- 6/30/2025
Dr. Robert Thurman, a respected scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama's close friend of over six decades, speaks to Mayank Chhaya on the Dalai Lama at 90 and his succession plans | SAM Conversation
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00:00Professor Robert Thurman has long been regarded as one of the most consequential articulators of
00:23Tibetan Buddhism in America. He was also the first Westerner to be ordained a Buddhist monk,
00:29by the Dalai Lama when he was barely past 20. Although he gave up monkhood in less than two
00:35years, he went on to become not just a lifelong practitioner of Buddhism and its sought-after
00:41teacher, but also one of the Dalai Lama's oldest and closest friends. As anticipation grows over
00:48what the Dalai Lama might announce on July 2nd on the much-speculated question of his successor,
00:55Dr. Thurman, who is 84, is uniquely positioned to understand what the soon-to-be-90 Dalai Lama's
01:02options could be. Perhaps the rarest possibility is that the Dalai Lama may opt for what is known as
01:09Matye Tulku, which in Tibetan means reincarnation during one's lifetime. There is nothing to suggest
01:16that the Dalai Lama would choose that option just four days before he turns 90 on July 6th,
01:21to preempt any effort by China to hijack the institution dating back to the late 16th century.
01:29However, in so much as it concerns options before him, Matye Tulku has come under some discussion.
01:35To understand what could be going through the Dalai Lama's mind,
01:39Mayank Shire Reports spoke to Dr. Thurman from New York.
01:44Welcome to Mayank Shire Reports, Professor Thurman. It's an absolute privilege to have you.
01:48Thank you, Mayank. I'm very happy to be here.
01:52You know, like I was saying, there are expectations that on July 2nd, the Dalai Lama will, via video
01:59message, make a highly consequential announcement about his succession. This is, of course, very
02:05speculative. But irrespective of what happens, what, in your judgment, should be the way forward
02:13for him to ward off China from taking over the institution of the Dalai Lama once he passes?
02:19Yes. Well, I think that he will simply, he has already said many times that that will not be
02:27acknowledged by him. And therefore, it will not really be acknowledged by the Tibetan people,
02:32although they can try to enforce it. But in the sense that they are already trying to prevent the
02:38Tibetan people from learning Tibetan, by that time, perhaps they are feeling that they will,
02:44you know, it will be irrelevant to the Tibetans, which has always been their fantasy and has never
02:48worked out for them. So beyond that, what I think he promised to do in his 90th year was not necessarily
02:57to designate a particular person or being, but to constitute a committee that will definitely find
03:08a person to be a Dalai Lama who will not have a political role. And in that sense, will be defined
03:17as a Dalai Lama differently from how he was defined when he was found. He has already, since 2011, as you know,
03:24resigned from having political responsibility or power. And he intends to preserve that for his
03:31next incarnation, which he always will say, he gives the caveat, if the Tibetan people want one,
03:36which, of course, they do, and so they will. So he will only be at the Ganden Podrang residence
03:43in Drebel Honestery, which is inaccessible to him, his residence, since it's occupied by someone else.
03:49And it will be in exile. And he has said it will be in exile, that he will be reborn, since the whole
03:56concept of it presumes his ability to choose the family in which he will be born. So, you know,
04:04that this ability is attainable by siddhas, you know, by adept yogis. And it will do. But what if it's,
04:13if there is something momentous stated on the jala second, it might be the chair of the committee,
04:19and it might be the fact that a lead person in the other schools of Tibetan Buddhism will be
04:29constituting that committee, because he wishes that the Dalai Lama to continue in a non-sectarian
04:34religion within Tibetan different schools. I don't use the word sects, in fact, people do.
04:42And also, it's even conceivable he would want to have people from other world traditions
04:48in that committee. And, you know, his ecumenism and his insistence on people not converting each
05:00other or competing for market, and religion is not competing for market share, and therefore itself
05:06not intending, not wishing to convert people who are not born as Buddhists into Buddhism. You know,
05:12his whole slogan of the, of keep your grandmother's religion, which he says to everyone, and he means it,
05:19and he has kept that line, held that line very, very carefully all along. And so, I think that whatever
05:28he, if he constitutes a committee on July 2nd, which is what I would rather imagine would happen,
05:33it will be that kind of a committee. It'll be, the only thing shocking about it would be the
05:38non-sectarianism of it. That's fascinating. That's fascinating. You know, that means we are perhaps
05:45confronting the very real possibility that the tradition of reincarnation may not exist as it's
05:55been understood. Because if, if this committee is choosing a successor in his lifetime, which is
06:00likely, are we then looking at a whole new tradition in Tibetan Buddhism?
06:05Well, yeah, the madetoku, what they call the madetoku, who you emanate, you create an emanation
06:12before you have passed away. I would be very surprised if he does that. But you know, anything
06:17is possible. You know, he's thought it through very, very carefully, I'm sure. And anything could be
06:23possible. But who knows? And if that would be earth-shaking, if he says that so-and-so already
06:31is the Dalai Lama, that would be amazing. And it would be a delight, actually, in a way. It would be lots
06:38of fun. But, which is conceivable. As far as there being no more reincarnation, I don't think that will
06:48happen in the sense that he would say, well, there won't be any more Dalai Lama reincarnations. In a way,
06:53what he's saying is that there will be no Dalai Lama reincarnation holding any sort of political
06:58power and political responsibility. That he's very, very determined about. He wants the Tibetans to learn
07:07the democratic skill of being a loyal opposition, so you can have a democracy. And therefore, he's not
07:14going to be there to make decisions for them, is what he's saying, you know, to mute conflict
07:19into where it's an alternation of power rather than a fight to the death over power, you know,
07:27which is what politics should be, such an alternation. So, which he certainly very much believes in.
07:33Actually, I think you can find its roots in the way the Buddha himself, Shakyamuni, constituted the
07:39Buddhist Sangha, which people don't understand, which is that in Buddhist monasticism, the abbot
07:47authority of the abbot is much more circumscribed than in Christian monasticism, where obedience to
07:53the abbot and the abbot's obedience to some archbishop and then God, finally everybody obeying God,
08:00is not a thing for the Buddhists. So, therefore, there are other virtues that are much more important
08:06than any kind of obedience. So, the idea of the Sangha being modeled on a republican kind of committee,
08:16like an assembly or a parliament or advisors to the king rather than the king having omnipotent power,
08:23has been the tribal chief, you know, having to deal with the elders and so on. I think it is said to be
08:29born in the Constitution of the Sangha, and I think that's correct. So, anyway, I'm looking forward to
08:37July 2nd. I hadn't heard that rumor. Yeah, and in fact, the current prime minister was quoted by some
08:44news agencies as saying that it's possible. Not necessarily succession, but something of profound
08:52importance may be announced on July 2nd. So, people are then speculating that it could be a successor.
08:57I see. Well, that would be great. If he did that, if he did that, that would be, you know,
09:05but I would imagine in the way he is, that if he did that, he would do that and.
09:14If there was a manetoku, it would be to hold the ground between now and when a baby could be born
09:21and recognized, but that he would preserve the idea of perhaps a different kind of education
09:30and a different kind of relationship with the parental instead of just banished and then the
09:34monks completely taking over, which is a little bit traumatic, I think, for younger incarnations.
09:39And also, the other thing I think would be that it would, you know, one of the reasons that the
09:48great fifth Dalai Lama feared corruption of the incarnation system was that an incarnation's household
09:57would, or a state, would keep his wealth. And so, the motive of his housekeepers, his treasurer,
10:06his chamberlains, and these kind of people, to quickly find somebody, and if possible in a wealthy
10:11family, to convince the state, if possible even, is that motive is essentially corrupting,
10:20even though it didn't always happen that way. And for example, he was picked in a sort of a modestly
10:26wealthy peasant family, but not a very rich one. So, it was definitely peasant, well, a reasonable
10:37middle-class peasant household to the Potala, like, you know, Lord Cap'n to the White House,
10:43like Abe Lincoln or something. You know, it has its own form of that. So, I think, if you name
10:50someone already existing, that would be amazing, and that would confer huge responsibility on that
10:56person. But on the other hand, it would be a placeholder, I think, where he would say,
11:02I will also incarnate personally, and I will be found, and this person will be in charge of that.
11:09Because, you know, the Nirmanakaya idea, the toku or Nirmanakaya idea in Buddhism is that
11:16someone who is enlightened can be multiple incarnations, which actually is not too
11:22outlandish in the context of Hinduism, where deities can be multiple, multiple bodies at the
11:28same time. Westerners can think of it as science fiction or something.
11:35Now, for those among my viewers who may not immediately understand,
11:39explain a little bit what emanation would mean to them.
11:43Yes. Well, what emanation means is that what a Buddha is defined as something
11:49not supernatural, but I would say super normal is the better word for it.
11:56Buddhahood is where a human being develops an ability to sort of be everything, you know,
12:04and I think the best analogy is because people have normally been in love some time in their life,
12:11and they have identified even momentarily completely with a beloved person.
12:18Not just romantic always, it can also be a mother and child, or a father and child, etc.,
12:24you know, siblings or, you know, where people, teammates almost, where they identify with each other,
12:30so that harm to the one they identify with seems to them like harm to themselves and so on.
12:35So the human ability to expand their sense of identification beyond whatever is in their own skin
12:42is magnified in the Buddhist worldview to such an inconceivable degree where a being comes to identify
12:50with all life, and in that line, and also remain present to the presence of all life,
12:57and therefore be disturbed by the suffering of many of the occupants of all life,
13:05and therefore be able to respond to that vast register of suffering by being,
13:11emanating actual other bodies that go to help those beings, because you can't, you know,
13:18it's like you, you would be, if you were the UN president, you would emanate blue helmets everywhere
13:24there was conflict, put them in Gaza in numbers where the other people couldn't violate that.
13:31And, of course, I remember years ago, angrily, I was in Malmora, actually, one dream that I had,
13:39where I was very angry with my guru, a Mongolian gentleman at that time, my main guru,
13:45and it was during a Bangladesh horrible tragedy going on, and I was angrily saying,
13:55where's that Nirmanakaya? Was this just a bunch of nonsense?
13:58Like, why aren't there peacekeepers out there stopping the, you know, the killing of babies,
14:04and all horrible things that were going on in Bangladesh, that you were in the Indian press,
14:09of course, in that time, and since there was no Facebook in those days, you know, no Instagram.
14:16So, and then my, this teacher of mine was sitting on a bench in this, on Cranks Ridge in
14:23Almora, where I was, and that's where I was in my dream. I was in the house, sleeping.
14:28But my dream body was there. And then he didn't answer. He looked very grim, as I felt,
14:34and I was angrily upbraiding him. There was the Nirmanakaya. And he was, he just started getting
14:43bigger, the dream perception of him, and he became bigger and bigger. And he pretty soon blotted out the
14:50skyline, which was Nanda Devi and Trishul mountains. He was so huge. And I was like screaming at his knee,
14:58like a fly or something. And then I woke up, you know.
15:01I see.
15:03So it was my own difficulty in confronting that sort of the inconceivable idea that someone could
15:11be multiple bodies at the same time, you know.
15:13Right, right. You mentioned the next one being a placeholder, while a new one really reincarnates.
15:21Now, can that placeholder be a woman, as the Dalai Lama has frequently mentioned?
15:25Oh yeah, definitely. Could definitely be a woman. And he meant that, he didn't just mean that as a joke
15:32to the fashion industry, because I think when he first said that he was in Italy,
15:37and he got in trouble because he made a kind of fashion gesture.
15:40Right.
15:41And, but he wasn't comparing a beautiful woman to an ugly woman. He was just saying that
15:47such a woman would be more beautiful than he was, you know, an old man.
15:52And so, so he wasn't being sexist in that way. But yes, that's of course totally possible in that,
15:59and he's often said that, how leadership, he likes to see more feminine leadership in the world,
16:06because he says that the way women are socialized, and even almost genetically,
16:14they're less prone to violence as quickly as men. There's quicker, in a crisis situation,
16:21there's an oxytocin release rather than a cortisol release. He's often said that,
16:26whereas the male wants to crash ahead and deal with it in some heated way. And the female rather looks to
16:33see the reality of the situation, and where is their allies, and where are their resources. And
16:37it's a little more, a little more pragmatic in dealing with difficult situations. And therefore,
16:44he wanted to see in this, in this era of the power of the weapons, extreme power of weapons,
16:50he wanted to see more female leadership. So that's when he is in that context that he made that
16:55semi-humorous thing. Right.
16:58And Tibetans, who are no less prone to male chauvinism than other people, were not just so pleased with it
17:03either. True, true.
17:06But certainly, in other words, and of course, you know, Avalokiteshvara and Tara are considered male and
17:13female reflexes of the same of all Buddhas. And even Tara is seen as having the miraculous abilities,
17:23more that Avalokiteshvara, having the shakti, like it's sort of similar to the idea of the female shakti,
17:29you know. Right.
17:30So Buddhism has that idea, too.
17:32Yeah. You were the first Western Dr. Sermon to be ordained a monk by the Dalai Lama.
17:38That's right.
17:39And what was your experience before you returned to the life of laity, as it were?
17:44Well, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed myself enormously. I had been brought by my first teacher, who was a Mongolian monk,
17:52who had really kindled my, helped me kindle my total affinity with Tibetan. And I learned the language
18:03really quickly. And I, oh, I just, and I loved the Dharma. I just was totally endured it. And I,
18:10so I right away wanted to be a monk for life. And I was totally into it. And he knew that I was very
18:14sincere in wanting that. But he also, he also foresaw that I was not living in a country where there
18:21were a lot of Buddhist monasteries in New York City in 1960s. In fact, zero. And in maybe a few
18:28ethnic conclaves, there was occasional bhikshu, maybe in Thai or Sri Lankan communities. But
18:35no Tibetan thing. He had his own tiny little monastery in a Mongolian refugee enclave in New
18:41Jersey and so on. And so, but I kept badgering him all the time. And he kept refusing to ordain me and
18:48said, look, it's fine. You live like a monk for a few years, since you're very gung-ho in your studies.
18:53And that's all very laudable. But long term, it's not going to be viable for your mission in life,
18:59as you will discover what it really is for you to be a monk in this society. And so I wouldn't listen,
19:05you know, being an omniscient 22-year-old and a 21-year-old, 22-year-old. And so he finally
19:13relented to the extent that he took me to meet the Dalai Lama on a trip he needed to do in India.
19:19Of course, being Mongolian, he wanted to help some Mongolian monks who had gone with the refuge,
19:23going into exile, because they had a different category. They were received by the Indian government
19:29at that time in a different way than the Tibetans were, because they thought of them as Russians or
19:34something, you know, because they came from Kalmykia or Buryatia or somewhere. So it was a little bit,
19:38they had a harder time. And he wanted to go and help them financially and so on. So he said,
19:43I'll take you. And then I'll introduce you to the Dalai Lama. Maybe he'll make you a monk. I'll leave
19:48it up to him, he said. But then when he introduced me to his hostess, he mentioned like this, and I
19:55already spoke Tibetan by that time. And then he was, I'd been with him almost two years, and then learning
20:02Tibetan, and there were several other monks there. And he was good in languages at that age. And
20:09he then says to his holiness, well, he's very desperate to be a monk. He's really good in the
20:13philosophy and study already, etc. He's a little crazy, like Westerners can be, but he's very smart,
20:19and he's very sincere about Buddhism. And he desperately wants to be a monk. But my advice to your
20:24holiness says, don't make him a monk, he says. I haven't turned, I said, what did you say?
20:30You weren't supposed to be a monk, now you're saying don't make him a monk. So he says, don't
20:34make him a monk. I predict he will, you know, be difficult for him in his homeland, and back in
20:41New York. And of course, his holiness hadn't traveled the world then, as he, this was 1960,
20:48through 64. He hadn't traveled the world. So he didn't really know the conditions. And so he didn't
20:54know quite what the old Mongolian was saying. But it wouldn't, it would be hard for me. And then
20:59the old Mongolian gentleman said, well, you decide you're the Dalai Lama. I'm just an old Mongolian
21:06monk, he says. So then that was that. And then his holiness took me under his wing. And after about
21:11a year of study and so on, he or he actually the case, his tutor ordained me as a mendicant novice
21:19from an area. And then his holiness included me in a batch to be a big shoe, what they call
21:27fully ordained or fully graduated literally is what upa-sambhada really means, not ordained. And
21:33as I said, ordainment and order and obedience is not a big thing for Buddhist monks, unlike what
21:40Buddhist monks. So anyway, I did. And I only lasted another year and a half or two, about two years
21:47more. And then finally, I came to the realization, to my huge embarrassment in late 1966, that really,
21:59it was not possible for me to sort of carry an enlightening message to my peers and colleagues in
22:06America as a shaven-headed, red-robed monk, of someone who they expected to, if not being a GI,
22:16at least being a regular American lay person in the Protestant ethnic society, you know,
22:22I don't understand the monkhood. Even among Catholics, they don't quite understand it. And I finally
22:29realized it was kind of a sociological reason that the old Mongolian had been that way. And then that was
22:35very embarrassing. And it took his oldest a few years, because we were kind of buddies by then.
22:41But it took him a few years to sort of decide that, well, maybe it wasn't such a total disaster,
22:46took him a little while. But he's so kind and nice anyway. But he did take it a little personally,
22:53actually, since I was the first, you know. And I had a number of emissaries coming to me saying,
22:58well, you can always go back, you know, which technically you can't do in Tibet, Tibetan tradition,
23:04once you quit being a monk. But on the other hand, exceptions have been made to a few Tibetans
23:10who dropped their vows and their robes for a while, offered up their robes for a while due to the exile
23:18circumstances, but then at an older age asked to return. And there have been exceptions made like that.
23:23But I did not. I became responsible for a family and so forth and professors life and the whole thing,
23:31you know, in the great grandchildren. Yeah. You are regarded as the most important
23:39articulator of Tibetan Buddhist ideas in America and perhaps even beyond.
23:43What are the fundamentals that attract you to it? Well, I don't necessarily agree to that
23:50moniker of being the most important. I don't think it does any good except to attract jealousy.
23:58I do do my best because I see it, you know, like what is always knocked my socks off
24:06when he arrived in America in and after 1979 in 1979, finally got past the Kissinger Brzezinski blockade.
24:17Thanks to Cyrus Vance and Jimmy Carter and started coming. And he said he wasn't
24:23bringing Buddhism in a big way here. He was bringing the common human religion of kindness.
24:28Right. And this was still in a period where I was only 15 years in my relationship with him.
24:36And he was always telling me that if I had been brought up as a Christian,
24:43since it was legal in a pluralistic culture to make different religious or spiritual choices,
24:50he couldn't fault me completely. But he said,
24:53at least I should absolutely appreciate Christianity and never be, you know, disparaging about it and this
24:59kind of thing. He was very, very firm about it. And I didn't quite understand quite why,
25:05why everybody shouldn't be a Buddhist, because I was enjoying being a Buddhist so much.
25:10And I did finally click around the time he started basically being in the West. And I saw
25:15his absolute determination not to convert anybody, but he would always give prefaces to
25:21his lectures in a non-Buddhist audience, or maybe a few Buddhists, but I mean, mostly non-Buddhist,
25:26where he would say, I want you to know, I never have a motive of trying to talk about some Buddhist
25:31knowledge or practice or any such thing, but to someone who isn't a Buddhist with a motive of them
25:37being a Buddhist. I think it's all right to learn some meditation technique or some this or that,
25:41or even deal with some philosophical or theological theories,
25:44learn that about Buddhism, but not be a Buddhist. And as a Christian or as a secular humanist,
25:52for that matter, he always considered secular humanism a kind of world religion. In fact,
25:56he always did. And, you know, with an open-mindedness and non-dogmatic way of being.
26:02I thought, so I didn't quite get, it took me about 20 years to drop, kind of, which was lucky because
26:10I became an academic teacher where you don't proselytize in the academy. But in the process
26:17of learning how to be like that, which I didn't sincerely became like that, it was at his inspiration
26:23about how it's wrong to think that the denomination is the key thing for people.
26:29Just, you know, and just shouting out Amphur, whoever it is. And rather, it's what, however,
26:35they have changed their own personality. And then, of course, I discovered in Ashoka's wonderful
26:40things where he said, the key thing is to convert yourself to the highest spiritual ideals of your
26:45own tradition in Ashoka's own determination to support not just the Buddhist Sangha, but also the
26:53Brahmins and also the Jains and also everybody else, you know. And they didn't,
26:58they never liked the Charavakas, you know, the materialists, but still, but the Dalai Lama proudly
27:04says about India, they still called a Charavaka guy, even though he was a Lokayata, they still
27:11called him a Rishi, even though disagreed with him. Indeed, that's true. How have you approached the
27:20idea of Anitya or impermanence in your daily life, especially when it comes to
27:25issues such as the future of Tibet or the Dalai Lama, the institution? Because impermanence is the
27:31fundamental aspect of Buddhism. Of course it is. Things are always changing. Any institution that persists
27:38because of its continuing usefulness, it's changing all the time, impermanence means. And
27:44one day it will fulfill it. If it fulfills its purpose, it will come to an end. And if it pales in its
27:50purpose, it will come to an end. So in the larger, that is the case. And in a way, I think I always
27:57sensed, and I was a little bit not so popular in the Save Tibet or Liberate Tibet movement, although I
28:04believe it should be liberated. And it is, in a way, ultimately liberated, which is why the PRC, CCP,
28:12goes into such contortions to pretend that it never existed. Like Putin pretending they never
28:17want such a thing as the Ukraine. That's the last resort of colonialists in that kind of a case.
28:25And so I do believe that. But on the other hand, I always said that Tibet will not be free until the
28:35world system changes. And even when I usually used to say that, I didn't quite realize what is very
28:40clear to me today, which is that colonialism is clearly not over. It's still continuing. And we can
28:49find it everywhere. We find it in Palestine, we find it in, in with the Uyghur people, we find it in,
28:56in various, it was going on in the, in Syria, actually, where the minority controlled the majority,
29:03which was because that's the way the French drew the lines, and the English drew the line where the
29:08Kurds, who are a nation, the Kurds totally in all four countries are more populous than the whole of
29:15Iraq, including the Iraqi Kurds. And it's so therefore totally deserves being its own nation,
29:20the Kurds, and they're persecuted by four different other nationalities rather badly,
29:25you know, and also they became supreme smugglers, which was a bonus.
29:31But the point is that the boundary, I only discovered recently that in 19, late 1940s,
29:38after the founding UN, that the powers that be in the UN forced any African country or Asian country
29:46that wanted to join as a free nation, they had to keep the boundaries imposed on them by the
29:52colonialists, which always included a minority on top of a majority, which is the colonial system,
29:59so that the colonial power, it defends the minority against the majority. And then when there's no colonial
30:05power, then the majority is likely to persecute the minority. And this has been happening ever since.
30:11And so it all has to do with them. And then the communists, of course, were told, like USSR,
30:17my Ukrainian friends call it the Romanov 2.0, as we're now in the Romanov 3.0, which is now trying to
30:26destroy the Ukraine. And not only that, but has other aspirations as well, Georgia, Moldova, I mean,
30:32you name it. Anything that was once within the Soviet empire should be back again in the Romanov 3.0.
30:39So the whole story is colonialism has to actually stop. And people have to face up to that fact.
30:49And different local groups, it's also ecologically essential, they have the determining choice in what
30:57is done in their area. Because far-off capitals do not really understand the ecology of a local area,
31:04and they will make decisions. The archetypal one was Brezhnev's desiccation of the RLC in order to drain off
31:13the rivers to have a higher cotton crop in other provinces. And that's simply not possible nowadays.
31:21You know, so the federational level of things has to become more genuine in many areas,
31:26which means an unraveling of the colonial system. And in that, then a sensible Beijing administration
31:35would want to federate with a semi or a truly autonomous Republic of Tibet, where the Tibetans would
31:43say how much destruction they want locally of their forests, how many dams they want, how much population
31:51they want, even creating therefore city areas that raise the temperature, destroying the permafrost and
31:57the glaciers in their rivers, which affects 2 billion people downstream in all directions, you know,
32:03in the case of Tibet. And then every like Inner Mongolia, Uyghur, Ukraine, all of these places have to have
32:11their local, more local self-determination. And indeed, the principle of self-determination has to be
32:19returned and re-established as a human right, as was intended in the founding of the UN and so on.
32:24And that is not the case now. The human rights specialists even, I've been told by professional
32:29human rights people over the years, oh no, we can't include self-determination as a human right,
32:35or we could never get anywhere with all these governments, you know, because the governments are
32:40still oppressing some minorities somewhere, you know, and they don't want self-determination.
32:44Right, right. I'll just last two or three points, Professor. One is, I want to draw your attention to
32:51what the great scholar Ananda Kumaraswamy writes in his book, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism. I'm
32:57going to quote a little passage from it. Okay, great. He's wonderful, art historian also.
33:03He says that, I'm quoting him now, the doctrine of the mean asserts that everything is a becoming,
33:10a flux without beginning or end. There exists no static moment when this becoming attains.
33:20Now that is profound. It is. And then he talks about, strictly speaking, the life of a living
33:26being is exceedingly brief, lasting only while a thought lasts. That's right, exactly. Now,
33:34that's a splendid view. What is your take on that? Well, I think that's absolutely correct. You know,
33:39what they call coarse wisdom or knowledge of impermanence, knowing that you are going to die,
33:47I am going to die, everyone dies, and therefore deals with what that is, what that means.
33:55And also, it also deals with the fact that nothingness doesn't exist. And therefore,
34:02there's always going to be something else. And therefore, life is beginningless. We've had
34:07infinite previous lives, all of us, not just Buddha. And we will have interminable future ones,
34:12which then gives a much heavier weight to our behavior, what I call karmic behavior,
34:18but what I call evolutionary behavior, which includes mind behavior and speech behavior,
34:24as well as physical behavior, contrary to materialism. So I think that's a very accurate
34:30and wonderful, wonderful idea and law. And what brings to mind a wonderful thing, I'm a good friend
34:37of a gentleman named Robert Svoboda, who is the first American ever to be licensed in Pune as an
34:44Indian Ayurvedic doctor in India with many patients. And he's retired now, but he's came from Houston, Texas,
34:52you know, has a Czech name, but he's American. And he, but he's a good Sanskritist, and he loves India,
34:59of course. And he, he, I hadn't really brought in my mind the word dravia in Sanskrit, which means
35:06substance. I don't know if it's the same word in Hindi, but it is. But dravia comes from a verb,
35:13dru, which means to flow, or to melt. Right. No, it actually has even the word for what we think
35:21of something static and permanent, like fixed substance. In the Indian language, ancient Indian
35:26scientific language, not just some spiritual thing, but scientific language, in ancient Indian science,
35:32and therefore in Indian language, it comes, it means something which is flowing, which is changing.
35:37Right. Like rocks are lava, which flows, you know, when they're even a solid rock. So, so I think that is
35:46very much not just the Buddhist idea, but it's basically Indian inner science, you know, which,
35:52by the way, his holiness, in his, what he calls, actually in his best formulation, he calls it his
35:59third aim in life. Although lately he has come to say, before that he used to say fourth aim. But his
36:05third aim in life, or fourth aim, whichever way he's putting it, is his, his, his duty to into India,
36:13India, for their kindness of having sheltered the Tibetan exiles now for 60 years, 70 years,
36:23yeah, about 60 years, a little more than that. And he says his body is more made of rice and
36:30dal than it is of Tibetan dumplings. Indeed. That is true. In honor of that, he has no intention of
36:38seeking to convert Hindu Indians to Buddhism. Absolutely not. He does want to help Indian
36:49Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, whoever they are, to transit or Sikhs or whoever it is, to reinforce
36:56ancient Adyatma Vidya, the inner science, especially the psychologies of the yoga tradition,
37:03the Vedanta tradition, the Buddhist tradition, the Jaina tradition,
37:07to sort of hold its own with Western materialistic science and with Western psychology, which he
37:14considers kind of a beginning psychology, since it's only a century or so old, a couple of centuries
37:20maximum old. And then, although I think it's older than that in the old Catholic monasteries,
37:25the monks were good psychologists, but, but in a secular world, only a couple of centuries.
37:30Whereas for India, thousands of years old, the nature of the mind, which is why India enveloped,
37:36developed the wonderful traditions of yoga, and so rather than anybody else. And so he's very strong
37:43on that. And I'm very, I myself am very much into that nowadays. And I was very, I'm very pleased that my friend,
37:52my dear friend Deepak Chopra recently has been calling himself an Adyatma Vidyavan.
37:58Okay.
37:59Okay.
37:59Yeah.
38:00You know, the ancient psychology, you know.
38:03Right, right.
38:04And I really like that.
38:06I'm going to quote you now. You said you can't enter into the ideal universe of enjoyment,
38:13wisdom, and compassion, the Buddha word, as I like to call it, until you first detach yourself from
38:20the world of suffering, this prism that is the fixed and absolute self-image. Explain that to me.
38:27Oh, okay. Well, yes. I'm not sure of the context myself or when I said that,
38:35but what I would be referring to is this, is that both Western religions and Western science,
38:44modern Western science, present a view to people. And I think, in fact, all in history, Western and
38:54Eastern societies have generally tended, when they're authoritarian, to present the world as a scary
39:02place to people. You know, even the secularists talk about nature is red in tooth and claw, you know,
39:10blood, red, and tooth and claw. Nature is a dangerous place. You know, the scientists, if you watch one of
39:16those, like, you know, the history of the planet, you know, where it starts in the exploding sun, and then the
39:22moon explodes out of the earth, and then all these rocks are bashing against one another, and then supernova
39:28awaits. We're awaiting supernova, this kind of thing.
39:30Right.
39:30You know, very scary. Then you have dinosaurs chasing each other around, and then the saber-toothed
39:36tiger, and then this and that. And we have, of course, everybody has their Pentagon and their
39:40nuclear weapons. And so that's a scary world. And then in the theistic world, God, you say,
39:48oh, yeah, God is good. Yeah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah is compassionate indeed. But then you're
39:55having Holocaust, you're having horrible things, you have hells, you're sent to hell if you don't
39:59obey. It's really pretty scary also. Right.
40:02And the point of that is to get people to be obedient, and fearing, nature, you know,
40:10the world fearing, so that they will obey the rules, you know, that the king and the high priest
40:17want them to obey, and not strike out to sort of make their own decisions about things, and not be
40:23too free. Even in democracy, we say yes, free, but then they scare us with nature being
40:29scary. So we need this drug, or that thing, or that restriction of the state, or whatever.
40:34And we need a big military budget, because the neighbors are out to kill us, and so on.
40:39So that's what I mean by the world of suffering. I don't just mean the first global truth.
40:44Okay.
40:44And so when we feel that the default reality, except for some exceptional person where Jesus
40:50has saved you, after all the bad things you did, or where Krishna comes and loves you,
40:57even though you don't deserve it, or where Buddha, somebody puts you in a Buddha land,
41:01even though you're a terrible, ignorant being. In other words, someone maybe is set to save you later,
41:08and meanwhile, the government is saving you, and or the high priest and the temple is with the option
41:15of being saved. But meanwhile, you're scared, and you go through life scared.
41:19The Buddha world is much more positive. And actually, I actually think in general,
41:24the Indian culture world has also experienced a shock where it's like that. I mean, after all,
41:30the Krishna of the Mahavarata is a bit of a warmonger. In fact, not necessarily of the Gita in
41:37its final form. But in the early form, Krishna really is egging on the Pandavas and the Kauravas
41:44to destroy each other and bring on Kali Yuga. But the Bhagavatam Krishna is Mr. Baby,
41:53you know, much more powerful than Jesus, and he's in love with everybody, and everybody loves him,
41:58and Bhakti is flowing. Well, that's a huge change in spiritual history, where they have
42:07you know, kind of, and the idea of, they're not waiting. Well, they are waiting for Kalki,
42:12maybe 10th Avatar Vishnu, but they have a much more sense of the benevolence of the gods and less
42:18fear of hell, I think, than the Westerners do. And so what I'm saying, the Buddha vision,
42:25especially in the Mahayana Sutras, and even in Theravada, where it's not that hard to achieve
42:30nirvana actually in one life, however they define it, but it's quite doable. You join and become a
42:37bhikshu and you put your effort into that and you can attain nirvana. And the Mahayana is a bit more
42:42hard because you have to bring the whole world with you, which is hard to understand how you could do
42:46that. But on the other hand, there is this possibility of becoming completely free and so on. So that's what I
42:53say. The Buddha world relates to shifting your view of things to a positive default reality.
43:04And in a way, what modernity is, the appeal of materialistic modernity has actually used that
43:12kind of idea itself because the lack of a future life, which is supposedly authorities at Harvard or
43:20MIT will tell you, like, that's a discovered fact, which, of course, it absolutely isn't.
43:26It's your own fake way of selling dispensations, like Martin Luther was mad at the Catholics for
43:31selling tickets to heaven. In a way, the scientists sell you a ticket to the heaven of an infinite and
43:40eternal anesthesia, no future pain. You know, maybe it's boring and there's no Star Wars and there's
43:49no ice cream cones and there's no rice and dal, but and there's no sex. But who needs it when you
43:55don't even know that you exist? You don't remember that you once used to have a few moments of fun in
44:00life, usually sinful or doing something wrong, and you might get punished for later, you're all told.
44:07So don't have too much fun. So the point is, they're selling a consequence-free future with
44:14their existentialism and the whole thing. And they found a willing adopting market for that,
44:21which has led to a global recklessness, where we're letting them get away with destroying the
44:26whole planet to make more money selling their oil and coal and gas and crap. There's no reason for us
44:31to do that. We can see the effect, we can see the destructiveness, we can lose our home in any flood or
44:38fire or whatever it is. And yet we still don't really politically put the stop to it, as we have
44:44the numbers to do it, if we really were determined to do it. So this last bastion of the materialists,
44:53pretending to people that whatever they happen, it ultimately won't matter, which then condones their
45:02selfish behavior and reckless behavior in our delicate environment is a very big, huge danger
45:11to us all. And if we can come back to the Indian middle way of interconnectedness, you know, and of
45:20happy, jolly lover gods, lover boy gods, nice angels, and Hanuman saving us from the bad guys and so on.
45:30And that's really nice. I believe that's the soul of India has that happiness in it.
45:38It is, yeah.
45:39And that's why India likes democracy openly and why now India, I'm hoping, will help America restore
45:50and will prevent. I don't think it can happen here, you know. I don't think that what they're trying
45:55will succeed, but it's very, very dangerous right now. I want to go into that in a moment.
46:02But so that's what I would say. I forgot the question though.
46:06No, you answered it. To conclude, Professor, Buddhism is rather matter of fact about death.
46:14Yes. There is no sentimentalism attached to that. Given that it's going to happen to all of us,
46:23Yes.
46:24Including the Dalai Lama, the inevitable.
46:27Yes.
46:27How do you, as a friend of nearly 60 years,
46:31Yes. More than 60, yes.
46:34Yeah. His passing and your passing. How do you look at that?
46:38Well, the thing is, the point is, we're not, the reason, I mean, they do actually make a fuss about
46:44death in the sense that there's lots of rituals and things for longevity and methodology to develop
46:50longevity. And the Tibetan Ayurveda version or the Buddhist Ayurveda version, which is more or less just
46:57like Ayurveda, is very much bigger. Ayur means long life, life span. So it's very much into that.
47:05But on the other hand, we inevitably will face death. And it's considered a healthy thing in life
47:11to be aware of the imminence of death and the momentary possibility of it. You could swallow the
47:18wrong fish bone if you were eating fish and choke to death in a minute or be run over by a truck or
47:24whatever. I mean, it could happen. And being aware of that is considered
47:30energizing and vivifying of life rather than morbid and something you should hide from yourself.
47:36And so therefore, death is just like walking through a doorway. What's most important is what's
47:41on the other side. And therefore, what to do, how to navigate that. It's just like,
47:47it's no big deal to fall asleep. But the question is, what sort of dream are you going to have
47:52and how good a deep sleep you're going to have and how much REM sleep are you going to have?
47:56And then how energized will you be tomorrow? That's the key thing. It's not a fear of falling asleep,
48:01in other words. So this is not seen in a large sense as a state of some sort of ghost-like suspended
48:11animation or even nothingness. It's not seen as that. So it's simply a doorway to a bigger reality,
48:20in fact. And if you think life is very, very dangerous, then you're scared because you're
48:25scared of what might happen afterwards, not of death itself. And if you have some silly idea that
48:32you're going to be nothing, then of course, in a way, you're only scared of not prolonging your
48:37pleasure and you want to do euthanasia if you're starting to feel a lot of pain in your older age,
48:42because then you get into that anesthesia that you falsely assume will be waiting for you in
48:48nothing. But I always think I like to say in any interview or in any public thing is newsflash.
48:55Thousands of years ago, the Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali, Bajarayana, the great rishis,
49:02they all came up with a wonderful insight, which is that nothing is exactly nothing.
49:09It's not a destination. And it's unscientific to imagine that you'll land in nothing.
49:16It is not a discovery. Nobody will ever discover it. It's a word for what you will never discover.
49:23And therefore, you always have to count on something else. And therefore, you have to prepare
49:29for it, which we pragmatically do. And what's so brilliant about that in the Indian context,
49:35and actually world religions also have that to a degree, but they don't make it a sort of
49:40scientific thing, so people don't necessarily believe in it. But to a degree, they have the idea
49:45that what you do now will determine the excellence or misery of what follows after you pass from this
49:52body. And so that's a very important thing to constrain your conscience and your ethical self-interest,
50:00if you will. And rather than, you know, Robert Nozick at Harvard or other kinds of ethicists,
50:07what they call philosophical ethicists, go on and on existentially about how it doesn't matter what
50:13you do ultimately, but so you have to choose it within a relative framework. But we can see that
50:18that that is not strong enough to really constrain people when push comes to shove, you know.
50:24Selfishness can reassert itself uncontrollably when they all think it doesn't matter,
50:29you know, except for some immediate consequence. I think that's a really important point that nothing
50:34is nothing and we have to cope with that. And then we will enter not just the Buddhist but the Indian mind
50:41and actually Western spiritual ones as well in a more graphic way where it will influence how we behave.
50:47Right. When did you last interact with him? With his holiness? The last time I saw his holiness was in March
50:55and we had a really nice moment. We had a cuddle and a really nice moment as we always do,
51:02although nowadays it's reached the point where, oh, you're still alive!
51:06And I hadn't started growing this beard. Otherwise he would have bouldered. He didn't recognize me.
51:13Yeah. And he went on a lot about home, home. He was very focused. I think he had just lost
51:22his elder brother, you know. And I think he was thinking about family. So when he met a really old
51:30friend, it sort of associated the time when he had his family. So he kept talking about home. And
51:37people who overheard him saying that who were there in the audience, they said, oh, he's saying,
51:42isn't that sweet? He's saying that you're home here in Dharamsala. And I think though,
51:48which I felt very nicely and it was very nice. And because I did live there quite a bit and I love
51:54that place. It's like, to me, it's the Gandharvan Nagara. It's the city of angels or fairies. And
52:02and so I love it. I love it there. Although I'm worried about it in an earthquake, but I do love it
52:07otherwise. And and then on the other hand, later I decided it fit with a dream I had
52:14when I was in a dream where he and I were performing ceremony and it was everything was really beautiful
52:22and it was lovely and whatever. And then some message came to me in the dream saying, you must
52:29come back to New York. You have to do something about Tibet House, this, which is the nonprofit in
52:34New York that I am responsible for at his request, which is the cultural center, his sort of
52:41representation of Tibetan culture, what we call a kind of a cultural embassy for a nation that's not
52:46supposed to exist. Right. But it's a cultural embassy. And so and then I said in the dream,
52:53I said, No, I don't want to go. I'm staying here. And then he stops the ceremony. He was chanting
52:59and he turns to me in the dream and says, No, you have to go. You go do that. Go do that.
53:04And I said, No, I don't want to. I said to him. And then he said, he said to me, and then he said,
53:11Well, why not? You could? I said, I said, I don't want to because I like to do this,
53:15whatever we were doing, some sort of colorful sort of mandala or something. And then he says,
53:20Well, you can do this at home, he says. And I said, Yeah, no, but I don't want to. I like to do it with
53:26you, I said, in the dream. So then we get into our because we were kind of schoolmates way back 62
53:33years ago. He was still in his 20s also, but he's five, six years older, but and he was an older pupil
53:40student. And so we kind of have that way of talking like a little bit. And so and then he says to me,
53:47he says, After all these years, you don't know that I'm with you always? Sort of harsh
53:58refutation like they do in Tibetan debate. And then I woke up. Oh, so when he was saying home,
54:08I think what he was saying to me was stay home. I love it being home here. And I don't want to go
54:16anywhere from Anzala, because he doesn't want to. He likes to stay in his room. He does a little
54:22exercise there. He has a therapist. He's 90. You know, he has that he had that knee operation, you know,
54:28and he had to do a lot of rehab. He has rehab. And he he can be online in the front of thousands or
54:35tens of thousands of people. And he can give his message to them when he wants. And he can read his
54:41books, which he loves his beautiful Tibetan, poetical and philosophical books. And home is
54:48great. You know, he's encouraging because he knows it's at my age, I'm only 84. Long travel like that
54:55is arduous. You know, when he was saying home home, when I met him in March, I was thinking he was
55:01saying that it's good to be with sharing with me how good it is to be home. And I was invited by the
55:08IBC to Delhi on July 13 to some sort of thing in the Ashok Hotel having to do with the 90th birthday.
55:16But I just can't make it, you know, too long a journey in one day. And I'm sending a video instead.
55:24You know, okay. Okay, I see. Yeah, too much. I'm staying home.
55:30Indeed. On that note, Dr. Sermon, I want to thank you very much for your time.
55:36It was riveting for me. You are very generous on this.
55:42Thank you so much. It's we were very, I'm very honored to be.
55:45No, no, no. The honor is all mine. Please don't say it. It's all me.
55:48You're a real scholar and you're a beautiful biography of his holiness. And you're a keen
55:56observer of the Tibetan issue, which I think is much more important to the world than people think.
56:04You know, even just the ecological level about the rivers all flowing down there out of the glaciers
56:10and the glacial lakes and things. And not only that, but the wonderful scholar, the glaciologist,
56:15Martin Mills, points out, it's not just the glaciers. It's the permafrost up there.
56:20Right.
56:20That's getting disrupted now. And that'll have an enormous impact on China's own ecology.
56:28Of course, Burma, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and India and Pakistan.
56:36Totally.
56:37Yeah.
56:38You know, between monsoons, if there's a trickle, because there are no more glaciers,
56:43there's only a trickle of usable water down all those rivers, we're talking global crisis.
56:51Absolutely.
56:51Absolutely.