American Buddhist Free for All Part 1

Murshid Sam invited Reverend Neville Warwick to join him in an open discussion at the Church of Mans to speak on Buddhist Dharma. Murshid Sam encouraged the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation, even debate. 

0:00—Preamble.

0:30—Recounts day’s events.

4:17—“What this country fears is not a wicked enemy but truth. We can handle a wicked enemy, we can’t handle truth…. You know who they are afraid of: Gandhi!...the people who control this country are afraid of truth and they are afraid that the generation is going to rise that will be able to tell when another person is telling the truth or not and that scares them more than anything else. And it is beginning to happen.”

7:15—“I’m going to tell you something that you never read, and this is why Allan Watts is my enemy. The word ‘I’ does not appear in the Old Testament except when it refers to God! He (Watts) never forgave me for telling him that because he wanted to inform the public. And we get up and we have a religion and a religion and a religion and Christianity says ‘I believe’ with the (..?..) I walk in and Descartes said ‘I think therefore I am.’ When did the first ‘I’ get in there? Who brought it in, where did it come from? And this is why we don’t understand reincarnation, at least I’m giving you my point of view.”

8:20—“Is this universe a place where a certain fixed entities come and go, come and go, come and go? Or is it a universe where there are billions of seats and where we are promoted from one to another in order until you get to the highest seat? Or are these two things the same? In other words, before we speak for or against reincarnation, you have to take into consideration not the Hindu ‘What am I?’ But where did this idea of ‘I’ come in? The Hindu says ‘What am I?’ He’s already assuming that ‘I’ just like Descartes assumed the ‘I.’ He’s assuming the thing that is being discussed. That’s why even so great a soul as Ramana Maharshi did not produce great souls. And even some terrible Buddhist Zen masters have as successors great souls.”

10:24—Questions and answers.

13:50—Jesus as reincarnation of the Joshua.

14:49—Dr. Warwick speaks.

17:20—Warwick.

20:45—Warwick.

21:40—Jataka tales.

23:05—”Now these stories (Jataka), if you forget the reincarnation element in them, are an excellent means of moral training for children. When I found, and that’s one reason that I have not been much interested in Buddhism, that practically no Buddhist chuch taught them, that practically none of them had a oral training that was of any value. And these stories for me, are the most marvelous values that can be, and if they were taught to children, you wouldn’t have any worry about crime or vice or evil or anything of the kind. At least, this is my point of view.”

26:17—Laws of Karma same as laws of physical and super-physical.

33:23—Warwick on soul (refers HIK).

35:44—Murshid leads meditation.

38:29—Murshid addresses audience and states purpose of convocation.

39:30—Spontaneity, prajna (immediate cognition), love, and compassion.

39:50—“Better to assume there is no ego than there is an ego—not that there isn’t an ego, not that there is no soul but by assuming there is no soul we come together. And assuming there is a soul, you stay apart…. There is nothing to stop every religion from doing the same thing or even all religions from doing it. And it is not a metaphysical argument against an ego-soul. It is a temporary pragmatic ethical argument, that if you put up a barriers between yourself and somebody else, why hold on to that? And if it takes away the barriers from somebody else, isn’t it wonderful? If we would hold on to an ego soul and love each other and counteract with somebody and not think at all of leadership or differences, then the argument would be sustained.”

41:22—“Lord Buddha was not interested in reincarnation, he was interested in deliverance, in moksha, in raising us above suffering. And he gave certain theories, not that they were metaphysically necessarily correct, but so they could bring us into this universe of love and joy and ultimately peace. And if anybody says that Christ didn’t teach the same thing, well they are crazy. He taught exactly the same thing!”

42:00—Comment on Christian church.

43:40—Lord Buddha’s disciples and diversity in Dharma teachings.