Transcript
[0:12] How are you everybody? Congratulations
[0:14] for getting up in the morning.
[0:17] And uh where do I have a slide up there?
[0:19] Oh.
[0:21] Oh, good.
[0:22] So, that's what that's my my what I'm
[0:24] talking about.
[0:26] And um I like I also like the
[0:28] introduction because focusing on what
[0:30] I'm going to do today,
[0:32] I realized that I most likely would like
[0:33] to take a nap.
[0:35] However, it's another nap, but you know,
[0:38] being somewhat jet lagged.
[0:39] However, I have not yet achieved what my
[0:41] son once said
[0:43] when we attended a lecture by a great
[0:45] Zen master in um Santa Cruz, actually,
[0:48] years ago.
[0:49] And if some people from a different Zen
[0:51] center were present there, and they all
[0:53] fell asleep during the lecture.
[0:55] And my son, who was younger in those
[0:57] days, he was very annoyed and felt it
[0:59] was a very much an insult to the
[1:01] visiting Zen master.
[1:03] But then they said, "Oh, no, it's a
[1:04] great compliment
[1:06] to a lecture or teacher or Dharma talk
[1:08] giver when you fall asleep when he when
[1:10] he talks." So, my son wasn't buying it,
[1:13] and he said, "I'm sorry, that doesn't
[1:15] work. If in fact the person who's giving
[1:19] the lecture could fall asleep while
[1:21] giving it and keep giving it, then I'd
[1:23] be impressed," he said.
[1:25] He said. So, that would be true non-dual
[1:27] lecture would be to
[1:29] sound asleep, resting in the absolute,
[1:32] and giving the lecture in the relative
[1:33] simultaneously. That would be perfect.
[1:36] Because the the achievement of
[1:37] non-duality, basically, one of the one
[1:39] of the aspects of it is the ability to
[1:41] be asleep and awake at the same time.
[1:44] Anyway.
[1:45] Anyway.
[1:46] So, this is I always show this slide
[1:48] beginning these things because this is
[1:50] Medicine Buddha
[1:51] who is my one of my favorite
[1:53] manifestations of Buddha
[1:55] which um um is in his mandala of healing
[1:58] of healing energy. Why does it go
[2:00] different when I walk over here? Healing
[2:02] energy and um
[2:04] when he thinks of human beings suffering
[2:06] of sickness, he turns blue.
[2:08] And uh then he holds a plant of the
[2:10] myrobalan nut in one hand, which is a
[2:14] key kind of panacea medicine in
[2:16] Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine, Buddhist
[2:18] medicine, Indian and Tibetan Buddhist
[2:20] medicine. And that's he's in his garden
[2:22] and when he teaches the teaching of
[2:24] healing from the Buddhist point of view,
[2:27] uh temporarily everyone who is present
[2:29] and there are Hindus and Buddhists and
[2:32] Jains and all kinds of people in that
[2:34] assembly and humans and gods are also
[2:36] both there.
[2:37] But everything in the universe is they
[2:39] have a vision while they listen to him
[2:41] of everything being medicine.
[2:44] There there's no you know, even poison
[2:45] is medicine if you have the knowledge
[2:48] that that it can be beneficial in
[2:49] certain context. So suddenly instead of
[2:52] our usual feeling of some germs coming
[2:54] after us or some problem happening,
[2:56] there's some toxins in the around us,
[2:59] there's a vision of everything as
[3:00] healing, everything as healing, which I
[3:02] like very much. But that's just for fun.
[3:04] So now, I was just talking to Sky who
[3:07] was a physicist and um
[3:09] and I I was saying that I consider I'm
[3:12] very much into the idea that we should
[3:14] try to swallow the idea as modern people
[3:17] who think we are too advanced and we
[3:18] have great sciences and we are uniquely
[3:21] with the uniquely avant-garde front
[3:23] culture in the history of the universe
[3:25] of this world at least of this planet.
[3:27] Of course, we thinking that this planet
[3:29] is the only one with human beings and I
[3:31] like to overthrow that idea. I don't
[3:33] agree with that idea. And so I make a
[3:35] big thing about a Buddha as a scientist
[3:37] has to be considered a scientist and why
[3:39] rather than a religion founder or a
[3:41] prophet.
[3:42] And why? Because
[3:45] uh Buddha's um discovery was the nature
[3:48] of reality, they say. I mean, of Of we
[3:50] they may be wrong. We have to be aware
[3:52] of that. We have to critically evaluate
[3:54] that. He asked us to critically evaluate
[3:56] it. He didn't say believe that I'm a
[3:57] Buddha. He said, "I am a Buddha and I
[4:00] know everything and having discovered
[4:02] the true nature of reality, I'm totally
[4:04] gassed out."
[4:06] Because the true nature of reality is
[4:08] bliss. It's nirvana. That's That was his
[4:10] discovery. His discovery was not
[4:12] suffering. Any idiot can discover
[4:14] suffering. Just Just stub your toe.
[4:18] Just stub your toe. And uh or stay up an
[4:21] extra two days or something without
[4:22] sleep and you know suffering. But But uh
[4:25] he discovered bliss actually and that's
[4:27] why he didn't focus on if you insist on
[4:29] being on enlightened, then you will
[4:31] suffer.
[4:32] That was his uh message, you know. The
[4:33] only reason he did that as the Dalai
[4:35] Lama says, if he hadn't discovered bliss
[4:37] being the option that you have by
[4:40] choosing a different understanding
[4:42] then and dispelling the illusory
[4:44] understanding that we are conditioned to
[4:46] by our cultures, which mostly want us to
[4:49] mostly want us to suffer.
[4:51] Uh you know, the elites of the different
[4:52] cultures, the high priests, the rulers,
[4:55] they want to cuz they want us to work.
[4:57] And they want us They don't want us to
[4:58] feel too good because then we might not
[5:00] want to work all the time for them.
[5:03] So So and So that's why in most
[5:05] societies in world history, bliss is
[5:07] illegal.
[5:10] In our country, too. Very much so. And
[5:13] um
[5:14] So anyway, we have the world totally
[5:15] upside down.
[5:17] We think that relative reality is
[5:18] absolute. We think we are absolute. Each
[5:21] person about their own ego, about their
[5:23] own self. They think there's something
[5:25] in there that's the real thing. As my
[5:27] old Mongolian guru used to say,
[5:29] "Everyone is correct that they're real.
[5:31] Everyone is real. But the problem is
[5:34] everyone thinks they're really real. And
[5:36] there they're way off base.
[5:38] Actually, they're only unreal real. But
[5:40] that's still real enough to worry about,
[5:42] of course, and to deal with it. But
[5:45] that's not that exaggerated level of
[5:46] being the absolute reality yourself the
[5:49] center of the universe etc. And
[5:51] therefore others as sub sort subsidiary
[5:53] to you or possibly simply a matrix
[5:55] illusion and you're the one, you know.
[5:57] And he used to say that too like decades
[5:59] before the matrix. He used to say
[6:01] everybody goes around secretly thinking
[6:04] I'm the one.
[6:06] And and that's a problem. But but
[6:08] Buddhism doesn't solve that problem just
[6:10] to dispel that illusion by everybody
[6:12] discovering that they don't exist. That
[6:15] would be also idiotic. If Buddha was
[6:17] going to say oh my discovery is that we
[6:18] all don't exist so we're cool.
[6:21] Like my like modern materialist
[6:23] scientists do. They go around claiming
[6:25] that they've discovered that there's no
[6:27] soul and therefore no future life and
[6:29] therefore everybody's automatically
[6:30] cool. All you have to do is die.
[6:33] And then you'll you'll you'll return to
[6:34] your basically non-existent state and
[6:36] they'll take your body and put it in the
[6:38] heavenly rest the permanent sleep
[6:40] cemetery and then you won't have any
[6:42] further problems. But that Buddha would
[6:45] not agree with. That's not correct.
[6:47] The the whole correction of
[6:48] enlightenment is
[6:50] to stop being the one yourself.
[6:53] Realize you're not the one. You're one
[6:55] of the ones.
[6:57] You and other people are all the
[6:59] everybody else is the one too and once
[7:01] you know that and there's so many more
[7:03] of them you automatically become an
[7:05] altruist. You become a bodhisattva and
[7:07] you want to help them and then you
[7:09] become happy rather than miserable.
[7:11] Anyway, we think our original self
[7:13] identity is really us. That it deposes a
[7:16] world absolutely other and that
[7:18] situation produces suffering.
[7:20] All right, that's really simple. It's
[7:22] not rocket science. It doesn't require
[7:24] major enlightenment just a little bit of
[7:26] human enlightenment for us to deal with
[7:28] that idea those ideas. Okay? Then he
[7:31] looks for that self that absolute self.
[7:33] It doesn't help to just say oh yeah, I'm
[7:35] selfless.
[7:37] That won't help because at the gut level
[7:39] you still think you're absolute. And if
[7:41] you're un-enlightened, I mean you may
[7:42] all be enlightened by now. You're you've
[7:44] already been to the conference for 3
[7:45] days.
[7:46] So, never mind if I'm if I'm
[7:48] short-changing you. If you're
[7:49] enlightened, you don't mind.
[7:52] If you're unenlightened, you're offended
[7:54] if I
[7:55] assume that you're unenlightened. So,
[7:57] I'll just since I'm unenlightened, I'll
[7:59] assume that we all are.
[8:01] So, but Buddha realized his freedom from
[8:03] that separate selfhood, that absolute
[8:05] separateness from everything else,
[8:06] enjoyed the release of his relative
[8:08] self, and thereby
[8:10] realized infinite interconnectedness
[8:12] with all life. And this is a central
[8:14] thing in my talk to this morning that um
[8:18] that the key about non-duality is that
[8:21] this right here now is non-duality.
[8:24] Non-duality doesn't mean that we're
[8:25] going to disappear into some vast state,
[8:28] and it's all have an experience of like
[8:29] it's all one,
[8:31] but nobody's there.
[8:33] It's all there no problems because
[8:34] nobody's in the one.
[8:36] Cuz cuz all the separate people are just
[8:38] an illusion, and we're an illusion, but
[8:41] we enjoy being just one with everything
[8:43] with nobody home.
[8:45] That's not that's wrong. That is a
[8:47] mistake, but it is a mistake that many
[8:49] mystics make actually, according to
[8:51] Buddhist critique. That's the main
[8:52] thrust of what I'm going to talk about.
[8:54] So, he discovered the release of the
[8:56] relative self, that is, he couldn't find
[8:58] it.
[8:59] But then he didn't make this mistake of
[9:00] thinking that he had found nothing
[9:03] because he wasn't insane like scientific
[9:06] materialists are
[9:07] who think No, they think they found
[9:09] nothing after people die. They go to the
[9:12] corpse, and they put some electrodes on
[9:14] the corpse, and they say, "Oh, nothing's
[9:15] happening in the brain. So, they don't
[9:17] exist anymore.
[9:18] We found there we found them not being
[9:21] there."
[9:23] That's insane. Do you realize that? Do
[9:25] you realize that that's insane?
[9:27] If you think you find nothing, then
[9:30] you're cuckoo.
[9:32] You know? And do you expect a prize or
[9:35] an award or grant money
[9:37] for finding nothing?
[9:38] Finding nothing is a mistake. You just
[9:40] didn't find what you were looking for.
[9:42] It doesn't mean it isn't something isn't
[9:44] somewhere else.
[9:45] There is no nothing, so you can't find
[9:47] it. That's very important. Remember
[9:49] that.
[9:51] If you die expecting to become nothing,
[9:53] you're going to be in for a problem as
[9:55] Pascal understood.
[9:57] And but in case you are correct, you
[9:59] won't have to worry.
[10:01] You'll just be nothing. And you won't be
[10:03] upset if you try to learn to meditate
[10:05] and became mindful and try to deal with
[10:07] your-self and your life and acted as if
[10:09] everything your life had a consequence,
[10:11] even to yourself in a future existence.
[10:14] If you if in case it does,
[10:16] then you'll be happy you worked on that.
[10:18] In case it doesn't, you're not going to
[10:20] mind, you know, you're going to join
[10:22] Carl Sagan saying, "Isn't it great I'm
[10:23] nothing?"
[10:27] Okay, so so the key therefore is is the
[10:29] realization of non-duality makes
[10:31] compassion, universal compassion,
[10:34] meaning the un-bear-ability of others as
[10:37] well as your own. You put your
[10:38] compassion to yourself, but that makes
[10:40] that the absolute concern, using the
[10:42] word absolute in a relative way.
[10:46] Okay, using it for emphasis, like not in
[10:48] a technical way. Okay, what's that
[10:50] What's that?
[10:51] What happened?
[10:53] So this is Yeah, I'm going to skip Well,
[10:55] yeah, it's science-based Buddha's
[10:56] discovery.
[10:58] It's freed by wisdom knowledge, and
[10:59] wisdom doesn't mean it just some sort of
[11:02] resignation to the way things are, like,
[11:04] "Oh, I give up, so I'm wise, you know?"
[11:06] Sort of the old gray-beard type of
[11:08] wisdom. The symbol of wisdom of Buddhism
[11:09] is a 16-year-old kid who's
[11:11] orange-colored, holds a book in one hand
[11:13] and a sword of critical intelligence in
[11:15] the other hand. And the word prajna
[11:17] means something like super-intelligence.
[11:19] It doesn't mean And everyone has that.
[11:21] All human beings have that
[11:22] super-intelligence, whether it's been
[11:24] developed or not, they all have it,
[11:26] according to the Buddhists. That's one
[11:27] of the challenges.
[11:29] Which you never heard that from from
[11:31] either religious people in your car in
[11:33] our culture or scientific people. If any
[11:35] scientist says, "Eureka, I now
[11:37] understand everything."
[11:39] they will give him Prozac.
[11:41] At the minute at the least. If the
[11:43] religious people say, "Oh yeah, God
[11:44] understands, but you don't and you just
[11:46] believe what I tell what I tell you to
[11:48] believe." And so everyone tells you you
[11:50] can't understand. That's why I was not
[11:52] satisfied as a youth in my in this
[11:55] culture in this society and I wasn't
[11:57] satisfied until I encountered Nagarjuna
[11:59] and the Buddha who tell you that not
[12:01] only can you understand the you will do
[12:04] the world, yourself in the world, but
[12:06] you have to understand if you want to be
[12:08] happy. You cannot do it by just
[12:10] believing that everything is fine or
[12:12] will be fine or Buddha's fine or God's
[12:15] fine. That will be nice. It might make
[12:17] you feel good for a while,
[12:19] but it will not actually free you from
[12:21] suffering and that suffering can go on
[12:23] infinitely actually. Unfortunately,
[12:26] because there's no such thing as a
[12:28] energy process continuum becoming
[12:30] nothing. That is an incoherent idea that
[12:33] that can happen. It never happens. Law
[12:35] of conservation of energy, right? Even
[12:36] the materialists will agree with that.
[12:38] It's just they don't think consciousness
[12:40] has any energy and that of course is
[12:42] silly.
[12:43] That's being denied living in denial
[12:45] that they are there.
[12:46] You know, that they are conscious.
[12:49] You know, whoops that's something going
[12:50] on.
[12:51] I think. What do you think?
[12:53] If you're awake.
[12:55] Okay, anyway. So Buddha was Buddha's
[12:58] teaching is taught in this short thing
[13:00] in Sanskrit here. Ye dharma hetu
[13:02] prabhava hetun tesham tathagata hyavadat
[13:06] tesham chayo nirodha. That's a summary
[13:08] of his teaching which means of things
[13:11] that are produced by causes, what are
[13:13] the causes and how to terminate them,
[13:16] that is what the realized one declared.
[13:20] That's sort of a summary of the
[13:21] teaching. So Buddha celebrated for
[13:22] discovering causation.
[13:24] Not for talking to God and being given a
[13:26] role as a prophet and founder of
[13:28] religion, but discovering causation in
[13:30] the 6th century before the common era.
[13:32] And that was a big deal at that time
[13:34] because before that people thought the
[13:36] gods caused everything and the Brahmin
[13:38] priests ruled because you had to get
[13:40] them to make offerings to appease the
[13:42] gods in order to get well or be happy or
[13:45] be successful. Whereas once you have
[13:47] causation, then you have to look into
[13:49] the causes and conditions of your
[13:50] conditions of how you are and you have
[13:53] to try to critique the negative ones and
[13:56] reinforce the positive ones.
[13:58] So
[14:00] So therefore sunyata karuna garbham, the
[14:02] title of my talk, which means
[14:05] voidness or emptiness. I do prefer the
[14:07] word voidness, but I'm not wedded to it.
[14:09] You used the emptiness.
[14:11] Emptiness, the womb of compassion.
[14:13] sunyata karuna garbham. It's a phrase of
[14:16] Nagarjuna's, the great philosopher of
[14:19] the around the turn of the common uh the
[14:21] you know from before the common era to
[14:23] the common era. Um and the Buddhist
[14:26] think he lived 600 years actually, but
[14:29] Westerners of course oh that can't be.
[14:30] Those are silly Asian people. They think
[14:32] that can't happen. We know that that
[14:34] can't happen even though we don't know
[14:35] anything.
[14:38] And uh
[14:40] supposedly and uh that was his phrase
[14:42] and it's such a beautiful phrase. I I
[14:44] love it. His Holiness the Dalai Lama
[14:46] loves it. It's it's the nature of the
[14:48] Kalachakra form of Buddha that they talk
[14:50] about.
[14:51] And it's the idea of emptiness, you
[14:53] know, you think that emptiness we tend
[14:55] to think I think a lot of Western
[14:57] Buddhists and even Asian Buddhists in
[14:59] the past thought that emptiness was
[15:01] something like nothingness. It was like
[15:03] a blank space, a void. And maybe that's
[15:06] the problem with the word voidness that
[15:07] I do like. But
[15:09] but emptiness is not a void. This is
[15:12] emptiness, you know, emptiness is form
[15:14] which is mistranslated. Emptiness is
[15:16] matter.
[15:17] Matter is emptiness. That's the famous
[15:19] formula. So emptiness just means that
[15:22] relative things have no non-relational
[15:25] essence. No, what they call intrinsic
[15:28] reality, intrinsic objectivity,
[15:30] intrinsic identity. No person has that,
[15:33] no thing has that. The their emptiness
[15:36] of that assures total relativity. Buddha
[15:39] is the discoverer, as a scientist, of
[15:42] the total interrelatedness of all things
[15:44] in the universe, of total relativity.
[15:46] And emptiness in a way is a critique of
[15:48] the concept of a separate absolute,
[15:51] which human beings have because the
[15:53] psychosis of the un-enlightened person
[15:55] is thinking that my essence is something
[15:57] separate from everything else. I have
[15:59] this inviolate soul that no nothing
[16:01] touches, never changes. And and so the
[16:05] the role of the mystic is to withdraw
[16:06] from all this bothersome
[16:07] interrelationships. And it's a very male
[16:10] thing, by the way. In ancient India
[16:12] Indian dualism, the purusha, the word
[16:14] purusha, which meant the spirit,
[16:17] was male. It also means a male. And
[16:20] Maya, illusory relativity, is female.
[16:24] And so the whole idea is for the male to
[16:26] get away from the kitchen.
[16:30] The male Brahmin and to get away from
[16:32] birth and get away from connectedness.
[16:35] And in that concept, see if Buddha was
[16:37] the discoverer of relativity, and if
[16:39] enlightenment is a complete immersion in
[16:41] relativity, and an awareness of your
[16:43] complete interconnection forever with
[16:45] everyone,
[16:46] then the female is more enlightened than
[16:48] the male. Very sorry, guys. You know?
[16:51] And if you don't believe that, if you
[16:53] think you're more enlightened, then just
[16:55] think do a thought experiment. You're
[16:58] just going along one day, you just had
[17:00] some fun, you got kind of wild on
[17:01] Saturday night, and then suddenly you
[17:04] note there's a new being, total
[17:07] stranger. You don't know where it came
[17:09] from,
[17:09] in your stomach.
[17:11] And it's there like
[17:13] clonched onto your the the lining of
[17:16] your womb like the the alien
[17:20] and it's going to get bigger and bigger
[17:22] and start kicking and then you're going
[17:24] to give it free pay free space, no rent.
[17:28] Condominium.
[17:30] And then you got to get it out of there
[17:31] which is like your husband will faint.
[17:34] And and you have to do that and then,
[17:37] you know, you don't sleep for another
[17:39] year or two.
[17:41] And then then the 13 years old they tell
[17:44] you it's my life, you don't bother me.
[17:46] And
[17:47] and then you have to pay tuition
[17:50] quarter of a million dollars to get to
[17:52] Stanford.
[17:54] So,
[17:55] which which guy
[17:58] which guy is going to do that? Which
[18:00] male guy is going to do that? Excuse me.
[18:03] Are you going to tell me in my
[18:04] No way. So, so the women are way ahead.
[18:08] I But in California it's fairly safe to
[18:10] say that. In New York you're really in
[18:12] trouble.
[18:13] Wall Street, they'll kill you.
[18:15] So, anyway, shunyata
[18:18] garbha. So, emptiness is not a null
[18:20] state at all. Emptiness just means that
[18:23] everything is totally interwoven. So,
[18:25] therefore the concept there is that it
[18:27] is a womb, a membrane, a nurturing
[18:29] membrane. Reality, the deepest absolute
[18:32] reality is a nurturing membrane and what
[18:34] it nurtures is compassion which is
[18:36] actually love, of course. Love is
[18:38] defined in the Buddhist sciences and
[18:40] psychology as the wish for the beloved's
[18:43] happiness. That's pure love is like
[18:45] that. And compassion is the
[18:47] unbearability of the beloved's
[18:50] suffering. So, the two are you know,
[18:51] take the suffering away, provide the
[18:53] other one with happiness. That's love
[18:55] and compassion. That's their that's
[18:56] their partnership in the in psychology
[18:58] as as concepts, you know.
[19:00] So, illusory relative reality is So,
[19:02] deep reality So, as a scientific thing,
[19:05] the the discovery of emptiness and
[19:07] relativism is that deep reality is
[19:09] beyond conceptual capture which I
[19:11] believe was the the main meat of the
[19:14] Copenhagen interpretation a hundred
[19:16] almost a hundred years ago, which people
[19:18] have been in denial about scientific
[19:19] materialists have been denial about ever
[19:21] since mostly. Deep and illusory relative
[19:24] reality is open to hypothesis. It's
[19:26] explorable by experience or experiment
[19:29] and the experience of a yogi or yogini
[19:31] is an experiment. And the result when
[19:33] you merge with the nature of reality,
[19:35] which you can't capture with a concept,
[19:37] but you can capture an experience, then
[19:39] you can report the result of your
[19:41] experiment. And your result is luckily
[19:44] Buddha's experiment, which has been
[19:46] repeated many times by millions of
[19:48] people, is that reality is okay. It's
[19:51] cool. It's bliss. It's fine. And we are
[19:54] surrounded by an envelope of blissful
[19:56] infinite energy that we can draw on
[19:58] completely to satisfy everything and
[20:00] everybody if we only knew about it.
[20:03] The problem is we don't know about it
[20:05] and we think we're just us inside our
[20:07] skin. Everybody else is out there and
[20:10] occasionally someone likes me, so then
[20:12] I'm cool. But mostly I'm in a struggle
[20:14] with all of them.
[20:16] And then when two people are in love,
[20:17] that's why we all get jealous because
[20:19] they're they're reinforcing each other's
[20:21] insanity. Each one looks at the other
[20:23] one and says, "You're the one, dear."
[20:25] And then the other one says, "Oh, no,
[20:26] you're the one." And then they like they
[20:28] spiral out of control.
[20:31] And then everybody else wants to
[20:32] assassinate them, Romeo and Juliet,
[20:35] because they're like everyone else is
[20:37] like, "What do you mean I'm the one, not
[20:39] them?" You know? So So that's that's
[20:43] where reality seems awful because you
[20:45] never get satisfied. There's no
[20:46] satisfaction.
[20:47] But when when when when you're living in
[20:50] love, when you just want the happiness
[20:52] of all beings, so Buddha is just the
[20:54] person in love with everybody.
[20:56] A Buddha is a being who has fallen in
[20:57] love with the entire even cockroaches
[21:00] and spiders and mosquitoes, totally in
[21:02] love with them all, money only wants
[21:04] their happiness and therefore is totally
[21:07] an engine of bliss, an ocean of bliss,
[21:09] that's all.
[21:10] So, anyway, but these are scientific
[21:12] things. Experience is superior to
[21:14] inference or belief or any conceptual
[21:16] structure. The mind's subtle as subtle
[21:18] energy, super subtle energy is more
[21:20] powerful than coarse matter, and wisdom
[21:22] potential is unlimited and deathless,
[21:25] and aware therefore of everything
[21:26] changing. Now, now this is really what
[21:29] Okay. Yeah, so then non-duality
[21:31] discovered in I hope I didn't skip like
[21:33] 10 things. Yeah, I didn't, good. Okay,
[21:36] non-duality is a scientific discovery
[21:38] whether by a Buddhist or a Vedist or a
[21:40] Hindu, and I make those as three
[21:42] different things. People go Vedic
[21:43] Hinduism, but actually Vedism is quite
[21:46] different from Hinduism. Hinduism is
[21:48] really a combination of Vedism and
[21:50] Shramanism.
[21:51] But that I don't want to go into that at
[21:52] length, but that because, you know, the
[21:54] some of the lot of the non-dual people
[21:55] here are Vedantic oriented, which is
[21:57] great.
[21:58] But I do have some We do have a little
[22:00] discussion about that, which I'll
[22:01] explain. Anyway, it is experienced,
[22:04] which is a result of experiment, guided
[22:07] by critical theory, interpreted by
[22:09] critical reason. And Buddha was a an
[22:11] adept of samadhi, dhyana, and samapatti,
[22:13] three different types of trance. I I
[22:16] translate it trance as samapatti, dhyana
[22:18] as contemplation, and samadhi as
[22:20] concentration, which is, you know, there
[22:22] are different ways you can translate
[22:24] them all as meditation, but that's kind
[22:25] of meaningless in a way, then it becomes
[22:27] meaningless. The word that is usually
[22:29] translated meditation, bhavana, actually
[22:32] really means realization because it's
[22:34] from the verb to be, so bhavana means to
[22:36] make something exist, to create
[22:38] something. It doesn't just mean sit and
[22:40] think about something, bhavana. But the
[22:43] dhyana is a little bit thinking about
[22:44] something. Anyway, he ranged up and down
[22:46] in and out of the body, ultimately
[22:48] returning to his body.
[22:50] And um now there's this thing here. He
[22:53] left a cosmology, the Buddha did, of
[22:56] what he calls the tri-universe,
[23:00] the tridhatuka lokadhatu for those of
[23:02] you who know Sanskrit.
[23:03] And and this became a general generic
[23:05] layout in the Indic world in all the
[23:08] Jainism and and the Hinduism
[23:11] eventually, but he did this from his
[23:13] experience. And with the world that we
[23:16] are in is if you look at the Oh, I don't
[23:18] have that here anyway. These are the
[23:20] eight states of the meditation
[23:24] achievement or contemplation achievement
[23:27] that he left, you know, sort of as a as
[23:30] a phenomenology of altered states, you
[23:32] could say. And the first four of them
[23:34] are called the Brahma Viharas, the
[23:36] divine abodes, the god godly abodes,
[23:39] Brahma abodes.
[23:40] And they are or they're also called the
[23:43] four immeasurable states. And the first
[23:46] one is love, second one compa- maitri,
[23:49] if you go to the bottom.
[23:50] First one is maitri, which means love.
[23:53] Second is loving kindness, they say,
[23:55] which is a word that got into Buddhist
[23:57] translations because the Buddhists
[23:59] didn't want to use the word love because
[24:00] Christian missionaries in Asia used the
[24:02] word love and then they killed you.
[24:05] If you weren't Christian. So, they did
[24:07] they wanted to avoid that, so they put
[24:08] in kindness in there, loving kindness.
[24:11] But it's just love.
[24:12] Wishing happiness of the beloved. And
[24:15] then karuna is compassion,
[24:17] wishing them not to suffer. Pramudita is
[24:19] joy, which means appreciating the bliss
[24:22] and happiness that every being already
[24:23] has. And there is there are the Buddha's
[24:26] vision in that nirvanic vision that he
[24:28] had is that actually we all are
[24:30] blissful. Everyone. Even you're
[24:32] miserable this morning, you have a
[24:33] headache, you did too much non-duality
[24:35] last night, and you're feeling tired,
[24:37] and you'd rather be taking a nap, but
[24:39] the reason that your body is holding
[24:41] together and the atoms even of your
[24:42] chair from Buddha's point of view is
[24:44] that the energy of love and bliss is in
[24:46] your atoms. The strong force of the
[24:49] universe, you can bet the physicists
[24:50] don't know what it is because it's
[24:52] described with an Anglo-Saxon word, not
[24:54] a Greek word. If they had knew what it
[24:56] was, it would have a Greek word, not it
[24:58] wouldn't say strong. Strong and weak
[25:00] mean they haven't quite figured it out
[25:01] yet.
[25:02] And the strong force from Buddha's point
[25:04] of view is this infinite energy of the
[25:06] clear light of the void, the clear light
[25:08] of emptiness, which is a concept I'm
[25:10] coming to. Anyway, so those are four
[25:13] immeasurable states, and that is
[25:15] constitutes something that is called Let
[25:17] me Let me switch to the next one.
[25:20] Uh that constitutes what is called the
[25:22] pure matter realm, which in Buddhist
[25:24] translations they call the form realm,
[25:26] which is a translation mistake. Form
[25:28] being the visual object, but the matter
[25:31] is some things you can't see are still
[25:32] material. And that And then the In that
[25:35] context it mean That's what it means. It
[25:36] doesn't mean just the visual object.
[25:38] Which is only This is the same word in
[25:40] Sanskrit, rupa, but that's because the
[25:42] most sort of noticeable physical objects
[25:44] are visible ones, but there are
[25:46] non-visible ones. So material is a
[25:48] better word. And the realm of pure
[25:49] matter, there are This is the four of
[25:51] them called the realm which is above
[25:53] where we are, which is called the desire
[25:55] realm, which I list on the side of this
[25:57] side. They have There are six heavens of
[25:59] the desire realm, which are what we
[26:01] think of as heavens, some really
[26:02] pleasurable place. And then titans,
[26:04] humans, animal, pretas, and naraka, very
[26:07] bad suffering forms of life. And that's
[26:11] where we are at the moment on the human
[26:13] plane. And then this is the realm of
[26:15] pure matter you can reach with those
[26:16] four dhyanas, as they're called, four
[26:18] contemplations. And these dhyanas are
[26:20] connected to extreme where you withdraw
[26:23] from normal sense connections, and you
[26:26] go into just a pure feeling of love. And
[26:29] you that love becomes the basis of that
[26:31] realm of pure matter. And you Since
[26:33] you're willing the love of all, you're
[26:35] connecting to that energy that that is
[26:37] available to all as a will as a to make
[26:39] their happiness possible. And therefore
[26:42] you're It's called the immeasurable
[26:43] love. And compassion is there where it
[26:45] begins to enfold beings who themselves
[26:47] are thinking, "I'm not happy." And
[26:49] that's where compassion wants to help
[26:51] them feel that they are happy. And then
[26:52] pramudita is to enjoy the fact that they
[26:54] are actually already happy, which at a
[26:57] subliminal level there's a joyfulness in
[26:59] their cells, which actually is their
[27:00] health, which actually is their energy
[27:03] of life. And then finally upeksha, which
[27:05] is where you're equal to all beings in
[27:07] in those earlier three feelings, which
[27:09] are connected all together. And then the
[27:12] top of that, the boundary between the
[27:13] realm of pure matter and the immaterial
[27:16] realms, these four, is where you know,
[27:20] matter become mass becomes infinite.
[27:22] It's like the speed of light for
[27:23] Einstein, which he thought was the limit
[27:25] of all things cuz he was a materialist,
[27:27] trying to be a materialist. But
[27:28] meanwhile, beyond that there are four
[27:30] realms that are considered purely mental
[27:32] or immaterial, although there's a very
[27:34] very subtle form of energy always where
[27:36] there's mind. And therefore, in a way
[27:38] they're not purely immaterial, but
[27:40] they're called immaterial or formless
[27:41] realm. And these are very interesting
[27:43] states. The first one is a state of and
[27:46] these are called trance states. And the
[27:48] body of a yogi who reaches this or
[27:50] yogini who reaches this goes into what
[27:52] you might call cataleptic trance, where
[27:54] it just, you know, there's like
[27:55] hibernation state cuz the mind is
[27:57] completely gets abstracted from being
[27:59] connected with the body in these states.
[28:01] And one is called a state of infinite
[28:03] space or the medium of infinite space
[28:05] cuz it's not a realm or a state cuz it's
[28:07] not there's no physicality about it, no
[28:09] overt physicality about it. The next
[28:11] second one is the realm of infinite
[28:13] consciousness. The third one, the realm
[28:15] of nothingness,
[28:17] which is of course not nothing, it's a
[28:19] realm that or a it's a medium, a place
[28:22] where the mind goes like a dark realm
[28:25] for rest. And a place where even there's
[28:27] no consciousness of being in the place,
[28:29] where one goes into it in a way of
[28:32] feeling it's more subtle than being
[28:34] infinite consciousness, which is kind of
[28:35] tiresome, nothing to be it's boring,
[28:37] nothing to be conscious of, you're just
[28:39] infinite consciousness. And then you
[28:40] become this you kind of go to sleep in
[28:43] the third realm as a as a pleasant
[28:45] thing. And then there's one beyond that,
[28:47] the fourth realm, which is neither
[28:49] conscious or unconscious, where sleep
[28:51] and wake are together and almost like an
[28:52] enlightened state, but not an
[28:54] enlightened state from Buddha's point of
[28:56] view because you are separated from
[28:58] everything, all the differentiated
[29:00] things in the universe. And once you're
[29:02] separated, once it's it seems to be an
[29:04] absolute to the yogi who who experiences
[29:06] it, but once they're separate from
[29:07] everything else, of course, it isn't.
[29:09] It's a relative state. It's achieved
[29:11] causally, therefore it's a made and
[29:12] created state, and that being moved into
[29:15] it from another through a series of
[29:17] causes and conditions of their yogic
[29:19] practice and discipline. And therefore,
[29:21] it's it only it tricks someone who is
[29:24] expecting an absolute state apart from
[29:26] the universe, which actually from
[29:28] Buddha's point of view, psychological
[29:29] point of view, is a projection of the
[29:31] psychosis of thinking that my real self
[29:34] is something disconnected from me.
[29:37] It's an absolute that is not affected by
[29:39] my relativity, and then I think through
[29:41] that meditation I've reached that
[29:42] absolute, and that's my absolute self,
[29:44] and it's me and me. And then I'll say,
[29:46] just for the hell of it, I'll include
[29:47] God in it.
[29:49] But it's me and God and nobody else.
[29:52] And therefore, it's a basically from
[29:53] Buddha's point of view, a psychotic
[29:54] state, actually, even though it's a
[29:56] mystic. 10 minutes, thank you. I know
[29:57] that I'm As you hear, I'm talking like a
[29:59] New Yorker.
[30:00] Okay?
[30:01] Fast.
[30:02] So now now in the Book of the Dead, I'm
[30:04] connect Now I'm sharing with you
[30:06] something I've never really shared at
[30:08] length with my academic colleagues, and
[30:10] I think it's something I have to claim,
[30:11] it's a kind of unique insight. In the
[30:13] Book of the Dead, you turn this upside
[30:15] down,
[30:16] and the process of dissolution in the
[30:18] death state, or when you faint, or when
[30:21] you fall asleep at night, even, but you
[30:24] don't you're not conscious of it because
[30:25] we're not attuned to the finer shifts in
[30:28] our consciousness, really, cuz we're
[30:29] always involved in sense stimuli and in
[30:32] in our sense consciousnesses. But if you
[30:34] develop a greater mindfulness,
[30:36] mindfulness moving in the direction of
[30:37] being aware of how the inner inner
[30:38] mechanism of mind works, you to to this
[30:40] one. And so, first is called the earth
[30:43] to water and when you first and when
[30:46] you're dying and then earth to water
[30:48] transition is where you see like the
[30:51] world is like a mirage, like a
[30:53] hallucination. You can't recognize
[30:55] anything. Your language, your speech
[30:56] things stops. Your feeling of solidity
[30:58] in your body stops. Your body sort of
[31:00] goes to starts going to sleep. You know,
[31:02] not just your arm because you're sitting
[31:04] or your leg because you're sitting in an
[31:05] odd posture. Your whole body starts to
[31:07] go to sleep. It becomes numb. Then water
[31:09] to fire is
[31:11] inner sign of that is a kind of
[31:12] hallucinatory state. Then water to fire,
[31:15] the inner sign of that transition is
[31:17] where you see like everything feels like
[31:19] a smoke. You're surrounded by smokiness
[31:21] and there's kind of a heat feeling. Then
[31:23] fire to wind and it's not air because
[31:26] wind means movement actually. So, it has
[31:28] to there's energy movement. It's not the
[31:30] stillness. Air can be still. So, you
[31:32] shouldn't translate it as air. Fire to
[31:33] wind is where you see sparks.
[31:36] And then you have or even they say
[31:37] fireflies, a swarm of fireflies. Like
[31:40] little green things going like that and
[31:41] getting cooler. The heat dissipates and
[31:43] cooler. And then you have wind to space
[31:46] or consciousness where you kind of go
[31:48] into a you lose a sense of your
[31:50] differentiated sense organism and you go
[31:53] into just feeling you go into space
[31:55] which you fear. When you die, you feel
[31:56] you're losing consciousness. But you
[31:58] haven't lost consciousness. You just
[31:59] feel that you're a spacious entity. And
[32:02] then consciousness to luminance I call
[32:04] luminance which is where you're as if
[32:06] the inner sign of which is that
[32:09] you feel that space that space is like a
[32:12] white moonlight.
[32:14] Like a pure moonlit space sky.
[32:17] With scientists named sky that's so far
[32:19] out. A moonlit sky
[32:21] and there's no moon. It's just
[32:23] everything is this white light and I
[32:24] call it luminance. And then where
[32:26] luminance goes into radiance, the next
[32:28] stage it's like it becomes more solar
[32:30] where your mind like it heats up and
[32:32] becomes like orange red, like a sunshine
[32:35] and very brilliant and you you are that
[32:37] brilliant. It's not like you're there
[32:39] being dazzled by cuz you don't have
[32:40] ordinary senses, you're not in your
[32:41] body, in your ordinary body, and it's
[32:43] this brilliant redness, and then that's
[32:46] too much for you, kind of, and you want
[32:47] to you go into imminence, which means
[32:50] threshold kind of thing where that's
[32:52] that's like darkness. It's like a
[32:54] brilliant blackness. And then, the final
[32:57] stage where imminence goes to what is
[32:58] called clear light, or although actually
[33:01] clear light is not a light, it's a
[33:03] brilliant thing where everything is
[33:05] transparent, and everything illuminates
[33:07] itself, and there's no shadow, and in a
[33:09] way it's beyond the duality of light and
[33:11] dark, actually, although it's called by
[33:13] people's habit clear light, the proper
[33:15] translation really should be
[33:16] transparency.
[33:18] And it's actually a gray type of light.
[33:20] I wore a gray shirt in honor of it.
[33:23] Because the mix mix of black and white
[33:25] is gray, right? Kind of luminous gray,
[33:28] but not really luminous cuz no shadow.
[33:30] So, it's a it's a diamond, sometimes
[33:32] they compare it to a diamond, a diamond
[33:34] light. A diamond doesn't is just
[33:36] transparent, like glass, you know? So,
[33:38] glass would also be a good thing. So,
[33:39] these are the stages of
[33:41] stages or the type of These are the
[33:43] stages of the death dissolution that
[33:46] everybody does every time they die, and
[33:48] actually they say every time we withdraw
[33:50] from our sense consciousnesses, we go
[33:52] through that state. Okay? Now, next one,
[33:55] I'm showing you this. You turn that
[33:57] upside down, that that set of
[33:59] transitions and those inner signs,
[34:01] and you connect it to these eight
[34:03] meditative states of the yogi.
[34:05] And what you see is that
[34:07] the yogi coming from the desire realm
[34:10] below the my tree, below the love, you
[34:13] know, where you're just in your sense
[34:14] your coarse body mind with your sense
[34:16] organs and so forth, and you go into
[34:18] boundless love, balance compassion, joy,
[34:20] and equapoise, and this connects to the
[34:23] earth to water, water to fire, fire to
[34:25] wind, wind to space, and then the
[34:28] boundary line is where mass becomes
[34:29] infinite, and only mind can go where,
[34:32] you know, it's pure light, you could
[34:34] say. And then you go to space to That
[34:37] parallels the dissolution process of
[34:38] space to illuminance.
[34:40] Then, when you're in this vast space,
[34:42] you're not a body floating in it, you
[34:44] are that vast space, and it's a really
[34:46] It's like a solid as being in this room
[34:48] to you at the time as a yogin, and it
[34:50] feels like a big relief because you're
[34:52] away from being bothered by any kind of
[34:54] unpleasant relation racial
[34:55] relationality.
[34:57] And then your mind wants to spread
[34:58] through it, kind of explodes in that
[35:00] situation. Your unconsciousness does,
[35:02] and then it fills it with consciousness,
[35:04] and it becomes radiance, like the sun.
[35:07] Your consciousness is like a sun, and so
[35:09] that corresponds to this vijnana
[35:11] ayatana, the infinite consciousness
[35:13] realm or medium. And then finally that
[35:17] gets boring and too bright, and you go
[35:19] into darkness, which is the same the
[35:21] same as that. And then finally the
[35:23] fourth state, which in some forms of
[35:26] Hinduism they think is enlightenment,
[35:27] and in some forms of dualistic Buddhism,
[35:29] Theravada Buddhism, where they teach
[35:31] that nirvana is somewhere beyond the
[35:32] world, not the world, and the world is
[35:35] sucks. They teach the usual thing that
[35:36] the world sucks and there's a nirvana
[35:38] somewhere else,
[35:39] which which non-dual Buddhism rejects
[35:41] that as a naive like lack of thinking
[35:44] and lack of understanding, critical lack
[35:46] of critical insight. And um uh and
[35:49] Buddha carefully doesn't tell And
[35:51] actually by giving this phenomenology,
[35:53] Buddha told those even those dualistic
[35:55] monks, cuz this is in Pali Buddhism, he
[35:58] said, "When you get those states of
[35:59] abstraction that you think it's kind of
[36:01] the brink of nirvana you're going to
[36:02] disappear into because your
[36:04] self-centeredness wants to disappear
[36:06] because you associate being related to
[36:08] things as leading to suffering."
[36:10] So, when you do that, you're really
[36:11] that's not nirvana. He says Those four
[36:14] states are not nirvana. He says that,
[36:16] but he doesn't really push it into
[36:17] non-duality. But in a way that is
[36:19] pushing it to non-duality. And there are
[36:21] many hints in the Theravada Buddhism
[36:23] about that.
[36:24] So, this this connection nobody normally
[36:26] thinks of, but what's beautiful about it
[36:28] is it means
[36:29] that the enlightened mind is accessible
[36:32] to everyone. And every time we have
[36:34] died, and from the Buddha's point of
[36:36] view, we have all died innumerable
[36:37] times, is one reason we're scared of
[36:39] dying, is not we you know I mean we are
[36:42] until we're in terrible pain. Then we we
[36:44] call Jack Kevorkian. But but if we are
[36:47] foolish enough as a materialist to think
[36:49] that we'll just automatically be
[36:51] anesthetized in nothingness. Uh if we
[36:54] have that irrational view, that blind
[36:55] faith view that can never have evidence
[36:58] for it, by the way. Never. Ever. There's
[37:00] no evidence for that. No, Carl Sagan has
[37:03] not reported back that he doesn't exist.
[37:06] And no and never will. No one who No one
[37:08] ever will. They do report back
[37:10] occasionally and documented in many
[37:12] anecdotal cases of people reporting back
[37:15] after they're dead and they say
[37:17] I'm I'm here. Feed my cat, you know. We
[37:19] have We have all of these guys in the in
[37:22] the in the TV. They're doing that.
[37:24] They're channeling those people. And of
[37:26] course the materialist thinks it's all
[37:27] fake, but of course it isn't cuz they
[37:29] know where the cat food is kept.
[37:32] They tell the people.
[37:34] So
[37:36] So anyway, my point is this is this is
[37:38] very important. Means that every time we
[37:40] die, even every time we fall asleep, we
[37:42] skid past enlightened consciousness.
[37:45] Because death is defined as when you
[37:46] reach the clear light state. And the
[37:48] clear light state or the transparency
[37:50] state is completely inconceivable,
[37:52] inexpressible, and all this, but it is
[37:54] experienceable. But it's so subtle that
[37:57] normally we don't experience it. I know
[37:58] I've got to quickly go cuz we're almost
[37:59] done. Now um now
[38:02] if you align the the tantric yogis, the
[38:04] psychonauts, Stan Grof, where is he? I
[38:06] love Stan Grof. He invented that word
[38:08] psychonaut, which I like, like
[38:10] astronaut. But the Buddhist inner
[38:12] scientist is a psychonaut that at the
[38:14] advanced level right He doesn't go into
[38:16] outer space, goes into inner space like
[38:17] an astronaut, but it's a psychonaut.
[38:19] Anyway, coarse body mind, which we're in
[38:22] now, most of us,
[38:23] uh I mean, we're paying attention to,
[38:25] rather. We're in all three all the time,
[38:26] but we're paying attention to that. Is
[38:29] is defined as it it dissolves in these
[38:32] four steps of dissolution, as you see on
[38:34] the right.
[38:35] Then there's something called subtle
[38:36] body mind, and that's consists The body
[38:39] consists of channels, winds, and drops.
[38:41] You know,
[38:42] uh nadi, vayu, and bindu in Sanskrit.
[38:45] And which is that inner chakra system,
[38:47] the neurology. It's actually a kind of
[38:48] neurological system that is the subtle
[38:51] body. And the subtle mind going with
[38:53] that is a mind that is pure luminance,
[38:55] radiance, and imminence. It's a mind of
[38:57] just pure those pure three light light
[38:59] states, light realms. And um
[39:02] and uh which corresponds to those stages
[39:04] of dissolution. And then the super
[39:06] subtle body mind is where body and mind
[39:08] are no different, actually. And Dalai
[39:11] Lama doesn't like to tell this to
[39:12] scientific materialists that he
[39:13] dialogues with, cuz he thinks they'll
[39:15] triumphantly say, "Aha, mind is matter."
[39:18] And it is, actually. At the super subtle
[39:20] level, there's no difference. But the
[39:23] thing that he's he's not relying on them
[39:25] understanding is that also matter is
[39:26] mind.
[39:28] There's no difference between matter and
[39:29] mind. So therefore, reductionism to
[39:31] matter can work and be useful for some
[39:33] context, as long as it doesn't become a
[39:35] fanatical dogma, as it has become in our
[39:37] culture. And And but also, matter can be
[39:41] mind, and the subtle mind, the power of
[39:43] the subtle mind, is actually supreme. So
[39:46] So that is a main point I wanted to
[39:48] make. And then finally, to talk about
[39:50] karma, I have I have another at least
[39:52] hour to talk, but I don't. So final
[39:54] point I want to make as before I stop,
[39:56] which will be soon, I'm sure. Is it
[39:58] already? Okay, 1 minute. 1 minute. So
[40:01] the final point I want to make is that
[40:03] this is very, very key, and this is a
[40:05] difference between the Buddhist
[40:07] non-duality and Veda's Hindu
[40:09] non-duality. And this is why later
[40:12] Vedantic
[40:13] uh philosophers in India rejected
[40:15] Shankara's theories,
[40:17] the greatest of the non-dualists in the
[40:19] Hindu side, because they said he was a
[40:21] crypto-Buddhist.
[40:24] He was a sneaking Buddhism in on them.
[40:26] And what they meant by that was that
[40:27] Buddhism does not believe in the
[40:30] absoluteness of the caste system, of the
[40:32] Brahmin versus the the low-caste person.
[40:35] Buddhism believes all beings are equal.
[40:37] Everyone has a chance to be enlightened
[40:39] and so forth. Everyone actually is
[40:40] enlightened every time they drop dead.
[40:42] They have a split second of
[40:43] enlightenment, but they haven't trained
[40:44] themselves to catch and to be conscious
[40:47] of the reality from the super subtle
[40:49] level and thereby be able to really feel
[40:52] that bliss at all times and be able to
[40:54] share that bliss with other beings. So,
[40:57] so the difference there is that the
[40:58] Buddhist and Shankara's radical Nirguna
[41:01] Brahman idea, unqualified Brahman idea,
[41:03] is that all relational things are only
[41:07] relational and there's no absolute caste
[41:10] system, there's no absolute personal
[41:12] God, there's no absolute creator and so
[41:14] forth. That those are all projected
[41:16] concepts and the absolute is
[41:18] inexpressible and transcendent of all of
[41:21] that and that leaves that leaves the
[41:23] Nirguna Brahman to be similar to
[41:25] emptiness. That's why he was rejected by
[41:28] most of the what they call qualified
[41:30] non-dualists and even they reached but
[41:32] with Madhva in the 14th 15th century,
[41:34] they reached what they call dualistic
[41:35] non-dualism, which I which is really
[41:38] cool. As a way of keeping their Brahman,
[41:40] you know, superiority in their minds and
[41:43] the absoluteness of that. And then they
[41:45] have for the absoluteness of their own
[41:46] absolute self that they think is
[41:48] absolute, you know. And so that's an
[41:50] important psychological difference and
[41:52] there are versions of the Hindu one that
[41:54] are like the Buddhist one and there are
[41:55] versions of the Buddhist one from the
[41:57] non-dualist Theravada traditions, a type
[42:00] traditions, that are like the like the
[42:02] Hindu one where they want to keep some
[42:04] sort of absolute absolute. They want to
[42:06] have an absolute absolute to get into to
[42:08] get away from everything, which is the
[42:10] last bastion of the psychotic
[42:11] self-separated absolute self. So, so So,
[42:15] so therefore, don't be trapped. If
[42:18] you're a good yogi or yogini and you get
[42:20] into a samadhi and you withdraw from the
[42:22] sense organs and you're zipping away
[42:23] there and you zip up through the eight
[42:25] states and you're up there and you're in
[42:27] the fourth state and you're in both
[42:28] awake and asleep at the same time and
[42:30] you're totally cool, don't think that's
[42:32] the absolute state. That is a kind of
[42:35] That itself is also empty, that state.
[42:38] And it by being empty, it's a relational
[42:40] state. So, you can't be there forever.
[42:42] It has causes. The The absolute, as
[42:44] Buddha described, is uncreated. And
[42:47] finally, I'll leave you with that, which
[42:48] means that we're in nirvana now. You're
[42:51] right now in nirvana. Not only when
[42:53] you're at the non-dualist conference,
[42:54] even when you go home.
[42:56] You're in nirvana and you've always been
[42:58] there. And when you finally strip away
[43:00] the misknowing, the misunderstanding
[43:03] that you're not in nirvana and you're
[43:04] struggling to get somewhere and deal
[43:06] with like Calvin and hell and Luther and
[43:08] God and and and nothingness and a
[43:11] reified nothingness, when you're dealing
[43:13] with that, you're still in nirvana. When
[43:15] you understand that you're in nirvana,
[43:16] you realize you were always in nirvana.
[43:18] And that's how I control myself for
[43:20] being unenlightened, by the way, when
[43:21] people ask me after 50 years of study.
[43:24] Because actually, although I am not
[43:27] enlightened and I never would dare claim
[43:28] it, my wife would throw me out of the
[43:30] house
[43:31] if I did. Uh
[43:33] when I do get enlightened, which I will
[43:35] definitely in some future life, I will
[43:37] revise my experience of being here with
[43:39] you a little bit over my time and I'll
[43:42] realize that I was already in
[43:43] enlightenment now and I will
[43:45] re-experience this moment with you all
[43:48] retroactively as nirvanic bliss. Okay?
[43:51] With all of you in. Okay, bye.
[43:54] Thank you. Thank you very much.
[43:57] Okay? How about that? Peace. Peace.
[43:59] Peace.
[44:15] Mhm.
