In this podcast Professor Thurman discusses the Buddhist Twelve Links of Relativistic Origination it’s perspectives on Bliss, Causation, Theism, Kingship, Ignorance, Emptiness & nirvana.

Includes an introduction to David B. Gray’s Translation of “The Cakrasamvara Tantra (The Discourse of Sri Heruka) Śrīherukābhidhāna: A Study and Annotated Translation” Published by American Institute of Buddhist Studies, dialog with trip participants and an elaboration of the Buddhist concept of Bliss and it’s connection to the Clear light of the void.

Podcast concludes with a cautionary tale about the way in which people resist the notion of infinite relativistic bliss in favor of accepted creation & destination theories and  falling into a Psychotic Nirvana or what the Hindu Yoga Tradition terms Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

“If you have a deep realization of the selflessness in regard to your absolute self, then it releases your relational self to be happily interconnected with everything in a blissful way. Then you yourself have “no problem” in the sense of no suffering. You reach Nirvana. However, because of your interconnectedness with all things, other beings still have a problem, and when you realize that you have no absolute self apart from things, you realize that essentially, you are all the other beings. So although you simultaneously realize they have no absolute self in their otherness apart from being related to all things that essentially, they could be completely happily interrelated. Then have the problem of how to help them get free, because just by your knowing that they’re essentially free, that doesn’t free them.

Just by your being blissful, it doesn’t release them from their knot of separation and false self absolutization. That problem has to be answered by means of art, because you can’t blast them with bliss. That freaks them out even more- so instead, you have to have an artful way of approaching them.

You do a dance for them, you get them to imagine being interconnected, and to imagine being free of their suffering, and not so self involved, through art that draws them out. Then you, and they, are all established in what’s called a Buddha-verse, or Buddha-land.”

Robert AF Thurman via Elephant Journal

This podcast was recorded during the 2014 GeoEx Adventure Travel Trip with Robert AF Thurman “Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon” and is apart of the Tibet House US Member Archive.

Photo by Benny Jackson on Unsplash.

To listen to more recordings from past programs with Robert AF Thurman at Tibet House US in New York City + Menla in Phoenicia, New York in the Catskills please consider becoming a Tibet House US Member.

The song ‘Dancing Ling’ by Tenzin Choegyal from the album ‘Heart Sutra‘ (2004) by Ethno Super Lounge is used on the Bob Thurman Podcast with artist’s permission, all rights reserved.