Basic Buddhism with Robert Thurman

We are pleased to bring you another excerpt from Basic Buddhism with Robert Thurman.  From this five lecture title he does focus on each part of Buddhism.  Today the topic is Sangha.

A Buddha has no desire to do anything in the world, in a way, no wish to do anything on his own. Of course to a Buddha, apparently, by definition the world seems a perfected place. The world seems absolutely incredible. Reality is a most incredibly blissful, fabulous, perfect thing all by itself, without anybody messing with it, that you could even imagine. That’s why Buddha is grinning all the time. He just is completely flipped out about how amazingly exquisite and perfect and beautiful reality is.

At the same time, he is not insensitive to the fact that many of the beings who are occupying that reality, according to their own view at least, are thinking that it’s a miserable situation, and so, since to him it’s perfectly fine, he has this sort of stamina to deal with all of their different versions of why it’s miserable.  He tries to get them to understand what a great place it is. And get them to understand their own original phase as they say in Zen, their own inheritance, their heritage of enlightenment in a way.

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Robert Thurmans Collection