's like into like putting people down and triggering their authoritarian dependency of a boss who scolds them and then pretending it's all for the good of their getting rid of their egos and that that's we're we're against that kind of cult behavior we don't like that and it looks like the face of the so-called call leader eventually because people eventually get pissed off as devoted and as subjugated as they get at first then they get that just that same angry and hateful later you know it's really stupid so i think like you know what what i was thinking about in doing this um was yeah i think what some when some people hear that word and i really would be you know love for you to kind of share this you know you say this thing um uh enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith faith it is an evolutionary goal and i think that's just a great way to describe that so could you kind of talk about enlightenment is not you know in certainly when i you know when i read songkappa when you read something like that he's not really talking about some epiphanous moment or some sudden insight he's really talking about a state of being yeah he becomes something don't don't fail short the epiphanous moments there's lots of great epiphanies moments and it's almost as good as a really good acid trip well that's true and uh those are which which kind of opened the door to some epiphanous moments too and let's face it the people who pretend they didn't get started that way are are pulling your leg because they mostly did and um but the thing is people who then just stuck on that then they don't go anywhere because then they just get really although it's hard to be addicted to um you know vision quests and theogenics as they say psychedelics that you can have a hell trip anytime so it's hard to be addicted to that you could have heaven trips and hell to us so but they they were very useful in our culture to help some people get less indoctrinated for short time so then they might think of looking elsewhere to figure out how it all fits together and like rom does then they come back where they don't use that they use meditation instead but what he learned from the psychedelics however had a lot to do with his ability to learn something from the name gueruli baba you know taking ramadas for example but he didn't promote it after that which is good and to tim on the other hand leery he just said you know it just takes more you know and then he didn't go anywhere after that so the thing is that enlightenment is what we are all supposed to be able to enjoy it's basically happiness and people are scared to say that kind of because they think it would be dismissed as some kind of hedonism or something or shallow new aging business but that is actually the fact buddha's discovery was not suffering any idiot knows about suffering buddha's discovery was that it's possible to liberate yourself from suffering and actually have happiness now we come we're in a country where after being beaten up somewhat the slave owning thomas jefferson managed to put in the pursuit of happiness instead of what many of his colleagues would have preferred to have and i think in some early drafts he actually wrote the pursuit of property i believe in the john locke in things in the scheme of things it was property that would then be the source of happiness perhaps for an english gentleman of those eight of that era and but he put the pursuit of happiness which was really auspicious and it's a good thing about some dream that we've only dreamt and never lived yet but we're going to and in this genocide-based country and so um that's what it is enlightenment is actually what the human being is happy and the amazing thing is that the human being has a better opportunity to achieve that in a human life if you take if you think of your life form your biological form as something like your computer equipment you know your platform so the human platform is actually the preferable one to attain swiftly evolved toward the divine ones there are various kinds of divinities in the buddhist theory no there's no one creator divinity but there are many kinds of divinities and that they are less fortunate than the humans actually although they are they're having more fun day-to-day on a superficial kind of fun but then it leads to a bad result because they become careless and so on and so thoughtless you know and they get in denial about the impermanence of even their divine situation and so the human is right there very vulnerable very sensitive very intelligent and um can of course be more vicious and nasty than the most ferocious cobra or anaconda or lion or tiger or komodo dragon but can also be a saintly and enlightened and completely self self-sacrificing and wonderful and and then we can learn to develop our wisdom and our compassion wisdom meaning not resignation to suffering but wisdom meaning knowledge of what is real and the depth reality that we can discover is is itself happiness it comes with the happiness comes from reality actually if we're really open to it so it's the process of opening up our paranoias and our fears of the other in the universe that we're into when we have a misunderstanding of the universe which we do and so i always say buddha is this was the supreme scientist and and and however he wasn't interested in his supremacy he was interested in millions other people other humans becoming great scientists and really understanding what is real and distinguishing from what is unreal and enjoying it as enjoying its reality and sharing that enjoyment with others and that's what enlightenment is so in a way it's it's the sumo bonum of all cultures and all philosophies that say there is such a thing you know the nihilistic ones the to them the summon bonum is be is just returning to nothing but that's not bad if it was if they could deliver that but of course it's insane also because you can't be nothing because no something ever becomes nothing there's just entropy maybe of some concentration of energy but then it comes back together again so energies always make other energies you know what i mean every that's what everybody observes nobody has ever seen the difference seen anything opposite to that they talk about black holes but then black holes are exerting gravitational force over a billion light years so it obviously doesn't become nothing you know and tibetans have this idea of like conservation of consciousness why would your consciousness go away totally if it's been there the whole time where would it go to why would it disappear like anything else in the universe i know but it's just it it hasn't gone anywhere actually that's the answer it hasn't gone anywhere everything is fine if we know what it is yeah if we really know our reality and for example we go around being scared of death but actually if we know death is the ultimate default faces failsafe death is if you know some nazi captures you and starts pulling out your fingernails and doing all their horrible things to you then you the great escape is to die that they can't you they can't touch you oh bye and you leave the body they can mess with the rotting body but you can die then when you die if you are very open-minded if you're very able if you're if you're an accomplished surfer or skydiver or someone who knows how to kind of let go and then float go with that flow of having let go if someone who knows that then death is a beautiful opportunity to sail to ever better to ever better ever greener grasses ever better ever better subdivisions you know ever better like living spaces better families better wombs you know of more beautiful mothers and nicer dads and nicer nicer cultures where you can learn how to bring out your potential and have a good time and uh and so death is a kind of is a is a what do you call it a way you know like in a shipyard you have what's isn't it called the ways where the ship slides into the sea so then if we understood if we understood life and death then we realized that death is the cool thing like you know you can't do anything that horrible to me because i can die right in front of you so one of the things that i thought would be great having you on on on that subject matter you have the uh liberation upon hearing in the between which is available right yeah i was like giving it a read listen and prep for this and one of the things i really love that you do there is you kind of talk about these three kind of bodies of enlightenment dharmakaya some boko kai or namanakaya and i just really thought for our listeners it would just be great to hear as much as you could do how you think about that and how you try to explain that to people yeah well it's a kind of it's a kind of uh you know the ultimate buddhahood is inexpressive one of the other great things about buddha that i really like about him is he he smiled when he obtained alignment big grin on his face we would call it a shit-eating grin and he ready for everything and delighted with it all and then he said wow he said i now know everything i really do and but the problem is i can't explain it to you because it's inexpressible it's beyond words it's you it's out of our divisions and analysis with concepts just past all that but it's and it's really wonderful i can assure you and you know you can take that of whatever for whatever it's worth you but you don't have to i'm not i'm not saying that if you believe it it's going to that much help you in a way if you believe there could be a positive outcome to your existence and then strive for it that would be good for you but only if you strive towards just to believe by itself will not be that helpful and uh and uh and and and i'm not a dogmatist i'm not saying this and that i'm i'm saying i'm just saying that i was a stupid prince yuppy prince and then i was a big you know crazy aesthetic self-torturer to try to balance that and now i don't need all those things but now i know what real is and real is just embraced me read the real has embraced me orgasmically and i'm so happy and actually you are the same kind of being you can do this yourself as well i can encourage you but unfortunately you you won't do it just by believing what i say what you have to do is you have to try out try and fail you have to you have to put into practice some practices that i will share with you and and and if you do you'll come to an understanding yourself beyond whatever i've told you but you know i could help you put put it that way you might find some other help by other ways as well to naturally you could maybe find it in yourself some people do i did it in myself i didn't have someone really teach me the most important but um so that's what he did so he founded a school you know and it was the school was for people to full-time student they got a scholarship from all the kings of the play of the time and an exemption from military duty and exemption from family duty females as well as males he was nervous about having the females only because he knew that the culture would have a harder time letting go their slaves because in the patriarchal society the women's were morally slaves so he wanted them to be lot going off he he took he accepted people in his school from the any cast or even outcasts he didn't care but and he inverted the hierarchy actually once they were in his his uh community but um he said you can learn this you can understand this yourself it's because it's reality and actually the reality of things will always overwhelm unreality unrealistic constructs put on top of it because in fact it's they are flimsy because someone's maintaining them against what is actually the case and that always is weaker it takes more energy it's less effective so so that's what it is you know and we still need that school and we still use it it helped me a lot and it will help me more when i finally get really enlightened which i'm going to do but i don't know in this life or not but that's what i think about i know i'm having more lives that i i've already i know that for sure well you could try to do it in the bardo right isn't that the uh you're gonna even do right we're pulling for you yeah do it in the bar though right come back and help us all that's right we need you that's right that's right that's it we're gonna all gonna do that everybody needs everybody else and um you know we're all doing that and everybody on this planet actually i'm shambhala's only 400 years away maximum and that's officially but i think it's closer personally and i had my old mongolian supported me in the argument against the scripture on that one i actually became went heretical and i said it may already be here in fact you know and uh he agreed with that which he usually didn't need usually he was very critical because demands like to debate and argue a lot as you know your new galaxy so um he was a great teacher to getting him she was so intelligent you know really yeah it's just he just wouldn't diet that's all i wanted him to diet he'd still be with us if he had diet i think he'd be there with the rich diet but i failed after the treats though he would still be out there you know even he was ill he'd still be sitting there just you know like yeah helping everyone those things very inspiring yeah yeah he just he just was a little bit kind of like never my sweet tooth right yes the whole thing is that's what enlightenment is and it's not that far away nagarjuna and his writings to his king friend he said after giving him lots of different advice because he was like the counselor it was like the you know the emanuelensis of a very important south indian king who did a lot of wonderful social innovations under nagarjuna's advice so he wasn't just armchair philosophy but he was but he was a yogi philosopher but uh he said to the king he said well listen don't think enlightenment of nirvana is that far away it is just as close as you get about understanding it and you work you have to work on it you know and don't waste your time on useless things and on things that were not going to give you as great an impact and as great a result well now so so now then however that state then can be it's an inexpressible state of course but the buddhists love to express inexpressible states one of their favorite things but they say they always do it with the caveat that that this is just these are just heuristic schemas that that direct they're like vectors for the mind to sort of try to expand to where it can think of something cognitively dissonant and incomprehensible and sort of open to experience that knowing that it won't fit with some formula type of idea and but the formula will bring them right up face to face with it but it will not encompass it but that way so this is called the three-body theory sort of true body then it morphs into three bodies and that is the reality body the dharmakaya really really should be translated as reality body because what happens when you become a buddha is you become everything you feel you are everything and you don't do in some way where everything is just vast space or something like that there's a there's what i call a cheap oneness that some yogis can achieve and buddhist yogis do do on the way and that is where they melt into space kind of and space seems infinite to them and they feel that's what's there you know they feel that they instead of they'll see through the walls and the floor on the ceiling and the planets and the stars and everything is a vast luminous space and then that there's consider that's a danger if you think then that's that's that's nirvana apart from all the previous people your body the relative world if you think that's it then you can be stuck in that space you become a deity of a formless realm which you which you don't do you don't stay there forever either but so it's considered to be a danger if you'd if you haven't got the automatic sense of just drilling through wherever you are and seeing through the seeing through so the disappearance disappears in other words everything like that it disappears everything is here and you see it but you're still one with it all and that's harder that's what i call the expensive one because then everybody's still here your former friends and everybody your body and the whole thing is still there and then you because you you have found a space in your mind that is sort of infinite you feel that simultaneously infinite it's like it's very easy very not complicated right now you me and everyone uh baker and you and me and three of us the three of us are all infinite because we can't exclude infinity from our supposed boundary and our finitude or it wouldn't be infinite so we're simultaneously finite and infinite actually there's no boundary within our infinite side but we don't encompass our infinite sign it's just infinite it is a kind of negation it's a negation of the real of the of the of the definitiveness the concreteness of our sense of boundary basically infinite non-finite that is so so that negation however is not manifest to us what is manifestos this is my me inside my hand here and that's a table outside my head that i'm pounding on right but somehow if i could develop a consciousness that was completely having the reach of infinity while also being able to manipulate my finite interrelatedness with other fine art things if those two were simultaneous in my awareness you know it's like looking in a mirror and after having tried to reach that person in the mirror who looks like you you realize that it's just your reflection so then you see yourself and you see a reflection in the mirror you don't see a window and yourself someone like you beyond in the window right although to not see that way something is making you correct the way you see without you have to think oh that's a mirror that's not that's not another bob thurman whose left right is reversed i don't have to think i know that when i see it so somehow that is a kind of simulation it's inexpensive it's still it's sort of a behind it's an inference that i once bumped into a mirror trying to go through it and now i know that inference so i don't have to renew that knowledge and do i really hold that knowledge at the same time as i hold c into reflection if you follow me do i see the mirror surface at the same time as the reflection so enlightenment is where you see both simultaneously with equal force and even almost the infinity part is a stronger force than the relational part sort of but it's it but i can you can't express what that is because it's uh it's encompassing the two things but a good analogy is the mirror thing so the body of reality is the mirror surface the infinite nature of everything and then the form body or the body of the material body that you have is your experience of that and the experience of and then and then but but it's the same as the internet so it's simultaneously infinite and so therefore you feel you are all the other people like for example if you were talking to me but you thought you were me at the same time as talking to me mm-hmm i accept and vice versa now if that if i was like that that would make me the best ultimate teacher because i would know what the other person is confused where their problem was what they were thinking so i would intersect exactly with what they needed to step toward to open up their thinking to think more deeply or whatever it is that they needed right just like as an acupuncturist if you somehow can sort of feel the kink in someone's shoulder i wish i had your services i have a frozen shoulder or sometimes you would know just which nerve to hit to put the little very slender needle into to stimulate inner flow of chi there you would know exactly if you were on both sides of you were like a cat scan you you were on both sides of the skin you could say so when you become a buddha you have the the powerful release of feeling your infinity which is your reality body enables you to engage in the minutiae of the beings with which you are 100 empathetic and then and those that are and of course it's easy to be empathetic with other buddhas and there are innumerable numbers of those because they are just like you they are feeling they are you and now they're happy to feel you as feeling better and like they do but then you also feel all the ones who feel terrible and are freaked out even once in a hellish situation in sub-human life form etc and yet you completely feel how they feel they're suffering but your larger bliss enables you to feel that without getting sucked into only that's the only thing so therefore you you're like the doctor who doesn't flinch when you cut in surgery when you make a cut in somebody even though the best doctor would be empathetic of how they're cutting so they'd be very careful not to damage this nerve and that thing you know they'd be really super on the on the beam not to do that right so so so that's called that's called the so then the for that's the material body and then the material body subdivides into what's called the bliss body or beatific body or enjoyment body and what is called the emanation body and the enjoyment body is easier to explain because it's like you as a continuum of your previous boundaried mis-knowledge imprisoned individuality uh are now enjoying being one with all buddhas and all beings and with infinity and and eternity and you're totally released and completely solidly realistically happy blissful that was the highest degree of inconceivable high bliss and but then in order to manifest and to take care of anybody you empathize with which is everybody who is not a buddha themselves you can make you want to do just whatever they need you want to be their acupuncturists want to be their messiah servants want to be their doctor you want to be their their servant you want to be their whatever they need their puppy dog if that's what they need and to do that that's called the body of emanation it's like you you become because you're infinite you manifest out of infinite energy all infinite incarnations or emanations as they put it near manakaya who interact with those beings in the best of all possible ways because you by the way when you achieve that buddhahood you become infinite in time as well as space and that's very complicated because the future is not set it's not like fatalism the every being could make different choices in different turn in different moments and so you your commitment is your emanations will be there with every being to help them make the best choices because they are free beings because the nature reality is freedom and so even in their ignorance they're free and you want to help them go left if they if that's the way to go at a crossroads and um so you're there in the multiple possible futures with all beings you're instantly there in the moment of your enlightenment helping them to the maximum effect all of them and being aware that they will reach their own buddhahood inevitably at this or that exact time and you're going to see to it it's as soon as possible within whatever their limitations are in their circumstances right so you have to do that in order not to oh wait i'm out of my camera you have to do that in order not to break your vow as a bodhisattva now to abandon them in your enlightenment and put a hood in your happiness and leave them out you your happiness will overwhelm their unhappiness but it might take some of them time so you'll stay with them one of your ammunitions will stay with them in that time it's really wonderful but then the point and and then but finally of course mind this if you may have remembered from gaelic's teaching the only sure thing is the freedom reality of your reality body all of your descriptions theories and evocations of what happens in the inconceivable magical miraculous relativity all of that is only relative so three-body theory to reality theory or true truth theory whatever theory it is is just useful in a context in a certain case it's not the absolute dogma because the absolute is of non-dual relative and absolute the absolute of non-dual relative and is inexpressible inconceivable and um it's too amazing cannot be captured in do in binary language so poetically you can help evoke it but it only gives vectors you know but it's kind of like inspiring right it gives this it gives this inspiration of what can be achieved you know with a life right it's very inspiring because that blocks buddhism from being dogmatic you see so anybody who says this is exactly what it is about it buddhist thing is in a way they're rarefying they're absolutizing a particular description and uh they that they really shouldn't do that you know in a way i really love i'm very fond of my translation my own translation of the vimalikerji sutra but i'm more fond of the original in sanskrit and the translation in tibetan and the ones in chinese the three in chinese and uh and in there there's a wonderful moment where vimela kirti magically brings a huge audience of thousands of people who have been in his tardis like doctor who targets like house and he brings them to the grove outside of town in the suburb where buddha and his thousands of followers are hanging out temporarily and he brings them in the palm of his hand across the town and then he puts him down and then he's there and then because they wanted to touch base with buddha at the end of his long teaching so then buddha says to him oh okay bin laden you guys all came over here to see the buddha now you're here what do you see we're going oh okay see you later we'll see you later bye so he says he says he says well i don't see buddha when i see a particular body in front of me and he's talking to shakyamuni buddha the buddha of that he at that time he says i don't see a buddha but i see a body i don't see buddha and he goes on and he rejects seeing any buddha in any particular specific thing in other words he sort of touches base with the reality body awareness of the buddha because buddha is also him you know he knows that from buddha's point of view he's also female security he's also everybody else and everything else there not just the people also those things and so he says i'm not going to pin down buddha as somebody inside your body in other words because he's touching what is buddha's awareness and um he's not saying buddha doesn't exist he just says i don't see buddha when i see a specific thing and it's really sometimes they will say buddha doesn't exist because someone is thinking of it as oh some guy over there is buddha or some woman or whatever female buddhist and so that's really that's really far off okay so so that's it you know so that's that's it there's no more than that but you know the other thing the key thing is you know like in zen they say first mountains and mountains or rivers are rivers then there's no mountains and no rivers then finally when you get enlightened mountains and mountains and rivers or rivers and there's some people misinterpret that but it's just caving to the ordinary it's and they're selling it way shortly because the point is the third place there yes mountains and mountains and rivers and rivers simultaneously would still be non-mountains and non-rivers and that makes your even every mountain and every river completely inconceivable and a complete miracle and other people you know that other people just think that's a mountain and a river but but you see it simultaneously and you don't see it simultaneously and thereby you can do all kinds of moral things there's a wonderful school in chinese buddhism that you may not have bumped into and it connects to the flower ornament sutra yeah yeah that's a that's a great sutra and that's a great chinese buddhist school for sure it is it's called the hawaiians yen school yeah and uh and the hawaiian school has a wonderful commentary on that by a guy called dusun and in tang dynasty and he he has this beautiful thing he said he gets three principles he says see true void that's the first one then he says leisure ui second one is the non-mutual non-obstruction of ultimate and relative basically i mean leisure is a little different but that's what it means ultimately relative and that's of course nonduality nirvana samsara you know absolute reality and relative reality because this is just a key point just to have people that can take away with it as a slogan buddha's discovery of emptiness by the way is not anything like discovering nothingness his discovery of emptiness is the discovery of relativity that's what it is because emptiness means that there's no absolute apart from all relational things and therefore all the relational things in their relativity are the absolute simultaneously and that makes you able to deal with the relative things in this completely free way but anyway the third principle so you have seeing the true void seeing the mutual non-obstruction of absolute relative and the third one is so seeing the mutual non-obstructive non-obstruction of relative and relative and what that means is that i'd like you like vehicle is version he teaches in one chapter from the flower ornament he says this is just a drop of the ocean of the buddha garland sutra or flower or monsoon and and but in that he says to understand the inconceivable liberation which is another title of the flower ornament sudra you have to understand taking the planet it has a different name for it but it's the planet and putting it inside a mustard seed without increasing the size of the mustard seed and without harming or diminishing the size of the planet you have to be able to understand that or to take an aeon that's like big bang to big crunch you know taking an aeon and having someone else experience it in a split second it's a relatively of experience question really yeah something like that well it's even important to imagine you know such a thing it's unimaginable almost really but it's an inconceivable and but but he he then makes this incredible the bodhisattva or the buddha and the inconceivable liberation they can do you know they can swallow a supernova in the pores of their skin they can swallow a hurricane they can swallow a tsunami you know just no problem you know and uh really outrageous things that you can't imagine magical miraculous things that you can't imagine but that that is a dimension you know the three it seems that otherwise it seems kind of neat you know the three bodies the reality body bliss body and an emanation body it's like okay that's what it is but actually it's something more inconceivable than any schema you know this this game is a tool to help you understand it somehow on a relative level and therefore and this is my last thing i think because i have to follow him and therefore don't say we can't fix the planet don't say it's impossible to get rid of like hitler don't say or any would-be hitler don't say you know oh these people are always like that it'll never change or there's some sort of thing you know there's nothing we can do about this don't ever thank you there's nothing you can do about anything there's always miracles are always possible and they may not seem like it at the time but they are so that's my point we're gonna you're 51. you have plenty of time you're going to fix it you don't want to live in a post-2030 world where there's no more california or no more from guatemala honduras the the media are so bad because there's so much commercials are bought by fossil fuel people they always say oh gee why are they living in honduras oh it's a bad government el salvador is about well yes of course it is about government but they've also been having major drought there's no water coming off the pacific to those those countries so except for the occasional torrent that then makes a mudslide but regular water is not there and this is good it's working its way up the mexican coast california why is it burning it doesn't have proper normal cycle of water and this goes all the way to breeze c in their predictions of course they say 2080. oh yeah but but in al gore has a slide that shows by all those 10 000 scientists that it goes into up to 2080 then it's completely uninhabitable the entire west coast of the u.s the total desert but but that will be 20 45. it's everything is so much faster than they thought you know greenland is down by 2035 finnish five meters of water forget miami alligators on the second floor so you're saying here the point is the point is those are those are trends that happening at the current rate of what is happening but look at when we had the covet in the first six months there were dolphins in the canals and venice you know there was just everything changed dramatically right away and so miracles can happen and that's really important as far as reality goes not only that the is comprehensible by a formerly human being who has just expanded to their full humanness their enlightened humans not only which is miraculous that's miraculous everybody told you since birth and they told me it was for that kid that's what i didn't like oh you can't understand oh no and the in the church they said the sunday school god son only understands you can't understand you have to believe but you don't believe what you don't believe and then the other the scientists oh yeah you can study everything and analyze it down this and measure everything and to down to the millionth of an inch but you'll never understand it the more you measure more you don't know because you'll never understand and they misunderstood socrates's rhetorical strategy of claiming not to know anything to get people to bring out their ideas so he could show what idiots they were and get them to develop a better idea so i think what you're saying there is you can't really put an artificial limit on the power of human understanding and ability exactly and we all have the ability to become enlightened with at which point we understand everything we're omniscient now of course you have to understand on this end when you say oh are you a vegetarian are you vegan no i'm not i'm omnivorous somebody will say oh no i'm relaxed i'm omnivorous they don't mean they already ate everything in the world i mean they're ready to eat whatever they turn their appetite toward okay so similarly omniscient means knowing reality ready to know and ready to therefore be responsible and therefore ready to ready to build back better okay that's that's the thing that's buddhahood joe biden it's getting enlightened now he made a lot of bad decisions and votes and his former sold out to the to the whatever you know the lame ass republican light democrats but now he's mr enlightened he's trying to be really ethical he's going for justice he's going to undo all the bad stuff he tried to do and uh we have to know that the people who will not cooperate with him joe manson has to wake up to the fact they are not seeking bipartisanship from the other side they are seeking to just they are not seeking to be a loyal opposition they're seeking to destroy the government they have said so and they are seeking to destroy the majority the majority rule and to continue to minority rule and wreck the government and the government's job is protecting the people from the oligarchs and they are they therefore want to destroy that protection because they are the servants of the oligarchs not of the people and they've said so so it's not a mystery it's obvious everyone is enlightened enough to understand that so we have to be firm about it joe biden and company have to enjoy schumer and everybody they have to be firm the government is needed to serve the people and help them and save them from their desperate right it seems like that's part of like a spiritual thing to recognize what's happening on that macro level and try to participate in the most positive way that one can that's right because the people who oppose the government and who have sold the oligarchs the oligarchs will cast them aside at the drop of a hat and furthermore life will just drop the oligarch aside at the top of a hat and then they will suffer the consequence of all negative things they did suppressing people so no one is the other guys are not benefiting from their domination and wrecking of our potentially positive social system where we respect the life force of each individual as being of equal value you know we don't pretend of course everyone is totally different but we respect that but the point is their their essential life force is equal to our life force and actually the more we identify with the life force of others the stronger our own life first becomes so it's not a hardship for us it helps us the more we do something it's like the runner who's running for the team or who's running for the town or running for the in the olympics for the nation or whatever they think is of some larger thing than themselves they will get a few seconds shaved off their time because they feel bigger power coming from them okay do it for the other so the motivation becomes more powerful when you're altruistic and you therefore do it better so so it's not a sacrifice to be less selfish and that's very well that's what the dalai lama calls and what i'll give you uncle used to call it's being a wise selfish okay listen guys i enjoyed thank you so much dr thurman thank you so much for talking to you of course thank you very much good luck with your podcast and please to send me an archival copy when you finalize it or whatever absolutely we're going to actually uh youtube it and we'll have some visuals put it in some place you know then bury it in a time capsule i don't know where it is but i'd say i'd like to keep it and if i don't get a copy people scold me no we'll give it we'll give it to you for sure okay so listen great meeting you both and uh i have a dear indian friend in chicago and another friend and they want me to visit there always and i have i'm like two years late so i'll call i'll look you up when i get there you send your emails right yes yes yes so i'll keep them on the list of chicago good yeah please do that's great man yeah up to devon we'll get some indian food it'll be uh it'll be a night out for us for sure all right thank you thank you very much my pleasure thank you you as well namaste okay this concludes our episode with we are very grateful to have had him on to be able to ask him some questions and have some dialogue with him it's such a pleasure to have somebody with so much knowledge share i hope you enjoyed the episode for eric this is daniel we'll catch you on the next one peace [Music] you