Question & Answer #189: from Martin Heidegger to the Nature of Perception and Volition

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Language: en
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Alrighty then.
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Hello and welcome to question and answer
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number 189.
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I am your host Po Basa. It is kind of
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amazing to me that like my first eight
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or so Q&A I was still a monk at the time
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and here I am up to 189 which is not
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prime but is in fact 3 * 3 * 3 * 7
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and I got the uh
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Arabica coffee going.
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This is uh my first good cup of coffee
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today. See, I got this woman who cares
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about me. And so when she makes the
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coffee for me, she's putting stuff like
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collagen and like whey powder and stuff
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into my coffee that makes it not taste
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like coffee.
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But she has the best of intentions, I'm
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sure.
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And uh we do not have an extremely long
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Q&A today. Um, I guess it's like finally
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I'm answering everybody's questions.
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So,
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everyone's just satisfied, I guess.
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And, uh, I am I mean, this is kind of a
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philosophical sort of video. this these
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Q&As's Q's and A's these Q&A videos tend
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to be somewhat philosophical and I've
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just been struck by this philosophical
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situation that happened to me today when
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somebody brought up the question does a
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drinking straw have one hole or two
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holes
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and I asked this question on the the
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Discord server that is associated with
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all this and someone said They learn in
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school that a straw has only one hole.
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Which then leads to the problematic
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like what is it result
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that our mouth and our butthole are the
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same hole
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which is kind of it's kind of thrown me
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for a loop if you will.
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But I guess we should just get into
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this. I don't think this is going to be
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an extremely long one.
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It's [clears throat] starting to be
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summery outside and stuff. People are
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out there sniffing flowers and [ __ ]
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So,
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first question is from Xenithoid.
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And Xenithoid says, "What are your
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thoughts on the philosopher Martin Hyde?
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Here's an old video of him talking with
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a Buddhist monk if you're interested."
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Well, somebody I think it was a few
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months ago, maybe a couple months ago,
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asked me about H Highigger. And my
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answer at the time was, I mean, all I
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knew about H Highigger at the time was
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that he was
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considered to be an existentialist or at
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least existentialism adjacent.
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He [snorts]
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influenced existentialist philosophy
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anyhow. And he was a Nazi. At least he
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was a I mean he wore like the swastika
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armband when delivering his lectures at
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university in Germany at the time before
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the end of World War II.
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And that's pretty much all I knew about
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him. I really never studied up on H
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Highigger.
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Um, but Zenithoid provided me with this
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video of Haidiger talking with a
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Buddhist monk, which is kind of
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interesting because there wasn't so much
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of an exchange of ideas as just a monk
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who looked like maybe a Thai monk was
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interviewing Hideigger and just asking
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Hidigger questions.
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And
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so, I mean, it's
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I watched the video. So, probably most
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of what I know about H Higher, or at
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least half of it, is derived from this
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15-minute long old black and white video
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of a Buddhist monk asking questions to
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uh Martin Hyde. And Haidiger says a few
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things towards the beginning of the
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video that are kind of strange. It's
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like he says, "A question that has never
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been asked before up until the 20th
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century apparently is, what is man's
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relation to being?"
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Um, and that's just kind of strange to
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me. I mean, being or boa is a term in
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Buddhism where like in the 12 links of
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dependent core rising, the bwa
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represents karma, you know, it's it's
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just like the force of existence,
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which is, you know, the force of some
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saric unenlightened existence.
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And um
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so I mean I mean what do you mean when
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you say being
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I mean I mean it is discussed like in
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Buddhism or like existence and
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non-existence according to the kalahawi
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suta of the atikawaga of the sutinata
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of the pseudapitica of the polyipetica
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existence and non-existence are a kind
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of mental state you know it's just sort
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of like this mental mentally
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generated dualism.
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So I mean just the idea of what is man's
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relation to being
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and with just emphasizing you know what
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is it what does it mean to be? I mean it
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seems like unnecessary intellectual
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complication
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and it does remind me of a statement by
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David Hume which I wrote down. And I
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thought it was a good enough statement
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that I wrote it down in this little
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notebook when I was a monk. And David
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Hume said, "The idea of existence is the
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very same with the idea of what we
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conceive to be existent."
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So I mean it's like the existence of a
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thing is just the thing itself.
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So I mean anything that exists I mean
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that in itself would just be all of the
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manifestations being.
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But it may be
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that. Let's see here. There's another
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statement by Spinosa that's kind of
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along the same lines here. If I can find
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it. Oh, here. So, Spinosa on the subject
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says, "The striving by which each thing
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strives to persevere in its being is
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nothing else than the actual essence of
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the thing itself."
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So, I guess that kind of touches on this
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subject at hand. But it seems to me that
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H Highaidigger is just I mean he's not
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so much wise as he is like
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intellectually intelligent. And he
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reminds me with just his verbally dense,
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complicated intellectual approach to
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understanding the world. He reminds me
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of Sartra or S. I don't know how to
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pronounce French names. I don't even
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really try.
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But and I mean I read some some of SHC
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and it seems to me like when he's
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philosophizing it's like his strategy is
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just to come up with such convoluted
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complicated complex statements that
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neither he nor anybody else can detect
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the flaws in his reasoning. It's just
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lost in the complications.
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And Haidiger I mean he seems
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kind of along those same lines. I mean,
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it's just this dense intellectualizing
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as an attempt to understand what
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ultimately you can't really understand
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by thinking about it.
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But he was a product of 20th century
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western culture
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and uh mysticism really was not a big
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deal at that time. And from my point of
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view, you're only going to understand
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reality through mysticism, which is just
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direct awareness of
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anything without having to filter it
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through perception.
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Just direct experience of reality
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without thinking about reality.
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So man's relation to being I mean it's I
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mean going with Hume it's like man's
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relation to himself I mean there there
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is no relation it's just the being of a
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man is just the man the being of a cup
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of coffee is the cup of coffee so I mean
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it might be that he's kind of reifying
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some abstraction of what does it mean to
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exist
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But I don't know. It just seems kind I
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mean, I can't really relate to it very
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well. Possibly just because I'm just
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introduced to this in an old grainy
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black and white YouTube video.
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So, let's just move on to this next
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little bit I picked up from the video.
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Uh he says man is the only living
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creature with language giving him the
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he's the only living being on this
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planet that has a knowledge relation to
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being if I remember that correctly.
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And I mean obviously human beings are
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not the only creatures with language.
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We're the only creatures maybe with a
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kind of arbitrary abstract symbolic
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language, but animals have language, you
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know, like body language, for example. I
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mean, when a dog yelps, that's a kind of
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language communication. When it's
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wagging its tail, that's a kind of
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language communication. And there's even
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interspecific
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like interspecies understanding of other
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other languages or other animals like
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calls for example like when I lived in a
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cave in Burma there were wild chickens
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red jungle fowl there was a kind of uh
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kind of spotted owl and also there were
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squirrels
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and they all knew they all understood
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each other's warning calls like if one
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of them saw a hawk it would make a
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sound. It wasn't the same sound among
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the three species, but the other two
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species would know that warning call and
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they would take heat. You know, so if if
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the squirrel made some warning call when
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it saw a hawk, the owls and the chickens
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would both hide. And if the owl saw the
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hawk first, it would make a warning
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sound, a different warning sound than
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squirrels made, but still they would
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understand and they would like take
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cover.
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Bees, honey bees have that complicated
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dance which is a kind of communication
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where the bee is indicating to the other
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bees, you know, how far away it is, how
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far away this source of nectar is, you
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know, what direction and how much of it
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is there relatively speaking. But this
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is all just sort of programmed into the
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bee. It's not like a verbal language
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which I assume H high digger is talking
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about but still I mean you have to have
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some kind of symbolic language to have
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like a knowledge relation to being I
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mean H highiger is calling knowledge I
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would call just a kind of complicated
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delusion.
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So yeah, I wasn't much impressed with
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that. Although he did say something that
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I think is good. Not that it was the
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only thing he said that I think is good,
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but something noteworthy, something
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worthy of remarking on that. He defined
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religion as a reaction to powers and
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laws which exceed human capacity. you
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know, it's sort of like a perception of
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something greater than you and like an
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awareness of that and a a response to
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something greater than yourself,
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which I mean that's that's a fairly good
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explanation of of religion. It's better
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than, you know, describing, you know,
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the worship of a god or gods as religion
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because, for example, Terra Buddhism
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doesn't really worship a god or gods.
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It's it's more or less of an atheistic
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religion.
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So with regard to H Highagger, I mean if
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I studied him and kind of forgave him
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like the dense verbosity of his like
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attempts to explain reality or whatever
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it is he's trying to explain.
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And I mean, I might have more
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appreciation for him, but it just seems
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like he's more intelligent than wise
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and just barking up the wrong tree,
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trying to understand reality by thinking
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about it. And I think it's just a a
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fool's errand, just an exercise in
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futility.
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[sighs]
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But in [clears throat] the tradition of
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western civilization,
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it's that does seem to be the approach.
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You try to understand anything by
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figuring it out. And I do not think the
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absolute the capital a absolute of
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ultimate reality can be figured out. The
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best you can do with the intellect is
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something along the lines of nagarjana
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or maybe even god Buddha like in the
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archaic sutas where you're using logic
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to just attack itself. I mean, you try
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to understand the limitations of your
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own like reasoning capacity and then
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just kind of set it aside or like in
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Zen, you try to solve a riddle that has
00:14:03.680 --> 00:14:06.949
no solution until your mind just comes
00:14:06.959 --> 00:14:09.750
to a screeching halt. You know, it just
00:14:09.760 --> 00:14:12.949
stops and then suddenly illumination can
00:14:12.959 --> 00:14:15.750
happen.
00:14:15.760 --> 00:14:18.629
But using intellectuality
00:14:18.639 --> 00:14:21.509
positively, not negatively to attack
00:14:21.519 --> 00:14:23.030
itself,
00:14:23.040 --> 00:14:25.750
but positively as a way of like trying
00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:28.710
to understand ultimate reality. I do
00:14:28.720 --> 00:14:30.494
think that is just an absolute
00:14:30.504 --> 00:14:31.509
[clears throat]
00:14:31.519 --> 00:14:36.150
it's an exercise in utter futility.
00:14:36.160 --> 00:14:39.829
And like uh the famous eccentric
00:14:39.839 --> 00:14:41.350
intellectual
00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:44.710
more or less existentialist English monk
00:14:44.720 --> 00:14:47.750
Nyanava used to say existentialism I
00:14:47.760 --> 00:14:49.750
mean it either leads to like nihilistic
00:14:49.760 --> 00:14:52.150
despair or it just goes off the tracks
00:14:52.160 --> 00:14:54.949
into mysticism because existentialism
00:14:54.959 --> 00:14:57.670
was kind of a philosophical dead end.
00:14:57.680 --> 00:14:59.990
Nyan Vera was trying to take
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:03.829
existentialism and like
00:15:03.839 --> 00:15:07.910
like reform it somehow so that I mean it
00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:09.670
it could keep going and lead you to
00:15:09.680 --> 00:15:12.710
enlightenment. He was he was heavily
00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:15.189
influenced by existentialism.
00:15:15.199 --> 00:15:17.030
Although he didn't talk about Hideiger
00:15:17.040 --> 00:15:18.550
much which is one reason why I don't
00:15:18.560 --> 00:15:20.310
know that much about Hideiger. talked a
00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:24.470
lot more about um oh Kieragard who was
00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:26.790
sort of a protoexistentialist
00:15:26.800 --> 00:15:28.470
you know he was sort of a forerunner to
00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:30.755
existentialism
00:15:30.765 --> 00:15:31.990
[clears throat] he had no use for Carl
00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:33.990
Jasper because Carl Jaspers went off the
00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:38.310
tracks into mysticism
00:15:38.320 --> 00:15:40.310
so [sighs]
00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:42.069
yeah my thoughts about the philosopher
00:15:42.079 --> 00:15:44.470
Martin Haidiger
00:15:44.480 --> 00:15:46.710
I guess I I've given what thoughts I
00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:50.790
have on the man and So I'm just going to
00:15:50.800 --> 00:15:53.110
move on to the Xenithoid's next question
00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:54.870
here.
00:15:54.880 --> 00:15:57.350
So Hide his his second question is also
00:15:57.360 --> 00:15:59.749
about Haidager. He says Haidager says
00:15:59.759 --> 00:16:02.949
that in order to truly contemplate being
00:16:02.959 --> 00:16:05.430
one has to no longer limit themselves to
00:16:05.440 --> 00:16:08.310
the confines of their religion. What is
00:16:08.320 --> 00:16:11.030
your take on this as a Buddhist? Well,
00:16:11.040 --> 00:16:13.110
yeah. I mean like you read the atikawaga
00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:15.350
of the sutin pata and the Buddha is
00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:17.910
warning against any kind of dharma or
00:16:17.920 --> 00:16:21.110
dharma any kind of philosophical system
00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:22.790
which would include h highiger's
00:16:22.800 --> 00:16:24.949
philosophical system I you have to break
00:16:24.959 --> 00:16:27.910
free of the mental prison of this
00:16:27.920 --> 00:16:30.870
intellectual verbal structure that's
00:16:30.880 --> 00:16:32.870
limiting your capacity to understand
00:16:32.880 --> 00:16:37.590
what is just infinite
00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:39.269
so yeah I mean
00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:41.189
>> I mean there have been arguments that
00:16:41.199 --> 00:16:43.910
the Buddha was not a Buddhist. I mean,
00:16:43.920 --> 00:16:45.509
Jesus was not a Christian, but that's
00:16:45.519 --> 00:16:47.030
like a different kind of argument. The
00:16:47.040 --> 00:16:48.629
Buddha was not a Buddhist because he was
00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:52.310
not so much teaching an ism. He was like
00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:56.150
like about as perfect of a mystic as
00:16:56.160 --> 00:16:58.310
exists. And he's just trying to say, you
00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:00.710
know, don't start up any philosophies.
00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:02.790
At least if you follow the Atakawaga,
00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:04.630
which is, you know, the evidence does
00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:07.029
seem to indicate that it is one of the
00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:11.429
oldest Buddhist texts in existence.
00:17:11.439 --> 00:17:13.669
And it's just saying don't believe
00:17:13.679 --> 00:17:19.350
anything, have no view whatsoever,
00:17:19.360 --> 00:17:22.390
which is I mean if it's a religion, it's
00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:24.390
just like a completely wide open
00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:27.909
religion with no doctrines, no no
00:17:27.919 --> 00:17:33.029
official dogmas anyway.
00:17:33.039 --> 00:17:37.909
So yeah, I I can agree that let's see in
00:17:37.919 --> 00:17:40.950
order I mean first of all contemplating
00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:43.590
being I mean that doesn't really strike
00:17:43.600 --> 00:17:46.870
me as all that important.
00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:49.110
Um I mean it depends on what you're
00:17:49.120 --> 00:17:51.669
going to call being. Like boa I've
00:17:51.679 --> 00:17:53.669
already mentioned in Buddhist Buddhist
00:17:53.679 --> 00:17:55.830
philosophy you know it's just the force
00:17:55.840 --> 00:17:57.510
of existence. That's usually how I
00:17:57.520 --> 00:18:00.789
translate Boa into from poly into
00:18:00.799 --> 00:18:03.669
English is force of existence
00:18:03.679 --> 00:18:06.630
which is you know it's pretty much like
00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:09.110
Schopenhau's will
00:18:09.120 --> 00:18:11.909
but what Hyde actually means when he
00:18:11.919 --> 00:18:14.870
says being
00:18:14.880 --> 00:18:16.630
I don't really know I haven't really
00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:19.190
studied Hyde enough but it could be that
00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:22.470
he's just conjuring up some reified
00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:24.310
abstraction
00:18:24.320 --> 00:18:27.270
you know with the idea that the being of
00:18:27.280 --> 00:18:28.789
something
00:18:28.799 --> 00:18:30.710
is somehow
00:18:30.720 --> 00:18:32.549
qualitatively different from the
00:18:32.559 --> 00:18:37.990
something itself or something.
00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.270
But yeah, I do agree that in order to
00:18:41.280 --> 00:18:43.750
know reality, forget contemplating being
00:18:43.760 --> 00:18:46.950
but just to know reality
00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:48.950
that I mean you can't limit yourselves
00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:52.390
within the confines of some doctrinal or
00:18:52.400 --> 00:18:57.909
dogmatic or intellectual system.
00:18:57.919 --> 00:18:59.430
And I suppose I should just move on.
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:01.830
Next question. This is also from
00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:05.110
Xenithoid. And Xenithoid says, "What is
00:19:05.120 --> 00:19:08.630
the significance of the number 84,000
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:11.270
in Buddhism?" I also see the number
00:19:11.280 --> 00:19:14.230
80,000 come up a decent amount, but not
00:19:14.240 --> 00:19:17.430
as much as 84,000.
00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:20.150
And with regard to 84,000,
00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:22.710
I mean, is it is it like the 84,000
00:19:22.720 --> 00:19:26.230
families of worms? I think that could be
00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:28.549
mentioned in Buddhism. But I think the
00:19:28.559 --> 00:19:30.710
main mention that you're going to find
00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:34.549
of the number 84,000 in the texts is not
00:19:34.559 --> 00:19:36.870
with regard to Buddhism itself, but with
00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:39.830
regard to a kind of rival philosophical
00:19:39.840 --> 00:19:42.070
system or rival spiritual system in
00:19:42.080 --> 00:19:43.750
ancient India in the Buddhist time,
00:19:43.760 --> 00:19:46.549
which was the Ajivaca system, which in
00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:48.230
the Buddhist time was more popular than
00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:50.549
Buddhism was.
00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:52.789
And the Ajivacas, if I remember
00:19:52.799 --> 00:19:55.830
correctly, believed, I mean, they were
00:19:55.840 --> 00:19:57.830
strict determinists. They did not
00:19:57.840 --> 00:19:59.909
believe in anything resembling free
00:19:59.919 --> 00:20:03.190
will. And they believed that, you know,
00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:06.310
every being goes through a sequence of
00:20:06.320 --> 00:20:09.990
84,000 lives. And then when you get to
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:12.950
the end, you're you're like an aivaca
00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:15.990
adept in your last life and then you
00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:18.870
don't get reborn anymore after that. And
00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:21.990
so I would assume that it's not really a
00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:23.590
Buddhist thing. It's like an ancient
00:20:23.600 --> 00:20:27.029
Indian thing. um not even necessarily an
00:20:27.039 --> 00:20:29.029
aivaca thing. It was just considered to
00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:31.430
be some kind of like an ancient Indian
00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:34.789
ancient north Indian more or less vadic
00:20:34.799 --> 00:20:39.029
culture. 84,000 was just kind of a a
00:20:39.039 --> 00:20:42.710
stereotypical big number.
00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:44.630
So I don't think there's any
00:20:44.640 --> 00:20:46.390
numerological
00:20:46.400 --> 00:20:49.110
significance just within the the scope
00:20:49.120 --> 00:20:50.789
of Buddhist philosophy. I think it was
00:20:50.799 --> 00:20:53.430
just an Indian traditional cultural kind
00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:56.230
of a thing where 84,000 was just singled
00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:58.950
out as some
00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:01.750
big number.
00:21:01.760 --> 00:21:05.270
So that's what 7 * 12,000. I mean there
00:21:05.280 --> 00:21:08.630
could be some like numerology involved
00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:10.549
but I don't it's not really a Buddhist
00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:12.549
thing in and of itself. It's just like
00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:18.230
an ancient Indian cultural thing.
00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:21.750
Uh let's see any anything else to say
00:21:21.760 --> 00:21:24.470
about the number 84,000? I mean I won't
00:21:24.480 --> 00:21:27.830
factor it out
00:21:27.840 --> 00:21:31.110
but uh yeah I mean it's it's certainly
00:21:31.120 --> 00:21:33.350
not anything intrinsic to Buddhist
00:21:33.360 --> 00:21:35.190
philosophy. It was an ancient Indian
00:21:35.200 --> 00:21:38.549
cultural thing which was either taken
00:21:38.559 --> 00:21:41.190
from the Ajivacas or the Ajivacas just
00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:45.029
took it from ancient Indian vadic or
00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:48.950
prevadic culture and use that as their
00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:53.430
number of of lives in in like a a system
00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:56.710
of rebirth
00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:59.270
if I remember correctly.
00:21:59.280 --> 00:22:00.230
And I'm just going to move on to the
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.710
next question. This is from Austin and
00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:05.990
Austin says, "For Q&A 200, will you do
00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:08.070
another live stream?" Well, it's it's
00:22:08.080 --> 00:22:10.630
possible. That's that's doable, I guess.
00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:12.470
I don't really feel comfortable with
00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:14.230
live streams just because I have so
00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:15.510
little experience with them that
00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:18.549
something something always screws up,
00:22:18.559 --> 00:22:19.830
you know? It's like I don't get the
00:22:19.840 --> 00:22:23.990
sound right or something. But yeah, I
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:26.310
suppose it's doable. I mean, my woman
00:22:26.320 --> 00:22:29.270
has pestered me a little bit about just
00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:32.149
doing Q&A or doing live streams for my
00:22:32.159 --> 00:22:35.669
Q&A videos instead of doing these
00:22:35.679 --> 00:22:40.789
pre-recorded ones. Um, but I mean, it's
00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:45.669
it saves time, I guess,
00:22:45.679 --> 00:22:48.630
but it's just you got more laboratory
00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:51.830
conditions, you know? It's in vitro here
00:22:51.840 --> 00:22:53.990
and it's doing a live stream is more in
00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:56.070
vivo. I mean, I might as well do a live
00:22:56.080 --> 00:22:57.510
stream because it's I do these all in
00:22:57.520 --> 00:22:59.270
one take with [clears throat] zero
00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:02.149
production values.
00:23:02.159 --> 00:23:07.110
It's just the main thing is um with if a
00:23:07.120 --> 00:23:08.870
pre-recorded Q&A, I mean, if there is
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:11.270
any kind of mess up, you know, you can
00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:13.190
go back and edit it or that kind of
00:23:13.200 --> 00:23:16.870
thing. And also, I just have enough
00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:19.909
experience that I just can do it without
00:23:19.919 --> 00:23:21.990
any kind of doubt as to whether it's
00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:24.630
actually working or not.
00:23:24.640 --> 00:23:26.230
That was that was part of the problem
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:29.510
with previous Q&As is um somehow like
00:23:29.520 --> 00:23:33.350
the like the live feed of comments is on
00:23:33.360 --> 00:23:37.590
a different kind of different window
00:23:37.600 --> 00:23:40.870
from the like the recording software or
00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:43.669
whatever it is. And so I couldn't be
00:23:43.679 --> 00:23:46.470
sure that I was even even live. I
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:48.630
remember I think it was the first Q&A
00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:51.590
version that I did live stream. I I
00:23:51.600 --> 00:23:53.510
thought that I wasn't even live and I
00:23:53.520 --> 00:23:54.950
just walked out of the room when
00:23:54.960 --> 00:23:58.390
actually it was recording. So, it was
00:23:58.400 --> 00:24:00.549
mainly an an attempt to avoid that kind
00:24:00.559 --> 00:24:03.190
of stuff that have caused me to just
00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:04.870
pre-record these. And then, of course, I
00:24:04.880 --> 00:24:06.870
have like all the questions in the list
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:10.176
there, which is nice.
00:24:10.186 --> 00:24:12.950
[sighs] But it's doable. I will
00:24:12.960 --> 00:24:15.909
seriously consider it. And I'm moving on
00:24:15.919 --> 00:24:17.430
to the next question. This is from
00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:19.029
Scudamain.
00:24:19.039 --> 00:24:22.230
And I'm unsure of the derivation of the
00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:26.950
name Scudamain. Could be Scandinavian.
00:24:26.960 --> 00:24:29.909
Anyhow, Scooain says, "The Buddha is
00:24:29.919 --> 00:24:33.830
said to have knowledge of like 96 eons
00:24:33.840 --> 00:24:37.350
of previous lives. Have you experienced
00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:39.830
anything like this?"
00:24:39.840 --> 00:24:42.950
And no, I' I've I don't even have
00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:46.710
knowledge of one eon of previous lives,
00:24:46.720 --> 00:24:48.950
let alone 96.
00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:53.029
Um, with regard to past lives, all I
00:24:53.039 --> 00:24:57.269
have are like guesses, like intuitions.
00:24:57.279 --> 00:24:59.990
Like there are certain
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:03.110
periods in history, certain places that
00:25:03.120 --> 00:25:07.430
I have like an unusual fascination for
00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:09.510
like
00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:12.710
or like an affinity. Northern Northern
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:15.590
India, northern ancient India, maybe
00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:20.070
medieval feudal Japan. definitely 14th
00:25:20.080 --> 00:25:22.789
century England.
00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:26.950
Um like maybe late Roman Republic around
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:29.430
the area of Naples. And there's just
00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:31.909
sort of like this intuitive
00:25:31.919 --> 00:25:35.430
like interest in this kind of thing that
00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:37.110
otherwise I mean you can't really
00:25:37.120 --> 00:25:39.669
explain it easily through genetics and
00:25:39.679 --> 00:25:41.909
past experience.
00:25:41.919 --> 00:25:46.710
Um, so I mean I do have sort of guesses
00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:48.950
about past lives. The texts say you
00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:50.390
really shouldn't be worrying about this
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:53.430
kind of stuff anyway,
00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:56.070
but that's about it. It's just sort of
00:25:56.080 --> 00:26:02.710
like intuitive guesses.
00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:05.510
But I do think it is very possible
00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:08.710
assuming that past lives even happen or
00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:12.950
did happen in the past.
00:26:12.960 --> 00:26:15.110
For example, I think one of my most
00:26:15.120 --> 00:26:17.510
formative lives
00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:23.143
in my stream of volition, my karmic
00:26:23.153 --> 00:26:25.669
[clears throat] stream was as a kind of
00:26:25.679 --> 00:26:27.430
rascally
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:30.390
Catholic monk in the 14th century in
00:26:30.400 --> 00:26:32.549
England.
00:26:32.559 --> 00:26:37.190
And he may have like recorded books like
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:39.269
manuscripts by hand because the printing
00:26:39.279 --> 00:26:42.149
press hadn't been invented yet. didn't
00:26:42.159 --> 00:26:43.750
have a high opinion of the French
00:26:43.760 --> 00:26:45.830
because England and France were arch
00:26:45.840 --> 00:26:48.950
enemies then. Didn't take his vows very
00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:52.230
seriously. I may have met my woman in
00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:54.390
that life cuz she has kind of an
00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:57.510
intuitive fascination for medieval
00:26:57.520 --> 00:27:00.630
England also. So I could have been some
00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:03.029
rascally monk who talked dirty to her in
00:27:03.039 --> 00:27:06.149
Latin and she was married to some knight
00:27:06.159 --> 00:27:08.390
or something. You know there's definite
00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:11.430
culture barrier between us. So it was
00:27:11.440 --> 00:27:14.870
kind of a illst starred romance in that
00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:18.470
life I think
00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:21.669
and I think I probably died of bubanic
00:27:21.679 --> 00:27:24.390
plague
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:26.149
and I won't give all the reasons for my
00:27:26.159 --> 00:27:29.590
belief in that but I mean I've like
00:27:29.600 --> 00:27:31.669
certain area of my body like the the
00:27:31.679 --> 00:27:34.470
right side of my groin
00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:37.110
don't want to get tmi right side of the
00:27:37.120 --> 00:27:41.110
groin area it's got like a weird like a
00:27:41.120 --> 00:27:44.950
purple birthark there, a little one.
00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:46.789
And I've always been a little bit
00:27:46.799 --> 00:27:50.390
squeamish about that part of my body.
00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:54.149
And uh so I mean that's where the boobo
00:27:54.159 --> 00:27:56.149
was, assuming that I died of bubanic
00:27:56.159 --> 00:27:57.990
plague.
00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:00.549
But I felt like it was a just punishment
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:04.070
from God because I had not not been a
00:28:04.080 --> 00:28:09.510
good monk in that life.
00:28:09.520 --> 00:28:11.190
But of course, it's all it's all
00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:13.269
guesswork. Like the the feudal Japan
00:28:13.279 --> 00:28:15.350
one, I think there is a good chance that
00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:17.909
I was a member of the samurai class, but
00:28:17.919 --> 00:28:19.909
I was not a warrior. I was just like a a
00:28:19.919 --> 00:28:21.830
school teacher or something. You know,
00:28:21.840 --> 00:28:25.110
by the like the 1700s, the samurai were
00:28:25.120 --> 00:28:27.830
just kind of like the upper class. And
00:28:27.840 --> 00:28:30.389
most of the members of the samurai
00:28:30.399 --> 00:28:32.310
class, which would include women of
00:28:32.320 --> 00:28:35.110
course, were just were not like sword
00:28:35.120 --> 00:28:39.590
fighters.
00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:41.669
Anyways,
00:28:41.679 --> 00:28:43.350
also I do think there's a possibility
00:28:43.360 --> 00:28:46.549
that I was some kind of shaman in like
00:28:46.559 --> 00:28:50.230
very prehistoric prevadic India, you
00:28:50.240 --> 00:28:51.750
know, sort of like Indis Valley
00:28:51.760 --> 00:28:55.669
civilization who took hallucinogenic
00:28:55.679 --> 00:28:57.669
drugs to induce mystical states and
00:28:57.679 --> 00:29:00.149
worshiped snakes.
00:29:00.159 --> 00:29:02.470
I' I've got this fascination for snakes
00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:05.585
in this life.
00:29:05.595 --> 00:29:06.149
[snorts]
00:29:06.159 --> 00:29:08.470
So yeah, that's about as close as it
00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:10.870
comes. It's just like intuitive kind of
00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:15.029
hunches that I would never insist upon.
00:29:15.039 --> 00:29:16.710
I would never say that I saw in a
00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:19.909
vision, that I was this this person in
00:29:19.919 --> 00:29:23.110
this culture, etc., etc. No, I I've
00:29:23.120 --> 00:29:27.269
never really had like a um a past life
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:29.909
regression. My father on the other hand,
00:29:29.919 --> 00:29:33.350
I mean, he claimed to remember past
00:29:33.360 --> 00:29:35.350
lives.
00:29:35.360 --> 00:29:38.789
Like I think it might have been the life
00:29:38.799 --> 00:29:40.149
before this one that he barely
00:29:40.159 --> 00:29:42.149
remembered, but he was some crazy
00:29:42.159 --> 00:29:44.870
Frenchman named Henri Maro who was
00:29:44.880 --> 00:29:48.160
hanged by the neck until dead in early
00:29:48.170 --> 00:29:50.149
[clears throat] Montana territory for
00:29:50.159 --> 00:29:52.470
rustling cattle.
00:29:52.480 --> 00:29:54.470
But the life that before that he
00:29:54.480 --> 00:29:57.029
remembers relatively clearly through
00:29:57.039 --> 00:30:00.950
hypnotic past life regressions. So I
00:30:00.960 --> 00:30:02.950
mean a lot of people in a hypnotic
00:30:02.960 --> 00:30:04.710
trance they'll just conjure up something
00:30:04.720 --> 00:30:07.430
through their subconscious imagination.
00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:09.430
So there's there's no proof of anything.
00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:11.269
But my father was persuaded. He really
00:30:11.279 --> 00:30:14.310
believed that like two lives before
00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:18.389
present he was I think a Scottish person
00:30:18.399 --> 00:30:21.029
named Jason Haskell.
00:30:21.039 --> 00:30:24.549
And um certain memories were very vivid.
00:30:24.559 --> 00:30:27.110
It it turns out like not only with my
00:30:27.120 --> 00:30:29.990
father but with past life regressions in
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:32.870
general like under hypnosis, it's the
00:30:32.880 --> 00:30:35.990
emotionally most intense
00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:39.110
like events that are tend to be
00:30:39.120 --> 00:30:40.710
remembered. And I would guess that the
00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:43.510
emotionally most intense events in a
00:30:43.520 --> 00:30:46.070
person's life are also the ones that are
00:30:46.080 --> 00:30:49.269
the most karmically significant. you're
00:30:49.279 --> 00:30:52.389
creating the most karma
00:30:52.399 --> 00:30:53.830
and there's someone right outside the
00:30:53.840 --> 00:30:58.246
window.
00:30:58.256 --> 00:30:58.789
[snorts]
00:30:58.799 --> 00:31:03.590
So, in my father's life as uh Jason
00:31:03.600 --> 00:31:06.870
Haskell, he remembers like being
00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:11.029
abandoned in a hut and he has small pox
00:31:11.039 --> 00:31:13.430
and it's like everyone just abandoned
00:31:13.440 --> 00:31:14.630
him because they were terrified of
00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:16.470
getting smallpox, which is kind of
00:31:16.480 --> 00:31:18.310
understandable. And he's just lying
00:31:18.320 --> 00:31:21.510
there raging and vowing revenge on these
00:31:21.520 --> 00:31:25.590
people that that abandoned him. And then
00:31:25.600 --> 00:31:28.470
he also remembers like crying over a
00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:29.990
grave
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:32.710
and he thinks that
00:31:32.720 --> 00:31:35.830
um he actually killed his sweetheart for
00:31:35.840 --> 00:31:38.470
dumping him and he was he has had like
00:31:38.480 --> 00:31:41.909
pockmarked face um ever since then and
00:31:41.919 --> 00:31:43.430
there's still somebody right outside the
00:31:43.440 --> 00:31:48.950
window.
00:31:48.960 --> 00:31:51.669
So, I mean that would kind of counteract
00:31:51.679 --> 00:31:54.310
certain Buddhist beliefs that you can
00:31:54.320 --> 00:31:57.590
murder your sweetheart and then not just
00:31:57.600 --> 00:32:00.549
go to hell for it.
00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:03.350
And then uh after that he was he was a
00:32:03.360 --> 00:32:07.110
sailor and he has this one vivid memory
00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:09.909
of being on a a [clears throat] a ship
00:32:09.919 --> 00:32:13.190
in a storm at sea and the the ship is
00:32:13.200 --> 00:32:14.789
just going back and forth like this. It
00:32:14.799 --> 00:32:18.070
had big blocks of marble I think in the
00:32:18.080 --> 00:32:21.029
hold. They were partly ballasted and
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:22.630
probably they were, you know, shipping
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:24.870
it somewhere also. And one of those big
00:32:24.880 --> 00:32:27.029
blocks of marble had broken loose and
00:32:27.039 --> 00:32:29.509
was sliding back and forth in the hole
00:32:29.519 --> 00:32:31.590
of the ship. And so they have to secure
00:32:31.600 --> 00:32:34.389
that in order before it beats a hole
00:32:34.399 --> 00:32:36.070
through the side of the ship. And so
00:32:36.080 --> 00:32:39.029
they're down there in the dark trying to
00:32:39.039 --> 00:32:43.669
secure this big slab of rock and during
00:32:43.679 --> 00:32:46.870
this storm and one of the sailors gets
00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:49.029
pinned up against the side of the ship
00:32:49.039 --> 00:32:51.750
and my father is is just yelling, "Bring
00:32:51.760 --> 00:32:54.070
after the light."
00:32:54.080 --> 00:32:55.669
And that's that's like one of the the
00:32:55.679 --> 00:32:59.509
memories that really just kind of jumped
00:32:59.519 --> 00:33:01.110
out at him during this past life
00:33:01.120 --> 00:33:02.789
aggression. Also, he remembered how he
00:33:02.799 --> 00:33:05.990
died. He caught an arrow underneath. He
00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.430
was like laying putting a saddle down on
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:11.990
onto something as they were breaking
00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:16.710
camp as they were like like North India
00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:19.269
or something and [clears throat]
00:33:19.279 --> 00:33:21.029
somebody shot him with an arrow and it
00:33:21.039 --> 00:33:23.509
went under his shoulder blade and came
00:33:23.519 --> 00:33:25.430
out [clears throat] like his his neck
00:33:25.440 --> 00:33:28.230
here. And the past life regression
00:33:28.240 --> 00:33:29.830
always ends. He he did it like two or
00:33:29.840 --> 00:33:31.669
three times with the same results where
00:33:31.679 --> 00:33:33.430
he's like coughing and choking and just
00:33:33.440 --> 00:33:35.990
like jolted awake out of the hypnotic
00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:39.909
trance when he gets to that point.
00:33:39.919 --> 00:33:43.509
So I I never did have like a hypnotic
00:33:43.519 --> 00:33:45.509
past life regression or like a
00:33:45.519 --> 00:33:47.669
meditative past life regression. In my
00:33:47.679 --> 00:33:50.870
case, it's just like intuitive hunches
00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:53.750
just assuming that past lives really do
00:33:53.760 --> 00:33:55.590
happen or did happen because they're in
00:33:55.600 --> 00:33:57.669
the past.
00:33:57.679 --> 00:33:59.509
But I mean, there's no way of proving
00:33:59.519 --> 00:34:01.590
it. At least I haven't been able to
00:34:01.600 --> 00:34:04.149
prove it one way or the other. Some of
00:34:04.159 --> 00:34:06.950
the best empirical evidence would be in
00:34:06.960 --> 00:34:09.909
the books of Dr. Ian Stevenson,
00:34:09.919 --> 00:34:12.310
who was actually trying to more or less
00:34:12.320 --> 00:34:14.149
scientifically
00:34:14.159 --> 00:34:18.069
state the case with real evidence for
00:34:18.079 --> 00:34:19.750
rebirth,
00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:22.230
which he mainly did through small
00:34:22.240 --> 00:34:25.190
children who would recall past lives.
00:34:25.200 --> 00:34:29.430
and then he could um question them, you
00:34:29.440 --> 00:34:31.349
know, see what kind of information they
00:34:31.359 --> 00:34:32.950
have with regard to the life of this
00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:34.710
other person that they couldn't possibly
00:34:34.720 --> 00:34:37.190
have and then go and like try and verify
00:34:37.200 --> 00:34:39.109
that. He [clears throat] wrote several
00:34:39.119 --> 00:34:41.829
books along those lines which are worth
00:34:41.839 --> 00:34:43.510
looking into if you're interested in the
00:34:43.520 --> 00:34:45.190
subject.
00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:46.310
But I should just move on to
00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:49.270
Scooterain's next question and uh I've
00:34:49.280 --> 00:34:51.669
already kind of touched on this one. Uh
00:34:51.679 --> 00:34:54.310
it's kind of a followup on the uh past
00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:56.389
life regression thing. He said, "How
00:34:56.399 --> 00:34:58.790
would you know if you did and it wasn't
00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:01.510
just a fantasy or daydream?" Well, I
00:35:01.520 --> 00:35:03.190
mean, if you're an enlightened being,
00:35:03.200 --> 00:35:05.349
you know, if you're God Buddha and
00:35:05.359 --> 00:35:07.270
you're remembering past lives, that's
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:08.630
that's one thing. I'm not going to
00:35:08.640 --> 00:35:11.430
secondguess the mental states of a sama
00:35:11.440 --> 00:35:14.230
sam Buddha. But with regard to someone
00:35:14.240 --> 00:35:16.470
who is in a meditative state and has a
00:35:16.480 --> 00:35:18.230
past life aggression, which does happen
00:35:18.240 --> 00:35:20.710
especially at places like Pog Doya in
00:35:20.720 --> 00:35:23.990
southern Burma or you're hypnotized and
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:26.230
you have a past life aggression or for
00:35:26.240 --> 00:35:28.150
whatever reason you have a past life
00:35:28.160 --> 00:35:30.230
aggression, there's no guarantee at all.
00:35:30.240 --> 00:35:32.390
I mean, there's some ways that you can
00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:34.950
verify it. Like I've told this story
00:35:34.960 --> 00:35:37.910
before. My father was a hypnotist
00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:41.430
and there was this he had some friends
00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:44.310
who had a big farm near our house just
00:35:44.320 --> 00:35:46.630
down the roadways
00:35:46.640 --> 00:35:48.069
and they would take in troubled
00:35:48.079 --> 00:35:50.150
teenagers just, you know, get them out
00:35:50.160 --> 00:35:53.349
of town, get them away from, you know,
00:35:53.359 --> 00:35:55.910
bad environment, take him out onto this
00:35:55.920 --> 00:35:58.550
farm with cows and sunshine and fresh
00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:01.750
air and just kind of let him detox, you
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:03.829
know, kind of settle down, this kind of
00:36:03.839 --> 00:36:06.630
thing. So, they were good good people
00:36:06.640 --> 00:36:09.349
trying to help people. But anyways, they
00:36:09.359 --> 00:36:13.670
had this 14-year-old girl there who at
00:36:13.680 --> 00:36:15.349
first she was doing okay and then all of
00:36:15.359 --> 00:36:18.230
a sudden she just stopped caring about
00:36:18.240 --> 00:36:20.069
her appearance, stopped caring about
00:36:20.079 --> 00:36:23.510
school, just would not talk to anybody,
00:36:23.520 --> 00:36:24.790
you know, she just started going
00:36:24.800 --> 00:36:28.150
downhill. So, they asked my father would
00:36:28.160 --> 00:36:31.109
he be willing to hypnotize her to try to
00:36:31.119 --> 00:36:33.829
help her with whatever is troubling her.
00:36:33.839 --> 00:36:35.670
So my father was willing, but he said
00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:37.910
she's going to have to bring a friend of
00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:39.670
hers that she trusts as a kind of
00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:41.510
chaperone, just like, you know,
00:36:41.520 --> 00:36:43.750
hypnotists etiquette. You know, you
00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:45.430
don't want to be hypnotizing a teenage
00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:49.589
girl with no no witnesses or anything.
00:36:49.599 --> 00:36:53.030
So um the girl and a friend of hers came
00:36:53.040 --> 00:36:57.670
to my father's house and he started
00:36:57.680 --> 00:37:00.710
hypnotizing the girl. And then while
00:37:00.720 --> 00:37:03.990
he's got this the the 14-year-old girl
00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:06.550
in like a hypnotic trance, he notices
00:37:06.560 --> 00:37:08.550
that the friend who's supposed to be
00:37:08.560 --> 00:37:11.109
chaperoning is like waving her arms
00:37:11.119 --> 00:37:13.750
around like this.
00:37:13.760 --> 00:37:17.510
And so he he kind of asks the the other
00:37:17.520 --> 00:37:19.829
girl, you know, what are you doing? And
00:37:19.839 --> 00:37:22.550
the girl says, I'm swimming.
00:37:22.560 --> 00:37:24.950
And he says,
00:37:24.960 --> 00:37:27.510
why are you swimming? And she said, "My
00:37:27.520 --> 00:37:29.030
ship has been torpedoed by the
00:37:29.040 --> 00:37:30.710
Japanese."
00:37:30.720 --> 00:37:33.190
And then he says, "Where are you?" And
00:37:33.200 --> 00:37:36.069
she says, "The South Pacific." And it
00:37:36.079 --> 00:37:38.069
turned out her name was She said that
00:37:38.079 --> 00:37:40.550
her name was Mark.
00:37:40.560 --> 00:37:43.109
Uh, what is it?
00:37:43.119 --> 00:37:44.870
Uh, I can't remember the last name. It
00:37:44.880 --> 00:37:48.950
was Mark something. And my father was
00:37:48.960 --> 00:37:50.390
fascinated by this, you know, he wanted
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:52.310
to follow up. He wanted to get like, you
00:37:52.320 --> 00:37:54.550
know, the the the sailor's serial number
00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:56.630
and the name of the ship and all this,
00:37:56.640 --> 00:37:59.190
but he's not trying to help this girl.
00:37:59.200 --> 00:38:00.390
He's trying to help the other girl. So,
00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:02.470
he kind of sets that aside and then
00:38:02.480 --> 00:38:04.870
tells the the girl, you know, the first
00:38:04.880 --> 00:38:07.270
girl that he was trying to hypnotize,
00:38:07.280 --> 00:38:08.630
you know, it's like sometimes if you
00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:11.910
have a problem, it's it's best to, you
00:38:11.920 --> 00:38:14.310
know, tell somebody about it. Tell
00:38:14.320 --> 00:38:16.950
somebody that you trust. you know, as he
00:38:16.960 --> 00:38:19.349
just kind of planted that that uh
00:38:19.359 --> 00:38:21.190
suggestion into her mind that it might
00:38:21.200 --> 00:38:23.349
be best to talk about this with
00:38:23.359 --> 00:38:26.870
somebody. And then the uh they came out
00:38:26.880 --> 00:38:29.190
of the trance, brought them both out,
00:38:29.200 --> 00:38:31.030
and then they just went for a walk out
00:38:31.040 --> 00:38:34.550
in the back field, and she the the girl
00:38:34.560 --> 00:38:37.190
confided with him that she was pregnant,
00:38:37.200 --> 00:38:39.589
and she was with two boys at the same
00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:41.510
that, you know, within the same short
00:38:41.520 --> 00:38:43.030
period of time. She didn't even know
00:38:43.040 --> 00:38:45.430
which one was the father.
00:38:45.440 --> 00:38:48.310
Um, but my father wanted to get back to
00:38:48.320 --> 00:38:52.150
that girl's mark. Oh, it's it's the last
00:38:52.160 --> 00:38:53.829
name of a famous trumpet player, I
00:38:53.839 --> 00:38:56.150
think.
00:38:56.160 --> 00:38:57.990
Anyways, she [clears throat] hypnotizes
00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:00.230
that second girl again later on a
00:39:00.240 --> 00:39:02.470
different occasion. And she had no
00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:04.870
interest at all in Mark what's his name?
00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:07.829
You know, being a an American sailor who
00:39:07.839 --> 00:39:09.349
drowned in the South Pacific when the
00:39:09.359 --> 00:39:12.150
ship was torpedoed. Instead, there was a
00:39:12.160 --> 00:39:15.510
a calf that a cow had given birth to a
00:39:15.520 --> 00:39:17.270
calf on the farm and they couldn't find
00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:21.750
the calf. So, she was just like
00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:24.470
single-mindedly intent on locating that
00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:26.069
calf while she was in the hypnotic
00:39:26.079 --> 00:39:28.230
trance. And she found the calf. The calf
00:39:28.240 --> 00:39:31.270
somehow was in a clump of blackberry
00:39:31.280 --> 00:39:35.589
bushes outside the fence. Somehow this
00:39:35.599 --> 00:39:37.750
calf had gotten onto the other side of
00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:40.310
the fence and was like hiding in like a
00:39:40.320 --> 00:39:43.990
brier patch. So she located the calf,
00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:47.510
but this mark I it bugs me that I can't
00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:50.630
remember the name.
00:39:50.640 --> 00:39:52.310
My father was never really able to
00:39:52.320 --> 00:39:55.990
follow up on that. But that's one way of
00:39:56.000 --> 00:39:58.470
doing it is if you can get enough
00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:02.310
information on a past life that you
00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:04.710
might be able to do some verifying. You
00:40:04.720 --> 00:40:06.790
know, it could just be I mean, it
00:40:06.800 --> 00:40:08.710
there's a good chance I mean, if you're
00:40:08.720 --> 00:40:12.069
some peasant in like the new kingdom of
00:40:12.079 --> 00:40:15.270
Egypt in the Bronze Age or something,
00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:17.990
then there's a good chance you're not
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.069
going to have any kind of like records
00:40:20.079 --> 00:40:22.150
or anything, but at least you might be
00:40:22.160 --> 00:40:24.630
able to get some of the details correct.
00:40:24.640 --> 00:40:25.750
You know, what's the name of the
00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:29.109
pharaoh? This kind of stuff. And at
00:40:29.119 --> 00:40:32.230
least I mean it wouldn't be proof but it
00:40:32.240 --> 00:40:34.870
it could filter out a lot of fake stuff.
00:40:34.880 --> 00:40:37.190
You know somebody's having a past life
00:40:37.200 --> 00:40:41.190
regression and they might be some famous
00:40:41.200 --> 00:40:44.950
person or they're saying it's it's 2275
00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:47.349
BC this kind of stuff and they wouldn't
00:40:47.359 --> 00:40:52.150
possibly know that.
00:40:52.160 --> 00:40:54.310
But I mean, you can sort of do a little
00:40:54.320 --> 00:40:57.109
bit of, you know, investigating if you
00:40:57.119 --> 00:40:59.109
can get enough information on the
00:40:59.119 --> 00:41:01.750
subject just to see if your memory is at
00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:04.630
least like historically correct within
00:41:04.640 --> 00:41:07.270
the the details of the period, that kind
00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:09.910
of thing.
00:41:09.920 --> 00:41:11.510
But as a general, you can't really be
00:41:11.520 --> 00:41:14.630
sure. You can't be sure about anything.
00:41:14.640 --> 00:41:15.990
You can't be sure that you're even
00:41:16.000 --> 00:41:17.510
seeing the stuff in front of you right
00:41:17.520 --> 00:41:22.230
now for real.
00:41:22.240 --> 00:41:23.430
And I'm just going to move on next
00:41:23.440 --> 00:41:26.069
question. This is from Maximan
00:41:26.079 --> 00:41:27.510
because we don't have a whole lot of
00:41:27.520 --> 00:41:29.589
questions. I can just digress all over
00:41:29.599 --> 00:41:33.109
the freaking place.
00:41:33.119 --> 00:41:36.069
And Maximan says, "Wouldn't following
00:41:36.079 --> 00:41:39.030
Vignia as a dutonga monk in the west be
00:41:39.040 --> 00:41:41.349
closer to actual renunciation given that
00:41:41.359 --> 00:41:43.349
our culture is not at all in harmony
00:41:43.359 --> 00:41:45.349
with the instructions of the Buddha?"
00:41:45.359 --> 00:41:48.069
Um, yeah. I mean, for those of you who
00:41:48.079 --> 00:41:50.150
are kind of rookies in the Buddhism
00:41:50.160 --> 00:41:52.550
thing, a dutonga monk is a monk who
00:41:52.560 --> 00:41:57.430
takes upon himself one or more of the 13
00:41:57.440 --> 00:42:00.309
optional aesthetic practices allowable
00:42:00.319 --> 00:42:02.870
to monks.
00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:04.950
And the second chapter of the Wizudi
00:42:04.960 --> 00:42:07.190
Maga is all about dutongas. It's really
00:42:07.200 --> 00:42:09.030
one of the most interesting parts of the
00:42:09.040 --> 00:42:12.309
Wudi manga from my point of view. So
00:42:12.319 --> 00:42:14.950
like wearing only rag robes or eating
00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:17.030
only alms food, never accepting an
00:42:17.040 --> 00:42:21.430
invitation to a house or just living and
00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:23.990
sleeping under the open sky or living in
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:26.069
a cemetery, you know, all of these
00:42:26.079 --> 00:42:28.470
things. Or or never never lying down,
00:42:28.480 --> 00:42:30.790
sleeping in a sitting position, things
00:42:30.800 --> 00:42:32.550
like that. They're all optional
00:42:32.560 --> 00:42:34.950
aesthetic practices called dutonga. In
00:42:34.960 --> 00:42:37.430
Burmese, it's called dutin. I think in
00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:41.589
Thailand it's called tudong.
00:42:41.599 --> 00:42:44.710
and uh being following Venezu Tonga monk
00:42:44.720 --> 00:42:46.950
in the west it would be closer to actual
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:48.230
yeah I mean it would be a radical
00:42:48.240 --> 00:42:51.430
renunciation um and it might even work I
00:42:51.440 --> 00:42:53.270
mean if you can really take the plunge
00:42:53.280 --> 00:42:55.190
you've got the courage to just really
00:42:55.200 --> 00:42:57.430
take the plunge kind of like that old
00:42:57.440 --> 00:43:01.109
lady peace pilgrim who she just took off
00:43:01.119 --> 00:43:04.230
walking one day no money just took off
00:43:04.240 --> 00:43:07.990
walking across the country and God will
00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:09.829
provide you know it's like if you
00:43:09.839 --> 00:43:13.430
protect dharma dharma protects you. So,
00:43:13.440 --> 00:43:16.550
you just get what you need.
00:43:16.560 --> 00:43:18.470
Consider the liies of the field and all
00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:21.510
that, the sparrows
00:43:21.520 --> 00:43:24.390
and you just like put yourself
00:43:24.400 --> 00:43:27.910
wholeheartedly into the into at into
00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:30.309
the, you know, at the mercy of the
00:43:30.319 --> 00:43:33.829
universe and it reciprocates in this
00:43:33.839 --> 00:43:36.790
more or less miraculous way.
00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:40.550
It does take just fearlessness though.
00:43:40.560 --> 00:43:42.309
But I mean, it's possible. I mean, if
00:43:42.319 --> 00:43:43.750
you're going to be a Dutonga monk who
00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:45.990
doesn't stay under a roof, you're going
00:43:46.000 --> 00:43:48.230
to have to stay in the southern states
00:43:48.240 --> 00:43:51.190
probably um especially in the winter
00:43:51.200 --> 00:43:53.030
time.
00:43:53.040 --> 00:43:55.829
And you might get really skinny. I mean,
00:43:55.839 --> 00:43:57.750
depending
00:43:57.760 --> 00:43:59.349
I mean, if you're going to be just
00:43:59.359 --> 00:44:02.150
living on alms food,
00:44:02.160 --> 00:44:04.309
you just take your bowl and walk around
00:44:04.319 --> 00:44:06.309
and hope somebody will put money or put
00:44:06.319 --> 00:44:08.069
not money, but food. You're not even
00:44:08.079 --> 00:44:11.190
allowed to accept money. So, um I've
00:44:11.200 --> 00:44:13.670
I've been told that one way that it
00:44:13.680 --> 00:44:15.829
works is just stand outside of a grocery
00:44:15.839 --> 00:44:18.630
store as people are are going in and
00:44:18.640 --> 00:44:20.950
out.
00:44:20.960 --> 00:44:23.589
That that is a way where monks in the
00:44:23.599 --> 00:44:27.430
west can get food in their bowl. Or you
00:44:27.440 --> 00:44:32.069
could do as um one monk I knew did
00:44:32.079 --> 00:44:34.230
briefly where he would just go to a soup
00:44:34.240 --> 00:44:36.390
kitchen and just get his food there and
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:38.309
they would put the food into his bowl.
00:44:38.319 --> 00:44:42.390
So that's possible I suppose.
00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:44.870
Um but yeah it's it would be closer to
00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:46.470
actual renunciation. It wouldn't be the
00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:48.150
kind of renunciation that the Buddha had
00:44:48.160 --> 00:44:49.910
in mind
00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:52.790
because when the Buddha devised
00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:56.390
vignia and just the the monk's life you
00:44:56.400 --> 00:44:59.990
it was largely based on the life you
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:02.309
know the lifestyle of other aesthetics
00:45:02.319 --> 00:45:04.710
in ancient north India. It was just sort
00:45:04.720 --> 00:45:08.230
of a cultural thing. So you know there
00:45:08.240 --> 00:45:10.470
was there was like cultural support for
00:45:10.480 --> 00:45:11.990
that
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:14.230
and so it wouldn't even be as radical of
00:45:14.240 --> 00:45:16.950
a renunciation in ancient India as it
00:45:16.960 --> 00:45:19.670
would be in the west I think
00:45:19.680 --> 00:45:24.390
it depend on the circumstances I suppose
00:45:24.400 --> 00:45:27.109
but I guess I answered that question and
00:45:27.119 --> 00:45:28.470
I'm just going to move on to the next
00:45:28.480 --> 00:45:32.069
question which is from Fostian
00:45:32.079 --> 00:45:35.190
and Fostian
00:45:35.200 --> 00:45:37.670
has kind of a strange question here. Or
00:45:37.680 --> 00:45:39.829
it's not really strange. It's sort of a
00:45:39.839 --> 00:45:41.829
common question actually that I've
00:45:41.839 --> 00:45:44.470
addressed more than once. In fact, um my
00:45:44.480 --> 00:45:46.390
friend Brian and I have done entire
00:45:46.400 --> 00:45:49.510
videos, at least one or two, on this
00:45:49.520 --> 00:45:51.270
subject.
00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:54.309
And uh speaking of Brian,
00:45:54.319 --> 00:45:57.190
um we did some videos recently and I
00:45:57.200 --> 00:45:59.109
really can't put them up on YouTube just
00:45:59.119 --> 00:46:01.109
because Brian has been kicked off of
00:46:01.119 --> 00:46:05.670
YouTube. And so any video I do with him
00:46:05.680 --> 00:46:09.430
can be removed just because YouTube
00:46:09.440 --> 00:46:12.150
decides to remove it,
00:46:12.160 --> 00:46:14.309
which might be messing with the
00:46:14.319 --> 00:46:15.910
algorithm or something. I don't know. I
00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:17.910
mean, I don't get literally punished for
00:46:17.920 --> 00:46:19.589
it, you know. I don't get strikes
00:46:19.599 --> 00:46:22.950
against me or anything, but they just
00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:25.510
somebody just does not like Brian.
00:46:25.520 --> 00:46:29.270
Completely harmless guy, but they just
00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:33.030
do not like him. And so I really and if
00:46:33.040 --> 00:46:35.030
you want to see my videos with Brian,
00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:37.829
you're you're best off going to Bitshoot
00:46:37.839 --> 00:46:39.750
or Rumble, especially Bitshoot because
00:46:39.760 --> 00:46:41.430
I've been on Bitshoot and uploading
00:46:41.440 --> 00:46:43.270
stuff onto Bitshoot longer than I've
00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:45.109
been uploading stuff onto any other
00:46:45.119 --> 00:46:49.910
platform really.
00:46:49.920 --> 00:46:55.270
So Fost Ian says, "Can you please riff a
00:46:55.280 --> 00:46:57.910
little more on the vegan question for us
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:01.349
pobo basa? I fully appreciate a beggar
00:47:01.359 --> 00:47:03.589
cannot be picky with the alms they
00:47:03.599 --> 00:47:06.550
receive, but all the sophistry about it
00:47:06.560 --> 00:47:09.750
being okay for a householder to eat meat
00:47:09.760 --> 00:47:12.390
but not kill and prepare meat seems
00:47:12.400 --> 00:47:14.870
hypocritical." I anticipate you'll say
00:47:14.880 --> 00:47:18.390
it's all about the state of mind. LOL.
00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:20.710
When I'm looking back at history's great
00:47:20.720 --> 00:47:24.710
minds, there is a very he's got very in
00:47:24.720 --> 00:47:27.270
capital letters very strong linkage to
00:47:27.280 --> 00:47:29.670
vegetarianism. And I don't think it's
00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:32.390
too much to say that full veganism only
00:47:32.400 --> 00:47:34.950
really became viable within the past
00:47:34.960 --> 00:47:37.190
century when lots of things were
00:47:37.200 --> 00:47:39.510
fortified and protein is available in
00:47:39.520 --> 00:47:42.150
various forms. The moral vegetarians of
00:47:42.160 --> 00:47:44.470
the past and moral vegans of today are
00:47:44.480 --> 00:47:47.190
motivated in a similar way. You talked
00:47:47.200 --> 00:47:49.190
in another video about the appeal, the
00:47:49.200 --> 00:47:51.750
appeal cats and dogs have for you. But
00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:53.829
there's so much misery that goes to
00:47:53.839 --> 00:47:56.390
creating the food they typically eat. I
00:47:56.400 --> 00:47:58.630
do not preference a cat over a pig's
00:47:58.640 --> 00:48:00.710
life, for example. By the way, I'm not a
00:48:00.720 --> 00:48:03.270
woke lefty, and the association with the
00:48:03.280 --> 00:48:06.069
blue hair crew is distressing to vegans
00:48:06.079 --> 00:48:08.470
such as myself.
00:48:08.480 --> 00:48:10.790
Well, first of all, I'd point out he's
00:48:10.800 --> 00:48:13.270
he's talking about sophistry about
00:48:13.280 --> 00:48:14.950
eating meat being okay for a
00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:17.270
householder. Well, I mean, the Buddha
00:48:17.280 --> 00:48:20.470
allowed it. Jesus of Nazareth allowed
00:48:20.480 --> 00:48:22.710
it. I mean, that's like two of the
00:48:22.720 --> 00:48:27.030
spiritual giants of world culture both
00:48:27.040 --> 00:48:29.829
ate meat and did not forbid the eating
00:48:29.839 --> 00:48:31.829
of meat, not only for the like their
00:48:31.839 --> 00:48:33.349
more advanced disciples, but for
00:48:33.359 --> 00:48:35.750
anybody.
00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:37.829
At least that's what the the evidence
00:48:37.839 --> 00:48:39.510
indicates.
00:48:39.520 --> 00:48:42.790
So I mean false Ian here is seems to be
00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:45.430
implying insinuating
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:48.309
that the Buddha was indulging in
00:48:48.319 --> 00:48:50.309
sophistry
00:48:50.319 --> 00:48:53.430
by not forbidding the eating of meat.
00:48:53.440 --> 00:48:56.230
And this is a kind of western arrogance
00:48:56.240 --> 00:48:58.549
where it's or it's it's you can call it
00:48:58.559 --> 00:49:00.150
arrogance or you can just call it being
00:49:00.160 --> 00:49:03.910
culture bound where people in the west
00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:08.069
nowadays just assume ethics is western
00:49:08.079 --> 00:49:11.510
utilitarian ethics which pretty much
00:49:11.520 --> 00:49:14.630
arose with Jeremy Bentham in the 19th
00:49:14.640 --> 00:49:17.270
century in England.
00:49:17.280 --> 00:49:19.349
utilitarian ethics. That's what the
00:49:19.359 --> 00:49:22.150
ethical system is. Just ethics in
00:49:22.160 --> 00:49:24.870
Western civilization, modern and
00:49:24.880 --> 00:49:26.790
presumably post-modern western
00:49:26.800 --> 00:49:29.910
civilization, utilitarian ethics, but
00:49:29.920 --> 00:49:32.390
that's the only valid kind of ethics
00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:36.390
that can exist. Buddhist ethics,
00:49:36.400 --> 00:49:40.309
Christian ethics, no. utilitarian
00:49:40.319 --> 00:49:43.990
western modern ethics is the only true
00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:47.990
ethics that apparently is like an
00:49:48.000 --> 00:49:52.870
unspoken assumption by fa Ian here
00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:56.309
but that's not the only kind of ethics I
00:49:56.319 --> 00:49:58.150
mean the Buddha wasn't going with those
00:49:58.160 --> 00:50:01.349
kind of ethics the Buddha was going with
00:50:01.359 --> 00:50:04.470
subjective ethics what you do is
00:50:04.480 --> 00:50:06.710
wholesome or unh wholesome not due to
00:50:06.720 --> 00:50:08.710
some indirect ramific ramifications out
00:50:08.720 --> 00:50:11.430
there somewhere. I mean, if you want to
00:50:11.440 --> 00:50:13.910
go even farther with this this
00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:16.309
utilitarian veganism stuff, you can say
00:50:16.319 --> 00:50:18.950
it's immoral to even to eat vegan
00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:21.510
vegetarian food if the farmers are
00:50:21.520 --> 00:50:24.150
wearing leather shoes.
00:50:24.160 --> 00:50:26.710
Animals are dying so those farmers can
00:50:26.720 --> 00:50:28.870
wear those leather shoes to raise the
00:50:28.880 --> 00:50:31.030
soybeans
00:50:31.040 --> 00:50:33.990
or you know like pesticides, this kind
00:50:34.000 --> 00:50:37.910
of stuff.
00:50:37.920 --> 00:50:43.589
But Buddhist ethics are subjective.
00:50:43.599 --> 00:50:47.109
Period. I mean like the the
00:50:47.119 --> 00:50:48.870
ramifications
00:50:48.880 --> 00:50:51.510
out there in a supposed external world
00:50:51.520 --> 00:50:54.309
are irrelevant.
00:50:54.319 --> 00:50:56.630
If you can do something with no unh
00:50:56.640 --> 00:50:58.870
wholesome mental states, you have done
00:50:58.880 --> 00:51:01.910
nothing unh wholesome. It just turns out
00:51:01.920 --> 00:51:05.910
that certain acts like for example
00:51:05.920 --> 00:51:08.470
kicking puppies,
00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:11.109
I mean it's extremely difficult to do
00:51:11.119 --> 00:51:13.270
that without some kind of negative
00:51:13.280 --> 00:51:15.510
mental states. you know, telling lies,
00:51:15.520 --> 00:51:17.349
stealing,
00:51:17.359 --> 00:51:20.470
literally killing
00:51:20.480 --> 00:51:23.765
that generally is just a matter of
00:51:23.775 --> 00:51:26.230
[clears throat] human nature
00:51:26.240 --> 00:51:28.710
that you can't do something like that
00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:31.510
without having like negative mental
00:51:31.520 --> 00:51:35.829
states which creates bad karma.
00:51:35.839 --> 00:51:38.870
But apparently
00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:42.150
eating meat is not one of those things.
00:51:42.160 --> 00:51:44.790
mean killing animals. Yeah. And then you
00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:46.470
can say, well, you're promoting the
00:51:46.480 --> 00:51:48.390
killing of animals, but that is
00:51:48.400 --> 00:51:52.150
irrelevant to Buddhist ethics. That is a
00:51:52.160 --> 00:51:55.030
western modern invention of utilitarian
00:51:55.040 --> 00:51:58.150
ethics. I mean, they're probably like
00:51:58.160 --> 00:52:01.670
precursors of that before Jeremy Bentham
00:52:01.680 --> 00:52:05.190
came along, but that's just not how
00:52:05.200 --> 00:52:08.470
Buddhist ethics works. And you can just
00:52:08.480 --> 00:52:11.750
adopt this extroverted
00:52:11.760 --> 00:52:14.069
this the the the phenomenal world is
00:52:14.079 --> 00:52:17.270
real kind of attitude and whatever we do
00:52:17.280 --> 00:52:20.230
even if it's just accidental
00:52:20.240 --> 00:52:22.710
it inadvertently causes somebody harm
00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:25.349
and it's bad well I mean you can adopt
00:52:25.359 --> 00:52:27.910
that point of view but I mean you're
00:52:27.920 --> 00:52:31.589
just it's like shackles I mean I mean if
00:52:31.599 --> 00:52:33.510
you're not even going to eat vegetarian
00:52:33.520 --> 00:52:35.750
or vegan food if the farmers were
00:52:35.760 --> 00:52:38.549
wearing leather shoes or if they were
00:52:38.559 --> 00:52:42.790
using insecticides ides. I mean I mean
00:52:42.800 --> 00:52:46.309
you might as well just like not exist
00:52:46.319 --> 00:52:51.430
to I mean to exist is to cause suffering
00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:55.990
somehow even if you're not trying to.
00:52:56.000 --> 00:52:58.390
So I mean you can say you just want to
00:52:58.400 --> 00:53:00.150
minimize the amount of suffering that
00:53:00.160 --> 00:53:03.270
you cause even indirectly through remote
00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:05.030
ramifications of your behavior and
00:53:05.040 --> 00:53:07.990
that's that's your call. But to impose
00:53:08.000 --> 00:53:10.069
that upon everybody else and say that if
00:53:10.079 --> 00:53:12.950
they don't, it's sophistry. That's just
00:53:12.960 --> 00:53:16.069
arrogance and just narrow-mindedness.
00:53:16.079 --> 00:53:18.150
And partly it's just western cultural
00:53:18.160 --> 00:53:20.790
conditioning. You just don't know any
00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:23.990
better.
00:53:24.000 --> 00:53:27.270
But I mean, you get to and go going back
00:53:27.280 --> 00:53:30.470
to two of the most famous spiritual
00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:32.150
sages
00:53:32.160 --> 00:53:34.549
of Western civilization.
00:53:34.559 --> 00:53:37.750
Well, Jesus definitely the Buddha. I
00:53:37.760 --> 00:53:40.309
mean, he's kind of a modern modern
00:53:40.319 --> 00:53:42.710
import into Western civilization, but he
00:53:42.720 --> 00:53:45.589
was a spiritual giant. And according to
00:53:45.599 --> 00:53:47.510
the textual evidence, both of them ate
00:53:47.520 --> 00:53:50.069
meat.
00:53:50.079 --> 00:53:52.230
The Buddha died after eating some bad
00:53:52.240 --> 00:53:55.589
pork. Although the Mahayana Buddhists
00:53:55.599 --> 00:53:57.030
didn't want to believe that the Buddha
00:53:57.040 --> 00:53:58.549
ate meat, and so they turned it into a
00:53:58.559 --> 00:54:03.030
mushroom.
00:54:03.040 --> 00:54:04.950
The original poly of what he ate is
00:54:04.960 --> 00:54:08.069
sukura madawa. Sukura means pig and
00:54:08.079 --> 00:54:11.109
madawa means like tenderized or tender.
00:54:11.119 --> 00:54:14.150
So the Mahayana Buddhists who really did
00:54:14.160 --> 00:54:16.150
not want the Buddha to have eaten meat
00:54:16.160 --> 00:54:19.190
even though it's contained and in like
00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:23.030
the Mahayana Buddhist like vignia
00:54:23.040 --> 00:54:25.829
like the pimoka rules the pratimokia
00:54:25.839 --> 00:54:28.950
says a monk is not allowed to eat meat
00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:33.750
um unless he is sick for example.
00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:35.670
or he's not allowed to ask for meat
00:54:35.680 --> 00:54:37.829
unless he is sick. That's that's that's
00:54:37.839 --> 00:54:40.470
the correct ter that's the correct rule
00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:42.150
or unless someone has given him
00:54:42.160 --> 00:54:45.829
permission to ask in advance.
00:54:45.839 --> 00:54:49.430
So I mean it it's allowable even in the
00:54:49.440 --> 00:54:52.069
Mahayana text themselves for a monk to
00:54:52.079 --> 00:54:53.829
eat meat.
00:54:53.839 --> 00:54:56.390
But it's like they wanted to change
00:54:56.400 --> 00:54:58.870
Buddhism over in this other direction
00:54:58.880 --> 00:55:02.950
which had good intentions I suppose.
00:55:02.960 --> 00:55:04.630
But the evidence does indicate that the
00:55:04.640 --> 00:55:08.230
Buddha ate meat. Jesus ate meat. So we
00:55:08.240 --> 00:55:09.589
get down to this part where he says,
00:55:09.599 --> 00:55:11.430
"When I'm looking back at history's
00:55:11.440 --> 00:55:13.829
great minds, there is a very strong
00:55:13.839 --> 00:55:17.430
linkage to vegetarianism." Well, how do
00:55:17.440 --> 00:55:19.990
what great minds? Two of the greatest
00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:22.188
minds ate meat apparently.
00:55:22.198 --> 00:55:24.470
[clears throat]
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:27.670
So I mean Pythagoras maybe. I mean he
00:55:27.680 --> 00:55:31.030
was he was more anti-beans
00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:34.710
than uh anti- anything else I think. I
00:55:34.720 --> 00:55:37.270
mean what other great minds?
00:55:37.280 --> 00:55:40.390
I mean we're talking spiritual minds I
00:55:40.400 --> 00:55:43.190
suppose. I mean of course the Hindus
00:55:43.200 --> 00:55:45.109
Neim Karoli Baba up there he was
00:55:45.119 --> 00:55:47.430
vegetarian. You'd still have dairy
00:55:47.440 --> 00:55:51.030
products and so forth.
00:55:51.040 --> 00:55:53.990
Let's see. But I'm trying to trying to
00:55:54.000 --> 00:55:58.069
think of history's great minds that have
00:55:58.079 --> 00:56:00.390
this strong linkage to vegetarianism.
00:56:00.400 --> 00:56:04.069
And I think that uh FA Ian might be a
00:56:04.079 --> 00:56:06.789
little biased in his searching of great
00:56:06.799 --> 00:56:11.589
minds.
00:56:11.599 --> 00:56:15.109
H great minds who are vegetarians.
00:56:15.119 --> 00:56:17.430
I mean, I'm sure they're like Mahayana
00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:22.309
monks, Hindus,
00:56:22.319 --> 00:56:24.710
but uh [clears throat] Catholics, I
00:56:24.720 --> 00:56:27.190
mean, Catholic saints,
00:56:27.200 --> 00:56:29.430
Cathol were were there any notable
00:56:29.440 --> 00:56:32.789
Catholic saints? St. John of the Cross,
00:56:32.799 --> 00:56:34.710
were they were they vegetarians? In in
00:56:34.720 --> 00:56:37.430
their case, a lot of it was like a kind
00:56:37.440 --> 00:56:39.109
of fasting. It was like a spiritual
00:56:39.119 --> 00:56:41.190
penance more than a concern for animals
00:56:41.200 --> 00:56:43.270
because of course the Bible says people
00:56:43.280 --> 00:56:45.109
have the right to kill animals and the
00:56:45.119 --> 00:56:47.430
Old Testament's full of God commanding
00:56:47.440 --> 00:56:48.950
the killing of animals and the killing
00:56:48.960 --> 00:56:52.549
of humans occasionally.
00:56:52.559 --> 00:56:55.990
So yeah, I mean I just do not see
00:56:56.000 --> 00:56:58.710
history's great minds having a very
00:56:58.720 --> 00:57:02.069
strong linkage to vegetarianism. I mean
00:57:02.079 --> 00:57:05.270
maybe I'm just not thinking of any.
00:57:05.280 --> 00:57:07.670
Let's see.
00:57:07.680 --> 00:57:10.630
So the moral vegetarians of the past and
00:57:10.640 --> 00:57:12.630
moral vegans of today are motivated in a
00:57:12.640 --> 00:57:14.870
similar way.
00:57:14.880 --> 00:57:17.829
Not I mean some of them maybe but like I
00:57:17.839 --> 00:57:20.309
just said a lot of vegetarianism
00:57:20.319 --> 00:57:24.069
in the past it wasn't out of concern for
00:57:24.079 --> 00:57:26.549
the like the suffering of another
00:57:26.559 --> 00:57:29.109
animal. I mean in some cases like maybe
00:57:29.119 --> 00:57:32.630
Pythagoras it was that way but like in
00:57:32.640 --> 00:57:35.109
Christian aesthetics and so forth it was
00:57:35.119 --> 00:57:37.910
just a kind of penance you know you are
00:57:37.920 --> 00:57:40.470
you are doing penance and being austere
00:57:40.480 --> 00:57:46.390
by refraining from good food.
00:57:46.400 --> 00:57:50.470
So yeah, I mean there there was uh a
00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:52.150
famous Seattle in Burma. I think it was
00:57:52.160 --> 00:57:54.069
called Peza Seattle, which just means
00:57:54.079 --> 00:57:56.390
bean eat Seattle. And that was all he
00:57:56.400 --> 00:58:00.309
would eat is beans. And people like
00:58:00.319 --> 00:58:02.390
materialistic people would say, you
00:58:02.400 --> 00:58:03.589
know, that's not possible. He'd be
00:58:03.599 --> 00:58:05.109
getting vitamin deficiencies or
00:58:05.119 --> 00:58:07.109
whatever, but apparently he managed it.
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:08.309
I mean, I was thinking at the time,
00:58:08.319 --> 00:58:09.910
well, maybe there's little onions or
00:58:09.920 --> 00:58:11.430
something mixed in with it sometimes,
00:58:11.440 --> 00:58:15.430
which would give him at least vitamin C.
00:58:15.440 --> 00:58:18.870
But I mean, some people don't even eat
00:58:18.880 --> 00:58:21.430
at all. I mean, I'm I'm willing to
00:58:21.440 --> 00:58:23.190
accept the possibility like Teresa
00:58:23.200 --> 00:58:28.069
Noman, some Catholic nun who the only
00:58:28.079 --> 00:58:30.150
food she would eat was like the the
00:58:30.160 --> 00:58:33.030
ritual communion wafer. And those aren't
00:58:33.040 --> 00:58:34.390
very they're not very [clears throat]
00:58:34.400 --> 00:58:39.345
substantial.
00:58:39.355 --> 00:58:39.910
>> [sighs and clears throat]
00:58:39.920 --> 00:58:42.230
>> So anyways,
00:58:42.240 --> 00:58:46.630
this whole issue is Foust Ian just
00:58:46.640 --> 00:58:50.789
imposing Western utilitarian ethics on
00:58:50.799 --> 00:58:52.390
everybody
00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:56.630
when it's not the only kind of ethics
00:58:56.640 --> 00:58:58.470
and it's not necessarily the most
00:58:58.480 --> 00:59:00.470
correct kind of ethics at least with
00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:02.390
regard to
00:59:02.400 --> 00:59:06.950
understanding right and wrong
00:59:06.960 --> 00:59:09.190
And for him to imply like the Buddha
00:59:09.200 --> 00:59:12.710
himself was was a sophist
00:59:12.720 --> 00:59:15.670
because he wasn't adopting modern
00:59:15.680 --> 00:59:18.069
utilitarian ethics. Well, I mean that's
00:59:18.079 --> 00:59:21.030
just silly.
00:59:21.040 --> 00:59:23.030
But I mean, if you have got yourself
00:59:23.040 --> 00:59:25.990
into a state where you cannot possibly
00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:28.230
eat meat without feeling guilt and
00:59:28.240 --> 00:59:30.710
remorse and other unh wholesome mental
00:59:30.720 --> 00:59:34.549
states, then don't eat meat.
00:59:34.559 --> 00:59:36.950
But that doesn't mean that somebody else
00:59:36.960 --> 00:59:39.750
can't eat meat without the unh wholesome
00:59:39.760 --> 00:59:43.349
mental states. I mean, some some vegans,
00:59:43.359 --> 00:59:45.750
I would assume that they've got unh
00:59:45.760 --> 00:59:47.270
wholesome mental states with regard to
00:59:47.280 --> 00:59:49.829
eating their vegan stuff. Even if it's
00:59:49.839 --> 00:59:52.549
just like pride or or like
00:59:52.559 --> 00:59:54.309
self-satisfaction
00:59:54.319 --> 00:59:56.789
or just getting into the subtleties of
00:59:56.799 --> 00:59:59.670
the flavors, you know, the spices and
00:59:59.680 --> 01:00:01.270
all this. I mean even that is wallowing
01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:03.589
in sensuality which is unskillful mental
01:00:03.599 --> 01:00:05.510
states.
01:00:05.520 --> 01:00:07.910
Then of course the farmer might have
01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:10.549
been wearing leather shoes and maybe
01:00:10.559 --> 01:00:13.750
used insecticides
01:00:13.760 --> 01:00:15.910
or other pesticides. Maybe they're even
01:00:15.920 --> 01:00:22.470
killing mice.
01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:25.030
But to assume that western utilitarian
01:00:25.040 --> 01:00:28.150
ethics are the only valid ethics in
01:00:28.160 --> 01:00:31.589
which you are just like leaving yourself
01:00:31.599 --> 01:00:33.349
like your own subjective mental states
01:00:33.359 --> 01:00:35.910
behind and just going out in search of
01:00:35.920 --> 01:00:37.829
these indirect ramifications of
01:00:37.839 --> 01:00:41.430
everything you do.
01:00:41.440 --> 01:00:44.710
It just it's it's I mean it's just like
01:00:44.720 --> 01:00:46.950
a samsaric
01:00:46.960 --> 01:00:53.030
trap from a Buddhist point of view.
01:00:53.040 --> 01:00:54.870
Anyways, I suppose I should just move on
01:00:54.880 --> 01:00:57.190
to the next question. This is from Dr.
01:00:57.200 --> 01:00:59.349
Scary. And I should probably have like a
01:00:59.359 --> 01:01:01.190
little bell or something I ring. There's
01:01:01.200 --> 01:01:03.030
there's like a news radio show I listen
01:01:03.040 --> 01:01:05.510
to when I'm driving to work sometimes
01:01:05.520 --> 01:01:09.270
when uh a new caller, the guy rings the
01:01:09.280 --> 01:01:11.750
bell for the new caller. So, a new
01:01:11.760 --> 01:01:13.750
asker, a new questioner. Maybe I should
01:01:13.760 --> 01:01:16.470
get a little bell and ring it cuz I I
01:01:16.480 --> 01:01:17.829
don't think I've been asked anything by
01:01:17.839 --> 01:01:19.510
Dr. Scary. Although some people do
01:01:19.520 --> 01:01:24.407
change their name. So there is that.
01:01:24.417 --> 01:01:24.950
[sighs]
01:01:24.960 --> 01:01:28.950
So Dr. Scary says at 2 hours 2 minutes
01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:31.670
and 6 seconds. I think uh they're
01:01:31.680 --> 01:01:34.069
referring to the previous Q&A.
01:01:34.079 --> 01:01:37.750
You say Nibbana is reality. Samsara is a
01:01:37.760 --> 01:01:40.309
delusional take.
01:01:40.319 --> 01:01:42.950
Is there a textual report support for
01:01:42.960 --> 01:01:45.109
this view? [snorts]
01:01:45.119 --> 01:01:47.430
To me, this framing feels closer to a
01:01:47.440 --> 01:01:49.829
Hindu perspective.
01:01:49.839 --> 01:01:52.549
I tend to agree with Ajantiso, who
01:01:52.559 --> 01:01:55.190
emphasizes that the Buddha wasn't trying
01:01:55.200 --> 01:01:58.230
to reach an ultimate reality, but rather
01:01:58.240 --> 01:02:00.470
to understand and bring about the end of
01:02:00.480 --> 01:02:03.109
suffering both formerly and now. It is
01:02:03.119 --> 01:02:05.670
only stress that I describe and the
01:02:05.680 --> 01:02:08.710
sessation of stress using Ajantiso's
01:02:08.720 --> 01:02:12.069
idiosyncratic uh renderings rendering
01:02:12.079 --> 01:02:15.030
here of the the polyword duka
01:02:15.040 --> 01:02:17.349
that's from the anur suta. Yeah, it's in
01:02:17.359 --> 01:02:18.630
other sutas too. I think it's in the
01:02:18.640 --> 01:02:23.030
alagadupal suta also and etc etc.
01:02:23.040 --> 01:02:25.670
Um I mean there's some stuff I can
01:02:25.680 --> 01:02:31.030
unpack here. First of all I mean see
01:02:31.040 --> 01:02:32.950
Dr. Scary quotes me as saying quote
01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:34.870
nibbana is reality samsara is a
01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:37.190
delusional take unquote and then asks is
01:02:37.200 --> 01:02:39.349
there textual support for this view well
01:02:39.359 --> 01:02:41.190
I mean some of the main textual support
01:02:41.200 --> 01:02:43.510
is if you're unenlightened you still
01:02:43.520 --> 01:02:45.750
have delusion
01:02:45.760 --> 01:02:48.870
so the world of an unenlightened person
01:02:48.880 --> 01:02:51.589
is delusional
01:02:51.599 --> 01:02:53.670
but when you become enlightened you have
01:02:53.680 --> 01:02:57.270
zero moha you have no more delusion no
01:02:57.280 --> 01:03:00.150
more greed hate or delusion or if you
01:03:00.160 --> 01:03:03.349
prefer no or attraction, aversion, or
01:03:03.359 --> 01:03:05.829
semic-conscious stupidity.
01:03:05.839 --> 01:03:08.710
So once you become enlightened, since
01:03:08.720 --> 01:03:12.069
you have no more delusion, then you're
01:03:12.079 --> 01:03:14.150
experiencing reality
01:03:14.160 --> 01:03:17.029
unless you can somehow experience
01:03:17.039 --> 01:03:20.150
what isn't reality with zero delusion.
01:03:20.160 --> 01:03:23.109
But the implication would seem to be you
01:03:23.119 --> 01:03:25.430
eliminate delusion while at the same
01:03:25.440 --> 01:03:28.069
time remaining conscious, then you are
01:03:28.079 --> 01:03:31.270
aware of reality.
01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:33.510
And getting to what Ajant Tenisro says a
01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:36.789
little later. I mean there's two
01:03:36.799 --> 01:03:39.190
approaches to Dharma or at least we can
01:03:39.200 --> 01:03:42.069
say there are two approaches to Dhamma.
01:03:42.079 --> 01:03:45.430
One is the more heartbased maybe more
01:03:45.440 --> 01:03:49.990
feminine approach of ending suffering
01:03:50.000 --> 01:03:52.470
or you can have the more head oriented
01:03:52.480 --> 01:03:55.510
more masculine maybe approach of ending
01:03:55.520 --> 01:03:57.430
delusion.
01:03:57.440 --> 01:03:58.870
I mean they both they're both the same
01:03:58.880 --> 01:04:00.309
enlightenment. They both lead to the
01:04:00.319 --> 01:04:02.150
same place. If you're striving for the
01:04:02.160 --> 01:04:04.309
end of Duca or you're striving for the
01:04:04.319 --> 01:04:06.470
end of Moa,
01:04:06.480 --> 01:04:09.109
they both land in the same place, which
01:04:09.119 --> 01:04:12.549
is fine. But I mean, it's it's like two
01:04:12.559 --> 01:04:13.750
different ways. I mean, if you're more
01:04:13.760 --> 01:04:15.109
heart oriented, you want to end
01:04:15.119 --> 01:04:17.270
suffering. Or you're more head oriented,
01:04:17.280 --> 01:04:19.910
you want to end delusion.
01:04:19.920 --> 01:04:22.549
They're the same.
01:04:22.559 --> 01:04:24.630
And I mean, my father was kind of a
01:04:24.640 --> 01:04:26.950
macho guy. You know, he was a barb
01:04:26.960 --> 01:04:29.349
brawler in his youth. He had literally
01:04:29.359 --> 01:04:32.230
killed people in the army and enemies,
01:04:32.240 --> 01:04:35.190
not like his own side. And he he just
01:04:35.200 --> 01:04:38.069
had like this cavalier attitude towards
01:04:38.079 --> 01:04:40.470
pain. You know, a little pain never hurt
01:04:40.480 --> 01:04:43.190
anybody, you know? He just it's like a
01:04:43.200 --> 01:04:47.029
fear of suffering is is I mean to a
01:04:47.039 --> 01:04:49.029
certain kind of masculine point of view,
01:04:49.039 --> 01:04:51.430
it's like cowardice,
01:04:51.440 --> 01:04:55.029
you know. is is like the ancient
01:04:55.039 --> 01:04:57.270
the ancient mindset, you know, the
01:04:57.280 --> 01:04:59.910
classical like Greco Roman mindset and
01:04:59.920 --> 01:05:01.829
just like the the northern Germanic and
01:05:01.839 --> 01:05:04.069
Celtic barbarians and so forth. It's
01:05:04.079 --> 01:05:06.470
like I mean you're not afraid of
01:05:06.480 --> 01:05:08.390
suffering.
01:05:08.400 --> 01:05:10.150
I mean, you don't like it necessarily,
01:05:10.160 --> 01:05:11.510
but it's not something that you should
01:05:11.520 --> 01:05:16.230
just like stop at all costs, but I mean
01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:19.190
to be deluded to be delusional, that's
01:05:19.200 --> 01:05:21.349
worse.
01:05:21.359 --> 01:05:23.430
So I mean there's it's just like two
01:05:23.440 --> 01:05:25.349
different approaches like more heart
01:05:25.359 --> 01:05:27.670
oriented and more head oriented but I
01:05:27.680 --> 01:05:30.069
mean it's the same enlightenment but
01:05:30.079 --> 01:05:33.430
either way you end delusion
01:05:33.440 --> 01:05:35.029
you're off the wheel you're no longer
01:05:35.039 --> 01:05:37.109
stuck in samsara I mean it's just it's
01:05:37.119 --> 01:05:41.349
like very simple logic
01:05:41.359 --> 01:05:44.470
so let's see any other textual support
01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:46.390
it's just seeing reality as it is is
01:05:46.400 --> 01:05:48.950
what happens when you become enlightened
01:05:48.960 --> 01:05:51.430
I mean it says that in the texts. Do you
01:05:51.440 --> 01:05:54.950
see things as they are
01:05:54.960 --> 01:05:57.829
or just see reality as it is? Because in
01:05:57.839 --> 01:06:00.230
my opinion, there is no more plurality
01:06:00.240 --> 01:06:04.309
in ultimate reality.
01:06:04.319 --> 01:06:08.630
So, let's see here.
01:06:08.640 --> 01:06:11.829
Yeah. Yeah. I do not consider Johno to
01:06:11.839 --> 01:06:15.430
be an infallible um oracle. I'm sure he
01:06:15.440 --> 01:06:16.950
doesn't consider me to be one either.
01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:19.670
And so we're we're we're even even
01:06:19.680 --> 01:06:22.470
Steven on that one.
01:06:22.480 --> 01:06:24.789
So [sighs]
01:06:24.799 --> 01:06:27.510
yeah, I think I think I answered that
01:06:27.520 --> 01:06:30.630
one fairly straightforwardly.
01:06:30.640 --> 01:06:32.710
Sometimes I get a little insecure if I
01:06:32.720 --> 01:06:35.270
answer too quickly and easily, but I
01:06:35.280 --> 01:06:36.710
think that was fairly straightforward. I
01:06:36.720 --> 01:06:38.630
mean, you become enlightened, no more
01:06:38.640 --> 01:06:40.150
delusion. That's just part of
01:06:40.160 --> 01:06:42.150
enlightenment. In fact, you could call
01:06:42.160 --> 01:06:45.910
that a definition of enlightenment.
01:06:45.920 --> 01:06:47.589
So, I'm just going to move on to Dr.
01:06:47.599 --> 01:06:50.309
Scary's next question.
01:06:50.319 --> 01:06:52.630
And Dr. Scary says, "I've recently
01:06:52.640 --> 01:06:55.589
discovered the polyword amata, which can
01:06:55.599 --> 01:06:58.309
be translated as immortality and more
01:06:58.319 --> 01:07:01.670
commonly as the deathless, which the
01:07:01.680 --> 01:07:04.630
Buddha frequently calls nibbana." With
01:07:04.640 --> 01:07:06.789
that in mind, can we say that in his
01:07:06.799 --> 01:07:08.309
quest, the Buddha was seeking
01:07:08.319 --> 01:07:10.069
immortality?
01:07:10.079 --> 01:07:12.789
No, I don't think so. Because I mean the
01:07:12.799 --> 01:07:15.270
Buddha was he lived within the context
01:07:15.280 --> 01:07:18.069
of the shamana traditions of northern
01:07:18.079 --> 01:07:20.789
India and from that point of view
01:07:20.799 --> 01:07:22.950
immortality would just be like eternal
01:07:22.960 --> 01:07:24.549
damnation
01:07:24.559 --> 01:07:27.750
that to exist is to suffer. First noble
01:07:27.760 --> 01:07:30.950
truth to exist is to suffer or to exist
01:07:30.960 --> 01:07:34.069
is to experience unease or going with
01:07:34.079 --> 01:07:37.750
ajisro to exist is to experience stress
01:07:37.760 --> 01:07:40.549
to exist is stressful.
01:07:40.559 --> 01:07:42.549
So I mean if you're going to be immortal
01:07:42.559 --> 01:07:48.241
then that's eternal stress.
01:07:48.251 --> 01:07:49.349
[sighs]
01:07:49.359 --> 01:07:50.789
So I don't think the Buddha was seeking
01:07:50.799 --> 01:07:52.710
immortality. He was seeking a way off
01:07:52.720 --> 01:07:56.549
the wheel and not really I mean before
01:07:56.559 --> 01:07:58.309
you you get there you you don't really
01:07:58.319 --> 01:08:01.510
don't know what it's going to be like.
01:08:01.520 --> 01:08:03.029
But I don't think he was seeking
01:08:03.039 --> 01:08:05.270
immortality. I think he was seeking just
01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:08.549
a way out of this world or a way out of
01:08:08.559 --> 01:08:10.230
samsara.
01:08:10.240 --> 01:08:11.670
regardless of what it was going to be
01:08:11.680 --> 01:08:15.430
like on the other side, so to speak.
01:08:15.440 --> 01:08:17.590
So, I mean, the deathless is it's not
01:08:17.600 --> 01:08:21.030
immortality in that you live forever.
01:08:21.040 --> 01:08:22.789
Like, when the Buddha I mean, when
01:08:22.799 --> 01:08:25.829
Nibbana is called the deathless,
01:08:25.839 --> 01:08:27.349
it's it's sort of like Dharma being
01:08:27.359 --> 01:08:30.309
called Akaliko or timeless, I mean, it
01:08:30.319 --> 01:08:32.149
doesn't mean that it lasts forever so
01:08:32.159 --> 01:08:35.110
much. It's just beyond time. It's just,
01:08:35.120 --> 01:08:37.269
you know, there no more time. There is
01:08:37.279 --> 01:08:41.990
time no more.
01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:44.229
So
01:08:44.239 --> 01:08:45.590
yeah. Yeah. I really don't think the
01:08:45.600 --> 01:08:47.669
Buddha was seeking immortality because
01:08:47.679 --> 01:08:50.870
from the context of north ancient Indian
01:08:50.880 --> 01:08:52.950
culture that would have been tanamount
01:08:52.960 --> 01:08:54.870
to eternal damnation. It's like a
01:08:54.880 --> 01:08:56.550
Buddhist is trying to get out of
01:08:56.560 --> 01:08:58.470
immortality
01:08:58.480 --> 01:09:01.590
to get out of this you know life after
01:09:01.600 --> 01:09:03.510
life after life birth and death birth
01:09:03.520 --> 01:09:07.349
and death birth and death. I mean, you
01:09:07.359 --> 01:09:10.870
still stay alive after death in a way,
01:09:10.880 --> 01:09:12.950
but it wasn't like he was trying not to
01:09:12.960 --> 01:09:15.349
die anymore. It was just getting out of
01:09:15.359 --> 01:09:18.149
the whole samsaric system
01:09:18.159 --> 01:09:20.630
and just let the chips fall where they
01:09:20.640 --> 01:09:23.590
may.
01:09:23.600 --> 01:09:24.950
And I think I'm just going to move on to
01:09:24.960 --> 01:09:27.910
this question. This is from Fred
01:09:27.920 --> 01:09:31.110
and Fred says, "Considering there are so
01:09:31.120 --> 01:09:33.349
many failed monks, is it an endeavor
01:09:33.359 --> 01:09:35.749
worth embarking on?
01:09:35.759 --> 01:09:37.669
Being a monk seems to create a lot of
01:09:37.679 --> 01:09:40.630
baggage in itself. Chores don't stop and
01:09:40.640 --> 01:09:43.269
commitment to chanting and rules, etc.
01:09:43.279 --> 01:09:44.789
continue."
01:09:44.799 --> 01:09:47.030
Well, I mean it is true that the
01:09:47.040 --> 01:09:49.189
overwhelming majority of monks do not
01:09:49.199 --> 01:09:52.229
become enlightened unless you know some
01:09:52.239 --> 01:09:54.390
Mahayana teaching is correct and we're
01:09:54.400 --> 01:09:57.110
all already enlightened and just don't
01:09:57.120 --> 01:09:58.588
notice it that kind of thing.
01:09:58.598 --> 01:10:01.030
[clears throat] But set that aside and
01:10:01.040 --> 01:10:03.830
let's go with the idea that is more
01:10:03.840 --> 01:10:08.870
terraodin unfortunately in a sense that
01:10:08.880 --> 01:10:11.270
almost all monks fail to become
01:10:11.280 --> 01:10:12.870
enlightened.
01:10:12.880 --> 01:10:15.510
So Fred is asking, you know, is it an
01:10:15.520 --> 01:10:17.430
endeavor worth embarking on considering
01:10:17.440 --> 01:10:19.990
that? Well, it's like an Olympic gold
01:10:20.000 --> 01:10:22.870
medal. The overwhelming majority of
01:10:22.880 --> 01:10:24.790
people who try to get an Olympic gold
01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:28.709
medal in say the 100 meter dash fail. So
01:10:28.719 --> 01:10:31.110
does that mean that trying to get win an
01:10:31.120 --> 01:10:34.550
Olympic gold medal is like unworthy of
01:10:34.560 --> 01:10:36.950
embarking on it? that nobody should even
01:10:36.960 --> 01:10:41.750
try or ascending Mount Everest,
01:10:41.760 --> 01:10:43.189
you know, climbing to the top of Mount
01:10:43.199 --> 01:10:45.030
Everest. Most people who try it don't
01:10:45.040 --> 01:10:47.910
succeed, I would guess.
01:10:47.920 --> 01:10:50.070
But still, some people think it's worth
01:10:50.080 --> 01:10:51.590
it, no matter how difficult it is. I
01:10:51.600 --> 01:10:53.669
mean, you know, the harder it is to
01:10:53.679 --> 01:10:55.830
attain, the more it's worth, the more
01:10:55.840 --> 01:10:59.750
glory there is.
01:10:59.760 --> 01:11:01.990
See, so Fred says like being a monk
01:11:02.000 --> 01:11:03.750
seems to create a lot of baggage in
01:11:03.760 --> 01:11:08.229
itself. Not nearly as much baggage as,
01:11:08.239 --> 01:11:10.229
you know, being on psych meds and having
01:11:10.239 --> 01:11:13.350
three divorces and, you know, having a a
01:11:13.360 --> 01:11:15.510
mortgage,
01:11:15.520 --> 01:11:18.790
some job that you hate.
01:11:18.800 --> 01:11:21.830
It's feuding with the neighbors,
01:11:21.840 --> 01:11:25.669
etc., etc.
01:11:25.679 --> 01:11:28.149
So, being a monk seems to create I mean,
01:11:28.159 --> 01:11:30.550
it it creates less baggage. I mean,
01:11:30.560 --> 01:11:32.870
unless you're just like a horrible monk,
01:11:32.880 --> 01:11:34.630
you're just completely unconscientious
01:11:34.640 --> 01:11:37.510
or just completely incompetent.
01:11:37.520 --> 01:11:39.990
But just living a simple life, you know,
01:11:40.000 --> 01:11:42.709
at a monastery or out in a cave or a hut
01:11:42.719 --> 01:11:44.550
or something, you're not going to I
01:11:44.560 --> 01:11:46.550
mean, how much baggage can you can you
01:11:46.560 --> 01:11:50.070
create compared with Big Lou who's on
01:11:50.080 --> 01:11:52.790
meds and he's been married and divorced
01:11:52.800 --> 01:11:55.430
and married again and, you know, selling
01:11:55.440 --> 01:11:57.110
insurance,
01:11:57.120 --> 01:11:59.750
that kind of stuff.
01:11:59.760 --> 01:12:01.350
And the whole idea that just because
01:12:01.360 --> 01:12:04.470
most most people who try it fail, I
01:12:04.480 --> 01:12:06.550
mean, that doesn't necessarily mean that
01:12:06.560 --> 01:12:08.870
nobody should try.
01:12:08.880 --> 01:12:11.110
I mean, even if you don't succeed in
01:12:11.120 --> 01:12:12.550
becoming fully enlightened, and I used
01:12:12.560 --> 01:12:15.270
to tell myself this a lot as a monk. I
01:12:15.280 --> 01:12:16.790
mean, even if you don't become fully
01:12:16.800 --> 01:12:17.990
enlightened, at least you're making
01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:20.390
progress. At least you're going to be
01:12:20.400 --> 01:12:23.189
suffering less. I mean, even that's
01:12:23.199 --> 01:12:25.189
that's pretty much guaranteed if you're
01:12:25.199 --> 01:12:27.030
like a conscientious monk. you're really
01:12:27.040 --> 01:12:31.189
trying to like practice correctly. I
01:12:31.199 --> 01:12:33.270
mean, you're pretty much guaranteed of
01:12:33.280 --> 01:12:35.910
less suffering and delusion even if you
01:12:35.920 --> 01:12:39.590
don't bring bring it to a complete stop.
01:12:39.600 --> 01:12:42.310
So, I mean, would you say it's it's
01:12:42.320 --> 01:12:44.870
unworthy to even do it even though
01:12:44.880 --> 01:12:47.030
you're guaranteed of less suffering and
01:12:47.040 --> 01:12:48.790
delusion just because you're not going
01:12:48.800 --> 01:12:51.510
to, you know, reach zero?
01:12:51.520 --> 01:12:52.790
I mean, that's that's not very
01:12:52.800 --> 01:12:55.990
reasonable. seems to me it's like why
01:12:56.000 --> 01:12:57.990
should I try to earn money if I'm not
01:12:58.000 --> 01:13:00.149
going to earn all of it? You know, why
01:13:00.159 --> 01:13:01.910
should I why should I work for a living
01:13:01.920 --> 01:13:03.430
if I'm not going to become the richest
01:13:03.440 --> 01:13:05.990
man in the world? It's that it's that
01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:09.990
kind of reasoning it seems to me.
01:13:10.000 --> 01:13:11.110
But even if you don't become
01:13:11.120 --> 01:13:13.270
enlightened, and most monks and nuns do
01:13:13.280 --> 01:13:15.590
not become enlightened,
01:13:15.600 --> 01:13:18.149
just going with empirical evidence, I
01:13:18.159 --> 01:13:19.830
guess,
01:13:19.840 --> 01:13:22.390
still I mean, you're you're going to
01:13:22.400 --> 01:13:24.550
have less suffering. You're going to
01:13:24.560 --> 01:13:26.310
have less greed, hate, and delusion.
01:13:26.320 --> 01:13:28.630
You're going to have less suffering,
01:13:28.640 --> 01:13:30.709
and that's
01:13:30.719 --> 01:13:34.550
well worth it, it seems to me.
01:13:34.560 --> 01:13:36.229
I certainly don't regret having been a
01:13:36.239 --> 01:13:40.709
monk.
01:13:40.719 --> 01:13:42.630
Okay, I think I answered that question.
01:13:42.640 --> 01:13:43.750
So, I'm just going to move on to the
01:13:43.760 --> 01:13:46.790
next one. This is from the sabatur.
01:13:46.800 --> 01:13:49.990
And the sabatur says, "I know you
01:13:50.000 --> 01:13:54.709
partially touched on this in number 188,
01:13:54.719 --> 01:13:58.149
but what kind of karma do animals have?
01:13:58.159 --> 01:14:00.229
I assume it depends on the animals
01:14:00.239 --> 01:14:03.270
evolution. A chimpanzee would be more
01:14:03.280 --> 01:14:05.669
aware of a sense of right and wrong than
01:14:05.679 --> 01:14:09.030
an ant. But think of all those chickens,
01:14:09.040 --> 01:14:12.470
pigs, cows, etc. What have they done to
01:14:12.480 --> 01:14:16.149
deserve such an ending? Well,
01:14:16.159 --> 01:14:18.870
all lives end in tragedy.
01:14:18.880 --> 01:14:22.229
So, I mean, if the chickens, pigs, and
01:14:22.239 --> 01:14:24.630
cows were just living out in the
01:14:24.640 --> 01:14:27.590
wilderness in a state of nature, then
01:14:27.600 --> 01:14:29.750
chances are they're still going to die a
01:14:29.760 --> 01:14:32.470
violent death.
01:14:32.480 --> 01:14:34.630
And the fact that they're domesticated,
01:14:34.640 --> 01:14:36.470
I mean, from the the species point of
01:14:36.480 --> 01:14:38.390
view, from the Darwinian point of view,
01:14:38.400 --> 01:14:40.149
it's just been a blessing to them. Even
01:14:40.159 --> 01:14:42.149
though their their individual lives,
01:14:42.159 --> 01:14:43.830
especially the pigs, the chickens,
01:14:43.840 --> 01:14:46.070
they're getting more humane. Like most
01:14:46.080 --> 01:14:47.990
eggs that you buy now, it's like cage
01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:50.870
free, free range kind of stuff. Although
01:14:50.880 --> 01:14:53.750
what exactly that means is not entirely
01:14:53.760 --> 01:14:55.189
clear. You know, they could be free
01:14:55.199 --> 01:14:58.790
range inside of this dark warehouse.
01:14:58.800 --> 01:15:02.709
But pigs, the way pigs are raised is
01:15:02.719 --> 01:15:04.709
pretty awful. I have to admit, you know,
01:15:04.719 --> 01:15:07.189
they're like in this this like little
01:15:07.199 --> 01:15:09.910
cage thing.
01:15:09.920 --> 01:15:13.430
Um, but I mean, like I said, it's like
01:15:13.440 --> 01:15:17.750
all lives end in tragedy and if they uh
01:15:17.760 --> 01:15:18.950
I mean, they're probably going to be
01:15:18.960 --> 01:15:21.750
killed by a something.
01:15:21.760 --> 01:15:26.470
And I mean, everything dies.
01:15:26.480 --> 01:15:28.229
But from like like the Darwinian point
01:15:28.239 --> 01:15:30.022
of view, it's like there's hundreds of
01:15:30.032 --> 01:15:31.270
[clears throat] there's way more
01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:33.750
chickens, pigs, and cows now than there
01:15:33.760 --> 01:15:35.669
were before they were domesticated. So
01:15:35.679 --> 01:15:36.950
that from the point of view of the
01:15:36.960 --> 01:15:39.750
species, the species is is prospering
01:15:39.760 --> 01:15:42.550
even though most of them are being cut
01:15:42.560 --> 01:15:47.030
off in their prime to be turned into
01:15:47.040 --> 01:15:53.830
tendies for example,
01:15:53.840 --> 01:15:55.510
which is not really a justification of
01:15:55.520 --> 01:15:57.830
killing, but it's just kind of an
01:15:57.840 --> 01:16:01.030
observation of like objective empirical
01:16:01.040 --> 01:16:02.950
reality.
01:16:02.960 --> 01:16:05.270
So what kind of karma do animals have?
01:16:05.280 --> 01:16:06.709
Well, it's not really an intellectual
01:16:06.719 --> 01:16:09.110
kind of karma, but still I mean if you
01:16:09.120 --> 01:16:12.470
have craving and delusion, you're going
01:16:12.480 --> 01:16:14.709
to make karma.
01:16:14.719 --> 01:16:17.270
So I mean animals to the extent that
01:16:17.280 --> 01:16:19.350
they have craving and delusion, they are
01:16:19.360 --> 01:16:21.270
creating karma. And it's going to be
01:16:21.280 --> 01:16:23.350
simple animalistic kind of karma, but
01:16:23.360 --> 01:16:26.149
still.
01:16:26.159 --> 01:16:29.510
So let's see here. The sabotur says,
01:16:29.520 --> 01:16:31.510
"Uh, chimpanzeee would be more aware of
01:16:31.520 --> 01:16:33.669
a sense of right and wrong than an ant."
01:16:33.679 --> 01:16:36.709
But I mean, karma is really has little
01:16:36.719 --> 01:16:39.910
to do with a sense of right and wrong.
01:16:39.920 --> 01:16:42.790
I mean, karma has to do with
01:16:42.800 --> 01:16:45.910
craving and delusion.
01:16:45.920 --> 01:16:48.470
So, I mean, you can be just complete
01:16:48.480 --> 01:16:50.390
sociopath and you're still subject to
01:16:50.400 --> 01:16:52.070
karma even though you have no sense of
01:16:52.080 --> 01:16:54.630
right or wrong.
01:16:54.640 --> 01:16:58.149
With regard to an ant, I mean, I can I
01:16:58.159 --> 01:17:00.390
can be skeptical of the fact or
01:17:00.400 --> 01:17:02.630
skeptical of the idea that an ant is
01:17:02.640 --> 01:17:04.470
creating karma because I'm skeptical of
01:17:04.480 --> 01:17:07.189
the idea that an ant has craving or
01:17:07.199 --> 01:17:09.189
delusion.
01:17:09.199 --> 01:17:11.110
Insects
01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:13.590
and like arropods in general, most
01:17:13.600 --> 01:17:15.750
invertebrates even, they have a
01:17:15.760 --> 01:17:17.270
different kind of nervous system than we
01:17:17.280 --> 01:17:24.790
do. Like an ant or a clam or a crab or
01:17:24.800 --> 01:17:27.669
whatever. And they do not have literally
01:17:27.679 --> 01:17:29.270
they do not have a central nervous
01:17:29.280 --> 01:17:31.189
system.
01:17:31.199 --> 01:17:34.470
It's it's like a dual spinal cord
01:17:34.480 --> 01:17:35.990
thingy. No spine because they're
01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:38.950
invertebrates, but it's it's not really
01:17:38.960 --> 01:17:41.030
centralized the way it is with us in the
01:17:41.040 --> 01:17:44.709
brain. And like I've told this story
01:17:44.719 --> 01:17:46.470
before
01:17:46.480 --> 01:17:48.709
um back before I was a monk, I was a
01:17:48.719 --> 01:17:51.350
fisheries observer, foreign fisheries
01:17:51.360 --> 01:17:54.070
observer. I'd work on Japanese longline
01:17:54.080 --> 01:17:56.790
vessels sometimes and I was the
01:17:56.800 --> 01:17:58.709
biologist and any kind of crabs that
01:17:58.719 --> 01:18:00.630
came aboard, especially if they were
01:18:00.640 --> 01:18:02.709
like a commercial species of crab like
01:18:02.719 --> 01:18:05.270
tanner crabs which are called snow crabs
01:18:05.280 --> 01:18:08.550
at the at the restaurant. Uh king crabs,
01:18:08.560 --> 01:18:10.499
that kind of thing. Um, I'd
01:18:10.509 --> 01:18:12.229
[clears throat] have to I'd have to do
01:18:12.239 --> 01:18:14.070
like viability on them, see if they're
01:18:14.080 --> 01:18:17.030
being killed by this fishing process
01:18:17.040 --> 01:18:19.430
because the foreign fisheries aren't
01:18:19.440 --> 01:18:22.149
allowed to catch these commercially
01:18:22.159 --> 01:18:25.110
valuable species like crabs and halibet
01:18:25.120 --> 01:18:26.470
and salmon, that kind of stuff. That's
01:18:26.480 --> 01:18:29.430
for the American fishermen. So, one of
01:18:29.440 --> 01:18:31.669
my jobs, one of my many duties was to
01:18:31.679 --> 01:18:34.470
determine, you know, if they're going to
01:18:34.480 --> 01:18:36.550
survive being accidentally caught and
01:18:36.560 --> 01:18:38.550
thrown back overboard. And so I'd have
01:18:38.560 --> 01:18:40.550
this holding tank
01:18:40.560 --> 01:18:42.709
and you know you put the put there's
01:18:42.719 --> 01:18:44.630
like seawater in there and you put the
01:18:44.640 --> 01:18:46.550
crabs in there until you're not busy
01:18:46.560 --> 01:18:47.910
with something else and then you can
01:18:47.920 --> 01:18:50.070
like take a look at them, see if they're
01:18:50.080 --> 01:18:52.149
still alive, see how injured or damaged
01:18:52.159 --> 01:18:53.669
they are, you know, their their
01:18:53.679 --> 01:18:55.430
likelihood of returning. Also, you know,
01:18:55.440 --> 01:18:57.830
the species, the the the sex, that kind
01:18:57.840 --> 01:19:00.790
of thing, the weight, whatever. And so
01:19:00.800 --> 01:19:03.750
anyways, some of these crabs, like a a
01:19:03.760 --> 01:19:07.430
tanner crab, a a snow crab, I mean, they
01:19:07.440 --> 01:19:09.750
they'd have like seven of their legs
01:19:09.760 --> 01:19:11.830
ripped off going through the machinery
01:19:11.840 --> 01:19:14.229
as they're being pulled on board. It's
01:19:14.239 --> 01:19:16.630
called a crucifier that they'd come
01:19:16.640 --> 01:19:18.709
through and, you know, they'd have like
01:19:18.719 --> 01:19:21.030
one leg left on one side and two legs
01:19:21.040 --> 01:19:23.030
left on the other side. And you throw
01:19:23.040 --> 01:19:24.630
them into the holding tank cuz I don't
01:19:24.640 --> 01:19:27.030
have time to to deal with them yet. And
01:19:27.040 --> 01:19:28.550
if there's a piece of squidbait or
01:19:28.560 --> 01:19:29.590
something in there, they just
01:19:29.600 --> 01:19:30.950
immediately stop and start eating the
01:19:30.960 --> 01:19:33.590
squid bait. It's like they don't care
01:19:33.600 --> 01:19:35.750
all that much, though. They just had
01:19:35.760 --> 01:19:37.910
most of their legs ripped off. It's like
01:19:37.920 --> 01:19:40.550
they're they're not experiencing pain
01:19:40.560 --> 01:19:42.870
the way like a vertebrate would
01:19:42.880 --> 01:19:45.830
experience pain. Like a mouse. I mean,
01:19:45.840 --> 01:19:48.229
you rip three of its legs off and you
01:19:48.239 --> 01:19:50.070
put a little peanut in front of it, it's
01:19:50.080 --> 01:19:51.189
not going to give a [ __ ] about that
01:19:51.199 --> 01:19:52.390
peanut. It's just going to go into
01:19:52.400 --> 01:19:55.830
convulsions and die.
01:19:55.840 --> 01:19:58.790
So, an ant is just kind of like a, you
01:19:58.800 --> 01:20:00.390
know, it's closely related to crabs. You
01:20:00.400 --> 01:20:02.229
know, it's an arthropod.
01:20:02.239 --> 01:20:06.470
And I I do have a certain skepticism
01:20:06.480 --> 01:20:08.550
with regard to whether they have a
01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:10.229
perceiving mind, whether they have like
01:20:10.239 --> 01:20:12.630
a visual image or any kind of mental
01:20:12.640 --> 01:20:14.390
image that they could just be like
01:20:14.400 --> 01:20:16.149
little little terminators. They're like
01:20:16.159 --> 01:20:19.030
little robots.
01:20:19.040 --> 01:20:21.830
So, that's possible.
01:20:21.840 --> 01:20:23.189
But you get into something like a
01:20:23.199 --> 01:20:26.709
goldfish or a frog where arguably
01:20:26.719 --> 01:20:28.470
there's a good better chance that they
01:20:28.480 --> 01:20:31.110
actually are having perceptions and
01:20:31.120 --> 01:20:33.350
having volitions even though they're
01:20:33.360 --> 01:20:36.390
very elemental, very simple,
01:20:36.400 --> 01:20:39.990
then they're already creating karma.
01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:41.590
And it may be that even something like
01:20:41.600 --> 01:20:44.390
insect or you know going with like Jane
01:20:44.400 --> 01:20:47.030
philosophy even plants they might have
01:20:47.040 --> 01:20:50.310
such a primordial kind of not just
01:20:50.320 --> 01:20:54.149
consciousness but like perception like a
01:20:54.159 --> 01:20:55.830
delusion
01:20:55.840 --> 01:20:57.669
because I mean it's delusion that keeps
01:20:57.679 --> 01:21:00.149
you in samsara
01:21:00.159 --> 01:21:04.229
that I mean maybe but it does seem to be
01:21:04.239 --> 01:21:07.750
like a like very different like order of
01:21:07.760 --> 01:21:10.630
magnitude between like an invertebrate
01:21:10.640 --> 01:21:13.830
or a plant than like a vertebrae. You
01:21:13.840 --> 01:21:15.270
know, you're getting into I mean dogs
01:21:15.280 --> 01:21:16.790
and cats especially. I mean they're
01:21:16.800 --> 01:21:19.350
obviously there's somebody there.
01:21:19.360 --> 01:21:21.189
They're simple, you know, they're like
01:21:21.199 --> 01:21:24.149
toddlers or something, but still I mean
01:21:24.159 --> 01:21:27.030
there's somebody there.
01:21:27.040 --> 01:21:29.189
They're already have like a subjective
01:21:29.199 --> 01:21:32.070
life.
01:21:32.080 --> 01:21:33.830
They might not have reached the stage of
01:21:33.840 --> 01:21:36.229
self-awareness yet, but still they've
01:21:36.239 --> 01:21:39.110
got cravings and and delusion and so
01:21:39.120 --> 01:21:41.350
forth,
01:21:41.360 --> 01:21:45.030
false perceptions.
01:21:45.040 --> 01:21:47.270
So, what kind of karma do animals have?
01:21:47.280 --> 01:21:48.870
It'd be like simple. It'd be like the
01:21:48.880 --> 01:21:52.229
karma of a of a of a baby, a small
01:21:52.239 --> 01:21:54.709
child,
01:21:54.719 --> 01:21:56.470
preverbal.
01:21:56.480 --> 01:21:58.790
But, I mean, karma isn't really verbal
01:21:58.800 --> 01:22:02.229
anyway. Karma is more emotional.
01:22:02.239 --> 01:22:03.910
You know, it's it's more coming from
01:22:03.920 --> 01:22:07.030
your guts in a way than than it is
01:22:07.040 --> 01:22:10.870
anything like cerebral.
01:22:10.880 --> 01:22:13.110
So,
01:22:13.120 --> 01:22:14.950
what have they done to deserve such an
01:22:14.960 --> 01:22:18.870
ending? Oh, at the end, I guess this is
01:22:18.880 --> 01:22:20.390
he actually asked three questions.
01:22:20.400 --> 01:22:21.830
There's three there's three question
01:22:21.840 --> 01:22:24.550
marks altogether.
01:22:24.560 --> 01:22:26.790
I got to separate these. Okay, I haven't
01:22:26.800 --> 01:22:28.790
even asked the third question. So, this
01:22:28.800 --> 01:22:30.149
first question was actually two
01:22:30.159 --> 01:22:32.470
questions. So what kind of karma do
01:22:32.480 --> 01:22:34.310
animals have? You know, it's just kind
01:22:34.320 --> 01:22:36.550
of a simple sort of karma. I mean, we
01:22:36.560 --> 01:22:38.390
can complicate it looking at them, but
01:22:38.400 --> 01:22:40.229
their subjective experience is going to
01:22:40.239 --> 01:22:44.229
be way simpler than us looking at them.
01:22:44.239 --> 01:22:46.470
You know, like a goldfish, our
01:22:46.480 --> 01:22:48.470
experience of the goldfish is way more
01:22:48.480 --> 01:22:50.470
complicated than the goldfish's
01:22:50.480 --> 01:22:52.709
experience of being a goldfish in all
01:22:52.719 --> 01:22:55.189
likelihood. you know, of course they've
01:22:55.199 --> 01:22:56.950
got a subjective experience that's
01:22:56.960 --> 01:23:00.310
beyond I mean, we can't really know that
01:23:00.320 --> 01:23:05.189
unless you can read minds or something.
01:23:05.199 --> 01:23:08.550
But still, I mean, it's it's kind of
01:23:08.560 --> 01:23:11.910
like projection anthropocentrism that
01:23:11.920 --> 01:23:14.950
we're like projecting our perceptions
01:23:14.960 --> 01:23:17.990
onto a goldfish, for example, or onto a
01:23:18.000 --> 01:23:22.470
chicken or whatever. That their life is
01:23:22.480 --> 01:23:24.390
subjectively experienced very
01:23:24.400 --> 01:23:28.070
differently from our objective like
01:23:28.080 --> 01:23:32.629
observation of them.
01:23:32.639 --> 01:23:35.590
But they they got simple karma. So I'm
01:23:35.600 --> 01:23:37.189
just going to move on to the sabotur's
01:23:37.199 --> 01:23:39.590
second question. Let's see which I've
01:23:39.600 --> 01:23:42.070
already I've already quoted it more at
01:23:42.080 --> 01:23:44.229
least once. See what have they done to
01:23:44.239 --> 01:23:45.590
deserve such an ending? And he's
01:23:45.600 --> 01:23:49.830
referring to chickens, pigs, cows, etc.
01:23:49.840 --> 01:23:51.750
Like in particular, what have they done
01:23:51.760 --> 01:23:55.189
to deserve such an ending? Well,
01:23:55.199 --> 01:23:58.149
partly they're living in a a crude level
01:23:58.159 --> 01:24:00.390
of perception, a crude level of
01:24:00.400 --> 01:24:04.470
consciousness, so to speak. And
01:24:04.480 --> 01:24:06.149
karma,
01:24:06.159 --> 01:24:08.310
I've I've mentioned this before. It's
01:24:08.320 --> 01:24:11.669
it's sort of like
01:24:11.679 --> 01:24:13.510
like,
01:24:13.520 --> 01:24:15.830
see, how do how do I put it exactly? In
01:24:15.840 --> 01:24:17.590
a way, it's sort of like driving a car.
01:24:17.600 --> 01:24:19.030
If you're not very good at driving a
01:24:19.040 --> 01:24:21.430
car, you're going to get in accidents.
01:24:21.440 --> 01:24:23.189
And but if you're the better you are at
01:24:23.199 --> 01:24:25.430
drive driving a car, not like navigating
01:24:25.440 --> 01:24:27.750
the vehicle, the less likely are less
01:24:27.760 --> 01:24:28.870
likely it is that you're going to get
01:24:28.880 --> 01:24:31.350
into accidents or it's like you've got
01:24:31.360 --> 01:24:34.070
like a troubled mind even though you
01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:35.669
know you're not going out and doing
01:24:35.679 --> 01:24:38.470
horrible things still. I mean even like
01:24:38.480 --> 01:24:40.310
a relatively innocent child can have
01:24:40.320 --> 01:24:43.510
nightmares at night. Nowadays we no
01:24:43.520 --> 01:24:45.750
longer believe that dreams are implanted
01:24:45.760 --> 01:24:49.030
into our minds by gods like people used
01:24:49.040 --> 01:24:51.270
to believe. Now we believe we are
01:24:51.280 --> 01:24:54.470
generating our own dreams
01:24:54.480 --> 01:24:57.350
and sometimes we will generate
01:24:57.360 --> 01:25:00.070
nightmares for ourselves you know as we
01:25:00.080 --> 01:25:01.750
are responsible for that we're the one
01:25:01.760 --> 01:25:03.270
who's creating our subconscious mind
01:25:03.280 --> 01:25:04.790
it's not like our conscious ego
01:25:04.800 --> 01:25:07.350
necessarily but still it's it's coming
01:25:07.360 --> 01:25:10.950
from inside rather than outside
01:25:10.960 --> 01:25:13.189
and what I'm trying to get to here is
01:25:13.199 --> 01:25:16.070
that I mean you don't necessarily
01:25:16.080 --> 01:25:18.950
have to have murdered in order to have
01:25:18.960 --> 01:25:20.950
it come back on you. I mean, that's not
01:25:20.960 --> 01:25:23.110
necessarily how karma works. It's it's
01:25:23.120 --> 01:25:25.350
sort of like the quality of the
01:25:25.360 --> 01:25:27.669
experience. I mean, you've got like this
01:25:27.679 --> 01:25:30.629
crude state of existence. It's you're
01:25:30.639 --> 01:25:33.350
going to have like a crude control over
01:25:33.360 --> 01:25:35.110
what you're doing and what's happening
01:25:35.120 --> 01:25:39.110
back to you. And it's like animals just
01:25:39.120 --> 01:25:40.950
are worse at driving the car than
01:25:40.960 --> 01:25:42.950
peoples are. And so, they're more likely
01:25:42.960 --> 01:25:47.910
to wind up in these tragic accidents.
01:25:47.920 --> 01:25:50.149
Of course, like some dogs are just
01:25:50.159 --> 01:25:51.669
completely pampered and spoiled and they
01:25:51.679 --> 01:25:54.149
they live a higher standard of living
01:25:54.159 --> 01:25:56.709
than most humans. So, I mean there's
01:25:56.719 --> 01:26:02.950
there's variation definitely,
01:26:02.960 --> 01:26:07.030
but I mean the chickens, pigs, and cows.
01:26:07.040 --> 01:26:09.669
Yeah. I mean,
01:26:09.679 --> 01:26:12.149
from a karmic point of view, I mean,
01:26:12.159 --> 01:26:14.870
like a a traditional Orthodox Buddhist
01:26:14.880 --> 01:26:16.709
would have to say that, you know, when
01:26:16.719 --> 01:26:18.709
you're in the animal realm, you're not
01:26:18.719 --> 01:26:20.390
necessarily a chicken every time. I
01:26:20.400 --> 01:26:22.149
mean, chickens probably the most
01:26:22.159 --> 01:26:24.310
predatory of the three listed here,
01:26:24.320 --> 01:26:25.750
chickens, pigs, and cows. You know,
01:26:25.760 --> 01:26:27.669
they're they're at least eating insects.
01:26:27.679 --> 01:26:29.430
At least the wild ones are. the red
01:26:29.440 --> 01:26:33.110
jungle fowl in Southeast Asia, you know,
01:26:33.120 --> 01:26:36.550
they're eating insects and worms and
01:26:36.560 --> 01:26:37.830
whatever other kind of little creatures
01:26:37.840 --> 01:26:39.110
they can find. They don't give a [ __ ]
01:26:39.120 --> 01:26:41.030
You know, they have no concept of maybe
01:26:41.040 --> 01:26:43.590
this is immoral anymore than a tiger
01:26:43.600 --> 01:26:45.270
does.
01:26:45.280 --> 01:26:47.270
Pigs, I mean, they're omnivores. They'll
01:26:47.280 --> 01:26:49.830
they'll eat, you know, they'll they'll
01:26:49.840 --> 01:26:51.750
eat baby, you know, they they root up
01:26:51.760 --> 01:26:53.669
like a rat nest with baby rats. They'll
01:26:53.679 --> 01:26:56.229
eat the baby rats. That kind of thing.
01:26:56.239 --> 01:26:58.149
cows. I mean, cows, I mean, they're
01:26:58.159 --> 01:26:59.750
pretty saintly. I mean, [clears throat]
01:26:59.760 --> 01:27:02.310
a cow keeps all five precepts perfectly,
01:27:02.320 --> 01:27:04.790
as far as I know. Certainly don't tell
01:27:04.800 --> 01:27:07.030
lies.
01:27:07.040 --> 01:27:08.550
And then they have like bad things
01:27:08.560 --> 01:27:09.990
happen to him. So, so the orthodox
01:27:10.000 --> 01:27:12.709
Buddhist would say, well, it's sort of
01:27:12.719 --> 01:27:15.430
like residual karma from a previous life
01:27:15.440 --> 01:27:18.950
as some more predatory kind of animal.
01:27:18.960 --> 01:27:21.110
But I mean you could just look at it as
01:27:21.120 --> 01:27:23.990
we are creating our own reality
01:27:24.000 --> 01:27:26.310
and there's like this positive and
01:27:26.320 --> 01:27:28.070
negative pleasure and pain kind of
01:27:28.080 --> 01:27:32.550
balance that has to dependently coarise
01:27:32.560 --> 01:27:35.510
and so
01:27:35.520 --> 01:27:38.470
it's just like the the crudeness of
01:27:38.480 --> 01:27:41.189
their mentality which humans I mean
01:27:41.199 --> 01:27:43.430
we're not all we're not all that pure
01:27:43.440 --> 01:27:46.550
either that it's just they're creating
01:27:46.560 --> 01:27:48.790
this reality for themselves which
01:27:48.800 --> 01:27:51.110
happens to dovetail with, you know, the
01:27:51.120 --> 01:27:53.189
karma and the the perceptions of of
01:27:53.199 --> 01:27:54.950
other beings, including the guy who owns
01:27:54.960 --> 01:27:59.351
the slaughterhouse.
01:27:59.361 --> 01:28:00.070
[snorts]
01:28:00.080 --> 01:28:03.669
Trying to understand karma is difficult.
01:28:03.679 --> 01:28:05.430
In the text, it does say that if you try
01:28:05.440 --> 01:28:07.669
to understand the ramifications, the
01:28:07.679 --> 01:28:09.910
permutations, the subtleties of karma,
01:28:09.920 --> 01:28:13.830
you can go insane.
01:28:13.840 --> 01:28:16.470
But it does seem to me that a lot of it
01:28:16.480 --> 01:28:18.310
is not necessarily that the chickens,
01:28:18.320 --> 01:28:20.149
pigs, and cows are being punished for
01:28:20.159 --> 01:28:22.709
wrong deeds. It's just that they are
01:28:22.719 --> 01:28:25.350
crashing the car because they do not
01:28:25.360 --> 01:28:28.310
have the mental sophistication to
01:28:28.320 --> 01:28:31.910
navigate the vehicle effectively.
01:28:31.920 --> 01:28:33.750
They are creating their own reality in a
01:28:33.760 --> 01:28:35.110
sense, which is very different, as I
01:28:35.120 --> 01:28:37.669
say, from our observation of them. their
01:28:37.679 --> 01:28:39.270
subjective experience is going to be at
01:28:39.280 --> 01:28:42.310
a different level than our observations
01:28:42.320 --> 01:28:47.669
of them, you know, outwardly.
01:28:47.679 --> 01:28:50.629
So, you know, there is that, but it's
01:28:50.639 --> 01:28:53.030
it's really a difficult question to
01:28:53.040 --> 01:28:57.430
answer because it's so metaphysical and
01:28:57.440 --> 01:29:02.310
subtle and complicated and so forth that
01:29:02.320 --> 01:29:05.830
uh it's it's really hard to answer.
01:29:05.840 --> 01:29:07.910
So,
01:29:07.920 --> 01:29:09.830
What have they done to deserve such an
01:29:09.840 --> 01:29:12.070
ending? I.e. being killed in a slaughter
01:29:12.080 --> 01:29:16.149
house. Um,
01:29:16.159 --> 01:29:17.590
it would depend on the individual
01:29:17.600 --> 01:29:20.390
animal, I guess.
01:29:20.400 --> 01:29:21.910
And I'm just I'm just going to move on
01:29:21.920 --> 01:29:24.470
to the next question. That question was
01:29:24.480 --> 01:29:26.870
difficult to answer.
01:29:26.880 --> 01:29:29.030
Just even from like within a Buddhist
01:29:29.040 --> 01:29:32.950
context, giving like a a really like a
01:29:32.960 --> 01:29:35.270
cogent coherent kind of answer is not
01:29:35.280 --> 01:29:36.709
easy.
01:29:36.719 --> 01:29:38.390
So I'm just I'm moving on to the next
01:29:38.400 --> 01:29:42.149
one from the sabotur. At about what age
01:29:42.159 --> 01:29:45.350
does a child begin to acrue karma? At
01:29:45.360 --> 01:29:47.590
the age when they begin to generate
01:29:47.600 --> 01:29:51.669
perception and have volitions which
01:29:51.679 --> 01:29:53.750
could be before they're even born. They
01:29:53.760 --> 01:29:55.910
could still be in mama's belly and
01:29:55.920 --> 01:29:58.149
starting to have perceptions and
01:29:58.159 --> 01:30:01.270
volitions.
01:30:01.280 --> 01:30:04.470
So I mean it doesn't take like adult
01:30:04.480 --> 01:30:07.270
human consciousness or like a capacity
01:30:07.280 --> 01:30:09.990
to form verbal sentences or anything to
01:30:10.000 --> 01:30:13.030
be generating karma.
01:30:13.040 --> 01:30:15.350
So yeah I mean at the as soon as their
01:30:15.360 --> 01:30:17.590
mind is developed enough that they can
01:30:17.600 --> 01:30:21.669
start perceiving and having vitions
01:30:21.679 --> 01:30:26.470
then they've started creating karma.
01:30:26.480 --> 01:30:28.870
Okay,
01:30:28.880 --> 01:30:30.790
that was kind of easy after the the one
01:30:30.800 --> 01:30:33.189
preceding it. I'm just going to move on
01:30:33.199 --> 01:30:35.590
to the next question. This is from PSA.
01:30:35.600 --> 01:30:37.110
And now for something completely
01:30:37.120 --> 01:30:39.510
different.
01:30:39.520 --> 01:30:42.470
PSA says, "On a previous Q&A, you said
01:30:42.480 --> 01:30:44.310
that if you're petting the puppy and it
01:30:44.320 --> 01:30:47.510
accidentally goes off, it's not a sana
01:30:47.520 --> 01:30:51.110
offense. However, chat GPT says that if
01:30:51.120 --> 01:30:53.030
the monk intentionally stimulated the
01:30:53.040 --> 01:30:55.750
organ and it accidentally led to orgasm,
01:30:55.760 --> 01:30:58.070
even if he didn't want an orgasm, and
01:30:58.080 --> 01:31:00.470
even if he didn't delight in sensuality,
01:31:00.480 --> 01:31:02.149
he was just trying to rid himself of
01:31:02.159 --> 01:31:04.629
overwhelming sensations, it is still a
01:31:04.639 --> 01:31:08.070
sanadisa offense. So, I trust you more
01:31:08.080 --> 01:31:11.110
than chat GBT, which I appreciate. Could
01:31:11.120 --> 01:31:13.669
you please set the record straight or is
01:31:13.679 --> 01:31:16.390
it or is it not a sanaa offense? Well,
01:31:16.400 --> 01:31:17.910
it isn't. That's what I've been that's
01:31:17.920 --> 01:31:22.950
what I said before. So it's like PSA
01:31:22.960 --> 01:31:26.310
here's my my statement that like a monk
01:31:26.320 --> 01:31:29.030
is just kind of not exactly spanking the
01:31:29.040 --> 01:31:30.550
puppy but just petting it and it
01:31:30.560 --> 01:31:34.229
accidentally goes off and then I say
01:31:34.239 --> 01:31:37.669
that is not a full san
01:31:37.679 --> 01:31:39.750
because you have to have intention. Then
01:31:39.760 --> 01:31:41.830
PSA
01:31:41.840 --> 01:31:44.070
for whatever reason doesn't fully trust
01:31:44.080 --> 01:31:48.870
me maybe he he goes to chat GPT an AI
01:31:48.880 --> 01:31:51.590
asks chat GBT and chat GBT disagrees
01:31:51.600 --> 01:31:54.550
with me saying that it's a san offense
01:31:54.560 --> 01:31:56.390
even if you have no intention to have an
01:31:56.400 --> 01:31:58.629
orgasm
01:31:58.639 --> 01:32:01.350
and uh chat GBT is wrong. I mean this is
01:32:01.360 --> 01:32:03.270
something that I studied very carefully
01:32:03.280 --> 01:32:04.870
as a monk cuz sometimes you have to know
01:32:04.880 --> 01:32:06.950
for sure did you commit a sanabisa
01:32:06.960 --> 01:32:10.390
offense or not and
01:32:10.400 --> 01:32:11.910
I mean I can give a little bit of a
01:32:11.920 --> 01:32:13.830
lesson in in rules of monastic
01:32:13.840 --> 01:32:16.229
discipline here there are two kinds of
01:32:16.239 --> 01:32:19.510
rules of monastic there's achieit and
01:32:19.520 --> 01:32:21.830
sacha
01:32:21.840 --> 01:32:24.950
means without intention sacha means with
01:32:24.960 --> 01:32:27.830
intention so there are some rules that
01:32:27.840 --> 01:32:29.990
you can break them even if you're you do
01:32:30.000 --> 01:32:32.550
do it accidentally. You know, you could
01:32:32.560 --> 01:32:34.709
be clueless that you're breaking a rule.
01:32:34.719 --> 01:32:36.229
Uh you can be clueless that you're doing
01:32:36.239 --> 01:32:38.229
what is against the rules and it's still
01:32:38.239 --> 01:32:39.990
against rules. Like drinking alcohol for
01:32:40.000 --> 01:32:42.790
example. If a monk drinks alcohol even
01:32:42.800 --> 01:32:45.030
by accident, you know, he doesn't even
01:32:45.040 --> 01:32:46.550
know that it's alcoholic. Somebody gives
01:32:46.560 --> 01:32:49.189
him some medicine or he gets some fruit
01:32:49.199 --> 01:32:51.189
juice that has started to ferment in the
01:32:51.199 --> 01:32:53.669
tropical heat in Southeast Asia. He
01:32:53.679 --> 01:32:55.510
takes a sip of it and it tastes like
01:32:55.520 --> 01:32:58.870
wine or there's obviously alcohol in it.
01:32:58.880 --> 01:33:01.750
He's broken a patchy offense even though
01:33:01.760 --> 01:33:04.390
it was done completely innocently.
01:33:04.400 --> 01:33:06.390
Other rules are sachidika which means
01:33:06.400 --> 01:33:08.870
you have to do it deliberately like
01:33:08.880 --> 01:33:11.110
killing an animal for example. If you
01:33:11.120 --> 01:33:14.229
accidentally step on an ant
01:33:14.239 --> 01:33:15.510
you mean you're not even aware that you
01:33:15.520 --> 01:33:16.950
stepped on it. You haven't broken a
01:33:16.960 --> 01:33:19.189
rule. But if you stomp on the ant on
01:33:19.199 --> 01:33:21.510
purpose then you've broken the rule.
01:33:21.520 --> 01:33:25.270
That's sachetika. and having like
01:33:25.280 --> 01:33:28.310
deliberately having an orgasm is
01:33:28.320 --> 01:33:31.270
sachita. You have to there's there's a a
01:33:31.280 --> 01:33:36.229
term in Pali uh Abi Abiarova
01:33:36.239 --> 01:33:39.030
which is in the in the text it's like in
01:33:39.040 --> 01:33:42.470
the the [clears throat] sutu banga which
01:33:42.480 --> 01:33:44.950
is the old commentary to the pimoka
01:33:44.960 --> 01:33:46.790
rules that is so old that it also has
01:33:46.800 --> 01:33:49.110
become canonical it's just like
01:33:49.120 --> 01:33:51.110
incorporated right into the the poly
01:33:51.120 --> 01:33:53.590
texti
01:33:53.600 --> 01:33:56.790
means having made up your mind you have
01:33:56.800 --> 01:33:58.709
decided once and for all you're going to
01:33:58.719 --> 01:34:01.590
do this thing. And in order to commit
01:34:01.600 --> 01:34:04.709
the SASa offense of deliberately causing
01:34:04.719 --> 01:34:06.870
yourself to have an orgasm, you have to
01:34:06.880 --> 01:34:09.189
have made up your mind that you are
01:34:09.199 --> 01:34:11.750
going to have that orgasm
01:34:11.760 --> 01:34:13.590
and then you have to succeed in having
01:34:13.600 --> 01:34:15.750
it. If you have made up your mind to
01:34:15.760 --> 01:34:17.590
have that orgasm and then somebody
01:34:17.600 --> 01:34:21.030
suddenly walks in and you stop, then
01:34:21.040 --> 01:34:22.709
you're still have broken a rule. It's
01:34:22.719 --> 01:34:26.390
not sana because you didn't really emit
01:34:26.400 --> 01:34:29.910
the precious bodily fluids
01:34:29.920 --> 01:34:31.510
but still you had the intention and you
01:34:31.520 --> 01:34:33.990
did start making effort. So that is a
01:34:34.000 --> 01:34:36.229
lesser a lesser rule that you have
01:34:36.239 --> 01:34:39.830
broken but you have to have the
01:34:39.840 --> 01:34:43.590
intention in order to have broken the
01:34:43.600 --> 01:34:45.990
rule. And that's one reason why if you
01:34:46.000 --> 01:34:47.830
have like a nocturnal emission in your
01:34:47.840 --> 01:34:51.430
sleep, then even it could just be like
01:34:51.440 --> 01:34:53.590
triple X-rated dream that you had, but
01:34:53.600 --> 01:34:56.310
still that you haven't really like
01:34:56.320 --> 01:34:59.189
broken the rule, which is is good
01:34:59.199 --> 01:35:01.990
because a young healthy red-blooded
01:35:02.000 --> 01:35:04.629
monk, I mean, in my [clears throat]
01:35:04.639 --> 01:35:08.149
case, when I was young, up until my 40s,
01:35:08.159 --> 01:35:11.270
um I'd be having like a pornographic
01:35:11.280 --> 01:35:14.310
dream about every two weeks, which would
01:35:14.320 --> 01:35:16.470
regulate the hormone levels. You know,
01:35:16.480 --> 01:35:18.149
the hormone levels get up into the red
01:35:18.159 --> 01:35:20.390
zone. You need pressure release. And if
01:35:20.400 --> 01:35:22.709
you're not going to do it like while
01:35:22.719 --> 01:35:24.629
you're awake, it just happens in your
01:35:24.639 --> 01:35:26.149
sleep.
01:35:26.159 --> 01:35:30.470
At least in my case, it did.
01:35:30.480 --> 01:35:32.070
So
01:35:32.080 --> 01:35:34.070
yeah, I mean that is one of the
01:35:34.080 --> 01:35:37.750
requisites of breaking the sanasa rule.
01:35:37.760 --> 01:35:40.950
Chat GPT is no authority on rules of
01:35:40.960 --> 01:35:42.950
ancient Indian Buddhist monastic
01:35:42.960 --> 01:35:44.790
discipline
01:35:44.800 --> 01:35:46.950
that you have to have deliberate
01:35:46.960 --> 01:35:48.470
intention
01:35:48.480 --> 01:35:51.030
to emit the precious bodily fluids in
01:35:51.040 --> 01:35:53.189
order for you to break the rule. I mean
01:35:53.199 --> 01:35:56.229
you could even be sort of kind of iffy
01:35:56.239 --> 01:35:58.629
on the subject you know it's like do I
01:35:58.639 --> 01:36:01.510
or do I not and then it happens still
01:36:01.520 --> 01:36:03.910
you haven't broken the full sana rule
01:36:03.920 --> 01:36:06.950
because you have to be
01:36:06.960 --> 01:36:09.510
you have to have made up your mind that
01:36:09.520 --> 01:36:15.191
you are going to do this thing
01:36:15.201 --> 01:36:16.629
[sighs]
01:36:16.639 --> 01:36:18.870
so it's kind of like telling a lie it's
01:36:18.880 --> 01:36:21.270
like you that's another one that that is
01:36:21.280 --> 01:36:22.470
sachidika
01:36:22.480 --> 01:36:24.390
that if you just say something that is
01:36:24.400 --> 01:36:27.590
false, believing it to be true, which
01:36:27.600 --> 01:36:29.669
happens sometimes, then you're not
01:36:29.679 --> 01:36:32.310
guilty of lying, which is something and
01:36:32.320 --> 01:36:34.229
and the Buddhist definition of lying is
01:36:34.239 --> 01:36:37.110
very helpful for me and I do apply it to
01:36:37.120 --> 01:36:39.910
sometimes stuff I see online, but I can
01:36:39.920 --> 01:36:42.310
get back to that. But in order to tell a
01:36:42.320 --> 01:36:44.790
lie, you have to have this deliberate
01:36:44.800 --> 01:36:46.950
intention to deceive. That's one of the
01:36:46.960 --> 01:36:50.470
requisites of lying in Buddhist ethics,
01:36:50.480 --> 01:36:53.910
the deliberate intention to deceive.
01:36:53.920 --> 01:36:55.750
But if you're just saying something,
01:36:55.760 --> 01:36:57.590
you're like recounting something that
01:36:57.600 --> 01:36:59.669
happened and then while you're like in
01:36:59.679 --> 01:37:01.350
mid-sentence, you realize that you're
01:37:01.360 --> 01:37:03.510
exaggerating
01:37:03.520 --> 01:37:06.390
and then it's like you you have what is
01:37:06.400 --> 01:37:08.870
called confused mindfulness.
01:37:08.880 --> 01:37:10.390
You know, it's like you're still
01:37:10.400 --> 01:37:11.830
continuing with the sentence while at
01:37:11.840 --> 01:37:13.910
the same time just like, hey, this isn't
01:37:13.920 --> 01:37:16.390
entirely true. then still you you're not
01:37:16.400 --> 01:37:18.470
guilty of lying.
01:37:18.480 --> 01:37:20.149
I mean, you have to like have made up
01:37:20.159 --> 01:37:21.669
your mind you're going to deceive
01:37:21.679 --> 01:37:25.030
somebody.
01:37:25.040 --> 01:37:27.270
But getting back to the stuff I see
01:37:27.280 --> 01:37:29.750
online sometimes, it's like so many
01:37:29.760 --> 01:37:31.990
people will just accuse somebody of
01:37:32.000 --> 01:37:33.990
lying or accuse a statement of being a
01:37:34.000 --> 01:37:36.229
lie simply because they consider it to
01:37:36.239 --> 01:37:38.390
be untrue, regardless of the motives of
01:37:38.400 --> 01:37:40.149
the person who says it. In most cases,
01:37:40.159 --> 01:37:41.990
the person might actually, well, in many
01:37:42.000 --> 01:37:44.070
cases, the person actually believes that
01:37:44.080 --> 01:37:46.149
what they're saying is true. So, you
01:37:46.159 --> 01:37:49.510
could say that it's a lie at some point
01:37:49.520 --> 01:37:50.870
along, but you can't really call the
01:37:50.880 --> 01:37:54.550
person a liar
01:37:54.560 --> 01:37:56.229
because there has to be a deliberate
01:37:56.239 --> 01:37:59.430
intention to deceive.
01:37:59.440 --> 01:38:01.350
Maybe they were deceived by some other
01:38:01.360 --> 01:38:03.669
liar, but they themselves would not be a
01:38:03.679 --> 01:38:05.669
liar so long as they consider it to be
01:38:05.679 --> 01:38:07.189
true when they're saying it, no matter
01:38:07.199 --> 01:38:11.510
how wrong it might be.
01:38:11.520 --> 01:38:14.149
But yeah, chat GPT is not a reliable
01:38:14.159 --> 01:38:16.950
source of information on the subtleties
01:38:16.960 --> 01:38:20.070
of ancient Buddhist monastic discipline.
01:38:20.080 --> 01:38:21.270
And I'm just going to move on to the
01:38:21.280 --> 01:38:24.390
next question. This is from PSA.
01:38:24.400 --> 01:38:28.149
History question. Of all non Buddhist
01:38:28.159 --> 01:38:30.950
countries in the world today, in your
01:38:30.960 --> 01:38:33.430
opinion, which one was formerly the most
01:38:33.440 --> 01:38:35.270
Buddhist and how did it come to
01:38:35.280 --> 01:38:38.310
completely disappear? So I assume he's
01:38:38.320 --> 01:38:39.430
not referring to India. I mean
01:38:39.440 --> 01:38:41.109
technically India is a non-bhist
01:38:41.119 --> 01:38:43.590
country. There's very few Buddhists in
01:38:43.600 --> 01:38:47.189
India now.
01:38:47.199 --> 01:38:50.229
So let's see here. Let's just assume PSA
01:38:50.239 --> 01:38:52.550
is not referring to India which is
01:38:52.560 --> 01:38:55.270
mostly Hindu now.
01:38:55.280 --> 01:38:57.669
Um see of all the non Buddhist countries
01:38:57.679 --> 01:38:59.109
in the world today in my opinion which
01:38:59.119 --> 01:39:01.109
one was formerly the most Buddhist and
01:39:01.119 --> 01:39:03.109
how did it come to completely disappear?
01:39:03.119 --> 01:39:05.669
Let's go with Pakistan.
01:39:05.679 --> 01:39:08.310
Pakistan was a
01:39:08.320 --> 01:39:11.270
strongly Buddhist country.
01:39:11.280 --> 01:39:12.790
I mean you don't really associate
01:39:12.800 --> 01:39:15.669
Pakistan with Buddhism nowadays but it
01:39:15.679 --> 01:39:19.430
was I mean it was like uh Kaneska what
01:39:19.440 --> 01:39:21.830
was he the the Kushon Empire. I mean
01:39:21.840 --> 01:39:23.350
it's like the the capital was in
01:39:23.360 --> 01:39:27.189
Peshawar or near modern day Peshawar
01:39:27.199 --> 01:39:29.430
which is in Pakistan and it was a
01:39:29.440 --> 01:39:33.030
Buddhistic kingdom. I think uh Kaneshka,
01:39:33.040 --> 01:39:35.189
the emperor Kaneska favored Sarvasti
01:39:35.199 --> 01:39:37.350
Vada Buddhism.
01:39:37.360 --> 01:39:39.990
There was a Buddhist council there. I
01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:41.590
think it [clears throat] was the fifth
01:39:41.600 --> 01:39:43.510
Buddhist council.
01:39:43.520 --> 01:39:45.189
Maybe it was the fourth. I don't
01:39:45.199 --> 01:39:46.790
remember now. But it was they decided
01:39:46.800 --> 01:39:48.790
that Sarvasti was the correct form of
01:39:48.800 --> 01:39:50.310
Buddhism. And so all the other schools
01:39:50.320 --> 01:39:53.350
rejected that one as invalid.
01:39:53.360 --> 01:39:58.310
But uh Pakistan was just strongly
01:39:58.320 --> 01:40:00.950
Buddhist country up until Islamic
01:40:00.960 --> 01:40:03.830
conquest. Probably Buddhism was already
01:40:03.840 --> 01:40:07.350
in decline in
01:40:07.360 --> 01:40:11.590
you know central Asia and Pakistan,
01:40:11.600 --> 01:40:13.910
northern India before the Muslims came
01:40:13.920 --> 01:40:15.590
along.
01:40:15.600 --> 01:40:17.510
um you know it was getting more esoteric
01:40:17.520 --> 01:40:19.430
and just kind of going off into these
01:40:19.440 --> 01:40:23.109
weird tantric kind of stuff and like
01:40:23.119 --> 01:40:26.390
stuff that only monks at universities
01:40:26.400 --> 01:40:28.229
would understand and the lay people were
01:40:28.239 --> 01:40:29.830
clueless with regard to this kind of
01:40:29.840 --> 01:40:31.669
stuff you know was kind of losing its
01:40:31.679 --> 01:40:34.149
touch with the village the kind of the
01:40:34.159 --> 01:40:37.109
the ordinary person
01:40:37.119 --> 01:40:39.109
but really what wiped it out just like
01:40:39.119 --> 01:40:42.149
what wiped it out in India was Islamic
01:40:42.159 --> 01:40:45.109
conquest and the fact that Buddhists are
01:40:45.119 --> 01:40:47.830
like uncompromising pacifists didn't
01:40:47.840 --> 01:40:50.550
help. You know, uncompromising pacifists
01:40:50.560 --> 01:40:53.590
are less likely to put up a good fight
01:40:53.600 --> 01:40:57.030
even in self-defense against
01:40:57.040 --> 01:40:59.910
Muslim Turks on a rampage just
01:40:59.920 --> 01:41:03.590
slaughtering Buddhists.
01:41:03.600 --> 01:41:05.189
So, that was fairly easy. I mean it's
01:41:05.199 --> 01:41:08.709
it's kind of cheating I suppose but you
01:41:08.719 --> 01:41:12.229
know much of central Asia you know like
01:41:12.239 --> 01:41:13.910
Kazakhstan
01:41:13.920 --> 01:41:15.750
Tajikistan
01:41:15.760 --> 01:41:18.709
this kind of stuff I mean that was all
01:41:18.719 --> 01:41:23.270
like largely if not primarily Buddhist
01:41:23.280 --> 01:41:28.310
and then it just got converted to Islam.
01:41:28.320 --> 01:41:30.629
Let's see.
01:41:30.639 --> 01:41:33.189
Yeah. So it it'd be India would be like
01:41:33.199 --> 01:41:35.990
the the easy cheating kind of answer. Um
01:41:36.000 --> 01:41:38.149
Pakistan might have even been more
01:41:38.159 --> 01:41:41.189
predom primarily Buddhist. I mean there
01:41:41.199 --> 01:41:43.109
was possibly a higher percentage of
01:41:43.119 --> 01:41:45.990
Buddhists in what is now Pakistan than
01:41:46.000 --> 01:41:48.470
there was in what is now India like
01:41:48.480 --> 01:41:50.390
during the reign of the emperor Ashoka.
01:41:50.400 --> 01:41:52.709
That kind of thing.
01:41:52.719 --> 01:41:54.310
And it came to completely disappear
01:41:54.320 --> 01:41:55.990
largely just because everything is
01:41:56.000 --> 01:41:58.229
impermanent and it was starting to go
01:41:58.239 --> 01:42:02.310
into decline. And then you had like
01:42:02.320 --> 01:42:03.750
rabid, [clears throat]
01:42:03.760 --> 01:42:05.510
you know,
01:42:05.520 --> 01:42:09.270
see, Muslim fanatics coming through
01:42:09.280 --> 01:42:12.070
using religion as a justification for
01:42:12.080 --> 01:42:16.070
just plundering the land,
01:42:16.080 --> 01:42:19.270
stealing.
01:42:19.280 --> 01:42:21.510
So, I guess I'm just going to move on to
01:42:21.520 --> 01:42:25.510
the next question. This is from Romeo.
01:42:25.520 --> 01:42:27.109
And we've been going, gosh, we're
01:42:27.119 --> 01:42:28.950
getting up to like two hours. doesn't
01:42:28.960 --> 01:42:31.030
it? It's sort of like these Q& A's are
01:42:31.040 --> 01:42:33.830
like a a like a shoulder bag where
01:42:33.840 --> 01:42:35.270
whether you have a big one or a little
01:42:35.280 --> 01:42:37.669
one, it's it's it's going to get full
01:42:37.679 --> 01:42:39.270
anyway.
01:42:39.280 --> 01:42:41.350
So, even if I have a few questions, it's
01:42:41.360 --> 01:42:42.550
still going to it's still going to go
01:42:42.560 --> 01:42:45.830
two hours.
01:42:45.840 --> 01:42:48.470
Anyways, Romeo
01:42:48.480 --> 01:42:51.270
Romeo says, "In my exploration of
01:42:51.280 --> 01:42:53.430
Buddhism, I keep coming across a term
01:42:53.440 --> 01:42:56.310
called spiritual bypass.
01:42:56.320 --> 01:42:57.830
But I I should really only use one
01:42:57.840 --> 01:42:59.669
finger cuz he used single quotes instead
01:42:59.679 --> 01:43:01.430
of double.
01:43:01.440 --> 01:43:03.270
Can you tell me your understanding of
01:43:03.280 --> 01:43:06.870
this concept? What is spiritual bypass
01:43:06.880 --> 01:43:09.510
and how do you suggest one best manages
01:43:09.520 --> 01:43:12.390
it? And I had never heard of spiritual
01:43:12.400 --> 01:43:14.629
bypass when Romeo asked this question. I
01:43:14.639 --> 01:43:17.109
actually looked it up online.
01:43:17.119 --> 01:43:19.830
I in fact I even emailed Romeo telling I
01:43:19.840 --> 01:43:23.030
never heard of it before. But I figure
01:43:23.040 --> 01:43:25.510
what the hell, it's fair game. It's on
01:43:25.520 --> 01:43:28.629
the list. So I cheated a little bit and
01:43:28.639 --> 01:43:30.070
looked it up and it turns out that the
01:43:30.080 --> 01:43:32.950
term was coined in the 1980s
01:43:32.960 --> 01:43:36.870
by some probably some western weiposa
01:43:36.880 --> 01:43:39.189
teacher who is also into psychology that
01:43:39.199 --> 01:43:41.430
kind of thing. So it seems like Romeo in
01:43:41.440 --> 01:43:43.750
his exploration of Buddhism is reading a
01:43:43.760 --> 01:43:47.109
lot of like western
01:43:47.119 --> 01:43:48.950
liberal
01:43:48.960 --> 01:43:51.270
you know very recent Buddhist literature
01:43:51.280 --> 01:43:52.950
which is in [clears throat] my opinion
01:43:52.960 --> 01:43:54.390
not the best [laughter]
01:43:54.400 --> 01:43:56.870
way to study Buddhism. I mean if you
01:43:56.880 --> 01:43:59.990
want to study like authentic Buddhism
01:44:00.000 --> 01:44:03.109
you should go as far back towards the
01:44:03.119 --> 01:44:05.189
the Buddha as possible. get as close to
01:44:05.199 --> 01:44:08.390
the Buddha as you can instead of reading
01:44:08.400 --> 01:44:10.950
stuff by Jack Kornfield or John Kabat
01:44:10.960 --> 01:44:14.149
Zen, this kind of stuff.
01:44:14.159 --> 01:44:18.149
But spiritual bypass, it's it turns out
01:44:18.159 --> 01:44:21.430
according to what I what I saw online
01:44:21.440 --> 01:44:23.669
that it's a term coined by some person
01:44:23.679 --> 01:44:25.109
whose name I don't remember back in the
01:44:25.119 --> 01:44:29.590
1980s with regard to using spiritual
01:44:29.600 --> 01:44:33.750
ideas to shortcircuit your practice or
01:44:33.760 --> 01:44:38.390
avoid making spiritual progress like
01:44:38.400 --> 01:44:41.830
using the the Buddhist idea of anata and
01:44:41.840 --> 01:44:46.149
no self as just a way of coping,
01:44:46.159 --> 01:44:47.669
you know, it's just sort of a defense
01:44:47.679 --> 01:44:49.669
mechanism. It's like, well, you know,
01:44:49.679 --> 01:44:51.990
it's like nobody really exists anyway,
01:44:52.000 --> 01:44:54.470
so this isn't really affecting anybody.
01:44:54.480 --> 01:44:56.870
Or you can adopt a more Hinduistic, it's
01:44:56.880 --> 01:45:00.390
all perfect. And so it causes you not to
01:45:00.400 --> 01:45:02.870
really deal with the issue or learn to
01:45:02.880 --> 01:45:05.189
deal with it anymore than just laying
01:45:05.199 --> 01:45:09.510
this kind of a label onto it. I was like
01:45:09.520 --> 01:45:11.109
one one thing I was thinking of when I
01:45:11.119 --> 01:45:13.350
was looking this up and and finding out
01:45:13.360 --> 01:45:15.510
what it is. It reminded me of like the
01:45:15.520 --> 01:45:18.870
Bavad Gita for example. Let's see. I
01:45:18.880 --> 01:45:20.790
don't have the Bavad Gita on hand but I
01:45:20.800 --> 01:45:26.149
do have the the poem Brahma by Wal Wal
01:45:26.159 --> 01:45:29.990
Ralph Waldo Emerson. And the very first
01:45:30.000 --> 01:45:32.470
line of the poem Brahma which is a nice
01:45:32.480 --> 01:45:36.149
poem. I really do like it. He says
01:45:36.159 --> 01:45:37.510
this is [clears throat] this is God
01:45:37.520 --> 01:45:40.790
speaking. If the red slayer think he
01:45:40.800 --> 01:45:44.149
slays or if the slain thinks he is slain
01:45:44.159 --> 01:45:46.629
they know not well the subtle ways I
01:45:46.639 --> 01:45:51.270
keep and pass and turn again
01:45:51.280 --> 01:45:54.149
and like a lot of the Bava Gita
01:45:54.159 --> 01:45:55.430
especially towards the beginning is
01:45:55.440 --> 01:45:58.470
saying is it's like you're not really
01:45:58.480 --> 01:46:00.310
killing anybody when you're when you're
01:46:00.320 --> 01:46:02.709
killing enemies on the field of battle
01:46:02.719 --> 01:46:05.350
you know it's like it's all god anyway
01:46:05.360 --> 01:46:08.709
this kind of thing um and so just kind
01:46:08.719 --> 01:46:10.870
slapping that label on without really
01:46:10.880 --> 01:46:13.189
like working out the issues that are
01:46:13.199 --> 01:46:18.629
deeper down is spiritual bypass.
01:46:18.639 --> 01:46:21.430
You know, it's just it's just my karma,
01:46:21.440 --> 01:46:23.510
you know. It's just their karma, you
01:46:23.520 --> 01:46:26.310
know, justifying screwing somebody over
01:46:26.320 --> 01:46:29.109
or slaughtering a chicken. It's just
01:46:29.119 --> 01:46:31.270
their karma. And then you know, you're
01:46:31.280 --> 01:46:32.709
not really dealing with the deeper
01:46:32.719 --> 01:46:35.510
issues involved. So that's my
01:46:35.520 --> 01:46:37.750
understanding of spiritual bypass that I
01:46:37.760 --> 01:46:41.109
learned shortly before doing this video
01:46:41.119 --> 01:46:42.790
just because I was kind of curious
01:46:42.800 --> 01:46:44.550
myself. You know, I was thinking
01:46:44.560 --> 01:46:46.470
spiritual bypass it could be some kind
01:46:46.480 --> 01:46:48.470
of operation where they're, you know,
01:46:48.480 --> 01:46:50.629
sort of like a coronary bypass, you
01:46:50.639 --> 01:46:52.550
know, where they're like doing some sort
01:46:52.560 --> 01:46:54.870
of condundalini bypass, you know, like
01:46:54.880 --> 01:46:58.390
like fig like fixing an obstructed
01:46:58.400 --> 01:47:00.950
chakra or something.
01:47:00.960 --> 01:47:03.990
But it's not that at all.
01:47:04.000 --> 01:47:05.350
Or [clears throat] another thought that
01:47:05.360 --> 01:47:07.590
I had of what spiritual bypass might
01:47:07.600 --> 01:47:10.950
mean is just sort of like having some
01:47:10.960 --> 01:47:15.910
guru like cleanse your karma for you
01:47:15.920 --> 01:47:18.790
which is a thing in Hinduism where you
01:47:18.800 --> 01:47:22.149
can go to a guru and you know you you
01:47:22.159 --> 01:47:23.990
offer them there was one you in South
01:47:24.000 --> 01:47:25.910
India I think you'd offer him cigarettes
01:47:25.920 --> 01:47:27.990
and he'd smoke the cigarettes and we
01:47:28.000 --> 01:47:30.470
would somehow be burning off your karma
01:47:30.480 --> 01:47:32.390
by smoking the cigarettes. And according
01:47:32.400 --> 01:47:34.149
to Rahm Doss, he might have like four
01:47:34.159 --> 01:47:35.669
lit cigarettes all going at the same
01:47:35.679 --> 01:47:38.790
time. Nim Curly Baba up there used food.
01:47:38.800 --> 01:47:40.390
You'd offer food to him and he'd just
01:47:40.400 --> 01:47:42.870
like devour it,
01:47:42.880 --> 01:47:44.870
which was a way of burning off your
01:47:44.880 --> 01:47:48.390
karma in an sort of a an Indian food
01:47:48.400 --> 01:47:52.070
oriented sort of cultural way. I guess
01:47:52.080 --> 01:47:54.550
that's not really Buddhism. You don't do
01:47:54.560 --> 01:47:56.310
that in Buddhism. I your karma is your
01:47:56.320 --> 01:47:58.229
own. No teacher is going to be able to
01:47:58.239 --> 01:48:01.189
remove your karma from you um just
01:48:01.199 --> 01:48:03.830
through blessing you or whatever. Go and
01:48:03.840 --> 01:48:05.830
sin no more. It doesn't work that way. I
01:48:05.840 --> 01:48:08.709
mean the go and sin no more part sure
01:48:08.719 --> 01:48:12.149
but the like forgiving your sins so that
01:48:12.159 --> 01:48:14.310
you don't have them anymore is not a
01:48:14.320 --> 01:48:17.669
Buddhist concept. At least not in Terra.
01:48:17.679 --> 01:48:21.350
It just doesn't work that way.
01:48:21.360 --> 01:48:22.870
So
01:48:22.880 --> 01:48:25.350
see, Romeo says, "Can you tell me your
01:48:25.360 --> 01:48:26.950
understanding of this concept?" And
01:48:26.960 --> 01:48:30.390
that's my understanding of it from what
01:48:30.400 --> 01:48:32.629
I I had to separate this because there's
01:48:32.639 --> 01:48:37.270
two question marks. Please excuse me.
01:48:37.280 --> 01:48:38.870
I I noticed there's two question marks.
01:48:38.880 --> 01:48:40.229
So then I have to separate into two
01:48:40.239 --> 01:48:42.629
questions. So my understanding of this
01:48:42.639 --> 01:48:44.229
concept is essentially that you're just
01:48:44.239 --> 01:48:48.790
kind of using like Buddhist slogans as a
01:48:48.800 --> 01:48:50.470
way of not really dealing with the
01:48:50.480 --> 01:48:52.629
deeper issues. You just say it's it's
01:48:52.639 --> 01:48:55.510
just the karma or it's all impermanent
01:48:55.520 --> 01:48:58.950
or you know there's no self anyway this
01:48:58.960 --> 01:49:00.950
kind of thing. And it's it's sort of
01:49:00.960 --> 01:49:02.550
rationalizing
01:49:02.560 --> 01:49:05.669
not dealing with the actual issue as a
01:49:05.679 --> 01:49:08.310
kind of cope.
01:49:08.320 --> 01:49:10.390
So that would be my understanding of it
01:49:10.400 --> 01:49:12.149
from
01:49:12.159 --> 01:49:15.669
my brief research shortly before doing
01:49:15.679 --> 01:49:17.430
this video. And I'm going to move on to
01:49:17.440 --> 01:49:20.390
Romeo's second part of this question. He
01:49:20.400 --> 01:49:23.910
says, "What is spiritual bypass and how
01:49:23.920 --> 01:49:26.950
do you suggest one best manages it?"
01:49:26.960 --> 01:49:28.950
Well, I already said what? Well, that's
01:49:28.960 --> 01:49:31.430
kind of weird. My understanding of the
01:49:31.440 --> 01:49:33.270
concept and what it is, I mean, that's
01:49:33.280 --> 01:49:35.750
the same question really. So let's just
01:49:35.760 --> 01:49:37.669
skip over the what is spiritual bypass
01:49:37.679 --> 01:49:39.830
which I've already answered as best I am
01:49:39.840 --> 01:49:43.030
able and get to how do you suggest one
01:49:43.040 --> 01:49:45.270
best manages it and the best management
01:49:45.280 --> 01:49:48.950
of it is just mindfulness that if you're
01:49:48.960 --> 01:49:51.590
being mindful and the situation arises
01:49:51.600 --> 01:49:53.990
you are processing it at a very deep
01:49:54.000 --> 01:49:58.390
level simply by just being mindful of
01:49:58.400 --> 01:50:00.470
what's going on. You know, it's like the
01:50:00.480 --> 01:50:02.550
situation arises. You're just being
01:50:02.560 --> 01:50:05.189
mindful of the seeing and the hearing
01:50:05.199 --> 01:50:07.350
and the mental states going on in your
01:50:07.360 --> 01:50:11.430
mind, the actions that you're taking.
01:50:11.440 --> 01:50:13.669
And that is dealing with it just at a
01:50:13.679 --> 01:50:15.750
fundamental level. It's the best way of
01:50:15.760 --> 01:50:17.510
dealing it dealing with it. I mean, you
01:50:17.520 --> 01:50:19.750
don't want to be I mean, once you get to
01:50:19.760 --> 01:50:21.990
the spiritual bypass level, it's all
01:50:22.000 --> 01:50:24.470
this conceptual stuff that really is not
01:50:24.480 --> 01:50:26.229
any kind of deep spiritual practice
01:50:26.239 --> 01:50:29.270
anymore anyway.
01:50:29.280 --> 01:50:32.390
So the panacea, the cure of all ills,
01:50:32.400 --> 01:50:34.709
including the ill of spiritual bypass,
01:50:34.719 --> 01:50:42.709
is just mindfulness.
01:50:42.719 --> 01:50:44.709
So I'm just going to move on to the next
01:50:44.719 --> 01:50:46.390
question. And this is from Cyrus Frame,
01:50:46.400 --> 01:50:49.350
who is the last questioner of this Q&A.
01:50:49.360 --> 01:50:52.709
He asks two questions, I assume. Yeah,
01:50:52.719 --> 01:50:55.030
there's two question marks.
01:50:55.040 --> 01:50:57.270
So Cyrus frame says please talk about
01:50:57.280 --> 01:51:00.709
what you understand voluition to be and
01:51:00.719 --> 01:51:02.550
this is another tricky one. It's sort of
01:51:02.560 --> 01:51:06.950
like in in science, physicists can't
01:51:06.960 --> 01:51:10.550
really define energy. Or last night I
01:51:10.560 --> 01:51:14.149
was um listening to some talk on the
01:51:14.159 --> 01:51:15.990
radio when I was driving home from work
01:51:16.000 --> 01:51:17.830
and he was talking about gravity and he
01:51:17.840 --> 01:51:21.669
was saying scientists really cannot um
01:51:21.679 --> 01:51:24.950
define gravity other than its
01:51:24.960 --> 01:51:27.510
attributes. its essence they can't touch
01:51:27.520 --> 01:51:30.229
but just the attributes you know it's
01:51:30.239 --> 01:51:33.669
just the interaction of you know two
01:51:33.679 --> 01:51:37.750
point point masses you know in in space
01:51:37.760 --> 01:51:40.870
or or whatever and um and then he
01:51:40.880 --> 01:51:42.550
pointed out like in science I mean you
01:51:42.560 --> 01:51:43.830
don't really deal with the essence of
01:51:43.840 --> 01:51:45.030
anything you just deal with the
01:51:45.040 --> 01:51:48.790
attributes the observable attributes
01:51:48.800 --> 01:51:50.310
and that's you're kind of in a similar
01:51:50.320 --> 01:51:53.189
situation dealing with like fundamental
01:51:53.199 --> 01:51:56.229
mental qualities ities consciousness
01:51:56.239 --> 01:51:58.790
itself especially.
01:51:58.800 --> 01:52:01.030
So I've already I've already mentioned
01:52:01.040 --> 01:52:03.669
in a recent Q&A that volition is like
01:52:03.679 --> 01:52:08.149
the kinetic aspect of perception.
01:52:08.159 --> 01:52:11.350
So volition yeah I mean it's just like
01:52:11.360 --> 01:52:14.870
the behavior of your mental states and
01:52:14.880 --> 01:52:19.030
if you do it vy I can't say volitionally
01:52:19.040 --> 01:52:22.070
you do it in a an unenlightened mental
01:52:22.080 --> 01:52:24.470
state just it's largely happening just
01:52:24.480 --> 01:52:26.470
through force of habit which has
01:52:26.480 --> 01:52:28.229
momentum
01:52:28.239 --> 01:52:31.669
and so you can't say volition or karma
01:52:31.679 --> 01:52:33.750
is like the momentum of your mental
01:52:33.760 --> 01:52:36.790
states a lot of the times I've given the
01:52:36.800 --> 01:52:37.830
analogy
01:52:37.840 --> 01:52:39.990
If we say that consciousness is like
01:52:40.000 --> 01:52:43.510
water, then the waves on the surface of
01:52:43.520 --> 01:52:46.709
the the water are perceptions and the
01:52:46.719 --> 01:52:49.030
movement of the waves and the currents
01:52:49.040 --> 01:52:52.149
and so forth would be volition.
01:52:52.159 --> 01:52:55.750
So it's like the the kinetic aspect of
01:52:55.760 --> 01:53:00.310
forms of mind would be volition
01:53:00.320 --> 01:53:03.589
and momentum going with physics is mass
01:53:03.599 --> 01:53:06.229
times velocity. So in order to get that
01:53:06.239 --> 01:53:08.229
down to zero, you have to either
01:53:08.239 --> 01:53:10.149
eliminate the mass or eliminate the
01:53:10.159 --> 01:53:13.189
velocity.
01:53:13.199 --> 01:53:16.629
And I I had this I had this theory going
01:53:16.639 --> 01:53:18.390
when I was a monk with regard to
01:53:18.400 --> 01:53:20.629
meditation, how you're trying to bring
01:53:20.639 --> 01:53:24.229
the momentum to zero and mass times
01:53:24.239 --> 01:53:26.390
velocity. I assume mass would just be
01:53:26.400 --> 01:53:28.870
like the mental states themselves. And
01:53:28.880 --> 01:53:31.510
so when you're doing especially samatam
01:53:31.520 --> 01:53:33.750
meditation like janna you're just trying
01:53:33.760 --> 01:53:36.229
to eliminate perceptions and by
01:53:36.239 --> 01:53:37.669
eliminating perceptions you're
01:53:37.679 --> 01:53:41.510
eliminating the voluition also
01:53:41.520 --> 01:53:44.149
but with mindfulness it's not so much
01:53:44.159 --> 01:53:45.589
you're eliminating the masses you're
01:53:45.599 --> 01:53:49.030
eliminating the velocity by
01:53:49.040 --> 01:53:52.373
being totally mindful of it that
01:53:52.383 --> 01:53:53.510
[clears throat] it's like there's no
01:53:53.520 --> 01:53:56.470
more autopilot force of habit driving
01:53:56.480 --> 01:53:59.109
it. And in a way, you're transmuting
01:53:59.119 --> 01:54:02.390
that and you're sort of negating the
01:54:02.400 --> 01:54:05.350
momentum of it by doing it consciously
01:54:05.360 --> 01:54:07.990
like with as close to full awareness as
01:54:08.000 --> 01:54:09.750
possible. And I don't know if that's any
01:54:09.760 --> 01:54:11.510
kind of clear explanation. I'm just
01:54:11.520 --> 01:54:14.709
trying to recall this theory that I had
01:54:14.719 --> 01:54:17.109
um as a monk, you know, just going with
01:54:17.119 --> 01:54:21.109
momentum is mass times velocity and your
01:54:21.119 --> 01:54:24.070
karma or which is essentially volition
01:54:24.080 --> 01:54:28.229
is the momentum of your mind. So that by
01:54:28.239 --> 01:54:30.310
to eliminate that momentum, you'd have
01:54:30.320 --> 01:54:33.030
to eliminate mass and or velocity. And
01:54:33.040 --> 01:54:34.629
then I'm trying to attribute that to the
01:54:34.639 --> 01:54:36.070
two main kinds of meditation in
01:54:36.080 --> 01:54:39.750
Buddhism, which is like concentration
01:54:39.760 --> 01:54:41.830
and mindfulness.
01:54:41.840 --> 01:54:44.470
Concentration would eliminate the mass,
01:54:44.480 --> 01:54:45.990
mindfulness would eliminate the
01:54:46.000 --> 01:54:49.030
velocity.
01:54:49.040 --> 01:54:51.430
Kind of a halfbaked uh analogy there, I
01:54:51.440 --> 01:54:53.030
guess.
01:54:53.040 --> 01:54:55.030
But volition is essentially the momentum
01:54:55.040 --> 01:54:56.790
of your mental states. the kinetic
01:54:56.800 --> 01:55:01.804
aspect of your perceptions
01:55:01.814 --> 01:55:03.430
[sighs]
01:55:03.440 --> 01:55:06.550
but it's very difficult to explain it
01:55:06.560 --> 01:55:08.870
very deeply. I mean if you try to look
01:55:08.880 --> 01:55:12.550
in like a ancient commentary
01:55:12.560 --> 01:55:14.390
is it can be very frustrating because
01:55:14.400 --> 01:55:17.270
all they do is just mainly some of their
01:55:17.280 --> 01:55:20.070
definitions or explanations is just
01:55:20.080 --> 01:55:23.270
listing off synonyms. Anyone who's
01:55:23.280 --> 01:55:26.149
relied on the commentaries to any
01:55:26.159 --> 01:55:31.935
significant degree will realize just how
01:55:31.945 --> 01:55:33.830
[snorts] frustrating trying to get a
01:55:33.840 --> 01:55:35.430
straight answer out of the commentaries
01:55:35.440 --> 01:55:38.550
can be sometimes because like I say,
01:55:38.560 --> 01:55:40.950
it's they won't really explain anything.
01:55:40.960 --> 01:55:43.030
They'll just give lists of of synonyms,
01:55:43.040 --> 01:55:44.550
just other words that mean the same
01:55:44.560 --> 01:55:48.229
thing. And to some degree, that's a
01:55:48.239 --> 01:55:49.669
definition. But if you're really trying
01:55:49.679 --> 01:55:52.550
to get pin down what all of them mean,
01:55:52.560 --> 01:55:56.550
it doesn't work.
01:55:56.560 --> 01:55:58.229
So I'm just going to move on to Cyrus
01:55:58.239 --> 01:56:00.149
Frame's next question, which is the last
01:56:00.159 --> 01:56:02.310
question of this Q&A. He says,
01:56:02.320 --> 01:56:04.310
"Regarding your idea of a single
01:56:04.320 --> 01:56:07.830
aggregate of perception and valition,
01:56:07.840 --> 01:56:10.310
is that somehow related to your uncarved
01:56:10.320 --> 01:56:14.870
block of stone analogy?" Well,
01:56:14.880 --> 01:56:17.910
I mean since the uncarved block of stone
01:56:17.920 --> 01:56:20.550
analogy is my theory of everything, it
01:56:20.560 --> 01:56:24.149
explains all of samsara. Then clearly
01:56:24.159 --> 01:56:26.629
the the [clears throat] aggregate the
01:56:26.639 --> 01:56:28.709
compound aggregate of perception
01:56:28.719 --> 01:56:30.629
volition
01:56:30.639 --> 01:56:33.350
um would have to fit in there. You know,
01:56:33.360 --> 01:56:36.229
it's I mean it would has to be related
01:56:36.239 --> 01:56:38.070
to the uncarved block because anything
01:56:38.080 --> 01:56:40.149
in samsara is related to the uncarved
01:56:40.159 --> 01:56:43.189
block.
01:56:43.199 --> 01:56:46.550
So you could say I mean the uncarved
01:56:46.560 --> 01:56:49.030
block has every possible statue within
01:56:49.040 --> 01:56:53.750
it. Even moving statues I mean why why
01:56:53.760 --> 01:56:56.709
couldn't you have like a running statue
01:56:56.719 --> 01:56:59.030
in virtual form in that uncarved block?
01:56:59.040 --> 01:57:01.030
I mean the molecules would be different
01:57:01.040 --> 01:57:03.270
as the legs are moving you know because
01:57:03.280 --> 01:57:04.950
the molecules wouldn't be changing
01:57:04.960 --> 01:57:07.669
position. I guess there's that,
01:57:07.679 --> 01:57:10.950
but that's just a a flaw in the analogy
01:57:10.960 --> 01:57:13.270
because I mean consciousness is not the
01:57:13.280 --> 01:57:16.149
same as stone.
01:57:16.159 --> 01:57:17.669
Consciousness is not made up of
01:57:17.679 --> 01:57:19.830
molecules unless you're an Abidama
01:57:19.840 --> 01:57:22.709
scholar, but we don't need to go there.
01:57:22.719 --> 01:57:26.390
So you could say that the imaginary
01:57:26.400 --> 01:57:29.430
statues, the virtual statues inside that
01:57:29.440 --> 01:57:32.629
uncarved block of stone
01:57:32.639 --> 01:57:34.790
like in each moment would would
01:57:34.800 --> 01:57:36.950
correspond to perception. But the
01:57:36.960 --> 01:57:39.109
movement the apparent movement of the
01:57:39.119 --> 01:57:42.229
statue would correspond to volition.
01:57:42.239 --> 01:57:44.709
That in a way voluition is what is
01:57:44.719 --> 01:57:50.390
holding the pattern together over time.
01:57:50.400 --> 01:57:56.229
You know, it's it's momentum
01:57:56.239 --> 01:57:58.709
and holding patterns together over time
01:57:58.719 --> 01:58:03.896
is getting kind of philosophical for me.
01:58:03.906 --> 01:58:05.109
[laughter]
01:58:05.119 --> 01:58:08.390
Even for me, it's uh something I'm not
01:58:08.400 --> 01:58:10.070
entirely prepared for. I mean, it's
01:58:10.080 --> 01:58:13.109
something like answering a question like
01:58:13.119 --> 01:58:14.629
this.
01:58:14.639 --> 01:58:18.390
Um, to really do it justice, I should
01:58:18.400 --> 01:58:21.350
probably have just laying around
01:58:21.360 --> 01:58:24.390
thinking about it for at least a couple
01:58:24.400 --> 01:58:26.229
days. I mean, that's how I used to write
01:58:26.239 --> 01:58:29.430
blog posts is you come up with an idea
01:58:29.440 --> 01:58:32.629
and then you just kind of let it digest
01:58:32.639 --> 01:58:35.270
or ferment or whatever over a period of
01:58:35.280 --> 01:58:37.910
days until finally it's ripe enough that
01:58:37.920 --> 01:58:39.910
you just, you know, it's sort of
01:58:39.920 --> 01:58:42.709
crystallized or gelled into this
01:58:42.719 --> 01:58:45.109
coherent idea that you can then write
01:58:45.119 --> 01:58:47.350
down on paper or onto a computer screen
01:58:47.360 --> 01:58:50.950
or whatever. But this is just it's
01:58:50.960 --> 01:58:53.030
really it's a [clears throat] question
01:58:53.040 --> 01:58:56.870
that was asked um earlier today I think
01:58:56.880 --> 01:58:59.270
or not long ago. I didn't really see it
01:58:59.280 --> 01:59:01.189
until until short when I was just
01:59:01.199 --> 01:59:03.830
compiling the questions. It's not like I
01:59:03.840 --> 01:59:06.470
really cheat and try to come up with a a
01:59:06.480 --> 01:59:08.310
decent answer for everything before I do
01:59:08.320 --> 01:59:10.390
the video.
01:59:10.400 --> 01:59:13.030
So yeah, I mean it's obviously related
01:59:13.040 --> 01:59:15.510
to the uncarved block and probably the
01:59:15.520 --> 01:59:18.070
easy explanation that doesn't require me
01:59:18.080 --> 01:59:19.750
to sit here and introspect for half an
01:59:19.760 --> 01:59:25.350
hour is that the the the form of the
01:59:25.360 --> 01:59:26.870
statues
01:59:26.880 --> 01:59:29.589
that are in an uncarved state in that
01:59:29.599 --> 01:59:31.750
uncarved block but are still virtually
01:59:31.760 --> 01:59:34.709
conditionally in there. is sort of the
01:59:34.719 --> 01:59:37.990
static form like a cross-section in time
01:59:38.000 --> 01:59:41.350
would be like perception but like the
01:59:41.360 --> 01:59:45.350
movement and like there'd have to be
01:59:45.360 --> 01:59:48.149
some sort of p some sort of momentum
01:59:48.159 --> 01:59:52.629
that would maintain the like the form or
01:59:52.639 --> 01:59:55.510
some semblance of the form over time.
01:59:55.520 --> 01:59:57.510
You know that would maintain some kind
01:59:57.520 --> 02:00:00.070
of pattern and coherence over time but
02:00:00.080 --> 02:00:02.310
it would mainly be the kinetic aspect.
02:00:02.320 --> 02:00:05.109
So you'd have moving changing statues
02:00:05.119 --> 02:00:09.510
contained within the uncarved block.
02:00:09.520 --> 02:00:12.149
So the perception would be you know the
02:00:12.159 --> 02:00:14.629
the statue at any moment any particular
02:00:14.639 --> 02:00:16.709
moment and the volition would be the
02:00:16.719 --> 02:00:21.189
movements of that of that the figure the
02:00:21.199 --> 02:00:23.910
image inside the inside the uncarved
02:00:23.920 --> 02:00:27.109
block of stone
02:00:27.119 --> 02:00:28.790
or maybe even more importantly what's
02:00:28.800 --> 02:00:32.149
causing that image to move while at the
02:00:32.159 --> 02:00:34.149
same time not just disintegrate but
02:00:34.159 --> 02:00:38.550
maintaining its integrity as like uh a
02:00:38.560 --> 02:00:41.270
more or less well-defined
02:00:41.280 --> 02:00:44.149
pattern
02:00:44.159 --> 02:00:47.830
and that would be karma going with
02:00:47.840 --> 02:00:49.350
Buddhist philosophy you know the
02:00:49.360 --> 02:00:52.390
momentum of the mental states
02:00:52.400 --> 02:00:56.790
the momentum of our personal samsara
02:00:56.800 --> 02:00:58.390
and some of these questions have been
02:00:58.400 --> 02:01:00.070
difficult
02:01:00.080 --> 02:01:01.990
and it's been difficult to answer a few
02:01:02.000 --> 02:01:03.669
of them I hope I have not completely
02:01:03.679 --> 02:01:06.390
disappointed the people who asked them I
02:01:06.400 --> 02:01:07.910
hope I at least gave give them something
02:01:07.920 --> 02:01:10.229
to chew on
02:01:10.239 --> 02:01:13.109
because I'm done.
02:01:13.119 --> 02:01:14.870
So, like I should always say at the
02:01:14.880 --> 02:01:17.189
beginning and pretty much never do, if
02:01:17.199 --> 02:01:18.709
you have any questions you think I can
02:01:18.719 --> 02:01:20.310
answer, especially with regard to
02:01:20.320 --> 02:01:22.950
Buddhism, Dharma, archaic early
02:01:22.960 --> 02:01:24.950
Buddhism, you know, technicalities of
02:01:24.960 --> 02:01:27.990
monastic discipline, I'm fairly fairly
02:01:28.000 --> 02:01:29.589
authoritative with regard to that. I
02:01:29.599 --> 02:01:31.750
know hell of a lot more about it than
02:01:31.760 --> 02:01:35.910
chat GPT does.
02:01:35.920 --> 02:01:37.830
Um, just feel free to ask and no more
02:01:37.840 --> 02:01:40.550
than three questions per person, please.
02:01:40.560 --> 02:01:44.070
And like and subscribe if you liked it
02:01:44.080 --> 02:01:47.750
and have not done so already. And please
02:01:47.760 --> 02:01:49.510
bear in mind, I should probably said
02:01:49.520 --> 02:01:51.510
this at the beginning, but I do have my
02:01:51.520 --> 02:01:55.830
fourth book is now um on Amazon. It can
02:01:55.840 --> 02:01:57.109
be ordered there. And that will be down
02:01:57.119 --> 02:01:59.510
in the URL links if you're interested at
02:01:59.520 --> 02:02:03.669
all in strange autobiographical
02:02:03.679 --> 02:02:07.030
stories of a western Buddhist monk
02:02:07.040 --> 02:02:09.589
living in Burma.
02:02:09.599 --> 02:02:11.350
And aside from that, all I got left to
02:02:11.360 --> 02:02:14.310
say is be happy. Have a nice rest of
02:02:14.320 --> 02:02:16.470
your day
02:02:16.480 --> 02:02:20.070
if uh if Samsar is willing to grant you
02:02:20.080 --> 02:02:21.669
that.
02:02:21.679 --> 02:02:22.629
And I'm I'm out of here [clears throat]
02:02:22.639 --> 02:02:25.639
now.