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Who do you look up to? · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:09
Today I wanted to say something about friendship, maybe from an
0:13
angle that we're, well, some of us are perhaps unfamiliar with,
0:16
at least in, well, maybe in daily life, especially in
0:20
Buddhism. Partially it's related to the
0:25
talk given last week by the man who actually ordained me and
0:31
gave him my name. He was talking about lineage,
0:33
essentially, his teachers and everything.
0:36
And also because we have Sanga Day, Sanga means something like
0:40
spiritual community Sanga day in two weeks.
0:43
So I thought it was topical and I don't know, I just wanted to
0:46
do it. So that's that's a good reason,
0:48
isn't it? Yeah.
0:52
So what came to mind? What, what came to mind
0:57
initially was, well, it's quite interesting.
1:01
After the, the, the, the, it's after the Buddha's
1:03
enlightenment, after he's said to have attained enlightenment
1:06
under the Bodhi tree, he realised that he had no one he
1:13
could really look up to anymore as a teacher.
1:15
Yeah, he kind of clearly says that he, he there was no one,
1:21
no, no aesthetics really no practitioners around in his time
1:25
that he could look up to. And he realised that not having
1:29
someone or something, but someone, not having someone to
1:34
look up to is actually painful. It's a it's a, it's a condition
1:37
for suffering. Yeah.
1:39
I'm not sure we even think about that in our culture at all.
1:44
But that was the first, strangely enough, one of the, if
1:47
not the first thing, one of the first things that struck the
1:49
Buddha, that he didn't have anyone to look up to anymore.
1:52
And that was a problem. So in the end, he ended up
1:56
looking, looking up to revering everything in existence that
2:04
made it possible for him to be free to to to be liberated.
2:08
Yeah. What's called the Dharma itself.
2:10
Yeah. Not in the Dharma in terms of
2:12
what we might be familiar with, in terms of the Buddhist
2:14
teaching. The Dharma is in terms of
2:16
reality itself, whatever that might be.
2:18
Yeah. So he could revered that, but
2:19
there wasn't anyone else for him to Revere, which is quite
2:26
interesting. And I mean, apparently in
2:29
ancient India, it was quite, you were considered quite uncultured
2:33
if you didn't have a teacher. Yeah.
2:35
What we might call a life teacher or a spiritual teacher.
2:38
And yeah, we'd we're not like that, are we really?
2:44
We. I don't want to get into a whole
2:46
kind of endless thing about all the, the the reasons why we
2:51
don't really look up anymore that much.
2:55
There's so many, aren't there? There's all the kind of world
2:59
wars you've had where people get thrown into a meat grinder,
3:02
looking up to people apparently who know better.
3:06
We've had communism, we've had fascism, but we still have, and
3:10
we have kind of all sorts of other things, materialism,
3:13
nihilism, the so-called European Enlightenment, and now what you
3:19
might call a cult of individualism, which is fuelled
3:23
by a kind of, what do you call it?
3:27
Not technocracy, techno, feudalism.
3:29
That's it. Anyway, the cult of
3:30
individualism. So I don't really want to talk
3:34
about any of that because it's just like goes on and on and on.
3:38
I'd rather keep it a bit more personal because it's generally
3:42
more practical and helpful for us, at least for me.
3:53
Yeah, so we struggle to look up to people.
3:55
And if we do look up to them, what do we want from them?
4:00
Yeah, if we if we if we find someone that we want to look up
4:02
to, especially in so-called spiritual circles, what do we
4:05
want from them? Yeah, we generally want
4:07
perfection. We want them to be perfect.
4:10
Yeah, we want a kind of. And if they're not perfect,
4:13
they're kind of useless to us. Yeah.
4:15
So, so somehow if it's if it's in a field of kind of the
4:19
spiritual field or the moral field, we generally want someone
4:22
perfect. I'm not really sure why this is.
4:25
Some people say it's because in a way, if you have a fantasy
4:30
spiritual life, then you need a kind of fantasy figure in the
4:32
middle of it, which you can just kind of project onto.
4:35
And they're kind of doing all the amazing stuff and you just
4:37
don't change. Basically, you just have this
4:39
figure that you can who's perfect and you can admire, but
4:42
you're not really doing much. Yeah.
4:45
And just to say, I think projecting, considering someone
4:51
or asking someone to be perfect is a terrible thing to do to
4:54
someone, isn't it? It's terrible in day-to-day
4:56
life, but it's actually not good to be able to to kind of expect
5:00
perfection from your teachers, so to speak.
5:03
Yeah, You kind of make them inhuman.
5:05
Yeah. And they, I think they can end
5:09
up isolated. So yeah, I was seeing, I mean,
5:13
it's pretty obvious, isn't it? If you put somebody on a
5:15
pedestal, whether literally as a statue or metaphorically in your
5:21
mind, what happens next? They get torn off, you know,
5:25
eventually we'll tear them off. And we, we definitely have a
5:28
kind of culture for good reason of like, well, in some good
5:32
reasons of like basically knocking people down or
5:36
discovering all the grubby things about them.
5:42
Yeah. So we're left without many
5:43
heroes. I was just.
5:45
I was, I remembered this. Who remembered?
5:47
Who remembers The Stranglers that banned The Stranglers.
5:50
They're amazing, aren't they? Stranglers.
5:52
They, they got, they brought this tune out in 1977 called No
5:55
More Heroes, which I heard like 20 years ago.
5:58
It blew me away. It's such a good song.
6:00
Stranglers. Fantastic.
6:01
Anyway, so maybe they're talking about that.
6:03
No More Heroes. Yeah.
6:04
So what you left with? So I think in a way, maybe
6:07
there's all sorts of understandable reasons why we
6:11
find it difficult to look up these days, you know, but in a
6:16
way I think it's necessary. Yeah, it's necessary.
6:21
The thing is, I think in order to in order to look up, you need
6:24
to have a certain level of self-confidence yourself and
6:26
self possession because people are obviously worried about
6:29
being taken advantage of for good reason.
6:33
So if you don't really, if you're not that self possessed,
6:35
you can perhaps lose yourself in kind of someone else or even
6:40
worse, you just have this kind of horrible cynicism where you
6:44
can't really do anything. You don't really look up to
6:48
anything. You end up kind of in a bit of a
6:49
wasteland. So I think in a way this is my
6:54
general, you know, generalisation, but I don't
6:58
know, I think it's an important sort of skill to learn.
7:00
You need to kind of learn how to look up, which begs the
7:04
question, obviously, what should you look up to?
7:06
What is worth looking up to? What is worth, what is worth a
7:11
lifetime's a lifetime. I would say yeah.
7:14
Because in a way you can look up on a certain level to people.
7:17
Everyone has different skills and qualities, but in terms of
7:20
your actual character, that person will, will embody values
7:26
and, and, and A and a certain way of life.
7:29
And it's a kind of, it's a lifetime.
7:33
So it's in a way it's it's kind of yeah, you have to, what am I
7:39
trying to say? You have to obviously find the
7:40
right thing or person to look up to somehow.
7:43
Yeah, I think, but I think it's important.
7:46
Otherwise I wouldn't say I I think it's really important.
7:49
I I, I think people, I think we suffer from not being able to do
7:52
that. We have a in a certain sense, an
7:54
anti hero culture, which is obvious by the films we make now
7:57
and all these kind of things. Just understandable why you've
7:59
ended up here. But I don't think it's a great
8:01
place to be in many ways. Yeah, Yeah, maybe just one.
8:10
I don't want to anyway. This whole kind of world, I
8:12
don't want to get into whole world views, you know, like the
8:14
whole why we're here could be Darwinism, materialism,
8:18
nihilism. But one thing I did did just
8:20
want to say before I speak more personally, because I think
8:23
actually speaking personally makes it more clear what what
8:25
1's trying to talk about, you know, in terms of looking up,
8:28
you know, one thing I did want to say is what I was saying
8:31
before. I think the worst thing 1 can be
8:35
a cynical. Yeah, cynicism, it feels to me
8:38
like a disease. Yeah, always kind of looking for
8:43
the worst in people or or looking for the the real
8:47
motives. Yeah, like like we know what
8:49
they are. And I would say it's pathetic.
8:52
I think cynicism is a kind of cowardly, cowardly point of
8:55
view. Yeah.
8:56
It's a sort of pretence of St. wisdom, you know, like I'm so
9:01
I'm not, I don't believe in anything, so I can't be fooled.
9:04
It's like, you know, but you're fooled without even knowing.
9:07
You're fooled because you've got a whole load of views that
9:09
you've inherited without even analysing them that you're
9:11
running on, but you kind of believe you don't.
9:14
So you're in double trouble. Oh, that's a good one anyway.
9:19
And I've met so many people that I think I've been like that
9:21
myself. And unfortunately now and then
9:23
it creeps into me again. But this whole thing of like,
9:25
I'm not going to fool, be fooled by anyone, so I'm not going to
9:27
believe anything. You're just like an eternal
9:30
fence sitter at that point. And what happens, you just end
9:32
up with no energy. Yeah.
9:34
And just a horrible view of life.
9:35
Like we're all just corrupt and selfish and everything's a lie.
9:40
So don't be cynical. You know, I think like our own
9:44
teacher makes a difference. Scepticism is one thing, you
9:46
know, where you use your rational mind to analyse
9:49
something and be like, is this true?
9:51
Is this not true? Yeah.
9:52
Let me, let me think about this and let me test it more
9:54
importantly. And that that was the Buddha.
9:55
The Buddha himself said test my teachings.
9:58
Yeah, that's the he didn't say follow me.
10:01
I am the way he said test my teachings.
10:05
Yeah, you need to test them for yourself if you in order to know
10:07
if it's true or not. So in a way, I think a few weeks
10:12
ago somebody was saying just park your forget your cynicism.
10:16
It's just a bad way to live. Yet basically test things if if
10:20
it's if it's something that might be helpful, take up an
10:22
attitude like maybe what it's saying is true.
10:26
Yeah, and I will, I will discover this for myself rather
10:29
than just kind of thinking one knows already, you know?
10:35
So in a way, in a way, it requires some kind of courage.
10:38
Yeah. But in a way, I think in the
10:46
end, we, we you have to find something to look up to, isn't
10:48
it? It's interesting.
10:49
It's a bit like the metaphor of a guiding star.
10:51
You we're kind of looking up to something and going in a certain
10:53
direction. If you don't have something or
10:54
someone to look up to, you are kind of in a wasteland and you
10:59
can end up living your whole life in that wasteland.
11:01
I think that's one of the tragedies of our of our age in
11:03
some respects. Yeah.
11:07
And it's interesting. I think my main question before
11:09
I came to Buddhism and actually throughout through continuing to
11:17
practice Buddhism, that question still being there because it,
11:19
you get a moment of clarity and then your clarity phase.
11:22
But my main question was basically, like I was saying
11:26
before, what is worthy of a life of my life?
11:28
What is worthy of a life's work? Because I don't just want to
11:32
kind of waste my time, you know, I want to be involved in
11:36
something that's worthwhile with the short time I have on this
11:39
planet. And that was the question, what
11:42
is worthy of, of, of a life's work.
11:45
Yeah. All the energy we put into
11:48
things, I just used to find it astonishing.
11:50
Like, I'm not going to call up people and friends of mine, but
11:54
the amount of energy we put into things that you just think this
11:57
is when you actually step back and look at what we're doing,
12:00
the kind of hassle that we get on, sometimes you're just like,
12:04
this is really a bit weird. Yeah.
12:06
We don't have that much time. And we're like, obsessed with
12:08
this little niche, whether it's amassing billions of numbers in
12:13
your bank account or, I don't know, you know, there's all
12:16
sorts of kind of mad things to get obsessed about.
12:19
Anyway, this question led me to Buddhism.
12:21
And I would say to the people that I would.
12:24
I just want to talk about before that, I want to say something
12:29
about, which was mentioned last week, this whole business of
12:31
horizontal friendship and vertical friendship.
12:35
Yeah. So horizontal friendship, we're
12:38
probably all familiar with. It basically means your peer
12:40
group. Yeah.
12:41
People of your own level of experience, roughly, that you're
12:45
friends with. Yeah.
12:45
So we're all familiar with this and our culture.
12:48
What we're less familiar with maybe is like vertical
12:51
friendship, you could call it. So people that are more
12:53
experienced than you, that you can learn from maybe that you
12:58
look up to even. Yeah, but they're definitely
13:00
more experienced than you. It might be they're just a few
13:02
steps or a step ahead of you, or they might be a long way ahead
13:06
of you. Yeah.
13:06
But there's there's a kind of verticality to it, if you want
13:08
to call it that. It's a bit like an
13:09
apprenticeship relationship. Maybe teach a disciple.
13:13
I don't know. And like I was saying in the
13:16
WhatsApp group, the obviously these aren't rigid categories.
13:19
They're not like fixed categories.
13:20
Sometimes they change, don't they?
13:21
Like I have, I have so-called peer friends that had definitely
13:24
become my teachers and then slipped out of being my teacher
13:28
or I've had people that I've considered my teachers that I'm
13:31
friends with and then, you know, so it morphs.
13:33
But they're kind of real categories, I would say.
13:35
But I want to talk about vertical friendship, you know,
13:39
because I feel, I feel kind of blessed that I've, I've met
13:43
people that have people in my life that I would consider not
13:47
just friends, but teachers. Yeah, in a life sense.
13:51
So, well, the first of these people kind of came
13:57
simultaneously. One was someone that I hadn't
14:00
met yet, and that was back in whenever it was, they had tapes.
14:05
So I was listening to tapes. Tapes are cool again now, but I
14:09
was listening to tapes of the Sangaracheta who found a
14:13
disorder. Yeah.
14:14
I didn't even know anything about Buddhism.
14:17
I just, I was not having a great time in life, I would say.
14:21
And I had this Buddha figure and I just looked at this figure and
14:26
I just felt like if anybody knows anything about this
14:28
madhouse, this planet, it's the Buddha.
14:31
Yeah. So I went to the Buddha Centre.
14:33
Also. I got bullied to go there by a
14:34
friend of a friend anyway, so I'm happy that he bullied me.
14:38
I just went to shut him up in the end because I was fed up
14:40
with him bullying me. So I went to the Buddhist
14:42
centre. I started listening to these
14:44
tapes, but I had AI think I, I wasn't into the, the whole
14:49
public image of Buddhism didn't appeal to me.
14:51
I, I saw Buddhist as people that you could just walk over.
14:53
They were like soppy kind of toothless people.
14:57
And I just thought, Nah, no way, not for me.
15:03
I don't want to be like that. So I always kept my distance in
15:06
case they infected me with their kind of their weakness or
15:09
something like that. So I didn't want that.
15:12
I didn't want that at all. And I met a few of them.
15:15
I was so judge mental, honestly. Like the first time I went to
15:17
the Buddhist centre, I said this before, but all I remember I
15:21
came in like, you know, I was quite big.
15:22
I was doing lots of weights and this stuff.
15:25
And like I just sat there and he was just, all I remember is like
15:28
him talking to the side of my head.
15:30
So obviously I wasn't looking at him.
15:32
She's a bit rude, you know, he's just taught.
15:33
And I was just like, so he turns out to be a great guy.
15:37
You know, he turned out to be a lovely guy.
15:38
I was just so judge mental. But the first guy that the first
15:42
person I met that I would say really I would say changed my
15:45
life was a guy called Kavala, you know, and he lived in a
15:48
community and this person that bullied me to come to the
15:51
Buddhist centre moved into this community, which I thought was a
15:53
bit weird. So a men's community suspect,
15:58
suspect. So, but I went and I thought,
16:02
oh, I better not scare all these, these Buddhists, you
16:05
know, And I kind of came in and I sat there and I just, Oh my
16:07
God, who are these people? And then by then Kabler came in
16:11
and back then he was quite big as well.
16:13
Like he looked, he looked, I don't think he might be, I don't
16:17
think he might be saying, but he looked a bit like someone out of
16:19
The Sopranos, you know, like the kind of like, and he was just
16:22
like heavy and something. And he scared me.
16:25
Yeah, he actually scared me. And I felt a little bit
16:29
intimidated. And it was just what I needed,
16:31
like a bodhisattva at that time, because I wouldn't have listened
16:33
to anyone else. I wasn't, I wasn't interested.
16:37
I needed someone that would actually like he He seemed
16:39
dangerous to me. Yeah.
16:40
I couldn't work him out. I was like, what does this guy
16:44
want? You know, he's like, because
16:45
he's being really friendly, but he's not smiling a lot.
16:49
And he's just like, looking at me.
16:51
And I just thought, oh, this is weird.
16:55
But he had a kind of, he had a, he had a kind of gravity to him.
16:57
He's a bit like a planet. He had this kind of thing going
16:59
on. I was like, I was kind of, it
17:01
was like Eros. I was just like drawn.
17:03
I was like fascinated. And like, he wasn't a
17:07
conventional. I would consider like what you'd
17:09
think of as a conventional Buddhist.
17:10
He looked a bit rough around the edges and not particularly
17:14
polite in many ways. Yeah, but kind to me at least.
17:18
Yeah, kind. And he just invited me on walks.
17:22
Like, it sounds a bit sad. I feel like one of those, like,
17:25
factory chickens, but I didn't really know.
17:27
I didn't really go into nature much.
17:29
But he took me to these, like, parks and, like, out of the city
17:34
and showed me. And we went for long walks.
17:37
And he befriended me. Yeah.
17:40
Which I now realise afterwards it's actually part of the whole
17:43
culture. Like, in this, especially in
17:44
this tradition, people do actually befriend other people,
17:46
which I find is incredible. Yeah.
17:49
But he definitely did that with me.
17:50
He reached out to me and there was something wild about him
17:55
that I, I appreciated. And also I could say anything to
17:57
him for that because of that. Yeah, I would say my, I would
18:01
like venture like dark things. I'd say, oh, I had this dream
18:05
about that. The most off key thing you can
18:07
possibly imagine right now in your mind.
18:09
We all have these, we just don't tell each other.
18:11
But I had this horrible thing. I was like, and then he said,
18:14
oh, yeah, I had a dream about and he told me something 10
18:16
times worse. And I was like, and I was like,
18:20
oh, it felt like a little flower, you know, coming up like
18:22
sunlight at last. I can breathe.
18:24
I can just be honest. I can say everything, even the
18:27
weird stuff. I can see everything.
18:30
So he really. Yeah, he was.
18:32
He really was. I owe him, like, a lot.
18:37
Also, what was good at the time, just when I arrived was the was
18:40
the kind of this outbreak of this sex scandal, true Ratner
18:43
sex scandal with the founder, Sangarachi.
18:45
There's all sorts of controversies going on.
18:48
I didn't really care, to be honest, at the time.
18:49
I wasn't that there wasn't even the Internet to read about all
18:52
this stuff anyway. But I heard about it and I was
18:54
kind of like, I don't even know what's going on.
18:56
Doesn't sound great, but whatever.
18:57
But it was really good to be with him because he'd been a
18:59
close friend of Sanger actors as well.
19:01
So there was all this stuff going on and he could tell me
19:04
first hand, yeah, this bit's a bit hyped up.
19:06
There's some truth to this, but it's not.
19:08
There's so much nuance to it that I was really grateful to to
19:11
have met him at that point as well, to have the kind of nuance
19:14
to all this. Otherwise I think I'd have been
19:16
lost. It's so, so sensationalised that
19:20
I may have just left, which would have been probably the
19:22
greatest tragedy in my life. So that was another good thing.
19:26
Like he'd actually been kind of, I don't know if you'd call him
19:30
his lover, but something like this.
19:31
Yeah. And he's not gay, but whatever
19:33
that means anyway. But so it was nuanced.
19:36
Yeah. So I was, I was Appreciate that.
19:41
I appreciate his loyalty. Yeah.
19:43
I think I learnt about loyalty from him.
19:45
He was like, if he was your friend, he was your friend, full
19:49
stop. Yeah.
19:52
And he'd rejoice in you to other people.
19:55
And yeah, he was solid. And I think another, this sounds
20:03
funny, but another thing, he helped me, he really changed my
20:06
life with his financial freedom. It sounds a bit mad, you know,
20:09
but. Like I had a tiny little bit of
20:12
money left and he was a bit wild and he was just said, he was
20:15
said buy some gold. And I was like what?
20:18
He was like buy some, no, buy some silver, buy some gold right
20:21
now. It's about to go up.
20:22
And I was like, I don't even know what he's talking about.
20:24
Whatever. I don't have any much money
20:25
myself. I didn't put like 10 grand in.
20:28
And like within six months it blew up to like 50 grand.
20:31
I couldn't believe it. And that allowed me to like work
20:34
less, practice more, Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.
20:36
So I was so grateful to him. I was like, how did this guy do
20:38
this? You know, he's just like, he's a
20:40
bit of a wizard, you know, really and truly.
20:44
So, yeah, I, I owe him, man. He's like, yeah.
20:47
And actually, the other thing was at that time, I think my
20:54
life, my life was very different.
20:56
You know, I was doing music, involved in clubs and
20:59
everything. And I had a number of music
21:02
friends, but a lot of my friends were like selling drugs, like
21:05
on, on crack basically, and a lot of gang related activity,
21:11
firearms, you know, and they were all living upstairs from
21:13
me. We lived in this block and they
21:14
were all living upstairs from me.
21:15
And they began to have problems with a whole load of other.
21:18
They were like kids. Yeah.
21:20
They were like 15 years old and they all had handguns and vests
21:23
and everything. And like there was a whole all
21:26
their, all their parents had basically been sent to jail.
21:28
They were like one of the biggest in, in England, at least
21:30
one of the biggest cocaine cartels.
21:32
And all their dads had disappeared and they were just
21:34
left there. I don't know.
21:35
Maybe they found their dad's guns.
21:37
And so I don't know. So my friends had beef with
21:38
these kids. And for some reason I got drawn
21:41
into all of this. And because I lived underneath
21:44
them and I don't know, I think because I'd, I'd had a bad
21:46
experience earlier when I was about 16, I basically got beaten
21:50
up by a whole gang of guys and just decided at that point I'd
21:53
rather die than go through that again.
21:55
So I was so stubborn. I was like, OK, well, whatever.
21:58
Yeah, I'm here. And I told I met Cavala in the
22:04
doctors. That's right.
22:05
I told him. And he said, ah, well, there's a
22:07
space in the community. Why don't you move in?
22:10
Like, as if it was just like, you're not running away.
22:12
It's just like a nice place to live.
22:13
And I was like, that sounds good.
22:15
You know, the way he framed it, I was just.
22:16
Oh, great. So he, he literally turned up
22:18
the next day in his car, took all my stuff out my flat and
22:21
just took me. And I lived in this men's
22:23
community called Sarana, which means refuge.
22:25
Yeah. And it's like opposite, like
22:27
this park and I was like in a different.
22:30
Well, I said to him a few years later, was that like, and he was
22:32
like, yeah, it was like deliberate, you know, but he
22:34
made it so smooth that there was no kind of weird stuff.
22:38
Like I wasn't like, oh, is he trying to do something?
22:40
It was like so he that that was that was very, I'm very grateful
22:45
to him for that. And, and I have to say with him
22:48
as well, I one thing I appreciated about that period.
22:50
He wasn't faced with violence, which is can be a great thing.
22:54
I don't mean he enjoyed it, that complete opposite, but he wasn't
22:56
like freaked out by it. It was just like part of life.
23:00
So I could speak to him. Yeah.
23:05
So I lived with him for a few years and that was fun.
23:10
It was like, it was like a big house, big, big men's community.
23:15
And to be fair, it was disintegrating a bit.
23:18
And like, it wasn't. It was a bit of a mess
23:22
basically, but it was perfect for me because I, I didn't want
23:25
to be in a strict community. I wanted to be somewhere I could
23:28
kind of do my own thing. So I lived there with him.
23:33
So that's the first person. And also Sangaracheta, Like I
23:36
say, I was listening to Sangaracheta's tapes and they
23:38
just blew me away. I was just like, I would get
23:41
four of them off the shelf every week just in random order,
23:44
whatever sounded interesting to me, you know, like, I don't
23:46
know, darkness in the cemetery of like, what's this?
23:49
Or like the wheel of life, you know, all this stuff.
23:51
And I was like, really, I just go home, draw my curtains, put
23:56
some candles on and listen to Sangaretchter.
23:58
And I was just like, this is incredible.
24:01
It was really incredible. Yeah.
24:05
So those that was my so Cave lawyer and Sangaretchter are my
24:09
first two people that I look up to and looked up to.
24:13
Yeah. OK.
24:17
So next we have someone called Janananda who I've talked about
24:19
a lot, and I met him in West London and West London.
24:26
The centre, the Buddhist centre in West London had basically was
24:29
almost dead. You know, it was like there was
24:31
hardly anyone coming along. There'd been all sorts of
24:33
internal order member drama with each other.
24:36
It's happened sometimes. Yeah.
24:37
People fall out. And he was basically almost at
24:41
that point, almost single handedly reviving the centre.
24:44
Yeah. And it's a bit of a miracle I
24:49
went to the centre at all because I went on the website
24:51
and looked at their website and it looked terrible.
24:54
It was just like horrible, like flowers and like, you know, the
24:58
usual thing of like the water on the stones and A and a Buddha.
25:02
I was like, oh God. But I thought I need, I need to,
25:07
I need Buddhism. So I'm going to have to just
25:10
suck it up. And I went there and he was so
25:14
he just immediately befriended me.
25:15
He was like, wow, one of these people who would just
25:20
immediately see treat you seriously, take you seriously
25:25
and like see your good qualities and, and talk to that and even
25:29
rejoice in your bad qualities. That sounds bad, but kind of
25:32
like, kind of like, you know, that's wild.
25:36
You know, like, so he was not squeamish about anything.
25:40
He was just really non, non puritanical, you know, very
25:46
upright man. He used to do judo a lot, but he
25:51
said he's a, he's, he always called himself a beta male.
25:54
So there's alpha males and there's beta males and I'm a
25:56
beta male. So he was, but he would, he
25:58
wasn't really. He was, but he wasn't.
26:00
And I found it interesting because that part of West London
26:05
at that point, it was, it'd gone from being a rough area to being
26:09
a mega posh area. Yeah.
26:11
And so everyone there was involved in banking.
26:12
There's loads of Russian bankers coming along who didn't put any
26:15
money in the dharna bowl. They were like worth billions.
26:17
I know this guy called Borat. Anyway, Anyway, so loads of
26:21
people. And for me, I found it
26:22
interesting that they actually wanted to listen to what you had
26:27
to say, you know, So for me, like I had my whole hierarchies
26:30
that I'd grown up with in my mind.
26:32
But to see like these people that were kind of like, like
26:36
financial warlords actually just being like, like, I need to hear
26:40
what you're saying. That's not, that's interesting.
26:43
He's obviously got something to say, like the Dharma has
26:45
something to say. It's like about life.
26:47
It's not just about sideline issues.
26:50
It's about life and death, you know?
26:52
And yeah, so I, I, I enjoyed, I enjoyed that he, he was someone
26:56
that I felt like I could be like, which is important.
26:59
It's good to see people that you feel like you might emulate, you
27:02
know, just the way he dressed. I mean, he dressed, he had holes
27:04
in all his clothes. Yeah.
27:06
But and he rode this horrible old bike, but he had dignity,
27:12
you know, like a real uprightness to him, which I just
27:14
thought was incredible. Like, and I think that dignity
27:17
came from a kind of integrity, you know, someone who's kind of
27:21
got moral integrity and, and, and walks the walk.
27:27
Yeah, like, that was my experience of him walking the
27:30
walk. And he made all sorts of mess.
27:34
I'm just going to swear he's going to be made all sorts of
27:35
mistakes in the centre. Yeah, which I'm not going to go
27:39
into. And he kind of got crucified for
27:41
that by some people. Everyone's like, you're a bad
27:44
man. Rare, rare, rare.
27:45
They weren't anyway. They weren't.
27:47
I was disgusted with the accusations coming at him
27:50
because I just thought, wow, this is unbelievable.
27:52
So people just discarded him. In some respects, yeah.
28:00
But you never know who people are.
28:01
So one thing I appreciate about Janananda is you just don't know
28:04
who people are, especially in Buddhism, especially in
28:07
spiritual circles, it's a huge mistake to think you know who
28:10
people are. Yeah.
28:11
And we don't know anyone is. We don't know who we are.
28:14
And it holds true in this situation because I don't want
28:17
to go into it by the way he died.
28:18
It was very, very difficult. Yeah.
28:20
And the way he died, it was almost like a a story out of a
28:26
kind of Dostoevsky short story, you know, Like, I just couldn't
28:30
believe it, You know, just the way he approached death and the
28:33
way he left this world was incredible.
28:51
Yeah. He was also a man of action.
28:56
Yeah. And I've told this story before,
28:58
but this I used to find. It's really impressive.
29:00
Like, anyway, I'll tell it why not because it's important.
29:06
It tells you something. But one, I was living above the
29:08
centre at that point in, in West London.
29:10
And I came down after a class, a yoga class, and I went to the
29:14
toilet and there was a huge turd in the toilet.
29:17
Just just this horrible monster in there.
29:20
And I was just like, I can't believe someone has left this.
29:24
I can't. Why?
29:24
How can you do this? Yeah.
29:26
And so I was disgusting and I was like, and so I went into the
29:30
office and he was busy working. And I said to him, I cannot
29:33
believe this. I've been to the toilet and
29:35
there's this giant monster in there.
29:37
What are people? Like before I'd even finished a
29:38
sentence, he was up in there flushing it.
29:43
I was just stunned. I was like this.
29:45
I mean, it blew me away. I don't know if this is it
29:48
doesn't, but it was just like, I wouldn't go near this.
29:50
Yeah. And I don't think any of you
29:51
would. But he did.
29:53
He was like heroic. So it's like, it wasn't like a
29:57
but that it. That was just one small sort of
29:59
example of his heroism, you know, like I wasn't going near
30:04
that. So, yeah, I, I think I, I owe
30:10
him a lot. And I think something he also
30:15
did with me was he, he, he never kind of corralled me.
30:18
He never kind of pushed me into a corner.
30:21
He was always, he always wanted me to kind of be me.
30:26
Do you know what I mean? Like to flourish, to be like my
30:28
shape, whatever that is. He didn't need to say anything
30:33
about ethics because he had a backbone.
30:35
So it was like it was in the air anyway.
30:37
You don't need to lecture people like he was an upright person.
30:40
So being with him, if you've got, I think The thing is you
30:43
can only like attracts like you can only be with someone.
30:46
You can only be with friends with somebody.
30:48
If you're behaving in a similar way, you know, it's not possible
30:51
otherwise, you know, if someone's kind of robbing and
30:52
stealing and doing all kinds of horrible things, you can't
30:55
really be friends with them. You can try, but it just doesn't
30:58
really work. So I'm not saying that's what I
31:00
was doing. I'm just, I'm just saying like
31:02
he, he just was relentlessly encouraging, basically.
31:06
And yeah, I even said to him one day when I came to his office,
31:14
like I was over, you know, sometimes you get a moment of
31:16
clarity. I was overwhelmed.
31:18
I just went into your office and I said, how can I ever repay
31:21
you? Like, really.
31:22
Like I how can I ever repay you for this?
31:25
And he just said, you can't. And I was like, all right, But
31:31
he did say you can hand this on, you know?
31:33
And that was that. That hit me.
31:35
I was like, all right, well, that's what I'll do.
31:36
Then I can hand it on. And yeah.
31:42
So that was Jinananda. Yeah.
31:53
So the next person is Padma Vajra, who some of you know, and
32:02
I met him at Padma Loca, where I used to live.
32:04
I lived there for five years and there's so many good qualities I
32:10
could say about him. Juan, he's a great speaker,
32:13
blah, blah, blah. He's he's done amazing things.
32:15
But I think just, he's just who, just how he is with people, you
32:19
know, the way he is with guests. Yeah, we don't have, again,
32:23
unfortunately we don't have, we don't live in a traditional
32:25
culture anymore, which in one way is good and another way is
32:28
bad. The bad side is we don't really
32:29
know how to do hospitality properly anymore.
32:31
We just like, we don't have a culture of it.
32:34
But he said basically he learnt from his time in India.
32:39
Like the whole, you know, the, the honoured guest basically.
32:43
And I just blown away the way he'd like, he'd just drop
32:45
everything. Someone would come, make sure
32:48
he's got flowers in his room, like really look after people
32:52
and you do that on a daily basis.
32:53
He did it with me. He did it with me for a long
32:55
time before I was ordained. I'd almost go into his room
32:58
every day and be like talking to him just about life and our
33:01
problems. Very just really encouraging and
33:06
kind and just a really good person.
33:11
Really, really good person. Also, I have to say, the way he
33:18
would lead poojas now, the way he does lead poojas was
33:21
something because, again, part of our untraditional culture, we
33:25
don't really know how to do ritual yet again.
33:27
Yeah, I think maybe we'll learn, maybe in if we're all still not
33:31
us, but if this tradition in the world is still going in 50 years
33:34
or 100 years, maybe we'll have got enough roots in ritual to
33:38
not feel like a bit awkward and a bit silly sometimes.
33:41
What am I doing? You know, he doesn't seem to
33:43
have that. He just, he'll just lead a pooja
33:45
with some gusto, with some oomphs, you know, or on the
33:48
mantras. And you do this now you do that.
33:51
It's a relief. I just really like, I've done so
33:53
many poojas with him, like rituals in the evening in
33:56
meditation that that really did activated something in me.
33:59
Because I think in a certain sense of Buddhism, we the modern
34:03
tendency in the West has been to kind of secularize and strip
34:06
anything out that it's a bit brutal.
34:08
Like strip anything out that apparently isn't in the middle,
34:11
isn't Buddhism or the Buddhist teaching.
34:13
Like people know what that is. It's a whole unit.
34:16
It's a whole organic thing. And ritual.
34:18
I think if you can get ritual somehow to some degree, I think
34:22
you, you, you tap into something else that you don't otherwise.
34:25
Yeah, it's not easy to get into, but if you can get into it, it
34:29
will, it will change your practice of Buddhism.
34:32
Yeah. It becomes less, it becomes less
34:34
of a head thing and more of a kind of full bodied experience.
34:38
So he, I'm really grateful to him for that as well.
34:42
Yeah. The next person I'll mention he
34:44
was here last week is Satya Raja.
34:46
I said. I rejoiced in his merits last
34:48
week, so I'm not going to say too much about him.
34:50
Really. So much energy.
34:52
I can't believe he's like, almost 70 and he's just, like,
34:56
flying along and he really befriends people.
35:01
Yeah, he's got part of the reason I asked him to be my
35:03
preceptor was because I saw how many guys that he'd ordained
35:06
that I respected. I'm like, wow.
35:08
He like, really? Again, if he's with someone,
35:10
he's with someone. He's like very loyal.
35:11
You know, he also knows Buddhism, you know, which might
35:15
sound like a strange thing to say, but a lot, there's a lot of
35:17
people that don't have that kind of clarity.
35:20
Like I was in a study group with him called the Transcendental
35:24
Principle, where you read this thick text and I'm a bit like,
35:31
if unless I disagree with something, I'll just be like,
35:34
yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I'll just go with it.
35:36
Yeah. It's like, that's how I've done
35:38
Buddhism or how I had done Buddhism.
35:40
I was just like, well, all sounds good.
35:42
Yeah. I don't, it's no, it's not
35:43
rubbing up me rubbing me up the wrong way.
35:46
And so I went into the study group with him and there's, I
35:48
think there's four of us. And he's like, right.
35:51
So what are your questions? Yeah.
35:52
Because it was like about the core principles in Buddhism and
35:56
everyone's like, and he just stopped.
36:00
He's like, listen, if you're not going to come with any good
36:02
questions, we can just forget this whole retreat and cancel
36:04
the group. And we'd and I was just like
36:08
next day, everybody before the group stopped by the fireplace
36:11
reading, taking notes. And it really turned into an
36:15
amazing group because everyone had like realised actually, I
36:18
don't have a clue what it's talking about.
36:20
I mean, I I agree with it, but I don't know why.
36:23
Yeah. And like, and actually, do I
36:25
agree with it? No, I don't.
36:27
Well, this bit doesn't make sense.
36:28
And I had some arguments with him on that retreat.
36:31
Like I don't know what I was arguing about.
36:34
It was good. But so he's, he's very much like
36:37
either take it seriously or don't bother kind of thing,
36:39
which I needed. Yeah.
36:42
And I think one thing with him I'm very grateful for is I
36:44
nearly left that place. Yeah, I was.
36:46
I hit a threshold in my own psyche where I was just like, I
36:50
didn't even realise I was done with it.
36:51
The way it manifested was, oh, I think I need a new adventure.
36:54
I need to go and move somewhere else and maybe start doing music
36:57
again. And all fine on paper, but if
36:59
you knew me at that point, you'd have been like, what are you
37:02
doing it again? You know, there's this kind of
37:04
like, let me just veer off away from this thing which is
37:09
stirring me up or going to be difficult and let me just escape
37:13
to a new place. Yeah.
37:15
And he'd. I told him.
37:16
I said, yeah, I, I said this before, but I said to him, yeah,
37:20
you know, I thought about this and I hadn't thought about it at
37:23
all. Anyway, I thought, I thought,
37:24
and I need to leave. And he was like, I don't think
37:26
that's a good idea. And I was like, oh, OK, So then
37:30
I waited another week, and I said, yeah.
37:32
And I said the same thing. He said, no, I don't think it's
37:33
a good idea. And I was like, this is awkward
37:35
now. Yeah, because we live together.
37:37
And so it's like one of those suttas.
37:40
The third week, I said to him, like, yeah, I've really thought
37:43
about it this time. And I'm really, I really need to
37:46
leave. And he said, no, that's a bad
37:47
idea. And I was just like, so I
37:51
stayed. Yeah, I stayed because I didn't
37:55
know what to do. I was just like, God, all right?
38:00
So I stayed. And it's completely changed my
38:03
life. Yeah.
38:03
The rest of my life has been absolutely transformed because
38:09
it changed because of that. None of none of what happened
38:12
would have happened if I'd have left.
38:13
So that takes on guts. Yeah.
38:17
Especially in this day and age, you know, to get accused of, I
38:19
don't know what it is like, not bullying, whatever,
38:21
authoritarian behaviours, stuff like this.
38:23
You know what I mean? It's not a good look, and he
38:26
just took that risk, so I'm very grateful to him.
38:32
All right. OK.
38:36
Another person that I want to mention is called Vidyamala.
38:38
You know, I don't know her very well, but in 2018 I had an
38:47
operation which I won't go into. Those who know me are bored of
38:51
hearing about it anyway. And if you don't, you probably
38:53
don't need to hear about it. But it was, it was
38:56
extraordinarily painful. I always say the guy, the NHS,
39:00
the National Health Service, in, in, in, in, in, in Britain,
39:03
sometimes leaves. How do you say it could be
39:08
better? Yeah, Like, I got a leaf.
39:11
I got a mess e-mail from them saying, oh, you might be in some
39:14
some discomfort for a week. That's not great.
39:16
But my flight tickets for a week.
39:18
And then I got there, you know, you got your socks on your gown.
39:21
And then the doctor came in and said, Oh yeah, just to let you
39:23
know, around the surgeon. So he said, just to let you
39:25
know, this is, I think he said this is one of the top three
39:29
most painful operations to recover from.
39:31
So it might, I was like, it was gone.
39:33
I was like, Oh my God, get injected.
39:38
And he wasn't lying. I woke up.
39:41
They couldn't, they couldn't even give me enough.
39:43
I think it was fentanyl. Like they couldn't even give me
39:45
anymore. I was just like, I need some
39:47
more. And they were like, we can't.
39:50
And and also anyway, that's enough for that.
39:52
I'm not going to go into it. I was an absolute mess.
39:54
Yeah. I was like, absolutely.
39:55
I've never been in that state. I've never been like that.
39:57
And I pray that I don't experience that again.
40:00
You know, maybe, maybe it's a bit like that when you're dying.
40:02
I don't know. It was ridiculous.
40:05
Couldn't get out of bed. I was sobbing.
40:07
I was losing my mind. I couldn't sleep.
40:12
The most difficult? Basically every time I went to
40:15
the toilet, it felt like I went on this forum and there was a
40:18
woman, she said I've been, I've given birth 4 times and she said
40:21
every time I go to the toilet it's more painful than giving
40:24
birth and it's gone on for like And she said it went on for me
40:26
for six weeks every day. And I've read that after like
40:30
day three and I was like why God?
40:34
Why me? So I was a mess.
40:38
I was an absolute. I was losing my marvels.
40:40
Honestly, I forget Buddhism. I didn't even couldn't even
40:42
remember what Buddhism was. I was just lying in my own like
40:45
fluids, just like and someone I will say at that point that was
40:50
like a like a blessing to me was Padmasagra like Oh my God, he
40:57
was like an Angel. Honestly.
40:58
He was just, like, so calm and like, I wasn't lying there in
41:04
agony. And I farted and like, all this
41:07
disgusting sort of liquid came out and I was so humiliated.
41:10
And he just laughed. He was just like, he was like, I
41:13
was just like, what? He was just so kind to me.
41:15
He, like, really looked after me.
41:20
Yeah, he was amazing. And but I was losing it.
41:25
I was really losing it. And out of desperation, I
41:29
remembered there was this woman called Vidyamala.
41:31
And I went online one night like 4 in the morning and I found her
41:37
and I listened to her story and her story's just like, again,
41:40
she's just one of the most remarkable people I've ever
41:43
heard of. Like she's a order member in the
41:45
UK. She's from New Zealand
41:46
originally. I mean, she literally had the
41:49
worst physical issues with her spine broke.
41:52
Everything you can imagine that's gone wrong went wrong.
41:55
Like and somehow out of necessity, she turned towards
42:01
that pain and has been helping people ever since with like
42:07
seriously chronic pain live. Basically, she set up a whole
42:11
thing. She got like a thing from the
42:12
queen or whatever it is. You know what I mean?
42:13
She's like, really, she's done miracles.
42:15
And like, I thanked her so much. Like, I emailed her, she sent,
42:19
she said, oh, maybe read this book.
42:20
And I do like I was just, I don't know.
42:27
Yeah, that she really saved, saved my bacon, as they say.
42:32
All right, so I'm wrapping up now.
42:36
Like I was saying, you you have these vertical people and
42:42
horizontal. There's so many people in
42:44
Berlin. I can mention people in this
42:45
room. There's so many people that
42:49
they're, I just, it's so inspired by and I feel like, oh,
42:52
they, they, they, they've got integrity.
42:54
They've got real integrity. And I want to be more like that
42:56
actually in my life. But one person I'm going to pull
42:59
up is not just because he's here, it's Lala Taratna.
43:03
You know, Lala Taratna is an extraordinary character.
43:08
Like I have to say, when I first got here, I was a bit shocked.
43:11
Yeah. I was like, wow, this guy is
43:13
different. He's different and like he said
43:17
some wild stuff sometimes, like even during talks I was like, I
43:21
can't believe you just said that, you know, but people love
43:25
him and he's again, he's somebody's like the real thing.
43:29
He's been doing his Ablo Katesh Rasadena.
43:32
This is just as I buy the buy for like every day for 40 odd
43:35
years, 45 I don't know how many 50 years or something, right.
43:40
And he's just like consistent, consistently here, giving to
43:43
people so much love for people. Like he really loves people.
43:48
That's the thing that really struck me.
43:50
Like when he talks about people, even people who doesn't know
43:53
that well, he'll find something about them beautiful.
43:56
He'll really like, Oh, they're wow, it's so beautiful.
43:59
This is like and he's really like loves people and that has a
44:03
huge effect on people here, actually a huge effect.
44:07
But one, the main thing I want to say about Lala Taratnas is I
44:10
think what I've learnt from Lala to Ratner is in a funny kind of
44:14
ways, like how to be myself in this city, you know, because
44:17
it's not always that obvious, because you think you, you have
44:19
certain blueprints in mind alike.
44:21
Oh, how should I, how should I do this?
44:23
How should I communicate the Dharma?
44:25
I'm just watching him. He just, he can't help but be
44:27
himself. He's just himself.
44:29
I just thought to myself, well, why don't I try that?
44:32
Why don't I just try and be me and not try and be anyone else?
44:35
I guess everyone gets to that place at some point.
44:38
So I'm so grateful to Lala, to Ratner, and I'm very, very, I
44:44
think we're we're it's a real blessing to have him here in
44:47
this, in this, in this Sangra, in this city and the kind of,
44:50
well, all of this, all of us here, you know, he's been a
44:53
huge, huge, huge part in generating all this as well.
44:57
So yeah, that's another person that, well, I said to him, I
45:03
wouldn't, I couldn't have stayed here if it wasn't for him.
45:05
It just wouldn't have happened. So.
45:07
And my life is good now, Like I love Berlin.
45:09
So I'm very grateful to that little Ratner.
45:11
Yeah. Oh, God, all these people.
45:14
I'm going to fall apart in a minute.
45:18
I did have some clever remarks at the end, did I?
45:27
No, not really. Anyway, all I all I all like
45:31
just to wrap it up, I would say yeah, just try not to, well,
45:35
forget about cynicism. Choose values.
45:39
Maybe if there's someone you look up to, then hold them as a
45:42
whole person. You know, they don't have to be
45:44
perfect, but hold them as a whole person, all their
45:47
so-called forts and all their, their beautiful qualities.
45:50
And then it's possible to look up, isn't it?
45:53
And yeah, that's it. Good.
45:57
Thanks.