The Dr. Hyman Show - Why We Suffer And How Not To with Robert Thurman

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

Before I became a doctor, I actually studied Buddhism. I wanted to understand the root of human suffering, and through that understand the way to creating happiness. I realized that by becoming a doctor, I could help people alleviate suffering in multiple ways. Better yet, through Functional Medicine, I could get to the root cause of why the body is struggling and correct it from the ground up. My interest in Buddhism was sparked when my sister took me, at just 15 years old, to a lecture by Professor Robert Thurman, the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. My life has never been the same, and I was thrilled to sit down and tell him that on this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy.  Robert Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University; President of the Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization; and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific treatises from the Tibetan Tengyur. Time chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.” *For context this interview was recorded in April 2020 Here are more of the details from our interview:  Robert’s description of “Buddhism in a nutshell” (11:04) The first Noble Truth (or fact) of Buddhism: Recognizing that we suffer (15:30) The second Noble Truth (or fact) of Buddhism: Misunderstanding that our reality causes suffering (20:13) The third Noble Truth (or fact) of Buddhism: Freedom from suffering (22:44) The fourth Noble Truth (or fact) of Buddhism: The 8-fold path of education, or training (26:24) Using Buddhism as a lens for dealing with COVID-19 and all the resulting suffering (31:02) Changing our relationship to fear through empathy (37:37) Robert’s experience as a young man, traveling to India, and meeting the Dalai Lama (42:16) Robert’s psychedelic experience and how psychedelics be used to treat and educate (45:21) Book recommendations to go inward, and learn more about Buddhist thought and the environmental movement (59:02) Learn more about Robert Thurman at https://bobthurman.com/ Follow Robert on Facebook @Robert.A.F.Thurman and on Twitter @bobthurman Listen to Robert’s podcast at https://bobthurman.com/bob-thurman-podcast/

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Buddhism teaches you to look for the silver lining and focus on that. On the other hand, it doesn't teach you passively to accept the bad stuff. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy with an F. F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you care about waking up as a human being, this conversation is one you should listen carefully to because it's with someone who was the person that got me going on the path that I'm on. Many years ago, when I was 15 years old, Professor Robert Thurman, who's a Professor

Emeritus of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. He's the President of Tibet House, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization. And he's the President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit center affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia. And he's dedicated to the publication of translations of really important artistic and scientific treaties from the Tibetan world. Time Magazine chose Professor Thurman as one of its most 25 influential

Americans in 1997, describing him as larger than life, scholar activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha from Asia to America. And the New York Times recently said Robert Thurman is considered the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. He's known as a talented popularizer of Buddhist teachings. He's a riveting speaker and author of so many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics, and culture. Welcome, Professor Thurman.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be with you, Mark. It's wonderful. So here's the story of Professor Thurman. I am 60, and I won't tell you how old he is, but 45 years ago, my sister was at Amherst College in Massachusetts as a student. And Professor Thurman was then a professor of Tibetan studies there at Amherst. And she dragged me to one of his lectures on Tibetan Buddhism. And, you know, it was obviously an impressionable time at 15 years old. But it was the most, I think, important lecture of my life because it set me upon thinking about the world and consciousness and personal development and the meaning of life

in a way that has literally guided my entire life. I am so amazed. It's true. And my sister, turned out, was a babysitter for Professor Thurman's children as well, which is so ironic. And then it led me to go on to study in college Buddhism. That was my major, Tibetan Buddhism. Really?

Chinese Buddhism, yes. Where was that? At Cornell. I studied Buddhism at Cornell. You might know my professor, Alan Gripard. Oh, yeah, sure. He used to be at Columbia. Yeah, he was at Cornell. You might know my professor, Alan Grappard. Oh, yeah, sure. Yes. He used to be at Columbia.

Yeah, he was at Cornell at Columbia. He was this guy from Paris who was this very eccentric, crazy professor who studied Zen Buddhism in Japan. Yes. And then I studied the Medicine Buddha with Raoul Birnbaum, who you probably also know. Sure. And a nice Jewish guy, but... He was great. Oh, I love Raoul. Yeah. And I began to think about healing and Buddhism and the kind of methodology of Buddhism as a system of healing of the mind yes and and uh and that's

really what led me to choose medicine was that uh and to understand the interconnection of things the interdependence of things the nature of reality it was always what i was trying to find and seek and it's ultimately what led me to functional medicine because it's a deep systems thinking model about root causes, which is what Buddhism is. It's a root cause analysis of suffering. Exactly. And happiness. And happiness. And happiness.

How to get rid of suffering. How to get rid of suffering. Exactly. Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, I feel so honored and privileged to be able to have Dr. Thurman on my podcast because without him, I wouldn't be thinking like I think. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. He was a catalyst. It was like the spark that lit the flame that's guided my whole life.

Well, that's really great. It's your own karma, you know, but I must say that just from what you said about the deep causation, then functional medicine and connecting to that through the discovery of relativity by Buddha 2,700 years ago, 2,600 years ago. That's why as a doctor, you have done this wonderful thing of looking at the causes in the food system, in the life system of our somewhat distorted culture that has gone wrong and is mistreating our bodies in this amazing way that blows my mind. I'm so amazed. I'm so thrilled at what you have done. No, seriously, I really am. I mean, I knew you, I liked your metabolism books and your other books before, and I tried to use some of them for our own health, and I found them helpful.

But when I discovered that you actually were tackling the whole industrial disease-forming system, a corrupt system in our country, which doctors are often loathed to do. I was so excited. I honor that. And so I am deeply honored to be with you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So that means so much to me. It's actually, as I think about it now, it's the same methodology.

So Buddhism is a methodology for understanding the root causes of suffering and the root causes of healing, right? Or happiness. And functional medicine is the same exact thing. It's a methodology for understanding the root causes of suffering slash disease and an understanding of how to create healing and happiness. So it's actually the same.

And it's sort of like this complete layering over of this framework. And it's the training i had in buddhism and tibetan buddhism that really helped me to see what i see in a different way and that's why i'm such a weird doctor no no you're every doctor that's what i'm going to talk about with you is every doctor should be doing what you're doing. I'm sure you read Ivan Illich's Medical Nemesis book. Yes, I did. I read that in college. Dr. What that book, among many other things about that book, although he's kind of disappeared off the radar of people nowadays, but what that said was that the great advances in medicine are not this and that high-tech drug and not this and that skill in surgery developed from war experience, but what it is are the public health initiatives over the centuries, over the last century or so, that medical awareness has caused, you know, sewage, you know, cleanliness, this and that.

So what they do for public health as a group, the doctors, is actually almost more important than inventing some gimmick that does some symptomatic thing, you see. But in order to get back to that, we have to break through the corruption.

And that's what's really what we're going to do. That's what we're doing right away. We're starting on November, whatever it is, and we're going to do it now. Definitely, definitely. And you're a big part of it. Well, thank you. I'm actually going to have the privilege of being on Dr. Thurman's podcast as well and talking about this work from a different perspective. Okay. So yeah, ask me questions. So there's many, many things that Dr. Hermanson, he's published so many books and he's translated so many important texts

like the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He wrote the foreword to one of my favorite books. It was so influential. The Way of the White Clouds by Lama Govinda. Oh yeah, Lama Govinda, yeah. And this guy, Lama Govinda, was a Viennese guy who went and became a monk and was studying a certain type of Buddhism and on a whim went to a conference in India

where he learned about Tibetan Buddhism and he moved to Tibet before the doors were all opened up to the world through China. Yes, that's right. He was one of the early people. It was just an incredible kind of tapestry of discovery of what that culture was that focused not on outer space or discovery of the material world, but on inner space and the discovery of the inner world, because they had nothing except their minds and the inquiry into their minds. And that's really what Buddhism is. People think it's a

religion. It's become that, but it really is this deep inquiry. And I want to sort of start the conversation with your journey, which is quite unusual. You were a student at Harvard, and then you had an accident where you lost an eye, and you got out of school. You went to Europe, Middle East, Asia, and you found your way to India where you met the Dalai Lama in 1962. And he had just emerged from Tibet in 1959. So can you kind of take us through the accident, your spiritual quest, and how you ended up meeting the Dalai Lama and becoming the first ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk that was a Westerner ordained by the Dalai Lama and becoming the first ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk

that was a Westerner ordained by the Dalai Lama. Well, it's kind of an involved tale. I'm working on an autobiography, actually, a little bit, although my wife's autobiography is Fred Takes Precedence, which is very interconnected. But, yes, what happened was i lost an eye and as my old mongolian guru used to say who was my first teacher before the dharalama uh he used to say whenever you talk about that say you lost one eye and you gained a thousand ah just say that so people don't feel worried you know there's a thousand armed-armed Buddhist icon of compassion.

You know, have a look at Tashvara. You know, the Buddhist icon of all the compassion of all the Buddhas. And the thousand eyes means, is only a symbol of the fact that for the Buddhas, Mahayana Buddhists especially, the presence of enlightened beings is everywhere. And they are trying to help us to heal us. Because this is the big breakthrough from Buddhism. If you want Buddhism in a nutshell, the big breakthrough from Buddhism in India, in ancient India, it's not an East-West thing.

It's in every culture. But Buddhism is an education and a healing system based on the insight that Shakyamuni Buddha Siddhartha achieved, which is that we can be healed. And that we can be happy. And that's a breakthrough because all cultures in history, in the last few thousand years recorded history, terrorize their participants, the humans, by telling them that there's no hope for them, except by a religion or a high priest and a religion, a medicine man, if it's a tribe, or through the chief political, if they obey the orders of the king or the president or the prime minister. And then after they die as an unknown soldier or as whatever it is, then neither the king will take care of them because he's God or God will take care of them because God is God. But no one can really help them in this life because it sucks life. And therefore,

they're not going to be well. It's a veil of shadows, a valley of tears and all this. And so Buddhism is not. And on top of that, what is strange about it is it doesn't help that much. It helps a little to believe that. So he's not saying you have to believe that. What he's saying is he was so cool, I said, I really love the Buddha. You have to realize this. You discovered it in a college

classroom just by my very imperfect channeling of this system. But what he did was he did understand, much better than me everything about what reality is and then he said oh good news reality is great oh if if you know what it is if you don't know what it is which i hadn't been doing and most of us don't you think it's a terrible situation and you're struggling with it and you're losing don't, you think it's a terrible situation, and you're struggling with it, and you're losing.

Because reality is you're part of it, but it's bigger than just you. And if you're fighting with it, you'll lose. But if you know you're part of it, then everything is fine. But then he said, the problem with that is that explanation by itself was not going to help you that much if you just think, oh, I want to believe that explanation. So what you have to do is experience that for yourself. So you have to discover what reality is for yourself. And then here's the really revolutionary thing that caught me initially about Buddhism, before I lost my eye, actually. But I was in denial that that's what I really should be doing with my life.

I mean, there weren't yoga classes on every corner in 1962. There wasn't meditation classes. Nobody was talking about this. How did you get into it? Well, even in high school, I read Herman Hesse and Siddhartha and Jung and the Jung's thing about the book of the dead and et cetera. You know, I was reading those things because I was a nonconformist already where I was always teaching, taking my own class.

I wouldn't go to some rotten professor teaching Buddhism. I would read my own book, you know, and then they would teach what they would teach Kant and Hegel, you know, this kind of thing. So, but what I'm saying is It's therefore he was an educator It's like an education when you go to medical school The the you know, the doctor doesn't say believe you're a doctor and you'll be fine and you can practice no way You have to study biology. You have to study anatomy. You have to study chemistry pharmacology

So so Buddhism is like that you have to you have to study chemistry, pharmacology, blah, blah, blah. So Buddhism is like that. You have to study it. No authority can just tell you it's like so-and-so, and then you believe it, and that's that. And that's why the Four Noble Truths, the sort of main framework of Buddhism, they translate it as truth, and that's not wrong. But if you translate it as the Four Noble Facts,

that would be better. Yeah. In other words, aspects of reality. And the first one is, if you don't know what it is, you're going to misunderstand who you are and where you are, and you're going to suffer. But you can learn what it is. That's the big kicker. Everyone else tells you in school, the religious people told me you can't understand anything. You just have to believe. And you have to believe whether it makes sense to you or not. Just believe.

And I said, I don't like that. I refuse. That's no good. And then there's a great joke on that. Do you know the joke about that? The theologian's joke? No. Where a theologian was asking the congregation, like, define faith, tell me folks, what is faith? Can you tell me? And nobody would

speak, you know. So then the little Johnny in the front row was going like, I can tell, I can tell. And he didn't go to him because he was a little kid. Then finally nobody had grown up would speak. So he says, well, you all should be ashamed of yourself. Little John is the only one who's answering the question. Okay, little tell these good people here what is faith he says oh i can tell i know what it is your well what is it he says faith is believing what you know ain't true langdon gilkey theologian at university of Chicago, told me that joke. I love it. It turns out a little bit cynical. Yeah. Anyway, so the point is, you can understand yourself and the world, and you don't have

to be Einstein. Every human being with a brain is a kind of Einstein if they develop it, you know? And that's what he said, the human life is so fortunate, not because animals are not former humans, they are, but because they have souls, etc. He's like Albert Schweitzer, he was like Schweitzer on that one. But the point is, you have the ability to understand, one, and two, you have the ability to understand, one. And two, you have to understand to be happy.

And when you really understand your world, you will be happy. So, you know, our saying... Because we kind of misinterpret our reality, and that's what causes the suffering. Exactly. And then they reinforce our misinterpretation by telling us ignorance is bliss. You don't want to know what it is because you'd be so scared of it, you know. And they misinterpret Darwin as thinking that it's nature red in tooth and claw. You know, they're going to all destroy us if we don't have nuclear weapons or something,

which is absolutely wrong, you know. But the point is, you they tell us is so terrible And scary and they threaten us with hell And things like that Then the scientists they tell you Oh yeah we don't believe all that We're atheists and etc But we also think

We're looking to understand this gene And this atom And this subatomic particle And that bacteria And this virus. But we know that we'll never know everything. So we still never will know. So we just always keep looking for more stuff.

But we have a preconceived idea that you can't understand everything. If any scientist jumped up and said, Eureka, I know everything now, like Buddha did, they would have them arrested or give them a tranquilizer, you know, because they have a preconceived idea that you also you can't understand yeah and but then i used to ask them well if you can't understand everything how do you know you can't understand and they could never answer that yeah well i mean to me buddhism is the science of the

mind that's it so that but it's also it says you your mind you mark hyman your mind bob term and you whoever it is if you really develop your mind it is capable of understanding the world and you therefore you can understand your world not only can you but you experience it all the time so you just you started with the four facts or the four truths yeah the first one is is that if you don't understand it it will bring you suffering and because you will they'll always be dissatisfied with everything and you will not understand what you are and who where you are and so you'll be afraid that different bad things will happen to you and so you'll fight things and you'll try to impose your own control on them rather than go with them. And then that will fail

and then you'll be frustrated. And even happiness, what you think of as happiness, you'll be dissatisfied with because it won't last. And then you won't enjoy it well enough to make it last. You actually can't. There is happiness that lasts, but not the sort of ones that depend on some external circumstance. So that's the first thing. Then second noble fact is that that suffering has a cause, and the cause is our inability to understand it. Understand the nature of reality, right? No, no. No, that's just our habit. It actually

is luckily less real than our ability to understand it. That's the good news. But in order to do that, we have to analyze it, we have to figure it out. And therefore, he was a scientist. He figured things out, the Buddha did. And meditation is not just shutting down your mind it's where that's wrongly taught meditation meditation is focusing your mind to a very much higher degree of intelligence which we all have the capacity for and then then we will reach an experience of what reality is and the third of a fact and the reason they're called noble is that they are factual for a noble person. They're not factual for an ignorant person. Can I go back to the second one?

Because my learning of that was that the first is recognizing that we suffer, that the way we think about reality causes us to suffer. The second is that we're attached to things being the certain way, and that that causes suffering. Is that a misunderstanding of the second? No, that's correct. But the certain way that we're attached to them is that we can't understand them. They are not us. They are vast.

In the case of materialism, which is our mainstream view in America nowadays, it's a vast material realm that nobody can count all the fish in the ocean, all this kind of thing. So knowledge is quantifiable, has to be, and you never will get to, in an infinite universe, you'll never get to the full quantity, ever. So our misunderstanding of the way things are

has to do with our inability to be all right within everything, you and the key component is that we're ignorant but we know we're ignorant so therefore we're attached to being ignorant actually and and if we really realize what ignorance means then we will realize that we don't know that we that we can't be sure that we're going to stay ignorant, and then we can change our mind. Follow me? So it's that first beginning point.

It's a shift. That's the big shift. We can know. And we can develop wisdom. And the wisdom can overcome that cause. It's like that's the antidote, right? But wait. Then the next thing is the third noble fact.

And the third noble fact is freedom from suffering, happiness. And this is what nobody, I'm afraid, really teaches well, who teaches Buddhism. They all stick on the suffering. And that's joining and terrorizing people. And the Buddhists themselves do that. And they say, oh, I'm so happy. I'm allowed to suffer. That's nonsense.

Nobody's allowing. Buddha doesn't want anybody to suffer. He's compassionate. He doesn't want them to suffer. That's the whole point. The recognition of the suffering is just a way of starting to cure it. It's like when you're a doctor,

if you go into the patient and you say, oh, you're a diabetic. Yeah, yeah, you'll never get rid of that. Have you done the job as a doctor? I don't think so. You're just taunting people, basically. Right? That's no good.

If you see a patient and they have a problem, sometimes you may have to say, I don't know how we can deal with this. You know, get ready to move on to a new life. But of course, that's a big problem. And that's a big problem for materialist doctors, because their train that all people have is the physical life. So they don't know how to help them across that frontier, you know, which is actually not that bad. Once you let go, they actually, it's, you know, in French, you know, they have an expression for orgasm. You know what that is?

It's a little death. And so that's. But that's not when you're fighting to stay alive. That's when you let go, and you're no longer burdened with a body that's malfunctioning. And then you think you're going to be nothing. And that, of course, is typical delusion. It's like science supposedly goes by experiencing things to experiment. And experimental data is supposed to outweigh theory, dogma, like everything is matter, for example. That's a big dogma. But experience is supposed to outweigh that, right? And yet, which scientist discovered the nothing that a materialist

is so certain they're going to when they die? Which one discovered that? That's a great question. So if we think there's nothing after death, who proved that that's true? Nobody. Exactly. Not only did nobody do it, but common sense will tell you nobody ever will. Yeah. Because nothing is a word for something that you don't discover. And therefore, you won't get there by dying. Yes. The law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy goes for the mind. It's the conservation of energy of the mind. Yeah. But the exact what it is, well, that's an open question that we can investigate. And science should be investigated, and Buddhist science investigated that thousands of years ago and

has some descriptions. But this is also the great thing. They say that no description of relative reality is the final description, the dogma. Except for that. You know, that it's open, in other words. That it's always open for a little more refined, better analysis and helpful in this context. But all such explanations are only good in certain contexts. And your mind is always open for further, deeper understanding. So wait, then the fourth noble fact, the fourth noble fact is the eightfold path of education.

And here's where typical mistraining comes from Buddhists, most Buddhists. They say training, they call it. But the word Adi Shiksha in sanskrit or in pali or in tibetan shiksha today in hindi is the word for the department of education in the indian government professor thurman has a unique uh privilege because he speaks all these languages. No, I don't really speak Hindi. Or he reads Tibetan. I read Sanskrit. Yeah, but not Hindi.

But you speak Tibetan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So you read the original text, so you don't have to go through a filter third party. You get to actually go directly to the source. It all gets so rusty. I'm getting to where I can barely speak English often. You're doing okay but but the point

is the fourth noble truth therefore is a curriculum it's a higher education in reality science discovery reality which is the job of science wisdom which is the job of science, wisdom, which is the goal of science, should be not just a quantifiable data list, but wisdom, ethics, you know, how to behave in a realistic manner, and mind or meditation or how to cultivate your mind and how to manage your mind so there's a higher educations in those three things and the eight branches fit into these three higher education but they say training why do they say training i'll tell you why because in our culture we're

all totally over educated yeah we've been four years here, eight years there, four years there, medical school, you know, totally. And we have these degrees and we're still pissed off. We're still suffering. Still suffering and still frustrated. And, of course, we think our education is the greatest that ever happened on the planet, in the universe. You know, maybe we're the only beings in the universe we stupidly think and then also we, you know, that talk, you know, and then we think it's the greatest. So if since we've had this huge education it must suck. So we want to think that Buddhism is just empty your mind and then you're fine. Don't have a mind, in

other words, it's just absolutely the wrong thing to do. The greatest thing we have is the human mind. It's a little bit divine, you know. And we agree with the religions on that. And it's vulnerable, which is the problem with the gods, is they are divine, but they're in their thousand-year jacuzzi and they never do anything. So they're in denial about the suffering, you know. But we are not because we bump into things, we stub our toes, you know. And so the point is, it's an education process. But it's a higher, adi, the adi part means higher. Adi Shiksha, you know, intense education. Because you're educating your whole being, your mind and your body.

You're also, and this, I love that you said, you know, our body, you know, in your book, you say we have to, we have to do something with our body. Our body is, we are responsible for our body. When we save our body, we save the world. Yes. That's just, that's the fourth noble truth. That's the fourth noble truth. Yeah. That is the education process. Yeah. And it's like really a doctor with a patient, you know this and you call it functional medicine, but every doctor should do that. They have to educate the patient. The patient has gone wrong in this beautiful environment that

is just suited for the human being. It's a perfect one for us if we didn't mess it up. You know, the plants are out there. They're in love with us. Give me your carbon, they say. Oh, I love that you breathe this carbon, noxious carbon, and I'm going to give you back oxygen because I love you. And it's a total gangbang with the plants. There you go.

But not if we screw them up, not if we mess them up. So, Professor, I have a question. We're recording this podcast, and it's in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are not doing it in person because we're socially isolating and being responsible. I know. And there are so many people suffering right now. There are so many people who've lost their jobs, who have lost their,

their purpose is sort of like what John Lennon said, life, what happens when you're making other plans. And we all have other plans right now, including you and me and everybody. We're all in this together. And there's just such a massive global suffering of humanity. How do you use Buddhism as a lens to help us think differently about this moment?

And what can you offer in terms of some wisdom from your learnings about how to navigate this for all of us? Well, thank you for asking that, that's good and that's a great question. And the thing is this, first of all, you know, it is a suffering but it just, it also, you know, first thing and first wisdom of Buddhism is ancient English Buddhism, count your blessings. You know, if you're isolated but don't have the virus, hey, that's better than being sick. If you have the virus but you don't have a severe case that's better than having dying if

you're dying in a at least you know you're gonna have another good life if you notice that you're dying and you can't help it and you then realize you're not gonna be nothing and also just because you believe in somebody else is going to help you that necessarily is not good but if you develop a positive view and relax yourself and let go into the light and you know and there's movies that teach you how to do that like jacob's ladder like like ghosts you know there are movies even nowadays that help you do that. And you just let go. Or, you know, Close Encounter of the Third Kind.

Or 2010, you just go into one of those special effects. Zoom, you know, you let go of yourself. And then you'll be out of the body, you know. So, in other words, no matter what, there's no worst case analysis that is the ultimate horror. No. Buddhism teaches you to look for the silver lining and focus on that. On the other hand, it doesn't teach you passively to accept the bad stuff. And therefore, you can demand that the government pay your unemployment insurance. You can demand that they stop the bank from foreclosing on your mortgage.

You can demand that they take the hundreds of billions that they give to the corrupt corporations, and they give it to you to grow your garden. And they start subsidizing regenerative agriculture and they and they move 20 billion we give 20 billion dollars of direct subsidy to the oil industry which they use to lobby the government to buy the congressmen like the moscow mitch yeah and other corrupt also corrupt corrupt Democratic congressmen. And the president, they buy the president. Presidents are cheap.

You give him a million dollars for his campaign, and you get billions of dollars of subsidy. That's a total, that's like hiring somebody on the street. So it's interesting. A lot of Buddhists are political activists, right? Yeah, well, some not. When they understand Buddhism as meaning, shut yourself up in your shut-down mind

and just sit there and take the pain of sitting there uncomfortably. But the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, these are guys who are real political activists. Well, of course they are. They're not only activists, but they are activists. To be a political, any kind of activist has to be an educational activist. You don't hate the bad guys. You want to educate them. Sometimes people are harming you and you have to, like even with demons, the Buddhists usually try not to kill the demons.

They try not to. Now and then, you have to, in self-defense, by accident, a bomb goes off. But they try to capture them, sit them down, and get into the classroom with them. They have these legends of interminable, multi-life lectures going on with the demon and then the demons shape up once they realize that that's not going to make them happy to harm people and harm other beings that never makes you happy because that increases your isolation if you're harmful to someone that means you don't identify with them and that means you're different from them so you divided up the world and you have stuck yourself in isolation. So the fact that we're all in isolation now,

if we are under a sensible government and with helping us to do that, to stop the plague, because our human life is so valuable because it can give us the opportunity to understand the world. That is only showing us actually that we normally live in isolation. People are lonely. They are shut down. They go on Facebook instead of having a friend who's their neighbor. They don't build their community. They're purposely isolated by industrialization because that makes them potential brainwashable consumers they can do

as you said 4 000 ads shown to children about some disgusting poisonous sugary color thing they have to they they get brainwashed by the deep by the media so they don't want them to hang with their parents and the parents would who know about have the media. So they don't want them to hang with their parents, and the parents who know about, have a good doctor tell them, don't eat that stuff. Don't drink that nasty, diabesity drink. Yes. So in other words, the isolation is imposed on us, actually,

by industrial culture. You know Jerry Mander's work? I'm sure you know that book four reasons why you threw out the television well i don't i don't agree with him it's the ultimate bottom line i don't agree but his awareness of that these things that can be so badly misused which are actually good things but people are fearful now right so people are having fear and and how do we how do we change our relationship to that fear? Instead of it shutting us down, how can it serve us?

How do we change the relationship to fear as a tool to improve our lives? A great bodhisattva, who was once our president, told us how the only thing to fear is fear itself. FDR. Yeah. One great bodhisattva. So what is a bodhisattvava for those listening who don't know a bodhisattva or a noble person

is someone who genuinely cares about other people in other words the technical in the Buddhist education the technical barrier of it is beyond having a theory about I should care for other people you begin

to have, you open up your natural human empathy to feel what they feel, which we all have. Everyone feels that about a newborn baby, their newborn baby. It's compassion. Yeah, it's what's empathy. And compassion is empathy, actually. But it's not only empathy. Beyond empathy, it then is the sharing of happiness, is what it is. Because the only way to get rid of suffering is to feel happy.

So compassion wants to spread happiness. That's what it does. So my understanding was the Bodhisattva is someone who's reached the gates of enlightenment. Yeah. But rather than get there himself, turns back to help relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. That's right. But that's because that person, it isn't just because this person is automatically nicer than someone else.

It's because that person has investigated reality enough to realize that no matter how cushy they feel, if there's 10 people around them in agony, the vibe is going to destroy their sense of feeling happy. So we feel each other's feelings. You know, the 60s, we have this wonderful expression from the 60s, good vibrations and bad vibration. But they have those kind of expressions

in more enlightened languages than ours about how you do actually feel each other's feelings. You do do that. And of course, we cultivate that like military people. They cultivate, but out of, you know, sort of riding on anger and hatred for the enemy, they cultivate a sense of expanding the kinship empathy to your platoon members, to your nation,

to your patriotism, you know, and only that far. And then they do it only as an opposite of the hatred for the enemy. So, but it shows that you can shift the way the mind of a person is. And, but it's very hard for the military, and it creates great suffering for the soldier, because it means they have to do two opposite things at once.

They have to cultivate their empathy for their fellow soldier and citizen, supposedly. But meanwhile, hatred for someone else, which means no empathy for them. So it puts them in an internal conflict right away, a hundred percent. And then, and that's, then they come back with their PTSD and then pretty soon they don't have empathy for anybody. And they're like, like Rambo, you know, they're, they're impossible. The sheriff is going to get them, you know, they're going to get the sheriff,

they're going to shoot the sheriff. But, but my point is my point is that we trained them to do that, you know, so we shouldn't blame them that much. So now in our fear, we shouldn't be afraid. First way of not being afraid is, well, some people you can't cure their ideological confusion right away. So even if they believe they're going to be nothing, once you're nothing, that's the equivalent of anesthesia. So that's not bad. You're just nothing. No problem. No fear of hell. And some people think as long as they mumble Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, or Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, or Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, then they will save them. And, you know, those guys will do their best. Jesus, Buddha, God, they are doing the best. They're all there.

You know, Buddha didn't disbelieve in God. He just said he's just not quite what he's cracked up to be by the monotheists. You know, he does his best. He's a nice guy. Buddha talked to him all the time. He was constantly in conversation with Brahma, who was the other Indians at that time thought was the creator. So nobody's against God. God gets grumpy because people don't listen to him. You know? So let's go back a little bit, because I think I'm curious about your story. It's a unique story a lot a lot of people you know in the 70s

went to India on these pilgrimages but back in the early 60s uh when you went it was kind of a novel thing and and listen when you were 15 a lot of people went with their sister to some talk and they said oh get me out of here that's, that's true. There's something in you. We have an affinity that we bring from previous life, of course. Yes. So what was that like going to India and meeting the Dalai Lama and becoming a monk? What propelled you?

The first one was really kind of great. It was this big suffering going there because, you know, what happened? One thing I have to say, I did lose my eye, but then after I lost my eye, what it was, I became open to deciding I wanted to seek enlightenment, which to me meant I want to learn to manage my mind and my emotions so that they don't manage me, they don't push me around, you know, which was sort of what I felt there was an ability there that I had. Wait, wait, I want to just pause there because what you said is so profound.

You wanted to learn how to manage your emotions so they don't push you around. And I think most of us are at the effect of our minds and our emotions and not at the cause of it, which is what drives the suffering. And you recognized that when you were a young man and said, I don't want any of this stuff anymore. I'm going to try to find a way out. Right. Well, I realized I had been reading that to see already in Jung and Eric Erickson, psychologist. I read a lot of Freud. They can sign Kant, Hegel, Plato. I read all philosophers. I went to good schools, you know, brainwashed. All the pop stars of the day, right? Hey, go.

Yeah, right. Right, right. Well, a few extra, like Hermann Hesse and people like that. Gandhi. But, and I had an idea there. And for those listening, if you want to start really simply, Siddhartha is a great novel. Oh, it is.

It's called Buddha by Hermann Hesse. And it's very short. And we're all sequestered away. It's something you can read. Oh, it is. About the Buddha by Hermann Hesse. And it's very short. And we're all sequestered away. It's something you can read. Oh, yeah. And will be an inspiring story to understand the history and the nature of Buddhism. That's true.

That's really, that's a great book. You can do that. And Hermann Hesse was, he was a hippie dropout. He lived in, moved to Switzerland to get away from World War I, although he did a great thing. In Switzerland, he worked in hospitals as an orderly, people who were wounded in the war, but he refused to fight because he knew it was stupid. He was German, of course, but he naturalized in Switzerland. And then he spent his whole life there in Lugano. But this is what I wanted to say. I want to confess something.

And that is that after I lost my eye, one thing that I also was reading and with someone called Henri Michaud, a French writer, and another one was Heraldus Huxley. Yes. And then about opening the doors of perception. And then some guys, not Tim Leary

and not that Robert Ramdahl spiritual helper, but a fellow student showed up with a dose of mescaline. And that really helped. It's a very dishonest people. Almost every teacher in the either Hindu or Buddhist

or Kabbalah, whatever it is, they had an experience when they were young like that. Not just a lecture, but they also smoked something or they did something. Yes, the same thing happened to me. Then because it was illegal, then it was all hidden and we went in. The smart ones didn't just keep doing it,

but they got into the system and they did something useful for people. But that was really helpful. It's a kind of special magic medicine psychiatrists were using it at austin riggs and different psychiatric hospitals bellevue and everywhere and they were having great work with autistic people and people with real mental serious psychotic problems and now it's coming back in psychiatry and then it became the maps work it became a mass medicine you could say with a lot of side effects. And then it became illegal

by the fascists, Nixon, you know, the militarists. They didn't like people not going to shoot more people, more Indians in Vietnam. You know, they were continuing their cowboys and Indians world in Vietnam,

these sort of nasty people. And they didn't want people saying, no way, we're going to go shoot some nice person who makes nice food. I want him to, somehow they came over here later as refugees and they have nice Vietnamese restaurants.

But we didn't know that at that time. The point is, they were not, even the Indians are not the Indians. They were also nice people. They lived indigenously. French trappers started the scalping, not the Indians. Yeah. You know, scalping because they scalped animals, right, for their fur. So the point is that opened the door for me,

and it's important to do that because it's coming back in the hands of responsible doctors, psychiatrists for serious problems, and I think it will come back within education eventually for all of our serious problems, which is the rigidity of our conceptual system. What it does is it temporarily shatters the rigidity of our thinking that everything fits with what we already know. So then it opens us to look fresh at things. Can I interrupt you for a sec?

Because I think it's important to underscore this point. What you're saying is you had an experience with mescaline when you were very young. It gave you a different perception of reality. The door is a perception, according to Alex Huxley. But what we're learning now is that, and there's a book called Altered Traits by our friend Dan Goldman and Richard Davidson that talks about the biology of what happens with meditation, which is the quieting of this part of your brain called the default mode network that is where the ego is active, the sense of separateness, the sense of sort of unique identity that keeps us disconnected from others and from reality.

And when you take mescaline or LSD or psilocybin, it also does the same thing. It's a shortcut. Now, what they found was in these Olympic meditators, these guys have been in Tibetan caves for 20 years, 40,000 hours, the same thing is going on in their brain. They literally have shut down this part of their brain in a way that's sustainable. And so that gives you a very different sense of reality. And I think that's what you're talking about. People are so attached to their sense of self with a small S instead of the self with a big S.

Yes. That keeps them in the suffering. And that's what's so beautiful about the methodology because it's not a religion. It's not about praying to the Buddha. It's about a phenomenology of the mind that allows you to understand why we suffer and what's going on. And this shortcut that we've sort of used through these drugs

gives us a little window, but it's not the full answer. Then we have to sort of do the hard work. So I just wanted to sort of frame it for people so they understand what's actually happening. That's right. But then the other thing, however, there is one point, and that is those 10,000-year Olympic meditators are always not going to be the vast majority of people.

No. And so the thing is that these psychotropic entheogenics or psychedelics, as they used to be called, you know, they have a use in all indigenous societies they were used, and they have a very important use of just giving people a hint that the world is more than they thought it was when they and then they're smart then and if it's properly managed then they don't just go keep doing that because then that's just too much and they get too

disorganized and chaotic and they can't learn anything but just like people who are only taught about meditating that it just means shutting off your mind, they become kind of, you know, and they can't learn either. No, there's a side effect. It's not about just sitting and looking at your navel is what you're talking about. Exactly, exactly. My Tibetan doctor friend, the one who does lucid dreaming teachings and other things, he's so great, physician, because he says medication has side effects, yes,

if used irresponsibly, and meditation can has side effects, yes, if used irresponsibly, and meditation can have side effects if used irresponsibly also. Yeah. No, the point is, either one has to fit into a thing. But in our current time on this planet, we do need a large scale, open minding, opening of minds. And therefore, the fact that these discoveries of Albert Hoffman and these people are now being properly studied and implemented therapeutically and available. There are some generals in the army who say they want their students,

I mean, they want their PTSD soldiers mean they want their ptsd soldiers to have access to psilocybin yes they're telling the congress people cut this crap about putting it in there with soporifics like heroin or amphetamine like stimulating drugs they're not drugs like that they are mind opening substances that can help people. Well, you used a word I think I want to just come back to, which is entheogen. Yes. And what that means is to be with God. That's right.

So there are drugs that allow you to open your mind to get a glimpse of a different reality that may bring you closer to whatever God is, the truth, the nature of things, the way things are, whatever, whatever way you describe it. Right. Yeah. I, I, I was against Tim Leary's constant, everything just turned on. I don't agree with that. I never agreed with it.

Although I knew him and I liked him as a person, but I never agreed with that in a way he did that because he was a, he himself was a materialist, actually. He didn't believe in anything. He was, he thought he was going to, he was a scientist., actually. He didn't believe in anything. He thought he was going to, he was a scientist, he thought he was going to nothing, you know. And which he's had a rude shock with some time ago. He's around somewhere and probably landed in another Irish womb, no doubt. But industrialization has enabled us to expand the three poisons of our ignorance, our lust, and our hatred, and our anger. In the form of mass false ideology, that's the ignorance. Mass consumerism and mass militarism.

Sounds like you're describing the world we live in today. Exactly. So we've imposed, but industrialization has industrialized our suffering, actually. So the entheogenics or the psychedelics are the industrialization antidote. They're also industrial products. And so we were not- So it creates a crack in that edifice. Yes.

And that we have to own up to and face honestly. And therefore that has to be managed by a sane government with the sane medical system to be used for PTSD and for things basically, something like this. And ultimately by a sane education system to be used for PTSD and for things basically something like this and ultimately by a sane education system. Yeah. You know and in an open way and I think that is actually happening because in a way we're desperate you know like the poor Chinese for example they even unleashed this thing with their insane behavior eating bats yeah eating bats

or messing with the bat thing in the in the neighborhood bio uh bio geological warfare company you know a facility that was three blocks away yeah and that it may leaked out of there somehow you know maybe or maybe it just the bat directly donated it but what that is is that is we are extinguishing zillions of animals at the same time we're destroying

we're having the sixth great extinction we are doing it our industrial thing led by the oil monarchs and the big ag and big food people that you've put the finger on, for which I bow to you. And so my point is that we are in a desperate situation. Subconsciously, everybody knows that. It's not the virus has made us desperate. We already are.

Everyone is. Therefore, they're frantically trying to go back to white tribalism, white nationalism, or fanatic fundamentalism of Islam or Christianity or Buddhism or whatever it is. All of them are susceptible to being turned into some crazy thing. How in this crazy world with all this craziness, how do we figure out who we are, what matters, and what we call our dharma? What I love is a great Buddhist teaching that some lady on Facebook wrote. I don't know if she's a Buddhist or not, but she said, Mother Nature has sent us all to our rooms

to think about what we have done. Oh, my goodness. That is a very good meme. There are many good memes out there, but that's a good one. Isn't that awesome? So that's true. And when Buddha was enlightened, you know what he did? He put his hand on the earth.

He touched the earth with his right hand over his knee. If you look at any statue, you'll see the enlightened Buddha moment. He's touching the Earth. And Mother Earth witnessed to his that a human being can attain enlightenment and can

overcome delusion, ignorance, lust and greed, and hatred and violence. And they can. And we are gentle beings actually. We are not, you know, delusion, ignorance, lust and greed and hatred and violence. And they can. And we are gentle beings, actually. We are not, you know, we don't, our fingernails will break when we try to scratch somebody.

Our tooth, we're only vampires in Hollywood have fangs, you know. We have pathetic little teeth. We are actually very, we intertwine to reproduce, you know, and we need someone else's help, you know, et cetera. We are the gentle social animal. There's no question. And so we got, we're going to just refine that. And in a way being away from all the distraction temporarily gives us a chance to reconnect in a new way and to realize, for example,

people in Los Angeles who are living in Bel Air, all those huge thousands of homeless people there who are definitely, and the immigrants are definitely not going to go be tested. And they definitely can't afford to be in a hospital. And they're definitely going to cultivate this virus more. And it's going to leak up from them Through the police and through the bus drivers and to whatever right back up into Bel Air So it's since you're connecting us actually in a really powerful way

So all these silver linings and I don't mean people should study Buddhism either. They should study Jesus is teaching if they're Christian. They should study the other great rabbis. Jesus was a rabbi, by the way, we should always remember. They should study the other great rabbis, like Rabbi Hillel, like Moses, like all of them. All the great rabbis' wonderful compassion teachings, which Jesus was using. They should study Hinduism if they want krishna's compassion teaching you know they should study even the the dalai lama is always showing the biological proof that the human animal is social they hold their little babies every one of us as a baby was helpless actually the wasps that i know

some wasps on their country club beach beach club down in Florida, some serious wasps, you know, and they can... You don't mean the insects. No, no. And you can sign your parents' name for your corn on the cob and your burger until you're 55. Yeah. So we're helpless, you know, we are helpless creatures who depend on each other.

This is teaching us that, this COVID virus. But it doesn't have any intention to teach us something nice for us. But we can use it that way. We can learn from this experience. So, Robert, there's so many books out there. You've written so many books of inner revolution, infinite life, awakening to bliss within you've written. That's the one, that's the one infinite life awakening to the bliss within.

So what should people read? I would recommend that from my books. Infinite life awakening to bliss within. Are there any other things that people should turn to that might help them yeah yeah sometimes it has uh well they can read any book of the dalai lamas more recently published ones with better translators that is uh they can they can uh read any any book of thich nhat hanh so beautiful pieces every step you know you know wonderful uh tick not hans uh simple books you know pieces every step that's really simple you know infinite life i love it because and it has different subtitles different editions of that infinite life and uh because um it has um

my favorite subtitle the publisher would never use. It was breaking free from the terminal lifestyle. And they said, oh, we can't do that terminal. That sounds like a disease. I said, well, that is a disease. To think that you only live this one time. You're just, all you are is your physical body. So you've got to get everything and stuff everything in that you can. And that's just going to make you more sick.

It's not going to help. And it's not true. Anyway, you are a much bigger being than just the body of this life but you really love the body of this life it's a very precious form that you have and you shouldn't waste it but anyway so i really get into that infinite life and then um any book by dalai lama or i would also recommend and uh and uh if they And if they're interested in Buddhism in particular, I would recommend Inner Revolution about the history of it and about how it's a thing.

And then there's a book I have that is about to be published, which is called Buddhas Have More Fun. Oh, that sounds good. And that's the one, but that somehow is stuck somewhere in a publishing process, but it will come out. And that's the one, but that somehow is stuck somewhere in the publishing process. But it will come out. And I like that. And there's a great comic book I have now I really want people to read.

It's called Man of Peace, the Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And it's a comic book. It's a book-length comic book, The Life of the Dalai Lama. And that's very inspiring. Even Bishop Tutu loved it. He said, everyone should read this. It will help them. So that one, I need to move out of a warehouse.

So please order it from Amazon, everybody. Yes. And that's it. That's it. So I think this is a moment for us where we have more time to reflect, where we are sent by Mother Nature to our rooms to reflect on what we've done and how we're living, that it might be a good time to sort of go inward a little bit. And all of us are doing that unintentionally, but maybe being more intentional about it.

Read Dan Goldman and Richie Davidson's Altered Traits and read Mark Hyman's Food Fix. Okay. I love it. You said this. You can save the planet with your fork. Yes, you can. That's a meme.

That's a great meme. I love that. Make sure you take this time. Check out Infinite Life. You're not a fanatic vegan. Don't be scared Life. And you're not a fanatic vegan. Don't be scared, people. You're not a fanatic vegetarian. It's hard to be a fanatic when you understand the complexity of nuance of life. It's hard to be a fanatic.

That is so great, you know. There's another book I want to recommend for people in the environmental movement. Besides the writings of Greta Thunberg, read that. There's a little booklet of her sayings. I would read that. But there's another one, which is called A Bright Future by Goldstein and Hammer or something. I forget the second author. But it's about green nukes.

Green ones. Green ones, not bad ones. We need that while we're switching from the oil to the renewables. It's how Sweden is already carbon neutral. Sweden, already. You mean using nuclear power?

Yes, but not the old-fashioned huge thing with a lot of polluting uranium coming out of it. It's a special kind made in South Korea for only 2 billion bucks that you then drop the whole thing

into the 2 miles down when you finish it after 50 years. But it gives you that steady power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. And then you have time to really and get geothermal and all that. But it's not forever.

But it doesn't produce a huge pollution. Nothing compared to coal mines, what come out of the coal mines. The after effect of the ash of the coal mine and the mercury in the air and the particles. Oh, it's deadly. Nothing. But we're brainwashed probably by the oil industries's propagandists that oil nuke are bad. You know, no faith in technology. And so therefore, the Greenpeace will probably have me shot for saying this.

Well, I remember in 1980, I went to the Rocky Flats plutonium plant. That's it and uh they were they were there were just so many monks there i know protesting and alan ginsburg and peter alasky and we're all they were all meditating yes and sitting on the train tracks to prevent the the plutonium from going out in those days it was connected with the weapon business you know know, in those days. And also it was very, very polluting and very iffy the way they managed it. And we've had Fukushima and Chernobyl and this and that since then. But abandoning it, for example, in Germany, they abandoned it. And what happened was huge lignite coal power plants produced 150,000 tons of ash in a month.

And besides what they put into the air, it's just unbearable. And China is building them like mad. And India also, even though in India it's cheaper to get all renewable, but they won't make the switch fast enough. Do you follow me? And the Swedish thing, now South Korean, Swedes, and French, a little bit,

are moving from the old, these are like thorium reactors, they're breeder things that use up the plutonium and you end up with a little bag of it, but then it's entombed within its own original structure, so it never take it out. And then you drop that down,

they have two mile deep storage places way below fracking water, way below the fracking water, way below the fracking level. And that we need for maybe a decade or two, because we just done that. In this month, the other great thing we've done, here's the silver lining, we have decreased carbon emission by 10% in the last month or two, in China and here and everywhere. And everyone's like, oh, the air is clean in Los Angeles and in Beijing. Oh, but it's an economic disaster.

Because, of course, we have to pump back the factories and the utilities and the whole thing and start polluting it again. Because we were increasing last year, we were increasing 20%. So my point is, we can notice that it's possible to just turn it off. And then we go, we move the subsidy right

away to the renewables. Starting November 4th or 5th or 10th or whatever. And going into next year. And whoever it is, they're going to do Congress,, and going into next year. And whoever it is, they're going to Congress. We're going to do it. We're all going to think of how we vote.

This is changing. I mean, this is an interesting moment because it's definitely changing the whole way we're going to be living afterwards as well. According to the scientists, we have to decrease 10% per year for 10 years to put this bad stranger thing genie back in the bottle so that not by 2050, not by 2040 emeritus and and yet you're on a whole new path a whole new career not just looking at how we can reach awakening ourselves but how we can heal the world and we have and you and you you've actually gone and got training in

a whole new approach yes climate Climate Reality Project Training, which is sort of inspiring you now to sort of become an activist in a way that... Absolutely. Well, I always was, but I didn't have time, you know, because it's an education thing, you know. But the thing is this, have you ever joined with your food fix thing, the Climate Reality Project trainings? No, but I'm aware of it.

He also does regenerative agriculture. It's part of it. But he doesn't hit it as hard as you do, and he needs your collaboration for sure. Yes, I've actually talked to him about it. Oh, good. And he needs your collaboration for sure. And he's happy. He'll be happy. I actually talked to him about it. And I think he's starting to become more aware and alert to this. And I think we are in a unique situation where everything's interconnected.

That's right. And the suffering that we're seeing from COVID-19 is just a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the suffering that we're going to see unless we address these bigger global issues of our food system it's just the beginning consequences on our health the consequences on economies the consequences on our environment so all these things have to get dealt with and i'm just so amazed that you're actually coming to that in the second career you're creating now. Who knows? It's not a second.

It's just I'm able to do more than I always wanted to do. But listen, the thing is, you know, because the universities are controlled, the high priests of the universities are the natural scientists who are these confused materialists who think they're all going to be nothing. So that's why they don't really stress themselves out and go get locked on the doors of the White House or locked up or whatever. That's why they don't do that. They do say the truth and they're great. I love them. Don't get me wrong.

But they are imprisoned in this false ideology that they're going to be nothing. So in a way, this is the short circuit that stops everybody is the idea that, you know, it's like a fuse breaker. The stress of like, am I going to restrain my wish for that soft drink? Am I going to restrain my wish for that cookie? Am I going to restrain my whatever it is, my vote?

Am I going to restrain my greed? And then click. Oh, finally it all doesn't matter. Finally it's all nothing. It's already nothing. I doesn't matter. Finally, it's all nothing. It's already nothing. I don't have a soul or a mind right now. It's just my brain makes me think I have one. You know, so then everything doesn't matter.

Yeah. That's our national mantra that we have to not repeat. It all doesn't matter. Yeah. Well, you know, I think. We always say, we always say, what the hell? Which is sweeping under the rug, the fact that it could be worse. As Garrison Keillor used to famously say, the Lutherans always say in Minnesota, and we'll be gone. When they're really happy, all they can say is, well, it could be worse.

Yeah. And then if you know it always could be worse, then you don't, then you hold the impulse, you manage the emotion, you hold the negative thing that wants to push you into something you know is not going to be good, but you do it. Do you follow me? That's the motivational trigger. The Climate Reality Project needs it. Food fix needs it. And functional and the new organization of doctors against food corruption. Yes. It is going to grow from it. No, seriously.

That's my goal. We've got to, we've got to wake people up. And I think that's what you spent your whole life doing is waking people up. And you're, you're such an extraordinary man is such a gift. Uh, and I, I just so blessed to know you. And, uh, you know, I just, uh, this is just such a special interview for me because literally your, your hammer that you hit me on the head with when I was 15, literally woke me up to a way of being and thinking and exploring. It's literally determined my entire

path it's really true last december last december in south india in a in the tibet monastery there the dalai lama pulled me out of the crowd to everyone's shock and horror including mine because that's just jealousy, you know. And dragged me up there with abbots who were offering him this special thing, getting a special thing and all this, you know, all that special, special stuff they do in those rituals. Yeah. And then, and everybody was shocked.

And I was like, no, no, no, no. And then he actually sent the bodyguard over, who was a friend of mine. He grabbed me literally by the scruff of the neck and he dragged me up in front of him. And then I gave him, I only had a dirty little scarf in my thing cause I wasn't making one of the formal thing, but he took that, gave me a huge one. And then he made his, his guy come up and give me a red thing, special one, the special, special.

And then he whacked me on the forehead. Wham! Like that. And I've been really happy ever since. There you go. Well, I have to tell you one story, one closing story. All right, all right. Please, please.

You know, I was guided into medicine through Buddhism and through the Medicine Buddha. But, you know, when I was in into medicine through Buddhism and through the Medicine Buddha. But when I was in medical school, I had a lot of doubts. Is this the path I want? Do I really want to do this? Do I want to be more on a spiritual path doing something else? And I went to Nepal on a medical expedition in 1986. And we were in Kathmandu in this little actually side town called Bodhanath,

which is where a lot of Tibetan refugees had gone. Yes, yes. And this woman said to me, come, I want to take you to meet this monk. He's receiving people and you can get a blessing. And I'm like, okay. And we went to this tiny little, you know, sort of cinder block building. It's very, very indiscreet, uh, you know, building. And, and, uh, I walked in and there was this little auntie room and there was a little nun there and she gave me this white scarf.

And then there was this little room and, uh, and I went in and there was this giant tibetan man there with a white bun on his hat head the very big belly and it was dilgo kinsey rinpoche oh wow and he's he's sort of like the other dalai lama in a sense for a different lineage he He's great. He's great. And there was a translator there that was Matthew Ricard, who was his translator, who was a French guy, who has been called the happiest man in the world. I know. And I was, you know, as I said to him, look, you know, I'm confused. I don't know if I should continue on this path of medical school

or I should take a different path and he said to me look this is your path this is your service and and it was that moment and he and he gave me that little string around the neck that you just mentioned uh and a blessing and and that was what sort of has has carried me through so that's so great yeah, it was quite a story. So I just, yeah, you never, you never know. And you, you know, even though this seems very disruptive right now for all of us and this, this virus has taken over our lives. You know, there's always a moment to stop and think about, you know, how do we want to be? How do we want to live? How do we want to create meaning in our life? How do we want to let go of the things that aren't working

and include things that are? And so... Also, I wanted to say one thing about your question. Just let me just say quickly. And also fear, a little fear is good. Fear keeps a mask on, keeps you washing your hands. Yes, that's okay. That's common sense.

That's good fear. Bad fear is what we already live with. And now you can get to the bottom of that and get rid of it and be less paranoid, be more happy. For sure. So make sure you take this time. I would really encourage you to get Infinite Life, Awakening to Bliss Within, Inner Revolution.

Search out the works that Dr. Thurman has created and follow that trail. It will lead you to a reflection. Matthew Ricard has nice books on happiness. Big poem like that on happiness. Yeah, in this age of being inundated with doom news about coronavirus, find a little light, take a little break

and do yourself a favor. And Professor Thurman, thank you so much for joining us on The Doctor's Pharmacy. You're such a gift to humanity. I love you. I love you too, really. Thank you.

We have to do some trainings online with the climate reality people and food and the motivation, the Dharma. Dharma. I know we have to do that. And if you're listening to this podcast, please check out Dr. Thurman's podcast, which I'm going to be on. What's your podcast called? It's called Bob Thurman. I think the Bob Thurman podcast. I should bet it. I'll get a better name, but it's just a Bob Thurman podcast.

And it's on iTunes. BobThurman.com. Yeah. Yeah's on itunes bob thurman.com yeah yeah okay so bob thurman.com check it out and we'll be talking about all these other issues and i just so happy to have this conversation me too you've been listening to the doctor's pharmacy if you love this conversation please uh share with your friends and family leave a comment we'd love to hear from you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. That's wonderful. Okay. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast.

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and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute

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