Good Life Project - Robert Thurman: Living Buddhist Ideals in a Western World.

Episode Date: June 26, 2017

Guest: Robert Thurman is one of the world's foremost Buddhist scholars, a long-time friend of the Dalai Lama, the father of actress Uma Thurman, and a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism and related cultures.He is an eloquent advocate of the relevance of Eastern ideas to our daily lives. In doing so, he has become a leading voice of the value of reason, peace, and compassion. Thurman was named one of TIME magazine’s 25 most influential Americans and has been profiled by The New York Times Magazine and People magazine. He is the author of many books, and played a central role in the new graphic biography, Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet.Story: After losing an eye in an accident at a young age, Thurman was suddenly confronted with impermanence and death. Shortly after, he embarked on a life-changing journey and exploration of Tibetan Buddhism and culture, building a close relationship with the Dalai Lama, and becoming a prominent Buddhist teacher and scholar.Big idea(s): A lot of spirituality is skewed into an idea of escaping from relationship and transcending into some vastness. What if that vastness existed already in the life you were already living, but you just didn't see it?Every relative thing is empty of any non-relative element.By knowing reality, you transcend the idea that you’re more special than others, and their heartbeat becomes as important to you as your own.You’d never guess: Why Bob abandoned his education in the spring of his senior year of high school.Current passion project:A graphic novel biography of Dalai Lama – story of one man taking on an empire, calling for truth, peace, and justice for his Tibetan people.Rockstar sponsors/supporters:KIND - For $10 dollars, you’ll get a box with 10 KIND snacks inside including free shipping (that's a $20 value for just $10). When you order the sample box, you’ll also get to try KIND’s Snack Club, where you’ll receive monthly snacks at a discount – starting with $10 off your first Snack Club order. To pick up your sample box, go to KindSnacks.com/goodCAMP GLP - Final $100 early bird discount ends June 28th. Grab your spot now, save $100, then forward this to a few friends so you can all rock the bunks (or private rooms, we only have a handful left) together! Oh, also, we’re getting very close to our cap, and when we hit it, there’ll be no spots left at any price! So, lock-in your spot now for only $995, that’s $100 discount from full-price.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the Dalai Lama likes to say, he says, if you're going to be successfully selfish, meaning fulfill your self-interest, be a wise selfish and be compassionate and altruistic. Because the first person who gets happy when you want the happiness of other beings is you. So if you've ever wondered what Buddhism has in common with the movie The Matrix, you may get your answer in this week's conversation, where I sit down with one of the leading Tibetan Buddhist scholars in the world, Robert Thurman, who has been teaching for decades, written a tremendous number of books, has been a very close confidant of the Dalai Lama for some 50 plus years, founder of Tibet House

in New York. And we talk about his incredible wide ranging journey from being a kid growing up in the Northeast, going through Harvard and studying with a Buddhist Lama in New Jersey, and then finally ending up on the other side of the world, diving deep into Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism and the culture and befriending the Dalai Lama at a much earlier point in his life. And we also explore towards the end, a wonderful book, The Man of Peace, which is out now, which is this tremendous graphic biography of the life of the Dalai Lama. We cover so many different topics from justice to compassion to love to the reality of today to goodness to bravery, and really what it means to be in the world today. A lot of reframes, a lot of really

big, deep questions. Excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot?

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. There's so many directions I want to go with you. Okay. You read the book? I have. It's sitting right here. I'm sort of refreshing myself on Tibet House and what's been going on there lately. Looking at the catalog and saying, oh, I missed that, but I want to jump into the next thing. Wonderful. Yeah. So I want to take a step back in time, though. All right.

I'm particularly interested in sort of your journey and some of the experiences that you've had along the way. Yeah. Big step back. You kind of started out education-wise in Harvard. Yeah. But then split from there. Well, I was here in New York, St. Bernard's,

Exeter, New Hampshire, then Harvard. That's where you came up originally. I ran away from Exeter, too. I never graduated. What happened? I left spring of my senior year with a Mexican friend to join Fidel Castro's revolution at the age of 17. And luckily for me, our recruitment was declined

by the recruiters in Miami Beach. We didn't really look like useful mercenaries. And so then we went to Mexico. What was the motivation? I mean, what was underlying that? Well, some sort of romantic Latino. He was the poet of the Sierra Maestra. My friend was this Mexican from a really right-wing Mexican family.

And we were just all into reading Spanish poetry. And it was just a little group. And it was like, oh, you wouldn't go and really put your life on and really work on the poetic revolution against oppression, would you now? No, you wouldn't. No, I would. Yeah, you would. No, who would? And then we went, you know, like about three weeks before graduation, and then long stories after that, but so I did that. Then Harvard, I was married. They let me into Harvard anyway because I was a sophomore. In those days, they had advanced standing, and I was already way ahead.

It was a horrible exit or making you work too much. And then— Did you have a sense for what you actually wanted to go to Harvard for, or was it— Well, I had already been admitted there. Then I married during the time I had a year off. And I fell in love with someone and married them at 18. And then I've got a supportive family, so I must go back to school. Yeah.

So it's a lot of accelerated things that normally happen at a slower pace. I know. Well, the big acceleration, actually actually that was really good was horrible, but it turned out really good was I lost an eye in a garage accident, which was a real blessing because I used to race around. I could easily lost everything.

And that sort of brought me up against impermanence and death and purpose of life. Well, you know, you lose an eye. It's like kind of a shock. And you couldn't have died, that type of thing. So then you realize,

well, I can't just sit here reading Buddhist texts and Nietzsche and yoga and Carl Jung and Hermann Hesse and whatever it is, and then just maybe just still putter around and party and hang out.

And instead, I've got to take it seriously, you know. Journey to the East, you know. Right, 19 or 20 years old? 20, yeah, 20. In your mind, is the word impermanence even part of your vocabulary then, or are you just like this something? Well, death sits there.

Yeah. Death was there. Which, again, brings you up against that idea at a far earlier age than your average person usually is. Yes, I think that's why I said lucky, because otherwise I might have puttered along in a comfortable slot and had a midlife crisis or something from my previous life affinities or something like that. You kind of accelerated the existential crisis. Yeah, and then you can actually have a chance to learn a little something.

Right. From there, though, you decided to head to India. Well, I knew India had what I needed. You know, Harvard didn't have the something. Right. From there, though, you decided to head to India. Well, I knew India had what I needed. Harvard didn't have the courses, and India must have them, I felt. And it was connected to Buddhism, I thought. But when I got there, the Indians had forgotten their Buddhism

and they actually don't really know what it is. But the Tibetans were just coming out, 61, 62 at that time. Right. So did you end up heading straight up to Dharamsala? No, no, he wasn't in Dharamsala. Well, yeah, he was already in 61, I guess. I didn't, in 62, I didn't really, I was about to go to Dalhousie, actually.

And then my father died, I came here, came back for the funeral with a round trip back there. And then I met a Mongolian, an old Mongolian Lama in New Jersey. Because that's where you meet Mongolian Lamas. And he was amazing. I was just going there to take a message back to India. I had a reservation like three days afterwards.

But meeting him was like, bowled me over, you know. And then I studied with him for a year and a half or almost two years. And then he took me to meet the Dalai Lama again, you know. And then I studied with him for a year and a half or almost two years. And then he took me to meet the Dalai Lama again, you know, and then I stayed with them for a while. So was he the sort of initial introduction to Tibetan Buddhism? Yes. I mean, the Tibetans I had met and I had a job teaching them and everything, but I didn't

really take up the job because of the heart attack of my dad. And so then the real first study was here in New Jersey, like two hours or hour and a half from Port Authority after hitchhiking and walking to India over a year's period of time. It's very funny. It's like you go out into the world searching for it. It's like, huh, an hour and a half away. That's right. But it's interesting, right, also, because you have these two experiences of impermanence. You lose a sight in one eye, and then your dad passes shortly after.

Did that sort of bring you back to that place of, huh? Well, yeah, well, he was part of it. I mean, he had his own spiritual thing, and he defended me when I left against various people who wanted to have me institutionalized, you know. And, you know, when I left, you know. And he said, no, he has this quest. Let him go on a quest and it's good.

What was, were you brought up in a spiritual household there? No, not particularly. And I wasn't spiritual. I was not religious. I wasn't looking for religion. I was looking for a better philosophy. I had read right through the West, psychology and philosophy. Wittgenstein was my latest hero at that time, still is a kind of hero.

But then they didn't just get it together. And then Nagarjuna, when you met Nagarjuna. Oh, Indian philosophers. Yeah, really at the tops. They're a little bit beyond the Greeks, actually. So you end up then, I'm just trying to sort of get the timeline straight in my head. So you go there, you come back, ostensibly to deal with your dad's passing,

but then you end up meeting the Lama here in New Jersey when you're here, and then you stayed for another... Yeah, a couple of... Well, I wanted to be a monk. I wanted to stay forever doing that, because those texts really opened the door to me for the nirvana, what it is. Not that I attained it, of course, that's why not, but what it is and that it's there

and sense of the imminence of it was very powerful to me. Every word and syllable I was speaking fluent Tibetan in ten weeks. It was like a home, you know, totally. It's kind of stunning that you pick up a language. Well, I was good at languages, but that one, I just lived and breathed it. It was just so, so wonderful. Was there something else going on there?

What? Previous life. Yeah, definitely previous life, no question. People who doubt it, they forget about it. They just deal with it. We're going to have to revisit that. I'm sure, I'm sure, I have no doubt. Because that is sort of a central tenet of a lot of Buddhist philosophy.

Well, it's common sense, actually. It's the majority of humanity, and also all of nature has continuity. Why is the super subtle energy of consciousness, the one energy that has no continuity, or, put it more drastically, it has the continuity of being nothing right now. So therefore, we're all nothing, and it's all meaningless,

and we're a random mutation, and we're a bag of cheap chemicals. You know, the materialist thing is really not satisfactory, and there's no evidence for it. There's no evidence that we're nothing, that there is nothing. Actually, nothing doesn't exist.

You mean assuming that after we, quote, pass or leave this physical body, there is nothing. Yeah, the people who have an image, a picture that death is like a big sleep and a big oblivion. And that because they're only brains, they're just brains. And there's no real thing inside the brain. You know, there's no ghost in the machine sort of thing, you know. People who have that, which are a lot of people, are adopting a view based on complete blind dogma. Because no one ever discovered that, right? No one ever reported back. And the key is that if that's the case,

in other words, if the reduction is thing, you reduce down to a nothing, it means you're already a nothing. So then, bang, you blow your brains out and you're nothing. Then you get there quicker. But that means you're going around with a picture that that's what you actually essentially are. Do you follow me?

And that's counterintuitive and counter-common sense. It isn't, you know, the shoe is on the foot of the people who argue for some kind of continuity. Whatever it might be, it might not be exactly the Buddhist picture or the Christian picture or any particular kind of picture. It might be something completely different,

something out of Star Trek or something, but it's some kind of continuity. That's the main point. That would be the rule in nature, right? Yeah, I mean, I guess it's sort of like the conservation of matter or the preservation of energy over time. But when I think where people struggle is when you frame that,

when you give it a word like reincarnation, all of a sudden it feels bizarre. Like, how could I have been alive in a past life? Because the high priests of our culture are the natural scientists. And they go around swaggering with their assurance that, yeah, so that's a little superstition that we know and all this kind of thing.

Meanwhile, it's utterly unevidence. They are supposed to be operating on experience and evidence. And nobody ever experienced nothing. Or at least they didn't ask for a Nobel Prize for it. Yeah, it is that really fine line between science and faith or maybe it's not so fine a line but isn't there a certain amount of faith in the assumption also in the idea of continuity?

Well, no, it's kind of, yes. I mean, there's a faith that things are there like there's a faith that things are there. Like there's a faith in Broadway is still outside. I have faith in that. I can't see it. It might have disappeared. Like in the Leonard DiCaprio movie or something.

It might have gone. But we have faith. We don't think of that, though, as a kind of mysterious faith. It's a common sense faith. And actually, people who have faith that they're going to be nothing and there will be no consequence to their life, however well or badly they lived it, that's a faith that is

definitely blind because there's no experiential evidence for that. Yeah, but then there's also the other side of it, which is faith in transcendence. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. People seek transcendence, you know, because they are sensitive,

and there's a lot of things you bump up against in the world. And, you know, when you get old and really creaky, and you're aching and in agony, you want to get away from it all. And a lot of people, I think, lately, especially, I don't know why, it's been very strong in my, maybe the things I've been reading, studying, translating. But, you know, a lot of spirituality is skewed into this idea of escaping from relationship.

You know, getting into some vastness where it's just you or something like that, you know. Or maybe God is there or whatever you want to think. So transcending and staying transcended. And actually, that's a kind of psychotic idea. It's as if it's psychotic in its own way as the I'm going to transcend into nothing and then I'll never have a problem, you know. And because if you newly experience something, even a state of transcending your boundaries,

then it's a relational experience. It can't be an absolute thing. Because a relational being cannot have an absolute experience, actually. It's not possible, right? Unless they're already having it and they don't know it. That's possible. If we're already having it and we don't know it, then that's possible. And that's what the Buddhists say.

We are in nirvana, actually. An enlightened being sees us as bubbles of bliss in an ocean and but and then feel sorry that we don't understand it so then he tries to help us find the understanding of it not to ask us to believe it that becomes nihilistic but ask us to find the understanding so lately i just said no i mean i don't really know because i haven't attained transcendence or enlightenment i've transcended this and that here and there, but I haven't attained it, you know? I tell myself anyway. But lately I've been running into this thing of like,

you really don't attain it. And by that same light, there's a famous phrase in the Heart Sutra, it says there's no attainment, but there's no non-attainment. They also say. That's kind of exciting. So it's like you've got to hold this duality.

Something like that. But we do that. We can do that. For example, in the morning you shave nicely, did a good job. And you do that and you have a knowledge that this is a mirror reflection which you see through the window of the mirror.

And you don't have to think it, you intuitively know it. And you just pay attention to what you see there. And you don't have to think it, you intuitively know it. And you just pay attention to what you see there. And you even correct the left, right, you know, like flip, and so on. And so you can hold this other connection to the fact that it's a mirror. You know that, so you have a double knowledge, actually. You hold that cognitive dissonance every day without any effort. So the key would be to know we're in nirvana while we're taking care of relationships. But that's how Buddhism defines enlightenment, actually.

So then the idea of transcendence isn't if we're here already. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's the only way it could be here. Because it's uncreated, you know, it's absolute. This has no boundary between it and you. So you can't newly get it, but you can find out you've always been there. Maybe you couldn't think. Finally, it's inexpressible.

Yeah. I mean, would that be, because I've always looked at the transcendent philosophies, including Buddhism, and I'm very, very, very basic of it as you aspire to transcend the cycle of suffering into this state of nirvana. But what you're offering is maybe it's less about transcending and opening to the fact that it exists. What you transcend is your sense of being an absolute separate being confronting an absolute other world, which of course is a losing proposition.

That's the samsaric suffering because you can't can't overwhelm it you can't get away from it you know it's sometimes okay but then it gets you right and so you're at your transcending so the transcendence is still there it's not that it's not there but the thing is the transcendence is here that's the good part actually but but buddha let some people think that they were going somewhere for a while. And because some people cannot conceive that they're too oversensitive.

Some of the highly intelligent Brahmins in his time, the ascetics and the seekers, they were just too sensitive to things. And the idea that this could be bliss was beyond their, they would have just said. This meaning the here and now.

Yeah, they would just say that's ridiculous or they would say, well, then I can do whatever I want, it doesn't matter. They misinterpreted it. So he was a little in reserve for a while. What do we call non-duality? Right. So if we work on the assumption

that this could be it, and the transcendence, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it, the transcendence that then we talk about is transcending the notion that we are in some way separate from others, from the world around us. It's transcending the struggle

of us against them, and it's feeling the oneness of all of us. I call it the expensive oneness. The cheap oneness is the mystical thing where it's all one but nobody's there. Which I consider psychotic, I actually have to face that it is. And not that I haven't craved it in my life here and there.

But whereas the expensive one is it's all one and we're all here together and therefore if someone's freaking out, that's our sole concern. By theory, I can't pretend that it's by experience fully, because that becomes our sole concern because they say, when we feel this oneness incorporating all life, we only can melt into that feeling through bliss, through a kind of transcending bliss,

like when you melt out of yourself, out of your boundary. And so you're blissful enough where you can then, you don't need anything more yourself, but you realize that those who don't know the situation are really struggling. And you feel that's where the, and that bliss is the source of your compassion for them because they don't need to be in that struggling.

You feel, and as I say, I'm saying compassion for them because they don't need to be in that struggling. You feel, and as I say, I'm saying that by theory. I don't pretend. I'm not pretending. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I wouldn't dare. My wife would throw me out of the house. We can't have that.

That's right. But it's interesting, right? Because if you take that at face value, then I've always sort of deconstructed compassion as empathy plus altruism, but you're not necessarily saying it has to be empathy. It's almost like... No, no, it is empathy. Sure it is. But how could you stand being empathic to infinite beings if you didn't have, if it wasn't reflected in the mirror of the blissfulness of their deepest reality and your deepest reality. In other words, you have the connection to that mirror knowledge,

that intuition underlying, has to be unified with it. And then you could tend to be empathetic. Actually, I always think of Buddhahood as, do you remember the Star Trek one where they met V'ger? No. Remember that? I don't rememberger? No. Remember that? I don't remember that. You never remember that?

They met this satellite that was out there, a machine that was devouring worlds. And, you know, Kirk and everybody. It was the old Kirk one, and they were out there. And actually a guy named Frank Converse, who I knew as a young person, the actor, he played a lieutenant on the ship. And it turned out that V viger was the voyager that we had sent that they'd sent out the 20th century right and it had the drive to know everything and then one thing it didn't know was what was it like to be a living being any human being it

really wanted to know that it was so it would consume things but then it would be frustrating because once it consumed them then they were gone and they still didn't know what it was like to be them. So then Frank said, well, listen, you don't have to consume me. I'll give myself to you. I mean, he was a lieutenant, somebody. And then that supercomputer, you know, sci-fi supercomputer and the human being merged. And it was like, and she had, of course, a female voice feature and very attractive. So it's like, it was like father-mother union, you know? And it was all knowledge. And that knowledge was empathy and sympathy. Because that sort of, to me, I don't know why that's like,

enlightenment must be like that, it seems to me. Well, it's so interesting, right? She disappeared then. She merged into the vast universe. There was no machine there anymore destroyed. Because there's no distinction at that point. There's almost like no distinction between... She was everywhere. She merged into a vast universe. There was no machine there anymore destroyed. Because there's no distinction at that point. There's almost like no distinction. She was everywhere.

Right. With him. He gave up. He was happy, apparently. Yeah. That's a little worrisome. I know. Well, because I think we freak out also on so many levels when discussing this.

Sure we do. But it's interesting, too, because the idea of the singularity is almost like this merging of like machine and consciousness all as one, like Ray Kurzweil and there's all this, the singularity institute these days. Well, because he was,

because he's a materialist, so he's going into where we're going to be all machine. That's his own escape. Right, rather than the other way. Which is kind of demented. It was going to peel your brain like an onion,

you know, like a fine slicer and then supposedly program its structure. And I think that's very unrealistic, actually, to think it's a singularity. But it's kind of exciting even to see it, but I think it's unrealistic. The singularity might be, on the other hand, I think, you know, the one that is in the back of that book, the Dalai Lama's, in the epilogue, Dalai Lama's vision of the world working out.

You know, Bucky F Fuller had a great thing that I love, the old Bucky Fuller that everybody's forgotten about, where he said that the world is beautifully designed for our participation. And if we didn't have scarcity psychology and freak out and kill each other and people hoard so much and not share it, and then politicians do stupid things, that actually it's very workable and that we have a cultural, he blamed all the religions. And he included Buddhism because he, you know, like Westerners think Buddhism is about only suffering. He did. He didn't know that Buddhism, Buddha's thing is based on having discovered happiness.

But he thinks about suffering. So he blamed them all for giving us an inferiority complex. Which becomes self-fulfilling. Like this is not an adequate planet. It kind of sucks. So we better kill other people so we'll have more room. And, you know, it's a whole thing like that. And I love that he had that kind of positive vision.

And so rather than machine, us all becoming machines, we all, us humans, become really more choosing love, finding the power of love and compassion out of wisdom, not out of some big goody-goody, but actually because we see that's what the real energy is. Contrary to our culture that tells us that the good guy ends up hanging on the meat hook and the bad guy runs things and lives in the White House, etc.

Although my wife reassures me all the time that this won't go on for too long because that gentleman really doesn't like it's his first experience of public housing and he won't want to stay there forever. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. It's interesting. Each time an actual result will vary. nature of human beings is goodness. Yes. That's nice. And, and, I had to know that.

And I asked him, I said, what is, what do you think it means to live a good life? And you know, like what, what word comes up? And for him, the word that came up was bravery,

which is the courage to sort of step into that place. Because it feels like when you look around the world today, the argument for the fundamental sort of nature of humanity is goodness. It's hard. Oh, sure. It's hard to just own that and to see it. It's so much so that it's sort of esoteric, actually, traditionally in the Buddhist world.

It's a little bit esoteric because it's, you know, Voltaire ridiculed it, right, in the Candide, you know, and the best of all possible worlds, you know. And in Buddhism, it's kind of esoteric. It's considered for the mainstream people, okay, just face the suffering and then really try to do something about yourself as an individual, because the world will always be like that kind of suffering. Some sort of idea that actually the world is headed onto a kind of omega point, like a short down thing, or like the Shambhala thing that the Buddhists have. But that Shambhala thing

was esoteric until just lately. It's now sort of everywhere. Because I think it's happening, personally. At least now, at my age, in the 60s, I felt it was happening next week always, and I was very frustrated. You know, negative

administration by negative leader by negative leader. I was very frustrated that they weren't living up to that standard. But now it may take a little longer, they say 400 years from now. But I think that's an exaggeration. But I think it is human consciousness. One reason we have now such incredibly bad oligarchic leadership everywhere. Now, finally, really overtly and nakedly here, but, and less overtly, we've already had it for a while on and off, is that the people are more

gentle, they're more aware, you know, Facebook, interconnection, the media before, even regular TV, seeing people of other races and things, and seeing films about them, and becoming familiar with how they look, and what they feel like and how they sound and loving their music or something, you know, their fabrics or whatever it is. And like Chinese people seeing white faces and not thinking it's just like some hairless rabbit, you know, with funny eyes, blue eyes.

And so this is weaving humanity together in a certain way. And the old way of where you have your tribal enemy and you say they're subhuman and we can exterminate them and then we'll have more land is like no longer too doable because there's a kind of, there is a feeling of empathy through the Facebook and the TV and this and that. And that's really accelerated to a high point now. But then those people who sort of more have that vision and, as you put it nicely, I think, step into that place of being more living in the goodness and feeling confident about it can be abused easily. They can be tricked and fooled and harnswoggled and conned, as people here have been lately, rather extravagantly. They can be. But on the other hand, the encouraging thing is the people who do that

and who are trying to dominate are getting so evidently incompetent and incapable. And you never can achieve whatever they try to do. Their wars don't get won. Nothing works. Their walls get breached.

And they feel prisoned inside them, actually. And so that's kind of, in a weird way, that's incorrect. Of course, that's maybe my rationalization faculty. I'm over time. But to me, that's a kind of good sign that the old militaristic, let's conquer, more budget for the Pentagon, it's just so totally unworkable. Yeah. I mean, when you look around the world, it is. I almost feel like depending what your wiring is, depending what your lens is, you can point to something substantial to validate the trend that you want to identify. This is what's evolving.

This is what's happening. But it's interesting to see you say, sort of point to a lot of what's happening with technology on kind of flattening the world. And because so many people are pointing to technology as, yes, flattening the world, but also disconnecting people from deeper community and relationship conversation. That's true, too. That is true, too. But, you know, maybe it's a phase, you know. But my only point there is it was very easy. Like the Dalai Lama always says, he learns that in that book. He supposedly, the reincarnation of this thousand-armed, thousand-eyed thing,

which is considered like the angel of compassion of all Buddhas. And I'm not saying he is or isn't. I don't know. He would deny it. Absolutely, he would say, oh, don't tell nonsense. I'm a simple monk. He goes like that.

But the concept itself is you have an eye in the palm of all these thousand hands and the thousand hands are just a symbol for infinite numbers of sins. So it's a seeing everywhere and everything

and being in touch with everyone's feelings and therefore feeling their feelings in a way where it becomes unbearable that they suffer to you. It's like their suffering becomes unbearable to you as your own. And I feel that even though they're, you know, maybe not talking to their roommate

and they're out there and they're watching some people starving in Somalia or someplace place in the Sahel, and then, you know, give $10 or worry about it, feel upset about it. It's kind of a beautiful thing. Like, you know, remember the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami and the huge outpouring, you know, from everybody who wasn't getting their pension very well and losing their job, but still they were sending some old sweater or

something. It was really wonderful. Yeah. Really great, I think. Yeah. I mean, when you look at it that way, I think you're right. I think it makes it harder to avoid suffering that you might not normally be aware of or choose to seek to see on a daily basis.

And I mean, identify with other people. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, when falling in love is identifying with one beloved, which is just everyone experiences as a big transcendent, amazing, dancing in the rain, Gene Kelly, you know, like, whoa. And somehow

then that you don't want any kind of pain in that beloved. You want just her to be happy or him to be happy or whatever it is, or that child. And that we could begin to have traces of that feeling about each other in a longer plane. That's why I made his life there in our book, that he stands for that, that that's a human possibility. Because the domination mode, the dominatric dominator mode, you know, the dominatrix, dominator mode,

is like you have to dominate because it's inevitable that beings are going to be selfish and they're going to destroy you. So that legitimizes you to lock yourself up, and then you'll be fine. And actually you won't. You'll be miserable and lonely, actually. I wonder sometimes whether we see so much opportunity for so much suffering that rather than opening to that and feeling it and being moved to in some way intervene, we see so much possibility for us not being able to shut it off enough to be able to get through every day. And that it almost has the opposite effect of us like retreating from wanting to feel it.

Yes, you know, Carl Sagan was big on compassion fatigue and this kind of thing. But lately I've got really appreciate Buddha's life, you know. And there's one aspect of his life, you know, when if you remember the story, that's pretty common, but maybe you didn't hear the particular one, that on that day, that early morning when he attained the so-called enlightenment nirvana under the tree,

when he was on the event horizon of this vast feeling of placing him, being able to experience himself in the context of vast interconnection and yet his unique individuality, realizing that. When he did that that just before that he remembered his infinite previous lives they always say and then you would say well why don't we remember even a few of them well we suffered a lot in those lives we so we shut down we died many times we had terrible things happen like i don't remember breaking my left wrist playing

hockey in the ninth grade you know i don't remember breaking my left wrist playing hockey in the ninth grade. You know, I don't remember the pain, the bone-crossing horrible pain. And so that's a natural thing that we do. So you'd have to be, that's why I said you have to have a kind of different vision of the deeper reality of this situation to be able to be open to infinite feeling in this situation and face the suffering. So you have a double vision, in other words, simultaneously, which is inconceivable, I think, normally. Yeah. Realistically, it's inconceivable. And it also requires us to,

to use a phrase that's being kicked around a lot these days, play a much longer game than we're used to playing. Play a much longer game than we're used to playing in the context of life and humanity. Well, yeah, yes and no. In other words, yes, as far as humanity ripening to that. But then they say that when you really get that feeling, when you reach that, that you also attend all the future.

You feel that the time, it isn't like you come into the now by excluding past and future, which I'm afraid a little bit some people misunderstand the power of now. But it's like the now incorporates all the past and future. So you see that everything working out, the future working out of people who are now having a terrible time, you see that as present now. Actually, we're sort of jumping around.

But let me just share right away, since you brought this conversation so deep, what I call my consolation prize for me being still unenlightened after, like maybe in my last moments of this one, a few years from now, hopefully, in our common. By definition, I will revise my experience of all the past nows, where I realized I was always in that everything was

always all right. So then I will be like you in our conversation, I'll be on this mirror surface of nirvana, in my own experience, retroactively. And so we'll be in yours. Right now we're like, we're going to do the job, we're going to finish, we're going to go here,

go back up Broadway, go down, whatever, take a nap, have dinner, and do all the things that we focus on doing and doing that. But later, this and then all the other things will all be seen as one smooth flow on the surface of this nirvana mirror. That's my consolation. I console myself. I'll be really enjoying things and really happy and really in the moment later.

Now. Right. It all sort of merges into one infinite state. One of Buddha's names is Triadvajna in Sanskrit, which means knower of the three times. Past, present, future. Yeah.

That's the name of the Buddha. Why Buddha? And that's his only excuse, actually. In other words, he had a Bodhisattva vow, I will not attain nirvana until all beings have attained. So how does he get off attaining nirvana and taking a hike

2,800 or 2,600 years ago? He broke his promise. Unless our future nirvanas are... He's with us all the way through to our future nirvana. In other words, he permeates the time as well as space. Or looking at your, sort of like what you offered earlier,

we are in fact all there now, but we haven't quite owned that. That's right, that's right. And then the job of someone who incorporates both the specificity of differentiation and the sort of vastness of freedom completely in one package, the specificity of differentiation and the sort of vastness of freedom completely in one package, one inconceivable cognitive dissonance

unifying experience. Their responsibility is to try to make the way, make the environment, make the teachings, make the path, wrap us with it, always, always be some force that wraps us with it, you know.

Like a force of goodness around us, you know. Like Sikyong, not Sikyong. Sakyong. There's a Sakyong also. Sakyong. But that's very nice of him. He has a lovely little video that I saw that I like. I don't know him very well.

But he has a nice video which has the refrain, what about me? What about me? Which deals with the Buddhist thing they talk about, the source of suffering being self-cherishing, self-preoccupation, self-obsession, like what am I getting out of this type of thing all the time, constantly evaluating, and therefore always being dissatisfied. It's a very strong Buddhist psychological thing. What's your take on that? What's your take on that? What's your lens on that? Well, that's a very deep thing, of course. In other words, it's against what we think.

As the Dalai Lama likes to say, he says, if you're going to be successfully selfish, meaning fulfill your self-interest, be a wise selfish and be compassionate and altruistic. Because the first person who gets happy when you want the happiness of other beings is you. So the compassionate person, they may not be able to help anybody else yet. But they're already feeling better by not focusing on what their own output is. And thinking of what's the output for the other.

Then that releases them from this self-evaluation, which was always inadequate, everything. We all know people who are particularly spoiled as children, maybe, or something, and they're very bored about getting out of it, and they're very dissatisfied always. They're rebooking their seat constantly on whatever vehicle it is to get a better one. Yeah. So we've gone kind of into the deep end of the pool pretty quickly,

which is fun. And at the same time, there'll be folks listening saying where their heads are kind of spinning right now. And part of what I'm fascinated by is how can you make ideas like this accessible on a practical everyday level with somebody who just wants to know, like, what can I do today? Can I leave this conversation saying, this was really interesting. I'm not exactly sure what just happened, but it's interesting. And I'm curious what simple thing might I be able to do in this moment, in this next moment, to start to buy into it, to start to experience these things in some

way? Beautifully put. This does bring me back to the book, because I had written a book, Why the Dalai Lama Matters, which is just words, and then some charts and things about the geopolitical situation. And Tibet as the 60-year-long standing rock,

you know, that's still standing against this industrial resource destruction and environment destruction, et cetera, and even war and domination and so on. So, but then this one is a comic book. And so one thing that we can do, I mean, there are a lot of things. If we had a second hour, we could do a lot of things.

But say there are a lot of practical things we could do. You know, mindfulness. People know of things. If we had a second hour, we could do a lot of things. But say there are a lot of practical things we could do. You know, mindfulness. People know meditate, do yoga, like take care of yourself. But, and take care of some others. But I wrote this book because we are not given good models. Our culture does not give us models

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It really rubs us, rubs our noses in evil, and that somehow goodness is nice, but you're going to get wasted. You're going to be a martyr. It's almost like it's painted as weakness, like goodness is weakness. Exactly, goodness is weakness, compassion is a doormat for all this. And so the Dalai Lama's life, everyone is always amazed. He's at the head of a people who are being genocided or ethnicided at the very least. And he's been struggling for them against the world powers. You know, he knows all of the world powers.

You know, he's met every ruler, head of state, except the Chinese ones around the world. And he's joyous. And he finds that he sees a bliss there. And when John Oliver asked him the other day, like, well, why do they hate you so much, the Chinese? And then I was talking with Joe Donahue, who told me he interviewed a few years ago. And Joe also asked him, like, don't you feel terribly frustrated that people don't follow your thing? They don't respond to you on the personal, practical level. Well, how do you react? What do you do? And then he says, wait, with a big smile. He says, wait.

And meaning, I think, a kind of confidence that even the enemy will finally realize that they will achieve their goal not by crushing you and not by doing that, because there'll be endless more people to crush. They will achieve their goal by befriending you, by stop the bitterness and stop the enmity and stop the resentment and so on. And that's where happiness will come to people, you know. So he represents a life that shows that in living, you know, that's why his life is so valuable to know its detail, how he extends up nonviolently and lovingly to even abuse and violence, and vigorously, not internally crumbling to it, you know, holding his own with it.

And then people say, well, but he didn't get to it free yet. So I answered that, how are they doing in Afghanistan? How are they doing in the Middle East? Everybody's violent to the teeth there. And it's all a standoff. And nobody's really won, and they never will win. And the cycle of violence, right? Jesus told us, many, many other great rabbis told us, violence begets violence. Buddha told us centuries before. So we need to, one thing that we can do is revise our sense of the environment we're in and realize that to choose love, choose the good path, choose patience,

choose non-retaliation, choose forgiveness, these are beneficial to us right now, all of us. And when we do that, we're fitting with the larger sweep of humanity. There was a great thing in the Gandhi movie, which did happen in his life,

where he had to call off a big non-violent strike fast because some people went overboard and burned down a police station and killed some police and things like that. And so he didn't like that, so he called it off. And then the person said to him, well, how do you console yourself when things go wrong all the time? And he said, well, that went wrong, he said. But tens of hundreds of millions of people didn't burn things down. They did stand patiently in front of someone they were not getting along with. They talked with them. They helped someone

across the street. The pattern of human life works because people are very, very actually empathetic and altruistic automatically, you know. An old lady is there, you stop the cab and help her get across the street. It's just an instinctive thing humans have. And the dominators, the militarists and the dominators, the oligarchs, they want you not to think that. They want you to think you're stupid if you do that. And they model that. And so then people feel and say, what can I do today was your question.

So if people feel, well, I shouldn't be like the people who are losing. I should be like the winners, you know? And then they're going to find it difficult to do the things that actually will make them happy, which is yield a little bit, which is give something, which is, you know, see something in a different way, allow some of the opening to be a little different than they expected

them to be, something like that, right? And that resonates so deeply with me. And the thing that comes to mind, is yes i understand wait i yes i understand the idea of looking at the macro looking at long term what do we say then though to the mother who's just lost a child to aggression today right and like you see that this like and say, wait, and think big picture. Well, you know what? It won't necessarily be great to say to her, isn't it horrible and everything else is horrible? It might not help either.

Yeah. So it depends on how you see it, you see. If you get into the thing that, well, this child in the flow of life is hitting another form, that's where the continuity thing is really critical. You know, in Japan, they have a whole huge thing that all the different schools of Japanese Buddhism are involved in around the Bodhisattva Jizo, his name is Jizo, which means earth treasure, and he's the one who, in their mythology, he goes and empties hells and things, you know,

and he helps beings be reborn well. And abortion was the birth control thing of choice in Japan because of some cultural thing about condoms, I guess. I don't know exactly why. So the poor Japanese women had to do that a lot. And in their, you know, recovering from the war and their country having been devastated by their own militarists being stupid and unrealistic. And so they

go to that to ask that angel, which is for them a kind of angel, to see that the being that they lost goes to even better, nicer family, better place, someone who can keep them and has another human chance because they think human life is so precious and valuable. So, I mean, you can't tell that to someone who doesn't have that belief system, of course. But, for example, if you see that the horrible thing that happened to them is one thing,

but they remain an amazing creature with bliss in their cells, and the being who lost that body and that embodiment and that beautiful mother who loved it so much is going to find other such things, and they're going to be attracted to kindness and to generosity and a breast that has milk flowing from it, a womb that will accept, you know, a condo person without any ID. And so you see it as not the end of everything, not the end of life. You see it as a very tragic thing, but something that life will go on for everyone involved.

You might not say anything. You might say how awful, if that was good. You might give a hug. It would depend on the situation and the person's view what you would do but if your feeling was really open to the person and yet they felt from you a kind of feeling a deeper feeling of calm that you know confidence in the in the ultimate turning of things, a vision even at the present. Within it, there are some redeeming factors, you know. And, you know, like animals,

sometimes in famine, predators, they will eat their young when they all die. When the mother, and there's a famous story about the Buddha when he was a young prince who was a very advanced bodhisattva. And when they tell that story, they say, don't try this, to the reader, which is a good sign. It means that in India, people were taking altruism seriously, you know, that they feel they have to say that, you know, like, don't try this at home. And Buddha was this prince, and he was with his brother walking in the woods for a picnic,

and it was a terrible famine in the land. And this mother tigress was about to eat her cubs, four cubs, mother tigress, and they were skeletal, all of them. They were going to die anyway, right? So he says to his brother, go get some food from the thing. We'll share it with her. This terrible that she's doing that. And then he himself offered his own body then when the guy was out of the way he jumped off the cliff down into the lair and gave his body and he said this life i give you my body in the future i will give you liberation nirvana when i'm a buddha you know and then those were his first five disciples they say you know those that tiger and the cubs and it's like um so i mean the the even in that animal thing, the mother loves those cubs, of course. She bore them, she nurses them, she's a mammal.

But she wants to live to have another batch, you know. And she'll even consume the protein of them, you know, in the nature. Then we'll do that. And you could see that as, oh, nature is so horrible, red in tooth and claw. But also you could see the compassion of the mother, longer term, you know, the celebration of the viability of life, even in this terrible environment of starvation and death.

Yeah, which is still, it's, I hear you. Listen, there's no solution. The end of the graphic biography of the Dalai Lama, the comic book, whatever, which is meant to try to make him more real to people, and it shows his reality, ends really badly for Tibet. Tibet is still in a bad place. The Chinese are still not relenting, although I think it's a leftover policy from the past communist leaders.

And I personally have great faith in President Xi Jinping when he gains fully control of the, you know, the different gangs that those politbureaus are constituted by, that they comprise that thing like a politbureau, you know. So I think there will be big change. I have this same feeling. And so we leave it there. But then he has a vision.

Wait, we'll see, you know. And he sees it all as workable, you know. And he's very confident about it. And if you meet him, it sort of liberates us. But you see, it's a gradual process. Just me saying something, him saying something, whoever it is, even, I don't know, whoever came here and said something. When we're long indoctrinated into justifying

our own closure in some instances and context, of our own person and our own self-concern by a worldview and a cosmos and people who are supposedly models showing this, showing the negative wins and the positive loses, that's going to take time to revise this, to really change it deeply. It's like, it's like, you know, to neural habit pattern of seeing the worst and feeling that's the reality. Although there, you know, there's even the Christians, you know, Christians unfortunately have this pattern very, very strongly. But did you know, people don't know, that for 320 years, the Christians never worshipped the crucifix. There were no crucified Jesuses.

The image they had of Jesus that was used by them is something called Christos Pedagogos, which means Christ the Teacher, who's this strong-looking guy, like a strong Socrates sort of type, throwing over the money changers from the temple, and, you know, like, now I'm going to heal. Now I don't care if it's Sunday or Friday or whatever it is. You know, I'm going to heal, and I'm going to take care of people. Sort of strong and powerful. And the crucified one being the sort of thing that sort of goes to the subconscious

was planted there by the Roman emperor, Constantine, from the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century. And guess who, you know, render unto Caesar and render unto the Lord. Yeah, you can render unto the Lord and you might get rendered, and I'm in charge, me and my followers, the emperors. So he was using the Christian thing, actually,

and he was creating this sort of the Roman Empire, using it to dominate people, and subverting, in that sense, the wonderful rabbinic message of Jesus, which of love, you know, love thy neighbor as thyself. He really was. People don't know that. So, don't your...

I love your realism that you're not going to, like, jump up and say, oh, here's Shambhala, it's down here on 9th and Broadway, and I have to discipline myself like that, too. I think it's correct. But on the other hand, it's like I tell my students, you have to sort of get

used to this different narrative. The reincarnation thing, for example, read the work of Ian Stevenson. Not Buddhists, but Ian Stevenson and people who investigate children who can remember previous lives. Or read Michael Newton, Journey of Souls.

You read these, you become more familiar. Read the former life stories of the Buddha, what are called the Jataka Tales, and sort of get used to a different narrative. Is there a conception

or a dealing with the concept of justice in Buddhist thought? Sure. Justice is the second transcendent virtue. But our connotation of justice, people don't usually translate it as justice. They say morality or ethics.

But I think justice is, I translate, I finally jumped to translate it as justice in my Infinite Life book because that's the sort of real ancient word that the moralists use as a major virtue, you know. And we too much connote it with punishment, you know. Right. Like the judge so-and-so, judge dread comic books or something.

Right. Well, especially like in just sort of comic political vernacular, the word justice is generally like we want justice. Yes, that's right. And then it comes to mean revenge and punishment and so forth. But actually in the ancient world, the world justice, I take it in a Buddhist sense of that the best thing for everybody concerned in a situation is just what should be there. So justness, like justice. And so justice means that justice is defined actually in the Buddhist thing as other regarding and other benefiting action.

And it is said to be the cause of humanity, actually, in an evolutionary way, that the animal that does naturally empathize and therefore has to sort of work themselves up to violate another, you know, due to special circumstance, because they're naturally kind of tender. We don't have armor-plated skin. We don't have big claws and fangs. Only the vampires in the movies. Otherwise, we don't have that. And we have

the soft skin. And our sexuality is very much in merger-ish kind of thing. We're not just sort of functional like the lower mammals even. And we are mammals. And the idea of having somebody else take up residence in your body is quite an altruistic thing to do, actually, even though, you know, well, there's all kind of legitimations that you're doing your job and it's really great. But it's, you know,

men are not exactly ready for it. And they say that your beauty comes from your past life's patience and non-anger. Your wealth comes from past life's generosity and openness and detachment. And your humanity comes from past life's justice. Because we're these inter-entangled beings, these human beings. We're very, very cooperative and social, very social. So it's a big concept, yes. human beings, you know, we're very, very cooperative and social, very social, you know, human, right?

So it's a big concept, yes. And Adalamo always says peace without justice is not true peace because there's a steady state of oppression going on during it, you know. Right, but by that definition, when he uses the word justice, he's not talking about retribution or fair treatment or punishment. No, he's talking about appropriateness, really. And you can imagine, if the definition of enlightenment is not like,

I think, unfortunately, many Buddhists think, it's just like that one person has pop, and then their head goes off like a bulb or something, you know. And it's like, they feel really greater than anybody else, you know. They think so. They kind of have an egocentric idea of enlightenment. But that's which, not the definition. If enlightenment is by knowing

reality, you transcend the idea that you are more special than the others. And you, and you, their heartbeat becomes as important to you as your own, effortlessly, you know, because it's like your hand, the condition of the skin on that hand, it matters to this hand, you know. So it's like you're the limbs of one body,

as they say, ancient classic work says. And when you feel that way, then you want to do what is the best for all of the sensitivities present, you know. And then that will be justice. That will be the justness of that situation, the just rightness of that situation. And that's what it means, I think, basically. But it can be for people who are not sort of, who are just, you know, it also can evolve into systems of law and systems of custom and duty and things like that. It does somewhat. Although in general, Buddhists are a little bit disobedient and very individualistic.

Actually, we're contrary to Western stereotypes that Asian people are sort of all part of the tribe and we're the individualists in the West. That's the opposite, actually. Individualistic in the sense of taking responsibility

for your contribution to the situation, you know, that it be good because you're interwoven with its consequences. And that's why I harp about the rebirth thing and certain modern Buddhists, quote unquote, who want to act like they were going to be materialist and scientific. It's the defining science as materialism, which is only lately that people do that. I challenge them all the time

because a culture where the leadership and the mainstream of the people are accepting the view that their life has no real purpose and meaning. And, you know, that's where you throw that out with some sort of simplistic theism. And also, therefore, ultimately, their life has no consequence, even if it's really good. That's a psychotic culture. That's why we're destroying the planet. We say, oh, my grandchildren are so much worse, but we're not turning off the switches and we're not doing it because

well, okay, maybe it won't be fit for human habitation, but then everybody will be dead and no one will miss being alive because they won't exist and I won't exist. It's irresponsible. It leads to the irresponsibility of our current elite, that worldview.

Yeah, it seems like everything just keeps coming back to the concept of non-separation. Yeah, relativity. The famous Buddhist emptiness means relativity, actually. That's what it means. The reason they emphasize the emptiness, because it means that every relative thing is empty of any non-relative element. It's almost it means. The reason they emphasize the empty, because it means that every relative thing is empty of any non-relative element.

It's almost so simple, you could almost jump for joy. But then it's viscerally complicated because we think we will fall apart if we don't feel that there's kind of an absolute us in here. But that's what then hardens our skin and isolates us from the world, actually.

But we think it protects us. So viscerally, it's hard to understand, but it's very easy to understand. And emptiness is emphasized to empty ourselves of that self-absolutizing sense of I'm the important, I'm the only real thing here, you know. That's what it is. And I love the matrix because, here, you know. That's what it is. And I love the matrix

because, like, the matrix, you know, becoming the one in the matrix when Neo does, that's when he is still himself, and also he's the whole program. You know, and so he actually merges with the... He doesn't realize the negative, because he's new to it, and that first one, he has the realization.

He merges with the agent, and then the agent gets this more expanded power, you know, and that first one, he has the realization. He merges with the agent, and then the agent gets this more expanded power, you know, and then he gets out of hand, remember? But he defeats the agent in the third one, in the end, because they merge again. The agent thinks by punching him, he's going to make him into an agent. But actually,

then the agent becomes him. So then everybody's cool, you know? Who knew that the Matrix would be this powerful teaching tool for fundamental ideas of humanity, right? It teaches the subliminality of our people and our culture. Do you have time to tell me your feeling about the book at all? Yeah, I mean, so it's really interesting to me

because to take normally, so what we're talking about here is it's not a graphic novel. It's the form of a graphic novel, but it's telling the nonfiction story. Yeah, it's a graphic biography. At the Woodstock Book Fest just now, the lady corrected me and said, stop saying graphic novel. The guy who brought me the project originally and got me involved in it was called it that.

So we always were going around calling it that. But it's a graphic bio. Yeah, and it's incredibly powerful, I think. And also what I love is it tells a story. It tells it in vivid detail. And it brings it to an audience that may well have never had an interest in diving into this. The e-book is out shortly. It's slow getting hit on.

Yeah, this, I mean, I was floored also just by, I mean, this is a big book. And the detail of this must have taken years. It took many years, a decade. And my heavy involvement was about three years with the five artists and two colleagues. Why? What's the why behind this? Well, precisely to show this person that everybody sort of has a sense.

There's somebody extraordinary there. There's a leader of leaders. And, you know, of course, he's not getting his way in some ways, but everyone loves him anyway. And then to show the detail that this guy suffered a lot. He's taken a lot of grief, and he still maintains that joy and nonviolence and nonresentment and so on, forgiveness. And to see the life and the difficulty

and to understand the contribution of the Tibetan people, you know, who are, they are indigenous people, and yet they are highly literate and they're not, you know, they're highly literate, highly sophisticated, preserving the most sophisticated psychology, spiritual psychology that ever existed, that of India, you know, where yoga came from, you know, and so on. And for the world, preserving and saving that science, science of the good life

for the world. And I just really felt it would be very helpful. My wife and I run Tibet House, which is a cultural preservation thing. And in a way, you could say that Dalai Lama himself is the most extraordinary cultural artifact of Tibetan culture. His whole education, his life, he was like a peasant son who was a yak caravan trader, and mother was a farmer and so on from a remote place. He became this great world inspirer. So I've just wanted people and young people to see there is a way, there is a way of joyfully overcoming the power of the dominators of the evils, but without hating them, feeling compassion for them. It's a story powerful told.

And to see it visually told that way also, I actually want to spend a lot more time with it and go through it a couple of times and just kind of slow down. Well, we're going to have it where people can have it on their phones, young people. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, it's like a comic where they can go panel by panel on the page. Oh, that's neat. Yeah, I love that. Almost done now. You and I, I think, could probably

talk for a lot longer, but I want to take us full circle. We've been talking for a while now. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So as we sit here, if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Yes, a good life. Well, I think the good life, actually, I canSF San Francisco revision of the type A personality study that was done originally in Michigan. And it says that a workaholic or someone who's very devoted to like a mission work type of thing, a purpose work, if they love the work and are not just doing it for fame or profit or egocentric

reasons, it's not dangerous for their health. And it's actually very, very good for their health. The workaholic who does something just to get money or fame or something, but they don't like what they're doing, that's very dangerous. That's the type A personality with a heart attack on Monday morning, when that's the vast amount of the heart attacks cluster around Monday morning. And so you can have a good life and have stress and do something that's difficult and requires like a be a great figure skater or something tremendous, or a concert pianist or violin, and a tremendous discipline involved, and work very, very hard. So a good life is not necessarily only leisure. But I think the good life is you know joseph campbell said it very nicely follow to bill moyers he said follow your bliss you know which what he told generations of sarah

lawrence students he said follow your bliss you know do what you love to do and uh and uh be with your love you know and make moments moments, by choosing always the positive and the loving and the patient and the self-restrained, etc., you know. There's a wonderful Indian verse from, not from a Buddhist source, from what's called an Upanishadic Hindu source, where the little boy asked the old man, why does the thunder go da, da, da? And the old man says, well, that's what that is, is the thunder is telling you, the thunder bearer is telling you,

da means self-control, you know, self-restraint, you know, justice, ethics, you know. Da means be compassionate. You know, that's dhamma and daya. And then da means be generous. So when the thunder goes da, da, da, the universe is telling you,

be just, be compassionate, and be generous. Even the thunder tells you. And the little boy says, oh, that's nice, Grandpa. That's the Indian one. Because India was the great mother, you know, of Eurasia, you know, it was the richest country in the Buddha's time, in the Axial Age time, you know, Buddha and Isaiah and Confucius, all throughout Eurasia. And so people were not so freaked out that nature was withholding something from them there, you know, I think in

that sense. And therefore they developed this wonderful language and they were the original melting pot. So they have very sweet things like in the moon in Buddhist countries, they see a bunny who is offering himself to a traveler who's starving in a competition of animals to who can be the most altruistic. And so there's a self-sacrificing bunny in the moon. I always remember that in my youth, there was a grumpy old man in the moon who was like holding a lamp to see if you were being naughty. You know, so we have to be accustomed to this kind of better, more relaxed and cheerful culture. Then we'll have a better life, I think. And that's the whole, you know, the Beatles,

why did they love Maharishi so much? And they went to India and they did this and that. And the ragas, remember? Remember Ravi Shankar and so on? There's some beauty comes from there. You know, we think of it as terribly poor now because after like, you know, 500 years of colonial extraction, it is poor. But also there's terrific wealth there. We think of it as terribly poor now because after 500 years of colonial

extraction, it is poor. But also there's terrific wealth there still, even today. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan. I enjoyed the good life. Thanks so much

for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life, take a moment and whatever

app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention,

for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. And just a quick reminder, as you head out into the world, we would love to see you. I would love to see you at Camp GLP. We are actually running out of spots, and the final price discount, $100 early bird discount ends June 28th. So be sure to check

it out and grab your spot. You can find more information at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just click the link in the show notes. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

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