Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 49: Robert Thurman, Renowned Buddhist Scholar

Episode Date: December 7, 2016

Bob Thurman, the father of actress Uma Thurman, was one of the first Americans to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He later gave up his robes and is now one of the most famous Buddhist scholars around, having worked with the Dalai Lama for over 50 years and traveled the world lecturing on Buddhist teachings. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. Dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey, hey, our guest this week is one of the most famous and well-respected Buddhist scholars around. He's also hilarious. He's also the father of Umatherman of all things. He's also hilarious. He's also the father of Umat

Thurman of all things. He's got a wild backstory. He's one of the first Americans to ordain as a Tibetan monk. And now he teaches at Columbia University. He's written a bunch of books, which I recommend and which you will hear about as we proceed through the podcast. He will make you laugh. He will really make you think. And he also, he's very close to the Dalai Lama. And he's got this new graphic novel out about the Dalai Lama, and he's got this new graphic novel, I would about the Dalai Lama, he'll talk about that as well.

So I give you Robert Thurmond. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. I would love to just get a sense of your personal history. How did you get into this whole meditation slash position? Well, I don't know. I was a restless child. get a sense of your personal history. How did you get into this whole meditation slash Buddhist life? Well, I don't know. I was a restless child.

I grew up in New York here, St. Bernard's Philip Sector or Harvard. Even I ran away from Philip Sector, I stayed in my senior year to join the Castro Revolution. The Castro Revolution? Yes, yes. And luckily, they refused my recruitment. I was like very skinny.

I was across player 6, 350 was like, very skinny. I was across player 6, 350 pounds, very, very skinny. And they said, oh, don't care what they're coming to say. So you went to Cuba? And they told you, no, I went to Miami. And they were recruiting there. And they said, no, thank heavens, I'd be dead. So I was like that. I was trying to break out of the wasp thing.

And then, in my senior year at Harvard, I had a similar event and I went to India. Then I met Dalai Lama. And I was reading Buddhism and all sorts of things as an undergraduate at Harvard. And then in 61 I just left. And I went to India. And as soon as I met the Tibetans, I was home. And so I've been studying that ever since. What about the Tibetans made you feel like you were home?

Well, they actually was going to India. I felt India had a different knowledge that we don't have in the West. What I later learned was called inner science, science of emotions, or even the body, which is actually yoga as a product of. And they're natural medicine that they have, Ayurveda and so on.

So I was looking for India and Buddhism, but then the Indians didn't know Buddhism, and the Tibetans had just fled a couple of years ago. They're exiles, a couple of years before that. And they did know Buddhism. And then I read great Indian masters in Tibetan translations first, and learned the language really quickly

and met the Dalama. You learn to speak Tibetan? Yeah, yeah. And well now I can barely speak English as you'll notice. I speak all along at my age, but yes I'm fluent. You're not old, you're 74? 75, what do you mean? That's not my friends are dead.

Yeah, well that happens to everybody, but 75 is not old in my life. Oh good, I'm glad. That makes me 2% happier. I'm working up to 10. By the end of this interview, you'll be a minimum. It will. It will. Minimum.

So you're in your early 20s, you're hanging out with the Tibetans, you're learning to bet and you're ordained as a monk. I was saying to them, I'm a monk, I wanted to become a monk because that's all I wanted to do. I was so excited. I was more than 10% at that time. I was ecstatic learning Tibetan. I was speaking fairly fluently in 10 weeks. Wow.

And I was good in languages, but it was unusual. Really, I just took to it. And nowadays, anyone would say previous life. And so that was totally great. And now it is anyone would say previous life. And so that was totally great. And then mainly unfortunately, and I didn't learn Hindi and I did eventually learn Sanskrit when I came back to school. Because after all the original monk teacher did want me to be a monk.

He said that you're not going to stay a monk. It's just not your thing. You know, he was 60 something. I was 20 something and I said, yes I am. So then finally, they let me be among, but he was right. And activism, there was a mid 60s. My friends were all marching against the war,

doing civil rights protests, things like that. I came out as a monk in my robes, what Uma calls, looking like Henry Miller and Dragg, but she later, I described it. Uma, Thurman being your daughter. Yes, yes. And you know, because I had a shaved head, and my lacrosse battered head was all shaved

with all its bumps. And so, my then my teacher, there was a little monastery in New Jersey in the Mongolian community there, or Tibetan monastery. And he said, you can't come and go like that in this country. You know, this is not Vietnam. You can't go and emulate yourself as something to stop the war or something. So you either go out there and be an American or stay here and be a Tibetan monk.

He said, then he did one night, he popped a question to me, he said, do you know anyone who really wants a white monk? And I had to, it sort of clicked something. And I realized, to be, you know, Tibetans wanted Americans to help them in their refugee plight, you know, and struggle with China. And Americans didn't know what a Buddhist monk in those days, you know, like Matthew Ricard, we have people now, but in those days they didn't know that. So it's true, I didn't fit anywhere very well.

Was part of taking off the robes, a desire to have children get married? No, not really. I was married at 17, I was married very young. It's 17? Yeah, it's 18 maybe. But we got together and I was 17. My wife was 25. This is like a reverse gerry-ly Lewis.

I know. What a reverse Buddha I think. Well, I don't know. It was a teen. It's a bridegroom. What can I say? It was just 25. I was very in love.

Who was this person? Oh, she was a very nice lady, French American lady, lived here in New York. Older sister of a close friend of mine from school. OK. So we had a great time. As an affair, we're having an awesome time. And then it turned more serious, and the family wanted it.

Mine didn't much wanted, but theirs did. And so we married, and we had a daughter. I tried to take them with me recently to India, but they wouldn't go. So then we separated and so on. So I wasn't to see, we're seeking marriage really. But then unfortunately, once I was ex-mogged, I did meet my wife, a present wife, and fell in love again. And we were voted at least likely to succeed, because she was a Ford model and a spirit but a very spiritual person that had been as Ford model from Sweden. And we met and we fell in love and maybe I fell more in love than she but I don't know she would probably can test that, consider it my

toosness. And we celebrate our 50th anniversary next year. Congratulations. Thank you. That's no small feat. It is. So one child from the first marriage and how many from the second? Four. So five kids running around. And Umu was from the second.

Yeah, yeah. Umu was. If I recall, there was an accident in a pool that would also change the trajectory. Well, yeah, that's what helped me leave Harvard again. It wasn't in a pool, but I was in a garage, but I lost an eye. And that was an impermanence thing,

and made me decide my Buddhist reading, my Herman Hess reading, the Siddhartha type of thing, Buddhist texts, and the Nietzsche and things like that, that I should act on that. Instead of floating along in a kind of wasp career of some kind, you know, exeter Harvard career, whatever it might have been, maybe diplomat or something. Instead of floating along in that, in a civilization I thought had problems, even then, and having it as a

side thing, and maybe they're getting to it in a mid-life crisis I might have. But losing the eye was like an impermanent shark. And therefore I decided I had to act that. And then that's when I wanted to take my wife and daughter with a Jeep. We had enough money. Take them with a Jeep and everything. Go to India and look for the Dharma. And there were no hippies then.

I think Alan Ginsburg and Gary had been already Gary Snyder. But very few people had been starting that whole flood to flow to India. Beatles hadn't gone there yet, type of thing, to see Maharishi. Right, right, so you were ahead of the curve. Yeah, a little bit ahead of the curve there.

So then we separated that, and then I became a Tabezanai's. Once, so I'm jumping around a little bit in the chronological, but once you became a monk and then unbecame a monk, and then got married again, you became a scholar? Yeah, well then I realized the only way I could do what I wanted to be a monk about, which

was study and meditate and do Buddhism, at every level, all my life. The only way to do that as a lay person in America was and support a family and myself was a professor. So I went back to Harvard and switched majors from English major to Sanskrit and Indian studies. Actually, initially East Asian language because Tibetan studies was in that department. And then eventually Sanskrit and Indian studies, very tiny department at Harvard. And has your whole career subsequent to that bin at Columbia?

No, I was at Amherst College for 15 years after Harvard, and I would use the minimum-lighted Harvard, actually. They kind of assumed I would come back there, but my wife refused to go to Cambridge because people don't drive well in Cambridge. They're all thinking of many things and head up in the air, and they go through stop signs here. And you have to be really careful.

I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and I can tell you that the bad driving is endemic to the entire metro area. Not just anywhere. I see it. OK. And it's rather true, yes. And I was under-regidated, so I was familiar with the place. Anyway, Columbia was, I never studied there,

but it's the place in New York, right? And then we were doing Tibet House. It's the Dalai Lama asked me and there was your gear to start Tibet House here in New York. You know, it's a cultural preservation thing. So it's much more convenient to come to back to the homeland, you know, get out of Massachusetts. So you mentioned to Bad House.

Can you give me a give us a fuller? Oh, sure. Yeah, to the house. US is a cultural center of his whole Instaul Alama in America. And our job is to make the culture known to let people basically, you know, some the political organization has a free Tibet motto or saved Tibet. And then there's some who have a free Tibet model. Then there's a refugee help group called Tibet Fund. That is channels of money from the US government

to Tibetan refugees in exile. Pretty much just a little bit in Tibet, mostly in exile. And then ours, our motto is love Tibet. So it's to sort of introduce new people to what it was, its own culture. Because the Chinese, it's nothing really personal. It's just that they know, even though they weren't members of the UN when Mao first invaded, if Taiwan was,

they knew that you're not supposed to have to infringe boundaries after the UN has found it, like Solomon's saying in Kuwait type of thing. Not supposed to do that. So they have to pretend to be always been part of China and they have been doing that steadily. They still do.

But it isn't actually. And they live at high altitude. They have special physiology. They have a weird chemistry and they're longs for the small amount of oxygen that's there. And so it ends up where they have to try to make sure that Tibetan culture, which is very different from Chinese culture,

is not known. And it doesn't, you know, so they consider promoting Tibetan culture without making a statement about political situation to be sort of disruptive to them, you know. So it's difficult to do that. And they are trying to re-condition Tibetans to be trying to think they're Chinese. So I have a Chinese identity, which doesn't work. The Chinese are. Yeah, which doesn't work.

Because they have a long ancient history with China. But when the Chinese used to be Buddhist empires, they would patronize Tibet in various ways, protect them sometimes, but they didn't live there and they didn't really own the place. They sort of paid homage to the great teachers there. So the Tibet House started by you, Richard Geer. The idea is to spread Tibetan culture and awareness of Tibetan culture.

No, no. So people get to love and like Tibet eventually even Chinese will decide they like Tibet and let the Tibetans be Tibetan within their union will be better for them than trying to change them and do an ethnic side what do you might call it? Telechemicals, cultural genocide, but I think better term is ethnocide, which unfortunately I invented. Do you have any, what's your level of optimism about? I'm very optimistic.

You are. Absolutely. Because I do really trust the basic wisdom of the Chinese people. They were Buddhist for many centuries, very strong Buddhists. They had this issue with communism and atheism and whatever it was, and Maoism. And now they're kind of capitalist, but sort of formally still communist, which is a confusing, and actually underground, they're very into Buddhism, even Christianity, where they do that, or Islam, at howism, they're very

interreligion. And they're naturally going to be, and they can't make Mao anymore into religion, or Xi Jinping, or Deng Xiaoping, or any of them, they can't be God anymore, for them. So they're eventually going to do that. And when they do, that a lot of luck, a good thing about the alamats, he has staying power. He's promised to live 213. But how do you really promise that? Absolutely, that's very specific.

Absolutely, very specific fulfilling of ancient prophecy. And he was not just toward it, I have to confess by me, actually, originally. But then they found an old Tibetan prophecy about it and he kind of got into it. But even if he doesn't or even after that, he's reborn. And they will recreate, they'll find someone and he'll still lead them, especially if he doesn't or even after that, he's reborn. And they will recreate, they'll find someone, and he'll still lead them, especially if he's in exile. He's asked if they get back to Tibet before that, not to have political duties. And he said, next time I should just be back in the monastery, he doesn't want to be in charge of the government.

He wants a democratic, local government, within an autonomous Tibet, within China, and self-rule, what he calls self-rule, in their own area. Because they would be able to do mining or medicine collecting or forestry or whatever, in a sustainable way. Whereas the colonial kind of thing Chinese have done is very destructive and unsustainable. I thought I read that the Dalai Lama said

that the next Dalai Lama might be a woman. He did say that a little bit humorously, but seriously and humorously combined. It was serious in the sense that he's for world peace. He wants 21st century, not to be like 20th century, with world wars and so on. So he's very strongly, even it didn't start too well, but he's for it strongly. And he thinks women are less likely to use the nuclear option or go ballistic over this or that than the male. So that therefore it might be good to sit an example and have Tibetan leader be a woman.

I guess he wasn't thinking about if I he doesn't want to be the leader, but he would be a spiritual leader anyway. So to be a woman would be there for good. And then the joking part, humor's part is in Italy, he then made a modeling gesture actually and he said, in that case, I'll be much more beautiful. Meaning some feminists have taken that badly, like a woman can only be beautiful, but he didn't mean that. He meant more beautiful than I am as a as a male person,

you know, he meant, but I've seen there's some bad feedback about that. So what's your, you've known him for a long time? Yeah, since, for 52 years. So I've interviewed him a couple times. I can't say that I have a closer relationship with him or know him personally. Well, he, I'm sure he liked you a lot. He laughed at me a little bit. He did? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. Yeah, at me and with me I made some comment. We were on stage together in Wisconsin at Richie Davidson. Oh right. A neuroscientist. He had an event and yeah, I made a joke about how When not long after we had our first baby, which was just a couple years ago. Oh, very much. Thank you. Thank you. If you want them, I'll give them to you. He, a couple of nights after he was born, I was telling a joke about how I was standing there in the middle of the night, holding this screaming beast and there was poop everywhere. And I had this thought, which was the title of my next book is going to be everything in my last book was bull exploitive. And the dollar alarm started to laugh

after it was translated for him. And then he turned to me and said, that tells me that your meditation is still in its initial stage. Yeah. Excellent. So what do you have your teaching? He didn't give me a teaching.

I mean, he comes off as a giggly, funny guy, also very serious. But what does he really like? Does he, I mean, you've ever seen him angry? Yeah, yeah, at me, I'd say. At you. Sure. Well, when I organize a vent or something and then this case will get too long or something like that, then he gets a little upset when he gets tired. And he can be a little sharp,

you know, and he says, I used to have a hot temper, he says, but what he defines his progress as, from years of study and meditation, when he loses it, nowadays, it hardly lasts at all. But actually, I haven't seen him really lose it nowadays except maybe, briefly, just sort of like feeling put upon by some kind of confusion of schedule, you know, when people don't manage his, because his schedule is so intense, he gets a little frazzled away. Are there politics around him? Oh, yeah, oh, terribly.

Yeah, he doesn't try not to participate, but the people around, it's like a court. And people buy for access and influence, and they do, and they kind of promote themselves by having access to things. People do that. And he knows the game and he tries to keep it under control. You can do a lot of meditating, but we're still homo sapiens.

Yes, yes. Tibetans are very homo sapiens. Now, you've got, you mentioned to me that you've got a book coming out, your next book. You've got, you've written a lot of books. we'll talk about some of them as we proceed here, but your next one is called Man of Peace, which is an illustrated life story of the Dalai Lamas coming out in hard back on December 10th. Yes. Tell me about it.

Well, it's, I have a friend who used to be a student and come to my classes off campus like at Tibet House or Dharma classes like that, and my non-academic teachings role. And his wife, you know, cancer prognosis being a few months even, was prolonged for a few years by the kindness of Dalai Lama in the early 90s, and that somehow he met her and he heard that. And then he said, well, you could check with my physician since the Westerners have given you up. Since you still have a will, something like that,

and she went to India, and then she lived for a few years, comfortably, but then she did pass away. And during the time she had that prolonged life, she was so moved about that Dalai Lama that she started to work on making a graphic novel about his life because she felt that the people didn't know the details of what he's been through and what he's liked, everything. So then she passed away and then my friend, William Myers, and co-author, he worked at it

for years, quietly, you know. And then finally, it was totally stymied about ten years ago, and he brought it to me, and then I saw it as a great thing for Tibet House to do, because in a way, Dalai Lama is like an ultimate artifact of a Tibetan culture, you know. He's the product of their top educational system of ancient Buddhism. You know, he's been put in a very stressful situation of, you situation of exile and speaking up for people against the whole huge empire, a giant country, and everybody wants to do business with everybody's afraid of and so on.

And he's done a great job, and he's become then a world-inspiring person. And that's all based on what Tibetan culture, Prick, and Pruduce, out of a human being, who was the son of a peasant, you know. Log cabin to White House sort of routine, you know, peasant's house in Northeast Tibet to the Potala. So it's so, I saw it as a project for Tibet House and then this friend, he mainly focused on the Kundun, you know, thing of the Allama just in Tibet and escaping.

And then I know. Kundun, what is Kundun? Well, you know the movie, more of a Scorsese menu, which is really just until he escapes first 24 years of Alama's life. And he didn't really know a lot of the ins and outs of coming to America dealing with the different presidents, dealing with John Sharp being dealing with a lot of stuff that has gone on during my 50 years,

of the next 50 years of dealing with the situation as the Alama's close friend. And so then I took us co-author and wrote that part and I also had to fix up early parts and so on. So anyway, it's like we slowly put it away out of volunteers. And then finally, one of the Tibet House donor, where kindly gave a grant to hire a bunch of artists, we then had a Tibetan who as a semi-volunteer was making comic book pages, but then he needs to live and we couldn't be a volunteer, his exile refugee. So we were making

no progress on the art side. And then someone gave a grant when they saw what we'd started with and then they hired a team of six artists and they did great job. So is this kind of given the Dalai Lama superhero treatment? In a way? Yeah, kind of, but different kind of superhero. He's not the Kapow side. The other side is the Kapow side. You know, invasion and occupation and prison camps and things

like that. We honestly show that, although we're not trying to create any kind of anti-abund anything, but we just, to show his greatness in that he's not reacting with that. And even we deal with the issue where his brothers, several of his brothers, insisted and said they must have a fight, you know, and they had that temporary thing with CIA in the 60s. And didn't go in, he said no, don't do that. He was from 56, he was totally into Gandhi.

And Buddhism is internal violence. So he said that won't work. Both in principle, because we're a Buddhist country. And in practice, because we're not in a situation where we can have that level of armament. We were 6 million against 700, 800 million when it started. I was surprised. When Mao Mao said China stood up now. Chinese said 600,000 Chinese have stood up.

Now it's 1.3 billion and we all think of them as having this one child. But they must have had a few extra. Yeah. Yeah. They must have. Anyway, so in that sense, he's a superhero. Where our superhero, the thing of him comes is, he tells W. Donabadeh Rakh, please, don't react violently, even to 9-11.

Try to negotiate, try to figure out what the problem is, talk to the people, deal with it, try to tell them done. Even his staffs, you know, you better been not right that to him, you know, but he did. And he speaks everywhere in Russia and everywhere, like, let's not have any wars, you know, this is no good, you know. He tried to go to Salam Hussein, actually, in 202, but then the other nobulous wouldn't go with him. And he said, well, as a Buddhist in a Muslim country, I think it's silly for me to go by myself. Sometimes they do things as a team. Him and two two. Two two, yeah.

Two two, yeah. And I think two two might have been willing, but some others weren't, so somehow it just didn't happen. And so he's helped in Northern Ireland. He tries to help wherever he can. He tried to go to Ramallah even more recently, but Chinese told Palestinians they wouldn't help them sell them weapons or whatever it is that they, whoever they talk to.

So they blocked it. Nowadays, probably nothing, Yahoo would block it. But in those days, it was blocked by Chinese. He tried to go to Sarajevo. We tried to get him to Sarajevo, actually. It was still shooting going on to kind of introduce something, try to start a religion department at University of Sarajevo, was what I cooked up, you know, Darwin was gonna come to bless that, but then UN wouldn't guarantee a safety, and then we'll let him, and China protest it also. So let's talk

Dharma. Yeah okay, back to 10% happy. Oh no, this is way beyond 10% your stuff, my. No, no, but I like 10% happier. I just want to put in the plug for it. Thank you. I'll take a plug anytime. Okay. So I come from the, I guess, secular mindfulness, and then more sort of teravod and old school Buddhism,

you know, my teachers are Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salver, Mark Epstein. Very different from Tibetan Buddhism. Well sort of although they all studied Tibetan Buddhism themselves. They did and so. And you were teaching but they all studied it. Well actually in Joseph who is my person you know direct teacher. Yeah. There is actually a significant amount of Zogchen which is a flavor of Tibetans in his teaching.

So, in Mahayana too, in other words, Zogchen is Mahayana. So, can you actually just give me a bayon and by extension everybody listening or watching a basic primer on the difference between early Buddhism, the kind of Buddhism that's really made its way into American culture in a big way, either through these popular writers like Sharon and Mark, and also through secular mindfulness,

which is really derived from this early Buddhism. Well, what is the difference between that and Yahya'na which you're talking about? Mindfulness is also completely, you know, chapter and verse in Mahayana. Because Teravada is chapter and verse in Mahayana, that's to begin the primaries. Every Tibetan monk has a teravada Buddhist vow, although it's called Mula Savastivada, but it's one of the branches of teravada. And teravada has that there were like ten different branches of teravada before it localized in Sri Lanka when it was in India. So teravada, Mahana, really not different.

The difference is that the Buddha felt that certain people was too much to jump straight into what's called non-duality. Like, this is Nirvana, right now, here on 10% happier. So, there is only 10% happier, or whatever we are, is that we don't know that we're in Nirvana, but actually we're in Nirvana and we're still here. That's non-duality. You gotta say more about that,

because I feel like I'm confused, so everybody's gonna be a little confused. What do you mean by non-duality? Well, see, the emptiness or selflessness teaching, which is in Teravada as well as in Mahayana, which is the ultimate reality teaching of the Buddhas. It's great discovery, you know. And is that there's no absolute outside the web

of relativity. In other words, Buddha kind of discovered, you know, if you could say absolute relativity, he discovered that. And so absolute relativity is why wisdom becomes compassion, because you don't escape from the other beings, and you therefore have to take care of them, and you're interwoven with them, you're entangled with all the other beings. So, whereas most religious people think, you know, I'll be with God somewhere outside of the world if they're theistic, if they're materialists or nihilists spiritually speaking, I'll be outside of this by being nothing by die after I die. Or the teravata Buddhism, what you could call dualistic Buddhism, is I'll be outside of this in Nirvana, which will become

final after I die. I could taste it now in life, but then the momentum of my separate embodiment, bumping into things and having things bump into me, while I'm still alive, we'll do that, but then I'll go back into final Nirvana when I die. So in other words, the idea that Nirvana, or ultimate reality, is elsewhere. That's called dualistic, evolve me. Yes, so there's two things.

There's this world, and then there's Nirvana, which is a different thing. That's right, true is a different thing. That's right, true. In Tera Mata. Yes. And even in people who consider Mahayana in some way, or maybe heard it in a Mahayana institution, but they understood it that way, because they couldn't quite cope with

the idea. There are several misunderstandings you can have. If you say, this is Nervana, you can say, well, what's the big deal? Nirvana means no difference. So I'm not going to try to do anything special. That's one misunderstanding. Another one is I can do anything I want because this is Nirvana. So then indulging oneself.

And another one is this is all a bunch of BS because it sucks here. It know, it's not nice. It's not 10%. Right. Let me just stop here for a second. What do you, when you say Nirvana, what do you mean? Oh, Nirvana, the extinction of suffering. And actually, what is wonderful about it in terms of our modern hipster culture, when don't ask me for the causality of that.

And literally, Nirvana means being blown out or being blown away. And we use that when we have a wonderful aesthetic experience or some moral sense, they say, oh, I really blew me away. So Nirvana is ultimate blowing away. So the idea of being ultimately blown away and yet still be here, which is what a Buddha is. They're still here engaging and they're and they're one thing that they're so blown away, they have no personal desires. So true Buddha. So their, engaging, and they're one thing, they're so blown away, they have no personal desires. So true Buddha. So the only thing, the reason they are kind of manifesting in a monument is they notice

that other people who actually are intrinsically blown away because they are free and they're made, their cells are made of bliss, they're not divisible from clear light of the void type of thing. And yet they think they don't have enough, and this is awful, and they have to fight, and they have to do this, and that, and they have to be a narcissist, and they have to say, look at me on TV. I'm not making any statements. But in their probably ear, they say, after the fact. But, you know, they're...

I thought you were talking about me. I was talking about myself. And so, so, so, so that's that's harder to understand. But, but see, the, in the four noble truths, which is also told by Hayanah thing, it is like it's not only terabata thing, but the Mahayanah thing, I mean, four noble truthss, in terabata, of the four of them, only the third one is ultimate reality, nearvana. The path and also the symptom of suffering and the diagnosis of what causes it being the egotism, ignorance, you know, egotism, et cetera,

the desire and hatred, which derive themselves from the egotism. And those three are relative, universe. And only Nirvana is absolute. So, Nirvana is actually his discovery, not the suffering. Everybody knows about suffering in his time and today. But there's a way to be free of it. And then there's two stages.

One, my being free of it means getting out of here, which he allowed people to do that. And later in the Mahayana, they say that Sharputra and some of his disciples, monk disciples, said, well, if everything is right here, why didn't you tell us? Why did you tell us? And I thought I was relieving for Nirvana type of thing. It says to him, I thought you were the devil posing as the Buddha, saying it's all here, you know, and then Buddha explained that he had to tell him that because that was the medicine they needed of that type at that time, you know, to feel that they strived to get away from things, because they couldn't have conceived of, they were too sensitive, too much engaged in suffering and they couldn't conceive being everything being perfect here actually. So I'm going to try to restate just a little bit of that because I'm always, always sort of paranoid.

I followed it, but it is fascinating and there's many more things to discuss. I always just want to make sure that I bring everybody else along. Of course. Teravata Buddhism is, I think, literally the school of the elders. It is the kind of Buddhism. It's the standard of our de Yen sense, yes. It is the kind of Buddhism that was alive, after the Buddha died, about 12, 10 years ago.

Well, we knew. It was publicly alive. Okay, there was still there, we think, but. Okay, so publicly alive. And then, a couple hundred years later, there's a schism. There's a schism, and what's born is something called Mahayana, which is known as the great vehicle of Buddhism. And that is what led to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism.

And later Indian Buddhism. And actually the majority of Teravada Buddhists in India from that time had a Teravada Buddhist vow of a monk, you know, resounds the world, but they were adopted Mahayana Buddhist ideology, you could say. So the two got together even in Sri Lanka. You had Mahayana in Sri Lanka, even Tantra in Sri Lanka, until of our 900 and something, when there was some political thing and then it just reverted. And that's when it was all wiped out in India. Both terabata and mariana. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another

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along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app You also mentioned the four noble truths. Yes, that is the Buddha's first big speech I think the lightening the list of these four truths one is life is suffering often misunderstood But basically means that life is unsatisfying if you are unenlightened life is unsatisfying if you... Un-enlightened life. Yeah, un-enlightened life is unsatisfying. The second noble truth is the source of that is thirst or craving. Yeah, well the root source is ignorance.

Ignorance. But the root manifestation is craving. And then the third is there is... The prognosis is good. Yes, there is the good news of Nirvana. And then the fourth is these eight-fold noble path, which is the eight things you Nirvana, and then the fourth is these eight fold noble path, which is the eight things you can do to live in light and life. Anyway, that is all considered traditionally

as part of the old school teravada stuff, but you're saying it is also sewn right into Mahayana. And you said something in there that I wanted to get back to, which is that we don't see that, so in the Mahayana conception, Abhuda is blown out and sticks around to help out other beings who are also blown out but don't know it. In other words, they are in living in Irvana, they're very cells are part of the bliss void. That's what I want to get to.

What do you mean by that? Well, I wish I really knew, but theoretically speaking, as I don't pretend to really know. But theoretically speaking, it means that, you know, it's like the Nirvana thing even conveyed in dualistic Buddhism and Teravala. Good news, in other words. The reason Buddhism has been so popular all over the world in the highly populated areas of Asia, which in ancient time were also much more highly populated, is that it is a good news. And the good news is that the default situation in life is good.

It's like those versions of theism where they say, you know, God is love, God is good. You know, maybe there's a veil of suffering and there's a devil having trouble, but ultimately God is good, which of course it doesn't fit with the idea of eternal damnation that they put in their scare people into behaving themselves. But the real positive news, of course, of all theistic religions is that God presented as ultimate reality is love, therefore we'll take care of everybody. So Buddha's discovery is the same except it isn't a person. Exactly. It's more like a reality itself. So it's like, you know,

in quantum physics, there's an odd concept that they discovered at their mathematical things that, in theory, a vacuum has infinite energy. And the reason it seems to be a vacuum is there's no motion and no action of it, because it's infinite, so everything is already done, something like that. So reality at the deepest level is understood that way by Buddha. That's what Nirvana is. And when one is conscious at that level, then it's like it's total bliss. And there's no deficit of any kind. There's no problem.

There's no suffering, no sin, no nothing. So people, the original ignorance is, I'm really me, and the universe is really not me. And in a way, therefore, in any kind of stress situation, it's me versus the universe. And in such a situation, I lose. It's, this isn't even rocket science. It's always wins. Yeah, why?

The universe always wins. Exactly. Even you become president of the United States You're still gonna have low debts to pay Never mind. I won't get that so so that you know things will pursue you You know even you know in other words you can be God and Buddhist you even you become God at a local universe There'll be another God will come and give you a hard time in a bakery. So therefore, I forgot what we were talking about. We're talking about the Nirvana bliss. Yeah, the Nirvana bliss. So Buddha was blown away by this discovery that, you know, and he smiled and he fully understood everything. And even in Teravada, he tells the story in Teravarada about himself as 500 lifetimes

as the bodhisattva. And all these are the original Walt Disney stories. You know, Lassi went and saved the guy. The old hyena went and saved the lion or the baby frog saved the turtle. I mean, whatever, even at their cost of their own life. So this sort of selfless, altruistic, give yourself away because you have, you have the plentiful attitude of being one with this wonderfully benevolent universe.

That's, you know, he told that. But then where the terabata, Mahayana, difference is, is that, because you did ask about that, is in terabata, he never says to them, you guys will have to do this. You're all gonna have to be the frog who gives himself away, you're gonna have to be the deer, you have thousands of millions of lifetimes. He tells them there's going to be thousands of lifetimes, but he says, no,

you can get out to Nirvana because they could impair that idea of having to spend thousands of more lifetimes doing stuff, you know, they couldn't deal with it. So in the Mahayana, he says, everyone that goes through that, you see, everyone's going to have hundreds and thousands of millions of lives like that. Because the entanglement of all beings of all life is total. There's no escape from it. And yet, so most people who don't understand that, it's a positive thing.

They were thinking, oh my God, I have to boss, that this is forever, you know. No way, you know, type of thing, you see. So that's why Mahayana was held in reserve, the way we understand it. It was held in reserve the way we understand it. It was held in reserve for four centuries. While they have a bad term that they use, for those members of the, of the not just Tarevara, there was other dualistic Buddhist schools in India, 18 of them. And those people, most of them liked the Mahayana

idea when they heard about it. And it didn't contradict what they were doing, just the final, I'd reinterpreted the final outcome, that's all. And so they mostly liked it. It wasn't a contrary thing, but there were few who were like against it. And for them, the Mahayana people came up with this idea, Hinaiana, which means lesser vehicle, which is rude. And it just means it, but it doesn't really mean lesser, actually, it means deprived.

What it means is they're depriving themselves of the more expanded positive vision of the Mahayana. So, they're deprived that they're still struggling themselves to get out of here, type of thing, against all odds, you know, I'm going to escape. So, I never translate that. I never translate that literally. I call it individual vehicle, I call it individual vehicle. And as opposed to universal vehicle. And that shows that universal vehicle needs the individual to

become liberated for everyone to become liberated if you follow me. So it shows how they fit together rather than one is lesser or greater. And because they're really the same, it's just what is your motive. You know, it's like if you're, if you do some action and your action is just purely for yourself, the level of energy you have in doing it can be very great. But if you're doing it for everybody, you know, like the guy in marathon, you know, who ran to tell the Athenians and then collapsed when he arrived, he was doing it for his whole nation, for his family, for people bigger than themselves. They have more energy in doing it. And so that's the virtue of Mahayana. It's a motivation thing. What evidence have you seen to support the assertion you're making that Nirvana is right here right now at the...

Whatever it is? Yeah. Well, logically it makes sense because the logical evidence is, which Nagarjuna, the great Mahayana philosopher, who was a very adept, the Teravada monk himself, he said, if Nirvana is different from the world, it cannot be the absolute, because there's a boundary between it and the world. So if you go to experience, and obviously Nirvana is no use if you don't experience it. So therefore, if you have not experienced it and then you cross a boundary and you experience it, you've moved into a different place. So therefore, it cannot be the absolute nature of every place because it's a relative

place because it's not here. You follow me? No. Well, if some, the absolute is outside of the relative, then it's relative to the relative. Okay. Yes. Yes. You know, it's like theologians will say, God created the world, but he's absolute and he's not, it doesn't really connect to him. But that's just an assertion they make. It's a misuse of language for logically. So I'm just giving you the logical evidence. But do you know anybody who's living in this

Nervana state all the time? I think so. But you can't be sure unless you reach it, of course. But I've Dalama, for example, well, some of my older teachers who passed away now, definitely, I definitely think so. And not only that, but Buddha himself said so, he even hinted it in teravata literature.

In teravata literature, there is a set of states that are one is called infinite space, other one is infinite consciousness, other one is absolute nothingness, and another one is beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. These are states, right? That Buddha said this is people can attain this by meditating, they don't have to be Buddhists, they become really one-pointed strong meditators. They can attain those states.

None of them are in Irvana, he said. They are not Nirvana. In other words, if you think an absolute, some kind of vast thing where you're blown away in a sense of you don't no longer exist, but somehow it's nice. It's not a bad, not existing, it's a good one. But that would be infinite space, wouldn't it? Or infinite consciousness? Or even steep sleep? Absolute nothingness. Or even beyond being either conscious or unconscious,

which would encapsulate all three of those other states. That would be a disappearing absolute. But he clearly said, they are not absolute. They are not near rala. They're not the reality, they're just other states, altered states, and if you mistakenly think there are that, you might be reborn in them as a god of the formless realm, bodyless realm. You would feel you had no body because all you would be would be the sense of that state, but you were, that's temporary, you go in it with the cause of meditative practices and eventually you'll come out of it.

But so if Nirvana is available to people like the Dalai Lama and a few older monks who know a lot about it. No, no, it's available to all of us. But what you've been doing this all the time, what was it? No, I know, I have a consolation prize. What's that? I'll tell you because this is 10% happier. I'm supposed to write a book about it that I will. But for some reason I haven't. tell you because this is 10% happier. I'm supposed to write a book about it that I will, but

for some reason I haven't. But I have, I have, I can soul myself for failing to have attained this. And that is I have another hint about it, both logically, philosophically, even I would say scientifically, to be sure that I will sometime. In, in this lifetime? No. It could be another lifetime. In the infinite bunch of lifetimes I'm confronting, facing, having to, so given the invented time, even a dodo like me will find to figure it out. Right? So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait something which when you learned it you thought, oh I always knew that. I just wasn't paying attention. Oh I knew that. We feel that we sometimes

about people, you know. Someone turns out to be a pain or they turn it to be nicer than we sort of acting with them and then we then when they we realize that they are there more of a pain or more nice. We say, oh I always knew that. We feel that way, right? So it's like you know something but in a way it's not a new thing. You realize once you know it that you always did. So Nirvana is the ultimate one of those in the sense that it has to have always been here. We have to always have been in it according to the theory.

So when we realize that we were in it, we realize that at some level we already knew it. And that of course connects very well to what the Zen people really mean by that. It's just ordinary consciousness. You know, they don't mean the ordinary ordinary. They mean this is the real ordinary. This is the real ordinary. You know, that's what they mean. And they're really based on that. They're not simplistically thinking that they're just resigned to running around relatively and like some modern Zen people pretend there's no future life and we don't need that and that's as ridiculous that's all fashion and we're made bunch of materialists and that's not what it is and you know we just it's

And so my consolation is that when I do It realized near by that I will realize I was always in near rama and therefore I will be able to remember in my infinite previous lives, the way Buddha did under the tree in the Terevana literature. And of the Bodhi tree when he ejected his life in the tree. Three things he realized. Remembered all infinite previous lives. Everybody else's infinite previous lives.

Second thing, remember that? Which means he knew he was entangled with them because beginningless infinite means we've all done everything with each other forever. And why don't we remember it because we suffered in those lives, they were painful. We were dying, we were freaking out of all, we were losing friends, we were losing everything. And but when you realize Nirvana you realize that just by being a cellular being, a sensitive being, wherever, even a bacteria, you were in Nirvana. You were floating in this bliss, sea of ocean.

So that's my consolation. I don't feel I'm in Nirvana now. When I do feel I'm in Nirvana, I'll realize and I'll revise my experience of this time, and I will enjoy being with you here in the show as Nirvana retroactively. That's my consolation prize. All these things you're saying about the infinite previous lifestyles,

infinite future lifestyles, I'm gonna repeat my question. Where are you seeing evidence for this? Evidence? Yeah, like why do you, why do you, where would there be evidence for a limit? Vickinsdine, who was one of my mentors before I encountered Buddhism, he said even in his early work before he was doing investigations where he

was more critical, he was still trying to be a kind of realist philosopher. And he said, a boundary implies there's something on the other side of the boundary. The idea of a boundary with only something on this side is not sensible, makes no sense. So infinity is actually the rule, rather than the exception. The scientists couldn't do as much as they like. Oh yeah, they're like, well, they know they run away from us and we'll never see them, but so they must not be there.

The stars, they're moving away so fast that the light can't reach us, the light-year travel, light speed travel. So that's just that people assert all these kind of things. Big bang came from nothing. They started with like Genesis. They wanted to be something from nothing, but that doesn't make sense. Nothing is not a place to be a source of something. Even theists who say God made the universe out of nothing, the God was there, so obviously he made it out of himself. When they're being practical, they say, law of thermodynamics, no energy is newly created, no energy can ever be destroyed. So, infinity, there's evidence for infinity in our daily life. Everything is continuous,

everything is infinite, and consciousness, therefore, the idea that consciousness is just limited to the brain is itself the exceptional idea. And it's the, everything else, all energy is, it's consciousness has no energy, is that what it is? It's a non-energetic thing. We don't think so when we're conscious, we feel we have energy. So, that's my evidence. You know, continuity, that's evidence for forming future life. Your materialists will tell you, MIT, Stephen Pinker, any more of them, they'll say, oh, there's no evidence for forming future life.

There's tons of evidence for forming future life. Many people remember previous lives. Many people do. And they're documented in all kinds of cultures, even when they don't have a formal idea of it, like a formal theory of it. And oh, Uncle Joe, yeah, I was on Uncle Joe. A know, a lot of people, a lot of cultures, this documented cases, all over the place. Plus many in Asia, it's a normal thing. And continuity is normal.

For something to become nothing is abnormal. That's a sort of irrational assertion, actually. Okay, food for thought. Okay. Let me just loop back to we're talking about kind of the history of the Dharma We start we started with the old school then we talked about the Mahayana greater vehicle And then you mentioned that Buddhism essentially got wiped out in India where it started. Yeah How did it get to Tibet and what did to what was to talk to me about to bad? That's the amazing thing to bed and We're very successful conquerors They're like jinging is kind of their time

in the mid-first millennium of the Common Era. And the Chinese trembled in fear. They conquered the capital of China one time, even they conquered the whole Silk Road down into Nepal, Bengal, all over the place. They were very fierce and nasty. And then at one point, one of their emperors kind of reached

the one lucky thing about them as far as their neighbors went was they liked living at three miles altitude. You know, the less oxygen gives you a kind of high, I guess, or something. They didn't want to settle down on top of anybody, you know? So they stayed up there, but they would loot and pillage, they were feared and despised by people for that reason. But then once they sort of maxed out their conquest

of where they felt comfortable and had enough loot and pillage, the main ruler said, listen, this is not really a nice way of living. And they noticed that all around them in the Silk Road states in China, in India, Buddhism was providing a kind of matrix of being more civilized, trying to be more altruist, being more friendly. It was like the Christianity of the place all around them.

So they said, well, let's look at that. Where's the source of it? India. Oh, let's send some people down there. Let's get a writing system, then let's translate their books, and let's practice mindfulness, and let's get the previous life of Dan Harris to go down there and study them and find out what makes them 10% happier. And then they started stopping conquering people and they cheered up.

And they started having happier time and they decided that it's not so nice to go and be people often steal their stuff and we have enough stuff here and it's pleasant here and we can. And especially, of course, when you're a warrior culture, conquering things, you're inevitably internally nasty to your women and your children, because they are not fighting on your front line for you, because they don't have the strength to most of them, some Amazon's, but most of them don't. And so then you beat up on them. And then once you beat up on them, they aren't happy and you're going to have a miserable life.

And that culture is today on the world where we're having terrible times where women are not properly listened to as we noticed, as we can notice. As screeniculous Christoph has so eloquently and Cheryl Wooden and eloquently taught in their wonderful book. And so then the Tibetans started calming down, bit bit. They just got turned into self-conquest instead of conquering others, which is what the Buddha teaches you. And then they cheered, if they did lose their empire for that,

because they weren't so nasty, gradually lost it. But they were very happy with this sort of inner empire of 100% happy or some of them, and others 10% happier, and that very colorful culture that you see in the paintings and in the dances and in the, and it's just, it shows a kind of ecstatic thing. I remember when we did a big art show to bedhouse, to the big art show in London in the Royal Academy,

we were attacked by the Chinese embassy, it's usual. And, but the guy who was Lord Somebody, who was not Lord Annalto, Lord Somebody, who was the New York Times, London Times guy before Murder. He said, he wrote a thing called Art of Freedom. And he said that in these 10th and 11th century paintings, and 9th century even 9th century paintings from Tibet, we see these beautiful, exquisite energy and colors. It's wonderful. And then in England at that time, all we were doing

was painting ourselves blue with wood. And he was admiring the culture and he called it the art of freedom. So that's what radiates from the Tibetan people is kind of energy of many percent happier, you know. And basically, and I've been seeing it so pointedly, even under conquest today, under occupation, where you have a Tibetan guy who's just bowed every three feet for 1100 miles from far Eastern Tibet and all dusty and thin and clearly not well-fed with a few teeth here and there and it reached to us at all and he's going around the temple there and he's like

grinning from ear to ear. It's like he's so happy and then looking at him on some police skies you know the local police guys looking like like what's this guy, is he gonna like get out of hand, is he gonna do something? And they're all little tricks, you know, like this. They totally miserable, okay. If you just see, it's incredible, you know. So that's why Tibet adopted the Dharma. And then because they're very smart,

individualistic people, because they had to be living at high altitude, nomadic, you know, semi nomadic, but they're yaks and things, and they're rather sparse economy, but never a disaster economy, actually, unless invaded an Archibald, they never had a famine in their history, it was very balanced, and although they ate too much meat, and because of being nomads, grazing animals, you know. But so they, so what? Oh, no, you were pretty young. Oh, then they inflicted the same thing on the Mongolians. And over four, they took

them a thousand years to finally demilitarize, you could say to bed, basically. And demilitarize meaning internally, mentally themselves demilitar, and become much more happy in their social life. And then the Mongolia, they took four or five centuries with the Tibetans working and teaching the mindfulness, basically. It's basically mindfulness. Do you think that kind of trajectory that you described in Tibet and then Mongolia could take place in the West? Of course. It is taking place in the West and worldwide actually.

And it's their underground in in common China. It's usually Tvettalamas or mentally popular and they have big followings even party members who sneak off and do some editing. And they have of course their Chinese Buddhist masters and teachers who are fine. And everywhere, it's Tiktok Han when he went back to Vietnam, which were doggily communists, but now in their phase of being communist capitalists, export platforms sort of place, the population went nuts to see him and then they clamped down on them because the little comments the overlords didn't like that, if you know the story. So I mean, people wanna be happier, you know?

That's what they want. And making money and working day and night and being asleep of the state is not making you happy. But there are people are grasping on ideologies that they think make them happier, but that are, I think, pretty obviously bad, like nihilistic Islam, and versions of Islam that kind of twist the whole thing

and make it super violent. Even some nasty Buddhists in Sri Lanka nowadays. And in Burma. Yes, absolutely. And being nasty to the Muslims. Yes, yes, to the right. Terrible, all of them are very upset. There are nasty Tibetans.

Come on. Not every Tibetan is a saint. You know, there are nasty Tibetans. And yet. I'm not ever Tibetan as a saint. You know, there are nasty Tibetans. And yet you think that the... But they're going home, I'm not in Pemet, home while they're picking your pockets.

Okay. Mindfully. Mindfully being mean to you. But you think that Dharma, mindfulness, whatever you want to call it, could become this incredibly constructive force in the West. Of course. It's not really mindfulness. Actually, the word is remembering, you know, sati.

Sati is the ancient term. It actually means remembering. Yes, all it means. So it means remembering you're here, you know, and remembering where you are. And does your mind wandering vaguely here there and there, you know, basically? And so once you become more aware of yourself, then you become more compassionate to yourself. And you realize like, oh, I'm driving myself

nuts to become president and I have a horrible time. And you don't necessarily, you will maybe listen into your body and some of you might decide not to do that, you know. It wouldn't be worth it, you know. You sort of look at the past president and watch how their hair turns white in like three months, et cetera. And you decide maybe that's not the way to do it or whatever. Some of I get a billion dollars and then I only have one. I'm not even for this, and I gotta have ten. You know, I mean, those are not making these people happy.

But I pick up in some of what you're saying here and also in some of what I've read from you a little bit of a sort of anti-ambition you know like don't try to get rich that's a folly no bodhisattva wants to get rich so they can give money to people define the bodhisattva's bodhisattva means one who is a hero for enlightenment and uh... and uh... and uh... bodhisattva's where marks the paper was wrong they had a very capitalist ethic

but it's have not only that, Buddhists have wealth deities that you do rituals. And then, the Sacks of Jewels wrapped up in a yaks in Tessent for all of the sky. All it's kind of thing. And Chinese people do too. They have, they know those in front of those big temples. They have those guardian kings.

And those are wealth gods. So it's okay to have a sack of jewels wrapped up in a yak intestine, but the motivation should be to share. That's right. And actually, I personally, I argue and Max Weber would agree with me to great sociologists. That is the root of capitalism, actually. Capitalism means it's based on a kind of a set of system, according to a sociological smart people.

And it's not based on greed of, I'm gonna consume more. And I'm gonna, it's based on someone who consumes less than they produce. Therefore, that creates capital. And so it's self-restraint, and it's called an inner worldly asceticism, Mark's paper very brilliantly. He thought that the Asian people didn't have it.

That's why Europe was beating them up. But he didn't realize that it was, because he didn't use the technology to go and conquer other people. China was way out in America and all over the world long before Columbus with much bigger ships, but they'd be like being in China. They didn't want to, whereas people from England, the food they had to eat before they conquered India

was sucked. They had no spices, they had no curry, they had to eat with taro balls. So you're not anti-ambition trying to succeed or make money or become famous? I mean your daughter's famous. Yeah, well that was natural with her. She told me she would when she was three. This karma for my life, she did.

When she was three she was picking out expensive dresses and the bird dress shop, somebody who just come from India and she was picking out expensive dresses. And the bird dress shop, some people who just come from India. And she was picking out. Every dress was $140. There were $30, $40, $50 dresses. And I was a penniless professor. My wife was a penniless ex-model. And she's going zig, zig, zig like this. And I'm going to like, look at my wife like this.

What are we going to do? And then they look at all like seven guys. Oh, don't worry, daddy. When I go off, I'll be a famous movie star and buy all my own clothes. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, but she was right. Well, we didn't think so.

Of course, at the time, but there's something going on there, I know. But you don't think it's a pointless, egocentric exercise to try to become famous, to try to become famous. Well, it's a motivation. If you're doing it because you're a narcissistic bag of neurosis, A, you will not really become famous for the right things.

You know, you'll become famous maybe for some wrong things. If you're doing it just out of joy and wanting to, you know, be able to give more, be more, see other people happy, you don't mind me happy yourself about whatever it is, you know, too. But you're doing it in a grander way, with a motivation for more than yourself, something greater than yourself. Then no, there's no problem with that. And you will find satisfaction, but the satisfaction clearly comes if you become more mindful, more remembering how your own self really is, you realize that the real joy is when you establish the Rockefeller Foundation and start giving things away to

people. And that's, and seeing their joy, that's, or Christmas is when you see a little kid open the present, and you know, then you're happy to be able to buy them a good one. But that's when you feel better. Because when it's just when I got something you are you okay by Maybach like what's his name that Puyahous and be on the radio, you know you buy six Maybacks But why you buy six because one once you have one it's like somebody dents it It's like somebody dropped a cigarette over here like it's no good anymore Once you get scrapped it for yourself you're dissatisfied immediately. It's not enough and So so you're heading for endless

dissatisfaction even though you accumulate. Whereas if you accumulate to just be a bigger thing because you, you know, like my friend Mark Benioff, he started his thing with... Cell force, yeah. He started his company with the idea that he would give away a certain percent of equity profit. Is he doing that? Yeah, he did. He is. My wife though said 10 percent would be better, but he didn't listen to that. I like it, never.

But he has done great stuff. Mobile, he started the cloud, you know, he started the Google thing because he has, he fundamentally sticks to an altruistic thing about business that business is based on satisfying the people who are your clients and customers. And when they get happy, then they give you the positive feedback and you make more money and then they do well. And the idea that you're in business to grab away from them, to use their investments like to do leverage for yourself or whatever or give them false advice and getting things,

exploitive is short term. And the crazy guys who are distorting Muhammad's nice teaching, which has lasted for a thousand years more and helped lots of people who are turning into this death cult. You know, that won't last. And there have been them, they were the Akshashis previously and it didn't last, it doesn't last. But unfortunately it arises here and there.

What is your practice like? Your meditation practice? It's not that good. That's why I haven't attained it in your heart. So are you, are you, do you do it every day? Yes, I do. I talk, how much? I do. Well, I spend time, especially before sleep, I have, I especially do. I do also during the day in between things, briefly. I do in the early morning, so those three times. But when I'm teaching and I'm trying to create Tibet House and make it last, you know, and struggling, trying to, you know, the Dalai Lama senior teacher told me I tried to retreat once in India

and who he wrote to retreat manual and I thanked him and he said, I didn't write it. I said, what do you mean? He said, my former life wrote it, because I was pointing to his name on it. I said, it was his former life. And I said, I never have time to write a book like that or do a retreat even. He said, because I'm always working for the government being the government in exile. He was the head of a huge order in the government exile. And usually, that's a three-year term. He'd been head of a huge order in the government exile. And usually that's a three-year term. He'd been there like 12 years or something. And then he looks up bailfully at me. And he says, you too, he says, you'll never have any time until his whole, and it says, wishes are fulfilled. He said to me. So, you know what that means,

his wishes are fulfilled. Means that his people are happy and into bed because Chinese are being nice to them. That's what it means. I'm coming back to that. You asked me about that. I want to just circle back that briefly. I just wanted to say that we love Xi Jinping. We are waiting for Xi Jinping to pivot toward Tibet

and toward Buddhism. And everyone else has given up. I think he says to really the monsters, the new mav, all the way around the world, the battle. And I'm not, I can't, I don't just really the monster, he's the new ma of the world, and all the battle. And I can't, I don't want to take time to go into the analysis, but his father was close friends of the Dalai Lama,

went Dalai Lama 24 years old. And he was born one year before Dalai Lama spent almost a year in Beijing. So I have this vision of Dalai Lama blessing the one year old in the father's arms, you know, although it was a big commie, right? So he couldn't be asking for a blessing from a Buddhist guy, but it was the dead, you know, Mao, even Mao in their way.

And so Xi Jinping said when his father was busted for being part of Hu Yao Beng's policy in the early 80s of being nice to the Tibetans, where there was a brief window of the early 80s after the gang of four went down, where there was a brief window of the early 80s after the gang of four went down and when Dung was paying attention to other things, and hoping also Dung Lama would come back. During that time, the father was very involved in being nicer to Tibet, and then he was busted by Dung when Dung hardened about that, and imprisoned even, and treated badly by the Communist Party. And at the time, the young Xi Jinping said, I will fix this in my life. My father shouldn't have this thing.

So we still think he will make a turn when he has the power to do it, to turn the machinery that sort of stuck old colonialist thing in the Communist Party of control those minority because we want to keep their land. So we have to crush them, which is what's still going on. And we think he will change it. So I'm very optimistic. But if he doesn't manage, if the gangsters get him or if he becomes a gangster once he has the power, then it won't last.

He won't last. And we will have to wait for another one. But it's been waiting a long time since 1959 for niceness to ensue. But China was awfully nice, you know, in different periods during an ancient time. It was a nice place. You take a long view of history. Yeah, you have to. It's been such a pleasure to sit and talk to you. Is there anything that I should have asked that I didn't ask any of, how do I have 10%? You can't afford that as much as that.

No, no, no. But I think it's true. Well, what I was trying to say on that one was this thing about the mindfulness and remembering, actually, some of my colleagues at the Columbia are having a conference tune calling beyond the hype. And they're all going to sit there and rag on the mindfulness movement about how it's not real Buddhism and all this kind of thing. And it shouldn't be

proselytized. It shouldn't be prostituted to commercial aims, have people more productive in the office. But I don't agree with them. And they know that so I'm not presenting the counter view. But even any, it's like yoga. Some people complain, oh, people just go to yoga, to, you know, guys just go to pick up girls or they just think it's calisthenics or, you know, they're not doing the real sacred yoga thing, but that's not, that's stupid. Anything that people do to become more aware of their health, to become more aware of how their mind is working, to come more, a little bit more restrained in control of how the mechanisms that cause them to have powerful emotions, which sometimes sweep them

off their feet where they then get into trouble, or they make trouble. Anything that increases such self-awareness, that's the kind of service that Tibet, India, China, Japan, Asia, the Buddhist culture would like to offer. And actually, the Catholic culture, the many mon. And actually the Catholic culture, the many monastic culture, the Sufi culture, anywhere where people are trying to live at a higher level

in some concentrated way, they have something to offer. And we have been going on our culture, even based last night at a benefit, I was that, then Segal said about it, I didn't realize that. Hypocrites even said, mind is just the brain. at a benefit I was that, then Seagull said about it. I didn't realize that. Hypocrites even said mind is just the brain. Materialism goes all the way back there to Greece. Hypocrites, I didn't quite realize.

I thought the Greeks had a little platonic spiritual idea. I think many of them did, but not Hypocrites. So therefore we think we're going to be solved everything problem when we have a new TV, we have better conditioning, bigger house, more friends, more land, more conquests, more things. We keep looking outside for satisfaction. But those satisfaction are not satisfying in long term. Egocentric based driven satisfactions are automatically, and we know it.

When we're blown away, even at a concert, or even we're at a museum, something we have an aesthetic experience, it ends the minute we turn to think, how blown away was I? How good was it? How good was it compared to the last concert? Exactly, or how could have been, you know,

how could have been it with a different girlfriend, you know, a boyfriend or whatever, you know what I mean. So therefore, any degree of self-awareness that anybody obtains through whatever method and without what, and coming from whatever source, that will benefit them, and that is helpful to them. So it's really wonderful that, between 10% or even 1% happier is better than no% happier. Because we're actually in a culture where we're told that it's not even safe to be happy. It's not even legal to be happy.

It's a big shock. Pursuit of happiness, said the Jefferson. Although somebody told me that he didn't really write that. He wrote, pursuit of property. According to John Locke, life, liberty, and pursuit of property, saying that the property. And somebody said, that's kind of too jive. You know, like put in happiness. I don't know who I heard that, but that might be false. Maybe Sally Heming told him that. I don't know. I don't know. But, so I'm in really 100% in favor of this sort of thing. And I don't think the sort of orthodox Buddhist is not, they're not pretending to be Buddhists.

They're just pretending to be more aware of themselves, you know? Well, I mean, obviously I firmly agree. I appreciate you saying it. And I'm of the view that there's a lot more than 10% happier or just using mindfulness to be more focused and productive at work. But you can't, you gotta start somewhere. You gotta start where people are.

Of course. And the orthodox Buddhism is the reason why I never heard about it or cared about it because no, I didn't speak to me where I was. Right. But I'm getting closer and closer to deep end of the pool of Buddhism. Why? Because I started somewhere because I got in the pool in the first place. Right.

And so that's... It's all I want is makes a big the big thing about he doesn't want people to depart their grandmother's religion. Because it will upset grandpa. So whatever you learn, like learn it in whatever one's religion is. Yeah, learn it in whatever context. And in that sense, I always reassure him

that I wasn't really religious. So he didn't steal me from the process. When I became a monk, my mom said, oh, I should have known. When we took you to the brick church on park every day, nice to be baptized, you made such a fuss and you kicked up your feet and you knocked over the little irons, like a little dish that they have there with a little feet, you know, that has the water in it, and you drenched the priests' casak. And he was all moved out and he just rung out a few drops on flailing feet. He said, so by the way, this is my pre-taste life. Not to be blamed on.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Dan. And thank you for all of your writing and teaching which I have absorbed over the years. It's been a huge contribution and it's a tremendous pleasure to sit and talk with you. And it is a great pleasure to talk with you. OK, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us. And if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter, at Dan B. Harris.

I also want to thank Hardly, the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work. Lauren, Efron, Josh Cohan, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calves, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dance Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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