Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 335: Robert Thurman

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

**Robert Thurman**, worldwide authority on religion, spirituality, asian history, world philosophy, Buddhist science, Indo-Tibetan buddhism, and a renowned advocate for Buddhist ideas in our daily lives joins the DTFH! [Click here](https://www.ramdass.org/wisdom-of-emptiness?utm_source=Ram+Dass+%5BMain+List%5D&utm_campaign=0afbcf9b5c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_22_05_55&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_199b04576a-0afbcf9b5c-95823665) to check out The Wisdom of Emptiness retreat with Ram Dass, Anne Lamott, Robert Thurman, Krishna Das, and Raghu Markus! Check out David Nichtern's meditation teacher training program [here](https://www.samarasacenter.com/). This episode is brought to you by [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/duncan) (use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site), Simple Contacts (visit [simplecontacts.com/duncan20](http://www.simplecontacts.com/duncan20) and use code duncan20 at checkout for $20 off your first order!) and by [Robinhood Financial](http://duncan.robinhood.com/) (get one free stock when you sign up).

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to the Dunkin' Trestle family, our podcast. A podcast emanating from deep within the dream that you call your own, your own existence. Exist, exist, exist, exist. We're all in dreams, baby. Seriously, well, I don't know. But I have been reading this book that is blowing my mind. It's called The Tibetan Yoga of Dream, Dreaming and Sleep.

And it's so psychedelic, and it sneaks up on you. It kind of pounces on you, but I haven't got, I'm scared to keep reading it, actually, because it produces such a, I don't know how to describe it, kind of psychedelic effect. Gary, can you keep it down please? I'm recording. Jesus.

Like, you know, reading Terrence McKenna, if you haven't read Terrence McKenna, you should. Sometimes, in some of his best essays, you just start feeling like you're tripping, just because he's so good at describing. Gary, seriously, man? Sorry, guys, my time duct is leaking again. Getting a repair.

And getting, and getting, and getting, and getting, and getting. Anyway, this book points out ways of looking at the world and it does it in a pretty surgical way. So the idea is, I mean, and when I say the idea, I mean, I'm in chapter two or three, baby. But the concept is similar to a concept I heard once about lucid dreaming. You set your alarm for every hour.

And any time your alarm goes off, you think to yourself, I'm not dreaming. I'm not dreaming. And then when you're in a dream, because you've sort of trained yourself to on the hour, every hour, remind yourself you're not dreaming, in the dream of like, holy shit, I'm in a dream. And then you can do whatever, fly, fuck 1,000 movie stars,

turn into an octopus, suck your own nipples, drink milk from your toes, whatever it is you're into, that's what you could do. And now here's Gary, my time duct repairman, with his song about dreams. When you have a lucid dream, you can do most anything. You can turn and do an octopus and suck up on your feet.

Put some lipstick on your neighbor's doll. Put a wedding ring upon her paw. Have a three-way with big foot on your honeymoon. All right, thanks, Gary. That's enough. Thank you. That was Gary, my time duct repairman, everybody. I think he's got an album coming out.

Definitely don't buy it. The point is, this book, the point this book makes, is that instead of sort of looking at your watch and thinking, I'm not in a dream, you basically start doing the opposite. So you start thinking like, oh, actually I am in a dream. Everything is kind of like a dream. I'm just a little dream and piggy floating through

an aquarium of illusion, which is actually the thing I thought was reality. And if you really look deeply into things, you will kind of notice from time to time that stuff just doesn't seem quite real. Something seems strange off. I guess you could say that's what simulation theory is. Like, simulation theory is just a modern version of the idea

that everything is an illusion, except now we're using technological terms. But what I have noticed is that if I apply this when I'm getting butthurt, I don't get quite as butthurt. And also, here's what's really interesting. If you start imagining you're in a dream, it really brings you into the present moment. Like, things get real clear and vivid

because you are in a fucking dream. If you're up in your head, it's called daydreaming. That's what they call it. You're dreaming in the day. So it's an interesting thing that apparently, eventually, it causes some form of lucid dreaming. But I haven't experienced that yet. But definitely it's helping me when

I can feel that deep inner. Dammit, Gary. There's still a temporal distortion in here, man. You said you would have this fixed by the time I recorded this. It's taking all day. All right, well, we got a great podcast. Come on, man. Just hit it.

Turn it on and off. Turn it on and off. And then all dinner. It is just, man, mom, fuck off, you're great. Sorry for snapping at you, Gary. Seems like we got at least a temporary, stable time field. So while we've got that, we're going to do some quick business. And then we're going to jump into this podcast

with one of the great Buddhist scholars living today, Bob Thurman. An eternal thank you to the beings of crystal light that exist within the motherships hovering around our planet, known as Squarespace.com, for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Squarespace has everything you need to make a beautiful, mind-altering, orgasmic-level website. They've got everything.

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Oh, good Lord. My lovely children. I'm tired. But in the best way I've ever been tired in my life, having a baby is so amazing. And I'm not going to rave about it yet. But I am at some point. I've got to get off my chest.

I've just never experienced anything as psychedelic as being a dad. And I blasted myself on pretty much every psychedelic currently in existence. I missed a couple. I know there's some weird more than a couple. I mean, there's a bunch of, you know, the experimental chemicals out there

and various strange toad venom. Excuse me, that's actually my ass in the chair. It's something I would never be so rude as to flatulate on my podcast. Just so you all know that. And also if it's illegal now, because the podcast in commission finds you $500 every time you do it for the podcasters out there listening,

definitely don't do that. Tomorrow I am headed to Maui for the Ramdas spring retreat. I'm bringing the baby and obviously my wonderful wife. So it's going to be pretty intense. We've got a essentially like a gypsy sized caravan of various things that you need for a baby. You can't just travel with a baby like you can for yourself. You need creams, wipes, temperate gels,

combing, lathes, you need oils, coconut creams, diapers, various ear canal protectors, nose softeners. And you also need Prince Dandy's lady feet conditioning soap and nail files, trimmers of monkeys and golden cages. And of course, a prodding cane to get the wise men off because we just keep getting bugged by wise men. And I love the gifts we've been getting, but we need a break. So hopefully there won't be any at the airport.

We just want to hop on the plane with the baby and get to Maui. And I can't wait. And because I'm leaving for this thing, I've been working nonstop on this other thing that I can't even talk about. So I'm bleary right now. I'm tired in the most incredible way. And basically, fortunately for us,

we've purchased one of those new Grinarian leather levitation stasis field cubes that will put the baby in stasis for the length of the flight. Apparently for the babies, it just seems like just a click and you're there. But it doesn't work for humans. That is the chair I'm telling you. So that's going to be awesome.

And if you want to watch live streams of the various teachers and kirtans and all the stuff that happens at the retreat podcast, I'm going to be doing with some of the folks at the retreats and live podcast. Then head over to ramdas.org forward slash wisdom of emptiness. I'm going to have a link at duckatrustle.com. But yeah, go there and you can watch some of the cool events

that are happening at the retreat. My dear loves, if you are interested in commercial free episodes of the DTFH, and my apologies, I know this episode has one more than I usually have. Go to patreon.com forward slash DTFH. The interview with Bob is there commercial free. So you don't have to have the flow of the conversation disrupted by my livelihood.

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exam. And simple contacts only tests that the current prescription still helps you see 2020 and renew that prescription. They don't write completely new prescriptions or examine eye health. There's lots of other stuff there, too, for you to enjoy. And when I get around to it, I'm going to put a live video of the interview with Mr. Robert

Thurman that he's amazing. And I know I've already on Patreon, some people got annoyed because he talked about politics. And I know I don't usually talk about politics on the DTFH, but I must say that he really did inspire me and made me realize how cynical I've become. And I think a lot of us have become, when it comes to politics in the United States

and just this general sense of like, fuck, man, what can we do? But he proposed an idea that actually seems really brilliant. And I hope that those of you who get upset by political talk or political talk that doesn't quite match the way you see the world can look through that to a bigger idea that folks like Bob are really good at putting out there, which is that we can do just about anything. And we could certainly sort of transcend

the normal ways of making shit happen in this world, particularly the ways that involve violence or anger or war, and that there is sort of a possibility for humans to have a kind of love revolution as absolutely cheesy and hip-fied as that may, damn it, this is, I swear to God, it's just me moving in this chair, swear to God. I don't know why I feel like I have to defend myself here. I'm not in the court.

One of the many things I love about Bob is that he doesn't fit into the stereotypical notion of what a great Buddhist scholar might be like. I don't know if you have an idea of what that looks like, but probably if someone's like, oh, this is one of the Dalai Lama's best friends, you would maybe some images of what that would look like might pop into your mind,

something maybe, I don't know, tranquil in a specific way. Or once somebody said something to me that really stuck in my craw, they said, well, most people just practice passive hipster Buddhism. It really bug me because my experience with Buddhism has not been passive at all. It's sort of the opposite of Pacificity, though I do understand why people, when they haven't looked

deeply into Eastern traditions, can get it into their heads that the Eastern traditions involve a kind of like detachment from the normal stuff people have to be worried about, like voting and making shit happen and activism. Even though there's case after case of Buddhists being great activists, some folks don't just have this weird idea of what Buddhism is.

And I love this conversation with Bob because the first part is fiery politics. And it's someone who's very passionate about the world using his brilliant mind to try to innovate a way to rebalance and reharmonize things, which I think every single one of us wants, regardless of what side of the fucking thing you're on. We all want to be happy.

We all want to figure out ways to be more loving. We all want to figure out ways to be kinder to each other. And I think every single one of us would love a day where the news wasn't blowing out endless stories of the embarrassing drama that seems to have possessed our political system. So it was really, to me, it was quite enlivening to chat with Bob.

And the last part, we do talk about Buddhism. And in his spectacularly precise and vibrant way, he really did a great job of breaking down the basics. And so I hope that you will stick it out if you find yourself getting a little woozy from political talk. You know, I don't usually do it on the show, but Bob Thurman is a very special human. And he is an exception to the rule, if you ask me.

Oh, and one last spirituality plug before I forget. The person I study meditation with, David Nickturn, is going to be doing a teacher training program at the Samarasah Yoga Studio, which is a really nice place. If you live on the East Side, it's a beautiful Liliyoga studio. He's going to be doing a teacher training, a mindfulness teacher training. So if you want to learn the basics of mindfulness

and sort of a technique to share that with people, he is going to be teaching that at Samarasah. The links will be at dunkintrussell.com. And I'm going to do an interview with him on that Friday night. All right, let's do this. Sorry for all the ads and the yapping and the babbling. I like to talk, but I'm taking next week off, because I'm heading to this retreat.

So there will be no DTFH next week. There's going to be a little pause. And then we'll be right back at it. Now, without further ado, today's esteemed guest is a recognized worldwide authority on religion and spirituality, Asian history, world philosophy, Buddhist science, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, and his holiness, the Dalai Lama, is friends with him.

He's an advocate of the relevance of Buddhist ideas in our daily lives. And he was named one-of-time magazine's 25 most influential Americans. He's also been profiled by The New York Times and People Magazine. Those are some incredible credits. But man, just hanging out with this guy

for a little bit of time could change your life for the better. He's the real deal. And I can't believe I got to have him on the show. So please, everyone, welcome to the Duggar Trussell Family Hour podcast, The Great Bob Thurman. It's really good to see you. Great to see you. I'm disappointed.

I thought you were going to be at the Ramdas retreat for some reason. Yeah, I am. But I'm going on the 29th. I'm going on the 30th, May 1st. I reach there. Oh, I see. Great.

It's from May 1st to May 6th. I'll get to see you in person there. That's great. Oh, you're coming too? Great. Wonderful. I'll be there. We had a close Ramdas, had a close call.

But he's better now, they say. Yes, he's better now. I'm very relieved. I am too. But this is something that is occurring to me that I guess must happen every generation, is that at some point, the teachers, they die. And they do.

And then what happens? I was wondering, is there always a sense when this phase happens of no one really being quite ready for that eventuality to happen and not knowing what to do? Yeah, that can be. The other day, I did some events at Tibet House with KD. Yes.

And he read a beautiful thing from the life of Shabkar, who was a great Tibetan yogi of the 18th century. And Shabkar was mourning and belly aching about his guru was gone, and he was sitting on the top of a mountain. He was looking sad. Where's my guru? Oh, he used to be with me. And then he sees a cloud formation

on top of the mountain where the guru used to live. And then on top of that, there's the guru, like Yoda in the Star Wars, in a body of light. And then the guru scolds him and says, look, I'm with you all the time. I'm in your heart. And whenever you go everywhere and teach or meditate, whatever you do, I'm there with you.

So stop. So go help other beings and stop belly aching. Right. So KD gets very, he belly aches a lot about Baba Maraji not being there. Yes. So he really liked that one that was also happening in 18th century Tibet on the part of Shabkar,

the famous yogi. He was very happy. So I think that's a natural thing. We're going to die. But even George Lucas has it in Star Wars. Yoda is still there. Right. If the great gurus are still there

and not in their meat puppet body, but Ramdas called the meat puppet, right? Right. Yes. That's good. Well, that is good. And I believe that, though. It's just easier when they're, as Annie Lamott puts it,

when they're there with a skin on, because we could see them and you could do podcasts with them. That's right. But once they're, if they do a good job, then we're ready for the, then you, the younger generation, will be ready for the transition and be ready to take up the burden. And it'll be good.

The Dalai Lama just wrote a book calling for revolution, spiritual revolution, by the young. He's saying that the older generation, business as usual by the older generation is wrecking the planet on which they're going to have to leave their lives. So they should rebel now. And I'm all for them, too, that 13-year-old girl in Sweden,

she's rebelling. She's suing the Swedish government for wrecking the place. Yes. I like that. I think that's totally great. And I think something like that has to happen in our country in this next election. We have to overthrow the petroleum

barons who are ruining everything. And they won't, they're in every, they have their fingers in everything, you know? The food is made out of petroleum, the fertilizer's out of petroleum, you know? They're doing, they're just wrecking it with everything. And they refuse to give up. It's very easy to switch everybody over to renewable

everything, and they will do it. Well, you know, this is one of the weird realizations I had some time ago. I was doing an interview at, oh gosh, where were we? We were at a university like Caltech or something. And they're working on solar panels. And they're working on these incredible solar panels. Oh, great.

But guess who was funding it? One of the big oil companies. And I said, what is happening here, that the oil companies are funding an existential threat to selling oil. And his response was, oh, it's compartmentalized. They're so big that they have sections that are antithetical to the general supposition

that every single person working there is evil or crazy or whatever you want to call it. When the really rotten thing is, it's a hive within which there seems to be counterbalance to the insanity. And so you don't, this frustrates me, because I like to shake my fist at the entire thing. And then when you realize it's sort of broken up

into clusters of people in there who want it to be better. So how do we, this is where it gets really wild. I don't know. But that's a good thing, because I also meet with oil executives. And I think that thing in Caltech is funded by BP, British Petroleum. Yes.

The European ones, Royal Dutch Shell out of the Netherlands and British Petroleum, they're way, and the statuels in Norway, they are better than the American companies. The Americans are stubbornly not doing that. But the European ones are beginning to do, however, even the European ones are doing it too slowly. Because the bulk of their research and the R&D money is spent on finding more of the fricking oil,

which is to stranded assets. They'll never be able to burn it. If they put that level of money, I always tell them, look, it's not antithetical for you to make panels and things. That's where you should shift. And then you'll be kings of the renewable. Just like now you're kings of the oil. Then you'll be kings of the renewable.

And that's what Norway is doing now. Norway has divested from all oil companies, even though they sell plenty of gas and oil from their North Sea wells, and they are 100% renewable in Norway. And that's what they should do. And then they'll be way ahead of the curve is what it is. But Bill McKibben, the great Bill McKibben, he wrote recently that the economics of the renewables

make it a no-brainer that it's going to win out. The only problem in where activism we still need, the fish shaking we still need to do, and the fish shaking has to do with stopping the delaying tactics on the part of the salesman, the business side in the oil industry, where they think they act like they're going to keep selling that shit forever. Right.

That's where activism, because in that delay, could be delete, could be one degree centigrade. It could result in a one degree centigrade overage of where we can get if we move faster. Of course, if Al Gore, who was elected president, had been president, instead of having it stolen in Florida by the brown shirts, then we sure would have been way ahead by now.

But we still it's not too late, according to McKibben, that great article, New York Review of Books, about two months ago. Al Gore says the same thing. Well, I mean, if it's too late, it's too late. But we still. No, it isn't, it isn't, it isn't too late. I think that I don't think it's too late.

I guess what I was trying to say is this revolution that you're talking about, I think that the young people are feeling this. And in a similar fashion to the sense of what are we going to do when the gurus die, I think the young people are starting to get a feeling of realizing that, well, as they say, I don't know if you've ever heard this saying,

revolution doesn't happen at the cocktail table. Revolution doesn't happen at cocktail parties. And that it's not a convenient thing to have a revolution. And you don't get to have a comfortable revolution. And there's no such thing as that. That in fact, it's going to require such a monumental shift, not just an exterior shift, but an interior shift as well, that it's daunting for anyone to consider.

So how do you take, I mean, it's, to me, being in the middle of the whole thing, age-wise, and knowing that, yeah, I agree with you. And I think we're all sensing that, well, at some point, this game we're playing in the United States, imagining that people are listening to us as a democracy, it's got to end. And when it ends, where we sort of just wake up to the truth,

like that George Carlin joke, they call it the American dream because you got to be asleep to believe in it. That's a great one. I like that. I didn't hear that before. That's a good one. But what does Buddhist revolution look like?

Well, it looks like what we're doing. That's it. The Buddhist revolution had been slower over history. And it's the inner revolution, of course. And it has, but it has had a huge effect externally. Why do you think the Europeans were able to conquer India when Alexander the Great got his ass handed to him?

The Indians had a cavalry of elephants with archers on top, like in the Lord of the Rings. Remember those guys, the bad guys? That was the Indian cavalry, and the Macedonian phalanx could not deal with it. And Alexander was killed by arrows fired from the back of an elephant from a longbow, longbow archers who could rapid fire.

It wasn't crankbowl, longbow. And big iron, and also India had a lot of iron. It has a lot of iron. And the Persians never conquered India in those days. But then finally, by the time of first the Muslim invasions from Iran and Tajikistan and so forth, around 1,000 years ago, and then the European invasions about 500 years ago, then they lost.

But that's because Buddhism had made the country more peaceful. The Buddhist revolution has been going on for several thousand years slowly. And it has made different civilizations more gentle, more meditative, more kind, more happy. But then they will help raise less happy, more aggressive people. But now we've reached a moment in history

where we have to have a fast one. And it's also global. And there's no one left who's going to be more aggressive. Everybody has to be more peaceful and more kind. And that's what our revolution is going to be about. Therefore, it is very doable. It's not, you know, the Russian revolution, American, French, were very violent.

And therefore, they brought about where the rulers maintained violence of the three. The American one was maybe the best because of our natural blessedness of a nature here. And we were only really badly violent to the blacks and to the Indians. And we didn't try to aggress the whole world because we had enough going on here.

Until after World War II, we got a little bit colonial. But otherwise, actually, my old history teacher in high school used to say it was the Philippine War. Teddy Roosevelt time, we became more colonial around that time. We had like the first Vietnam was in the Philippines, where we encouraged the Filipinos to throw off the Spaniards. And then we jumped in on top of it.

We moved into the governor's mansion of the Spanish mansions. We moved in instead of letting, you know, they weren't ready for democracy sort of routine. Yep. Anyway, now it's going to be a unique in history because it's global and it's going to be peaceful. It has to be.

And the guys who are still into weapons and war and stuff, you know, Putin, our own Defense Department, you know, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, the Chinese, they're doing it. They just go bankrupt because they can't use those weapons because their blowback is instant. Right. You launched a nuclear, I had a dream.

That's the other day. I really, it was a great dream. And it's not very Buddhist, but shall I tell you my dream? Please. And I only believe it, of course, because I was asleep. Thank you, George. But in the dream, I was with Putin in the Kremlin.

And it was a nice living room sort of thing. And he had a whole bunch of, he didn't have a football. He had a whole wall panel of buttons, the electronic button. Sure. And he was gloating. The dream started that I remember anyway. And he was gloating at me because he had pressed

a bunch of buttons. It was going to wipe out New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, et cetera. Yes. And I said, I was saying to him, he was gloating. And I said, hey, you're crazy. At least you can get those cities, but they're going to blast you because they

have silos and submarines. So you're committing suicide. What are you doing? Right. He said, no, no. He said, I don't mind. They're just going to knock out Moscow and Petersburg. And those people in Moscow and Petersburg,

they don't like me anyway. Oh, Jesus. My backing is all out in the country. So I'm in a bunker somewhere, so I don't care. And he was laughing and gloating. So I was in the dream. I was calculating, how can I get past him? Yes.

He's a martial arts guy. Yes. How am I going to get past him to that thing and press the button to stop it or to send him off into the sun, the missile? Yes. And I'm calculating. And then this guy shows up who I haven't

seen for 55 years, who was a former boyfriend of my current wife, who we've been married for 52 years. And he's an English guy, and he's a jeweler and he's a fashion guy, because he used to be a model. Yeah. And so he shows up, and he's a very nice guy. And I'm saying, hey, how are you doing? And the Russians had led him into the room

because they thought he was just a jeweler, you know, like a fashion guy. Right. So then I decide, well, I've got to get Putin. I have to stop these missiles. So I pick up a chair and start beating the crap out of him. We're in a chair. And he's laughing and kind of dodging and laughing

because he has a button in his hand. And he's pressing the button and he says, my security is going to come and shoot you now. So that won't work. Tough luck. You're not going to be able to beat me up. So then I twirl around and guys are running down the hall at me with their machine guns.

And this British guy, the jeweler, he whips out his James Bond pistols and shoots them all. Wow. And so then Putin is so surprised he's taken off guard. And then I really do beat him up with the chair. And he's bloody. He's bloody. I don't kill him and I don't want to.

I just want to knock him out of the way. And I did. And then I get over and I'm pressing the buttons, you know. And then as I woke up, I'm satisfied because the missiles are heading straight up into the sun. And I woke up with that. I was great. It was a great dream.

I felt really great for a whole three hours. And I'm feeling good now telling it to you again. And the thing is that they can't. Those guys, you know, where we are now with the stupid elite like Bush, for example, who raided the criminal war he did and our name with our money, our tax money, into Iraq was criminal. They didn't attack us.

They weren't at 9-11, the Iraqis. In fact, Saddam Hussein was an employee of the CIA attacking the Iranians for years. I didn't know that. And a bunch of BS. And so, you know, the point is the one saving grace of all those militarists on the planet who are interwoven with the petroleum people

is they're so unbelievably incompetent. They are just everything is blowback. And the blowback is getting faster and faster on them. And they can't deal with it. And now, by now, Russia is an oil company, as is Saudi Arabia. They're just, they're not countries. They're oil companies.

So they're hard to stop. So my point is that we are going to, it's not, you know, that girl suing the Swedish government and kids in California leaving school and suing the state government and the federal government. And most of all, our next election, where we're going to do something different and then things were going to go well.

And I'm writing an op-ed right now about what to do. But I don't want to take up the whole time with that. But only I just want to say this. Bernie Sanders wants a revolution, right? Yeah. Political revolution. Yes. But meanwhile, the Democrats, they all think maybe

they have a shot at Trump. So we have 10 or 15 egotists saying, I'm the one who's going to save the scene. Beethoven, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren. They're all going to save us. But we already know that the one guy who comes and says, I'm only I can save you.

And then I'm going to have the best people. That's what we heard. And he's destroying the whole place, right? He's completely wrecking everything. So he doesn't even have the government as a complete mess, you know? So the revolution starts now in the primary. And instead of doing a bunch of stupid Fox News debates,

like the Republicans did, they have to sit down themselves in a room, all of those primary candidates. And they have to decide how they're going to make a team and how they're going to put aside their super egos and pick the two best people for the co-president. Never mind vice president. Because you know what we need?

We need a racial person. We need a female and we need a climate change warrior. Those are the three people we need in the top position. Well, may I interject? This is my despondent feeling about this. The first part is, though I agree, it would be wonderful to have a multicultural, climate centered, intelligent government.

Clearly, it'd be great. There's another part of me that feels that the part of us that is still monkey DNA, that's the part that helps get autocrats into power, which is that there's some ancient thing in people where they look at a thing and they see just basic, aggressive, charismatic, dull power and they are drawn to it because they're terrified.

So on the left, or whatever you want to call it, we have this concept of the ideal. And the ideal is what you just described. But the problem is that a great many people, they don't see that as the ideal. They see that as vulnerable, weak, and antithetical to the PTSD alcoholic father they grew up with. Because our country's been at war for 92% of the history.

So when you push someone out there who looks like someone that your dad in one of his drunken, near flashbacks would have aggressively wanted to punch, it triggers the part in you that wants to please your dad. That too. I know, but listen, we just did that for the last two years. And the damage is unbelievable.

It's like we have a Russian puppet in the White House destroying our alliances, destroying our economy with tax cuts and deficits that they all pretend they hate the republic. Destroying our society between people, creating anger, and rage, and totally screwing a completely incompetent ignorant. And therefore, I think we can do it,

and we can take one or two charismatic people. Do you know Jay Inslee? No, I've heard the name. Well, if you read the latest Rolling Stone, the introduction of him, he has been since Al Gore wrote Earth in the Balance in the 1980s. He's been in the Congress, in the Senate, in the state politics in Washington state.

He has been fighting the climate change thing full blast. He's now governor of Washington state. He now has a democratic legislature there, and he is doing it there. And he knows how to do it as an executive. And he's a big stroke guy. And he ran for Congress in a rural Republican district, and he was always votes Republican,

and he won as a Democrat. And he is really solid. And you know, he's really, he would have beat up your dad, your drunken dad, easily. And he told Trump at the governor's meeting that the president was forced to attend some month ago, because he's the head of the governors. You know, he was what he called president

of the governor's association. And he told Trump, who was starting his blather about climate denial. And he said, look, Mr. President, we don't really need to hear about this. We are doing something, whether you are or not. That's great. And he said, and as far as from the White House goes,

we governors who are responsible for our United States, he said, we need less Twittering and more listening from you. Yeah. So he's not gonna be bullied by that asshole. Is he running for president? Yes. And he's not get known.

He's not big name recognition, but that's a great article. You read it in Rolling Stone. Cool. A big board member goes on, now wait, now let me fit it. Then Kamala Harris is a woman and black, okay? And so, but we say, then we don't want the women

to be pissed if she's vice president. And we don't want the men to be freaked out if he's vice president. So what they say is, look, we just had an asshole as president and they can say that in public. Yeah. They didn't do any good.

And his cabinet is a bunch of swamp creatures, 100% in Congress, destroying all the agencies they preside over. And you need these agencies, people. You need your healthcare. You need your clean air. You need your clean water. You don't need that.

So we're running, we're not gonna argue with each other. And we're not all the greatest, but together we're the greatest and we're gonna give you our CV and our employment credentials right now from the primaries and we're all running together.

Kamala Harris and Jay Inslee are gonna be co-presidents. And then Cory Booker, Secretary of State, Elizabeth Warren, Secretary of Treasury, Bernie Sanders, Secretary of Education, so-and-so, Buttigieg, Secretary of Health, Biden, Secretary of Defense, because they're all, the cabinet is president.

He needs a cabinet that's effective. And that's all there. And the two charismatic figures, Kamala Harris, she's can do it. He won the governorship and he was the one as a senator. And before that, he won as a congressman. They can win, they can get up and bullshit you. And we're not having any other bullshiters.

We are all doing it. Now let's project, when we fix the thing, and you young people see a future ahead of you on a livable planet, then you can go back and have a popularity contest if you like as a presidency. We haven't changed the constitution. For this time, we're running as a fucking team

and we're all gonna campaign as a team and we're gonna be toe-to-toe with that moron. And then we'll debate him, oh yes. And we'll see what has he done and what is his record and who is he and what about the Russians? And by the way, we're gonna get an Obama who'll come back and be the attorney general and give us the tax returns and the fricking Mueller report

and the full level of pollution that's going on. How realistic is this that you're describing? Is this a thing you have thought about or people are actually, this is the plan? I am thinking about it and you know what? It's a revolution in my family because my daughter, Uma, thinks it's a great idea and it's gonna help me place it as an op-ed

to get it into the minds of these Democrats. It's Bernie says revolution, but why doesn't he make a revolution of not act like he's gonna be the only one who can save us? Right, I gotcha. He's not, he's not, but he wants to, all these people will bring the people who like them all together.

Hillary would never have lost in spite of the rigged states that the Republicans had all set up with fake computers and fake governors and fake secretaries of state. She didn't actually lose 87,000 votes in three states and they dismissed hundreds of thousands in each one of those states of poor black people. They did, the Latino people, the Republicans were the secretaries of state.

And just like in Georgia, just now, she was beaten because that guy was counting the fucking votes while running against them. Give me a break, that's ridiculous. And so the point is, nevertheless, she still would have won like Obama did in spite of all that criminal rigging. If her runner up in the primaries,

Mr. Sanders was the vice president. But she didn't offer that. The arrogant Clintons didn't offer that because they're still playing business as usual. I'm going to be the great saving mom president. And I'm going to be, I'll be nice to you guys in the oil industry. Don't worry, we won't be so bad to you.

We'll take you. We'll, we'll, you'll still get your subsidies and stuff. No, these people are not going to get their subsidies. They're all the subsidies are going to go to renewables in every state instantly. And Cassio Cortez is going to be the EPA. She's going to be the EPA secretary. I just don't, I don't, I don't believe in this.

I love what you're saying. I hope, I don't believe in the state so much. No, don't say you don't believe it. You say you want a revolution. Business where it starts now, not waiting for some savior to come and say, okay, now you have permission for a revolution. It won't work like that.

The revolution is now. Right. And you get the young people who are going to live their lives in this polluted screwed up Homer Simpson world. They're cooking up for you. They are, they have to have it now. They should start suing the government and they should go to court and sue those creeps in the, in the, in the Supreme

Court, because they have standing. Cause they'll be alive when it happens. And though, though Supreme Court people will not be alive in 2050 and they will be suffering. It'll be, it'll be like, you know, what do you call it? You know, war worlds or whatever those, you know, the G. Mel Gibson movies, you know, there's a lot I could think of that remind me of,

you know, let, they tell us all that one of the ways they have continued past their termination date, which was 30 years ago is by having us convinced that anything miraculous is impossible. And so we were for, oh, no, everybody wants to aggressive. Oh, everybody wants to save it. Oh, everybody's simple minded. No, people are intelligent enough to save their asses

when they see the train running down the track. Right. And the train is running down the track. It is. And so, and so, you know, I mean, you know, the point is if they, if we, if we could get them by creating the meme around the country and put those primary contenders in a room now and say, look, this is not carnival time.

This is not to replay the 2016 Republican primary circus by you guys. This is for you to already start governing. And the first thing you do is part your fucking egos and work together and pick the most plausible people who can win as a team, all of you. And then the one who says, oh, I always wanted Elizabeth Warren. I love her.

Oh, I want Bernie or I'm not going to vote for anybody. No, you're getting Bernie. You're getting Elizabeth. You're getting Kamala. You're getting a guy who knows the climate thing and knows how to do it as an executive. You're getting Corey. You're cute Corey.

You're getting cute Corey. And, and you're getting them all. And maybe the old Biden, the old bartenders can get Biden. You know, and they get through with Biden. And he will be the secretary of hugging. That would be the defense department. I love it. Sign me up.

I'm down. Let's do it. What do we do? Let's do it. What we have to do, we got to do that. We definitely got to do it. I want you in there somewhere. No, I can, I can be like, I can say prayers

in the cabinet meeting. OK. An eternal thank you to the Wonder Beings over at robinhood.com. Robinhood's an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees.

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Hour a free stock like Apple Ford or Sprint to help you build your portfolio. Sign up at dunkin.robinhood.com. That's dunkin.robinhood.com. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be there. I'm meditating. I'm trying to save Tibet.

So me and Nancy Pelosi will go and save Tibet. But we really, the young people should insist on this. And the young, for example, the young people who didn't vote at all because Bernie was badly treated by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary and Bill Clinton, treated him badly. Had they all voted anyway, because of realizing the danger of Trump, he would not have gotten in.

Even all the Russians and all everything, he still wouldn't have gotten in. But they got pissed off. And they've just played as egotistical a game as a Republican by saying, no, I didn't get my Bernie. So fuck you. And that's really stupid. What do you think about the yellow vests?

Who? In Paris, the yellow vests. I think they're funded by the Russians, actually. Really? Yes. The Marine Le Pen has a $10 million loan from Bank of Russia in Petersburg. You know, who does the, who does the, she's the,

you know, that's the ones who want to take the France out of the union. They want to go back. And then alternative for Deutschland in Germany. That's also KGB. And those are the Nazis in Germany. Wow. To destroy Angela Merkel.

And then the five-star movement in Italy and Bannon was over there egging them up. And when this whole nationalism, who benefits? It's a European, the Marine Union goes down because of people being stupid and not remembering World War II, which was in US with Europe's game. Then that's because the only people who like that are the oligarchs in Russia.

The good people in Russia and Moscow and Petersburg, I know them. I go and teach Buddhism with them all the time. Yeah. I like them. I have an interpreter. I thought the oligarchs were somehow fundamentally evil. No, yeah, but they're the, the oligarchs are KGB.

You don't know that? I know I figured. But I, I'll tell you, there's a book. I'll show you. It's called Putin's kleptocracy, who owns Russia. Right. By a woman, a woman named Karen Dowisha, sociologist at University of Oregon.

And the KGB when, when Gorbachev started Glasnost, they said, oh, they said, and Gorbachev was KGB too. And so was Andropov who put him in. So, because they had information. They knew what was going on. So, so they said, they took all the money they could take out of Russian government. KGB did their black budget, it was a red budget,

let's call it, put it in foreign banks. And the KGB station chiefs in France and Germany and Singapore and everywhere were the signatories. And they said, when it all gets chaotic in Russia, and everybody privatizes, we'll buy all the resources and we'll be oligarchs. And if we fail to, and then we'll research control that way. And if we fail to do that,

we'll be really rich in the south of France. They even have a memo like that. They do. And then they bought the mines and the factories and everything and they are the oligarchs. And they are, they are defeating the Russian people's wish to be part of the European Union themselves. I mean, the educated ones, they have a backing

once they took over all the TV stations, they have a backing in the countryside. But the internet wise people in Petersburg, Moscow, Kateryna, Bergen and a few other places, they are, they hate them. They don't like that, put it in those people. And they, and he hasn't allowed them to have a real economy, by the way.

He's just a fucking oil company. He took Kotarkovsky's Yukos and he just sells oil, that's all. I just, the reason I bring up the yellow vest, and I, you know, I have forgotten my suspicion about just about anything these days. Because I think that because of what's happening, there's concerted efforts to disconnect, disrupt, to pollute the info streams

and to make everyone just deeply confused. But one thing that isn't confusing is that we have a situation where people are not getting paid enough money to live, the distribution of wealth has become so obviously imbalanced that there isn't really a good way to trick people and to make matters worse. We've got, as our president, someone who flaunts his wealth

to people who can't afford to pay their kids or get their medicine. So what's happening is people are getting angry and people are beginning to feel completely disconnected from the political system itself. And I think that people are beginning to have this sense that no matter what we do, and I love what you're saying, I am down, anyone in their right mind would do anything

they could to avoid any type of violent revolution, any type of civil war, any type of aggression because... Yeah, so listen, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are in the cabinet and they're on the campaign and they're all running together as a team and they promise those angry people cancellation of all student debt instantly, instant on the day of inauguration, cancellation.

The banks can fucking eat it. They got bailed out and they're fucked up, credit loads of bulls' obligations and the students are all gonna be bailed out. What health system, yeah, leave some private insurers for wealthy people, they can do that, but they are immediately gonna get pre-medical care. Everybody has medical care to write instantly

and you're running on that. And these other fuckers are closing your, cutting off your Affordable Care Act. So we're not telling you, we're gonna do it when we get in, we're telling you, this is it, there it is. You sign up here and make your vote and we're doing it. And you mean they're not gonna vote for that? They damn well gonna vote for that.

And don't remember they're suffering for two more years under this shit and that guy hasn't given them a penny worth of raise. He never paid his workers ever. He went bankrupt himself anyway and he never paid anybody. He's torturing the Latinos. And you know, I mean, all you need is someone

like that governor who said to him in the governor's meeting, we need less meeting and more listening from you, Mr. I agree with you there. I mean, I think unfortunately you gotta get somebody who's got that same kind of. We got him, we got him. That's great, I haven't even heard of him.

I didn't know he was even running. I, this is the- Get him on Stephen Colbert for four or five nights and get him on everywhere. And you know, he'll, everyone will know who he is. And then that he's partnered with Kamala Harris on the black, that's the areas. Yeah.

I wouldn't want to be yelling at me. Exactly. He's a big guy in six, three or four. He's a Marini former Marine. He didn't drive your fucking draft. He fought there wherever it was. I don't know where, but he's a real guy. And booty gig, you know,

booty gig we get him in there. We get all the gay, he'll be in somewhere in the cannon all the gay people, LBGTQ people vote for him. I got to, I want to point something out. You can't lose if they do that. If they sit there and tear each other down during primaries and play the usual ego game and fight over who can get more donors and waste some money.

And then we say, it's iffy, you know, the other guys can lie their way through maybe but they're big war chest. But if they, if they really get together now and start the presidential campaign now by working together, there's no way they will not have a victory. The only danger would be if that somebody shoots all of them.

So they have to have security. I want to point something out because this is a one of the critiques I've heard regarding Buddhism, which is one of the dark terms I've heard is passive hipster Buddhism, passive hipster Buddhism. And you, sir, one of the great Buddhist scholars,

dear friends with the Dalai Lama, I think in this moment are demonstrating to people that Buddhism is not about inactivity. It's not about being apolitical. It's not about being passive. It's about, it's this, it's fiery and real and it works. Are you still there? Good book, it's the latest book.

I'll get, I'll get the book. Yeah, I'm very inspired by you right now. And, but this to me is wonderful because- You're inspiring me because you know, you're not, are you a millennial? What is, I don't know the difference- I'm not a millennial, I'm 40. I'm out of the millennial range.

You're in the middle, as you said. I'm in the middle. You're a lot younger than me. And you can reach more millennials and we need to reach them and get them going. Well, I mean, I think we need to reach everybody. I mean, the reality is that what's happening is- Justin, Justin, go ahead, go ahead, you are the reality.

It seems like people are losing track of their connection with reality. And because we've sort of subverted our own connection with just basic, here's the earth, here's the sun, here's light with a never ending stream of data coming from a variety of sources and people are getting very anxious and confused and more than anything opposed to each other.

And then you end up sitting down with just about anybody, just about anybody. And you realize everybody kind of just wants to be happy and everybody, and yet there appears to be a kind of, you know, I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but that thing where you decide to drink and you think, you know what, I'll let Tamara's version of me deal with the hangover.

And it seems similarly that as a whole, we've been drinking oil and we know that we're about to have the worst hangover of all time, which involves sea levels rising, coastal cities being driven out, massive, massive refugee problems that make what's happening right now look like nothing and essentially a complete collapse of society

as we know it, which we're already seeing. It's already happening and it's going to keep happening. And not only that, this is somehow coinciding with the technological revolution, which is gonna involve a 45% unemployment rate. So it's a, it's a, it's a mess. So I love that on one hand,

you're advocating kind of political approach using the system as it is to try to improve things dramatically and radically. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the spiritual side of all this, the deeper spiritual side of all this and how the two can balance out.

Right, well, the spiritual side is you know, Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva vow, you know, Bodhisattva commitment, I want to become a little bit of a take of all living beings and I want all beings to be happy. Anyway, that's in way, obviously, that's second. First, first of the spiritual love is this, Buddha's discovery, what is the root of the Buddha teaching

is his discovery that reality itself is bliss. Okay, yeah, that is a revolutionary discovery. In other words, instead of the default situation, it's hell, it's a mess, is it never works out, is it nothing goes right, is blah, blah, blah, and how is this dangerous because you'll do what happened to you if you're happy.

Buddha discovered nirvana is reality. Now some Buddhists are a little worried about that because they talk about life, they hear him say that life is suffering. But he never really said that, he didn't say life is suffering. He said, an unenlightened life is suffering. If you don't know what the fuck is going on,

you're gonna suffer, yes, because you don't know where you are, you're a psycho. You think everything is like this, you have to fight the universe, and if you think you have to fight the universe, guess what, the universe wins. You lose, you could be president of the United States until they'll beat you up.

There's no way in which one individual versus everything, infinite everything, is gonna defeat it. So therefore, but the point is we're not versus, we're all interwoven with each other. His insight was that we're all interconnected when we realized that we were interconnected. With the infinite abundant energy of the universe,

then suddenly we are blown away. And when you say blown over there, I mean, there's two meanings of blown away in our English slang, which were perfect for, one of them is perfect for Buddhism. Yes. One of them is the gangster meeting where you kill somebody.

Yeah. And it's not perfect, that sucks, because you lose your body. You don't become nothing actually, because the materialist might think you just lose your body, but then then you scramble to find another one. But the other meaning of blown away is, I really like that grateful concept.

Wait, sorry, wait, you've, sorry, wait, Bob, sorry, you faded out. Can you repeat that? The other meaning of blown away is? Yes, I really liked that grateful, dead concept. Yeah. I was blown away by the joy, you know, and that means I blew away for temporarily

to worry my anxiety by feeling that whatever it is, I'm not having enough fun, but you know, I could have more, it could be better. And then somehow I'm satisfied because myself thinking and myself doing and my nervous and anxiety is blown away by some overwhelmingly wonderful thing. And the point is, reality does that to you

when you really know what it is, when you realize that your life force is the bliss in yourselves. And that's why people like to ask it for crying out loud, suicide and misconduct, because temporarily it blew away the notion in our brainwashed society that everything is no good. I'm gonna get sick.

That's a germ. I mean, I need an injection and you know, they're gonna arrest me if I have a good time. If I say something, you know, if I lose control, et cetera. You know, happiness is illegal. In the United States, you get arrested for being happy. Yes. And that's why in the sixties,

temporarily people look totally and they would, and immediately they refused to go kill a bunch of Indians in Vietnam because they were too happy and they realized, we don't want to, what do we want in the jungle over there? We're not freaking out with them. That's just some cowboy movie that Johnson is playing. Right.

He's so stuck in a John Wayne movie. It's stupid. The minute you get stoned, you saw that in the sixties and you don't want to do that. And then they made it illegal and they arrested everybody and they've been trying to put the lid back on, human good feeling, which we can have here in America and in the world.

And Buddha's discovery was that if you leave it alone, life is beautiful. And even death is all right. You know, if you know about near-death experiences, people who died clinically and came back, most of them didn't want to come back. They were floating in the blinding golden light, you know, and they were happy

because the human being already is a highly evolved animal. And it's very sensitive and can have a lot of pleasure and very intelligent and self-reflective. And there's no reason to make each other all this misery. And Buddhism gives you an education that enables you to see that. You know, the psychonellics, the entheogenics, as they know, as we hear Susan Smith call them

or psychonellics, as Tim called them, these things gave you a temporary window around us. Why do you think Ram Dass got his energy to start with? It's the best. Yeah, but then he realized, more smart than Tim, he became Baba Ram Dass because he realized that this is natural in you and that those catalysts temporarily shatter

some negative culture that has you not seeing it and then you temporarily get a glimpse. And then if you're smart, you work on yoga, meditation, bhakti, whatever it is, and you can open this out because actually the real bliss, the joy is in you but it's in the human heart. That's the nature of the human being.

It's love, compassion, kindness. And that's what Buddha discovered. So that's the essence of the Buddhist thing. Certainly, for example, the whole thing that stopped us from not fixing everything is the concept that can't be fixed. Wait, I'm sorry, you're fading for a second. I'm sorry, can you repeat that? The whole thing that keeps us from fixed,

say that again, the last sentence? From fixing our planet with all the knowledge and technology that we have is the concept that we have inherited from a wrong view of Christianity, not what Jesus said. Jesus said, it's fine, every sparrow, every daffodil in the field. But the church, and oh no, you gotta just do this

so we're gonna put you in hell. In other words, the great people in history have all said the same thing, everything is fine if you live it as fine and are nice to your neighbor and yourself. And that's what we can get back to. Buddhism has education system, very effectively to get you back to that.

It's not a matter of just believing it. It's a matter of doing it. And the psychedelics opened the door for people and then they can develop it through an education system right because it's in everybody's heart. Everybody has the ability. And even Trump, even the horrible EPA, oil company stooge, you know,

in our supposedly environment protection thing, they can all be happy. We don't want them to suffer. We don't want them to, even if they go to jail, it would be a nice jail with some girls and some food. And they can have a, they can, no, you never had Paradise Island. I've always, it's always been one of my desires

is to have a Paradise Island for ex-dictators. Wow. Cool. They will never leave and they keep killing people to stay because they think if they leave, then they'll get killed, you see? But, you know, they got Marcos and Imelda out of the Philippines instead of killing Mrs. Aquino

by bringing them to Hawaii. And they even set a plane for her shoes. Wow. Ha, ha, ha, ha. You just described the best TV show of all time, Paradise Island, the world's top 10 dictators, living their weekly episodes. That's right.

And they get massages. They get great massages and rikean therapy. So they could have one fulfilling orgasm, so they don't have to grab everybody else's pussy, which they don't know how to do, they don't know how to work with it. That's why they kill so many because they can't, they don't enjoy it themselves.

If they're all locked up inside, you know, they're all twisted and angry and ah, and they're afraid of their own sensitive, vulnerable, melting, blissful emotions. I'm afraid of that. And I'm not even a dictator. Me too. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

I don't agree with that. Yeah, so, so, I am true. I'm, I'm educated. I went to, I'm educated every uptight, right wing school you can think of. Yeah. But luckily the Buddha Dharma saved me with a little help from some psilocybin to start.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Get me out of the way, it's just like Rhonda. You know, that's helpful, you know, in, in, in, in, in Amazon cultures and in Mexico or something, you get a little much fun when you're a teenager and then you have a spiritual life, you know, you don't keep taking it all the time cause you got a cloud of fields and you got to do some work,

you know, but you, but these, these things are, they were very valuable psychological and educational things. Those, those, uh, vision quest substances that all in history cultures have had. And thanks to Albert Hoffman and Tim Leary and, and about Rhonda's, he's, they temporarily exploded something in our culture.

Yes. And it's time we honored that. And then, and, but we, we've gone beyond just depending on that and we have to now depend on our heart's courage and our say, our lack of fear of death. You know, we, we shouldn't be afraid to speak up. You know, actually revolution does happen in cocktail parties where some,

some ass, some banker comes up with his drinking hand and acts like, well, we're helping everybody. He goes, we made some loans and we make him money and it make him money out of people. Yeah, you're making money to help me buddy. And somebody there speaking back to him in a friendly manner, but forcefully showing him he's wrong. He's like, he's like mistaken,

make a mistake thinking it's just money. With his fourth trophy, he has his fourth trophy wife on his shoulder because he didn't enjoy the first one who bore his children for crying out loud. Wow. His kids are addicted to something because he didn't pay enough attention to them getting to be a big CEO.

Right. So that, that's a revolution when somebody meets him on his level in a nice way and speaks at that elite level to him, but doesn't both doesn't mess around with him. We got to get into the boat. We got to get you into the Bohemian Grove. Are you a member of the Bohemian Grove yet?

No, hey, no, I didn't go there. But, you know, I'll go wherever, but I know what it is, but I never went there. No, I never did. But I, I love what you're saying. And I, and to me, that's the other element of Buddhism that I love so much is it's contagious. And it doesn't, the way it approaches life

is not to try to correct, but to communicate. I can't see, can you hold it up this way? Let me see. Yes. Wow, cool. I see it. Yeah. You know where she is?

Where we are there? Where? We're at a Tibetan community New Year celebration in Queens. Wow. Because the Tibetan ghetto in Jackson Heights and in those places, you know, Tibetan exile refugees cool are in her district. Wow.

You know, 800 families and she was invited and she's the cause woman of it. And she was looking so happy not because of me. I'm just an irritating, you know, person asking for a story. But she, she, and we have those white scarves given by the Tibetans, they, the Tibetans gave them to us because we were at the bar out there saying, and she, and she would like seeing the Tibetan,

I can't, I can't, seeing the Tibetan children dancing. Hey, we got five minutes. I told her, I told her, I said, listen, challenge Nancy Pelosi and she loved the Tibetan children Nancy. So I said, look, challenge Nancy, she's a chair Nancy, but she really is good. And she loves the Tibetans too. And she knows the Dalai Lama for years.

She's helped them. She's saved them. She gave Dalai Lama the golden medal, not W Bush. He didn't, he joined in it, but she's the one who arranged it. So you have to see her good side. She's older generation and so on. And she's practical. She worries about what is realistic and practical,

but challenge, but cherish. That's what I was whispering to her there. Challenge, but cherish. She said, oh, yes, we said, we're getting along. She said, oh, yes, we're getting along. Can you please say they hate each other? We have five minutes left. And I wonder if in those five minutes

you could talk about Tibet House a little bit and how people who are interested in helping in that way can connect. Yeah, thank you. Yes, well, as long as the Dalai Lama, I've known since 1964, we were kind of classmates initially studying with his senior teachers. I'm six years younger, but we were sort of classmates.

You know, he wasn't really my guru at that time. And he was my caretaker. I was so lunatic. But I was a monk. He made me a monk. And we were really buddies. And then, but then we kept together friends. He was a little annoyed me when I ceased being a monk,

but then he really liked my wife and children. He thought they were better than me, better than Paolo. So we remain really good friends now for almost 60 years, 50-some years. And I really like him. And at one point he asked me to create an organization, or he asked me to do a lot of things, but one was create an organization

for the Tibetan culture. Not for the political, you know, lobbying against China or anything like that. Although sometimes I speak like that for the Chinese, you know, in public events as an individual, but the institution is not political and it's not religious. It's not a Dharma center,

although we do teach meditation and things. But it's about getting people to love the culture. And our slogan is not save Tibet, and it's not free Tibet, although we don't disagree with either. But our slogan is love Tibet. Because Tibet, they're very free, those people. They're very individualistic.

They're very kind and compassionate. They were great warriors for a long time, but then they became kind and compassionate, and they really kept that great Indian education system alive up until the modern period. It got wrecked in India by people invading India. And so, you know, and it never came to its fullest in East Asia because the king, the emperors,

they're always kept it under a little bit wraps as a counter-cultural thing. But it became mainstream in Tibet and Mongolia as it had been in India. And so we're trying to save that culture, and he wanted us to make a powerful, wealthy foundation, which we have not succeeded yet in doing, so that we can actually make grants all over the world

to Tibetan exiles, to Tibetans in Tibet, to Westerners who are interested in Tibet, and we can open the door and do exhibitions and bring Tibetans traveling groups and monks. We brought the first monk chanting tours, things like that. So they love the culture, and then people will, if they love it, they'll help it politically, they'll help it religiously, they'll learn stuff,

and you know, it'll be great. And the Tibetan American link between being a free person and seeing the world as basically good and wonderful, and therefore not being cynical and depressed about being able to change it for the better. That's what the Tibetan culture embeds as a mainstream aspect in the culture, making them peaceful and cheerful and happy.

But they're not all perfect, they're not all Buddhists, it's not Shangri-La. But they have problems. But they always tend toward the good, and they've made great contributions wherever they've been exiles and refugees, and they're ready to make an awesome contribution to China. And the Chinese in past history,

pre-commonists, love Tibet, and they honor the Tibetan Lamas as great sort of magicians and great teachers and happy people, and they would honor them and support them. And the Manchu, the Ming Dynasty, the Mongolians, and the Song Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, they loved Tibet, and before that, they used to have wars, Tibetans and Chinese.

But when they both got into Buddhism, then Tibetans were considered adept really having the full blast of the Indian Buddhism, and so they were very honored by the Chinese, who also liked Buddhism. So that's Tibet House, and it's a national organization. We need to open branches in LA. We only have the one branch still in New York,

because it's been very hard to raise the big money that we need to pay, because people think that if anybody has more money, they think, well, I have to help Tibet save themselves politically, or I have to help the refugees economically, and our people to Tibet, and that's fine. They should all do that, we're not against that,

but it's not either or. They should do all of that, and a lot of people who are introduced to love Tibet by us do go and do those other things, but they also need to make sure that his Holiness has resigned from the political aspect of the Tibetan movement himself, now that he's 84 years old, he resigned 2011,

and then the head of the government in exile is elected now, democratically, and he's not automatically, then he says, in the future, he won't be, but he's not resigned from saving the culture, and that is our job as commissioned by him to do. A lot of people who are either religious centers or political people, they also act like,

we're saving the culture too, and they're very competitive, because there's a great Tibetan saying, if you have 40 Tibetans in a room, in that room, there are 40 horns. Like their national animal, which is a yak. The yak is a very wild and independent cow animal, cow family animal, they're wonderful, the yaks.

Actually, my friend John Perry Barlow used to tell me that he tried to raise some yaks in Wyoming when he had a ranch out there. You know him, the Grateful Dead, the nurses said, you know, Perry Barlow, I bet you do. And the late John Perry Barlow. And then he said, however, he sort of was discouraged, because when he would go to town, to the bar or something,

the cattleman would ask him, well, John, what are you doing with them long-haired, hippy cattle? Ha ha ha ha! Even as ass-on longer! Anyway, so the thing is that we haven't got the big money that we need to before I die, so that it can make rents, not just raise money.

But on the other hand, we've survived well, but always in the black. We have a great retreat center, where I'm speaking from, where we're trying to introduce people to the Tibetan herbal natural medicine, you know, diet, massage, external therapies. You know, it's not a recognized medical system in America. It is in India and China, but not in America.

And they're very popular there, because it's very effective. But it's a good complementary, good among the tourists of complementary medicine. It's a very good one. And so that's what Menla is. Menla retreat center up here. People are welcome to come.

They're welcome to come to our lectures and our teachings and our events and our exhibitions in New York, at Tibet House on 15th Street. And then they're welcome to help us open Tibet houses. In Chicago, we have a kind of semi one in Tucson, Arizona, actually friends of Tibet organization. And then LA, San Francisco, we want,

Seattle and Atlanta. You know, we want to open little Tibet houses, which are like destination places, where people can go in there and they can see paintings and tankas and learn the history and see it. And they won't get lobbied and they won't have to join any cult or anything.

And they will just get to love Tibet. That's what all we want to do is to love Tibet. And by loving Tibet, realize the value of indigenous cultures and more natural cultures and everywhere. And we encourage that they can help everyone. But you know, like the Dalai Lama is so unique. He's a little problematic as the fundraisers

within the aggressive thing, because he'll go to an event and he'll thank the donors of some Tibetan organization. And then he'll say, and he's done this many times, they don't say, well, it's great. It says, but also, by the way, if you want to really help Tibet, help some other people.

Help the poor people in your city here. Help the people under the tsunami. Help the people over there in Mozambique. Help, he does that because if he had a country in a foreign policy, or as he wants it in the future, where Tibet remains a very good and strong and honored part of China, Tibetans will become important in the Chinese government

inevitably because they're very effective people. Naturally, they're energetic and charismatic, all of them. And so then they will be using that foreign policy not to help dictators like the current silly policy at the moment, giving Confucius prizes to Robert Mugabe for crying out. Right. And Bashar al-Assad and joining the dictator parade.

Instead, they're helping people. And they're poor people in the country. That would be a full compassion foreign policy is what great nation like China should be doing. And they will be in the future when Tibet is a real part of them as Tibet, not trying to kill off Tibet and culture and swallow Tibetan people

to try to be some kind of half-baked Chinese. They're not Chinese, they're Tibetans. But they're happy to be part of a Chinese union and really help China and help China help the world. They really want to do that. And so they should exploit that asset instead of treating them as some kind of problem Chinese. Thank you so much.

Thanks for the reminder. Thanks for the reminder. I forget it all the time. I'm gonna believe again and dive into this. All right, all right. I'm in. I got it. I love you, I love you.

I love you. Listen, you have to come on my podcast one of these days. Anytime. And then I want to hear about your life and your story and your struggles and this and that. And you don't crack some more jokes instead of me talking all the time. Anytime.

Let me know. Let's do it again. And I hope you'll do this again, Simpson. Thank you very much. Thank you. Keep that beard trimmed. Keep that beard. I need to trim it.

Keep it nice. No, no, no, just shape it. Okay. I'm gonna shape it. But when we do your podcast, it'll be nicely shaped for you. All right, all right. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Hare Krishna, thanks a lot. Bye. Thank you so much for listening, my dear friends. If you like the DTFH, don't forget to subscribe and give us a nice rating on iTunes. It really does make a difference. And if you need anything that from our sponsors,

give them a shot. I don't promote stuff on the podcast that I don't use, except for simple contacts, because I have perfect vision, but my wife uses them. So they're great. Much thanks to Bob Thurman for appearing on this episode of the DTFH. Big shout outs to my new wonderful sound person, Aaron.

Send him some glory juice, won't you? We will be back in one week's time with a new DTFH. I'm headed to the Ram Dass retreat, so I'm gonna collect some cool interviews. Until then, I love you, and I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful series of heartbeats. Hare Krishna.

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