The Karmic Wheel of Life with guest Joe Singleton, Author

Embark on a profound journey with us and renowned author Joe Singleton, as we navigate through the intricate pathways of the karmic wheel of life. Joe's insights from his book, "Mara Dawn Buddha Rise: The Awakening," shed light on the alluring traps of Samsara and the teachings of the Buddha to transcend the cycle of rebirth and suffering. The wisdom of the ages comes alive in our dialogue as we unravel the Dharmic principles and the Four Noble Truths, aiming to elevate consciousness and escape the vexing illusions of Mara, the trickster figure of Buddhist lore who symbolizes our inner and outer adversaries.

As the conversation unfolds, discover the pivotal role of meditation and yoga in fostering personal growth and aligning the seven chakras, key to navigating life's circumstances with grace. While acknowledging the world's trials, we underscore the transformative power of self-improvement, asserting that it is through refining our inner selves that we can hope to influence the greater tapestry of society. Joe and I dissect the concept of perceived free will, challenging the pursuit of material success and advocating for a life rich with passion, suggesting that true freedom lies in the joy of the present and the fulfillment of our truest desires.

Concluding our enlightening exchange, we examine the very essence of Buddhist enlightenment, contrasting it with Western religious philosophies and reflecting on the notion that within us all lies the seed of potential for profound understanding. Through discussions on the symbology of the Wheel of Life and mindfulness, we invite you to consider how these ancient teachings illuminate the path out of ignorance's cave. Join us in this exploration of spirituality and self-discovery as we ponder the practicality of Buddha's guidance on your personal journey toward spiritual ascension.

Link to Joe's Book: https://www.amazon.com/MARA-DAWN-BUDDHA-RISE-AWAKENING/dp/B0CQGNB7M1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WOGHZKJYOF5N&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WBfs-ZHzGzwkv64lhh2eTw.sXI0qQDQ5pE1Ze2h3jxcevzrPwNoHwDM3c5NpDpJ-Ks&dib_tag=se&keywords=mara+dawn+buddha+rise&qid=1711585902&s=books&sprefix=mara+dawn%2Cstripbooks%2C146&sr=1-1

Next Sunday's Topic: Remote Viewing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:33

Hi, thanks for joining me today. I have a guest, as you can see, and this is author Joe Singleton, and he wrote a book called Maradon Buddha Rise the Awakening. We're going to be talking about the karmic wheel of life, which is why I have the karmic wheel of life behind me, but I do want to say hello to my listeners that are in Rogersville, tennessee. Thank you so much for supporting the show week after week. I really appreciate it. You must be telling your friends because the listenership there is rising by the week.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Let's jump into this. I want to show you at the beginning, with a background. It's kind of hard, but this is Joe's book and I am still in the middle of reading it. Because I'm reading it slow, I could skim it. I'm a fast reader, but I'm really enjoying it, joe. So I'm absorbing it. And you know we talk a lot on this podcast about reincarnation. We've talked about karma. That's why, when we brought up some various topics we could discuss, I knew that this Karmic Wheel of Life is a good fit for my show. So, joe, I kind of just want to jump right there. So much, there's six parts to this book and I want to be sure we get to talk about all six parts today, so let's start with this. Who is Mara? Who is Mara of Maradon?

Speaker 2: 2:55

Mara is that character. If you Google or whatever Samsara or Samsaric wheel of life or karmic Buddhist wheel of life, you will see this wheel. That kind of looks like what you have behind you, and behind it is this kind of red monster with his hands on the top and his feet on the bottom, hopping his feet on the bottom, kind of like. He's kind of like the devil in Buddhist terms. As it relates to Judeo-Christian kind of things, there are some similarities. He tempted the Buddha for a long time, but he is kind of this trickster. I see him as a trickster. If you read the book, I kind of frame him as a trickster who kind of turns, spins the world around us to keep us kind of in this state where kind of forwards is backwards, what we think we want is what we don't really need, and what we really need we don't think we want. So I see him kind of as a magician, trickster kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Okay, and then, and I appreciate that, and then, and the other thing is what is samsara? Because I've actually been reading about that before. I knew about your book and I actually I think I talked about it a couple of episodes back, but we always have new people listening. So what is samsara and how does that relate to to the world as it stands today? How does that relate?

Speaker 2: 4:15

to the world as it stands today. Samsara is really just that. It's the world that we live in. Right, it's Mara's kingdom in a way, and what I talk about in the book a little bit, it really crosses all cultural boundaries. You know it represents the human condition. You know, whether we live in this country and we think this other country thinks a completely different way and we're completely different people, in the end we're, all you know, parents of children and friends and family and all this kind of stuff and we all suffer the human condition. You know, as it relates to kind of Dharmic principles and the Four Noble Truths, you know we all suffer deep kind of dharmic principles and the Four Noble Truths. You know we all suffer deep down and it kind of gets to the heart of that.

Speaker 2: 5:01

You know that samsaric wheel was something that really opened my mind. You know I call this book A Ladder of Ascension of the Mind. It starts out, as you know, pretty heavy, you know, paints a pretty dark picture of the world and then it kind of opens up and finishes with this, this, this meditation thing, to kind of get us beyond these kind of samsaric principles. But I, the more I study it and the more I write about it. I'm working on volume two now and I was thinking of a little metaphor the other day where, you know, you know how you see a picture of the earth from space and you see this beautiful blue ball in that site, I think for all of us you know, inhabitants of Earth, it kind of represents an all-encompassing picture of this kind of beautiful water energy that we're all a part of. If you look at the wheel of Samsara, in a way it kind of it represents the same kind of thing but us in it, like what transpires within this big ball that we're all spinning on, you know, and it's really cool, it's got. You know there's higher levels and lower levels.

Speaker 2: 6:01

I compare it a lot to, you know, in Western kind of Judeo-Christian mythology, like Dante's Inferno, where you have these kind of 12 rings of hell, you know, and some people are worse at the bottom and some ascend higher. But in the end, what samsara is, no matter how virtuous we are or how non-virtuous we are, we're all actually suffering the same kind of human conditions and just going around and around, lifetime after lifetime, hundreds, thousands, millions of lifetimes, sometimes, with no way out. Really, and really what the Buddha did. If you read the Dhammapada which my book is kind of a expanded treatise of the Dhammapada in Western terms there is a little way out at the top of the wheel, we can talk about it.

Speaker 2: 6:46

There's a little smoke ring and you see the Buddha up there and he's pointing to this little sign that represents the Four Noble Truths. We're hamsters on this wheel. The idea is to get off of this and ascend to some higher plane of existence, right, almost like we're stuck in this trap, like hamsters on a wheel going round and round. That's what it represents to me.

Speaker 1: 7:07

And I think something you said is so important it's part of why we're stuck in this wheel is the otherism that's really prevalent in the world right now, this group versus us, this group versus us, when, instead of thinking we're all human beings, we're all sharing this planet. But I think that that does take some spiritual growth to get to that place. But the other thing is, I definitely do plan to talk about that little exit doorway that there is, because that's like a little ray of light. Right, people need to know there's a way out of this.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Yes, it's kind of funny. You said that because a few people when I was writing the book I had some people kind of sampling and reading it and one guy read the first part and he said you've got to put you know, you've got to say there's a better way or there's a way out, because the first part I always tell people get through the first 30 pages it's really heavy. It almost paints this dark picture and I think maybe I painted it too heavy of thinking that. But it's, that is exactly the point. I'm glad you hit on that because that is exactly the point of this book what the Buddha taught and all of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I didn't see it dark. What I saw was very just observational. I see that like I just kind of was able to step back and just read it like well, that's the facts of what it is now. But I didn't see it as being particularly dark or heavy. But I want to be sure we get all these parts covered in there. So much so okay. So on to part two, the veil exposed. You talk about anxiety and how samsara is presented as this world where just a little bit of fear and anxiety within can go a long way towards impeding our personal enlightenment. And I know most of the people who watch and listen to my show are very interested in personal enlightenment. So tell us about that. One third rule of anxiety.

Speaker 2: 9:01

I love this rule because, if you think about it, you know, if we say in, so in dharmic principles, a big part of dharma and what this is all about what I call a 3D prism of ourselves is things are always and this is kind of how that meditation at the end is structured. You know, we see things come into our life, whether it be a little thing or big things. You know that we can kind of see them coming into our life and then they arrive into our life and then they depart from our life. Right, it's this departing form of that 33% of the principle, right? It's this departing form of that 33% of the principle, right?

Speaker 2: 9:38

If you think about it, a lot of anxiety, whether we're young and we're getting our education and we're worried about the job we're going to get, or we meet our spouse and we buy a house and we're going to have a family. This comes up a lot. I'm a tarot reader as well and I find this in all of the people that I read, for there's always something inside that we're, you know, we want things to be perfect and permanent. Right, we're going to have this house and we've got our family and it's always going to be this way, but that's not what happens, right, the kids grow older and they leave and we're left with this emptiness, or the house isn't what we always, and we want to remodel it. And it seems like, you know, in our Western culture, we just want to rebuild and build and build and build. And that's the source of that anxiety is that, you know, we want things to be permanent all the time, at least the things that we really desire in life, but they're not. That's that whole thing of the Four Noble Truths, right, we all suffer all things pass, suffering itself too, and the good news is that mindfulness and understanding that all things pass sort of enlighten us. So it's, it's kind of having that vision.

Speaker 2: 10:44

If we understand that, that our lives and this is what I try to put forth in meditations through balance of chakras is that, you know, I can see, I know these new things are coming, I've got these things here and these, some of these things are leaving, right, and if I understand that up front, maybe we can go straight to the core of the problem the fear of death. Right, I had a tarot reading the other day and this singer dancer on a cruise boat just fearing death. So she's 20-something years old, right, and look, that's going to happen. We've something years old, right, you know, and look, that's going to happen. That's we've got a sick dog right now and it's the saddest thing in the world, but it happens, you know, and the 33% rule is that we let that 33%. You know, that's kind of what causes the fear and anxiety. And in my equation there, to sum it up really shortly as well, if, okay, if stuff's I know stuff's coming 33% of the time and I've got my stuff, that's 66% of the time I should be happy, right, but it's not that way. That 35% almost wrecks all of that because we spend, you know, it all transfers to that worrying of that.

Speaker 2: 11:49

I was in sales for a long time and I had a manager one time who told me, you know, the fear of loss far outweighs the potential for gain. So when people make a decision I've sold software to doctors, I've sold cars you know people really fear making these choices and these decisions Right. When you think about you know what it all really comes down to, especially in you know, in in what we do from you know. You know in what we do from you know, whether it be tarot or readings or however we help people, is overcoming that bit of anxiety. You know what our heart really wants us to do and that you know those few things that keep us from doing that or what kind of really prevents that. So 10% of fear, can you know, block 90% of where my life could go. Does that make sense to you?

Speaker 1: 12:37

That's like we're spending a lot of time worrying about what might happen and ruining the little, those lovely times that are really rare, when everything's going fine.

Speaker 2: 12:47

That's it, and we worry about 99% of the stuff we worry about when we think about it and look back on our lives never happens. So we look back and we said, god, I spent all this time worrying about this and I'm always fine. It's where we manifest, where our life goes through our mind. Right, and if we let that happen, we're not going to die unless something crazy happens to us. But we always seem to think, if I leave this job and do this, I could lose everything, I won't be able to pay my rent, I'll be out in the streets. You know, that's that kind of heavy thing that just that just overcomes us, like like, like that, that fear and anxiety really rules our life and it you know through through mindfulness and understanding and understanding that you know, look, these things are going to pass you know, look at the old George Harrison album.

Speaker 2: 13:38

All things must pass. If you looked at what happened to his life when the Beatles quit and Eric Clapton stole his wife, you know he's sitting there in the yard but he's cool, right, you know? I mean it's, it's that, except what's coming new? You know something's always coming around the corner, so that's kind of where that is and what that's about is overcoming that is really hard to do, right.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Yeah, and part of what you said is that how I trained myself out of severe anxiety was telling myself things are going to happen, whether you worry about it or not. So why would you ruin good times worrying about things that might never happen? And I can talk myself down and now I just don't worry as much. You know, I don't not nearly like I used to, so I think reminders like that are really helpful, that you know life is full of change. The one thing we can count on is constant change. Sometimes it's very subtle, sometimes it's huge.

Speaker 2: 14:31

Exactly, and that's why I try to. I call this book a ladder of ascension for the mind. As you go through the six parts it kind of opens up, gets to the awakening and then the three breaths of the seven chakras. Meditation, and it's all about that kind of balance. You know, when I can go through people think meditation, or about, you know, finding a place, quiet place, with my candles and my Buddha and my music, you know, and just kind of erasing the day or whatever that's part of it. But that music, you know, and just kind of erasing the day or whatever that's part of it. But that's not. Meditation is work, right, meditation yoga, which is yoga, which is is. In early days yoga was mind exercise, union of the science of the Supreme, union with science of the Supreme. You know it developed in stretching and all these poses, but originally yoga was mind work, right.

Speaker 2: 15:15

And I try to cycle up through the seven chakras and you can see, you know what just one or two of those are out of balance. So seven key points of my life. It wrecks everything, right. So there's those kind of rare times when they're all in balance, you know, and your Kundalini snake rises and that's where we wanna be right, and that's kind of what this book is all about is kind of understanding what that is understanding how the world, the pressure of the world, really works on us and it's never going to change.

Speaker 2: 15:43

In that front of where you're talking about, I like to say there's always been a war. There was a war yesterday, there's a war today, there's going to be a war tomorrow. There's never going to be peace on earth. There's never going to. You know, this is designed for us, something for us to overcome and ascend. That's what Samsara is. It's a place that's never going to change. And how many of us spend our life thinking we're going to change the world or fix the world or whatever, but we're a wreck ourselves, right? Really, what the Buddha said was the only person we can really change is ourself. Once we change ourself, things open up.

Speaker 1: 16:18

It's. All you can change is yourself. But if enough of us change ourselves, then things do have some significant change. But I agree with you. I have to remind people a lot. There's a lot of people who are very fearful and living in hopelessness, like this is not the worst time in history. It's a bad time. It's a bad time, it's a difficult time, but it is not the worst time in history. I have studied plenty of history. I know that's not true.

Speaker 2: 16:44

So we you know, I grew up in the seventies Ivory, when it was just after Vietnam, and I look back on it now and the music was so great, we were having so much fun, but people, it was just the end of the world. You know, and I don't know if you get a million texts a day, but I think it's. The last five elections now have been the very most important election of our life. And no, they're not Quit bugging me. It doesn't matter at all. I don't care who wins, man, I'm going to stay in my lane you know I just keep working on myself.

Speaker 1: 17:13

I don't waste a bunch of time. I'll help people who want help, but they got to do the work.

Speaker 2: 17:19

That's it.

Speaker 1: 17:20

Let's go on to this. This is really something I know our audience is going to want to hear about False free will. What does that mean? What's perceived free will?

Speaker 2: 17:33

Perceived free will is what goes back to your initial question of what is samsara really? Perceived free will is the belief that, for instance, in the West I wrote my book I'm an Eastern spiritual thinker in the Western world. Right, and there's great, there is just such great wisdom and lightning in Eastern spiritual thinking. But when it translates to the West it's kind of seems something that's far distant or very different from how we are. Right, it's almost in the West we say we're free. Right, we live in a free world. We are not free. You know, we spend 90% of our time busting our butts every day to make a few dollars so that we can save up and go on a vacation for two weeks and, man, it's great for that, you know, six days. But when it's time to go back home, that little time clock starts going back in our head and I start I get pulled back in the world. I got to go back to work and I've got to do this If we're not lucky and we don't absolutely love what we do for a living which I'm beginning to think is the point of life right, find your art and do it. Yes, how many of us don't do our art for 90% of our lives and we only do our art for 10% of our lives. It's finding that reversal, right, we're not really a false free will is the whole idea of what Mara does and what Samsara does. I said you know, we take one step closer to him and he steps one step back right. And these desires. So in the Dharma you hear a lot about desire. Right, it's built on desire, our desire. I want a bigger car, I want a house, I want a different house, I want a boat. I want this. I want this beautiful person in my life. I want this.

Speaker 2: 19:23

She was a tarot reader. She wrote a book called 78 Degrees of Wisdom. It's a book about the tarot. She wrote a line. I used her quote in the book and it says you know, we have this.

Speaker 2: 19:43

The problem with our world is it's a dualistic world where we have to make a choice of either this or that, like the two of swords card, right, I'm blindfold. I got to make this choice. Our minds don't want to make that choice. They want to go in all directions at once. That's nirvana, right, but we live in this physical world where we have to choose between this or that. We make a choice to go this way and maybe it's good for us, but we're always be haunted by that way. We didn't go right. That's kind of this free will.

Speaker 2: 20:11

We really don't have free will when we have to make a choice of this or that in everything we do right, and those choices like the swords and the tarot just start. You know, if you go up the ladder of that six, seven, eight, nine, ten of swords, there's no good ones in there. These are the heavy actions of our life. So it's almost this principle of you know you think about retirement. I don't know anybody. You know who's aged in your life and that you know they've been saving up for their retirement and they did it right, and but you know you're at the end, that you're close to the end of your life, right, and then how many people you know who retire and then six weeks, six months later they're back to work, right, because we have this vision in our mind that one day I can be free, right, and then we get there and freedom is not really freedom.

Speaker 2: 21:01

That's kind of this false free will that we think is. We're programmed, whether it's on TV or by our political leaders or our teachers or educators, even the great Bodhisattva Manjushri. I have this in the book. Even our parents, they love this and they want the best for us. But what do we do to our kids? We train them to be just like us and go on the same painful pathway that we've gone on right. Subconsciously, we know there's something wrong with it, but in our conscious field we keep going because that's what everybody else is doing and that's the direction of the world that it goes. It's almost like a magnet that pulls us towards this decadent ending right and we're all caught in it.

Speaker 2: 21:46

And part of that little way out of the wheel is what the Buddha did. He got rid of all of his desires and wants and needs. The more that you get rid of, I'm finding, in life, the more free you become. Right, I used to have a big career and a big house and lots of things, and that's pressure, pressure, pressure as we deconstruct our lives and let those things down. Man, I'm down to just doing the things that I love and you know you got to make some adjustments down right, I can't go out to eat five times a week anymore. I can't go on, you know, on these wild trips or whatever. But finding happiness in your home, in your little place in the world. I've got a line. You don't need to go to Giza or Burma or any of these places to find your spirituality. You can find right on your coffee table and your couch with your little can and your medications. The whole world that's nirvana is right there. That's freedom, absolutely that is free will.

Speaker 1: 22:41

It's kind of like you can't ever escape yourself, and that's true. You can't escape that. Within you is the path to freedom. Within you is the path to finding passion, you know, and I think it is critical to find something to do if you're still working and you want to work. Find something you're passionate about, because I don't ever want to fully retire.

Speaker 2: 23:04

No, me neither.

Speaker 1: 23:05

I can't People think I'm crazy, but I love what I do so much that I would miss it. I know I would. I'll cut back, but I don't want to quit doing my work, I just love it. So let's go into this part three here. I like this idea you brought up that enlightenment comes first through a new realization and then an awakening through a reverse engineering of our minds based on that newfound realization. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 2: 23:37

Yes, this is. There's something you just said just 30 seconds earlier. There's, I quote, an author called Takasaki in the book a couple of times and he talks about something called the seed of Tathagatagarbha. And one of my things on the book is to not use words like Tathagatagarbha. You know everything you read about Buddhism goes back to that. You know everybody has to say exactly where it came from. I try to get rid of all that and just what it is.

Speaker 2: 24:05

But what that is is it says that you know kind of the difference between a Judeo-Christian spiritual belief and an Eastern let us say Buddhist spiritual belief is that you know God is a dualistic thing. In Judeo-Christian right, we're down here, god's up there. It's two separate things. In Eastern spiritual terms, we are God right. It's inside every one of us. Buddha simply means awakened, awakened one. That's Buddha right, and we all have the opportunity to be a Buddha, to be Buddha. It's called the seed of, it's a little seed within us that once we find it, enlightenment happens and it lights up and there's almost no going back right. And that seed starts in the Four Noble Truths, in the Eightfold Path of Righteousness, those things that you see in Buddhism, the Three Jewels of Buddha is a cool thing to talk about, right, the Three Jewels of Buddha are one, the Buddha, two, the Dharma and three, what's called a Sangha. Right, so the Buddha himself is almost like. You know, when you see, you know I was raised in Judeo-Christian. You know structures all my life and I always thought I'm not. You know, when you see, you know I was raised in Judeo-Christian, you know structures all my life and always thought I'm not. You know, I never want to deal with that. But something about that Buddha, as you see, he's just kind of sitting there and he looks up. There's something peaceful about it, right, that's almost like the beginning of that seed, right. And when you start to kind of dive into what the Buddha actually said, right, that's the Dharma.

Speaker 2: 25:36

The Dharma is kind of a straightforward way of talking and pretty much the Dhammapada these are the words of the Buddha is all about kind of the samsaric principle that we think we want all these things but they all bring us to ends that that have unfulfilling ends, and then the desire takes us to somewhere else. Right, this car or this person in my life or this house. It wasn't good enough, so now I need another one. Right, and I start the process all over and this kind of unending thirst, right, once we realize that you know that desire is part of the problem. Right, we don't understand is part of the problem. Right, we don't understand fully enough how desires, how they pull us towards things, and how to put the reins on those desires, right, maybe, if I keep doing this over and over, it keeps bringing me to a place that I don't like. Why don't I just stop doing that? What do you think?

Speaker 2: 26:30

Yes, and the Dharma is all about understanding these, you know, whereas, say, the Bible will tell you this is a sin, don't do it. Right, the Dharma tells you OK, these are the, these are the five hindrances, or lust, anger, laziness, skepticism and angst. Right, lust is a form of desire. Right, A hunger for things. Right, and it tells us this is what it draws us to. This is where it comes from. Right, if you, you know there's a balance to everything. Like for anger, the balance is happiness. Right, if I'm always angry, if I find myself to be an angry person all the time, then I can simply balance that out by stop doing that and do something that puts joy in my life. Right, that's that balance.

Speaker 2: 27:14

This is a form of enlightenment that comes through the dharma and that's kind of that seed.

Speaker 2: 27:21

That's first finding that enlightenment right, and once you start to understand these and start to think differently about our desires and maybe these desires that I've been taught, these things I've been taught all my life to do, are not in my best interest, right, so we can start start curbing that over in different directions and find new pathways for our life that are better than our old life. That's enlightenment Right, and then using that, you know, first as a form of enlightenment and then using those, those principles, those dharmic principles, to guide ourselves in our meditations and our mindfulness during our life. That's kind of that progress, part of that right. That's where it becomes more of a way of life for us. So dharma itself is kind of that central thing. It's where enlightenment meets that work that we do as you said earlier, they've got to do the work right. So it's understanding how that work helps us and the benefit that we get from doing that work. That's the awakening right, that's the change of our lives. So that's kind of what that's all about.

Speaker 1: 28:27

Very interesting. I remember I don't even know who gave it to me, where I got it, but reading the entire book of Buddha in my 20s and it was probably the first book I'd read, which now it's one of many of different religions books and I think the more we read about that, the more enlightenment we receive. Expansion of the mind.

Speaker 2: 28:48

My background really is. I, you know, in midlife. You know I started out as a songwriter when I was young, wanted to be a rock star, and then you know that obviously didn't work out at about 30, you know. So I turned to my writing, you know stuff, and then I got it. I found existential philosophy when I was about 40. You know, we're about 40. We've learned enough about life and we can really start to learn. That's kind of my assessment of life so far. But I really sought hard for about 15 years through existential philosophy philosophers like Frederick Nature and Jean-Paul Sartre, and I love them. But there's an emptiness to philosophy. It's almost like that kind of samsaric right or always kind of searching for that one thing, and I found myself trying to find out what the exact mechanics are of our inner being and maybe how we can tune that, and just ended up nowhere.

Speaker 2: 29:42

Fortunately, I was an assistant editor on a book project for an old philosophy professor, and the Buddha was the Dhammapada was one of the books that she used. One part of my job was to track down her footnotes and get everything together. I kept seeing these quotes from this book. I said this is right on time with everything I'm thinking. I bought that book, it came, I read it page to page in two days. That became the inspiration for this book. Since then, I still love Meister, nature and Jean-Paul Sartre and the French philosophers and the existentialists and all that.

Speaker 2: 30:14

But that's almost just fallen by the way when I found like this is the thing, right, this is the answer. It's almost where philosophy ends, I like to say in the 1500s, descartes said I think. Therefore, I am right, that's a famous philosophical statement. They could have just shut closed all the books right there. And that's philosophy's end, right when our mind we think. You know, everything is electrical. It's almost like a dream, right, and that's where Dharma and Eastern spirituality comes in. The Eastern spiritualists have known for a long time that we're reincarnate beings and we come back over and over and our karma does affect us and we, we evolve and devolve, you know, based on on our actions, very different from what, how we kind of grow up and what we're taught here in the west.

Speaker 2: 31:03

So, um, I just, you know, once I found it, it just has become the primary source and that enlightenment, you know, it just keeps growing, it's. I don't know about you, but it just keeps. You know I'm I'm working on volume two now and bringing in some Hindu stuff with Brahma and the Maya, which is very close to Mara, and it's just, it's like unpeeling that onion right. It just keeps going and that in itself is a form of nirvana, when I know that I can just keep going and there seems to be a purpose resolved to it, whereas in philosophy, you know, there's not a lot of, there's a lot of random chaos Right and trying to understand how that all comes together. So that's kind of where that, that that sits with me and it's really cool. I feel lucky to have found that kind of the answer.

Speaker 2: 31:52

You know that we all seek, right it's, it's right here in the Dharma and the beauty of it is the simplicity of Dharma, if you listen to actually, the words the Buddha taught, the fact. The book I'm talking about is called what the Buddha Taught, by Rahul Wapola. Buddhism, like any other religion, has been bastardized and twisted and you know the Buddha got out of samsara and left and over time they said this was a selfish act, right. And then we turned to what's called Mayana Buddhism and the idea of the bodhisattva, where I have to keep coming back over and over a million times if possible, until everybody can go to nirvana together. That sounds very much like the samsaric wheel right, like that has come back into it. So I go back to the source of the words, of what the Buddha actually taught, and that's where the gold is for me.

Speaker 1: 32:41

We're going to run out of time and I want to be sure we talk about that exit point. How do you get out of that wheel, Joe?

Speaker 2: 32:49

Well, if you look at it in the very center of the wheel, this is the thing that really grabbed my attention is you have three characters chasing each other. You have the pig, which represents ignorance and greed, biting the tail of the peacock, which represents pride and envy. She bites the tail of the snake, who represents anger and spite, and the snake is biting the tail of pig and you've got this circle going over. That's us, that's that each one of us is in the same human condition. And then you have these six levels, kind of these higher levels of existence and lower levels From humans. We're kind of in the middle and it goes up to what they call demigods. And then divas are gods, right, you can think of that as like a rock star, somebody who seems to have everything, elon Musk, right, they live this kind of godlike existence Down to, animals, are right below us, and then you have these hungry ghosts. You know upper and lower levels, you know kind of of all this stuff, and we just run around and we go up and down.

Speaker 2: 33:51

Something I'm really looking at now is I've got this little tarot sticker, right, and if you think of the old tarot, you've got three figures there. You've got a little devil. You've got a little snake and a sphinx, kind of all chasing each other around. There's so much synergy between the different you know Egyptian magic and Buddhism and even Christianity and all that that it all kind of fits in together. If you look at the top of the wheel, there's a little crack up there by one of Mara's hands and this little bitty cloud of smoke. And there's two clouds above the wheel. Right, the Buddha stands to the one on the right, above Mara's left shoulder, and he's pointing to what looks like a little chalkboard on a cloud on the other side, over Mara's left shoulder, and he's pointing to what looks like a little chalkboard on a cloud on the other side, over Mara's right shoulder, and there's four lines there which represents the four noble truths. We all suffer. All things pass. Suffering itself too shall pass. Mindfulness and understanding that all things pass, that's where the enlightenment is, that mindfulness and understanding. Once we understand that, it's kind of.

Speaker 2: 34:58

I like to relay it to a lot of people know Plato's allegory of the cave. Right, the guy, the people are chained, watching the shadows on the wall. One gets free, he makes his way out of the cave and he realizes it's the sun shining off a piece of glass in a river and that's what they're seeing, that's their reality. Right, he realizes that's not reality. The sun in this glass is reality. He tries to go back to the cave and tell everybody hey, you're all crazy. And they think he's crazy and they kick him out. You know, get out of here, you're not. So it's kind of escaping out of that thing. So just that mindfulness is what I call nirvana, right, and we find that through meditation. At the end of the book you'll see the three breaths of the seven chakras meditation. This is my interpretation of meditation through chakras and how we can cycle through that. I give an idea of it and that's that way out. Right, we don't know.

Speaker 2: 35:51

The Buddha didn't like to talk about things that we don't know about. You know, there's a famous parable where they're asking him okay, if you're so smart, tell us what happens after you die, this stuff, and he says it doesn't matter. That's the parable of the arrow. You have an arrow in you. We don't take it out, you're going to die. Oh, but who's the doctor? And matter, if we don't take the arrow out, you're going to die. Right, that's taking that arrow out and understanding that there is a path of ascension. Right, there is something bigger than this thing that has always just been grabbing my heart and pulling it away from where I want it to go. That's the freedom, and beyond that, we don't know. Right, we don't know what the next level of ascension is. There's a lot of people who talk about reptilians and all that. You know? I don't know. Have you ever seen one? I haven't.

Speaker 1: 36:35

You know, I haven't seen a reptilian.

Speaker 2: 36:36

No, I've seen a lot of things but not that.

Speaker 2: 36:40

That's right. What I do know is that that my you know my soul, my essence, my core of being can be a lot freer through enlightenment. And that enlightenment through Dharma, that's just that first understanding is our first step out of there, right, when we go beyond, that we can only imagine. But that in itself is the freedom, just that kind of change of mind, right, a new way of thinking, a new way of enlightening, pull me out of this angst and anxiety, and that's freedom, that's freedom of choice. Then we have some freedom as to where our mind goes, because I firmly believe, and you probably do too, we manifest our reality.

Speaker 2: 37:22

What is in our minds is what we manifest. Right, if I think I'm always going to lose, I'm probably going to always lose. Right, if I believe I can win and I do the work to try, you know the steps necessary to do it I can win, right, win whatever we do. And I always say just find your art. You know, we all have, individually, whatever it is, we all have something inside of us that we always wanted to do as a kid or we wanted to do, but got off on a different path. Find that, foster that, enjoy what you do every day and that's nirvana. You know that's the beginning of that exit for us from that wheel.

Speaker 1: 37:54

I love that. I think it's a great book. As I was reading it I could feel I think just like more, like an intuitive hit, like you had a lot of moments of illumination that led to this book and the ideas in this book, because I could feel it just reading it, so it had a lot of great ideas. I want to just show people your book once more Moradon Buddha Rise the Awakening. This is Joe Singleton and Joe, where is your book available?

Speaker 2: 38:21

It's on amazoncom. You can get it. It's on Amazon worldwide. And I love what you said because that all comes from the third eye portion of my meditations. When we get to that third eye chakra, ivory, I'm telling you it's a transference of energy. I'm not writing these words most of the time. I can't tell you how many times I have to text and email to myself and interrupt my meditation because some enlightening form of understanding and that's the Buddha talking to me. Right, we're in this together. This is our project together.

Speaker 1: 38:51

I was going to ask you that after the interview. Yeah, who is this coming through?

Speaker 2: 38:57

Because I can feel that and I know I've written some bad books, man, and this came out and it's like what you're saying. I can't tell you how good it is to feel People are reading this and saying, man, this reads amazing. I had a friend call me the other day and say, man, I can't, this is awesome. You know, I'm letting go of my anger when you hear people say that that's not us. Right, we're not. That that's. That's the spirit. That's when you know you found your, your, your, your destiny and your lane Right. And when you cycle up, when you get to that sixth chakra for me that's where all of the magic happens Right, the crown. You know, when we get to the spirit, that's just kind of that rest point where everything you know cools.

Speaker 2: 39:36

Volume two coming out. It's called Wheels of the Mind. I'm working on it now. It's more. You know I spent 40 pages on that meditation at the end of this book. The next book is going to be just a dynamic opening of that whole process through cycling up through our chakras and it's really cool. It'll be a little step up philosophically. I wrote this book just to be an easy introduction, understanding, to help people find that and hopefully that can spark and it already had in some people. And it's a beautiful thing, man, I really appreciate that, those nice words. Well, I look forward to it and I'm going to put a link. I'll appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 40:12

Those nice words. Well, I look forward to it and I'm going to put a link. I'll find the link on Amazon and I'll put it in the show description so you can find his book easily. And thank you, joe, for coming and being a guest on the show today. I really appreciate it. I look forward to it. It's great. Next Sunday's topic is remote viewing. I'm going to tell you about my personal experiences with it and I'm working on a guest to come talk who's done that with the government. We'll see if that can come through, but if not, I'll just tell you about my personal experiences and how it works. In the meantime, may your angels surround you. May your angels protect you every moment, every day of your life. I'll see you next week, namaste.