Stuff You Should Know - Nirvana: Not The Band

Episode Date: August 27, 2015

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know. Here we are now. But I did include a Nirvana reference in there when I said here we are now. Oh, did not catch that. I noticed. Very nice. Very subtle. I slid that one in there. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing? Are you feeling centered? Uh, no, I'm all wackadoo. Your chakras are all over the place? My chakras are all over the place. So much so that I couldn't think of anything. So all I did was repeat you. Well, you know, man, I have to say, while we were researching this, I was like, this is some beautiful stuff.

It's very appealing. Yeah, actually, it was, it's neat stuff. Yeah. Like I was, I became calm in researching this and researching Nirvana. Yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah. I think this, you can tie this in. We have a couple of related episodes and we might as well just call this the Enlightenment Suite. How about that? Sure. I'd like that. Karma from July 2011. Yeah. And reincarnation from July 2010. And Burning Man. The angriest people in Europe. Yeah. And you know, our buddy in New York, Rachel Grundy, is a Buddhist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And she's, I've talked to her about it some, because I was like, you know, Grundy, I've meditated some and it really appeals to me. And like a true Buddhist,

she's like, it's great, man. Here, I'll send you some stuff. No pressure. Nice. I'll send you some pamphlets. Yeah. That's basically what she did. She wasn't like, you know, you should look at this. You know, it's a little less overbearing than other religions I found. I got you. You know what I mean? Now, Rachel Grundy does the literary pub crawl, right? Does she still do that? I don't know if she still does that. She used to. But we can plug her band Coyote Love. How about that? There you go. And she just adopted a dog. So congratulations. Congratulations to everybody. That's the Buddhist way. That is. So Nirvana, I thought was the perfect way to cap off karma and reincarnation. Yeah. As the third part. And maybe we should do meditation. Maybe we should

make it a four-parter. Yeah, that could probably be interesting. I'm sure there's a lot of studies about the physiological effects of it and all that. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. All right. All right. That's an, it's agreed upon then. And then the, the, what'd you call it? The what suite? The Enlightenment suite. The Enlightenment suite. Not to be confused with the Transcendentalists. Or the Enlightenment episode. Right. Man. Which doesn't factor into this at all. No. Okay. So Chuck, we're talking Nirvana. Yes. We have like a conception of it. I have a conception of it. But in researching one of the things, and I also knew that Buddhists and Hindus share a lot of cosmology. Oh, I thought you were going to say they hate each other. No, I don't get that impression. No,

of course not. But they, they are, Buddhism is a, an offshoot of Hinduism. Yeah, it's a spin-off. It's the after-mash. It is. Of religions. It's the Joni loves Chachi of religions. That's right. What else? Maude. What was that an offshoot of? Mary Tyler Moore. Mary Tyler Moore. Right. It's the Jefferson's. Yeah. From Arch, Archie Bunker. Yeah. Or all in the family. Absolutely. Man. I could do this for at least 30 straight minutes. Yeah. We should do an episode on spin-offs. Where we just say spin-off names. Yeah. And just hold thumbs up or down. And, but we don't say. People just guess. Right. What are we doing right now? Yeah. It's the threes company. Spin-off of Hogan's Heroes. That's good. Okay. Are we done? Yeah, we're done. Okay. I did not realize that.

I guess is what I'm saying. I knew that they were related. I didn't realize that it was like a direct offshoot. Where basically. I don't think I knew either. The Buddha whose name, whose original name was Siddhartha Guatama. Did you know that? Actually, Siddhartha. Okay. So the H is silent. Gautama. Nice. Yes. I actually looked at pronunciations or listened to them for this episode for once. I'm proud of you. Yeah. I'm also a little ashamed because you did that and I didn't. That was all for Grundy. I was going with the original status quo. Okay. Which is just mangling words of foreign origin. Well, I'm trying to mix things up here 15 years in. And scientific words too, not just foreign ones. Right. So you were talking about Siddhartha Gautama. Right. He was

born into as a Hindu, a Hindu family. Sure. And decided like, I'm not too hip on Hindu. I think there's other ways to go. And there's Buddhism. That's the quick version. Yada, yada, yada. There's Buddhism. Yeah. This is 5th century BC in Asia, of course. And like you said, he would later become the Buddha, which is not to be confused with Buddha. A Buddha. Exactly. Which you want to be a Buddha? Go do it, Chuck. You can do it. Well, you couldn't be the Buddha. Right. Because that's Siddhartha's. Right. Yeah. But you could be a Buddha. I could be. A layman's version, I believe. Right. Okay. Because like only monks generally achieve the state of a Buddha. So in researching this,

if you wanted to, you could be like, Saiyanara life, I'm going to become a Buddhist monk and conceivably achieve nirvana in this lifetime. You could. Sure. Because you're a human being. You're incarnated as a human being into this moral coil. And if you wanted to, you could go do it. But in researching this, yes. Apparently, it's typically left to the Buddhist monks, because they're the ones who are like. Who have the time. Saiyanara life. Yeah. Because you got to drop out, sort of. In a lot of ways. Not entirely. I mean, Buddhist monks still filter amongst the masses and all that. Sure. But for the most part, they're focusing a lot more on achieving nirvana than the average day-to-day person does,

even like a day-to-day Buddhist or something. Yeah. It's not a part-time job. You're not like sitting around on Netflix like, should I watch Orange as a New Black or should I meditate for eight hours? Right. You know? Can I do both? You can, by the way. That's called zoning out. So, let's talk a little bit more about Siddhartha's journey. This is 563 BC in modern day Nepal, or what would be modern day Nepal. Does the wayback machine go there? Yeah. You want to go? Let's go. All right. Sounds like a lovely time. All right. Here we are. It's cold. It's lovely. You know, it's funny. I didn't take it as cold. I thought we would be going back to maybe spring. But yeah, it's really cold here right now.

Yeah. It's a good thing you're wearing that oxide. Yeah. You know? Lined with Sherpa. So, I see Siddhartha over there, and he is a rich dude, and he is a very sheltered dude. And despite all these riches and this lifestyle, he's very pampered, I can see it in his eyes. He is dissatisfied. He is dissatisfied. He was born into a ruling class, very powerful, like you said, rich family. Yeah. And he's part of the idle rich, but he's part of the thinking idle rich. So, he started to question his place in life, which is basically what you said, right? Yeah. He starts to mull this over, and like, maybe there's more. It's a very long story, and we could spend hours talking about this. But

I'm sure people do. I've seen that, yeah, because like, you can't do it part-time, like I said. Right. But I'm looking at him, and basically, I can tell that his disillusionment has has reached its apex, and it is culminated by him looking out the window one day, and he sees three things from his little palace window. He sees a decrepit old man, he sees a diseased man, and then he sees a corpse, and he's done. So, it's like the progression? I guess so. And he's like, you know what? I'm done with this life. Can't take it anymore, even though I have my arranged wife, my cousin, whom I married, was forced to marry. I have a beautiful son, whom I love. I'm going to leave them. I'm going to leave all my possessions,

and I'm going to go on a quest, a vision quest, if you will, to understand the true nature of life. And here I go. Right. And back we are to the present day, sir. You can hang your oxide and that sherpa on the coat rack. Well, there's more to the story. Do we have to go back? Yeah, we got to go back. I got on short pants. Put your pants back on. So, Chuck, here we are back again, and Siddhartha, he's gone from a very rich, powerful family. He's decided to go on this vision quest. He thinks, well, I mean, if I was

very dissatisfied, and I think it's kind of wrong to be as grossly rich as I was the family I was born into, I'll just go the exact opposite route, and I'll become a hermit. A completely poverty stricken hermit who has not even a pot to pee in. Not even that. And he figures out that as he's starving to death, that it's not leading to any kind of enlightenment. He's actually growing increasingly uncomfortable. It's getting harder and harder for him to pay attention to enlightenment because, say, he's hungrier and hungrier. And he realizes, wait a minute, maybe this isn't the right way to go. Maybe polar extremes are a little too extreme. Yeah, what if I die without achieving my goal? That would just have been a wasted life.

Yeah, I would have been poverty stricken and great, but that doesn't lead to enlightenment, clearly so. Here comes a stranger who's offering me a meal. I'm going to take it. I'm going to be poverty stricken no longer, and maybe I don't need to be rich, but I also don't need to be poverty stricken. I need to take this middle road to enlightenment. So I'm going to kill that stranger, take all the food, no? With a pigeon hammer? Oh, wait, that's not the middle road. That's far from the middle road. That's kind of extreme as well. I kid. So he takes a meal from a stranger. He figures out, I think, finally that, like, oh, okay, this is the way to do it. It goes and sits under a tree

and achieved nirvana. He achieved omniscience. Yeah, there were three stages of that. He saw his past lives, all of them. He saw the past lives of all others, and he's like, I'm really starting to catch on to things here. Things are revealing themselves. And finally, he identified the four noble truths, which we'll talk about in a bit. But those were the three stages under the tree. And in the end of it, he said, you know what, I gained a perfect understanding of the laws governing the cycle of birth and death. It's nirvana. Boom. It's nirvana. And nirvana, we should probably say once he achieved nirvana. He didn't say it's nirvana. No, he couldn't say much, actually. One of the things that I came across in research time and time again is that he very

famously couldn't put it into words, a description of what he experienced in this new state of enlightenment that he was vibing in. It's like katulu. Kind of. It was the unnameable, you know? Yeah. But everybody trusted him anyway. They said, this guy knows where it's at. We're going to start following his teachings. Yeah. In Sanskrit, nirvana means to extinguish. So in this case, they're talking about extinguishing suffering and hatred and ignorance. No good. So we'll talk about the Buddha's path to enlightenment and his teachings that came out of this achievement of nirvana right after this. You know, when you're staying at an Airbnb, chances are you've wondered,

could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? You might not realize it, but you could be sitting in an Airbnb right now. Like some people Airbnb their whole house when they're away visiting family or really on any sort of trip. Just think, you can make enough money to cover plane tickets or some of that trip. Find out how much your home could be earning at Airbnb.ca. Just about everything you want to do in life depends on what you know. To earn more, learn more at Houston Community College. HCC has more than 300 programs. You can take courses at transfer to a major university, or you can jump into an exciting career field in just two years or less. HCC has cutting edge programs like artificial intelligence or robotics, process

technology, cybersecurity, solar technology, business, health sciences, and more. Spring classes are registering now, so frame your future. Visit 8ccs.edu. And we're back. That's pretty funny. Put an ad in the middle of a Buddhism lesson. Well, we take all comers here, my friend. So if you achieve nirvana, what you're doing is you are breaking that cycle. If you listen to our reincarnation podcast, the samsara is that cycle of reincarnation that you can be caught in or stuck in, I guess. And this is where karma, and again, we have the great episode on karma. Karma comes into play because what you're doing is you're rewarded on your past actions in your current life and earlier lives.

Right. Does that make sense? No, it makes sense. Yeah, sure. And I love that this article says it's important to note that the law of karma isn't due to God's judgment over a person's behavior, and it's closer to Newton's law of motion. That makes more sense. Right. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So when you step on a snail, you're just like, man, didn't mean to do that. It's going to come back and bite me later on in another life, and you build up this karma or whatever. But when you reach nirvana, you stop accruing bad karma. That's right. You transcend it.

Yeah. And when you transcend it, then all of a sudden you can spend the rest of your life working off that karmic debt that you have already accrued because that doesn't just go away. It's like paying down a credit card. Exactly. But it's like when you achieve nirvana, the credit card's cut up. So you're not adding to your account any longer, but you still have some money that you owe, and you're paying that off in this life or conceivably other lives following. But at some point, your golden ticket has been granted. You have achieved nirvana. That's right. And when that happens, you have escaped that samsara, and you have achieved paddy nirvana. And that is the final

stage that you find in the afterlife. And in the case of Siddhartha, he was eight years old when he passed, and he died in a state of meditation, basically saying to his people around him, it's all good, man. This is the goal. It was a great way to pass. We should all pass that way. Sure. Telling everybody it's all good? Yeah, pretty much. Like, Wooderson style. He's going, all right, all right, all right. Yeah, those were his last words, if I'm not mistaken. So when one achieves nirvana, and you escape the cycle of samsara, you eventually,

when you die and you work off your karmic debt, and you're no longer reincarnated, you basically travel to another dimension, another realm. It's just something different that basically exists outside of space-time, as modern Buddhists would say. And you are kind of one with the universe. You just become a selfless part of the universe. That sounds beautiful to me. Sure. It's nice. So paddy nirvana day, or just nirvana day, is celebrated on February 15th in East Asia. Celebrations vary. Evidently, I looked it up. Apparently, some people just meditate. Some people are just reflective. A lot of times in monasteries, food is prepared and shared.

But that is February 15th. Okay. Nirvana day. Yeah. So Chuck, if you become a Buddhist monk and you achieve nirvana, and let's say you're not a Buddhist monk. Okay. And you, no, let's say you are. Okay. Okay. So you're a Buddhist monk. And I keep putting on these clothes and taking them off. You achieve nirvana. You become a Buddha, right? Again, not the Buddha, but a Buddha. Which means an enlightened one, right? Yes. And if you say, I have got some time and money, and I'm going to hire you, a Buddha,

to lead me to nirvana, you're almost like a junior Buddha. There's a different word for him. They're called arhats. Yeah. Arhit is what I found. Arhit. Yeah. Okay. That's right. That's when you have a Buddha guide to guide you. And you are not, you're enlightened. You're just not omniscient. Yeah. Not bad though. Yeah. Big difference though. Not omniscient and omniscient. There's a pretty big difference between those two things. You know. So when the Buddha came back from his, well, once he achieved his enlightened state, he started trying to tell people like, you can be like this too. And here's how you do it. He said that there are, it's very simple. There are just four noble truths. It's all you need to know

until you realize that the fourth noble truth mentions an eight-fold path. And suddenly, like it's exponentially more involved. But it's still fairly simple stuff. Yeah. He taught this for the last 45 years of his life. Number one is that life is suffering. And I think that was, he was clued into that from his window that day. Yeah. It was the suffering that really made him go like, man, this is life. That old guy, that dead body. If this is life, who needs enemies? Oh, good point. Number two, suffering is caused by ignorance of the true nature of the universe. So ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is no good. No. And basically, the true nature of the universe is that we are made unhappy by wanting, by craving things,

and that we can free ourselves from those things by overcoming them. That's right. That's number three. You can end that suffering. And then number four is, if you attach yourselves and follow the four, I'm sorry, the noble eight-fold path, not the four, then you're all set. You can overcome all that junk. It's like, just remember these four things, and then these extra eight things. So the eight-fold path, the noble eight-fold path are the ideals that guide you along the way, and they're broken down into three divisions. There's samos. The divisions are samos? Oh, no. The individual paths are called samos. Oh, gotcha. Well, the first two are under the

division of wisdom, right views and right intention. And samos are frequently translated into right here in the West in English. And this article I read by this one guy said, that doesn't mean that the opposite of that is wrong. It's more like right in this sense means complete, perfect, whole. So the opposite of that would be incomplete, imperfect, not whole. That makes sense. Rather than wrong. Right. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. The second division is ethical conduct, and under there you have complete or right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Right. So working for Goldman Sachs or clubbing baby seals, you're going to have trouble achieving nirvana in those positions. I would say so.

Probably not. You're probably not seeking nirvana either. Right. Yeah. So you're fine. What about podcasters? Podcasters are totally in there. We're somewhere between clubbing baby seals and Goldman Sachs. And then finally, concentration is the last division, and that is right effort, right mindedness, and right contemplation. Yeah. And the right mindedness is being mindful, being aware. Right effort is like you're directing your effort toward these good things. Yeah. You're not being slack in your path to enlightenment. Yeah. And then the last one, right contemplation is kind of difficult to understand. It's very least as difficult to explain, I found in researching. But it's basically focusing your entire self on this,

on the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths. Yeah. Like you're really directing all of your thought and energy into that. Yeah. And that's what I got from Grundy when I talked to her last time we were up there at the bell house. She was, it was just very soothing. She's just like, man, it's just, it's just practice. You're like, it's a cycle. You're just continually trying to do the right thing. Gotcha. And that's like the simplest breakdown. But you know, if something bad happens and you don't, you start over and you try harder. Gotcha. Which is like, that sounds like really great life principles. Yeah. You know. So that's Buddhist thought as far as achieving nirvana goes. And Hinduism is actually very closely related, but there are some major

distinctions. And we will talk all about that right after this. You know, when you're staying at an Airbnb, it might have crossed your mind. Can my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Like maybe you have a spare bedroom where friends or family crash every once in a while. But when it's sitting empty, you could Airbnb it to help pay for some bills or, I don't know, something more fun. Either way, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Just about everything you want to do in life depends on what you know. To earn more, learn more at Houston Community College. HCC has more than 300

programs. You can take courses that transfer to a major university or you can jump into an exciting career field in just two years or less. HCC has cutting edge programs like artificial intelligence and robotics, process technology, cybersecurity, solar technology, business, health sciences and more. Spring classes are registering now. So frame your future at hccs.edu. Okay, Chuckers, we're back. That's right. The Buddhists typically talk about nirvana as nirvana. In Hinduism, it's usually referred to as moksha. But they're basically talking about the same thing. It's the highest plane of existence wherein you stop being reincarnated. You have worked off your karmic debt and you reunite with the cosmos, with the universe. And in Hindu cosmology,

they're talking about Krishna, which is the Godhead, which is the source of all things. Krishna incarnates in three major deities. In all deities, all Hindu deities are extensions of Krishna. But the big three are Brahma, who's the creator. Vishnu, who's the sustainer. And Shiva, who's the destroyer. And when you die, when you achieve moksha, you go and get absorbed into Krishna again. Yeah. And the big difference that I think we found between Buddha nirvana and Hindu nirvana, or Buddhist nirvana, is that with Hindu, you're working your way up through this caste system. Eventually. You start out by, you have to be born through every type of organism that exists on the planet. You actually make it through under Hindu cosmology,

8,400,000 different species of animals before you even get to humanity. And then once you become a human, you can go through countless lives in different castes over and over again. But those castes are hierarchical. And you, like you said, are working your way up. Yeah, that's called the varnah. And you get that good karma, you perform by performing duties in that caste. And then basically once you have, it's almost like a graduation in the next life, if you've done well to the next cast up. Yeah. And there's actually just a lot of debate right now, because Gandhi was famously thrown out of his cast by Shaya, I believe. It's the merchant class. And he was thrown out of it because he championed for the rights of the lowest class, the Sudra,

who basically were responsible for handling, picking up dead animals and taking care of the rest of the community's waste. And basically, we're just generally mistreated by the higher castes. And so there's this question now in modern Hinduism, like, does the caste system still fit? Is it still appropriate? Right. But the thing is, is if it's not a reflection of, say, God's punishment, but something as physical as like the second law of thermodynamics or motion, sorry, that it's just a reaction to some other action you took in the past life, who are humans to say that the caste system is no longer appropriate. It's just part of the universe. Yeah. But then if it turns out as a human construct, well, then it gets kind of ticklish,

right? Because it undermines this Hindu cosmology. So it's a weird place that modern Hinduism is in right now talking about whether or not to do away with the caste system. Interesting. What do you think? I think that's up to Hindu. Good answer. Thanks. So I would imagine then Gandhi then in his next life was definitely in that next cast up, huh? I would guess if he didn't just achieve moksha right then and there. Yeah. He's a pretty good guy. You're Gandhi. You can skip a few levels. Exactly. Skip a few grades. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like the highest class is the Brahmin class in Hinduism, and they're the priestly class. They're like the Hindu or the Buddhist monks who go off and try to achieve nirvana. Their station in life is to achieve moksha. They've worked off

their karmic debt to a tremendous degree. And their focus in life is to get rid of the rest of their karmic life so they are not born again, right? Right. The one below that is kashatriya. And that's the ruling warrior class. That's the one that Siddhartha was born into apparently. Gotcha. When he was like, this is wrong. Yeah. We, like anybody should be able to achieve enlightenment. Yeah. And that was one of the main reasons that Buddhism was born, right? Was that he didn't, he rejected that caste system. The main reason, yes. Yeah. And so, but within this, like if you're a kashatriya, like you're, you're working on your karmic debt because as far as you're concerned, if you can work off enough of it, you will be born the next life into the Brahmin

class. And then you can work really hard and get out of that and end up achieving enlightenment. So there is like a hierarchical progression. Right. And as you were saying, one of the main things that you're tasked with as a Hindu is Dharma, which is responsibility to your caste. Yeah. Right. Like acting like a member of your caste rather than, you know, acting out like Gandhi. I love it. You got anything else? Yeah. There's actually four tenets, just like the, the eight. What was it? The eight noble, the noble eight full path. Right. The, the, there's like four in Hinduism. One of them is Dharma responsibility to basically your caste, society's rules, but more importantly, like Krishna's rules and also like

being, having a responsibility and duty to your own calling in life and just like living like that. Artha is pursuing wealth because in Hinduism, there's this idea that it's like kind of like in Buddhism where you don't need to be super rich, but you also shouldn't be poor either. Right. And one of the things is just like with Buddhism and Hinduism, you're trying to escape earthly desires and wants. One way to do that is to have the money to not have to worry about where your food's going to come from. Freeze you up for a lot of time to contemplate and get toward enlightenment. Right. Sure. That's Artha. Kamma is more fulfilling desires frequently like sexual desires, that kind of stuff, but there's all sorts of like taboo and

constraint and all that kind of stuff. It's not like a free for all in Hinduism as far as sex goes, right? Right. And then lastly, there's moksha. Once you have moved past your earthly desires, you become free from delusion and realize that there is no earthly self. There's just your connection to Krishna and then you can become enlightened. Which is also called moksha, correct? Yes. Nice. Pretty interesting stuff, huh? Yeah. So that's nirvana. Not the band. Not the band. Man, I hope we pointed that out at the beginning of this or else everybody's really confused right now. Oh, we'll probably call it something like nirvana, not the band. There you go. If you want to know more about nirvana, not the band, you can type that word into the search

bar at houseofworks.com. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. And if you want to know more about nirvana, the band, watch the great documentary, Montage of Heck. It's not called nirvana, the band. Nope. Montage of Heck. Okay. Very well done. Is it? Oh, it's great. It's pressing. All right. I'm going to call this our biggest fan in Uganda. Hey guys, my name is Joshua Quisenberry. I'm a huge, possibly the biggest fan of your show. And I listen every chance I get. My wife, son, and I live in Kampala, Uganda, where we run an NGO for children with severe, special needs. We've been abandoned orphan or abused. On the Nazi sabotage episode, we spoke about the brilliant but poorly executed plan of the Germans to infiltrate the U.S. and cause chaos.

I wondered if you guys knew that wasn't an original idea by Hitler. But in fact, during World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm, number two, had an entire sabotage ring running out of New York City that was responsible for numerous acts of terror, including blowing up or attempting to blow out railroads, bridges, canals from the East Coast all the way to San Francisco and Canada. Did not know that. This is during the neutral period, our neutral period of 1914. One of the largest and most devastating was blowing up a munitions depot on New Jersey's Black Tom Island. Apparently, the blast was heard all the way in Philly and through shrapnel that actually damaged the arm and torch of Lady Liberty herself.

What? Bring me Kaiser Wilhelm. I just want to kick his body. What was that? I just figured that was you, Kaiser Wilhelm. Is that what I sound like to you? Yeah, no. Like I'm drunk and about to throw up? Some of the other plots that were thankfully discovered were attaching rudder bombs on ships.

Another interesting one was trying to buy U.S. passports from dock workers to smuggle more spies in. It was found out and ushered in putting photos on passports. I think I understand. I think so too. So they couldn't be stolen and used anymore. Anyway, I thought you guys would find it fascinating that the Germans, they were a little better at sabotage and would have made a better film in World War I. Wow. And that is Josh Cousenberry.

Thanks a lot, Josh. Thanks for the work you're doing out there. Nice. Thank you. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know more about something we walked right past in a previous episode, we'd love to hear more stuff. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com.

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