SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Cat, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz of Beat the Prosecution. I am a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer here in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. There's this concept in Buddhism about non-duality and not favoring one person over the other. And uh that's uh I'm having a lot of trouble following that. This is one of uh, this is an amazing guest I have here. He is Robert Thurman, that's Bob Thurman, the uh Tibetan Buddhist scholar and everything else. I don't have him on because of his fame, even though he is famous as a Buddhist scholar and beyond. I don't have him on here even because his uh even with his having a famous uh actress daughter, Uma Thurman. The reason I have him on, this uh show is called Beat the Prosecution, is this is a man who inspires me so much. He makes me laugh. He works in talking about frozen yogurt when he's talking about, I don't know what, non-duality. He talks about uh doing blissful vacations with Buddhism. Uh I don't want to go on and on. Uh, I want to introduce you to the man himself through his own words, Bob Thurman. Please introduce yourself to our audience.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Okay, thank you, John. It's so nice to be there with you, to be here with you, be here and be there in Northern Virginia. And you're down there near the epicenter of the current uh imbalance that is plaguing our country, our beautiful country. And um the thing about non-duality, though, that we I was very happy to see on the wall behind you is the famous salutation and mantra of the Lotus Sutra of the Buddha. Um that that Lotus Sutra, in that Lotus Sutra, the Buddha reveals to his disciples of that sutra that the world itself is magnificent, beautiful, perfect, without any problems. And it's sort of the background uh, in a way, of our lives is that the world is full of life. And um it even death is only a doorway into more life rather than some sort of negation or horrible, dangerous hell or whatever we're scared of. And that's very important to know, actually, and to face that. Otherwise, people use the fear of death as a way to coerce us into being hardly alive. So it's wonderful to see that because what is the point of non-duality if when you fuse with reality, reality is horrible? Who wants to be non-dual with that? In other words, reality should be bliss, freedom, indivisible, as is stated in the formerly esoteric Buddhist uh um teachings, they're called Vajrayana, which are at the center of things in Tibetan Buddhism, but we're also there the last five, six hundred years of Indian Buddhism as well, and also very much Japan, and also very much uh Indonesia, Bali, especially today, but in the old days, very much Sumatraya and everywhere. And Indonesia was one of the countries that liked that. And even Sri Lanka was Vajrayana in the old days. And um, whereas nowadays Sri Lanka is dualistic Buddhism, you know, nirvana somewhere else, you know, rather than this is nirvana. But you know, Buddha is very strategic. He doesn't just blurt out dogmas. So, for example, that Lotus Sutra in which he revealed this vision to his closer disciples, he said, now this vision I'm showing you and all kinds of various, you know, angelic and other beings who are present for that vision. But he said, I don't want to spread in India for about four or five hundred years. I want the dualistic version of Buddhism to be the one that spreads, because otherwise, if people are not a little bit prepared, the idea that this is perfect will not suit them. They can't believe it because they stub their toe and they bump into things and things go wrong, it seems to them, and then they are ascribing too much reality to all of that, and so they'll never believe that this is all perfect. So after 400 years, when they're really more settled in self-control and they're more critical about that the way they see things is not the absolute way they are, then they'll be more open to the non-dualistic type of teaching. So he was very sociologically sophisticated, the Buddha, which Westerners do not credit him with. They just think he's like cruel or something, you know, and he and they don't realize that Buddhism is like more as much a science as it is a spiritual tradition, and more than it is a religious tradition as defined by blind faith religion.

unknown 5:31

Right?

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Because Buddha was against blind faith. That's why Buddha liked lawyers and he liked merchants more than he liked Brahmin priests. I mean, he liked them too, of course, he liked everybody, but but he really liked those who realize you sort of, you know, merchants kind of realize you can be a self-made person that you change all the time and you kind of you are kind of your own product a little bit. And uh lawyers learn, they go to philosophy as undergraduates, and they because they need to learn how to reason and to debate, and to debate with others is very essential to be able to analyze in your own mind and debate with your own different possible theories and ideas that other people will tell you you have to adopt. And that reasoning is very important. And in the Enlightenment movement and the meditation movement, which I know you're very, very familiar with, John, you're probably way better than me about it. I doubt it. Well, I'm lazy, I'm a lazy practitioner, very, very lazy. But uh the thing is that there's a mistake in the American version of these meditation things where they leave they leave out the fact that the liberating thing in the in the all the in a way Asian teachings is uh wisdom. And wisdom has three levels wisdom born of learning, which doesn't just mean training, it means education. Then there's wisdom born of meditation, which is critical thinking really more than it is just emptying your mind. It's thinking critically about what is real versus what is unreal. Like Descartes actually did very big meditation and had a very Buddhist insight without Buddhism, because he couldn't find the self, right? That's why he then said, Well, if I think about then that's me, which is a very relational discovery. It's not a discovery of the absolute reality of the self, no way. He was a little bit, didn't have somebody to critique his result. But he did have a very deep insight that you couldn't find yourself as the object, that solid object that you think it is. And that is the Buddhist insight, actually, in fact, exactly discovered by him because it's part of reality, it's not just part of some doctrine or something. So the key point I'm just trying to make here is that once you're enlightened, you still have to be reasonable to interact with other people. Before you're enlightened, it is reason that brings you to a place where you kind of go beyond the problem of rationality and non-rationality, and you have a direct, kind of inconceivable, surprising, amazing grace experience of the bliss, freedom, indivisible reality of the universe. And but that when you come back from that, or in a way, when you realize that that's not nothingness, it's not empty space somewhere, it's everythingness. So, in fact, you don't have to come back because what happens is your awareness spreads itself where you become utterly empathic with other beings, and therefore you want to help them and be nice to them, and you want them to be happy because you are their happiness or their misery if they insist on being miserable. So, therefore, you uh your compassion is compelling to you, and then in engaging with them, you must be reasonable.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

This is very important. We can't have people who meditated a lot and they're supposedly meditation teachers, then being mean to other people and acting egotistical with them, right? And being harmful to them and acting starting a cult which always blows up in their face sooner or later. At first, it seems great, and they get they make they get some Rolls-Royces out of it, and a little bit of pleasure, but then it blows up in their face because people don't like it. Because, you know, everyone on the planet is really a little bit like us, very individualistic. They look on their cell phone and they can see what the super rich people are doing and how they are, and they're not going to tolerate them being mad kings for long. Temporarily, some of them might be brainwashed, but the others will do something to get rid of mad kings. We can't because the thing is, the old mad kings, they really just sat in their throne rooms, sent a few troops out with their spears and swords and sort of to do as much harm as they could, but they couldn't do that much. They didn't have nuclear weapons, they didn't have like missiles and horrible things and poison chemistry and poison diseases and things like today. It's really too dangerous. So we can't have one person calling the shots like Putin, like Xi, like Orban, like Maduro, and like he who shall be not named.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I guess it's not Voldemort. You're not talking about Voldemort this time from Harry Potter.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

That's right. That's so good. So, anyway, that's that's an opening statement triggered by the Namonyohorengeo, which means Namusad Dharma Pundarika Sutra. Which is uh which is ancient Sanskrit, too.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Your your essence, persona and words completely underline why you inspire me as a lawyer. You are able to take your brilliance and distill it down, use the humor, use the engagement. I mean, I talk about how my work is the thrill of victory and agony of defeat, just like wide world of sports. And then uh it was in a book that I have by Ringu Tuku, who says when you come to the real uh uh non-duality, you can actually uh see uh people uh becoming victims of mass murder and not be so debilitated you can't help them. If I become debilitated and can't help them, what good is that?

SPEAKER_03 11:22

That's right. Well, compassion for someone who is an authoritarian person who's causing harm to others is actually resisting them and helping them not do that because every act has a consequence. You know, Buddha's discovery was causation, actually, rather than the gods creating things and doing things. He said, No, they're causes of things. And so you learn how to how to interfere with the bad causes and how to reinforce the good causes, and that way everybody has a good life. And so so someone who is causing true terrible harm and death and destruction on other people, their precious human embodiments, then they they will get the consequence of that in their own future. And um, you know, for Buddha, the former and future life realities were common sense and they were science. They were not some blind faith religious thing. There's a huge amount of evidence that the materialist, dogmatic, unscientific scientists nowadays are following that dogma that there's no such thing as the mind, there's no spirit, there's no soul, there's no future, there's no past. You just sort of automatically hear, and it's really all nothing. And then you become entropy or something, and you think, you know, all your problems become entropy if you just die and you're permanently anesthetic, anesthetized. And they promise that fake result to even evildoers, and that's not going to be that's not gonna happen to them. They're gonna be consequences of how they of the evil that they perpetrate. So compassion for them is to resist them, and that's what lawyers do. They take a murderer, they take a grifter, they take a felon, and they say, you must learn that that's not the thing to do. And we prove that you did it, and we you have to try to become reasonable instead of self-centered and absolutist and crazy and thinking your tantrum isn't gonna like we're all gonna cave into your tantrum.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

And some of them are guilty, in fact, just like uh none of Perry Mason's or or Matlock's clients were guilty. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

That's right. And but you know, then it should be then then, of course, rehabilitation is what prison should be. It shouldn't be torture, torment, exactly, and and horrible, uh, you know, like oppression, worse oppression, you know, making the people worse. It should be truly educating them and so on. I'll never forget one guy in Massachusetts who at one time was a governor who shall be unnamed. On a radio show, I heard him say that he wanted to cancel all educational programs in the prison system in Massachusetts because poor people would commit small offenses to go and get free schooling, otherwise. And he didn't want that. He wanted them to remain uneducated and desperate and therefore come in and be tortured in the prison system without any rehabilitation. I thought that was so sad.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Publicist of the uh prison rehabilitation. Have you been involved with the prison ashran movement or anything involving helping out inmates?

SPEAKER_03 14:32

Yeah, well, people do. We have not had, we see, we don't Tibet House. Oh, yeah, you asked me to talk about my institution, it's a cultural one, not a religious one. Do you know what I mean? So it's not a cult of any kind, it's not a church, it's not a dharma center. We there's a lot of dharma there because Tibetan culture is filled with it, but it's uh it's um a cultural center because it represents His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, it's his cultural center. I'm just a custodian, unpaid custodian of my wife, or me and my wife. And we've as we've done it as a give back to our teacher, the the Dalai Lama, who we love dearly. And um, and it represents him because he has an absolute strict vow, which he repeats at every public lecture, which is not just within his own monastic community, which he says that I have never and will never in my life give a teaching about Buddhism to non-Buddhists with a motive to make them Buddhists. So he's against the religion converting, you know, religions trying to compete for market share by converting people in other religions from other religions into their religion. He's very against that. And he told three or four popes about it. He didn't have a chance to tell Francis directly, but I'm sure Francis knew that was his theory, because he told John Paul, the predecessor of John Paul, and also Benedict. So he met a lot of popes at Alama, and he told them that they should stop trying to conquer the world for their religion and realize that you know God can try to help people through other religions that would be important, you know. And he asked the Muslims, and he especially likes the Jews and the rabbis because he they don't try to convert you unless you marry one. They don't bother you. You know, you have to be born. He likes that. He does. He went, he promised the Hindus. Now that he and the Tibetan exiles are in India, he's not trying to convert Hindus back to Buddhism. Many of them were Buddhists in 8,000 years ago, but he's not trying to do that. He's only trying to reinforce what he calls Indian inner science of yoga, you know, the mind, how to use them, how to use spiritual science, you could call it, instead of materialistic science. So they can stand up and hold their own with the materialistic scientists of the modern period. And then the the outer sciences, as they're called in ancient India, like biology, physics, etc., can meet the inner sciences, which is psychology, philosophy, meditational things, and also cultivating human beings, what we might call supernormal abilities, not just like Western psychology, trying to help the abnormal person become what is considered normal in a confused society like our materialistic one, but rather from someone who's normal, help them become a little bit higher normal or supernormal. That's the thing. You know, that that's very much a province of inner science, yeah. And you that's why they invented yoga, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yes. Well, yoga and meditation are available in some uh uh uh jails and and prisons, yes, and blooping that and is it too late for us at this point, or should we do it later on to maybe do a little bit of mindfulness or or groundedness practice for you, me and our listeners? Would it make sense now or a little later in our talk to maybe do a uh a few moments of mindfulness or practice, whatever you do?

SPEAKER_03 18:00

You lead it. You're you're better.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

I lead it.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

You lead it, you lead it, I'll I'll follow along. Come on, do it.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Okay, well, here's here's how I do it. Okay, my uh mindfulness practice is to at least do standing meditation for five minutes at the end of my uh uh two rounds of Tai Chi Chuan. So whether I'm standing or sitting, I just focus on the breath. So uh I'm not gonna do much guiding this, we're gonna have some silence. So I'm in my chair. Let's get grounded. Feel your feet to the ground. It's a good idea to close your eyes. Keep your body upright. As if it's suspended from the heavens, your feet rooted into the ground, your body like a weed in the ground, so even if there's a hurricane or tornado, you do not get uprooted. Relax and sink your entire being into your Tan Tian, which is where your chi, qi, energy or whatever you call it gathers near this the abdominal area. Focus on your breath. Don't worry about any interruptions. So let's go for about thirty seconds. And now I say the thing there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Well, in the Mahasati Pattana Sutta, which means the great focus of mindfulness sutra, the long one. There's a short one and a long one. And the long one is means the great it's called the great one in the Diga Nikaya, the long discourses of the Buddha. He leads people through the four mindfulnesses. His monks, you know, and he addresses it to mendicants, you know, because some are nuns actually. Anyway, mendicants. So he says, mendicants, this and that, just like you said, focus on your breath. But and then he goes on to the second one, and the focusing on the breath takes you to the body. Second one, focusing on your sensations or feelings, but as some people translate, but that's confusing because in English, feelings can mean your emotions. But this is not emotion. It's just, you know, pleasure, pain, or numb numbness, you know, sort of neutral feelings. And so then even you're sitting there, you you try to inventory all your what you feel, where you have a little ache or something, or where you have a feeling of pleasure, because you're sitting happily and nicely with your eyes semi-closed or closed and so on. And then he goes, that's pretty quick. Then he goes on, focus on your mind. And then when you do that, you really can't find your mind very easily. You see thoughts, but you don't really necessarily find the mind. So that's a quick one. And then the final one is focus on mental objects in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 22:37

That's the one then the vipassana, the mindfulness that they do, and they're not really looking for one-pointedness, they're scanning all the thoughts and things in their mind to try to see the full workings. And then there's a wonderful thing, which I'm sorry to be that lengthy. I just wanted to say this one thing which I love in that sutta, which I discovered while I was traveling in Sri Lanka, because it's not in the short of sutra, but in that, among mental objects, the mendicants, Buddha urges the mendicants to deal with the four noble truths, which I like to call the four friendly fun facts, actually. Oh, that's great. But never mind, I could explain that later if you want. But the four noble truths, which is suffering, the cause of suffering, the freedom from suffering, and then the educational path, including meditation to become free of suffering. So, you know, it's a effect, cause, effect, cause. Those are the four friendly facts or noble facts. So he leads you through those, and then when you get to the suffering one, he wants you to see everything as suffering, sort of a little bit stressful. And it's very important there is to see things that you think are fun or are not really fun because they don't last. And then you feel kind of, if you're addicted to them, then you sort of want them back, but you feel disappointed when they leave. So that makes them what he calls the suffering of change.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

He makes a big fuss about that, and he makes a big list of all the what he calls pleasant and agreeable things in life, which is very kind of killjoy routine. He's famous for that. Okay, then he's then he gets you to consider the cause, which is your misunderstanding of what's really happening. And then he does freedom, you know, nirvana, third one, which is the real, real one, he says. And then, to my shock, he gives the same list of all pleasant and agreeable things in the world. He doesn't say there's some space, out and out of space, or whatever it is, nirvana. He says, the nirvana, where is it? He asks. It's right here, the all the pleasant and agreeable things, he says. Then he answers the question which he anticipates his meditating mendicants are going to ask. Where they say he anticipates them thinking, Well, wait a minute, you just listed that all as suffering of change, as stressful. Now you're saying it's blissful? It's bliss. What's the difference? And he says, the difference is that now that you've understood the cause, second noble truth, you're free of the craving that went along with your desire for the pleasant and agreeable things, the extra crazy. And once you're not craving more, when you are having something pleasant, once you're letting yourself go to that, it's not suffering, though it ends. So therefore, you just go you go on like that, and you have all these pleasant agreeable things. So, what I love is that's non-duality sneaking into kind of hinting, sneaking into the dualistic thing about you have to leave for nirvana, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

J just like my not attaching that I'm having an amazing time with you right now, and I'm not thinking, wouldn't that be cool to have a reprise? Just do it right now.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

I'm having an amazing time with you. I enjoyed very much um concentrating. You know, I prefer not to close my eye. I only have one eye, you see.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

I know.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

When you do the ultimate way of meditating, it's better not to close them, but to half close them, where you sort of then look down your nose, almost like a little cross eye, if you have two eyes.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

But and in order to make a very boring visual field, they'd say if you close them completely, you might get sleepy. If you open them wide, you'll stay stuck in your visual field because we're such visual beings, you know, when we're awake. Right. So instead, half close means a boring eyelid, and then just like looking down at the ground in front of you or down your nose, you know, or at the wall of the meditational center, or wherever, whatever place you're meditating. So, so for me, that's very easy because I don't get cross-eyed because and I like that, and it brings another kind of alertness where you become more attentive to your inner process than stuck in your visual field. And actually, I keep my eyes open. You feel alert because they're partly open.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

I keep my eyes open. That's really fun. Thank you so much for that. So, what other what other things? Should we talk more about Tibet?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Oh, I could take I could take hours and hours, but uh, what I would like to address now is one of the things I love about you, you you could probably read me the ingredients from uh a box of cookies and have me entertain. Uh, you may be born in 1941, 12 22 years before me, one year after my mom, but you seem like a 19-year-old of the oldest. And that's the way I feel. If I I delayed having a child until my son Dennis was born when I was 42, because at first I felt like a kid, and I felt I'd be having a uh a kid having a kid, and when I realized I would never stop being a kid, I'll finally have a he must he must have really enjoyed that. Um, we have a great time together.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

That's wonderful. That's really good. Yeah, I try with my sons. I have I have three sons, and uh. I have two daughters, three sons, but um, but you know, so they like to rebel here and there, you know, and this and that. But I tried to be very close with them, but I was too busy during a certain time getting tenure, you know, the whole professional thing. Yeah. And so I I was I became I I became what I didn't want to become, sort of unfamiliar, you know what I mean? Like uh show up in the evening and then get up and leave in the morning, you know, this kind of thing. And um, I hope I've succeeded somewhat to some degree with most of them.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

I I've been there.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

That's good. That's really good. That's lovely. Uh family is so critical and important, it really is, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

On the other hand, of course, where do you get your youth and your internal youth and vigor? Have you always been a have you been a playful person your whole life?

SPEAKER_03 29:04

I've tried to, although I don't necessarily have that image. Like, you know, my good wife of 57 years now, um, pointed out to me because I I was you know whining when we were first getting together and telling each other about our youth, you know. I was whining that I had a hard time and my family was very theatrical and crazy, they have emotional struggles and people would get all wound up and blah, blah, blah. And uh, my older brother would kind of pound on me and I'd lose my temper. So I was going on like that. So then she, you know, found a box of old snapshots, you know, and she pointed out that actually in most pictures where the whole family's there, I'm the only one who has a big grin. So I must have been empathizing with them and irritating them by being like a pain or naughty or whatever, or a big mouth. I always did have a very big mouth and uh and would say things and uh whatever I did. And uh I I I uh I was uh I think I was very I was 5'3 until I was 12, I think to not not alarm my elder brother, who was always alarmed by me from sibling time, you know. And uh then in when I went away to prep school, I grew 13 inches in one year. And I reached my my six three height, which now I've shrunken down to six one at eighty-three. So so anyway, yeah, I thought I think I've always been kind of playful. And and uh to my joy, I discovered that that Buddha is very playful too. He has a tremendous sense of humor, you know. And um he um but he's subtle, you know, he plays jokes on people in a subtle way and always to help them, you know. But laughter, you know, in our in the Buddha's view, you know, we all have we all have this central nervous system, the human, we're all super AI creatures, human beings, according to Buddha's view. We're really marvelous among animals. And we have because we have this big AI brain, and actually, you know, my AI friends, for all their pumping up and propaganda about how great AI is, they all admit so far, nobody has contradicted that, that the human brain has more connections than even the best AI connected to however many hard disks in some data center. You know, the human brain is still not matched, the billions and hundred billion different connections that we have in our heads and also throughout the body, the whole central nervous system. So Buddha knew that, and he knew how precious the human intelligence is, and it can become enlightened wisdom. And so education for Buddha was the highest value of human life. You know, it's it was the thing, lifelong education is good. So the fact that you, John, are feel like 19 years old at your your advanced age of what 51 or something?

SPEAKER_01 32:04

I am 62.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

52, there you go. 60, 62. My wife says I hold my youth. Actually, 62 is quite young. You know, even the 70s will be fine. Although I I don't say this because I don't know that, but yet fully. But our 90-year-old friend said once, Bob and Nina, he said to the two of us, you're fine now in your 70s, but let me tell you, the 80s are not for sissies. But but I feel fine in the 80s, even, but I'm not and I am a sissy, so I'm trying to manage, you know. But anyway, we we are we are we that's the point. If you're ha by the way, that is a very big point, medically speaking. And that is what the doctors, good doctors know intuitively, although they don't get they don't get educated about it in medicine, unfortunately. But but they do know that, intuitive healers, which is that the human being's health, or even a pet, an animal, has to do with their joy level.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Health energy is joy. If someone takes grief too far, like I think my mother did. My dad had a weird thing from his teenage years where he had rheumatic fever, but then he did a lot of heavy sports against doctors' orders. So he had a weird layering of muscle and weakness in his heart, and he died very young in his 50s.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

And my mother then died very young in her 60s, and I think of cancer, actually, but he had a heart attack. But but the point is that um she was very struck by grief about it, and I think that's how the cancer started, you know. So if you lose your joy and get all gloomed out about reality, then that loses you, that weakens your immune system. That makes your cells open to being invaded by cells that are not part of the network. You know, they they're doing some random growth on their own and killing off the host, you know, which is called cancer. And so I really think that joy is health. Health is joy, and and the good doctors who have a good bedside manner and who stimulate a good uh uh, what do you call it? Not probiotic, but a good placebo effect in the patient. You know, the most powerful healing thing is to believe you can get well, because that cheers you up. And then when you're cheered up, you're like, oh, I can handle it. And then that's the that's the vigor that you need, you know, to get rid of whatever symptom. So the good doctor has cultivates the ability to see the potential health in the patient, which is the patient's joy. So when they give a diagnosis, they're very careful not to over-dramatize the negative aspect. They, of course, they reveal it, but they they encourage the natural health to emerge from the patient. I've I'm confident I my experience of doctors bears that out too. You know, functional medicine doctors.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

My wife's name is Joy. There you go. And she chose that name, and uh, because that was a name which naturalized. And in Tai Chi Chuan, Joy is so important, it helps us lose our ego and it helps us become more powerful. And Tai Chi Chuan is very good for health. I mean, my version is from uh Cheng Man Chang, who is uh also a Chinese physician, and I noticed now by not missing a day of Tai Chi Chuan for over five weeks, this uh tendinitis that was on my wrist for years, it's almost totally disappeared.

SPEAKER_03 35:44

Isn't that great? I've been I have one on my thumb that I'm doing Tai Chi thing where you you massage it like this. Excellent, like this, on this this part of the thumb, and that's a very it's on Instagram actually. There's some great Tai Chi masters on Instagram. So speaking of joy, I'm at your constant pain there, and when I massage this three or five three or five minutes a day, right here, it it it minimizes, and apparently this connects to the circulatory system.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

This point.

SPEAKER_03 36:17

And so you it connects to this thing in the upper muscle of the R of the near the elbow, and then the one up on the shoulder, and that it helps your helps my arterosclerosis from eating too much ice cream, that I'll have a little clog probably here and there. But this really helps. So I'm on your ball wavelength, wavelength, but I'm not as good as you. I have a dear friend, Paul, who was diagnosed with AIDS actually in the 70s, and he is healthy as a horse. That's like four 50 years later, because he really worked seriously with Tai Chi masters, and he never misses a day. He does an hour to a day, and he you know he draws that qi. And of course, they're all now good anti-retrovirals and things like that. But but he weathered the whole huge problem when many people were dying. His wife passed away at that time, that wife of that time, and he's he's tremendous. Uh, and because of Tai Chi, I admire him. But I'm I don't I'm not as good as that. I'm too much of a desk jockey.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Related to this joy, I met your friend Ron Doss in three, amazing, and uh and I know, and uh he's such a great teacher. So what was he a joker at all? Did he have a mischievous side to him?

SPEAKER_03 37:33

Well, he was a dear friend of mine, uh, although earlier when he was Dr. Richard Alpert, he did have a few personality issues, and you know, we didn't say I don't everything. But um, on the other hand, once he found Neem Curly, and he also did study a little bit with my first guru, who was a Mongolian guy who lived in New Jersey, uh Lama, who lived in Mongolian, but uh but had been in Tibet for 40 years. What was his name? In the 50s, actually, in New Jersey. And um, he uh Ramdot Richard used to come down and visit him quite a bit, and uh he's in Geshiwangal was his name. He's in B here now. Thank you. But uh he didn't click with him quite to the degree that I did, and or that he did with Nimkar Olibaba with Maharaji. And his story with Maharaji is so amazing. And actually, I really got to, you know, what when he was had his stroke and he was in Maui, I really got to really realize that Richard is our first Hindu Jew saint. You know? Yes, I heard you say that. He's a Hindu, you know, Hindu Buddhist saint, uh, in in his generation, in my opinion. You know, there might be some other Zadikim that I never heard of who are saints, I'm sure they are. But uh he was definitely, he got rid of all those youthful Richard Alpert, little privileged ideas about himself, and he became truly their serving beings. And he, you know, right at the moment he died, I happened to have been in Menla, which is the country healing center of the Dalai Lama's Cultural Center in America, Tibet House US, which main base is in New York City on 15th Street. And I and Katie and I were having a dialogue and he was doing chanting when he passed away. And in um, we got the word he had passed away in Maui, um, uh Ramdas. But you know, we felt Ramdas go through to the Bardo and to be greeted by the saints and Maharaji and everything. We really, we basically, of course, we might have been our fantasy, but we felt we really felt it. Totally. Wow. And we feel, I feel his presence still through his, you know, Ramdas, different people, you know. And I'm going to Boone, North Carolina with KD. KD was also very fond of him and very fond of Maharaji in a very strong way. No, Krishna Dass, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

I I hope to go there for that program. I don't think I have any.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

In Boon, you're going to be there. Well, I'll see you there, then I'm going to be there. They asked me to come, you know. Um I I did see Ram Maharaj, but I never had a chat with him, sadly, because I was always doing ambulance service for his center there. Because I was living in a different part of Almora, near Nanital, and where his temple was. And when Ramdas was there with Dan Goldman and KD and all those guys, uh, I would often come there, and but normally to what pick one of the hippies who got sick and take him to the Nanotopital hospital because I had a Volkswagen camper.

unknown 40:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

So they would call me and I would come. So I never took time. And I was working on my dissertation and I was into sort of lamas, you know, so I didn't go and hang out with I missed the chance to go and hang out with Maharaji. But in a way, I feel later with Ramdas in Maui and later with KD now that I'm with Maharaji. When I'm with them, I do. Or even, you know, I have pictures of Maharaj that flip me out. Just looking at the picture.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Uh now, so I think you're a great storyteller. And I think part of you being a great storyteller is you distill uh you get rid of all the uh unnecessary factoids and just get it right to the audience without dumbing them down or dumbing yourself down. How do you do that? How are you such a great and engaging story?

SPEAKER_03 41:32

Well, I don't think I really am, but I'll tell you what it is is uh is that I do think I try to be empathetic. And I try to remember when I was an academic teacher, I was very popular in Colombia, and I have my classes, my main lecture classes were limited by the number of TAs I had, which were not which were too few, because the department didn't have that many fellowships for Buddhist studies and so on. But you know, they have all the other world religions in a religious studies department, and uh only a limited number of um grants, you know, fellowships. So, but I always felt that the main thing happening when you're teaching something or even talking to somebody is the person you're talking to. Yes, and it is the receptivity and the curiosity and the interest in their mind that then inspires you to think of something, and it's almost like the vibe, or it's almost like it's like it's not clairvoyance because I'm not clairvoyant, but it's like you kind of feel what is you intuitively feel. I think actors also do that in live theater, and you know, and um I think they sort of feel the, they feel the feel the room, they feel the crowd, you know. And uh also women naturally do that more than men, because men aspire to fill the room with themselves. And I'm afraid too many professors do that too. They just get up and then they're if they're performing. Whereas I try to be listen to the student mind, I I welcome interruption, and uh I somehow and I I affirm to them that it is what's going on in their mind that is the important thing in the class. And what and also the and another very effective way to do that, if you happen to not be clairvoyant, like I'm not, uh, because I haven't meditated enough, but um the another way to do that is to when you're broaching a subject that you already have quite familiar with, you don't decide that you already know all about it, and you you learn new things from your own subject.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

You may see that you're learning while you're talking about it, and you say, Oh, I didn't notice this, and you actually don't don't notice. Like, like there's some sutras where you know I read it for students for 40 years or something, you know, and then I see a new thing there in the on this in this sentence, and then I make a fuss about how I do see this new thing and why I didn't see it before and how I now see it. So they realize. That you're learning with them rather than being the big all-knowing who's telling them, you know. Yes. And then if they ask you a question where you don't know, you say you don't know. You don't feel insecure about your professorial thing that you're supposed to know more than them. Of course, you do know more about something, some piece of information, but that doesn't mean you know really the real meaning of it all. So you're always learning. I think that's very important, personally. And I really do. But I wanted to tell you a little story about Ram Dass, which you might have been. Yes, yes. Well, he, I don't know if you know Mark Epstein, my dear friend. He's a famous Buddhist psychiatrist, you know, who goes to Bari all the time and he writes wonderful books. He's a very popular writer. So he apparently had a personal meeting at home with Ramdas in Maui. Uh, the year before I first went to, I was first invited to one of the Maui events. And um, Ramdas told him he had a problem, that his problem was that he was a Hindu, and his self wanted to go join the super-self at, you know, whenever, you know, because it wasn't that happy in his current body. But his all his friends, or most of them, were Buddhists, and they kept telling him he couldn't have a self. And this bothered him a lot. So then Mark said, Well, I don't know how to explain that. I'm sure I don't think I can really help you, but you know who could really help you is Bob Thurman, my friend. Oh, yeah, I remember Bob. Oh, we know Bob. Oh, I haven't seen Bob in some year, blah, blah, blah. So then uh, so then he invited me the next year to come. Uh KD transmitted it, and then I went, then I went for a few years. But anyway, on that time on stage, he says to me, Bob, I have this problem, you know, and there were like 500 people there. He says, and that is that uh, you know, I I have a self, I'm a Hindu, and I want to go join Brahma's self, you know, Krishna's self, whatever, uh, when I pass away. And all my Buddhist friends say I can't have one. So what do I do? So then I was inspired a little bit, and I said, because I I didn't want to quote a lot of Buddhist texts and things, I didn't think that would help. So I said, Well, Ramdas, I'll tell you what, there's one great yogi who has something to say that I think will help you. He says, Really? A yogi? Who's that? Who's that? I said, Yogi Berra. Oh, great, yogi berra? Oh, great. Well, what do you have to say? And he looked a little suspicious because it's yogi berra, it's not yogi, it's nama mama. So then I said, Well, what yogi said was when you come to a fork in the road, take it. And he loved it. Some of the at first, some of the audience were very scandalized or something that I was like playing around, fooling around with Ramlas. You know, they wanted to be more pious. But but actually, then they also he started roaring with laughter, which was hard for him in that body member. And they were, and um, and then we all were, and uh, he realized you know, he had to deal a little, he had to develop a little non-dualist cognitive dissonance tolerance, as we call it. Tolerance of cognitive dissonance, which is the doorway to non-duality, and uh and he got it, you know, and loved it. And he was going on and on that particular another four or five days of that retreat. Wow to tell in Maui about Yogi Berra. Oh, right. Really, because he he used to be a New York Yankees fan himself, you know what I mean? So he knew about Yogi Berra. He did, you know, and uh that was I was so thrilled with that one, and I I just I just got to love him, you know, old Ramdolf. I didn't love Romals. Amazing thing, he another amazing thing, and not that time, but another time I was giving another lecture, one of the maybe this next year or two years later, and I I got very inspired by the whatever it was, and it was you know, people were very happy in the thing. So then I went back to where he was in the audience in his wheelchair, sort of a little bit childishly looking to see if he liked it. But you know what he said to me immediately? He said, Look at them. In other words, he didn't want me looking at him, even though he he enjoyed it, he told me later, but there was a whole bunch of them looking at us both. Oh he wanted me to rather be concerned about them, because that's what he was concerned about, and they were very happy, so it was fine. But I'm just saying I love that in that he he was not being the center of it. He he was he was moving himself out of the center of it, and he was opening the door uh to be more aware of the field of people, you know, which is very proof of an enlightening person.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Well, I don't think he ever saw it to be the center of attention, he was totally transparent, he didn't try to get a uh a following, and what he by him not seeking a following, he got the following because he was the real the real and caring and loving McCoy.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Yes. Well, that's what it, by the way, that's a great thing he said to Mark Epstein that I really liked, which is that he uh he Mark had been a bit of an undergraduate student of his as Richard Alpett years and years before, like decades before, many decades before. And so he said, Oh, now you're a shrink, are you, type of thing, you know? But not but in that whole thing where he would speak, right? The the uh post-stroke uh Ramdat. And then Mark said, Yes, yes, you know, I'm a shrink now. But then Ramdas says, Well, what I'd like to know is do you all see them when they come to you as already healed? I said. So that's like what I say, you do you see the healing and the health in them? Of course they're gonna tell you the problems, and you're gonna see that and you're gonna work with that. But do you see the healing in them? Yes. Like even the potential, but it's the it's the most important thing. Or are you thinking you're healing them? In other words, it's very, very good, I think. That was what I meant about the doctor who sees the health in the patient. That was so in, you know. I don't like to say enlightened person anymore. I like to say enlightening person. Excellent. I like to use the geran because if someone is enlightened, their concern is enlightening others. It isn't, and it isn't doesn't mean brainwashing them or having them join a cult, it means letting them blossom themselves, you know, helping them to do so, knowing that they have that in them, and you're not necessarily they're not just going to repeat what you say. Do you know what I mean? That's not gonna help them that much, you know.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

So in these last few moments, I do want to ask you is it true that George Lucas is one of your friends? Yes. He's a really nice guy. Do you know uh the extent to which uh Buddhism has or has not influenced him in his being a masterful storyteller?

SPEAKER_03 51:05

Uh no, well, not not in this life, I think. I think that Buddhism, uh at least what he knows from what I know about what he knows. I mean, may he may have other meditation teachers, whatever. I don't really know all the detail. But I know that what he thinks of as Buddhism from his knowing me has cheered him up here and there, because he gets very, he gets, he's very has a lot of of open-heartedness about the mass of people who he tells those great stories to, and he gets a little bit Weldschmerz, Weldschmerz kind of feeling. He can get down on that, like feeling there's so much craziness, you know. I mean, he's very aware of all that. And uh, I try to cheer him up, you know. And um, and I do, and and and I I do love him and his lovely wife and child and children. I love them all, and uh, they are great people. And um he uh he did he doesn't like being retired exactly. He he was so to be made. The one thing he really loved was the young indie series that he did, and he was a little frustrated that that didn't go so commercially well as his other works, you know. But but it but actually should be revived on Netflix. I think there's it's really great. The Young Indie, I don't know if you know, because he meets Virgief, he meets all kinds of interesting people, the Young Indy.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

I'll have to go see it.

SPEAKER_03 52:25

The way it's set. Well, I don't even know if it's available online so well, but maybe it is. And yeah, he is a great, great, great person. I really like him. Although I remember, like funny thing, we were at a birthday party for one of his kids, or one of the daughters, I think, uh, by previous marriage. And he uh is a really great dad. And um he uh we were sitting in a little booth with with um his other ones and so on. So he says to me, he had had an epiphany by something. He says, Bob, I f I I figured it out. I said, Well, what is it? What is it, George? He says, It's all about survival, so then I couldn't restrain myself. I said, Well, that's great, George, but the problem is we're not going to survive. And then he looked at first a little shocked, and then everybody at the table laughed because they're all very enlightening, their family. And then he got he got on and he laughed, and he was open, you know, because you know that that's the thing. Tibetans uh enlightening way is that being aware of death is the doorway to being both most vitally alive. Yes, it makes you appreciate the moment, it makes you realize how precious life is, and also when you really look at it, you realize that the thing that the materialists sell to us to keep their higher salaries and their big research grants and their billion-dollar like secret trials and whatever it is, is that we're going to be permanently anesthetized in nothingness at death, which is utterly unscientific and absolutely false. Right because news flash, my favorite slogan nowadays, nothing is nothing. That's right, therefore, there's no it's not a destination where a continuum, a life force continuum, can go and and stay asleep for eternity. It's unconscious, it's absolutely not the case. When we go unconscious even at night, we dream. Yes. We we wake up, and if it's we're in a problematic place in a horrible situation, we don't even want to wake up, but we do. And so death, if they literally look carefully at death, they will and besides which scientists, you know, when I challenge my natural science friends on this point, which doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the things they have discovered looking at matter and at the way atoms and subatomic things and galaxies and blah, blah, blah, it's all great, but they done, but now they've hit the limit. They crashed into dark mass and dark energy ten times more than the bright stuff. They crashed into black holes, they don't know, they crashed into the uncertainty principle of the subatomic product. So they don't really know what to do. But what they must do, what Dalama wants them to do, is really look into themselves.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Do like Jonathan does, Jonathan Katz does, and look into the way their own mind works, and starting to realize that is a zone to be scientifically investigated, rather than succumb to the dogma that it doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 55:40

That there's no such thing as a mind, it's just an epiphenomenon of the brain, that we're we're all really essentially nothing. You know, by bra and they deify nothingness as the final destination and the bottom of reality, which is ridiculous. It's slightly insane, actually. And uh, because it's not that that's the word for what isn't there. So rather, freedom or emptiness or nirvana is everythingness from a non-dual perspective. Wonderful. That's much nicer. A lot of Buddhists think that emptiness it means nothingness, and that Buddha was agreeing with their materialism, and that is not correct. I told you, Bob, we'd be together for an hour. Oh, we did. Okay, well, I didn't really promote one thing. My book Wisdom is Bliss, my latest one, Wisdom is Bliss, the four friendly fun facts that can change your life. I like people to get that book and cheer themselves up. The real subtitle is CTFU, which I'll leave as an anagram. Cheer TF Up.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Well, you have plenty of books.

SPEAKER_03 56:54

Because you know why? Because Buddha has been given the bad rip of the noble of the friendly fun fact or the noble truth of suffering, the suffering of change, etc. So they think, you know, like the previous Pope Benedict, he thought Buddha was a super killjoy and we're all supposed to be miserable. But that's that's a mistake. His nirvana was the Buddha's good news, and that means we're supposed to be happy. So I really wanted to make that point. And then, two, I want to invite people to come to Tibet House US on 22 West 15th Street. Or for one of our retreats or an RR or healing session or a Tibetan meridian massage at Minlam Mountain Retreat uh in Phoenicia, New York, in the Catskills.

SPEAKER_01 57:37

That's excellent. And Bob, the name of this show is Beat the Prosecution. I know you're not a lawyer, but you're interested in the law uh to an extent. Do you have any suggestions for us, criminal defense or uh lawyers or or the defendants beyond uh the importance of uh loving your enemies, which we didn't even get to, but that is one of your books.

SPEAKER_03 58:00

But loving your enemies is very important. We can take a minute unless you have a time. We can take a minute. Loving your enemy is so practical and important. It's not at all a prescription for martyrdom, as it has been misrepresented by the Romans messing up Rabbi Jesus' really excellent teaching, uh, you know, by by centering on the crucifix instead of centering on the ability to rise from murder, you know. But never mind that, from this great yogi rabbi, who he was, you know. And uh my point being that loving your enemy means, because what love means is wishing the beloved to be happy.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 58:42

Well, the reason your enemy is your enemy is because that person thinks you are standing in the way of their happiness. And if they can just harm you or eliminate you or get rid of you, they'll be happy. And actually, of course, they won't, because then they'll want to harm and eliminate other people. But the point is, so they're confused. So, therefore, if you love them, you want them to be happy because once they're happy, they'll leave you alone and they won't be your enemy anymore.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

That's great.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

And one way they're not going to be happy is by destroying you. So, therefore, loving your enemy means prosecute them or her if they're doing evil and they're making crime and they're hurting people and they're robbing them or they're deceiving them or whatever it is wrong or killing them, actually, as certain dictators have been doing lately, as the ICJ and the ICC have noticed. And we don't want to be, we shouldn't be collaborating with that actually, or envying that, and want our people wanting to do that. That's really, really wrong. And so if you love him, you want to make him happy by stopping him from being destructive.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 59:45

And if you have to stop him by prosecuting and by restraining, and then but but then key, if you're restraining if you're if you're if the jail place is a torture chamber, then that's no good. Yes. You have to simultaneously work on making rehabilitation real, you know, by rehabilitating. In other words, re-educating such a person as much as possible, psychologically and so on. And for example, I know a certain unnamable person who is out to do negative things, has already done a lot of them, whose niece is a very good psychoanalyst. And that person, if restrained in a pleasant place, could take some lessons from his niece.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

That would be good.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:32

Who, by the way, whose book about him is very sympathetic about his difficult childhood and his traumatization in his own childhood. So then she knows the way for healing to him, which is not by becoming omnipotent, is not going to heal him at all. It's going to make it worse. And so, and I'm not talking about anybody we know. But but, you know, that's loving your enemy. And then this is the other thing. That also means that the prosecutor has to try to see the big picture. And even though they're prosecuting an evildoer like somebody who did a big robbery or they did it, they did some murder or something, and see that they don't do that anymore, and that they're they see the error of their ways. It's proven to them, even though they might still scream and not accept that proof. But then they have to simultaneously, as a group, you know, the bar associations that they have to really get more after the prison industry, and especially this very dangerous thing of the private prison industry, where their bottom line is enhanced by keeping more prisoners longer, having more repeat offenders, etc. That's really, really wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Well, you know, Captain Paul Watson.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

That makes for there become torture chambers, you know, like that thing in like that thing in in El Salvador, you know. Yeah. That's not the solution to all the terrible violence that went on for years in El Salvador, where I'm sympathetic and all the gangs that arose from that violence. But that's the only way people thought they could protect themselves. But actually, by being more violent like that, it's not really going to help. If he doesn't do something good for those people who are restrained, he has to train them in basketball or something. You know, you can't just and the way they push their heads down and they have two black-suited guys super pulling them around. That's really beyond the pale. That's like so hellish. It's just, it's really disgusting. And the people who do that, it's very demeaning and it's very bad for them, you know, desensitizing them and making them evil and horrible. It's really, I just can't speak how unspeakable it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

Oh, it's it's awful. And and but nonetheless, you know, I want everyone to hear, even when Bob's talking about uh such troubling things, you can see why I adore this man so much for all the reasons I said his essence is amazing. If I'm feeling down in the dumps one day, all I need to do is play one of his podcasts or YouTube, and he has me laughing hysterically and also in touch with reality.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:04

That's that's that's the job. That's the game.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

You can find the links to his podcast and his YouTube and his books at bobtherman.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:16

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:17

Thank you, and we got the plug for Tibet House. Uh, Bob, uh, what's uh is just best to donate to Tibet House just by going to Beth?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:26

Tibet www.thus.org.org. Or t-h-us- I'm sorry, or www.menla-m-e-n-l-a.org. Those are two other important websites.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

And Tibet House.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:45

Because Dalai Lama also was a wants to cheer people up. He said that when he first came to America in 79. He said when when Cyrus Vance and Jimmy Carter gave him finally a visa, broke past Brzezinski and Kissinger and gave him a visa. And um he came here, he said, I'm not promoting Buddhism. I'm promoting the common human religion of kindness. Excellent. Yes. And and it's kindness, good humor is kindness, cheers people up. And that's what we have to do. We have to see the glass half full. We have to, even we're prosecuting somebody, we don't hate them. You know, the wonderful tradition of the lawyer defending even the bad guy, you know, that's that's also can be good, as long as there's no corruption involved. And um, you know, the even the bad guy gets you know, habeas corpus, presumption of innocence, etc. Due process. That's what we all want.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:38

Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:39

That's what you are devoted to in your life, Jonathan. And I I honor you for that. I really do.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Well, thank you, Bob. Thank you so much. You've given so many great ideas. If you have any final parting words uh for us, otherwise, I'll I'll sign out whichever one you prefer.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:54

Okay, thank you very much. I will sign off, and you have a great weekend.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

Please don't sign off before I take this too. Don't sign off before I sign off, though, because I'm going to talk you for 10 seconds. Okay. Thank you. Oh, wait. Well, thanks, Bob Thurman. You've heard from Bob Thurman, a great man, a great teacher, a great Dharma teacher. Thank you so much. This is John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DWI defense lore in Northern Virginia. Stay tuned.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:28

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Cat only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571-406-7268.