Learning, training and education are probably the most important factors that determine success and happiness in life. Whether it’s ordinary education—reading, writing, arithmetic and all of that—or highly advanced training in some science or engineering discipline, or training in enlightenment and Self-realization, the ordinary educational system has let us down.

It doesn’t teach skills, it only teaches how to give right answers on tests. So you wind up graduating from school, only knowing how to get through school. And then you hit the real world, it’s another story. What is needed to rise above the current crisis in education, in leadership, in trust, and in self-realization, is a new kind of education—not ordinary schooling, but experiential learning that teaches real skills.

We cannot master a subject without doing it; and we cannot do the subject without being it. That’s where our Western philosophy has let us down. Descartes’ idea of ‘I think, therefore I am’ is completely backwards. The Cartesian split between the mind and the body, between knowledge and action, is completely wrong. Why? Because real learning starts from being. We went over this in the previous videos in the Foundation Series, and we’re going to go into it much deeper in this series of Becoming Genius.

Because no one is born a genius—or you might say, everyone is born a potential genius—why do some people realize it and others don’t? It’s simply because they are not becoming a genius. Of becoming a genius, I’m not going to say it’s easy. You have to know how. But once you know how, it’s simply a matter of the methodical application of certain principles, and we’re going to go into those principles deeply in this series.

If one wants to become a doctor, you have to enroll in medical school; you have to go through a lot of book-learning; and then you have to go through a lot of practical learning. Finally, you have to be approved, evaluated and stamped a doctor by a panel of judges. All of whom are practicing physicians themselves.

The same is true of enlightenment. You can study about enlightenment from books or websites, but unless you actually practice and become an enlightened person, you will not attain what you’re looking for.

This series of videos is how to become a genius in any field that you choose. Of course, we would rather that you become a genius in Skillful Living and realize the teaching of the Buddha, because that will give you the greatest benefit. So, what is Skillful Living and what is becoming a genius? Well, let’s talk about it some more...

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So, we have been posting on this channel for now eight or nine years, and still our basic assumption, or basic fact, or basic principle has not been well understood by the audience. I don’t know if it’s my fault, because i’m not presenting it properly; or I don’t know, maybe the fault lies on the other side, that people aren’t investigating it, and researching it and practicing it. Because if they did, they would immediately find out the Truth.

What is that Truth? Consciousness is the Absolute. I should make a slight change to that: unconditioned awareness is the Absolute. This is the Absolute Truth, the summum bonum, the ultimate conclusion of all philosophical, religious and meditative disciplines.

Why do we assert this? Well, because it’s observationally verifiable in real time; and it’s true.

Consciousness is the absolute. Everything is experienced and measured relative to consciousness. There’s no getting around this; this is the way it is, for everybody. Now you know dharma; Dharmasār means the Essence of Dharma; and dharma means what is, the way it is, and why it is the way it is, So what is, is that consciousness is the Absolute. The way it is, is that it appears in four flavors—jagrat or consciousness of the world, svapna or consciousness of dreams, suśupti or consciousness of the void, and turīya or unconditioned consciousness.

Now in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, he states that “Every motion is relative.” In other words, it’s only measurable in comparison with an observer, who is assumed to be at rest. Einstein’s very tricky; he snuck the idea of consciousness into his theory—which of course was subsequently proven to be absolutely correct—and he snuck the idea of consciousness into the observer.

Now if you ask a scientist what is the observer, he usually talks about some kind of measuring instrument. But the measuring instrument in a lab is only a proxy for consciousness, because unless a being, a conscious being, reads the output of the measurement, it’s meaningless. It has no context. Just to say that ’This machine put out a reading of such-and-such during an experiment’ is meaningless—unless you already have a theory, an ontology, a terministic screen describing the context of the experiment.

So Einstein is very tricky; he was a student of the wisdom of the East, Bhagavad-gītā, and many other esoteric books. And he knew very very well that consciousness is the Absolute. So he snuck it into his theory in calling it the “observer”.

But actually without consciousness, the idea of the observer is meaningless. And note that the observer is assumed to be at rest, and the motion of the observed is relative to the observer.

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Now we’re back with Part Three of what we’re going to call the Foundation Series, because this explains being and becoming, which is at the root of all of our work with Skillful Living. Being and becoming is the key, the mechanism, the works under the hood, that makes everything work. So if you haven’t watched the first two videos—what is Skillful Living, and Being & Becoming—then stop this video right now, click on the links and go back to those first two videos, then watch this one. OK?

So now we’re going to continue with the process of becoming. Let’s just review: Becoming is the process of changing your being. Everybody is being something or other. We’re being at a certain quality of being. Changing our being means, in our case of Skillful Living, we want to improve the quality of our being.

Well, how do we measure that? It’s improved in terms of your quality of life, and your abilities. So if you have increased abilities, if you have increased quality of life, that means you’ve improved your being.

To change your being you have to stop being what you are now, and start to be something better than that. And how do we do that? Well, the dictionary defines becoming as “begin to be, grow to be, turn into.” That’s applicable to both personal and impersonal things, but of a person specifically, “to qualify, or be accepted as, or acquire the status of.”

The example they give is “She wanted to become a doctor.” Well, I wouldn’t recommend to anybody that they become a doctor. If you want to use this technology to become a doctor, you could do it; or a musician or a pilot or any of the other examples that we use—you could certainly take this technology and turn it into that.

But specifically we want to become leaders: spiritual leaders, thought leaders. Not the kind of a leader that depends on a title or a position in some organization. No, because all the organizations we have right now are based on a false principle called hierarchy.

Hierarchy means that one person is viewed as better than, or intrinsically more valuable than, another type of person. And that’s just not true! We all

have the capability or the promise of being something great and wonderful. And the Buddha didn’t recognize any of these organizational titles or statuses; he accepted a person as they are, and he gave them the ability to become something more.

Let’s see how the Buddha defines becoming: “Kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, craving the moisture. The consciousness of living beings is tuned to a refined property, thus there is the production of renewed becoming in the future. This is how there is becoming.” — Bhava Sutta, AN 3.76

In other words, the dictionary tells us what becoming is, but the Buddha gives us how to become, and what he says is, that we tune our consciousness to a refined property which is in the future.

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Being and becoming. Being and becoming are such fundamental concepts that we often take them for granted. But actually, they’re deep subjects to which we can devote an enormous amount of study and development work.

After all, without being we wouldn’t exist. How could we do anything or have anything? First, we have to be. Descartes had it backwards: “Because I am, I think.” Because I exist, I can do. And because I do, then I can have things.

So being is fundamental. And when we want to change our being, then we’re talking about becoming. So, becoming is how we change our being.

For example, if we want to learn. Let’s say we want to learn to be a musician, or we want to become a pilot. There’s two ways to approach this: through peripheral methods and through essential methods.

Peripheral methods study the externals of a subject or state of being. For example, if we want to study leadership, we’ll read books by great leaders and about great leaders, and we’ll discuss examples of what they did in this situation, in that situation; and then we’ll try to emulate or imitate them.

But wait a minute. That’s imitation. That’s not authentic.

Authentic leadership comes from the essence of being a leader. And if we’re not being a leader now, how do we become a leader? If we’re not being a great musician now, how do we become a great musician or whatever it is we want to be?

Fortunately, the Buddha’s teaching has a great deal of information on being and becoming. And that’s what this video is all about.

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The teaching of the Buddha is the basis of one of the world’s great enduring civilizations. It’s also the basis of many different religions. But that’s not all it is. Westerners are finding now the value of mindfulness taught by the Buddha in all kinds of situations in life.

But the Buddha’s teaching is very deep. The Buddha himself admitted: “My teaching is profound, hard to see, hard to understand.” Only someone

who experiences it for himself can really understand. And why is this? Because the Buddha’s teaching is the equivalent of modern science; but instead of exploring the external world, his teaching explores within.

Along with mindfulness, the Buddha emphasized skillfulness: that a skillful person can learn or teach himself anything, any skill. Western science has

developed the technology of dealing with the outside world to a high degree; but Buddha’s teaching develops the technology of the inner world to a degree beyond any other field of knowledge. This can only be experienced for oneself.

Skillful Living Network (an early name for Dharmasār, the Essence of Dharma) explores the Buddha’s teachings on skillfulness and how we can become expert at living.

Skillful Living Network is designed to help you acquire the greatest skill in life: the skill of skillfulness itself. All of our programs are either foundational knowledge or examples of that knowledge in practice.

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