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Call and Response Ep. 48 | Hanuman, Mrs. Hanuman, and Time Machines
“When you attain that oneness, you’re also one with all Beings in all moments of time, past, present and future. So, because, after all, time is like a space, it’s like a subtler space than space is. You know, time, it’s a space of time, a space of duration, of continuum. Right? And so, everything is past and future. So, when you become Buddha, you’re all in all moments of the future, so then you become aware that everyone else will eventually become Buddha, and not only that but you then manifest to accelerate that process so they can do it as quickly as possible. The really dense ones might take a million lifetimes. The quicker ones, a hundred, etcetera. But You’re going to work on it with them. That’s your attitude. This is the sci-fi idea of Kalachakra, ok?” – Robert Thurman
KD: Yeah. All these practices, all these traditions really are here for us to help us overcome the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, which for the most part are at least limiting, to say the least. So all these practices are so based in love. Some years ago, one of the lamas I study with, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, invited me to sing at one of His retreats where He was going to teach on devotion. Now, in Tibetan Buddhism, devotion is not talked about separately as a subject usually. It’s part of the practices. But Rinpoche was going to discuss that aspect of devotion separately. So, He asked me to sing and so I sang and, but one of the things He said, over and over is that, if we don’t love ourselves, how will we ever really love all Beings? Not to mention, another Being? Real love. And it was very interesting to see some of His students react to that because, you know, Buddhists. What are you going to do with them? You know? So intellectual sometimes, you know? Thinking about stuff and understanding the philosophy and I remember one time, I said to Rinpoche, because I don’t take that many teachings with Him but we became very friendly at one point and I said, “Rinpoche, don’t underestimate the ability of Westerners to not understand what you’re talking about.”And He went… and then, by the next year, He had reorganized His teachings. It was very interesting because I think He realized that we talk a good game, but when it comes to the nitty gritty, we hide. Our issues cloud the sun. Like the clouds, they block the sun, so… and of course, Her Loving Kindness talks about this all the time, you know, how to, how offering Loving Kindness to others heals our own hearts. And Maharajji used to say, “Don’t think about yourself.” You know? When I was going to kill myself that time… I was going to jump in the river behind the temple, you know? It was about six inches deep, but I figured if I got my head, you know, stuck under a rock, I could probably get it done, you know? So He said, “What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Jump in the river?” He said, “You can’t die.” He said, “Worldly people don’t die.” He said, “Only Jesus died the real death.” What is He talking about? Only Jesus died? And He looked, “Yeah. Why? Because He never thought of Himself.” What is the real death? What’s the death of the ego? When thoughts of “me” no longer arise. When it isn’t about “me” anymore. “How am I doing?” “How am I doing now?” “Am I wearing the right clothes?” “Am I sitting straight enough?” “Did I put on enough makeup?” “I got that…” what is it they call that stuff? “acne medicine” it’s been so long since I had a pimple. I don’t remember because I don’t have a mind either, you know? So, you know, He never thought of Himself. Thoughts of “me” never arose in that Being. And of course, all I did was think about myself. And I said, “Baba, all I do is think about myself. What am I going to do?” And He looks at me, “Attachment. Ha!” He wasn’t buying it. So eventually I gave it up for that particular period of time. All right. Let’s sing a little bit. And then we’ll, you know we’re going to go back and forth with Bob. Talking and singing. Talking and singing. Falling asleep. Talking and singing. And you’ll get a whole three hour dose tomorrow, so that’s going to be great.
So, I usually start with this prayer. In fact, I always start with this prayer. It’s a prayer to Hanuman. Now, in Indian system, in the Ramayana, the story of Ram, Ram’s wife, Sita is stolen by the demon Ravana. And Ravana has ten heads. Each head is for one of the senses and object of the senses. It’s the whole worldly attachment and identification. So, Sita is the individual soul, they say, and so the ego wants that soul, wants the shakti, wants the juice. So, it grabs it and takes it away to its island and it wants to mate with it. But due to a curse, the ego can’t seduce the soul. The soul has to fall in love with the ego. Otherwise, the ego doesn’t get the juice. And that could never happen. So, it’s a beautiful story. So, but in the story, Rama, who’s God and who’s job in that incarnation as that avatar, is to pretend that He’s a human being. The perfect human being. And He pretends He doesn’t know what’s going on. But at one point, He has to kind of shake it up a little bit and He sees, He tells Hanuman, “Ok, so here, take my ring. And if you meet Sita,” because the monkeys are going to, that Ram meets, are going to go out and try to find Sita, because Ram was wandering in the jungle crying for His wife and He doesn’t know where She is and He’s all alone and what’s He going to do and then He meets the monkeys. And He meets Hanuman. So, now all the monkeys are going to cover the earth looking for Sita. But Ram gives Hanuman His ring. And He says, “When you find Sita, show Her this ring so She knows you come from me.” So, Hanuman is this, the power of grace, the flow of grace which is always flowing and what it does is it connects that individual reflection with the great light, the one light. And by removing the obstacles and locating that within us, so this prayer to Hanuman is what I usually start with. Now, I really wouldn’t know anything about Hanuman except that when we we got to India, we found out that Maharajji was considered to be an actual incarnation of Hanuman. And the more we spent time with Him, the more we got glimpses into what that really means and how that works.
Bob: So, can I ask you a question? So, Hanuman has a, has a brother, Sughreeva, or something? Hanuman has a brother, doesn’t he?
KD: No, Sughreeva is His king.
Bob: Sughreeva is the king of the monkeys. Does He have a Mrs. Hanuman?
KD: No Mrs. Hanuman. According to most people. But you told me a story once.
Bob: Yes.
KD: Would you like to tell that now?
Bob: But that’s about Tibet. That’s Tibet’s vision, but I think in Ramayana and Rama lore…
KD: There’s no Mrs. Hanuman.
Bob: There’s no Mrs. Hanuman. He doesn’t show up for tea with Rama and Sita when all’s over in the war and He brings along Mrs. Hanuman.
KD: No Mrs. Hanuman anywhere.
Bob: Mrs. Hanuman has to stay in the tree? Mrs. Hanuman stays in the tree?
KD: Does He say He’s…
Bob: I mean, does she just stay in the tree? She doesn’t come and hang out with Rama?
KD: Who?
Bob: Mrs. Hanuman.
KD: There is no Mrs. Hanuman.
Bob: There is. Are you kidding? Well, actually, in the Tibetan story, maybe you’re right, but in the Tibetan story, they don’t call them Hanuman, necessarily in that particular origin myth of the Tibetans. They say He’s a monkey.
KD: A celibate monkey God.
Bob: As a monkey, He’s an emanation of Avalokiteshvara, Lokeshvara, Avalokiteshvara. And Avalokiteshvara, you know, the word “Avalokita”, or even “Loka” but “Avalokita” especially, means, “Ishwara” means, you know “God,” and “Avalokita” means “the caring one who looks on with caring love”, loving care. So that’s what “avalokita” means. Avalokita Ishvara. It’s kind of like a little dig at Maha Ishwara, the great God who’s like a Big Shot type of thing. This is the one who’s futzing over people, who cares about them. So, anyway, they think of Him as, He’s an emanation, and He’s a monkey monk. He’s a monk monkey.
KD: A celibate monkey god.
Bob: A celibate monkey god. And a bodhisattva. And a bodhisattva god. And He goes to the mountains in Tibet and He meditates there and He’s meditating, and then He’s still the beautiful golden wonderful like, monkey, bodhisattva monkey, so there’s a kind of Goddess of the mountain who’s sometimes they call her an ogress. Or a demoness. But that’s because she can be fierce, but she’s really beautiful, also. And she falls in love with the monkey monk. So, she says, “Come on. What is this monkey monk business? I want to marry you. I want you to marry me. What’s the monk thing?” And He says, “No, no no I’m a monk. I may be a monkey, but I’m a monk. So, no marrying. I don’t marry.” And then this goes on and on, then finally, She gets desperate, because she’s really in love with Him. And She knows He should, He’s kind of likes Her a lot, too, but He’s a monk. And so then, He asks another form of Lokeshwara, the one who’s in the pure land, Sukhavati the blissful land of Amitabha, infinite light Buddha, and the heavenly plane up there in the Brahma Akanishta, heaven, and the top of what they call the Form Realm, the Realm of Pure Form. And He says, “Ok, I know you emanated me as a monk monkey, but this lady is going to throw herself off the mountain if I don’t marry her. So, could I give back my monk vow?” And, “Yeah, sure, you know? You don’t have to be a monk. It’s ok. You can give it back.”
KD: Just like that? Yeah, sure?
Bob: Just like what?
KD: Just like that? Ok, what the hell?
Bob: Yeah, He offers it back.
KD: Ok.
Bob: For an act of compassion. To save the life of this rock goddess, demoness, ogress, beautiful mountain goddess. And so, so they marry.
KD: He got the night off.
Bob: And they produced many many children and they have six different varieties of the children because these are Beings that come from the six planes of existence, you know? Hell, Preta Realm, the realm of so-called Hungry Ghosts, and the Animal Realm, Human Realm, Asura Titan Realm and Deva Realm, you know, God Realm. Six Realms. So, there are different kinds of Tibetans, in other words. And then the whole Tibetan race comes from that.
KD: From the mating of the celibate monkey God and the demoness.
Bob: So, they say that, typical chauvinist warriors, tribal, originally, they blamed their naughtiness on the rock ogress, and they blamed their goodness on the monkey monk. Typical chauvinist. But the point is, that’s the story and we connect that to Hanuman.
KD: He was a good monk. But was he… He seems to have been a good husband.
Bob: Because you discovered something that I didn’t realize, right? In the Kalachakra. Tell us what you discovered.
KD: Oh yeah.
Bob: In the wheel of time prophecy.
KD: Look. First, explain a little bit about what the Kalachakra is.
Bob: Kalachakra means “time machine.”
KD: The Time Machine. Ha.
Bob: And it’s a chakra, because chakra means a “wheel”, but just like we say about someone who comes up with a Tesla, we say, “Oh, nice wheels,” we say. So, in Sanskrit, chakra can just mean a “machine.” And so, the Kalachakra is a form of Buddha that Buddha manifests to show His presence in all Time, because, and He shows that to give an excuse, that’s His excuse for becoming a Buddha. Because He shouldn’t become a Buddha as a Bodhisattva, unless everybody’s already a Buddha. Right? So, in other words, we, like, I was probably some kind of, like, a worm or something on the side of the tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment. And I could have complained, “You promised, as a Bodhisattva, you wouldn’t attain freedom of suffering until we’re all free from suffering. So where are you heading? Where are you going? What’s up? You’re like the Lone Ranger? You’re leaving town and we’re still here? What is that?” And so He then shows Himself as a Kalachakra Time Machine because one of the aspects of enlightenment is not only do you experience yourself as everyone else, which is really weird, it’s a weird thing. People wrongly think enlightenment means something, some bright light goes off in your brain and you sort of go poof and disappear. And then we’re all, “Oh gee whiz, it was great, He attained enlightenment.” But that sucks, you know, that idea. It totally sucks. What good is that if He disappears. That doesn’t do mean any good. That’s silly. But actually enlightenment is defined as where you realize you’re everyone. And also, do you not realize you’re everyone, and this is very important, it’s not what I’d call the “cheap experience of one-ness.” The cheap experience of one-ness is where you kind of, you get a sort of bright light and everybody else is also dissolves into the bright light and you dissolve into the bright light, and you’re all one, and you’re all just a bright light. So, you don’t feel guilty that you abandoned people to go and enjoy being in a bright light, because you feel you’re not there either. So, we’re all one and nobody’s there. Isn’t that great?
KD: Fantastic.
Bob: That’s what I call the cheap one. And then you come back later and say “Oh, it was all One.”
KD: But do you come back later?
Bob: And then actually, some people even act like, “Well, I know it’s all One, because I saw everybody else and myself disappear and you did so I want like, a Rolls Royce or something.” Or nowadays it might have been a Tesla. “I’ll have a hundred Teslas please.” But never mind. So they behave badly sometimes, people like that. But you see, the Expensive Oneness is different. The Expensive Oneness is yes, you have a kind of bright light experience, maybe, but the final experience is, It’s All One and Everybody’s There. And they’re all looking at You. And You suddenly find yourself looking at Your Self from their perspective. Can you imagine that? You know, some of you probably are empathetic. Everyone who’s been a mother has been empathetic. Everyone who’s been a loving father has been empathetic. Right? You feel you are that little goo goo gaga thing there, you know, for awhile. Or you feel that about your lover. So everyone has had the experience of feeling they are two people or more, actually people on a football team, they think they’re the whole team, you know? Sometimes. That’s why they get mad when somebody knocks out their friend, you know? And army people even get like that. So, human beings can expand their sense of identification. So, but imagine if your sense of identification became so huge that you felt you were everyone, even just in this room, much less everyone on the whole planet? And much less, not just the human beings, all the animals? All the Gods? All the Devas? All the Demons? Everyone. That would be truly weird, wouldn’t it?
KD: That’s the Expensive Oneness, for sure.
Bob: That would be super weird, and then, you become frustrated because when you’re in that light, you saw that everyone already has Buddha nature, they’re made, even, of Buddha Bliss. That’s what the positive gracious vision is. But they don’t know it. And then, you can’t blast them with Bliss, because they’re too paranoid. If you go blast somebody with bliss, then they think the Alien is after them, and they’re going to like, “Don’t get in my space! I don’t want that bliss! That’s your bliss! Leave me alone! I have my own bliss!” That’s what people do. So, you can’t do that. The only thing, each one has to open to the reality, through their own mindfulness taken to its limit, taken to what they call the limited being, where they’re mindful of their true nature. So, then, apparently, and this, I know its preposterous, because the Indian people, they don’t need Star Trek. They had it thousands of years ago.
KD: Yeah.
Bob: Total Star Trek. The Ramayana is Star Trek. The Monkey brings the mountain for medicine and… all the soldiers jump up?
KD: They fly around in these big things, yeah.
Bob: They all had Star Trek a long time ago. And, you know, Star Trek is some way of trying to catch us up.
KD: Yeah.
Bob: You know? Really. Kirk is Rama. Spock is Lakshmana. Doctor McCoy is I don’t know which one, you know? And Worf is Hanuman.
KD: I see.
Bob: Seriously. So, it’s catching us up.
KD: Ok.
Bob: So, but anyway… time machines. So, “Time machine” then means that the Buddha, when you attain that oneness, you’re also one with all Beings in all moments of time, past, present and future. So, because, after all, time is like a space, it’s like a subtler space than space is. You know, time, it’s a space of time, a space of duration, of continuum. Right? And so, everything is past and future. So, when you become Buddha, you’re all in all moments of the future, so then you become aware that everyone else will eventually become Buddha, and not only that but you then manifest to accelerate that process so they can do it as quickly as possible. The really dense ones might take a million lifetimes. The quicker ones, a hundred, etcetera. But You’re going to work on it with them. That’s your attitude. This is the sci-fi idea of Kalachakra, ok? So, then, to be specifically on this planet, Shakyamuni Buddha’s time, Kalachakra is Him showing that history, it’s like omega point idea of time of….. [ ] it’s like, it’s an ancient Buddhist [ ] vision, if you know what that is, where things are going to a positive point, which is called Shambhala, and so there’s a time where Shambhala is here where a lot more people become enlightened. And it looks like everything is going down the drain into the Koch Brothers tar infested bank accounts and that’s what it looks like and that’s good that we see that because then we’re going to see that it doesn’t happen. But it looks like that. But actually, it’s going to go in a great place. We’re going to have a great time only 400 years from now.
KD: I see. Ok.
Bob: So, there’s a little struggle between now and then. We’ve been having the struggle, the world wars and things, and a bit of struggle and we had a struggle through 2018 election and 2020’s election is a struggle we’re all going to win.
