Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna. And we were just starting chapter 18 and we said of the 27 chapters of this ancient extended poem, the 18th chapter is probably the second most quoted chapter. And it's the chapter where Nagarjuna really gets into emptiness.

And the way he gets into emptiness is by examining contradictions about the person and the body and mind of the person. So Michael and Michael's body and mind. And there's a lot of contradictions that are going on about the way we think about ourselves.

And we learn to live with them and we learn to ignore them. And we learn to sort of, what do you call that? Candy coat them or something like that.

Sugar coat them. Yeah, and we get used to those contradictions and we don't struggle with it much. And kind of Nagarjuna takes it as his mission to grab us by the collar and say, look, this doesn't make sense.

If things exist the way you guys think, then this cannot be, something's wrong. And so he's asking questions that you asked your mom when you were about seven years old. And she told you, that's just the way it is.

And then you tell your children that, your own children, and then that's the way it's been. So we're going to start. It's a very difficult chapter.

And there have been whole books written about this chapter. One book, which we recommended yesterday, is a recently translated book by our Mixed Nuts team. I'll give you the ordering information here.

It's called Emptiness Meditations. The author is actually the same commentator that we are using for this book today, which is Choney Lama Dorpa Shedu, born 1675, passed away in 1748. He has, by coincidence, he has a great connection to our monastery, to my monastery, which has, it's one of the big three monasteries in Tibet with a traditional enrollment of about 15,000 monks.

Now there's still 3,000. We've built it back up to 3,000 monks after it was destroyed. And about 90% of the monks were killed or disrobed.

And so we have this book, Emptiness Meditations. It's been translated by our Mixed Nuts team. And this book was done by Venerable Utpala.

And as I mentioned in the last classes, we're looking forward to commentaries, modern explanations of this book. It's a very difficult book with about 38 proofs of emptiness in it. And an extra couple of hundred pages on the traditional instructions for how to meditate.

So these are the original texts from about 1,300 years ago on how to do your daily meditation, how to set up your seat, what kind of food to eat, what kind of place to have, how to start focusing your mind, nine levels of how you focus your mind. And all of those instructions are in this book. I mentioned that John Brady and Connie O'Brien are going to be writing commentaries, especially on the part about how to meditate because they both spent, they both done very powerful three-year retreats.

And Venerable Utpala, who was the translator of this book, is also, has agreed to do some commentaries on it. So I think it's going to take four or five books of explanation. But I encourage you to get this book.

I like the e-book. My neighbors are always asking me what the heck I do. And it's kind of hard to explain.

And when the e-book came out, I bought a bunch of copies and just sent it around the neighborhood. And so it's so easy to get it. It takes about 30 seconds to QR code and get it.

And it's extremely valuable. So I encourage you to get it. It's by the same author that we're studying now, Choney Lama.

And it will help you understand this book better. All right, so let's get going into chapter 18. We had covered, we talked about the very first verse.

And verses in Sanskrit are normally, which are called shloka, will be two lines of Sanskrit. And the Tibetans will translate it as four lines. And this first verse is split into two parts.

The first part says, ,GAL TE PHUNG PO BDAG YIN NA, ,SKYE DANG GCIG PA CHEN DU RGYUR, Which means, if your body and mind, if Tim's body and mind were really Tim, then Tim would go in and out of existence the way his mind and body do. And that requires an appreciation of the Buddhist idea that almost all the things in the world, those things which are changing, those things which came into existence because of some kind of causes, that the nature of being caused is that you blink in and out of existence by the millisecond. Nothing is solid.

Things are blinking in and out of existence from the time they start to the time they end. And so body is one of those things. Physical matter, the nature of physical matter is that it blinks in and out of existence moment by moment, millisecond by millisecond.

And the nature of the mind is also the same. It blinks in and out moment to moment. It goes in a flow, but the flow is made up of milliseconds of consciousness, which are blinking in and out.

And so the argument here by Nagarjuna is that, what's your relationship to your body and mind? And did you notice there are some discrepancies? And he loves discrepancies.

And he says, look, there's a discrepancy here. And we're like, what's discrepancy? I'm fine, I'm my body and mind.

He says, no, it's not fine. If you are, are you your body and mind or do you have an existence independent of your body and mind? For example, if your body and mind disappeared, would you still be here?

So what's the relationship between you and your body and mind? And then Nagarjuna's way to resolve a discrepancy is to look at all the options. So the whole chapter is a list of options.

And he doesn't comment on the options. He just says, he gives you an option and he lets you figure out that it's ridiculous. And you say, well, not that one.

And he says, whoa, must be the next one, right? And then he gives you the next one and you're like, well, not that one either. And then he's like, whoa.

And then at the end of the chapter he says, so look, it's not what you thought, is it? Because you just used up all your options. So here's, we're starting the options.

You can see a picture here. And it's just a stopwatch. And it means if you are your body and mind, if to be Tim is to be Tim's body and mind, then Tim must be changing millisecond to millisecond.

You can change your ideas. You can change your opinions. Your feelings change constantly throughout the day.

Your body, if you're my age, you understand, it's falling apart instant by instant over the length of your life. It's crumbling as you get older. But we wouldn't say Tim as an idea, Tim gets older.

Or we wouldn't say Tim vacillates, oscillates from moment to moment. We wouldn't say that. Your mind is constantly, you're in a good mood, then somebody says some little stupid thing and then you're in a bad mood the rest of the day.

And the mind is very fickle. And the body is similarly fickle. But Tim is not fickle.

Tim is Tim. Tim is the whole life, Tim. So he says, I don't think Tim could be.

It doesn't look to me. I'm not telling you what to think. This is Nagarjuna's style.

But if Tim were his body and mind, then I don't think it could be because the body and mind are instant by instant changing, like this. And then Tim is just Tim. You don't pronounce his name different from moment to moment.

Tim is Tim. He gets the name when he's a little baby. He carries the name to his death and beyond.

And then it's just Tim. It doesn't change. Tim is Tim.

Tim is Tim. It doesn't become Tima or Tabu. It's just Tim.

So Nagarjuna says, I don't like the first option. And I don't think you will either. I think you'll agree with me.

And he doesn't give you the answers. He just points out the difficulties with different ideas. Now he's going to go a little bit further.

And this is Choney Lama. I'll just read the Tibetan and explain it. BDAG PHUNG PO BYED TZAM DANG RANG BZHIN GCIG YIN NA If Tim was his body and mind taken in general, not as the moments of consciousness changing and the body constantly changing.

But let's just say he's quote body and mind in general. MTSAN GYIS PHUNG PO DANG YANG GCIG TU RGYUR LA Then he would be the parts that he has in this lifetime. So the other guy said, I understand your reluctance to say that Tim is his body and mind if you look at body and mind as things that are constantly in flux.

Because Tim's not in flux. Tim is a solid thing through his whole life. But what if we just look at the body and mind in general?

What if we just say body and mind? And we don't worry about the atoms and we don't worry about the thought waves and we just say body and mind in general. How about that?

Could we say Tim is that? Can we say that he has that relationship with his body and mind? And the guard says, okay, let's look at that.

By the way, where is he going? I mean the punchline, let's say the punchline. The punchline is Tim didn't have to be this body and mind.

The idea of Tim is artificially assigned to this particular body and mind by his karma, by the actions he's done. How much kindness has he shown to other people will determine the strength of the connection between him and his body and mind. It's not a natural connection.

It's an artificial connection. It's an idea. And that can have a bad side to it and it can have a good side to it.

If Tim is an idea put on his body and mind according to how kind he is to other people, then if he understands that relationship, he can endeavor to be more kind and more compassionate to other people. He will collect more mental seeds in his mind, which is what the definition of karma is. And then he will see himself in a gradually more perfected way.

And at the end of that process, he could even become immortal and serve humanity on all the planets of the universe. And that's the goal. So we take advantage of this artificial connection between his body and mind and Tim.

And we improve on it because we recognize it's coming from us and it's not a natural connection. But to do that, we have to prove the connection is not natural and that it could be tinkered with to make him a being like an angel who could actually help countless people at the same time. Because that's the goal of Buddhism, is to improve your being until you can serve countless people at the same time.

And it is possible. And if you work on these books and you work with them and you learn the meditations, you can have confirmations in your meditation, in your prayers, in your meditation. You can get actual undeniable experiences that demonstrate to you without a book and without all this philosophy that it is possible to change your being.

The human being is an unfinished person, is an unfinished being. Human beings as we know them are unfinished beings and their evolution, undeniable, unavoidable evolution is to become a person who can serve all beings in the universe at the same time. And that's why we're studying this book.

But first you have to establish that we are not automatically the body and mind that we have now. If that connection is changeable, or if that connection is artificial, then we can tinker with it and we can become an angel or whatever. And that's the whole goal of this book.

Okay, so he says, ,BDAG PHUNG PO CI TZAM DANG RANG BZHIN GCIG YIN NA, If we were the... Okay, you want me to say Tim is just generally Tim's body and mind without talking about milliseconds? Okay.

,ZEN GYIS PHUNG PO DANG YANG GCIG TU RGYUR LA, ,DE NYID MI RIG TE, In that case, he would be the parts that he consists of in this particular lifetime. Meaning from the time he's born, or in Buddhism, from the instant that he is conceived until the time he takes his last breath. Then is that what you're saying?

That Tim is, without looking at the instantaneous question, is he just his body and mind in general from birth to death? Is that what you want to say? Can we look?

Are there any contradictions with saying that? ,GYUR LA DE NYID MI RIG TE, Yes, there is a contradiction. What's the contradiction?

,ZEN GYIS PHUNG PO PHYI MAR MIN BYUNG BA LTAR, This body and mind don't continue after the point of death. This particular life's body and mind don't continue after the point of death. The point of death is a major transition in the composition of your body and mind.

It's illogical to think that just because the body stops, the mind has to stop. I like to say, if you see a car stopped on the side of the road when you're coming here on the highway, that's not... If the car is obviously broken or something happened to the car, it's not proof that the driver is dead.

It's just a vehicle is stopped. It doesn't prove anything about the driver of the car. To see a body die at the end of this life, and then to assume that the mind has died is illogical because the mind can't communicate with you anymore because the mouth died.

Then the lips don't work anymore and the teeth don't work anymore and you can't say anything anymore. It's like a driver in a car that's broken and they're banging on the windows, but they can't communicate. And if you ever have a deep meditation where you see a dead person or you communicate with a dead person, that's exactly how it feels.

They're very frustrated. They can't communicate and they're like banging on the windows and they didn't die. So there's no logical reason to assume that your mind stops when your body stops.

We do assume it, but if you think about it, it's just like the person's cell phone ran out of battery so they're dead. Oh, I haven't heard from Tim today. He must be dead.

And then you're like, no, maybe his cell phone just ran out of battery. You're like, oh yeah. So that's what he's saying.

SEMS KYI PHUNG PO PHYI MAR MI SBYUNG BA LTAR It's true that this life's body doesn't continue. BDAG KYANG PHYI MAR MI SKYE BA'AM But can you say that proves that Tim doesn't continue? YANG NA BDAG PHYI MAR SKYE BA'I LTAR TSE DI PHUNG PO GNYIS KYANG PHYI MAR NYING TZAM SBYOR BA RGYUR BA'I PHYIR Or are you saying that Tim does continue past death and since he is his body and mind, that somehow his body didn't die?

Are you saying like he took some version of his body to the next life and left this version of his body? Is that what you're saying? And then he's just pointing out contradictions again, meaning he cannot be his body and mind because he would take the body with him.

Okay, it's pretty simple. All right, if he is, if Tim is only his body and mind and if the mind continues, then the body should continue also, but the body tends to lay in the bed and you burn it or you bury it. Okay, all right, we have a picture for that I think.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Actually it's coming from the, let's use this one. Leave it up though. GZHAN YANG, one more possibility, says Nagarjuna.

And he's just, he's not telling you what he thinks. He's just eliminating possibilities. And it's a beautiful, this is a very Buddhist approach.

GZHAN YANG, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm just showing you problems with your ideas. GZHAN YANG PHUNG PO SKAD CIG SO SO BA LA BDAG GIS CIG BYED NA'ANG MI THES TE Neither is it possible that Tim goes in and out of existence the way his body does or the way his mind does during the course of his life.

RANG GI MTSAN NYID KYI GRUB PA'I SKAD CIG SO SO BA LA BRAL BA BYO MI NUS PAS Because your idea of an instant is that it is a discrete thing. One instant has a beginning and an end and it stops and then the next instant happens. So according to your idea, and this is very deep, you don't understand that time is coming from you.

So you assume that time is coming this way, which means time has measurements. Moments have a measurement and that's fixed because it comes from the outside world. And it's not a construct of your mind.

Time has some outside existence. So a moment, those milliseconds of Tim, they start and they stop. They have their own front end and they have their own back end.

So actually a millisecond, which is the shortest period of time, is a contradiction in itself because it would have to have a front end and a back end or else it couldn't have a flow. The back end of the first moment has to touch the front end of the second moment to have a flow. If the back end of the first moment touches all the parts of the second moment, then there's no time.

Time stops in one millisecond. So milliseconds must also have front ends and back ends for them to go on in a chain, which is impossible if it's the shortest measurement of time. Same with the atom, same problem with the atom.

So that's one of Nagarjuna's favorite contradictions. But what are we talking about here? So are you saying Tim is each millisecond of Tim's body and mind?

Or are you saying he's separately? A millisecond starts, a millisecond ends, pause. Another millisecond starts, a millisecond ends, pause.

Does millisecond one overlap with millisecond two or does it happen and then millisecond two happens? We tend to think that they don't overlap. Otherwise, it would just be one fat millisecond.

It must be that one millisecond stops, then the second millisecond starts. Are you okay with that? And you say, yeah, I don't want milliseconds overlapping because milliseconds, they're the shortest part of time.

If you pile two of them together, it's not the shortest part of time anymore. Okay, are they discrete? Does one start, stop, start, stops?

Yeah, that's the way it feels to me. It feels to me, if Tim is the flow of his body and mind, then he should be the discrete milliseconds. Well, then Nagarjuna says, well, what connects those milliseconds?

Why isn't there a millisecond of Tim followed by a millisecond of Joe followed by a millisecond of Rosa? Why does it all have to be Tim? If the milliseconds don't touch each other, then why isn't Tim every random millisecond?

It's uncomfortable to think about. You're like, don't give me all this BS, just tell me what it is. But Nagarjuna's like, if Tim was made up of separate milliseconds of his body and mind, then there's no particular reason why he would have to be the milliseconds of his body and mind because the milliseconds of his body, for example, wouldn't be connected.

One would finish and the next one would start. But they wouldn't have a relationship. They're like separate tennis balls or something.

And they don't overlap. So any part of anybody could be Tim in the next millisecond. So you can't say that Tim is his body and mind because it doesn't make sense.

And he's not telling you what it really is, he's just telling you what doesn't make sense. And we keep, there's this Buddhist tradition of trapping the opponent in a contradiction and then watching him run to the other mouth hole. And then you block that one, and then you block that one, and you block that one.

And finally he's in the middle of the floor, the middle of the room, he's saying, I don't know. So here we go. GZHAN YANG GZHAN YANG means, hey, I'll tell you another problem.

BUM SO SOGS RO LAS RIGS DANG GCIG NA MI THES TE BUM PA LA MANG PO YOD PA LTAR BDAG KYANG NGO BO THA DE PA'I DU MA Is Tim his body and mind? Yes or no? It's not my body and mind, it's his body and mind.

Okay, so there's two Tims. Why? His body and mind are separate, it's two things.

No, they're both Tim. No, you said, is Tim his body and mind? Yeah, he is body and mind.

Is the body and mind plural? Yes. Is it multiple?

Yes. Are there multiple Tims running around? No.

It's just one Tim with body and mind. So there'd have to be two me's. Because technically, you got that next picture?

The mirror, the lady in the mirror. Okay, if Tim were his body and mind, then there's a contradiction of plurality. The body and mind are plural.

Tim is singular. We don't say Tim's, oh look, here comes Tim's. But you should.

If his connection to his body and mind is natural, then he should be his body and mind, and then he should be too. And it sounds silly to you, and you're like, ah, come on, that doesn't mean anything. But it's because you haven't thought about it carefully.

That the idea of Tim being his body and mind is untenable. It doesn't make sense, if you're really honest. If you're really, really honest, it doesn't make sense.

He'd have to be plural. All right, next verse, Tim's next verse. If Tim is not inherently connected to Tim's body and mind because of all those problems, then, okay, so then Tim is distinct from his body and mind.

How about we go that way? Nagarjuna says, why don't you go a different mouth hole? Try a different mouth hole.

We're like, okay, so Tim is separate from his body and mind. So Tim has an existence, which is discreet from his body and mind. Body and mind die, Tim keep going.

In the end, they're separate. He picks up a new body and mind later. How's that?

Let's go that way. Nagarjuna says, okay, let's go that way. Then he says, GAL TE PHUNG PO RNAMS NAS GZHAN PHUNG PO RTZA NI MED PAR BRGYUR Okay.

And see if you can follow this one. And they're not easy. Tim's body and mind display certain characteristics.

For example, let's see the example he gives. RANG BZHIN DU GRUB PA'I RTAG LA'I PHUNG PO'I DU BYED GSUNGS PA'I TSE NI So there's an idea called DU BYED. DU BYED means anything in the universe which was caused by a cause and conditions.

So like a tree. A tree has a main cause, which is the seed. And then it has conditions like warmth, water, gardener, sunlight.

And let's say that Tim is separate from his body and mind. The body and mind are products of causes. The body came from the semen and egg of his parents.

The mind, I don't know, depends on what you believe. But I don't know, a consciousness woke when there was enough chemicals in the brain area or something. So they all have causes.

As causes, as things which have causes, they should display the typical career path of a cause thing, which is start, stay, and fall apart. All cause things in the universe, when the causes and conditions come together, they come into existence, they last for a while, and then they crumble. And we have to say that Tim's body and mind display those three things.

They started at some point, they lasted for a while, and then inevitably they fell apart. In that case, what qualities does Tim have if he's separate from his body and mind? Does he start?

Does he continue? Does he stop? Does he fall apart?

Because if he doesn't have a relationship with his body and mind where he is the body and mind, if he's separate from the body and mind, then he loses the right to come into the world, to continue for a while, and then to leave the world because he doesn't have that relationship with the body and mind that has those qualities. He has a separate relationship. He exists independent of his body and mind.

Well, in that case, Tim should just be forever. Because he doesn't have the relationship with his body and mind that he is them. He somehow has a separate existence from them.

So either way you want to take it, Tim is part of his body and mind has problems, and then Tim is not part of his body and mind has problems because the body and mind are what mark Tim as a thing, which starts, lasts, and falls apart. Because the only way we can tell he's going to start, last, and fall apart is from the indicators of his body and his mind. Because there's no reason for Tim to fall apart.

Tim, just a name, right? It wasn't born 23 years ago or whatever it was, and it didn't last for a while, and it didn't end. If Tim is separate from his body and mind, then Tim would just be eternal because what marks him as impermanent is the behavior of his body and mind.

Got it? If you are not your body and mind, if you are somehow separate from your body and mind, if you're the king and they are your servants, then you don't have that relationship. And then he talks about Tim's relationship to, what is that?

Oh, yeah, okay, here we go. There's another problem. And this gets into, he takes a typical, we can take the qualities of, we can take the qualities of living thingness of the body and mind.

They have a birth, they go for a while, then they die. If Tim was somehow separate from his body and mind, nothing would mark Tim as starting, staying, and stopping. There'd be no indicator to us that Tim was born or got old or stayed for a while because he wouldn't have those qualities.

Why? He's separate from his body and mind. He has an independent existence from his body and mind.

And there's another problem. Now Choney Lama gives us another problem. The main, the definition of physical matter.

What is it? Do you know physical matter definition? GZUGS KYI BRTZEN NI What's the definition of physical matter in Buddhism?

What's the definition of red in Buddhism? And it's a very interesting, yeah, anything, what's green? If somebody doesn't know what's green and you say, that's green.

That's green. There's no other way to define green unless you do wavelength thing or something like that. You can say this angstrom to this thing.

But in general conversation, if you had never seen green before and I wanted to define it for you, the only way is to point to it and say, this is green. This is what we say is green. So Tim's body is GZUGS RUNG BA, something we can point to as physical stuff.

That's its main characteristic. What's his mind's main characteristic is sensation. What's the main quality of Tim's mind is that he senses things.

He feels things. That's the difference between Tim and a rock is that he feels things. So feeling is the essence of Tim's mind, sensation.

And then the essence of Tim's physical existence is something that exhibits physicality. So those are the two parts of Tim. If Tim was separate from those, then again, there's no defining Tim.

We can't say Tim is conscious and we can't say Tim has a presence in the world if he were not connected to his body and mind. We covered the problems with a Tim that was connected to his body and mind, for example, discrete milliseconds. But now we're discussing the problems of a Tim who is his body, sorry, is divorced from his body and mind, who somehow has an existence independent of his body and mind.

And then Tim wouldn't exhibit physicality and he wouldn't have sensations. We'd have to look for a Tim like that. And that's not possible.

We can't have a Tim like that. There wouldn't be Tim then. If there was no physicality and no sensations, Tim couldn't be running this show, right?

We think so. All right, it's not just bullshit philosophy. The religion department at Princeton got so small that they made us share a building with the philosophy department because they also were shrinking all the time.

And so they said, okay, now you guys stay in this one building, it's split down the middle. The religion department has this half, the philosophy department has this half. And then we had to share the same office spaces and coffee station.

And so we ran into the philosophy majors every once in a while, especially the doctorates. And it was really weird. It was really, really weird.

And you'd say, yeah, have some sugar. And they'd say, sugar, sugar doesn't exist. They were always in this angst thing.

Is sugar there or sugar isn't there? And it was very frustrating. Finally, we just made a separate coffee station because we didn't want to talk to them because it was just frustrating.

They were unsure of everything. So I'm not trying to do that. So Nagarjuna's not trying to do that.

He's not trying to say doubt everything about yourself or have permanent angst because maybe Tim's there, maybe Tim's not there. He's just saying, if you slow down and really consider it, Tim cannot be who you thought he was. And that turns out to be a good thing because if Tim was who you thought he was, he could not be perfected into an angel.

He could not be rebuilt. And if he is who you thought he was, then he's going to live, die, and disappear. And that's the end of the thing.

All right, BDAG GIS YOD PA MA YIN NA BDAG GIS YOD PA GA LAG GYUR This is the last sentence of this chapter. We just zoomed through the whole chapter. Am I right, Tim?

Did I get lost? You got this, look. There's no picture for it.

And the Garjuna offhandedly throws a bomb and then he leaves the kitchen. And he says, by the way, if there's no Tim, there's no Tim's, Tim apostrophe S. If there's no Tim, there's nothing that Tim has.

And then he leaves the stage. He says, that's the end of the chapter. And in Buddhism, this is a huge question.

What's the relationship between me and mine? And the misunderstanding of who I am, coupled with the misunderstanding of who is what I own, or what is mine, me and mine. The question of me and mine is the root of all suffering.

According to Buddhism, the misunderstanding of me, coupled with the misunderstanding of mine, is the root of all pain. And all trouble in the world comes from that. And then the Garjuna just kind of says, look, if there's problems with Tim, there's problems with Tim's, apostrophe S.

And he says, see you guys later. Let's go to chapter 19 again. And as we pointed out yesterday, see, there's no obvious flow between the chapters.

Me and Veronica were discussing it this morning. She says, I have a theory. I've been bugging her all week.

She says, I have a theory. What? He gave separate lectures in separate places for five years.

People wrote the lectures at different places and they glued it together into one book. And I'm like, I mean, that's very possible. It is possible, but it's not the way it was supposed to happen.

Supposedly, there's some very deep and important connection from one chapter. There's a segue. And if you get the segues, you understand emptiness and you can become an angel.

But if you don't get the segues, you got to work harder. Yo! So, oh, is that my...

It is by the Gypsy Kings. Yeah, that's a good segue. So look, the idea is we've set all the students in this class, your homework is to figure out the segues.

And I haven't found someone who did it. I mean, it probably is there, but I was kind of saving it for you guys. So we're going to segue.

We're going to go on. We're going to stop this class. We'll go to chapter 19.

But I challenge you as a student, as a listener, I challenge you to explain the segue from 18 to 19. How does he... By the way, 19 is...

I'm sorry, that is not the segue yet. I take it back. Let's do that later.

After he does mine, he has a little bit more. We're not segueing yet, I apologize. All right, let's finish that chapter next class and then we'll segue to 19.

See you guys then. And by the way, if it sounds confusing and it's difficult, it's harder to die and disappear and end up somewhere else, which you will. So if it sounds like a challenge to work your way through this stuff, I would argue that it's more of a challenge to die, to go into some kind of oblivion, to come out of it again.

And by the way, something your mom told you, if something can happen once, it can happen twice. If you've come here once with no explanation, then there's no logical reason why it wouldn't happen again. Whether you believe in future lives, I don't care.

But wouldn't it be nice to figure it all out and reach a state of some kind of bliss or understanding that you could stay in forever and not have to keep popping into places and have this short, violent life and then do another one. So it's not just philosophy. It has a deep, deep goal and a deep, deep purpose.

And sooner or later, you're going to have to face those questions at some point in your lives. Okay, all right, Tim, let's go.