49 Freedom from Existential Suffering

Let’s go directly to the meditation. The chanting first then meditation. [00:16] Alan and the class chant three times, The Seven Line Prayer and Mantras, in Tibetan.

Transcriptionist note: The Seven Line Prayer and Mantras (in Tibetan and English) and Guru Rinpoche Mantras (in Tibetan) are written below.

The Seven Line Prayer and Mantras

HUNG ORGYEN YUL GYI NUP JANG TSAM HUNG
In the northwest frontier of Oddiyana,

PEMA GE SAR DONG PO LA
In the heart of a lotus

YAM TSEN CHOG GI NGÖ DRUP NYEY
Sits the one renowned as Padmasambhava,

PEMA JUNG NEY ZHEY SU DRAK
Who achieved the wondrous supreme siddhi,

KHOR DU KHAN DRO MANG PÖ KOR
And is surrounded by a host of many dakinis.

KYED KYI JE SU DAK DRUP KYI
Following in your footsteps, I devote myself to practice.

JIN GYI LAP CHIR SHEK SU SÖL
Please come forth and bestow your blessings.

GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG

[02:06] chant ends, Alan continues and whispers Guru Rinpoche Mantras

OM ĀḤ HŪṂ VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HŪṂ
OṂ ĀḤ HŪṂ VAJRA GURU PADMA TÖTRENG TSÄL VAJRA SAMAYAJAḤ SIDDHI PHALA HŪṂ

[04:38] OM AH HUM GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG

[04:59] You may switch postures now if you wish.

[05:22] Meditation bell

[05:38] Settle you body speech and mind in their natural states.

[06:28] And let your awareness, what the Dzogchen tradition calls your ordinary consciousness, rest right where it is, effortlessly, without object, without target, without hope or fear, without striving. Resting in its own nature, knowing itself. This is the portal to the deeper dimensions of consciousness, to the substrate consciousness and beyond, to pristine awareness itself. Look nowhere else, to know who you are or to find your true refuge. This is a portal, rest there and see what rises up to meet you.

[08:33] When we rest in the sheer knowing of knowing, the knowing of being aware. We’re resting in the cognizant aspect of consciousness. Knowing what is already true, what is actual, but there’s more to consciousness than knowing. There is always also its luminous quality. The luminous quality that illuminates, makes manifest dreams, creative ideas, music, art, creativity of all kinds. It is the luminous aspect that allows us, enables us to venture into the realm of possibility and not be mired down in the realm of actuality, as if that is all that is true, all that is real. As we move now into the meditative cultivation of compassion, we move into the realm of possibility, imagining that which is not yet actual, but which could be. Compassion is the aspiration that we may be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. It takes no wisdom to experience manifest suffering. But it does take some wisdom and intelligence to recognize the underlying causes. It also takes intelligence and wisdom to recognize the suffering of change, when things seem to be going well and we’re enjoying our lives, while embedded in a whole network of attachments, clingings, cravings. It takes wisdom to see the underlying causes of the dissatisfaction and the pending unhappiness that is just waiting to occur. But now this morning we move to the deepest dimension of suffering as presented in the Buddhist tradition. I won’t give the technical term, I will simply say existential suffering, existential dissatisfaction, that occurs even in the absence of adversity, even in the absence of overt craving, clinging and attachment. It goes right to our very sense of identity, our existence itself. A sense of unease, a sense of alienation, a sense of discontent. Stemming from a delusional sense of self. The sense that I am separate, autonomous, inherently existent, and therefore inherently other. Separate from everything and everyone else. Is such suffering real? Have you ever experienced it, this subtle dimension? And is its underlying cause real, can you identify it?

[12:26] So before venturing into the actual meditation on compassion, attend closely as you direct your awareness inwards. Do you have a sense of being someone in here, someone from your side, a quiet presence, a subject, discrete, unitary? Can you see your own face? And if so, what do you see? Do you have a sense of being the same person, the same entity, the same individual or self that you were yesterday, and ten years ago and twenty years ago? Do you have a sense of continuing through time as some unchanging essence? Can you identify that? Is there such grasping or is there not? Do you have a sense of being autonomous, not being identical to your body but having a body, not being identical to your mind but having a mind, directing your mind, using, purifying, transforming, being bullied by, on occasion blessed by, your mind? Is there someone in here who has a body and mind? Is that you? What do you look like? See your own face.

[16:10] Can you see a connection? If you do indeed feel a sense of this autonomous, separate, independent agent, you sense it, can you identify it as the root of malaise, of discontent, the root of low self esteem and high self esteem, of uneasiness, of anxiety, of vulnerability? Can you see the connection? Vipashyana again involves cognizance knowing what is occurring now. But now we move explicitly to the cultivation of compassion rooted in wisdom, understanding, insight, and with the awareness that there is indeed this deepest dimension of suffering, some dissatisfaction. Begin with yourself. With each in breath, arouse the aspiration may I be free, free of this ground suffering and free of its underlying cause of delusion, especially the ignorance and delusion pertaining to my own identity and implicitly the identity of all other sentient beings. With each in breath arouse the yearning may I be free of this dimension of suffering and its causes. With each in breath imagine that ignorance and delusion in the form of a cloud of darkness, veiling, obscuring the natural luminosity and purity of your own awareness, your own being. With each in breath imagine syphoning off this darkness and extinguishing it in this light of the Buddha nature, of a pristine awareness at your heart.

[20:04] And as this darkness recedes breath by breath, imagine this light at your heart filling, pervading your entire being, your body, your mind, your very sense of identity, saturated by this clear light, pristinely, primordially pure and luminous.

[21:35] Now expand the field, the space of your awareness, to include all of those nearby in your proximate vicinity, each of us, each of us sentient beings clinging, grasping to ourselves as autonomous, separate and looking outwards for our happiness with craving and then with hostility when we meet with obstacles. Wishing to be free of suffering, hastening after the causes of suffering. Wishing to be happy, destroying the causes of our own happiness. With a heart of compassion, with each in breath draw in this darkness of delusion and ignorance of those around you with the aspiration may you like myself be free, free of suffering, all dimensions of suffering and their underlying causes right down to the root. With each in breath imagine drawing in this darkness but extinguishing it in this infinite light, this fathomless light at your heart. May we all be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

[24:09] And breath by breath expand, expand the field of your awareness and banish the darkness in all directions, outwards and outwards, replacing the darkness with light. This is what is already there once the darkness is dispelled. Darkness merely conceals the light, it doesn’t extinguish it.

[27:04] Imagine this light becoming boundless and imagine all beings being free.

[28:32] Release all appearances, objects, and aspirations and let your awareness rest in its own place.

[29:23] Meditation Bell

[29:50] So it’s really this dimension of the cultivation of compassion that the skillful means and wisdom, the left hand, the right hand, they really must come together. You just don’t get to this depth superficially. There has to be intelligence, wisdom, and insight to see even what it’s all about. So not so easy but enormously deep and rewarding. So I’d like to share with you some gifts I received in my meditation this morning, thoughts that came to mind. Then also, some thoughts from outside of my mind then came to my mind, other people’s thoughts. Preface it by just pointing out that I’ve been quite tough in my criticisms of these so called new atheists, or militant atheists who disparage religion without having studied it. Just basically bringing their own infatuation with science but very naive and uninformed even of science but all the worse their naive loathing and contempt for religion and again without studying it well. And so I’ve read a number of these works and I find none of them are even worthy of refutation. They’re best used as mulch after the compost heap and is I think really a sign of the degeneration of our times that any of these books are taken seriously. The scholarship is so shoddy, they’re so prejudicial it’s an embarrassment to civilization frankly. Having said that, I’m not going to belabor that point. Nobody has to agree with me, but that should go without saying. How could I say you have to agree with me or what I do. I mean really, where is the agenda, how would I make you agree with me, not possible. But I’m not going to elaborate on that, I’m going to elaborate on another person who, also is an atheist but as I was reading him and I’ve read some of him before and I find just admiration coming up. Thoughtful, deep, well versed, erudite, knowledgeable and he wrote a whole book called, or an essay called, Why I’m Not a Christian. I look at his criticisms of Christian doctrine, practices and I say well I have to empathize with you on a lot of that, that’s why I don’t call myself a Christian in any normal sense of the term. And his name is Bertrand Russell. And so I found two statements by him that I found really very thought provoking, helpful. So his Bertrand Russell’s autobiography occasionally reveals a complex and ambivalent relationship to religion. So not simply a rabid denunciation, ridicule or so forth which is common among these so called new atheists, which I think is just embarrassing. But in particular he relates an episode in 1901 when he witnessed the wife of his Cambridge colleague Alfred Whitehead, a powerful thinker, I’ve read his work, very impressive. But he witnessed the wife, when he witnessed the wife of his Cambridge colleague Alfred Whitehead suffer intense pain due to heart problems causing Russell to have what can only be described as a spiritual insight. This is from his biography, and I quote from Russell,

The ground seemed to give way beneath me and I found myself in quite another region. [he writes] Within five minutes I went through such reflections as the following. The loneliness of the human soul is unendurable. Nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that religious teachers have preached. Whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best useless. It follows that war is wrong, that a public school education is abominable, that the use of force is to be deprecated and that in human relations one should penetrate to the core of the loneliness in each person and speak to that.

[33:52] I find that very powerful. And again whether it is by an atheist, agnostic, a Buddhist or Christian, really, does it really matter. The words are the words. I find that tremendously moving, thoughtful, deep, non prejudicial, existential. I was very moved by that. But there is more. I got interested because I feel he was right there, wasn’t it true. I mean this is my evaluation. He was talking about that deepest dimension of suffering. It wasn’t having a bad day, it wasn’t being infatuated, oh I’m so wealthy, I’m so handsome, I’m religious, I love life, isn’t it great, the suffering of change, it is not that, right? It’s not manifest suffering, it’s not the suffering of change, it’s deeper. He is really going deep there and he sees the only antidote there is love, right. Well so that perked my interest. I thought well my gosh that was so insightful. And I know he is very critical of Christianity but very thoughtful, well informed, nobody has to agree with him, a lot of people don’t, but a lot of people do. But it’s provocative, it’s thought provoking, intelligent, analytical, good use of logic. And he is an atheist. I would enjoy having a conversation with him, wish I could. I missed him. But then I got curious. I wonder what he had to say about Buddhism. Because he is so well informed. He really read. He read widely, he didn’t, how do you say, entomb himself just in western ethnocentricity, big thinker, big thinker. So, he did say something about Buddhism. And I quote.

Buddhism is a combination of both speculative and scientific philosophy. It advocates the scientific method and pursues that to a finality that may be called rationalistic. In it are to be found answers to such questions of interest as what is mind and matter. Of them, which is of greater importance. Is the universe moving towards a goal? What is man’s position? Is there living that is noble? It takes up where science can not lead because of the limitations of the latters instruments. [the limitations of scientific method] Its conquests are those of the mind.

[36:33] Man I’m impressed. [laughter] And he’s not a Buddhist. You know if I said that everybody would say ah he’s a Buddhist what does he know. He’s bought and sold, he’s a party member. But Russell wasn’t. He wasn’t a Buddhist. But man that’s good. I’m so impressed, thank you Bertrand Russell, I wish I had known you. The theme of anatta or anatman in Sanskrit, not self, not self. I think there is a lot of confusion, again by crude thinking, recent crude thinking, there is so much deep nuanced thinking. But then of course that there is now as well. But what’s becoming in the popular press, so much of it in references to Buddhism and even modern, some not all, some modern Buddhist scholarship, I’m thinking, oh that’s so crude, what happened. The crudeness is where there are Buddhist scholars and then are popularizations everywhere. The modern vipashyana movement, the modern Zen movement, and I’m sure it’s there in the modern Tibetan Buddhist movement as well. Self doesn’t exist, self doesn’t exist, there’s no self at all. I looked, all I saw was thoughts. So there’s thoughts without a thinker. I looked, all I saw was mental processes therefore there is no self, no self at all. Well the Buddha didn’t actually say that. It’s not self, this is not the self, this is not the self, this is not the self, this does not belong to the self. That’s what he actually said. Did the Buddha ever say there is absolutely in no sense of the term is it meaningful to speak of self because it’s like talking about the son of a barren woman, or whatever else you think, rabbits horns. Rabbits horns have no existence whatsoever, right? I think we can agree on that hopefully, if they find rabbits that do, then I will have to find another example. The self is not like that. The Buddha never said the self is absolutely in every way, non existent, and I can prove it. It’s not an opinion. That is if we’re really talking about what the Buddha said and we’re relying upon the most authoritative sources that we have such as the Pali canon then how about this one for starters. As the Buddha is just about to pass away into nirvana, I’ve read it before, I’m going to read it again though but this time with context, Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seek no external refuge, with the dharma as your island, with the dharma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.

[39:32] Well, be islands unto yourselves. If you don’t exist at all, that’s being an island unto nothing, which makes no sense. And there are many many cases, many throughout, I checked with Bhikkhu Bodhi, in terms of personal correspondence. I’ve also corresponded with Peter Harvey and some other outstanding so I’m not going to try and compare them but they’re all really superb scholars of the Pali canon. I’m not a Pali canon scholar at all, but I have the good sense to find really good ones, and when they’re very generous with their time, they respond to my correspondences. There are many, many cases where the Buddha did use first, second, third person personal pronouns. I, you, they, she, he, it comes everywhere. You don’t do that with unicorns, or things that have no existence whatsoever. I don’t really actually know if there are unicorns but let’s imagine.

[40:25] So modern scholarship and the modern popularization of Buddhism that says ah we figured it out, there is no self at all. Puhh, you’re wrong, but you’re actually catastrophically wrong. And then what happens frequently, ever so frequently now, as people who are very keen on science come together with people who are you know have attended a vipassana retreat or a Zen retreat or maybe even a Dzogchen retreat, whatever. They say ah that Buddhist theory there’s no self. Right on, there’s no self at all, you don’t exist, you’re non entity. You know why? Because the neuroscientists have the same conclusion. They looked into the brain and there is no cpu. There is no central unit within the brain that’s the master. The cpu or the ceo or the cia [laughter] There is no central intelligence agency or part of the brain that is controlling all the other parts that would be the neural correlate from me. There’s at least one neuroscientist, do I get confirmation Amy? She is nodding with noble silence. It’s uncontested. There is no part of the brain that is a neural correlate that you can say this is part of the brain that is controlling emotions and desires and attention and mindfulness and so forth and so on, there is no. You don’t find any self in the brain at all and therefore neuroscience corroborates Buddhism, you don’t exist at all. That means you’re not an agent and that means we no longer need to use the word I or for that matter mind, because when you look into the brain you don’t find mind, either. You don’t find thoughts, images, memories, hopes, fears, desires, dreams, or anything else mental. You find neurons, synapses, dendrites, glial cells, chemicals, electricity galore but what you don’t find is mind and you don’t find self. So in this delusional coalition of reductionist neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and delusional self styled buddhists, we have a really unholy union of delusion meeting delusion and shaking hands and congratulating each other. But from the Buddhist side, if you don’t exist at all then the same people will say there is no such thing as free will at all in other words you’re not making any decisions at all and therefore all of your actions are predetermined and therefore you are a robot. And you’re a robot because you’re simply influenced by the five skandhas, and that includes mental processes as well as physical, but you’re a robot, which means we just have to follow the logic. We just have to follow the logic. We simply have to not stop thinking and if this is true then you are not morally responsible for anything you do. That’s just, you have to come to that conclusion. If there is no person and everything that’s taking place here is simply a result of biological processes in the brain, they’re not mystical. They follow the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, none of those have any morality in them at all. Evolutionary biology, there is no morality there, it’s survive and procreate. That’s good, don’t survive, don’t procreate, that’s bad. There’s no there’s no morality, there’s no ethics in biology. And that includes neural biology, evolutionary biology that’s not what it’s designed to do. You don’t look there for ethics anymore than you look to Buddhism for understanding the brain, wrong place. But we see how catastrophic this is because you see Buddhism for many people does have some authority, science for I think every informed person has a great deal of authority, for good reason. Now we bring these two authorities together and say they both say there is no self and that the brain is the agent and the brain is operating according to the mindless amoral laws of physics, chemistry and biology. Now the whole notion of path is gone, the whole notion of ethics is gone, wisdom is gone, everything, it’s nihilism, nihilism you know.

[44:53] So this is, I’m speaking pretty calmly here, but this is really truly catastrophic. Is it not, and you don’t have to agree with me, but that’s my position. This is not simply, oh that’s wrong, like no, the world was not created 10,000 years ago and no there’s no santa claus and no, it’s not just wrong, this is catastrophically wrong because if people start living by this and many are, then we’ve got a big problem on our hands. Maybe and this is my untested hypothesis the fact that somebody’s killing themselves every 40 seconds, boy do I sympathize with that. If that’s who we are, why on earth would you want to continue? Have a bad day, one really bad day should be enough, say to hell with this, who needs more of these, and say I’m finished. That’s always an option I’m out of here. I don’t need more days, and I’m looking ahead I’m going to get sick, get old, ugly, going to lose my mind. Who needs that, screw it, I’ll off myself when I’m still in pretty good, 40. I’ll off myself when I’m 40, because everything is downhill from there right. [inaudible comment from student] Exactly, I missed it. I’m already 24 years late, what was I thinking? So an understanding of what is meant by anatta, that is not this crude, crude, utterly misleading, profoundly incorrect notion that we don’t exist at all which is now all over the place. The common press when they’re referring to Buddhism they say everywhere and then even among some scholars I think they’ve been influenced by materialism frankly because it’s clearly if you’re aspiring for nirvana and nirvana is annihilation, then you’re aspiring for non becoming which the Buddha said is a type of grasping and craving and clinging and attachment. So why do you call yourself a follower of the Buddha when you’re doing, aspiring for what he never proposed and what he specifically refuted? So I think really and here we are in the 21st century, proceed with great caution about what look on the surface to be parallels, positive affirmation across the board, neuroscientists, psychologists coming to the conclusion, there is no self. Ok, but if there were a self, would they know anything about it, when they’re just looking at behavior and brain patterns. It’s like looking for an elephant in your bedroom. If you want to find an elephant go to the zoo, but don’t draw false conclusions. So this Buddha’s statement from the Mahaparinirvana Sutta is very empowering, very empowering to the individual, because he says look within, to be an island unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge. I’ll read it through.

With dharma as your island, the dharma as your refuge seeking no other refuge, [but then he continues and I didn’t read this earlier] And how Ananda is a bhikkhu, [now his words are always carefully chosen, a bhikkhu, a fully ordained monk] and how Ananda is a bhikkhu an island unto himself or a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge, with the dharma as his island, the dharma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge. [How, how does that occur? How do you enact that, what does that imply? And he says] When he dwells contemplating the body as the body, earnestly with introspection and mindfulness, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world. When he dwells contemplating feelings as feelings, the mind as the mind, and phenomena as phenomena, earnestly with introspection and mindfulness after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world. Then truly he is an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge, having the dharma as his island, the dharma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge, those bhikkhus of mine Ananda, who now or after I am gone, abide as an island unto themselves, as a refuge onto themselves, seeking no other refuge, having the dharma as their island and refuge, seeking no other refuge. It is they who will become the highest if they have the desire to learn.

[49:00] There is so much there. It is so empowering to the individual. So how do you become, by taking your first person experience seriously, carefully examining, contemplating, with wisdom, intelligent discernment, probing into the nature of your body as a body, which means your body not as a self, not as a person, not your ego. Looking into your feelings as feelings. This is often mistranslated, but I’m quite confident this is the right translation, not feelings in feelings, that doesn’t mean anything. What, two feelings, one the container, the other one’s inside of it. It doesn’t make any sense. But feelings as feelings, makes perfect sense. Because otherwise, I’m so unhappy, I’m so happy, I am, I am, I am, ahhhh. Total conflation of ego with feelings. You’re not feelings, see feelings as feelings, and then look, do feelings have a real owner or not? Do they really belong to a self? So cut through the delusion. You’re not a feeling and those feelings are not inherently yours. They don’t belong to anyone, if you think they are, fine check it out. That’s what vipashyana is. Contemplate them with introspection, with mindfulness. It’s so ennobling to the individual. This you can know, don’t take, don’t take any external refuge. Don’t go to a therapist to figure this out. Don’t go to a psychiatrist and for heaven’s sake don’t go to a neuroscientist. [laughter] Why on earth would you go to a neuroscientist? To find out who you are, this is an external refuge. Don’t go to the pharmaceutical industry for god’s sake, they just want your money. And some there are benevolent, they want to help you. But when it comes to psychological problems, when it come to the suffering, existential suffering, you going to take a drug for that? When you’re feeling alone, you’re feeling alienated, you’re feeling vulnerable as an entity, as a creature in the universe. What are you going to take prozac, lithium, a severe blow to the frontal cortex? What are you going to take, looking for external refuge. This is where I weep and you’ve seen my passion come up. We’re being manipulated, the population is being manipulated for other people’s welfare, for their power, for their prestige, for and they want money. It’s a collusion, the scientific establishment, it’s academia, the pharmaceutical industry, the media, and the government. They’re disempowering us. They’re disempowering every individual. Churches have done that historically, they have been condemned for it. Rightly so, but now it’s bigger than a church, it’s all of those and they wage massive authority, a massive prestige, money that, they determine where the research goes, and it all empowers and enriches them, but what about us individuals? And of course the scientists, the government people, the pharmaceutical employees and so forth, they are also, it’s disempowering them as individuals. That all of our experiences are illusory we’re told. And even the most insulting statement to the human intellect possible: you don’t have any experiences. I’m kind of [expression]. You actually said that and you’re not in an insane asylum, right? You’re not in an insane asylum, and you’ve just told everybody, qualia don’t exist. You’ve just told everybody there is no mind body problem, there is no problem with consciousness because thermostats have it. This is an incredible degeneration of intelligence, where delusion reigns as king, perversion of science. This notion that there’s no mind body problem, the hard problem doesn’t exist. That the mind body problem has been solved, is now, we know what it is and this notion that it’s solved, permeates the press now. The mind is the brain. The brain is the agent. Hardly any references now, look find a reference where the mind is the agent, brain is the agent. You don’t exist. If you do, you’re an epiphenomenon, you’re an illusion, your mind doesn’t really exist, it’s just brain effluent, if it exists at all. So it’s either an epiphenomenon with no causal efficacy or it has no existence or it’s identical to the brain but one way or another it all comes out to the same, you’re nothing. All of us as individuals are nothing, it’s a radical disempowerment. The radical reduction of the individual to nothing. Where there is no internal refuge, there is no island unto yourself, because you’re nothing. And when Buddhists adopt this, people who call themselves Buddhists and embrace these principles of scientific materialism and then say for example this is Buddhism without beliefs, I say ohhh, now I am going to faint. You’ve taken the beliefs of scientific materialism, which are not scientifically established, they are simply beliefs. And then you’re saying those are no beliefs and now you’re saying this is Buddhism. It’s like taking polio and saying this is a polio vaccine. No it’s polio. These beliefs are like a mind eating virus. They eat your mind so you actually feel you don’t have one. They actually say, there are no qualia. Consciousness thermostat has it.

[54:53] So the stakes here are enormously high. But the Buddha’s own words here, come with such clarity. Draw from your own first person experience. Yes, our experience can be illusory on many occasions, in some ways it’s profoundly illusory, but then so is that true of everybody else. Scientists, philosophers and everybody else, but then refine your first person ability of mindful introspection, refine it so it is less and less and less delusional, misleading. Filter it, purify it, cleanse it, so you see clearly with incisive insight the nature of your body from the inside, the nature of your feelings, your mind, the phenomena arising to the mind. Ennoble yourself, don’t deny yourself. Purify yourself, don’t negate yourself. Be an island unto yourself and take the dharma as your refuge. This really I think is a work for everyone, religious and not religious, buddhist, not religious and not Buddhist. As Bertrand Russell said, this is going beyond the limitations of science which should come, be received with open arms by the whole scientific, academic, journalistic, and so forth communities. Thank you we’ve seen our limits but here from this powerful voice of the Buddha, whether you’re a Buddhist or not, here’s a voice that compliments, that comes and meet us, with respect, hand in hand where we see our limitations, that’s where you show your strengths. And where you’re Buddhists having no brain science at all, that’s your weakness. Maybe you didn’t need it, but it may be useful. That’s our strength, let’s join now. Together we’ll be stronger and we need to be together to address, let alone to be able to effectively deal with the extraordinary challenges, the crises that face humanity today. So thank you Bertrand Russell, he was our guru for this morning. Words of wisdom from an atheist, a very knowledgeable, wise, thoughtful atheist. A real mensch. Enjoy your day.

Transcribed by Kriss Sprinkle

Revised by Rafael Carlos Giusti

Final edition by Cheri Langston

Discussion

Ask questions about this lecture on the Buddhism Stack Exchange or the Students of Alan Wallace Facebook Group. Please include this lecture’s URL when you post.