“Why am I not happy?”
Question: What is your question?
Robert Thurman: Why am I not happy? What’s wrong… with the – with, with me, you know? Why should I not be happy? I’m a human being. This is I’m alive. Now, people who are in a starvation, famine, in Zemlya in some place, you know. Obviously that’s really difficult, although, we – the Red Cross gets there, somebody gets there soon, but some – for some it’s too late. So, obviously you can’t reach those people, and – with such a question, you ought to reach them with food before you expect them to think about anything, (cough) you know ‘cause they’re, but even – although strangely I think actually if you’re starving to death, you reach a kind of point where, you’re kind of high on the starvation and, you know of course if your children are going that’s really agonizing it’s terrible, it is terrible.
So I don’t mean to blatantly say you can you can just go with someone whose leg would just bone up or whatever, and to do that you have to help fix them up first, of course. But then once people are at a modicum, which most of the people are, you know four fifths of humanity are either have some sort of modicum, then that’s the question. And get them, and you – you ask them that question, and then you try to help them see the half full of the glass, or maybe the quarter full or the third full in some cases. Most – all too many cases nowadays I’m sad to say, you know. But that’s a question to ask them. And all of their traditions, and it – if there’s any tradition or religion that they have that tells them they’re supposed to not be happy, it’s a misunderstanding.
Like many Buddhists think, well Buddha says you’re going to suffer, so I’m supposed to suffer, that’s not correct. Buddha said that you will suffer if you persist in being stupid, if you persist in being ignorant and egotistical, you can’t easily overcome that by being more intelligent and more altruistic, and be more cheerful. And you don’t have to do it. And that was just a symptom – diagnosis of the symptom of ignorance it wasn’t like what you have to be.
On the contrary he said you can enjoy life like nirvana if you wake up. So, I think all the traditions kind of say that if you embrace Jesus, then you’ll be happy, if you dance with Krishna you’ll be happy if you venerate the prophet and surrender to the prophet you’ll be happy, you know they all do. Not just pie in the sky later, and there’s some bad priests and some bad institutions might say yeah, only when you get to heaven then you have to suffer and be my slave, those are misinterpretations.
Recorded on: June 1, 2007
