The One You Feed - Robert Thurman- Buddhism and the Dalai Lama

Episode Date: October 11, 2017

Robert Thurman is the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism and he has recently written a book called Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dali Lama of Tibet. Whether you embrace the teachings of Buddhism or not, this episode will educate you on powerful approaches to growing in wisdom and it will also paint a beautiful picture of how the concepts of Tibetan Buddhism apply in today's world. More than meditation and mindfulness, Robert Thurman gets to the heart of what the Dali Lama is working to achieve for all beings to have peace and enlightenment.   This week we talk to Robert Thurman Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. The New York Times recently hailed him as "the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism." The first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk and a personal friend of the Dalai Lama for over 40 years, Professor Thurman is a passionate advocate and spokesperson for the truth regarding the current Tibet-China situation and the human rights violations suffered by the Tibetan people under Chinese rule. Professor Thurman also translates important Tibetan and Sanskrit philosophical writings and lectures and writes on Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism; on Asian history, particularly the history of the monastic institution in the Asian civilization; and on critical philosophy, with a focus on the dialogue between the material and inner sciences of the world's religious traditions. Popularizing the Buddha's teachings is just one of Thurman's creative talents. He is a riveting speaker and an author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, including Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,  Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well, Inner Revolution, The Jewel Tree of Tibet, and Why the Dalai Lama Matters. His latest book is a graphic biography of the Dalai Lama called Man of Peace: the illustrated life story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet   In This Interview, Robert Thurman and I Discuss... The Wolf Parable His book Man of Peace: the illustrated life story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet Buddha Nature and Buddhahood Enlightenment: When you get it, you realize that you've always had it Whether or not we can actually reach enlightenment in this lifetime His experience of tasting enlightenment Clear light of bliss The Buddha's mind in us We are the Buddha's reality body That the Buddha is pure love That the future Buddha is currently manifesting as dogs Kalachakra That we can find a way to talk with our enemies and find peace The common theme of "Love Thine Enemy" across religions and traditions How the current Dali Lama is working to lay the path for all beings to reach enlightenment     Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our great virtue as a human is that we're very deprogrammable and reprogrammable. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Robert Thurman, professor of Indio-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University,

and the president of Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the Tibetan civilization. The New York Times recently hailed him as the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. as the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. Robert is the first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk and is a personal friend of the Dalai Lama for 40 years. He is a passionate advocate and spokesperson for the truth regarding the current Tibet-China situation. Robert is the author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics, and culture, including The Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Inner Revolution, The Jewel of the Dead, Inner Revolution,

The Jewel Tree of Tibet, and Why the Dalai Lama Matters. His latest book is a graphic biography of the Dalai Lama called Man of Peace, the Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. If you're getting value out of this show, please go to 1youfeed.net slash support and make a donation. This will ensure that all 185 episodes that are in the archive will remain free and that the show is here for other people who need it. Some other ways that you can support us is if you're interested in the book that we're discussing on today's episode, go to oneyoufeed.net and find the episode that we're talking about. There will be links to all of the author's books. And if you buy them through there, it's the same price to you, but we get a small

amount. Also, you can go to OneYouFeed.net slash book. And I have a reading list there. OneYouFeed.net slash shop. And you can buy t-shirts, mugs, and other things. And finally, OneYouFeed.net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening. And here's the interview with Robert Thurman. Hi, Bob. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. Nice to talk to you.

I'm excited to have you on and talk about you are one of the leading Buddhist scholars in the West, and so I've been familiar with your work for a long time. And you have a new book out called Man of Peace, the Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. So we'll come back and cover all that in just a minute, but we're going to start like we normally do with the parable. Mm-hmm. in just a minute, but we're going to start like we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops for a second and he thinks about it and he looks up and he says, Well, grandfather, which wolf wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, that means that one should definitely not feed the bad one and feed the good one. And the ideal, though, you know, is in the Buddhist world, at least, I think in lots of spiritual traditions, not just the Buddhist one, I think the best thing to feed the good wolf with is the bad wolf. And then you don't have to worry about that so much anymore. And also the good wolf gets the energy that before the bad wolf had.

It's really difficult to be the good wolf or to let the good wolf function if the bad wolf is always nagging and nipping at it and crippling it. And I think Western culture too much has the attitude that it always has to be a balance. And even it has the culture that the good wolf is really nice but the bad wolf is stronger and even like modern psychology freudian and otherwise tend to reinforce that by the idea that the conscious mind is weak and it's small it's the tip of the iceberg and the unconscious mind is much more powerful and pushes your impulses to do things that you can't control and just have to live with that whereas the buddhist plan is and other spiritual traditions i would argue is to

feed the good one and starve the bad one or consume the bad one where it's even better than just starving the bad one and turn the bad one's energies into the energies of a good one. So you really, really have the one wolf, and that's a good one. And that's what enlightenment is somehow, where you're just the one good wolf. And maybe you just cease being a wolf, actually, and you become like, I don't know what, toothless, friendly dog, you know? Like your nice pet dog, you know? Happy dog, loyal and faithful and

friendly. But you keep the strength of the bad wolf so that other people's bad wolves or general bad things, you can defend against them, you can help them become free of those and so forth. And I think the one nice news that Buddha had was that the human being is capable of becoming a good wolf. It's not a matter that the bad wolf will always win and always overcome. That goodness is more powerful, ultimately, and I can give a reasoning for that. But just in short, that's what I would say. And so that goodness is often referred to as Buddha nature? Buddha nature is just one aspect of that. That's a way of referring to goodness. And of course, Buddhahood is Buddha nature in full, you could say, fully realized.

And, you know, you do hear some people give a version of Buddhism where sort of Buddha nature or, you know, enlightenment means sort of, you know, busting your hump to try to get away into some nirvana imagined as somewhere else and then enlightenment is just being resigned to just being here and dealing with it i know some people who pretend to be buddhist experts and they say well you're always dealing with the devil no matter what so on and so on in yourself you know and uh actually that's not accurate uh we do have the capacity to become wholly good and the reason being good the good is more powerful is that the good is that which you do for others it is fundamentally altruism love

and compassion and we know which sourced by from wisdom and um since there's so many others and they have so much need that's a huge energy that it draws on. And whereas the bad is based on selfishness, and in a way you're just doing your own will and seeking your own pleasure and success, and you have a lesser drive because there's only one of you. And so therefore, the good is more strong, you know. When you're motivated for the good, for others, then you have more power than those who are selfish. Excellent. Let's talk about enlightenment for a moment. It is a concept that is very much at the heart of Buddhism. And there's a lot of people who I would say these days tend to think of enlightenment as something that doesn't really happen for most people. What's your view on that? I mean, is enlightenment something that

we can be looking for in this lifetime? I think so. Perfect enlightenment of Buddhahood might take most of us a while, although the good thing about it, which I can, at least I console myself about since I still have failed to get it fully. I have had a few hints, and I think I understand sort of the logistics of it to some extent from having studied because the enlightened people leave a map. They have a great, excellent science of the whole of enlightenment and unenlightenment. So my consolation is that when you get it, you kind of realize you always had it. So the sense of not having it and trying to go find it is based on your ignorance.

Unfortunately, however, that ignorance is so powerful and strong that you have to go as far as you have to go in order to find it. But you can, and you will, and some will in this life, although that's exceptional. And even if it happens in this life to someone it means they have developed tremendously in many previous lives which buddhists would say even to have become human means you have become very close to enlightenment you have evolved from all kinds of other life forms that we've all been from beginningless time where the human one is a particular balance and our great virtue as a human is that we're very deprogrammable and

reprogrammable unfortunately that means if we reprogram ourselves toward the negative we can become worse than most any other animal yeah but if we try to reprogram ourselves deprogram that as negativity is those bad wolves inside ourselves into a really the awesome great mega buddha wolf then we are really capable of doing it so that's why education is so important for the human because the human is completely not exactly blank slate but is tending in the very very good direction and very very malleable and mutable let's say and so we can mutate you know we can mutate into the butterfly where the proverbial cocoon you know and we can mutate into the butterfly, we're the proverbial cocoon, you know, and we can mutate into the butterfly pretty, pretty easily.

But it might take us a few human lives, even in the most esoteric, most accelerated way. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does tom cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason

bobblehead. It's called Really? No, really. And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And here's the rest of the interview with Robert Thurman. In your case, you said you've had a couple hints towards enlightenment. I think that was the word you used, or small taste. Tell me about what that's been like. Well, I'll tell you something that I'm particularly happy with and excited about nowadays, because I just finished editing a book of a student of mine, Chinese student, who Chinese American student, but who spends a lot of time in China, and who is a great translator

has become has a PhD from our university, and had a lot of studies himself before that. And he translated for his thesis, a book on the Buddha nature, channeled in a way by the future Buddha Maitreya, according to the tradition through a master, an Indian master named Asanga in the 4th or 5th century, and then commented on by a great Tibetan Lama during the world renaissance of the 15th century in a brilliant manner. And, you know, before that, I knew there were two ways of understanding the Buddha nature. And one was that it was just a kind of notion of the mind, you know, the intelligent and enlightened mind that somehow we have a seed of inside. And it was sort of taught by Buddha to reassure those who are habituated to feeling they have a sort of structured self and they're secure with the self and so on to think that there was some kind of self-like structure buddha structure inside

themselves and then the more sophisticated one is where the buddha nature is just emptiness it is sort of ultimate reality and everything it has the ultimate reality we're all empty in some way and therefore that's the Buddha nature. And I had sort of those in my mind. And then when I redid this book, because my student has been living in China for a decade or so, we had to finish his English version. He translated the same book into Chinese. And we had to finish the English version.

So I had to kind of very much redo the English and do it sort of thoroughly, which I had not here and did a part of it in a thesis that I had gone over. Then I realized this beautiful idea. What a Buddha is, is someone who identifies, has come to identify in a visceral manner with the entire universe, including all the sensitive beings in that universe. So technically for Buddha to become a Buddha, meaning fulfill his or her bodhisattva vow not to depart into enlightenment, into nirvana until everyone is free of suffering, he couldn't have left any of us behind. So what that means is that he completely thinks he's me and you. Anybody who ever attained Buddha, and actually there's infinite numbers of them, but the recent historical one is Shakyamuni from 2,500 years ago. So he thinks he's you, Eric, and me, Bob, and plus everybody else,

and plus your dog there at Beautiful Nights Irish Center. He thinks he's that. And in doing so, he's capable of that because he experiences us on two levels. On one, he sees us as made of what is called clear light of bliss, you know, the feeling of vast expansion into sort of ultimate space of reality and feeling that all reality is configurations of bliss. that we experience ourself as an isolated entity looking out from our senses into an environment that is often threatening and dissatisfactory and problematic and frightened and anxious and occasionally triumphant and content but but always on the edge kind of so he experienced us both ways and therefore since he sees that our reality is this bliss he automatically knows what it is he needs to manifest to us that will open the door to us to find out our actual nature and drop our ignorance

because the part of us that thinks we're separate from everything and we can't deal with it and it's overwhelming to us is our ignorant it's it's our misknowing it's better than saying our misknowing part so if that's the case then bud Buddha nature, that so-called emptiness or Buddha nature, is not just a vacuum, but what it is, is the Buddha's mind in us, which is our deeper reality than our mind in us. And when we become a Buddha, we suddenly realize we're one with all the Buddhas, and, however, unfortunately, because of the compassion, all other beings, even the non-Buddhas, the idea that my Buddha nature, and yours too, Eric, and the dogs,

is the Buddha's mind in us, what's called his dharmakaya, his reality body. And because of that, you know, since the Buddha experienced us as pure love, as made of love, but then realizes we don't feel that. So then automatically that love overflows in such a way that he wants to manifest to us whatever encourages. And actually, it is believed by Tibetans, particularly, I'm not sure the Indians had that belief before. Maybe they did. But, you know, out of the Indian tradition, the Tibetans believed that the future Buddha, this Maitreya, manifests now in the form of dogs. It fits with your wolf thing because a dog is originally like from wolf stock. And yet a dog just loves us.

They trust us. We trust them and feel comfortable with them. We reach out and we pat them. So it's the idea that it's kind of a nature that we might be afraid of on a subconscious level you know because like in game of thrones sort of thing they might devour us in a jail if we were thrown in with some hungry ones but actually they don't and they will die for us actually and they will give themselves for us and so it's like that that's the future Buddha, that's the Buddha's mind in the dog, in other words, the way. So therefore, Tibetans are kind

of horrified by any culture like the Chinese that eats dogs. It really freaks them out, you know? I'm horrified also. On the other hand, unfortunately, kind of hypocritically, they didn't exactly have an ASPCA in the Buddhist monasteries the buddhist monasteries and they collected these dogs and they fed them with what they could but there were so many dogs they became kind of feral and it's so you know future tibet the monastery will have to have an aspca branch outside the monastery definitely you know and i had a friend chai ling who was one of the the chenna men's square students democratic students

who escaped and who got awards and ran around and she always had this mutt this lovely nice mutt i'm sorry i forgot the nut's name very nice female dog always used to bring with her even to ceremonies at the un and everywhere she insisted and the reason she said she had that is that mao you know made them eat all the dogs because they didn't want to waste food on dogs so then and birds and everything so Chinese lacked pets then they got into this thing of you know class struggle and cultural revolution so kids would turn in parents and parents kids and uncles and cousins and so they kind of really lost trust for many decades and they're just kind of recovering it now you know otherwise they made them kind of really paranoid and the dog she felt you know so

we had a kind of plan of a dogification program for china in those days after 10 men in the 90s of how to take thousands of dogs from all our pounds, we would have to inject them so their meat tasted terrible. And second, take them over there and then allow people to pet them and so on. We had a silly plan like that, which unfortunately we couldn't implement. But I think it naturally got implemented anyway. And I think they have pets now, luckily.

And they're cheering up. You know, Chinese are very much cheering up. I think animals, at least for me, have been a way to learn to love in a way that is easier to a dog for whatever reason. And then that, for me, is translated then into being able to do it better with humans. Right, exactly. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog

truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne

Knight, welcome to Really Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's talk about your latest. It's a graphic, I won't say novel, I'll say a graphic biography of the Dalai Lama's life. Right. We don't have time to go into a lot of it, but it really covers a couple of key things. One is the development of Tibet, what has happened in Tibet over the years with China, the Dalai Lama's role in that, the things he's tried to do, the peacemaking. And then it also talks a lot about his internal spiritual development. It's that latter part that I'd like to spend a few minutes on, which is more kind of where our show focuses on, you know, what can people do in their own lives to live a better life?

And I'd like to talk about a term that is used a lot in the book. You talk about over and over, it was sort of an esoteric teaching that the Dalai Lama brought out to the rest of the world. And I don't know if I'm going to say this right, but I'm going to try. Kala Chakra? Yeah, Kala Chakra, Wheel of Time, yeah.

Tell me a little bit about that teaching, because it looks like it was this very remote esoteric teaching, and yet now he has had these Kala Chakra teachings or ceremonies for hundreds of thousands of people across the world. That's right. He's done it 34 times. And the grand initiation is called sometimes for 500,000, 600,000 people, a lot of people from around the world as well as those hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, those who were in exile, those who were already originally Indian citizens in the Himalayan area. And in a couple of eras, especially during the 80s when things were looser quite a few could come out of tibet

just for that but now they're prevented at the moment the way things have been since 2008 so um the thing about that is you know the title man of peace the reason we give it that title is because he has walked the talk in his he's reached but he did that he wanted to do that from the beginning but he really reached that gradually to really really be able to do it as he has effectively of responding to kind of a cultural genocide and certainly in a colonial occupation annexation invasion all of that he's responded that non-violently he has refused to make them the enemy to call in for invasion and this and that or counter invasion his brothers did for a while against his advice and wishes since he doesn't have like total power over what

the tibetans do but he said that would be doomed it wouldn't work and he didn't want to do it and so forth and it was he never called the whole country kind of to rise and he asked them to respond heroically peacefully and so that makes him kind of man of peace and one of the things i've always tried to do in my previous book before that something called why the dalai lama matters is that at this time on the planet we have two major things threatening us and one of them is this kind of industrial militarism where the weapons are so powerful no one can win a war, and an escalated war among the powers wrecking the environment in an in another way for profit and money but especially on the militarist side you know since we could all imagine if all the money spent on weapons and militarism today were spent on quality of life for all the people today there really wouldn't be much problem and people wouldn't really feel

they had to go invade someone else because they'd all be wealthy enough yeah but people then always say about the dhar lama well great he's a man of peace but isn't that completely unrealistic you know it's like with with this basic thing that is that i mentioned at the beginning with the wolves that we and the world's culture now in materialism following pretty much on the western colonial power and its culture, Abrahamic religion's culture, has this idea that the good is weaker than the bad. And therefore, you have to arm or you're going to be done for. And everyone has to be armed to the teeth, basically, to protect yourself.

And so they say, well, then he's not like that. Tibet got wasted because they demilitarized in the 17th century, etc. And well, yes, true. But after the 17th century to the 20th, they did really well. And then the British invaded, and then the Chinese reinvaded the Manchus at first, and then the Nationalists, and then the Communists finally. And then they did get wasted. Yes. But before that, 1000 years earlier, before Buddhism, they were wasting other people like a typical conqueror. So in a way, they just made a choice to be vulnerable in order to have a blissful, beautiful society with spiritual value, love and compassion and joyfulness at the center of the culture. And so,

yes, it's been 60 years, the Tibetans are still suffering. And so now we have to live up to the power of peace, we have to manifest it, we have to dialogue with the enemy, we have to live up to the power of peace we have to manifest it we have to dialogue with the enemy we have to find a way to get along with everybody and we can do that and and we have to do that i don't know talk and snack i think talk and share a snack you know break bread together as the great teachers of humanity have been trying to tell us for 3 000 years you know that's what the human destiny has to be by our own free will we have to choose that and we have to do it and we have the power to do it so he as a man of peace you know which actually is the word that you know

prince of peace is the word used for jesus you know but then in the problem with that for christians is that they then they sort of have this image blazing into their head by Constantine, the Roman emperor, that Jesus got wasted and Caesar remained in power. You know, so he was nice with his Sermon on the Mount, but it's not practical advice. Whereas now in the 20th century, it is practical advice. Buddha gave the same advice 500 years ago and also wasn't fully listened to. And a lot of other all basically all the holy teachers have done so muhammad people only think muslims are universally violent and jihadist and that is untrue muhammad defended himself against the meccans for a long time then when he won that

thing because of the power of his charisma and of his of his idea of islam of let yourself go and give yourself to the universe you know is, Islam means to surrender, you know, surrender your ego. He then walked into Mecca unarmed. Maybe, you know, you could say, well, the Meccans were afraid if they had killed him, his army would punish them. But basically, he still made himself vulnerable, and he walked in to do pilgrimage with his former enemies unarmed, and then they became his friends and then you developed the power of islam which spread rapidly around the world so all the great spiritual teachers have

taught this and all of us and the and the kings and the leaders and the high priests have not listened and they've turned those religions into battle standards and banners that they've carried into battle you know for jesus you know and jesus never said bomb thine enemy he never said take the sword to my enemy he said love thine enemy you know and so did buddha and it's time we listen now and so the kala chakra is this amazing thing which is part of a prophecy that shambhala, this magic country that's somewhere, eventually becomes the sort of global culture. It doesn't mean people all become Buddhists at all. It doesn't mean that people all become Shambhalans at all, but it just means that within the terms of each culture,

people find the good side and they find the good wolf in the teachings and the and they enjoy life and they love each other and it's much more happy planet in relation to that it's the word chakra like in english means a wheel but like in english a wheel can stand for a machine so buddha's way of not abandoning beings into his own enlightenment in other words not attaining a nirvana a freedom from suffering on his own separately from beings is that he sees all future moments and destinies of beings apparently in his enlightenment experience it is stated in all versions of his enlightenment he sees his entanglement with all beings from many infinite previous lives and then he sees all their future possible destinies how they can make choices that will help them and ones that will harm them and he puts his energy out of compassion to try to shape the world in such a way that it will lead them give them the optimal evolutionary

path to their own fulfillment and enlightenment and to him those future moments are just as real as the present moment 2500 years ago under the tree when he achieved full enlightenment. So, in other words, the illusion of time being these separate moments is no longer afflicted by, and his compassion enables him to be with us as we evolve life after life, all the beings do, into a state of where we find that same understanding of reality as a bliss freedom indivisible as buddhists would say at the deepest level so the kala chakra is the most vivid symbolic and yogic expression of that sort of vision of the buddha operating in history to optimize the planet not abandon it to some dark age and some horrible you know corruption and

self-destruction and things but to see to it that it evolves although it doesn't look like it on the surface with its holocaust and world wars and craziness but basically the sensitivity of the humans and ultimately of the older beings is such that they're more and more sensitive they're more and more and well educated more and more aware of each other look at facebook we have a kind of global brain through the internet nowadays where we know everything that happens to everybody else and and our compassion natural sensitivity and compassion empathy gets us to like the other beings that used to be very alien to us and so that's the that's sort of the kalachakra legend a kind of benign you know new age revelation thing you know like book of revelation but not there is a little violence but that's the violence we are now having but it sort of

self-destructs the destructiveness and then everything goes well human beings have great opportunity to use that human intelligence to really enjoy life and bring such enjoyment to all the other creatures in the universe. That's why he has especially done that Kalachakra all around. It's been like a mass prayer to see the positive possibility of human evolution and human history also on this planet. And that's why he does that. Excellent. Thank you for that explanation. That's very helpful. Well, thank you, Bob, for your time. It's been great talking with you. I've enjoyed it. I really like the book. I'm glad you guys got it done.

I know it took you a long time, and thanks for all your work with Buddhism and the Tibet House. Thank you, Eric, and have a great time, okay? You too. Okay, take care. Okay, bye. Take care. All right. Bye. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.