Cultish: Overview Of Classical & Zen Buddhism, Pt. 1

Former world history teacher and current Himalayan studies PhD student, I just want to say that the

Buddha was born in what is modern -day Nepal. This might seem like it's not a big deal, but almost every book you find about the

Buddha refers to him as an Indian prince living in ancient India. But here's the thing, the kingdom that he lived in, while he was a prince of his own kingdom, it was really an amalgamation of numerous kingdoms that spanned across what is now several different countries throughout

South Asia. There was no single unified India. In fact, there was no unified religion either.

Many people will argue that Hinduism was and is so diverse that calling it a single religion is disingenuous.

So we have this prince of a small kingdom living in an amalgamation of kingdoms that spanned several regions across South Asia.

But the fact is he was born and raised in what is now unquestionably Nepal. So let's just get our geographical history, right?

That's all I'm asking. All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, entering the kingdom of the cults.

My name is Jeremiah Roberts. I am one of the co -hosts here. I am always joined by my trusted co -host, sidekick, and super sleuth and all -around great person, husband, father of three, including the latest addition to the family,

Fimius Sankrant. Anyways, how are you doing, Andrew? I'm doing well. Thank you.

Thank you, Marcia. Thank you for the congratulations. Thank you for that introduction, too, Jerry. Wow. I feel like I'm just like an awesome wrestler, dude.

Like I should have just like been running into my seat, sat down, put my headphones off, put them back on, and been like, yeah! I have a tight intro music.

Yeah, and I'm stoked for today, bro. Introduce our guests. Introduce our guests. We are bringing back one of our frequent guests.

She's almost sort of like the third co -host, almost. She's made the most appearances so far.

We are back with one of our favorite guests, our favorite, I would say, Kraken, Marcia Montenegro.

It's good to have you back on Cultish. How are you doing? Hi, I'm doing great. Thank you, Jerry and Andrew.

Thanks for having me yet again. I love being on with you guys. Awesome, awesome.

And of course, we have to play our quick honorary clip, and then we're gonna get into the subject at hand. It's not appropriate unless we play this first.

Here we go. Release the Kraken! Okay, so the

Kraken is now released. I am super excited today because we are going to be talking about Buddhism, and as you see, and this is one of the biggest, really, religions in the world.

It's had a huge influence on the culture. There are a lot of different definitive cults that have taken aspects of Buddhism into application.

This is something that, as much as you've done programs with us before on the Enneagram, the

Enneagram astrology, we did one on witchcraft, responding to TikTokers on witchcraft, which a lot of people enjoyed.

We got a lot of positive feedback on that. Buddhism, however, is kind of a unique, it kind of hits closer to home for you, kind of given your background and story.

So if you could, just tell them just a little bit about that. Okay, sure. I was in what is called the

New Age for a good 20 years, though my interest in it started before that. I ended up, while I was in the

New Age, being a professional astrologer and very active professional astrologer, and I also taught astrology.

But even prior to becoming an astrologer, I had been interested in Eastern religions, and I started off with Hinduism and reading about Hinduism, believing in reincarnation, the chakras, and several ideas from Hinduism and reading books that got me deeper in.

And then I got involved for about a year or so with the Tibetan Buddhist group, and I learned

Tibetan Buddhist meditation and some of the ideas in Tibetan Buddhism, which was kind of my introduction to Buddhism.

But I went from that into Zen Buddhism, and those are very different.

And if we have time, I can maybe just say a little bit about the difference between them, why they're different, because Tibetan Buddhism is also something people hear about because of the

Dalai Lama. Yeah, so it might be good to say a few words about it. But anyway, so I got into Zen Buddhism, and I stayed there, really, until God intervened in my life.

And I trusted in Christ. So I did mindfulness meditation pretty much every day.

I went to a few Zen Buddhist dojos, places where they go to meditate, and meditate, and you kind of sometimes you get interaction with people, sometimes not.

But anyway, so I did read a lot of material, too, mostly Zen Buddhist material.

And I was very, very influenced by it. Now, I would say I had a combination of some

Hindu beliefs with Buddhist beliefs. I was not like,

I would never say, well, I was a Buddhist, because I, you know, I didn't formally follow the path of Buddhism.

But I incorporate a lot of Buddhist thinking and worldviews into my mind, and the meditation affected me.

So I'm going to talk about all of that as we get to it. Oh, no, that's wonderful. And I think that it's really important, as we unravel this, to realize, too, that just where you're talking with your experiences, that a lot of the

Eastern religions tend to kind of cross over and originate. You'll see, we're going to talk in a second, too, about the origins of Buddhism.

As you saw, this is a religion that's had an incredible amount of influence. As you see, we open up with that. TikToker kind of giving her quick 60 -second

TikTok introduction to the geographical locations of Nepal and with Buddhism and all that.

But yeah, you'll see a lot of shifting back and forth, you know. So a lot of times there'll be people, even modern gurus, who will sort of,

I was listening to watching some clips of Russell Brand, and he was just, he was grabbing a little bit of everything.

He was kind of talking about, he was like, I like Jesus, I like Buddha, and I think it's also good to kind of like, you know, you know,

I like the, I like the Bhagavata, I like the, I read some of the Vedas, and I like this, and I like that. And so you'll see a lot of sort of mish -mashing together.

I think a lot of it just has to do with a lot more relativists. They have a lot more idea of just very subjective truth that all passed, lead back to the same

God, or everyone sort of tapped into the same source. So you'll kind of see a lot of that as we unravel this.

And that's why I think, too, that while Buddhism is definitive, like in a lot of areas, it would be categorized as a definitive world religion, you'll see many different aspects or applications sort of played out in many different ways.

And they're not always, sometimes they're even contradictory, but they still sort of appeal to the same source. Yeah, yeah.

So, so all that being said, maybe if you could expand so people can kind of get an understanding, just given all your experience, go take us just into the origins of Buddha.

Like, how did he start? I know that it's, I'm going back to my community college world religions class, and I know that it originated from Hinduism.

And then I know that he, I'm trying to remember that he was married, but then he left, supposedly left his wife, and then he saw several different things.

And then one of the last things that he saw was a wandering holy man. And I'm going way back into the archives of my community college class.

So I just remember he had this experience where he wanted to really start his own, really, the practice of it.

So, I mean, so go ahead and just expand. Like, what do you know of the origins of Buddha and how this all started? Okay, well, let me first say that the historicity of someone named

Buddha is not verified. You can't even say that there was somebody who was

Buddha. What we have are a bunch of teachings that appeared in writing for the first time, from what

I understand, and I'm not an expert on the history, but I know some overall things, appeared for the first time in 29

AD, okay, and that Buddha lived five to eight,

I think at least 500 years before that. Not 800, I'm sorry, 500. So it's sort of shadowy history about whether there was somebody named

Buddha or not. So you hear these stories, like on the TikTok thing, where she's talking as though this is a definitive historical fact, but there is nothing really to document that.

You just have what people say, you know, and what they wrote later about this figure.

It's possible that there was a teacher and that some of his teachings became the basis of Buddhism.

But we just don't really know for sure who this was or how it came about.

And all these stories like what you said you read in your world religion class, could just be tales.

And you tend to find this in a lot of the Eastern religions. There's a lot of like myth and tales.

For example, Taoism, you know, Lao Tzu wrote a book that's very popular with college students sometimes, and I was into it in college.

And this is from Taoism. But Lao Tzu, they don't even know if he was a real figure or that was just the name that was given to the teachings or to a teacher.

So there again, you don't have any real historical data to go by. So this is one of the big differences with Eastern religions and with Christianity, where we have documentary, you know, solid documentary evidence, including from non -Christian sources about somebody named

Jesus. And so you've got much more documentary support for Jesus than you do for Buddha, which is very shadowy.

So supposedly there was this figure, you know, who was a rich, like a prince and was in a palace.

And he was very, you know, cushioned from anything bad. All he saw was good things.

Then he saw, you know, a sick person and that really shocked him. He didn't know illness existed and he saw a poor person.

He didn't know poverty existed. And, you know, he so he went on this quest where he felt he had to, you know,

I guess understand what's the meaning of all this. Why is why is there this poverty? Why is there illness?

What's going on in the world? And he he supposedly he was raised

Hindu. He was a Hindu prince, but he became dissatisfied with the methods of Hinduism.

Supposedly he tried that, tried asceticism, where you just really deny yourself and practically don't eat and meditate all the time.

And then you try to indulge yourself or whatever. So he supposedly tried these different methods and he felt they were all they all kind of failed.

They didn't really give him any kind of answer. So he meditated under a Bodhi tree.

Yeah. And and I think for I think I can't remember. It may be wrong.

Forty days. I'm not sure. But he meditated for a number of days. And and then there's all these tales about things that happened to him while he meditated.

And he had like these certain demons, like this female demon came to him.

Now, in Buddhism, a demon is not what we call a demon in Christianity. So don't don't equate it with Christian demons.

In Christianity, a demon or an unclean spirit is a fallen angel.

It's an angel who went chose to rebel with Satan. Usually that's the prevailing view.

But in Buddhism, that's not they're not thinking of of demons from the. You know, they just have they have a whole range of beings besides human beings.

And they have like demigods. And then they have these demons and then they have these other creatures with ghosts.

But it's not a ghost like in our culture where it's the spirit of a dead person. So it's it's different.

It's completely different. So but it still was a bad the demon was still a bad character.

But he withstood all of this. And then and then on the last day, he he understood the truth and he became enlightened.

And so he started teaching and his teachings became the basis for Buddhism.

Now, according to what I know, he was not trying to create another religion.

He was trying to reform Hinduism. Hmm. But it became it it ended up developing into another religion.

But there are still elements of Hinduism in Buddhism. And so you can find some parallels or you can see where it kind of correlates with some

Hindu ideas. But yet it is a distinct religion from Hinduism. So, Marcia, I have a question.

Yeah, just just a question real quickly. And also, let me know if you have questions so you can jump in here as well, too.

In regard. So I just thought of this in regards to the fact that there's really not that much real definitive historical sources on Buddha and his origins.

And it seems that it's more kind of word of mouth in regards to how he tried to reform

Hinduism. And obviously it kind of took a life of its own. Do you think the fact that maybe because Eastern religions, there's not it's a lot more word of mouth than definitive sources versus Christianity, where we have documents, external sources.

Do you think it could be related just to the underlying worldview behind a lot of Eastern religions, sort of that all itself or specifically the knowledge comes from within?

Because if you're looking from knowledge within yourself, it seems that that's where the source of knowledge is or that this information is get it.

You're getting it from versus Jesus, who would always appeal not to his own authority, but sources outside of himself, where Jesus says it's been said unto you.

And Jesus would quote the Old Testament, an authoritative source outside of himself that's verifiable. But then

I say to you, he would expand upon a source that's already verifiable. Do you think is there any sort of relatability between that?

That's just a thought that I had. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a worldview, not just in the religion, but just a worldview in the

East. Yeah. And I'm definitely not holding myself out as an expert on. Oh, sure.

Yeah, on Eastern Asia or anything. But that it does have a huge influence on the new age.

So I kind of I kind of know where they're coming from. Yeah, I think a lot of it is because it is subjective, more than objective.

And, you know, probably somebody who knows the culture of the Eastern countries could give a fuller answer to this.

But I think part of it is, yes, it is a more it's more subjective oriented.

And the teachings are something that are passed down from teacher to teacher. And so what matters, and this is especially true in Hinduism, what matters.

And it's also true as Daoism developed, because I read a book on the history of Daoism and it's teacher to teacher.

So this teacher would be teaching these things and have these followers. And then another teacher over here is teaching these things and has these followers.

And then, you know, 100, 200 years later, you have another new teacher with the teachings, take some of what was taught, but also adds his teachings or changes it.

And so you have this kind of complex development. It's not like a single theme that develops necessarily, but you have a lot of teachings being added onto it.

And, you know, in Buddhism, the basic teachings of Buddhism, the basic ideas of it, the

Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths were the basis of Buddhism.

And in Southeast Asia, like Thailand and Burma and that area there, that is the kind of Buddhism they follow very strictly.

And that's that's Theravada Buddhism, I think means the Buddhism of the lesser vehicle.

And that isn't in any kind of derogatory way, but that's they call it the lesser vehicle because Mahayana Buddhism is the greater vehicle because it accepted later teacher, later teachings like the sutras.

So the sutras are these teachings like the Diamond Sutra, which is kind of famous, especially in the

New Age. And those teachings came later. And Mahayana Buddhism, which is in China, Japan, Korea, and in that more north northeastern area of Asia, that is where you have

Mahayana Buddhism. And Zen Buddhism, which is a particular branch off of Buddhism, is also branched off of Mahayana Buddhism.

So Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism will look at later teachings, whereas Theravada Buddhism is more focused on those basic teachings and more focused on being a monk is more important than Theravada Buddhism.

And so you have all these monasteries in Thailand that a lot of men go to and they're monks for a while or maybe for their life.

But it's a little different. It's not exactly the same, although the basic Buddhism is there in both of those areas.

But those are two major areas of Buddhism that have a lot of differences. Now, Mahayana Buddhism, the greater vehicle in China, Japan, that is the

Buddhism that has influenced the United States, the culture in the United States, not Theravada Buddhism.

So I know more about a little bit more about Mahayana Buddhism than Theravada Buddhism, because I wasn't ever really exposed to Theravada Buddhism.

And that wasn't the kind of thinking that is over here, except for actual followers of that, maybe from those countries.

So the Buddhism that you find influential here is going to be usually it's either

Tibetan or Zen. And both of those are well, Tibetan is kind of in its category, all of its own.

Yeah, it is Mahayana. Yeah. Andrew, do you have a question, Andrew? Yeah, yeah. Marsha, just to backtrack a little bit between Hinduism and Buddhism, in what ways do they overlap?

Right. Is it in ways of the the belief of, let's say, like samsara or the cycle of rebirth and karma, things of that nature, like certain words that I can remember, like same thing going back like Jerry did do his college world religions class, the same thing, like words like Mukti, your devotion to God and Dharma, your duty to God.

Like we have this internal evidence that Buddhism came from Hinduism.

So my question is, what ways do they differ? And then other question is, how does a

Buddhist view a Hindu and how does a Hindu view a Buddhist? OK, yeah, yes, there are similarities in the idea of Hinduism, reincarnation and Buddhism.

You have rebirth. Now, there's a big difference, too, which I don't want to get into right now. But in Buddhism, they don't believe in the real existence of the self, whereas in Hinduism, they believe that you have your true self is the

Atman, A -T -M -A -N, which is kind of like the divine self. And so the idea of reincarnation in Hinduism is a little bit more concrete and a little bit more clear cut, you know, like you may come, you do this and that's bad.

And you may come back this way because you did this bad thing. And in in in Buddhism, there is rebirth and there's that idea.

But it doesn't seem to be as concrete. It seems more, you know, because because the self doesn't exist.

So how can it doesn't really exist? And how can you come back? You know, that's it kind of it doesn't really answer the question.

Yeah, but you know, some something whatever composes the self as you conceive of yourself is supposedly comes back.

It's it's but it's I think I don't think you can really support it logically. But, you know, that's based on my understanding and knowledge of it.

So so there is that similarity, but that difference then also.

So that's one thing. And of course, seeking enlightenment in both Hinduism and Buddhism is is important because what's what's really true of Buddhism, Hinduism and Daoism, which are the three

Eastern religions I'm most familiar with, because there are others that I know very little or nothing about.

But the three those are the three major Eastern religions, all of them. Their goal is to seek the nature of of true reality, the true nature,

I should say, the true nature of reality. That is the goal. What is the true nature of reality?

Because they all reject this reality as being as being really real or substantive.

So there's something else you're not really getting. What you see is not what you get, in other words.

So you you have to go on this search. And so, of course, that is the idea, the philosophy behind these religions.

But on a practical day to day level, the followers, most of the followers of these religions aren't into these kind of lofty ideas.

They're just doing day to day things, you know, like the Hindus may have a certain god in their household that they that they worship or pray to and they go to maybe another god for something else, for fertility or something.

So they do like these kind of practical sort of things. And they're not into this big philosophy and this and the same with Buddhism.

And another thing I want to mention is, which is true, really of really all religions, including including

Christianity, you have the the merging of the religion with indigenous cultures or folk beliefs.

And so you have the merging of Buddhism with like in Tibet, with the indigenous religion of Bon, which is very animistic and shamanistic.

So Tibetan Buddhism retained a lot of the more esoteric stuff from Hinduism because it's

Tibet is isolated. So when Buddhism went there, it was fresh out of India and it had still some of the

Hindu ideas. And it kind of kept those like the mandalas, the use of mandalas and some of the other ideas that had to do with gods and spirits, even though there is no officially there's no god in Buddhism because supposedly

Buddha never said anything about God. He never said there is no god or there is a god.

So God is sort of absent in Buddhism, whereas in Hinduism you have one major god,

Brahma, Brahman, and he manifests as many gods. So that's another difference with Hinduism and Buddhism.

But in Tibetan Buddhism, you've got you've got these deities because it was retained some of the

Hindu ideas. Plus, it merged with this animistic religion, which had evil spirits and good spirits and gods and everything.

So it's very, very Tibetan Buddhism. It's very like it's a very kind of animistic, almost an animistic religion.

So those are some differences right there. Now, meditation, a similarity would be the importance of meditation.

So in both Hinduism and Buddhism, meditation is very important because that is the way that you transcend the kind of prison of your material self.

And you have to but you also have to transcend your mind because your mind is part of your material self.

So so in order to get to the true nature of reality, you have to transcend the mind.

And the techniques of meditation are supposedly designed to do that so that you can go beyond the mind and kind of see things into the, you know, the realm of true reality.

I don't know that they would put it that way, but that's how I'm expressing it. So in that case, there's a similarity.

And some of the meditation methods in Buddhism can be similar to the Hindu methods.

But there's different there's not just one way to meditate. So, you know, there's different forms of meditation.

And Hinduism is so complex that it's, you know, and I've heard this said many times, it's not one religion.

It's really like a bunch of different religions. When you have a Hindu comes from the word for India.

Yeah. I mean, I have been a Christian for nearly 20 years and I'm still I'm still working on trying to understand the one true

God. So you talk about the incomprehensibility of God, but also just the complexities of so many aspects just of Scripture, of the revealed revelation of Scripture, just of who

God is, the God of Christianity. But I mean, just with Hinduism, you've got millions upon millions of deities with all sorts of different complexities involved.

And yeah, all kinds of teachings, too. Yeah. And then the gods. I did do a world religions course in seminary from Dr.

Wynn Cordawan. And I do recommend his book. I think it's called Neighboring Faiths.

It's a book on world religions. I recommend that if you're wondering about one and you can read his chapter on Buddhism and Hinduism because he's an expert, you know, much more than I am.

And you can get some more information. But, you know, he said even like the gods in North India are different from the gods in South India.

And sometimes a god will have the same name. But in North India, it's one thing. And in Southern India, it's another.

So even within Hinduism, within the same country, you have these differences. It's not in other words, it's just not consistent.

Wow. So there are gods aren't immutable. Complexity, just like, really, you could just like,

I mean, I would find it overwhelming if I was trying to become an expert. And Buddhism is,

I think, also somewhat complex. But then it's almost like a simplified Hinduism in some ways.

And because Buddha was trying to get rid of all the bells and whistles, he thought they weren't necessary.

And so Buddhism and then Zen, which came out of a movement much, much later, was a movement to simplify

Buddhism. It seemed Buddhism had seemed people were some teachers thought it was too complex and they thought it needed to be pared down.

And so and that was in China. And in China, it's called Chan. It still exists as a religion there.

And when Chan went to Japan, it became Zen because Zen is like apparently like the

Japanese word for Chan. And I may not be saying Chan right. But so basically

Zen Buddhism comes from Chan in China. So that's a form of Buddhism in China. So I am just giving a very general broad overview here because it's, of course, there's more details and there's a lot of details

I don't know. So I'm giving the major things to maybe help people understand what is

Buddhism? Where did it come from? How is it like Hinduism? How is it different from Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism?

I did say a few things about it. The Dalai Lama is actually there's four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism and the

Dalai Lama is the head of one of the four schools. But because of something they decided in Tibet a few centuries ago, they decided to make the head of his school kind of the head of Tibet.

And so he's kind of is seen as the main figure of Tibetan Buddhism.

But when I was involved in Tibetan Buddhism, I was following another school, Tibetan Buddhism, that was headed by Choigum Trungpa, T -R -U -N -G -P -A,

Choigum Trungpa came to this country and founded the Naropa Institute in Boulder, which is very well known among new agers and Western followers of Buddhism know about the

Naropa Institute. And he founded that and he started or maybe followers of his started different groups across the country.

And one of those groups was in Atlanta, where I was. And when I went to the group there to learn how to do

Tibetan, I didn't go there to learn to meditate. I went there sort of out of curiosity. And my first visit, the guy who kind of led that group said, you know, do you want to learn how to do the meditation?

And I said, yes. And he took me in a room and we sat down on the floor and he guided me through how to do it.

And every meeting every week, they would sit there and do it for about 45 minutes. And then one of the people of the group would give a talk, you know, like maybe a 15 or 20 minute talk based on the teachings of Choigum Trungpa.

And then I got books by Choigum Trungpa and read them. I was very impacted spiritually by them.

They affected my worldview. And his teachings were, you know, at the time they seemed so profound to me.

I read this book called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which is one of his more famous books.

And I was like, wow, I've never read anything like this.

This is so profound. And I had read some stuff, Hindu stuff. And I read the autobiography of Yogananda.

Well, actually, I think I read that later. But I was just really struck by what I thought was these profound thinking where he

I felt like he was just had this laser vision and he could see through things and he could see through all this, you know, gunk and clear it away.

And, you know, now that I think about it, I can't remember anything from. I don't remember anything except he was talking about spiritual materialism, which

I think for him was these extra excess things that you don't need in spirituality.

You know, you don't need these excess things. You just go right for the heart of it. Yeah. And it's very

Tibetan Buddhist because Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Vajrayana Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism.

Vajrayana comes from a word for lightning. And Vajrayana Buddhism comes from tantric

Hinduism, as I understand it, which is the most esoteric form of Hinduism, which involves all this esoteric stuff.

It is so esoteric. I don't think you could even sit down and read a page of this stuff.

I'm reading, actually, this book that is a little off the topic, but The Roots of Yoga.

If I just sat here and read you a paragraph or two, your brains would be scrambled. I'm not kidding.

This is so esoteric. And I know esoteric stuff. So believe me, when I'm saying this is esoteric and it's going to scramble your brains,

I really mean it. No, it does. The Roots of Yoga. Yeah. And it does. It does feel like that. A lot of times when you'll hear different Eastern gurus, they talk in such a way that's very rapid fire technique.

And it's all over the place. And it's almost sometimes it almost sort of kills away your critical thinking, you know, and almost creates this dependency that, you know, all the knowledge comes from them and they're all over the place.

And you'll see that a lot of times where sometimes even the people who are following this guru, they're not really thinking for themselves.

They're just literally parroting the exact same thing that the guru is saying just because they're all over the place.

You'll see that a lot. Well, why don't we do this? I'm just curious because, I mean, you have an extensive background and I think it is there's a lot of different variations.

You gave the examples of the different versions and formulations of Buddhism. So basically what when

Buddha, according to word of mouth, word of knowledge is that Buddha came to the formulation of four basic truths.

And I remember, again, I pull this up. I remember learning this in my community college, rural religions class.

And we'll expand on this. So he came up with the idea of four noble truths. It says they are the truth.

The four noble truths is that there's the truth of suffering.

There's the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.

But there's also what they would call the eightfold path, which is I'm not going to pronounce the pronunciations to it, but it's a right understanding, a right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

And in very simplistic terms, at least my understanding is that you work out ways to apply that.

I'm sure each person, you know, it's going to die at the beholder how exactly you carry that out.

But you're essentially doing that, hoping to do better either in the next life or to hopefully reach a finality and to reach essentially nirvana.

And there's different ways that you can do that. That would be the basic general assessment, correct?

Yes, but let me say this, Western followers of Buddhism, probably very few of them could tell you anything about the eightfold path.

They aren't they're not following Buddhism strictly the way that you would follow it if you lived in Asia and you were following it.

Yeah, they most of them would know the Four Noble Truths because those are something you have to understand to when you read when you if you don't know,

I mean, you just come across that so much when you're reading, you're reading any Buddhist type material.

And those form the basis of even the worldview, those four things, which I do want to talk about, because that relates to mindfulness.

But the eightfold path, you know, is, you know, I remember reading about it, but I didn't really

I didn't try to apply it to my life. I wasn't following the eightfold path. To me, it just sounded like kind of like, well, these are ethical things, you know, this is you.

And basically that kind of sums it up. This is how you live ethically. But here's here's the here's the thing that makes a big difference from Christianity.

The ethics is not because it's based on some kind of absolute standard of what's good.

It's it's a practical way to live your life so that you can reach enlightenment.

It's you know, in other words, if you don't follow it or you do the opposite of it, it's going to cause problems.

You'll have rebirth. It's going to take you longer to reach enlightenment. So it's more like a pragmatic thing to you, follow this ethical path, because that's going to help you, you know, in your search for enlightenment or your journey to enlightenment or liberation.

And so that's the idea. Whereas in Christianity. What we define good as based on God's character and what he reveals, what you know, good is based on God's character because he's absolutely good.

So that's how we know what good is, you know. And God declares, you know, what is good, but it's based on his character.

It's not a a random kind of thing. And it's not because God's volatile and it's like, OK, today it's good to do this tomorrow.

It's good. It'll be bad to do that. You know, it's based on his character. It's based on something objective.

But this these ethical eight steps, a full eight full path things are kind of these this guide.

So they'll talk about it. And when you hear it, a lot of people think, oh, we'll see. They believe in being good and they're teaching to be good, just like in Christianity, because, you know, there's all these books that I've seen come out for quite a while comparing

Jesus and Buddha and saying, you know, well, Jesus was teaching what Buddha taught, you know.

Well, no, no, not at all. Not at all. And what's interesting to me is how people said

I've I've heard or seen people say, well, Jesus was influenced by Buddhism. But if the

Buddhist teachings were not written down to twenty nine AD, sorry, Jesus didn't see them.

I mean, and I don't think they were in that area in the Middle East at that time. That's when they were first written down in Asia.

So by the time they got to the Middle East, who knows when? I mean, that was after Jesus's resurrection.

So anyway, the so I would say the eight fold thing is not although I'm not ruling out that there are

Western followers of Buddhism who take it seriously and really study probably the they're probably the kinds who really take this seriously.

But I really heard no talk of it from people who were into Buddhism. I heard nobody talk about it.

They're more into also their people like D .T.

Suzuki and Alan Watts, who were kind of the purveyors of Zen Buddhism in this country.

They wrote books that were in English. And I don't know if Suzuki wrote in Japanese and was translated in English, but his books were available in English.

And I read, you know, I read things by Suzuki and Alan Watts. Yeah. And supposedly

Alan Watts was giving a an Americanized version of Zen. And there are people who are who either are advocates of Zen Buddhism or who really say they're experts or they know it.

And they'll say Alan Watts wasn't really talking about Zen Buddhism as it is in Japan. He was giving like his own kind of Westernized version of it.

But that that kind of Zen Buddhism influenced a lot of people in this country, you know, including me.

And so I think the basic ideas of Buddhism about the self and the need for enlightenment and being detached, cultivating attachment, which

I haven't talked about yet. I had those ideas and those are Zen Buddhist ideas.

But, you know, here I was, I was a new ager and I had some Hindu ideas and Taoist ideas.

And I was kind of, oh, yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot to say something very important. Chan.

I'm very sorry. Let me say this. I've talked about Chan in China, going into a form of Buddhism in China.

It is a form of Buddhism in China, but it's a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism. Because Taoism is the older religion in China, it existed before Buddhism came to China.

And so when Buddhism came into China, it mostly merged with Taoism and became

Chan. And that's the kind of Buddhism. So Chan became Zen. So Zen Buddhism has elements of Taoism in it, almost more elements, maybe not more, but as much elements of Taoism in it as Hinduism.

Because I was into Taoism, too. And I really felt like Zen Buddhism and Taoism, to me, they were so many similarities.

There's no God in either one of them, you know, and both of them have the idea that,

OK, in Taoism, everything comes from the Tao, which is the person which is an impersonal source of everything.

And everything goes back to the Tao. So the Tao is almost like in Zen Buddhism, like the

Buddha mind or Buddha nature, because in Buddhism, all that really exists, all that has substance, substantive, permanent existence is

Buddha mind or Buddha nature. And everything, everything else doesn't really exist.

So they say there's form and formlessness. Everything that is form is just temporary.

That includes, you know, us and the animals and the trees and the stars and the rivers. That's all form.

And what only truly exists is formlessness. So that's another way to look at it.

So it's form and formlessness. But that's very much like, you know, there's a parallel with Taoism where everything comes from the

Tao and all that is really real is is the Tao. So so there's a lot of and Taoism is a very complex history and stuff, but there are some elements where Buddhism matches

Hinduism and Taoism and Buddhism. Now, a quick question for you,

Marsha. So for those four essential truths, how in that worldview does suffering play into it?

Right. Because that's those four essential truths. What's the what's the point? Isn't that a form? Isn't suffering a form?

Right. It's a material thing. They acknowledge that they're suffering, but suffering as a result of attachment.

So the idea is that and suffering in Buddhism, when we say suffering, we think of somebody, you know, like really, you know, having a hard time, you're crying or you're sick or something.

And that's true. They would agree that that's suffering. But suffering is also the attachment to this reality that causes suffering.

So your attachment to this reality and to yourself as an individual causes suffering because when things happen to you, you really you you're impacted by it because you take it seriously, because you take it as real and you are attached to it.

So, you know, if I'm sick, well, I'm sick. I have this illness. I have to find a cure.

I have to get treated, you know, until I get treated. I'm suffering and you and you and it becomes this real thing to you.

So what you have to do in Buddhism is what what Buddha said he recognized was that there was a suffering and the cause of it was attachment and the way to escape, escape it.

The only way to escape suffering is to escape rebirth and escape this life. But the way to do that is to cultivate detachment.

And that is the goal of mindfulness meditation. It's to cultivate detachment.

And it does do it because I did it for 12 years. Does it? So cultivating detachment, it doesn't mean that it means you have no desire.

But the way we interpret that in the West is like, well, you know, you know, have no desire.

You know what? You know, that can that's such a broad term. You know, what does that mean in in Buddhism?

Having no desire means you're you're not grasping at this reality and you're not grasping at yourself as real.

That's desire. That's where it's where you're drawn to something. So the idea is that if you cultivate detachment and you come to see through meditation, first you come to see through there, you know, because then

I learned Zen Buddhist meditation after I did the Tibetan Buddhist meditation. And it was it was somewhat similar.

You. You come to see you, you watch your thoughts go by and by watching your thoughts, you're supposed to recognize

I am watching my thoughts, therefore, my thoughts are not me. My thoughts are being generated, but they're not coming from me because I'm watching them.

So they're just they're just like clouds in the sky. So I just watch them go by.

You know, I just sit here. I don't I'm not impacted by them. I'm not judging them. I'm just going to let them go by.

And then if you meditate and that's how you're reacting, because that's how they tell you to do it. You begin to actually do you do distance yourself from your thoughts and your mind, because you're supposed to see that your mind is not who you are.

And that eventually, eventually you're supposed to see that yourself is not a real self and that is formless.

You're well, you're so you're in other words, you're taught yourself is not yourself, but you're you're part of the source, which is formless, formless.

Exactly. And that and that's and that's what I'm curious about, too. And you can give me your thoughts on this, too, is that, you know, there's some people have commented almost if titled

Buddhism as a almost an atheistic religion because there's not even really a deity really attached to this.

So it's not almost like a pantheism where all is divine, but there's all this just sort of this formless source.

And that's where what doesn't add up to me. I'm just curious, too, for someone who has a worldview of Buddhism, like if all is completely formless, where where do you how do you tap into the source?

How did Buddha tap into the source of these four noble truths and these eightfold paths?

Are those not illusions as well? How do those become definitive versus all other thoughts, which are which are our thoughts are not you.

So if this is the formulation that Buddha came up with, those thought I mean, those thoughts of the eightfold path are not him.

So why should we pay attention to them? Does that make sense from St. Andrew? How do you feel about that, Andrew? Is that I feel like your mind's always your mind's always thinking.

So what are your thoughts on that, man? Give me your thoughts. Well, it's kind of like the kind of the way I think about it, which maybe you may be saying it in a different way,

Jerry, is, well, if it's to be formless, if it's to be free from desire, if it's to be detached or if it's to do to say that we have essentially like a silver cord connected to us from the

Buddha mind in the material and we need to do certain practices to detach and snap that silver cord so we can be one with the

Buddha mind. It's hard. It's hard for us to understand, I'd say, as Christians, especially in the

Western culture, to understand the fact, well, what about the desire to reach nirvana? You know, how is that not something material?

How is not not in total contradiction to the point in general? Right. And with with regards to atheism,

I can understand the similarities between the two. But at the same time, with true logical atheism, there's no purpose whatsoever.

And Buddha says there is a purpose, and that's to to reach nirvana to a point of formlessness. So it's really, really interesting.

It's not really a desire to like you're what you're doing is you're seeking the true nature of reality.

And so it's not like and I think we probably should say what nirvana is. It's not like heaven. Nirvana is a state.

Nirvana is the state of no longer being attached to anything. That's what nirvana is.

So basically, you know, it comes from a word that means extinct to extinguish.

So you have extinguished all attachments and desires. And that is nirvana.

You're then you are in the state of nirvana. So it's not like you're somewhere, you know, you're because if there's no you, then you can't be anywhere.

I mean, it's you know, it's ultimately contradictory because you're basically trying to not you're basically saying

I don't really have a self. Myself doesn't really exist. And I'm trying to get I'm working towards getting towards the state where I understand myself doesn't exist so that I don't exist.

Yeah. You know, it's kind of like and I kind of you know, I would that would come to me and I kind of didn't

I didn't understand it. And I thought, well, you know, you know,

I didn't really I didn't I didn't. I did not cherish the idea of having been in a state where I basically wasn't existing anymore.

So I I I kind of told myself that when

I was ready for that, then I would want then I would be OK. I just wasn't ready for it yet. And that's why

I was kind of put off by it. And it was kind of similar to the New Age ideas that you would eventually merge with the one, you know, with the source of everything.

It's kind of it's very similar. And that particular New Age view.

And so I had already heard that and I heard it more later. And to me, it was very similar to Nirvana.

And I just thought, well, you know, when I get ready, when I'm actually ready for that, you know,

I'm sure I'm going to have some more future lives. I know it's not going to be in this life that I'm going to be enlightened.

So I felt I had some more future lives down the road and then I'll be ready for it and then it'll be

OK. But it's not really a very comforting thought at all. Yeah. You know, it's it's it's actually, to me, a very depressing thought.

And, you know, but yet that is that is the teachings of Buddhism. So the only way to escape suffering is you cultivate detachment, come to realize that, you know, ultimately yourself doesn't exist.

And then, you know, when you really and realizing it doesn't mean you think it's true or you believe it, realizing it is like the state that you reach where it's really

I see. I think that's what the thing was with Buddha under the Bodhi tree. It wasn't his the

Four Noble Truths weren't supposedly his idea. It was like he realized the true nature of reality.

And those Four Noble Truths were kind of, I guess, I don't know if you want to say given to him.

I'm not sure that Buddhists would put it that way, but sort of became apparent to him in his state of enlightenment.

He saw that he saw those as the four truths. Yeah. And that's why they're called the

Four Noble Truths, because that's what guides Buddhism. Wow. How did you develop like interpersonal relationships at this time in your life, like trying to devote a life to Buddhism and detachment?

How do you relate with one another? Like in the Bible, we know Jesus says the two greatest commandments is love the Lord, your

God with all your heart, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Right. Like this reality that we're living together amongst other people who are creating the image of God to form relationships, to love one another.

Right. Whereas in Buddhism, it's like, how do you even form a relationship with somebody else?

It seems like it's all very subjective and about you, even though it's not supposed to be about you, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. Now, I don't you know, I think that kind of maybe must have compartmentalized because I can't remember the exact I can't remember if I got into Zen Buddhism before my son was born or after.

I think it was before, but I can't I can't really remember now if it was before or after. But I know that I was still following it after he was born and and I was married, too.

I think that I just kind of it's kind of like, well, this is my life, you know, with my husband and son, and this is what

I need to do for my I mean, I love I love my son. I mean, non -Christians love their children as much as Christians.

And, you know, I love my son. I was doing everything I could for him that, you know, being what

I thought was a good mother, you know, so I definitely I wasn't trying not to have a relationship with him or with my husband.

But then I had it was kind of like, OK, that's my family life, you know, and that's kind of the way

I have to be because I'm a mother and I'm responsible for this child. And so I'm not going to turn my back on my responsibilities as a mother.

Plus, I loved him. So my reactions, you know, my decisions were all based on this love for him and taking care of him.

And then there's the Buddhism part, which is where when I was meditating or thinking about things, you know,

I was in the sort of other sphere where I was on this path to enlightenment.

You know, I'm not sure exactly, you know, I'm just guessing kind of that's that must be how

I did it, because thinking back, that seems to me how I was doing it. And I had

I also, you know, I was an astrologer. And so I believed in, you know, I pretty much had the reincarnation idea of Hinduism, basically.

And so, you know, I would look at charts and with the worldview of reincarnation in mind when

I was doing a reading for a client. And I would think in those terms, kind of these new age terms, new age

Hindu terms. So it's kind of like I have this Buddhist thing going on and then

I have these other things going on all at the same time. Yeah, that's good. That's very it was interesting to me to think about how how you live that way.

It's you have to live in many different ways because, number one, you live in God's world in true reality that's defined and set forth by God.

And then we have this manmade religion to where you can't actually live it fully, logically, consistently, because why you live in God's world.

So you have to wear almost like masks in a sense. It's interesting. Yeah, yeah. You can't really, you know, and I think that's why you find like people who are really seriously following Buddhism.

A lot of them, you know, do become monks. They do go off and into, you know, by themselves or with another community of monks.

Even in this country, there's Western, you know, I mean, there's monasteries,

Buddhist monasteries. And there's a big one up in Maryland where, you know,

Western, mostly Western followers of Buddhism go there and they actually, you know, live there for a while.

I don't really know how long if it's the rest of their lives or they live there for several years seeking, you know, to understand things.

And so really to really follow it earnestly, you really ideally would not be with a family or would not be married.

You would be off by yourself doing it because it doesn't work well.

I don't think practically in everyday life with a family. And so, you know,

I know I do want to say this because a lot of people probably don't know this. The Dalai Lama is very aggressive in spreading

Tibetan Buddhism and he has planted, I forgot how many Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in this country.

They're all over. And I don't think people know this. When I went up, I actually went and heard the

Dalai Lama in person. I know we're back to Tibetan Buddhism. Oh, that's good. I kind of go back and forth between the two.

In 2008, I had a friend who lived in Ithaca, New York, where Cornell University is.

And the Dalai Lama was going to come and speak there. And she got tickets for me, for herself and for me.

And I drove up there and we went to hear him speak at Cornell.

She tried to get tickets for the talk on Dharma, but they sold out. They sold out in less than five minutes.

It's almost like as soon as they went online for sale, they were gone. So she got the tickets to the talk on world peace.

So we went and heard the talk on world peace. Now, this is just a very interesting experience.

Is it OK if I relay this? No, it's good. Yeah. Now, she also drove by this building and showed me there in Ithaca.

That was the Tibetan Buddhist monastery that the Dalai Lama had set up or his followers had set up, and it was going through its third expansion.

Yeah, it was going through its third expansion. I think Ithaca is a very new age kind of city, and I think most people who have lived there or whatever would tell you that.

But anyway, it's going it was going through its third expansion then. So we went to hear the

Dalai Lama. She had gotten us good seats. I mean, we were like not right in front, but we were near the front.

But before the Dalai Lama came out, they had and it was there was apparently five thousand people there.

This was an indoor kind of huge indoor place. And I think I had heard there was five thousand people and there was press.

There was a whole section for the press. But before the Dalai Lama came out, I mean, we must have waited.

Of course, we got there early because we had to wait in line. So I think when we got inside, we were there maybe close to an hour before the actual talk began.

These four, I think four men or five men came out and they were dressed kind of in there the way they dress in Tibet.

And they had the long, those long kind of I don't know what the name of the instrument is.

It's a musical instrument. It looks like a really, really long horn or something. I'm not good on music.

I believe I've seen those somewhere in passing. I believe I know what you're referring to. Yeah. And they they came out with them and they started playing.

Now, this is not music for entertainment. This is not like music. You sit there and go, oh, that's a really pretty you know, that's it's very disturbing.

It's very disturbing. It's this low kind of like that louder and deeper.

And then another one of the and it's like it's almost it's actually disarming this. And it was so loud.

And my friend and I were sitting there and we looked at each other and we were like, this is disturbing.

You know, we're like, yes, this is so there was something so evil about it.

And actually, it's they believe that it has a spiritual effect on the people. It's almost would it be almost like they're trying to get out a certain sound frequency out in order to try and conjure up something?

Well, no, I don't think they try. I don't know that it was. Well, it depends what you mean by conjure, not conjure up a material thing.

I think I think they they believe these sounds have a spiritual effect. I think they probably in their thinking, they think that it's kind of making either making people more receptive to what the

Dalai Lama is going to share or somehow raising our spiritual awareness or something.

I think that's how I don't know if they would think exactly how technically they would think in terms of vibrations or anything.

But they definitely believe that there's a spiritual effect to it. Wow. It's almost like a form of a spiritual effect to it.

But it's oppressive. Yeah, it's oppressive. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. She and I were sitting there like, oh, my gosh, this is absolutely

I had to get up and walk around because I was like, I can't I can't take it. And so. Eventually, you know, things got quite and you could tell that they were going to have him come out because this man came out on the stage and there was a a chair there and like a little low table with some objects on it.

And the man went over and like a glass of water. And the man went over and he started moving the objects around like very carefully, like he'd move this one like a couple of inches.

And then he moved this one. And he kind of stepped back and then he'd go over and he moved them again.

And he did that like off and on for like five or ten minutes. I mean, I thought I thought it was never going to end.

And it's like he had to get them exactly right now in Tibetan Buddhism, like in in like in Hinduism, they believe that, you know, like the buildings, how they face a certain way and how objects are placed all have a meaning and all have an effect.

So it's actually like he was doing a spiritual thing by moving the objects around. This is also the idea behind feng shui, which comes from Taoism.

So you can see how there's a similarity in all all three religions, actually. And so finally, he finished doing that.

And then the Dalai Lama came out. Everybody there got to their feet and started clapping, except for my friend and I, because as soon as they got to their feet,

I turned to her and I said, Patricia, I am not standing up because he is seen not just as this religious figure from Tibet, but he's seen as the reincarnation of a

Buddha. Really, he's he is seen as reincarnation. He's like, I think, the 14th Dalai Lama or something.

And he's a reincarnation. It's the same person that keeps keeps coming back. Well, didn't

Buddha claim to have a final birth? I mean, he had an infinite number of births, but then he had a final birth. I don't know if he really claimed that or not.

And so we don't really know what Buddha said or taught. That's the problem. We just know what people say he taught. See, I remember the hearings and like back and forth in my world religion class.

And someone was asking. I remember there's I think there was another person in my class who was a Christian and he was asking my world religions teacher.

And at least he was making the claim. And again, it's Chandler Gillett Community College. So this is not super accredited like at Oxford.

You know, so I don't know reliability and all that. But at least my community college class teacher, he was teaching that Buddha had an infinite number of lives, but then he had a he had a final birth.

And that's where he came to this acknowledgment of, you know, of of the of the different eightfold and the fourfold and eightfold path.

But I think he asked them, well, how does an infinite number of lives like reach a finality?

Isn't that self -refuting? Isn't that self -contradictory? So I just thought of that. I mean, I thought Buddha was the finality.

I thought he hit like he reached. He's teaching people how to get out of the karmic circle of reincarnation and to reach

Nirvana. But the Dalai Lama is actually a reincarnation of him. I'm just trying to make sense of it.

Yeah, you know, he's not really, I guess, reincarnation Buddha. But he is a Buddha. So here's here's what that what that means.

I probably didn't put that right. But yeah, I think Buddha is a title. Actually, it's not a name. It means and like the enlightened one.

So what they believe in Mahayana Buddhism is that you can become a

Buddha and that means you can become enlightened and you are like a Buddha. You're not the Buddha, but you're a

Buddha. So he is considered a Buddha. Now, they don't that is not true in Theravada Buddhism.

That's in Mahayana Buddhism, which is in Tibet, China and Japan. So you can become enlightened like a

Buddha. Now you can choose after you die. You can choose to come back to help teach people.

Or you can go on. Now, that's Mahayana Buddhism. I read and heard that all the time.

The Dalai Lama is considered a Buddha because he's considered to be enlightened and he comes back to teach people.

Hmm. OK. Oh, that's the Dalai Lama. So he came out on the stage. Now, his

English is very or well, I don't know. Maybe he knows English better than he acted.

Maybe he didn't want to act like he knew English for a while because he thought it was more endearing to kind of struggle.

He came out and he kind of said he kind of looked behind the curtains. He came out and he said, oh, so many people.

And everybody just, you know. Well, I forgot to say people clapped for five minutes.

It lasted for five minutes. Yeah, I thought it was never going to end. And we were the only as far as I know.

I mean, now we were kind of near the front. So I know what it was like. But I see anybody else sitting down.

Everybody else stood up. We were like, maybe the only two people there. Maybe there are a couple other Christians who didn't stand up.

But I was not going to stand up for him. I'm not acknowledging him as any kind of enlightened spiritual teacher.

I'm just not going to do that. So she and I just sat, stayed seated. Wow. But he came out and he's like, oh, so many people.

And then everybody like laughs and titters. And then he's like kind of goes through this thing about world peace.

And he starts but he starts off talking about how animals he says, well, you know, animals, sharp teeth.

Long claws. Humans, short teeth, not sharp.

Don't have long claws. So in his way, he's saying, we'll see. Humans are not meant to fight.

We're meant to be at peace. That was what he was saying. So he was talking like that. And every once in a while, his translator was there and he would ask his translator how to say a word.

And his translator would tell him and then he would say it. And he went through this talk that was really kind of very almost juvenile, you know, in my opinion.

I mean, it was really I thought it was very, very bizarre talk. And then his

Dharma talk, which is the one she tried to get tickets to. And my friend couldn't get the tickets to. They did put it on tape or on audio.

And I listened to it online. I listened to an audio and it was a very serious talk.

And he did that talk in his language and the translator translated it.

And that was like the real deep spiritual stuff for his followers. But the reason I'm saying this is because I think a lot of people don't realize his influence in this country.

Like he was a consultant on the film Inside Out, which I did a Facebook post on about the

Buddhist views and Inside Out. And and what I did when I did the post, when

I first recognized the Buddhist views, I did not know that Dalai Lama had been a consultant. I just recognize him because a little girl is being taught to see her emotions as separate from herself.

They're their own. Each little emotion is its own character. Here's anger. You know, here's sadness. Here's joy.

Here's excitement or whatever they were. And she sees them as this kind of committee.

Well, this is very, very Buddhist like because you are separating yourself from from your thoughts, from your emotions, in this case, emotions.

And when you try to make a separation between yourself and your emotions, I mean, that's not always

Buddhist, but that is a that is a characteristic of Buddhism. Right.

That's what first that's what tipped me off on it. And and I thought this bothers me. This really bothers me because it didn't strike me as a

Christian way to look at how to deal with our feelings. Yeah. And so anyway, that's, you know, another topic.

But if you want to do a search for it or you can message me on Facebook, I'll find it and give you a link to it.

So I have a very long post on Inside Out because it was such a popular movie and a lot of Christians saw it and liked it.

And I'm like, no, be careful with this movie. There is a Buddhist worldview in it. So anyway, that's you know, that's just one one way it's influenced.

But actually, you know, the first very vocal followers of Zen Buddhism, you know who they were in this country?

Who? The beat poets. The Berlin Getty, you know,

Ferling Getty. This is a music group. I know. No, this is past.

Oh, man, I can tell you guys are young. Yes. Yeah. These are the they're called the beat poets and the beat writers.

They did like, oh, gosh, I can't remember the most one of the most. Jack Kerouac on the road. They wrote like in the late 40s and the 50s, they were very they were the unconventional people of that time.

And Jack Kerouac, K -E -R, I think O -U -A -C, I think is how you spell his name.

He wrote a book called On the Road where he drove around the country with a couple of friends, I think, and his girlfriend.

I haven't I haven't read the book, but I know about it. And just kind of the beat, you know, remember the beatniks?

You've heard of the beatniks, right? Have you heard of the beatniks? Andrew, I have no idea.

I wish I knew your assignment, guys, because this will help you with with everything to have a context because the beatniks had an influence on their culture.

Yeah. Google beatniks and read about it. This is when this was a time they they would have these like beat these these nightclubs that featured the beatniks.

And the beatniks were like usually dressed in black. And they would come and read this poetry, like very modern poetry.

And people didn't clap. And it was kind of this very everything was kind of very solemn.

And that those were the those were like the beatniks and beat poetry. And there were beat poets and beat writers.

And that was very much in the I think the late 40s and very much part of the 50s.

But it was very it was very much different from the very conventional lifestyle of the 1950s.

Yes. Which was very conventional middle class type lifestyle. They were a stark contrast to it.

And when I was growing up, I I was not I was.

Well, so now you're going to know I'm old because I was very young when the beatniks were on the scene and they were beginning to kind of leave the scene.

But I heard a lot about them. And there were still people like talking about them because they hadn't been it hadn't been that long since they had been a big force in the culture.

And so I knew who the beatniks were, and I thought it was really cool that they dressed all in black and everything.

I thought that was really cool. You know, and I really thought that was neat. So but Jack Kerouac on the road.

I mean, these are kind of almost like pre hippie hippies, but they weren't really they weren't hippies. It wasn't the same philosophy, but they were definitely countercultural like the hippies.

And so they were into Zen Buddhism. They were influenced by it.

And there's even a book of poems called I think it's called Big Sky, Big Mind.

I actually had it at one point. I don't know if I have it anymore. It's poetry by the beat poets.

That's about that's influenced by Zen Buddhism. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So this is the whole part of our culture that initially.

And of course, it wasn't mainstream, but there was an element. And, you know, people in college and stuff were impacted by these things and some probably younger, you know, like young adults and stuff.

And that that influenced them. So that was kind of the first impact in this country of Zen Buddhism.

And then later there was another impact in the 60s through people like Alan Watts and D .T.

Suzuki. Yeah, the 70s and on. Right. And even just to bridge the bridge, the gap as we wrap up here in the first part of this episode.

And yeah, I feel like this is just a just a surge of information. I think we're both drinking from the fire hose here.

Andrew, I know your mind is. I know I'm trying not to do that. It's awesome, though.

We love it. We love it. We love it. We're taking one for the team because, you know, this is you know, people are about their day and they have a lot going on.

But we do this because we have a lot of people who listen and we want to give them the best content possible. But to bridge the gap, you know, just a couple of examples to, you know, you mentioned, you know, the film

Inside Out. You know, it's just it's good. I mean, I think as far as what you choose to watch and not watch as a matter of personal discernment and Christian liberty,

I think there is a level of responsibility, though, is that you need to be aware of what is being propagated in the in a particular film.

There's always an underlying worldview being being propagated. The neutrality is a myth.

So it's always good to be aware of that. So just a couple of people just to bridge the gap who are prominent Buddhists.

And I even know this. So apparently David Bowie was someone who was a Buddhist when he was a apparently he experimented with multiple religions in his life, including

Buddhism. And he he really saw that as kind of he was really into it from what

I could see. Also, not surprising. George Lucas. Imagine that. Not a there's a shocker right there.

And obviously, there's no you can just basically take a look at the worldview propagated in the

Star Wars universe. It is very easy to see very Eastern. And even someone apparently

Steve Jobs. He apparently took a trip to India in 1974, and that sparked a lifelong interest in Buddhism.

And so and a parent and also his his Buddhist principles were part of the influence behind his

Apple products. Yes, yes, definitely. And you can see that in how he marketed how

Apple was marketed. It's very like the bit like it's kind of pared down, you know, and kind of gets to the point right away or something.

There is something very Zen Buddhist about Steve Jobs and our jobs. And and Apple, I mean, because when

I found out he was into Zen Buddhism, I thought, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Well, if you think about this real quickly, as if you if you think about just the aspect of like reincarnation, like reincarnating you know, something that was already there into something better.

I mean, that's all he really did. You look at the iPod prior to that. There are these MP3s. And I saw my friends who had those.

I'm like, what is that? Is that is that legal? You know, like with all these songs on there?

Like, is that safe to even have? It just looked like some weird gadget. And all of a sudden,

Steve Jobs took the iPod and it was just this really cool thing. He just basically took this old product and kind of reincarnated it.

So if that was an aspect of it, that would make sense if he was trying to take

Buddhism and try and apply that to his area of business. So, yeah, he was. And you know who another

Zen Buddhist? I mean, you may have another name, but I don't want to forget to say this. Goldie Hawn. Yeah, big followers in Buddhism.

And she implemented a program into a lot of schools that has Zen is based on Zen Buddhist type ideas.

She I actually was was writing posts, Facebook posts about this several years ago because Goldie Hawn really fought beliefs or she says she's a follower of Zen Buddhism.

And she her worldview was put into these programs that were implemented in the schools.

And I can't think of a name for the program that I can't think of right now. But she's another one.

She's another. Well -known person, someone well -known, well, she is a well -known actress or a one time, you know, follower of Zen Buddhism.

Yeah, you probably know some others. Yeah, I was just looking at a list here and like one of the person they mentioned

Jeff Bridges being a Buddhist. And apparently, you know, he was in the film like his popular film,

The Big Lebowski. Some people actually consider it a Zen Buddhist classic. I can't personally recommend the movie because it unless you see a very edited version of it, because there's a lot of words in there that don't include the words, please and thank you.

But there are a lot of various Zen principles if you think about that, if you have actually seen that film.

So anyways, all that being said, Marcia, thank you so much for coming on for the first part of this episode. I believe in the next one, we're going to maybe get more to the real nitty gritty of really defining terms that there are different views on revelation, authority.

What is actually salvation look like? And how do we how do we contrast that with the biblical worldview and kind of really do a comparing contrast?

Because obviously we would come from a point of not neutrality. We would come from this approaching the religion of Buddhism, knowing that Jesus Christ is the king of kings and the

Lord of lords. And he's given us his revelation through the Bible. And we need to take a look at the claims that are being made.

And we need to understand how do we give tangible answers to them and realize that these people who are, whether it's the

Dalai Lama, these Tibetan monks or just people who are trying to there, they have eternity written on their hearts.

They're desperately trying to find the truth, but they're looking for it not in the truth.

They're not looking for it in Christ. They're looking for it elsewhere. And so we need to be able to find tangible answers to give to them so we can be a witness to our friends and neighbors.

So all that being said, thank you all for listening in. And if this has been a blessing to you, as you know, we're headed into a brand new year of of an interesting time to be alive, for sure.

So if you want to partner with this ministry as we continue to expand and continue to get out great content to you on a weekly basis, go to the cult to show dot com.

You can go to the Donate tab. You can donate one time or monthly. So that being said, we'll talk to you guys next time on Cultus.