Shortsighted

Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast

Timber Hawkeye

Spirituality, Buddhism, Awareness, Calm, Society & Culture, Meditation, Mindful, Buddhist, Philosophy, Awake, Minimalist, Innerpeace, Selfhelp, Spiritual, Education, Aware, Mindfulness, Self-improvement

4.8 • 907 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We claim to fully understand what we have only partially experienced, and we dismiss other people's reality as invalid if it contradicts our own. That's our ego playing tricks on us until we argue and fight to prove that we are right by making someone else wrong. Yogananda called it "Feeling tall by cutting of the heads of other men." The entire concept that you are somehow separate from others is an illusion. We are here to snap out of our self-importance.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:17.0	Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
0:36.8	I have friends who are outspoken activists concerned about anything and everything from climate change to social justice, privacy protection, gun control, animal rights, gender equality, fighting for one issue or against another.
0:44.1	While I do admire their passion, they have all acknowledged that their motivation is
0:49.5	fueled by the belief that if others only knew what they know, then more people would change their
0:54.8	ways.
0:55.8	There are two major flaws with that line of thinking.
0:58.7	The first problem is that those activists are convinced that they are right, and the second issue is that they presume people always act rationally.
1:07.6	To unpack the first problem with anyone thinking they are right about anything,
1:12.4	let's revisit the classic tale about a group of adults who have all been blind since birth
1:18.0	encountering an elephant for the first time in their lives.
1:21.0	They each touch a different part of the elephant, so the one who touched
1:25.5	the tusk described the elephant as smooth and sharp, but the one who grabbed the elephant's
1:31.0	trunk disagreed and said no, this animal resembles a snake.
1:35.2	Hearing this, the one touching the elephant's tail argued, you are both wrong.
1:39.9	The animal is more like a frayed rope.
1:42.4	The one who touched the elephant's leg said it felt like a tree trunk,
1:46.7	while the one touching the elephant's belly was perplexed by all of these descriptions because the animal just felt like a large wall. In some
1:54.4	renditions of this story they endlessly fight about which one of them is right
1:59.0	while other traditions introduce someone with sight informing them that they are all partially correct.
2:06.1	The moral of the parable is that we tend to claim absolute truths based on our limited subjective
2:11.9	experiences while completely ignoring other people's
2:15.3	limited and subjective experiences.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -310 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Timber Hawkeye, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Timber Hawkeye and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.