 What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to be? How should I live my life? What should I do with my life? What ideals should I follow? And why those ideals? What's the purpose? The meaning? The point of my existence? In this book that we're covering, World Religions, the editors have provided or World Scriptures, excuse me, the editors have provided a sampling of some of the spiritual texts of these major religions. They are trying to say that the editors are trying to say what these religions are doing is trying to provide an answer to these questions. They're trying to provide an answer to the question, what is the purpose, the meaning of your life? Now, I want to be clear. I'm not going to pay close attention to any particular passage. Rather, in this video, I'm just going to explain the major assertions that the editors think come from these passages from these sacred texts. Now, I also want to reiterate the point of this video and indeed the point of the whole course is not to show or ask the question which religion is right. I'm sure there's an answer to that. But that's not the purpose of this. But that's not the purpose of this course. Instead, all we really want to do is to figure out what these religions claim. We want to understand these religions. I'm not even asking the question what justifies religions. No. It's just not even looking at them. The only point is to figure out what these religions have to say. And in addition to that, what demand do these religions have upon your life? What is the claim, the change that these religions would have? The editors think that these passages give us some main assertions. Some answers to the questions, to the question, what is the purpose of life? And, you know, probably the broadest terms or broadest sense, the answer is basically this. The purpose of your life is to follow the divine. And that the divine, or whatever this ultimate reality is, gives you that purpose, as opposed to getting it from yourself. That one who follows the divine somehow partakes or is changed by the divine to become more like the divine, to have more like a divine nature. And the book refers to such a person as a saint. And as a consequence of this, the saint no longer pursues physical things, temporary things, material things, right? No longer pursues those kinds of joys. And instead the divine, excuse me, the saint, becomes happy, achieves fulfillment following the divine and partakes in the divine nature. So the first assertion that the editors address deals with happiness. The purpose of life as happiness. Now, there's something to keep in mind here when we're talking about happiness. These religions make claims, they all pretty much say this, make claims as to the source of this happiness and what kind of happiness can be found. And we'll just kind of contrast it to what we'll call the mundane happiness or worldly happiness, right? So these religions will say, okay, sure, you can pursue worldly happiness, but what's that going to be? It's going to be some kind of object, right? Or something in this physical world. And well, what's going to be the good of that? Physical things deteriorate, they fall apart, they decompose, right? They only last for a little while. You know, anything that you try to pursue that's just grounded in this world is going to be at best temporary. It can last a while, maybe. And you're supposed to try to make your market history. Well, like I said, well, look, yeah, you know, people might remember you, but they'll remember you for a little while and people always forget, right? You'll eventually you will be forgotten. You know, any of these goals that you pursue in the world, in mundane goals, sometimes they're pretty much just to satisfy fleeting emotional needs. But emotions and emotional desires, they're capricious. Then, you know, if you satisfy them once, you're going to need to satisfy them again, right? You'll always be hungry if you pursue mundane goals. You know, in contrast, in contrast, these religions are claiming, the editors say these religions are claiming, the happiness that you're supposed to pursue is from the divine. It's supposed to be transcendent. It's not going to be found in the world. It's what's responsible for the existence of the world. Instead of being temporary, they're eternal. Instead of capricious or fleeting, they're permanent. Instead of what is merely caused by ultimate reality, it is the self ultimate reality. So the first assertion the editors address is the purpose of your life and happiness. The second assertion the editors address deals with the source of that happiness. So according to the editors, these religions claim that the source of your happiness is from the divine itself. It's not from anything mundane. It's not from something physical. It's not for something temporary. It's not for something fleeting. It's from the divine itself. Since it's not from the world, since it's not from the mundane, your source of happiness, what brings you that happiness is not you. Since the source of happiness is not mundane, since it's from the everlasting, what the book calls the ultimate reality, it's not from anything in this world. And instead, according to these religions, the source of happiness is from the divine. Meaning that's the only place you can find that happiness. The third assertion the editors address deals with human nature and the divine nature. Now according to all these different texts, or at least according to the editors, what these texts are saying is that there is no opposition between the divine nature and the human nature. They're compatible. That means that in some way the human nature is improved upon. It's not to say necessarily that humans are divine, although that isn't excluded with some of these possibilities, but that it's not to say that human nature is inherently flawed, although some do say that. Now instead, what's being claimed here is that you can take the human nature and the divine nature and the divine doesn't become human. But instead, that the divine makes the human more like the divine. The point of these religions is for humanity to be elevated to something like divinity. Now the details of this differ from religion or religion. But the main point here to remember is what these religions are claiming humanity is not opposed to divinity, and divinity is not opposed to humanity. Rather, they can work together. The fourth assertion is dealing with the human nature, pretty much just only the human nature at this time. The last assertion dealt with compatibility with the divine nature and the human nature. This one says that there's nothing inherently bad about the human nature. In fact, you wouldn't go further to say the human nature is inherently good. Now they all have something to say about how something goes wrong. If something didn't go wrong somehow, then humanity would maybe automatically be elevated to divinity or something like that. We probably shouldn't try to read too much into it at this point, other than to specifically from the viewpoint of one's own religion. Don't try to understand other religions in terms of yours. But the idea, I think what the editors are trying to get at is that for the human nature, humanity has the possibility of happiness. Humanity has the possibility of being one and united with the divine. Now I said I didn't want to pay too much attention to any given religion and I don't. But I'm going to take a little bit of a sidebar here just to deal with what's called the original mind or the no-mind. Now this is related to the earlier assertion about the inherent goodness of human nature. And the Eastern traditions take on a different sort of flavor to it. In the West you would talk about innocence. Purity or moral goodness of human nature. Okay, that's fine. But it's not exactly what they're doing to describe it in the East. Now this notion of the original mind or the no-mind can be a little bit difficult to understand. So I'll kind of take it from kind of work backwards to the situation that we're currently in. So some of you might smoke. Some of you might have a favorite dessert but it's like deep pangs for that. Chocolate lava cake. Some of you might really be proud of I don't know your car or an achievement like a trophy that you won winning a track meet or something like that. Okay, so these are all attachments. These are all things that you desire of these of the physical world, of these mundane things. These are all physical. These are all temporary. They're all fleeting. They will crumble. Now that's not the original mind, right? That is you attached to things. So the original mind or the no-mind doesn't know these things. Doesn't want these things. Purged of the original mind is the self as purged of these desires. And instead of desiring temporary things mundane things physical things, a person desires ultimate reality when the person no longer thinks of the self of the ego of the want, the desire they're detached from the world. And when they're detached from the world they can be attached to become one that's ultimately real. So the next assertion that the editors deal with is the saint. Now the editors use the word saint. Okay, it's largely a western word, but we'll just ignore that for a moment. Now what's important to keep in mind here is the editors don't mean that the saint is somebody who is just better than you. That's not what's going on. That's not how the editors describe it. Instead of for the editors the saint is someone who has achieved a significant measure of this divine nature. Now let's just, to understand what the editors are trying to explain here imagine that you've been offered a job and this job or you have a job right now. Let's say you have a job right now and this job is great. You love your coworkers. Your coworkers are really great to work with. They're fun. They're cooperative. Nobody says a mean word to anybody. You love the work. You believe in the work. You think that the work makes the world a better place. It makes you a better person. The pay is great. In fact it says when you're going to get paid too much. It's got great benefits. You have the best medical and dental and retirement plan. Even the place where your work is beautiful it's a joy to come in. They've got traveling art shows through there that just lift up your spirits right there. Why wouldn't we all love to have that job? And it's a puzzle along the way you you've been offered another job and the person who offers the job is like yeah well you should work here because you know you should do what we say you have to do what we tell you to do. You know the pay stinks. The coworkers the potential coworkers they're all kind of jerks. You're shoved off to some meaningless tasks that actually doesn't do any good for the world or yourself. No benefits. Long hours. Have to work weekends. Why would you choose that second job? So this is the position of the saint according to the editors. The editors say look in all these different religions they all talk about a saint to some extent but what this means is that this saint has achieved a certain amount of this divine nature and in doing so the saint doesn't want anything in the world. At least not for that on purpose. A saint might have nice clothes doesn't have nice clothes for the sake of having nice clothes. Nice clothes for some other purpose. The saint according to these editors no longer desires anything in the world for its own sake. Why? Because the saint has already found the divine. So the last claim the last assertion the editors address it deals with the person who has achieved and fulfilled the purpose of life. The purpose of the meaning of life. Such a person has universal love and universal love is pretty much just that. Some of you love already sure you love family friends, pets maybe you love your job that's okay sure you have a measure of love but that's love for what's familiar or favorite. According to the editors of the book those that have fulfilled its purpose of life have this love for everybody not just familiar or favorite at least for the familiar favorite but not just the familiar or favorite it is love of family it is love of friends it is love of the stranger love of the enemy what these religions are telling us is that in achieving this ultimate reality in achieving and partaking in the divine nature one loves all. So just kind of a closing note these are some bold claims right? Now I'm not telling you you have to accept these claims I'm not. Like I said the point of this course is not to ask whether any particular religion is right instead we're just trying to figure out what these religions are saying so let's assume that the editors are correct that all these religions are claiming these from these passages I'm not saying you have to not believe them and kind of on the note I'm not even saying we have to take the editors word for it that these passages indeed are making these claims I find it difficult to believe that you could take a passage from any sacred text or frankly any legal text or any piece of fiction or literature or philosophy and nicely sum up the exact assertion and no I have serious doubts that you can prove that any given source says this from even a page of some of these quotes are quite lengthy but certainly not from single sentences or paragraphs or something like that so I'm not saying the editors are mistaken I'm just saying we don't necessarily have to take them at their word these are nice starting points we have the editors assertion that these religions are claiming this okay cool but let's find out whether they are in fact claiming this the point of this course is to understand religions understand what they claim and what they want from us and even if we start with a suggestion that the religions are saying this in trying to investigate whether this suggestion is true we will understand these religions better