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Who is Padmasambhava? · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:09
I hope you had a good meditation next door or downstairs for
0:15
those of you that come regularly.
0:19
Well, you might notice the shrine is a bit different.
0:22
And, well, this weekend we're celebrating a figure called
0:28
Padmasambava. Yeah, tomorrow is Padmasambava
0:32
Day. There's a festival day tomorrow,
0:34
which you're very welcome to come to, which I'm sure will be
0:37
very good. And.
0:41
Well, yeah, we have this beautiful shrine.
0:43
I'm not sure who made it. I think Merko put it together.
0:46
I know Artiquet, who painted the painting at the end.
0:50
So this morning I just want to say something about Padma
0:53
Sambava. Yeah.
0:54
So Padma Sambava. Well, he said to really.
0:59
He said to brought Buddhism into Tibet.
1:01
And he's sometimes called the second Buddha, at least
1:05
according to the Tibetans. So I thought this morning I just
1:09
wanted to look at, well, three things, really.
1:13
One, who is Padma Sambhava? The second one is why is he part
1:19
of our tradition, you know, all the way over here in Berlin.
1:22
And the third thing is how, how might he be helpful in a way, if
1:28
that's the right way to put, I'm not sure it's I couldn't phrase
1:30
the question properly, but how might he be important even
1:34
perhaps. So there are three things who is
1:37
Padma Sambar? Why is he part of our tradition
1:39
and how might be how might he be helpful or important?
1:46
So Padma Sambar is said to have been born, I think in the 8th
1:50
century in what is now, I guess Pakistan, Afghanistan.
1:58
His life story is quite difficult to get hold of.
2:01
It's quite, as with most life stories of ancient times,
2:07
they're kind of woven between myth and what we, we would call
2:10
fact, you know? And I think to be honest, that's
2:15
probably true for us as well. We like to think we have certain
2:18
day. I was born in 1900 and whatever
2:20
it was and da, da, da, da. And this is all the things that
2:22
happened. But it doesn't really tell you
2:24
that much. Even photographs, Yeah, don't
2:26
really tell you. There's something mythical about
2:28
our own life as well. So in a way, it's the same with
2:32
the Buddha. We have in a way, we have more
2:33
information about the Buddha's life than Padma Sambhava's life,
2:36
factual information. But the facts don't really tell
2:40
us much. You know, they can give you a
2:41
century, they can give you a few actions that were done.
2:45
But in a certain sense, with, with with these kind of what you
2:48
might call biographies, the myth probably tells you more about
2:52
the inner inner journey or the inner world expresses more about
2:55
this person somehow about their life necessarily than the facts,
3:00
than the bare facts. So his, his life is very much
3:05
interwoven. It's very hard to say what's
3:06
what. But apparently he was born in
3:09
the middle of a lake at the age of 8 years old in a Lotus.
3:15
So I don't know, maybe that's true.
3:17
Maybe that happened and that's where his name comes from.
3:22
Padma means Lotus. Samba was born.
3:25
So he's born from a Lotus. And there's a whole, I'm not
3:31
going to go into the whole story, but he was he, he
3:33
basically became a Buddhist and ended up being a great, what we
3:41
would call scholar, not the right word, teacher, tantric,
3:46
tantric guru. Yeah.
3:48
And a real master of all these things.
3:50
He's said to have been at Nalanda, which was a huge
3:54
monastic university with 12,000 monks.
3:57
Something like this is enormous. So he was in, he was in, in that
4:03
part of the world. And he's, he's spent a lot of
4:08
time practising in, well, not cemeteries, burial grounds,
4:13
Yeah, where people come to burn their dead or, and there's kind
4:17
of animals there and they're said to be like haunted places,
4:19
perhaps full of strange spirits. And he would practice there, you
4:23
know. So he, he's very, he was not
4:26
afraid of these kind of things. At the same time, there was a, a
4:37
monk, apparently a very good monk, who'd gone to Tibet to,
4:41
well, to essentially bring Buddhism to Tibet, you know.
4:44
So Tibet was a wild place. Well, we all know Tibet, or we
4:50
know pictures of Tibet. We have an image of it in our
4:52
mind. And it's quite interesting
4:54
because I've met Tibetans before, and the Tibetans are
4:58
kind of astonishing in their kind of response to things that
5:00
have happened to them in recent times.
5:02
Yeah, hardships they've had to face, all this kind of thing.
5:07
But it was quite interesting. Before Buddhism came, it was
5:09
said to be a very ferocious place.
5:11
Yeah. So we all know about Genghis
5:13
Khan. You know, there's a whole kind
5:14
of warrior culture. And it's the same in Tibet.
5:17
So I did not get his name wrong. Santa Rakshita.
5:22
Is it Santa Rakshita? I've forgotten his name now.
5:24
It's not Sangarakshita. Yeah, Santa Rakshita.
5:27
So he went to Tibet, and he was a very good monk.
5:29
Apparently he was trying to teach them basic Buddhism, the
5:32
four noble Truths, maybe condition, Co production, the
5:37
wheel of life, this kind of thing.
5:40
And the king of of that area of Tibet wanted to build a
5:44
monastery. You know, they wanted to build a
5:47
proper monastery for Buddhism to flourish in Tibet.
5:50
The problem was every night they built this monastery, they would
5:54
come back in the morning and all the bricks would be back where
5:57
they were. The whole thing was demolished
5:59
again. Yeah.
6:00
And this kept happening. They kept trying to build the
6:02
monastery and it kept being taken down at night.
6:05
And what it was, was apparently, although the people were very
6:08
happy, interested in Buddhism, the spirits of the land, you
6:14
might say the demons, they were not happy.
6:17
They didn't like it at all. They thought it was terrible.
6:19
So they just kept destroying the monastery.
6:21
And in the end, they put out a kind of SOS to Padmasambhava,
6:26
who was in India. And Padmasambhava decided to go
6:31
to Tibet. Yeah.
6:32
I guess in those days it was especially it was not a cat,
6:35
something done casually that could well be.
6:38
That's your whole life, you know, you don't casually go to
6:40
someone like Tibet from India. Yeah.
6:42
So it was it was a big journey. But he went.
6:45
Yeah. And I think they especially
6:51
wanted him because he was a he was a tantric master.
6:53
He was, he was, he was into all these kind of, he could maybe he
6:58
could deal with the demons. Yeah.
7:01
So he goes to Tibet and he engages with the demons of Tibet
7:05
and well, yeah, he basically, I wouldn't say, well, he pacifies
7:11
them. He gets them on board, he gets
7:13
them on side. All these forces that want to
7:14
kind of destroy this monastery and are not interested in
7:17
Buddhism. He communicates with them.
7:19
They end up giving him their, which I like actually their
7:24
their secret names. Yeah.
7:25
So you can imagine some demon destroying everything around
7:29
you. And you kind of work.
7:31
I'm about to work with him. I'm not.
7:33
I'm not a tantric master, so I don't know.
7:34
But you do something with this demon.
7:36
Yeah. You you engage with this demon
7:38
and it offers up you. It offers you up it's name.
7:41
Yeah. It's secret name, which is the
7:42
same as almost. It's life itself somehow.
7:44
Yeah. So there's a certain intimacy.
7:46
There's a certain intimacy that Padma Sambava has with these
7:50
forces, with these demons, and he makes him swear an oath as
7:55
well to protect Buddhism. Yeah.
7:57
So not only are these demons kind of on board they were, they
8:01
were also protecting the Dharma, as we call it, protecting
8:04
Buddhism. Yeah.
8:04
So there's a lot of energy in this.
8:08
And in a way, it's the same for us, isn't it?
8:12
We all have demons. We all have wild forces in US.
8:17
Sometimes we're unaware of them. They start kind of doing all
8:20
kind of stuff in the world. They start doing stuff in their
8:23
own life. Sometimes they start wrecking
8:24
our own life. And we need to listen to them,
8:26
don't we? Or we need to engage with them
8:28
in a way and I guess eventually transform them.
8:32
Maybe we learn their secret name.
8:34
We learn what our demons are, and in the end, they can become
8:38
a friend, you know? So, yeah.
8:42
So there's loads of amazing stories about Padma Samba
8:46
converting these demons. I have to say my favorite one I
8:51
heard on a retreat at a place called Padma Loka given by Padma
8:57
Vadra. Padma, Padma and Padma Loka in a
9:03
way is dedicated to Padma Sambava.
9:04
I'll, I'll explain how we get there in a minute.
9:07
How why it's part of our tradition.
9:08
But but Padma Vadra, who some of you know is someone who's
9:12
practiced, well, practiced the Padma Sambava is Padma Samba, is
9:20
Padma Badger's practice and has been for over 40 years.
9:24
Yeah. In a serious way, every day,
9:25
which is quite astonishing. Yeah.
9:26
So when he's, when he was giving this talk, it comes with the
9:29
kind of inner world and a weight and a momentum behind it, which
9:33
really affected me. This was about 15 years ago.
9:35
I was on a retreat. And probably also why I asked
9:40
for ordination in the end, because I just thought this is
9:42
amazing. This is completely my.
9:44
This is not why I expect out of Buddhism.
9:46
Yeah. So anyway, one of the most
9:49
famous demons is a demon called Tarpanagpo.
9:52
Yeah. And he, he's also called the
9:55
Mother Eater. Yeah.
9:56
He's so bad that he was hungry and he ate his own mother.
9:59
Yeah. And he turns into some
10:02
horrendous demon of the land. You know, he's like horrible,
10:05
horrible demon. So Padma Samboba has some kind
10:10
of spiritual warfare with him or some mantra, some mantra stuff
10:15
going on. And in the end, unfortunately,
10:18
all I remember from this story is Padma Sambhava turns into a
10:22
tiny flying pig or a donkey and flies up inside his penis, this
10:29
other demon, and explodes him. And that was the end of
10:34
Tapanagpa. Yeah, well, not quite the end,
10:36
because then Tapanagpa also gets converted and starts protecting
10:42
Buddhism. But that story, I was just like,
10:44
I couldn't even believe what I was hearing.
10:46
Like on a Buddhist retreat about some flying pig going up
10:49
someone's Pete. I just thought this is wild.
10:51
I thought it was great. This is amazing.
10:54
Yeah. And somehow.
10:57
Yeah. So anyway, I even I even went on
11:00
ChatGPT and I actually wrote if it's gut fall out, how can he
11:05
still be alive to protect Buddhism in Tibet?
11:08
What kind of question is that? It's like it's obviously never
11:10
happened. Anyway, you don't get a tiny
11:11
flying pig flying up someone's and then ChatGPT said.
11:15
That's a sharp question. Tara Parliter you put you put
11:21
your finger on the paradox at the heart of this myth in the
11:26
Padma Sambava cycle. The stories aren't written like
11:28
modern history. They work on a mythic and
11:30
tantric logic. So wow, ChatGPT new, huh?
11:34
So. So anyway, it might sound weird,
11:38
but it was part of me asking for the nation.
11:42
I don't know. It wasn't just that story,
11:43
obviously, hopefully, but it was a bit like this whole business
11:48
of your demons. You know, there's so much energy
11:53
in there. I mean, half the music we love
11:54
and listen to is demonic, you know, like it's great.
11:58
It's like it's got so much energy in it, you know, that we
12:01
need that on board. And when, when I was even the
12:03
figure of him, I thought, is he like some, he looks like some
12:06
kind of, I don't know what he looks like, you know, he
12:08
actually looks like, but he does actually literally look at the
12:11
devil in a way. Yeah.
12:13
And I was living in a community anyway, but I was living in a
12:15
community about 20 years ago in Bristol.
12:19
And there, there must have been some Christians had found, found
12:22
out that we were Buddhist community.
12:24
Yeah. And I got knock on the door one
12:26
day and open the door. And this guy was there with a
12:29
leaflet and he just gave me this leaflet and they looked at me
12:33
and walked off. I thought, wow, OK, what's this?
12:35
And it was, it was Padmasambava riding a tiger, which said
12:39
something like, you're worshipping the devil.
12:40
It's like it has a whole leaflet about how Buddhism is demonic.
12:44
And I thought, wow, he went to a lot of effort.
12:47
You know, he could have just said that, but he made a whole
12:50
leaflet for us, which was very nice.
12:51
So but there's something about that.
12:54
There's something about Padmasambava.
12:55
And it's like, what's that story?
12:57
That was that saying the devil has the best tunes.
12:59
You know, there's something about energy where there's not
13:02
this dualism between, Oh no, I can't be all this other stuff is
13:05
all bad. I have to put this in a box.
13:08
And now I must be a good Buddhist.
13:10
And I shiny, perfect, mindful, always perfect Buddhist.
13:15
And I, I went, to be honest, when I began Buddhism, I found
13:17
well before I began Buddhism, I found it repulsive, the image of
13:21
it. I just thought, it's just not
13:22
for me. You know, it was.
13:24
But with Padma Sambava, I thought, wow, this is a really
13:27
interesting, interesting figure. So as a, as a, as a little side
13:34
note about magical mantra warfare, there's a great story
13:40
about Sangaracheta, you know, who founded this particular
13:43
tradition? And he was born in England and I
13:46
think he was in India at the time.
13:47
And there was another Englishman turned up who's tried they were
13:50
having a cup of tea together. And he, it's such a strange
13:54
story because Sangaracheta is not one of these people that
13:56
makes up wild, funky stories. It's just like, but it gives you
13:59
a glimpse into something. And he said that and this guy
14:01
started doing, it's like these weird green symbols start coming
14:04
out, this guy's eye eyes and they're approaching him.
14:06
So then Sangarachita started doing the Ablucortestra mantra
14:09
while drinking a cup of tea while having a conversation like
14:12
push this like green energy away from him back into this guy.
14:16
Although this is amazing, such an English kind of, you know, a
14:19
polite cup of tea and then some weird mantra warfare going on.
14:23
So great. Anyway, so how is Padma Samba
14:29
the part of our tradition? Well, I mean, in a way to to
14:34
answer that, it's probably good to have some idea of how
14:37
traditions emerge in the first place.
14:42
There's normally someone, well, somebody normally leaves an
14:45
existing tradition and starts a new thing because they feel that
14:49
the thing they're in, either they feel the thing they're
14:51
involved with or have been involved with has gone a bit
14:53
stale and somehow it's gone a bit dead, or they're asked to go
14:58
somewhere to start something. And I think almost 2, both of
15:01
those things happened to Sangarachter actually.
15:05
So he, he was born in the UK, he's born in London.
15:08
And in the 60s, well, there was loads of hippies.
15:13
There was, there was an opening in the West for it would never
15:16
happen these days, you know, we're so kind of locked in to,
15:18
to our kind of what we're doing. But there was an opening, there
15:21
was a cultural and even psychic or spiritual opening.
15:24
And he came back to the West and founded a new tradition, which
15:30
is this one. And his teachers at the time
15:32
were very happy. They, they, in a way they, I
15:35
think they would have, they more, they basically said to
15:37
him, it's good that he goes because he's from that land and
15:40
he can communicate in a way that might actually land with people
15:44
organically within their own culture.
15:46
And so that's how it happened. And I think, I think it's five
15:52
out of his eight main teachers were from the particular
15:55
tradition where Padma, that Padma Sambavi is said to have
15:58
started the Niigmar tradition. Yeah, some astonishing figures,
16:03
really astonishing figures. So that's why he's that's one
16:06
reason he's part of our tradition is because five of his
16:09
eight main teachers were, well, I don't know about the last of
16:15
the they were, they were like giants basically.
16:18
And they were, they Padma Sambo began that their lineage.
16:24
So I mean, basically what happened is there was a one when
16:27
the Chinese came into Tibet, a lot of them left.
16:29
They basically fled through northern India.
16:31
And that's how he get got to meet them because he was in
16:33
northern India at the time and he got to meet them basically
16:37
and take initiations and practice with them.
16:40
So that's why Padmasambava is part of our tradition.
16:43
But it's more than that. I think it's also that
16:45
Sangaracheta had had an immediate response to the
16:49
figure. I'll read, I'll read a passage.
16:53
I think it's from, I think he was in Darjeeling actually.
16:55
Was it Darjeeling? I'm not sure.
16:58
Does anyone know? Yeah, it was Darjeeling.
17:00
So he went into a temple and there's this huge figure of
17:03
Padmasambava, you know, and I'll just read what he says.
17:08
It's from one of his Sango Wretches biographies.
17:11
He says, though I had never seen the figure of Padma Sambava
17:13
before, it was familiar to me in a way that no other figure on
17:17
earth was familiar, familiar and fascinating.
17:21
It was as familiar as my own self, yet at the same time
17:25
infinitely mysterious, infinitely wonderful and
17:28
inspiring. It was to remain indeed, from
17:32
then on, the figure of the precious Guru, Guru Rinpoche,
17:35
which is Padma Sambava, was to occupy a permanent place in my
17:39
inner spiritual world. So a tradition emerges from a
17:45
people and a person. And I think that's why Padma
17:49
Sambava is so much part of our lineage.
17:56
I think it's also somehow I get the sense that it was also
18:00
necessary to start this particular, to start a new
18:04
Buddhist tradition at this at a particular time in history as
18:07
well. There was a lot of pretty wild
18:11
young people in the 60s that picked up Buddhism and threw
18:18
everything into it. And it obviously it would be
18:21
chaotic. You know, there's a lot of
18:22
energies, a lot of stuff going on and it seems like there's a
18:26
figure almost Padma Sambava was was, I'd say is, but was
18:30
necessary to bring all that energy together and really do
18:34
something with it, you know, so it's not just that he's part of
18:37
our lineage in a certain sense. He's needed, he was needed as a
18:40
figure, you know, maybe to breakthrough old social
18:44
conditioning, religious conditioning and to bring
18:49
energy, you know, so I mean, Buddhism is said to be as much
18:54
about energy as it is about wisdom and compassion.
18:56
And this figure probably some of it kind of brings that out.
19:02
Good. So why might he be helpful to us
19:05
here and now? Actually, before that, I just
19:10
thought I'd go over a couple, a couple of dangers of practice
19:14
dangers, maybe not dangerous, a bit strong word, but a couple
19:17
of, let's just say dangers, a couple of dangers with this
19:23
whole Padmas practicing this Padmas, Padmas sambava thing.
19:28
Yeah. The main danger is probably to
19:32
do with literalism. Yeah, in some ways, you know,
19:40
he, I think I've, I've, well, Moxurati was saying in Mexico,
19:43
but maybe it's the same here as well.
19:45
A lot of men especially would look at this figure and be like,
19:48
it's a real man. It's like, you know, and it got
19:50
a little bit too and not macho is the wrong word, but he he
19:58
kind of embodies sort of different archetypes.
20:00
There's a king, warrior, magician, lover, all these, all
20:03
these archetypes, you sort of embodies them all.
20:05
But it's easy to pick it up in the wrong way.
20:07
You know, I don't think we have any danger of this.
20:12
Perhaps also what you might call, I think what Sangaracha
20:15
calls pseudo spiritual exoticism.
20:17
You know, we see a figure and it's so it seems so exotic to
20:20
you that you're like, oh wow. And it's kind of all a bit
20:22
unreal and a bit exotic, you know, doesn't have the kind of
20:27
roots somehow. Also, I've been in so many
20:32
situations where when sometimes when Pad Vasamba is evoked, it
20:36
becomes a bit of a kind of freefall, a bit of a kind of,
20:40
yeah, individualism. Like, yeah, now it's my time to
20:42
do a kind of solo or something. I'm just going to like, you'd be
20:44
doing a mantra and someone will start going, oh, Padma, They're
20:47
like go off and like you're like, what's going on now?
20:51
Yeah. The most extreme example I've
20:54
seen of this was on was on was after I was ordained with, I was
21:00
going to say pad samba with Padma Sagra, my God, or the
21:04
Padmas. We were ordained about 10 years
21:07
ago now. And on my first We order
21:10
weekend, you know, you become an order member, you go through a
21:12
whole thing, training, blah, blah, blah.
21:14
Anyway, you have these weekends. So we're all there together in
21:17
this place called Addishtana and there's this massive tent, you
21:20
know, like a festival tent. I was already struggling, like I
21:23
struggle with big numbers of people.
21:25
Yes. So I was already like, yes, like
21:27
loads of people. And I was sort of hiding in my
21:31
room a bit. Anyway, I came out like a little
21:33
and went into this tent and there was a pooja.
21:36
There was like a ritual, a big load of chanting, you know, this
21:39
whole big ritual, this pooja for Padma Sambava.
21:42
And I was like, wow, I love Padma Sambava.
21:44
Great. So I was there.
21:46
And so the mantra began. The first thing that happened,
21:50
these two, like I would say, relatively elderly women, got up
21:54
and started dancing next to me. And I thought, hey, that's
21:56
different. And then like this, there was a
22:00
friend of ours called Paraga who's.
22:02
He's really great. He's he's one of these people
22:04
that you can count on to be, what is it?
22:06
Irreverent, irreligious. He's like a, you know, if people
22:12
get too pious and like holy, he'll immediately just destroy
22:14
it, which is really great. Anyway, he was there and like,
22:18
everyone's doing the mantra. And this guy next to him, I'm
22:22
not lying. He started beatboxing.
22:24
Yeah. So it's like Padma City, Padma,
22:35
Padma. And I was like, Oh no, my toes
22:38
were like grinding into the floor and like Paragon was just
22:42
staring at him like, like this like.
22:45
And apparently I heard after this, Paragon is more worried
22:48
that people think it was him because everyone's like, what's
22:52
going on? So he's all doing his solo time
22:54
and getting groovy. And I was like, oh, no, this is
22:57
so embarrassing. So don't do that.
23:00
Please, please don't beatbox. I mean, beatboxing is great, but
23:06
not with Padma Samba. Yeah.
23:11
Anyway, because that's that's the that's the the potential
23:13
dangers. It's a very serious danger.
23:15
Things like this can happen. Yeah.
23:17
So don't miss to be aware of. But yeah, in the past days as
23:24
well, I've been reflecting on, well, why is this figure so
23:26
helpful though? We've talked in vague terms.
23:29
Well, I've talked in vague terms, you know, energy taming
23:33
demons, it's all important. But actually it's, it's popped
23:38
out of a couple of study groups I've been in and just
23:42
reflections of why, why are you so important?
23:46
And funnily enough, it was in our study group the other day,
23:48
someone said his eyes are open. You know, it's not just open.
23:52
I can, I'll put a, well, one of the pictures in the WhatsApp
23:55
group. His eyes are really open.
23:58
Like he really his eyes are like the Buddha normally has more
24:01
downcast eyes. There's a kind of inner world of
24:05
riches. Although the Buddha was the same
24:08
as Padma Sambar, essentially. He was going around, he was in
24:10
taming demons. Yeah, there's the whole fire
24:12
chamber story. He's taming, taming energies,
24:14
taming demons. And he was, in fact, when the
24:17
Buddha came out of the jungles in the forest, he he would 100%
24:21
not look like this. He'd look terrifying.
24:23
You'd probably be, like, stunned if you saw him.
24:25
Yeah. So he's more of a shamanic
24:26
figure, at least when he first leaves the forest.
24:30
Yeah. So not a clean cut, nicely robed
24:33
golden Buddha. Yeah.
24:35
So in a way, Padma Sambar is a bit like that.
24:37
His eyes are wide open. And for some reason, I just
24:39
think that's important, you know, it's important to have a
24:43
figure like that as alongside the Buddha, something to do with
24:49
engaging with the world. I don't even know.
24:54
I don't even think I want to talk about it too much.
24:56
But there's something important about a figure with his eyes
24:58
wide open and kind of present and almost moving out of
25:04
themselves. You know, I've said about the
25:07
taming demons harnessing their energy.
25:11
There's something also about mentioning earlier about not
25:14
being afraid of 1's animal side, one's kind of in the best sense,
25:21
one's wild side, even one's demons.
25:24
And I was reflecting on it. I thought it's, it's, it's not,
25:28
it's actually within our own culture.
25:31
There's been a whole drive and whole push to to to engage with
25:35
that. Like we'd especially with music,
25:36
especially in a place like Berlin, you know, especially I
25:38
was saying when I was growing up and for generations now, there's
25:42
in terms of like all kind of music that, well, it's all
25:48
there. It's just missing something
25:50
important, which is you might say like a higher perspective
25:54
order of consciousness. But there's there's something to
25:56
do with energy that if you can't bring it into your practice of
26:00
Buddhism, you're not going to go anywhere.
26:02
Nothing's going to happen. You're going to kind of try and
26:04
be a good, good, good Buddhist for a while.
26:07
Then you'll get frustrated with yourself because you've got
26:10
inner things tearing you all over the place.
26:12
You can't practice anymore. Then you think, oh, well, I'm
26:14
not, I can't practice Buddhism. And then you get so down in the
26:17
dumps, they think, oh, I need to practice Buddhism again to be
26:19
happy. And you just go through this
26:20
kind of bumpy cycle. But I think the figure like
26:23
Padma Sambava is very helpful because, well, because of this
26:27
explicit kind of engagement with these these sides of us that
26:32
need to come on board. Yeah.
26:34
If they're not on board, we have, well, an anemic spiritual
26:40
life. I don't know if English is your
26:42
second language, that's not very helpful.
26:44
But anemic is like very pasty, very pale, very kind of half
26:48
dead spiritual life essentially. Yeah.
26:51
So we need ways to draw, draw that into ourselves to actually
26:58
engage with that. Otherwise we end up partitioned.
27:01
You know, we have one side of ourself going this way and
27:04
another side going this way, and we end up with all sorts of like
27:08
in a conflict. Yeah, they will rise anyway.
27:11
Not just because you have Pablo Samba on your shrine doesn't
27:13
mean you're not going to have that problem.
27:15
All of us. I think it's like everyone
27:17
practising Buddhism has that same thing at a certain point in
27:21
their life, or maybe from the beginning.
27:22
Yeah. You don't just fly down the
27:25
highway to to enlightenment. There's all sorts of strange
27:29
places you will end up that you will need to go.
27:32
And Padma Sandover really embodies that.
27:34
Yeah, he's meditating in cremation grounds.
27:37
There's all these wild strange forces and figures around him.
27:43
So I think, I think he's important on that front.
27:46
I think he's also important because because he I wouldn't
27:51
he's not purely mythical, but because he's so mythical, it
27:54
forces you out of your kind of narrow rationalism about if I
27:57
can't factually check something, I'm not going going to engage.
28:01
And therefore somehow almost puts you into your imagination
28:05
immediately. Like with a capital I, you have
28:07
to get into it like I again, to meet fully grown adults that
28:12
have spent five decades of their life with this figure intensely
28:18
on a daily basis. That is something.
28:21
Yeah. And so it forces you to say,
28:23
well, was that is that a waste of time?
28:24
Is this just like this person's on a kind of fantasy trip, then
28:27
they're just like imagining this figure and what an enormous
28:30
waste of a life. But no, because you meet these
28:32
people and you're like, something is clearly going on on
28:36
like on a very significant level.
28:38
You know, it's not just an inner world journey.
28:43
It, it manifests itself in people's behaviours and even the
28:46
energy, you know. So I would say that's why it's
28:51
important as well. Yeah, maybe I'll leave it there.
29:00
So Padma Samba is like I say he's he's a, he's a semi
29:04
mythical figure, but is also said to have brought Buddhism to
29:08
Tibet, tame the demons there. He ends up in our tradition
29:14
because, well, our our own teacher, our own teachers,
29:18
teachers were part of the school that Padma Samba established.
29:25
I think Padma Samba is also important in, in, well, like I
29:29
say, he's also important in our own, in our own journey, in our
29:32
own inner journey. We can't just cut bits of
29:34
ourselves out that we don't like without problematic.
29:37
It all has to come on board. And in a way, Padma Sambar
29:41
explicitly represents transformation.
29:44
There's something alchemical about him, you know, it's, it's
29:46
like you can take those energies that are within us all and that
29:51
express themselves in different ways and you can harness them.
30:06
I had something good I was going to say and it's just kind of
30:08
drifted off. You know, that annoying thing,
30:10
you think that's really good and it's gone, It's gone.
30:13
So I'll leave it there. Thank you.