ycIAW0M2-NQ.srt

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Buddha's farther is visited by an angel 
who tells him that his son is going to 

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grow up to be the greatest temporal 
profane ruler of the world has ever seen

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or a great spiritual leader and his 
father.

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Being a pragmatic and conservative man 
decides that there's no possible way.

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I'm going to allow my son to take the 
ambivalent road of spiritual 

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enlightenment.
I'm going to allow him to fall 

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completely in love with the world so 
that he will remain attached to his 

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domain.
So prior to Buddha's birth,

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his father constructs a great city with 
walls around it and inside that city he 

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removes all signs of pain,
frustration,

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and disappointment.
Any sign of ugliness,

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the end aids,
the only people that are allowed to 

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exist within the city or those who are 
in perfect mental and physical health 

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who are paragons of beauty and virtue.

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And the idea that lurks behind that 
archetypal story is that when a father 

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has a child,
the his moral obligation is to shield 

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the developing consciousness of that 
child from contact with any of the 

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horrors of life that could provide the 
child with an experience too traumatic 

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for that developing consciousness to 
apprehend so because it's an archetypal 

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story,
it relates to the development of all 

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people,
not just the redemptive savior,

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and that's the motif that the Buddhist 
story initially follows.

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A good father makes his child fall in 
love with life by enticing that child 

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into a direct relationship with all that
life has to offer.

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So Buddha grows up within this walled 
garden.

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It's unselfconscious paradise,
but precisely because he's been shielded

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to this degree and allowed to mature.
His consciousness continues to expand 

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and the world outside the boundaries 
that his parents have established for 

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him starts to attract his attention.

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Now we know already that the forbidden 
fruit,

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right?
The lawyer of what's outside the walls 

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is something that human beings just 
can't keep their mangy little paws off.

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Right?
We are absolutely uncontrollably curious

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and the best way to make sure that we 
investigate something is to lay down a 

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stricture that says whatever you do 
under whatever circumstances,

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never look there,
right,

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and then the automatic systems that 
underlie our orienting and that motivate

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our seeking experience are constantly 
pulling our attention precisely to that 

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forbidden spot,
compelling us to investigate exactly 

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that which has been forbidden.
So because Buddha is a consciousness 

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developing in a healthy manner,
he immediately becomes curious about 

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what lies beyond the the limits that 
have been established with him and he 

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makes a decision to go outside of 
Paradise.

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Right?
Which seems a particularly ridiculous 

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thing to do given that in principle he 
has everything he could possibly want 

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inside the walls,
but then again we have the troublesome 

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notion of the original sin of Adam,
right?

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Which is that if any of you were offered
a forbidden fruit,

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again under circumstances mythologically
equivalent to those that are obtained in

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the beginning,
you'd immediately reach your hand out 

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and take it.
Because what we haven't got for human 

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beings is always far more compelling 
than what we have got.

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So Buddha goes outside the walls,
but his father,

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who's a good father,
although somewhat conservative,

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decides he's going to rig the game a 
little bit so it gets rid of everybody 

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that's diseased or unhappy or 
uncomfortable or ugly rolled or anything

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that could possibly disturb the Buddha,
any lines,

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the streets with flower waving women and
puts pedals on the road and census,

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son out into gilded chariot.
But the gods who are lurking around 

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right,
the troublemaking gods who represent 

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chaos and disorder in the unknown decide
to stand in front of Buddha.

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A sick man who hobbles unsteadily 
interview and Buddha asks,

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is his retainer precisely what this 
phenomena represent sound?

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His retainer says,
well,

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you know,
human beings like you,

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sincere human are subject to the 
deterioration of these physical powers 

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in an arbitrary way.
And this man is one person who's being 

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so affected.

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And so buddha is completely disenchanted
by his exploratory move out into the 

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terrible unknown and runs back into the 
castle walls and shuts the door and is 

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perfectly happy to think of nothing for 
months.

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But then as his anxiety habituates and 
his curiosity grows,

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he can't stand the notion of never going
outside the walls again and outside.

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He goes again and this time where after 
his father prepares the route ever so 

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carefully,
the godsend insight and old man who 

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hobbles interview and mood,
it looks at him in shock and horror and 

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says to his retainer,
just precisely what's going on here.

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And His retainer says,
well,

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that's an old man and everybody gets old
and you're going to get old too.

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And that's the way of all humanity.
And that's the point at which voted.

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Self consciousness expands not to only 
include the possibility of degeneration,

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but to include the temporal horizon 
that's characteristic of life.

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And he finds that so terribly shocking 
that he runs back into the castle and 

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shuts the walls down and plays with his 
friends for another six months,

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maybe a year till his anxiety.
Finally habituates.

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And he goes out one final time.
And this time the godsend,

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a funeral parade for him and he sees his
first dad body.

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And this is such a terrible shock to him
that he can't even go back to the 

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castle.
So his father prepares for him a great 

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party in the woods near the castle full 
of nude dancing.

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Women who are perfectly willing to 
flaunt themselves into offer themselves 

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to him.
But Buddha is so absolutely 

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catastrophic,
really shocked by this notion of 

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emergent death,
that he can't take any pleasure 

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whatsoever and what's being offered to 
him.

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And he leaves the kingdom once and for 
all.

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And you think,
well,

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that's exactly what happens to you when 
you grow up.

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Right?
If you're reasonably well socialized and

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properly looked after,
then your curiosity gets the better of 

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you and you keep going out into the 
world until what year parents have 

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established for you is no longer 
sufficient for you.

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And as a consequence of that movement 
own into the world,

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you find out all sorts of things 
characteristic of your own life that not

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only your parents can't precisely 
explained to you,

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but even the broader formal structures 
of your culture have a very difficult 

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time handling.
And when you finally do encounter such 

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realities and allow their effect on you 
to fully manifest itself well then 

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you're finally independent and you no 
longer can return home,

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but from that point forward,
you are also burdened as Adam is 

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burdened when he loses his Paradise Hill
unselfconscious snus with the full 

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revelation of what it means to be 
limited and alive.

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So what happens to Buddha as a 
consequence of this revelation,

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he becomes an apprentice and the 
chronicles of the Buddhist adventure are

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careful to say that he becomes the 
world's most proficient practitioner of 

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Sam [inaudible],
which was a philosophical precursor to 

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yoga and then to yoga so he masters all 
the positions and the asanas until he's 

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disciplined physically to an almost 
unlimited degree.

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And then he decides that he'll adopt a 
stance of world renunciation,

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which is also something he's a 
remarkably good at,

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and he starved himself until the chronic
lewis say he resembles nothing so much 

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as a pile of dust and then having 
exhausted all the disciplinary 

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structures that his sophisticated 
culture has to offer him,

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but still not precisely finding the 
answer that he's looking for.

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He retreats into the forest,
a place of the unknown and sits himself 

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at the base of a tree underneath the 
tree.

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He's visited by visions and temptations.
The first vision is an essentially 

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erotic one life itself,
camps him back out of his self conscious

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state into the domain of pure physical 
pleasure,

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a perfectly reasonable temptation,
right,

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and one that's powerful enough so that 
Hindu philosophers say,

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b,
as their churches and cathedrals are 

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covered with erotic drawings.
If you can't get past the erotic 

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drawings into the church,
that's the domain that you should still 

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inhabit,
right in the dawning phases of life at 

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least till middle age.
That's the appropriate motive being to 

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be enticed and seduced by the physical 
pleasures that life has to offer,

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but in the final analysis,
those are not sufficient to solve the 

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problem of emergent self consciousness 
and so the angel of death visits him and

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offered him the opportunity to exist 
permanently in a state of Nirvana.

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Very,
very interesting twist on the story 

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because you have to wonder,
given the association saved between 

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suicidality and the notion of paradise 
that exists underneath that.

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If what Buddha isn't being offered by 
the angel of death is in fact death and 

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the cessation of all the problems of 
being regardless,

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he rejects that attains enlightenment 
briefly and then decides to return to 

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the world to share what he's discovered 
with all of suffering humanity.

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The idea being that the Buddha who is 
the awakened or enlightened one,

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is capable of attaining a transcendent 
state,

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but also knows fully that because human 
beings have a shared social aspect,

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it is not possible for any one person to
attain redemption until all people 

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attain redemption.
The reason being that it's very 

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difficult to be transcendent and 
enlightened when you see someone who's 

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sick lying in a ditch.