Why We Suffer And How Not To with Robert Thurman

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, is the president of Tibet House, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization. And he's the president of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a nonprofit 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 then 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. So wonderful. Here's the story of Professor Thurman. I'm 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 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 Grapard.

Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, he used to be a Columbia.

Yeah, he was at Cornell, 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 Raul Birnbaum, who you probably also know.

Sure.

And a nice Jewish guy, but...

He was great. Oh, I love Raul.

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 that's really what led me to choose medicine, was that route.

That's so great.

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.

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 and 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. You know, it's actually, you know, 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.

Yeah, absolutely.

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 a framework and it's the 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 right. Every doctor, that's what I'm going to talk about with you. It's every doctor should be doing what you're doing. I'm sure you read, I'm sure you have, you read Ivan Illich's medical nemesis book.

Yes, I did. I read that in college.

You know, and what that what that book, among many other things, about that book, you know, although he's kind of disappeared off the radar of people, but 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 the public health initiatives over the centuries, over the last century or so, that medical awareness has caused, you know, sewage, you know, clean this and that, you know. So what they do for public health as a group, the doctors, is actually almost more important than inventing some gimmick.

Yes.

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 we're going to do. That's what we're doing. Right away, we're starting on November, whatever it is, and we're gonna do it now. Definitely, definitely, and you're a big part of it.

Well, thank you. I'm actually gonna have the privilege of being on Dr. Thurman's podcast as well, talking about this work from a different perspective.

Okay, so yeah, ask me questions.

So, there's many, many things that Dr. Thurman's done. He's published so many books and he's translated so many important texts like the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He wrote the Forward to one of my favorite books. It was so influential, the Way of the White Clouds by Lama Govinda.

Lama Govinda, yes.

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.

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 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, you know, 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 or 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, that's right.

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.

Well, it's kind of an involved tale. I'm working on an autobiography actually a little bit, although my wife's autobiography 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 Dalai Lama, he used to say, whenever you talk about that, Say you lost one eye and you gained a thousand. Just say that so people don't feel worried. You know, there's a thousand armed Buddhist icon of compassion, you know, have a look at Tashvira, 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 from the 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 via 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 it'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 know, you discovered it in a college classroom just by my very imperfect channeling of this system. Because 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. 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. 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, 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 not, 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 at high school, I read Hermann Hesse and Siddhartha and Jung and the Jung's thing about the Book of the Dead and etc. You know, I was reading those things because I was a non-conformist 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 in education, when you go to medical school, the, the, you don't, 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 Karma. 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. 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 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 Johnny, you tell these good people here, what is faith? He says, oh, I can say, I know what it is. Well, what is it? He says, faith is believing what you know ain't true. Langdon Gilkey, a theologian at the University of Chicago, told me that joke. I love it. It's a little bit cynical, you know?

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, et cetera, that he's like Albert Schweitzer, Buddha was like Schweitzer on that one. But the point is, 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- 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 red in 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, and, but the point is, you know, even death that 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 et cetera. 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, you see. Yeah. But then I used to ask them, well, if you can't understand everything, how do you know you can understand? And they could never answer that one.

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 Thurman, 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 started with the four facts or the four truths.

Yeah, yeah.

The first one is that- if you.

Don'T understand it, it will bring you suffering. And because you will 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'll you won't be you won't get you won't be joy it well enough to make it last. you actually can't think. There is a 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 causes are an 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, that's wrongly taught. Meditation is focusing your mind to a very much higher degree of intelligence, which we all have the capacity for. And then we will reach an experience of what reality is. And the third, noble 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.

A person who- 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 is, you know, nobody can count all the fish in the ocean, all this kind of thing. So it's quantum 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 see. 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 if we really realize what ignorance means, then we will realize that we don't know 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, 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, you know, we know, we'll get ready for it 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 they're trained 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. Actually, it's, you know, in French, you know, they have an expression for orgasm. Do you know what that is? Yeah, it's a little death, and a petite mort. And so that's, but that's not when you're fighting to stay alive. That's when you let go, you know, and you're no longer burdened with a body that's malfunctioning, you know? 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, exactly. And 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. So, but exact what it is, well, that's an open question and we can investigate. And science should be investigating, 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, 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 mist training comes from Buddhists. Most Buddhists, they say training, they call it. But the word adishiksha in Sanskrit or in Pali or in Tibetan. Shiksha today in Hindi is the word for the Department of Education in the Indian government. Shiksha. Shiksha means. Professor Thurman has a unique privilege because.

He speaks all these languages. No, I don't really speak it. Or he reads.

He reads Tibetan.

You speak to that. Sanskrit.

Yeah, but not Hindi. But you speak Tibetan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And so.

So you read the original text. So you don't have to go through a filter third party. You get to actually.

Well, it's all. It's all gets so Rusty. I'm getting to where I I barely speak English often.

You're doing okay.

But the point is, the fourth noble truth, therefore, is a curriculum. It's a higher education in reality, science, discovering reality, 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 education in those three things. And the eight branches fit into these three higher educations. But they say training, why do they say training? I'll tell you why. Because in our culture, we're all totally overeducated. We've been four years here, eight years there, four years there, medical school, totally, and we have these degrees and we're still pissed off.

We're still suffering.

Still suffering and still frustrated. So we think, 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 since we've had this huge education, it must suck. So we all, 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 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 just in their thousand-year jacuzzi and they never do anything. So they have 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. And I love that you said, you know, our body, you know, in your book you say 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. That is the education process. 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Because I love you.

Yeah.

And it's a total gang bang with the plants.

There you go.

But not if we screw them up, not if we mess them up.

No. And so, Professor, I have a question. We're recording this podcast.

Yes.

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 is 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, 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 dying. If you're dying, at least 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 there's movies that teach you how to do that, like Jacob's ladder, like ghosts, there are movies even nowadays that help you do that, and you just let go, or, Close Encounter of the Third Kind or 2010, you just go into one of those special effects, zoom, you let go of yourself, and then you'll be out of the body. 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 move 20 billion. We give $20 billion of direct subsidy to the oil industry, which they use to lobby the government to buy the congressmen like the Moscow Mitch and other corrupt, also corrupt Democratic congressman. 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, these are guys who were real political activists.

Well, of course they are. They 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 have been self-defense by accident, you know, some 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've 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 is 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 get brainwashed by 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, diobesity 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 youy Throw Out the Television. Well, I don't agree with him, it's the ultimate bottom line, I don't agree. But his awareness of that these things are going to be so badly misused, which are actually good things.

But people are fearful now, right? So people are having fear in And how do we change our relationship to that fear? Instead of it shutting us down, how can it serve us? How do we change our relationship to fear? It's a tool to improve our lives.

A great Bodhisattva who was once our president told us, Haribhakti, the only thing to fear is fear itself. FDR, one great Bodhisattva.

So what is a Bodhisattva for those listening who don't know?

A Bodhisattva or a noble person is someone who genuinely cares about other people. In other words, and technically, 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 not just that.

Yeah, it'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. 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 that's it. That's an, 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.

Yeah.

And of course, we can come, we cultivate that like, 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 they chose 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 they're put in an internal conflict right away, 100%. And then they come back with their PTSD, and then pretty soon they don't have empathy for anybody. And they're like Rambo, you know? 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 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, they'll do that, or those guys will do their best. Jesus, Buddha, God, they're true. They are doing the best. They're all there. Buddha didn't disbelieve in God. He just said he's just not quite what he's cracked up to be by the monotheists. He does his best. He's a nice guy. We're gonna talk to him all the time. He's 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, so, so tell us.

So let's go back a little bit because I think I'm curious about your story. It's a very unique story.

Oh, yeah. Back to my story.

A lot, a lot of people, you know, in the 70s went to India on these pilgrimages. But back in the early 60s, 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.

Well, that's true. We all 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 and what foretold you?

So 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. I want 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. I was an ability there that I had, you know?

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 recognize that when you were a young man. I 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 Erikson, psychiatrist, psychologist. I read a lot of Freud, Wittgenstein, Kant, Hegel, Plato. I read all philosophers.

I went to good schools, you know, I was brainwashed in the- All the.

Pop stars of the day, right? Hegel. Yeah, right. Right, right. Well, I feel extra like Hannah Arendt and some people like that. Gandhi. But, and I had idea there. And for those listening, if you want.

To start really simply, Siddhartha is a great novel.

Oh, yeah.

About the Buddha by Herman 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't do that. And, and Herman Hesse was, he was a, he was a hippie. Dropout, he 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 in was someone called Henri Michaux, a French writer, and another one was her, Aldous Huxley.

Yes.

And then about opening the doors of perception. And then some guys, not Tim Leary, not that Ram Dass, spiritual Albert, but a fellow student showed up with a dose of mescaline.

Yeah.

And that really helped. You know, 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 that was coming back in psychiatry.

And then 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. They were continuing their Cowboys and Indians world in Vietnam, these sort of nasty people. And they didn't want people saying, no way, they're gonna 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 Indians are not the Indians. They were also nice people. They lived indigenously. French trappers started the scalping, not the Indians. you know, because they scalped animals, right, for their fur. So 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.

Yeah.

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 afresh 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, just gave you a different perception of reality, the doors of perception, according to Aldous Huxley. But that's what we're learning now. is that, and there's a book called Altered Traits by our friend Dan Goleman and Richard Davidson.

Yes.

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. Right. And this shortcut that we've sort of used through these drugs, give 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. That's right. So, 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 and theogenics 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 wrongly 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 the side effects. It's not about just sitting and looking.

At your navel is what you're talking about.

Exactly, exactly. It's, it's, there's, my Tibetan doctor friend, the one who does lucid dreaming teachings and other things, he's so great physician because he says, he says, medication has side effects, yes, if used irresponsibly. And meditation can have side effects if used irresponsibly.

Also. Yeah.

So 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, you know, studied and implemented therapeutically in it and available like There are some generals in the army who say they want their students, I mean, they want their PTSD soldiers to have access to psilocybin. They're telling the Congress people, Cut this crap about putting it in there with soporifics like heroin or amphetamine, like stimulating drugs. They are not drugs like that. They are mind opening substances that can help people.

Well, you used the word, I think I want to just come back to, which is, and Theogen.

Yeah.

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 way you describe it.

Right. But I mean, yeah, 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. He thought he was going to nothing, you know, and which he's had a rude shock some time ago. He's around somewhere and, and probably landed in another Irish womb, no doubt.

And.

But, but. We are industrialization has enabled us to expand the three poisons of our ignorance, our lust, and our hatred, and our anger in the form of, you know, mass, you know, false ideology. That's the ignorance, mass consumerism, and mass militarism.

So it 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 able to create-.

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 a sane medical 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 unleashed this thing. with their insane behavior.

Eating bats.

Yeah, eating bats or messing with the bat thing in the neighborhood biologIcal warfare company, you know, facility that was three blocks away. Yeah. And it may leaked out of there somehow, you know, maybe. Or maybe it just, 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 that, our industrial thing led by the oil monarchs and the big ag and big food people that you've put the finger on, which is for which I bow to you. And so my point is, 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.

So 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, you know, and you know, 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, or when 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, we don't, our fingernails will break when we try to scratch somebody. Our tooth, we 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'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 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 through whatever, right back up into Bel Air. So it's interconnecting 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's teaching if they're Christians. 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 is Jesus was using. They should study Hinduism if they want Krishna's compassion teaching, you know, they should study Even 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, I know some wasps on their country club, beach club down in Florida, some serious wasps. You know, and they can, they're using.

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 are 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. and, and, you know, Robert, what, what.

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 infinite, infinite life, Awakening to Bliss within. Are there any other things that people should turn to? Yeah.

Yeah. Sometimes it has, well, they can read any book of the Dalai Lamas. more recently published ones with better translators, that is. They can read any book of Tich Nhat Hanh, so beautiful pieces every step, you know, wonderful Tich Nhat Hanh's 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 because it has 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 should have wasted. So I really get into that infinite life. And then any book by Dalai Lama or Tich Nhat Hanh, I would also recommend. And if they're interested in Buddhism in particular, I would recommend Inner Revolution about the history of it and about how it's the 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's somehow stuck somewhere in a publishing process, but it will come out. And I like that. And there's a great comic book I have now I'd royally want people to read. It's called Man of Peace. the Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. It's a comic book. It's a book-length comic book, the Life of the Dalai Lama. 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, no, I love it.

You say this, you can save the planet with your fork.

Yes, you can. And that's a meme.

That's a great meme. I love that.

So make sure you take this time, check out Infinite 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. that for people in the environmental movement, besides this writings of Greta Thunberg, read that. There's a little booklet of her sayings that 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 getting switching from the oil to the renewables. It's a very argument, 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 radium coming, you know, uranium coming out of it. It's a special kind made in South Korea for only two billion bucks that you didn't drop the whole thing into the two 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 end good geothermal and all that. But it's, 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 were brainwashed probably by the oil industry's propaganda that all nukes are bad. You know, no faith in technology. And so therefore the Greenpeace will probably have me shot for saying this.

Well, I remember, I remember in 1980 I went to the Rocky Flats plutonium plant.

That's it.

And they were, there were, there were just so many monks there protesting and Alan Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. And we're all, they're all meditating 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, 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 produce 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, you follow me. and the Swedish thing that 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 the. Way below 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 this is economically a disaster because of course we had 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 move the subsidy right away to the renewables starting November 4th. or fifth or tenth or whatever, and going into next year, and whoever it is, they're going to the 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 2015, not by 2040, by 2030, we're back on a track to absorb already what has happened.

What I love about you, Professor Thurman, is, you know, you're retired from Columbia, but you're still a professor 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 to.

And you've actually gone and got training in a whole new approach called the climate reality project training, which is, yes, 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 also, it's education thing, you know, but, but the thing is this. Have you ever, have you ever joined with your food fixing the climate reality project trainings?

No, but I, but I'm aware of it.

And he, he does, he also does regenerative agriculture. It's part of it. But he doesn't hit it as hard as you do. And he needs you or, he needs your collaboration for sure.

And he, yes, I've actually talked to him about it. And, you know, he's starting to become more aware and, and alert to this and I think we are in a unique situation where everything's interconnected and the suffering that we're seeing from COVID-19.

That's right.

It's just a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the suffering that we're gonna see unless we address these bigger global issues of our food system. It's just the beginning. There are going to be consequences on our health, the consequences on economies, the consequences on our environment. So all of 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? Who is 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 don't have a soul or a mind right now. That's just my brain makes me think I have one. So then everything doesn't matter. 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, in Wabash, 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. The negative thing that wants to push you into something you know is not going to be good, but you do it. You follow me. That's the. That. That's the motivational trigger. Yeah. The climate reality project needs it. Food fix needs it and functional. And the new organization of. Doctors Against Food Corruption.

Yes.

And it's going to grow from it. No, seriously.

That's my goal. We've got to wake people up. And I think that's what you spent your whole life doing, is waking people up.

And that's it.

You're such an extraordinary man and such a gift. And I'm just so blessed to know you. And, you know, I just, this is just such a special interview for me because literally 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 that's literally determined my entire path. It's really true.

Last December, last December in South India, in the Tibetan monastery there, the Dalai Lama pulled me out of the crowd to everyone's shock and horror, including mine. 'Cause this just creates jealousy, you know, and dragged me up there with the Abbotts who were offering him this special thing, getting this special thing and all this, you know, all that special, special stuff they do in those rituals. And then, and everybody was shocked and I was saying, oh no, no, no, no, no. And then he actually sent the bodyguard over who was a friend of mine, but 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 then he took that, gave me a huge one, and then he made his guy come up and give me a red ding, 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, just remind me.

All right, please, please.

You know, I, I was guided 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 Bodh Gaya, 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 indiscreet, you know? building. And I walked in and there was this little anteroom and there was a little nun there and she gave me this white scarf and then there was this little room. And I went in and there was this giant Tibetan man there with a white bun on his head, on his hair, the very big belly and it was Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

Oh, wow.

And he's sort of like the other Dalai Lama. In a sense for a different lineage.

He's great.

And there was a translator there that was Matthew Ricard, who was his translator, who's a French guy who has been called the happiest man in the world.

And.

I was, you know, 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 it was that moment and he gave me that little string around the neck that you just mentioned and the blessing. And that was what sort of has carried me through.

So, yeah, so great.

Yeah, it was quite a story.

So, I just, I love that.

I love that. Yeah, you never know and you know, even though this seems very disruptive right now for all of us and 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.

That's okay. That's common sense.

That's good fear. Bad fear is sitting 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.

That's 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 tome like that on happiness.

Yeah, in the, in this age of being, you know, inundated with doom news about coronavirus, find a little light, take a little break, and do yourself a favor. And, and, 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. And, I love you, too.

Really.

And thank you.

We have to do some trainings online with the climate reality people and food and the motivation, the Dharma.

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, I'll get a better name, but it's just the Bob Thurman podcast.

And it's on iTunes.

Yeah, Bob Thurman. www.thurman.com. 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 share with your friends and family. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast 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 in to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff, from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S. and sign up for the newsletter 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.

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