The Truth About Truth – Reality Or Illusion? (Ep.2)

Does truth exist or is everything just perception? Can truth be known or is truth elusive? Is truth the same for everyone or is it different for everyone? Welcome to The Meditate More Podcast where it's all about helping you to meditate more consistently so you can reap all the incredible magical benefits that meditation can bring to your life today. And here is your host, Manny Mandala.

Hey, and welcome to Episode 2 of The Meditate More Podcast with Manny Mandala. If you're here for the first time, make sure you subscribe to this show because this is a special episode that I'm really excited to bring to you.

Today's topic is so important that I considered making it Episode 1. It's even more fundamental than the missing key I talked about in Episode 1. And it was one of the most profound insights I've ever had on my spiritual journey. So with that said, I hope you enjoy this week's episode of The Meditate More Podcast. And we've got another power-packed show for you here today.

In this episode, we'll talk about enlightenment, how misunderstood the concept is these days, and we'll clean up with some major misunderstandings and misconceptions. We'll talk about the best kind of meditation that I've found after over 19 years of practicing and trying dozens of different techniques.

And we'll talk about the most fundamental principle of all spiritual inquiry and practice. Without this principle, you cannot tread the spiritual path and make any progress. And according to a recent survey in the US, 57% of people are missing this principle. So the odds are you're missing it and you don't want to miss it.

So this is a very important episode. So we'll talk about all that. Before we do, I want to encourage you to listen to this podcast at 1x speed. I know everybody is used to listening to content fast these days, even voice messages from friends and family, but I recommend you listen at 1x speed, at least to The Meditate More Podcast for three important reasons.

If you've started meditating already, then you realize that the mind goes in all kinds of random directions all the time. Now, if you accelerate your audios, you will accelerate the mind. So that means while it's still on random mode, it will go in random directions, even faster, which is a big problem these days. And I'll talk more about that in future episodes.

Reason number two, the goal of meditation is to become more present and listening at fast speeds will have the opposite effect. It will make the mind more frantic, more hectic, more turbulent. It's almost like anti meditation. And the third reason is that slow listening allows you to really take in the ideas and reflect on them as you're listening.

And I'm not hating on the fast speeds. I used to listen to everything at 3, 3.4x speed, but I've come to change my perspective on that. And I now recommend this only for very targeted studying. It shouldn't be a habit that we do all the time, even when listening to a podcast to relax, even when listening to voice messages from friends, from family, et cetera.

Next, if you haven't listened to Episode 1 yet, I would urge you to go back to Episode 1 right now, because it sets the foundation for Episode 2. Just like in a TV show, you'd watch the pilot before watching the second episode.

In Episode 1, we talk about the missing key to meditation. This is actually the most important principle of meditation practice and it's absent from most meditation teachings today. Second, I show you very specifically and tangibly how meditation can help you to have a better life. 

And third, I'll show you a simple meditation technique, the POM technique, that if you're a beginner or very busy, you can start with as little as one minute per day and start to see the benefits. But if you're already advanced, the POM technique will help you to take your meditation further. It will allow you to meditate longer and more deeply. So if you haven't listened to Episode 1 yet, hit pause and check that out right now and then come back and Episode 2 will make much more sense that way.

And last point, before we get into the episode, I also created The Meditate More Challenge for you. This is for you if you've ever said, "I know I should meditate more, so why don't I do it?" This is for you if you've ever struggled to establish a consistent meditation habit, if you've ever felt frustrated that you can't make a meditation practice really stick. I used to have that problem, I don't anymore, and I'll show you how you can solve it. So go to meditatemorechallenge.com and check that out.

I'm going to sell this course in the future, but since this is a new podcast, I'll give the whole course away for free. In return, I hope you give me feedback if you apply it. So make sure you go to meditatemorechallenge.com to get that.

All right. With that out of the way, we're going to dive into our first topic today, and that is enlightenment. And there is a lot of confusion surrounding this topic these days. Nobody seems to really know what is enlightenment. Is it even real? Does it exist? Is it some religious myth? What is it exactly? What does it mean? If it is real, can it be achieved by the average person? Do you need to become a monk to achieve it? Does it take several lifetimes?

So I want to clear up one misunderstanding straight off the bat. There is a false dichotomy, meaning a false choice, in the meditation community and in the spiritual community these days between two extremes. And people usually fall into one of these two camps.

The one extreme is, you're already enlightened, you just gotta realize it. That's the idea that you can just snap without much effort if you just have this quick insight. The thing is, if that was true, people wouldn't train meditation for a lifetime. They wouldn't go to monasteries for decades to be monks and really practice and deepen their practice over time.

That's kind of like saying you're already a Kung Fu champion, you just got to embrace it. You just got to let it out of yourself. The Kung Fu champion's already inside you. You just got to let it out. Just sign up to a championship and kick your opponent as hard as you can. Just let the champion out and you got this, right? So this mindset is a bit of an outgrowth of our quick fix, instant results culture.

So that's the one extreme. The other extreme is enlightenment is so far in the distance that you can't even attain it in one lifetime. That's the idea that even if you become a monk, you probably won't become enlightened. Even if you dedicate your whole life to it. Like, how many of the monks haven't achieved enlightenment? How much of a chance do you really have as a layperson?

There is a problem with that logic as well. So let's say it takes 10 lifetimes of meditation, from a Buddhist perspective of reincarnation. What if you've already meditated for nine lifetimes? Then you can achieve it in this lifetime, right?

So you see these two opposite extremes are a bit of a false dichotomy and don't really make sense when you examine them. So what does make sense? We'll talk about that right now.
And here is another big misconception that most people don't talk about and most people don't even know. Meditation in traditional Buddhism is not a binary thing, meaning it's not a yes or no. It's not an on or off. It's not either you're enlightened or you're not enlightened.

In traditional Buddhism, there are actually five levels. There's the unenlightened and then there's four levels of enlightenment, right? So unenlightened would be just normal everyday consciousness of the average person who hasn't meditated or who hasn't meditated very much.

And then there are four levels of enlightenment. The first level is called Sotāpatti, that is known as stream entry in English. Then the second level is Sakadāgāmi. Third level, Anāgāmi. And the fourth and final one is the Arahant, which in English would be the liberated one, the awakened one, or the fully enlightened master.

So right off the bat, you see that this whole question is, can you get enlightened or not, misses a fundamental point, which is, it's not a yes or no question. Enlightenment comes on a gradient, just like temperature.

By the way, the enlightenment experience I described briefly in Episode 1, I consider that to be a Sotāpatti. To me, this is very clear. Buddhist scholars actually bicker over definitions and interpretations of scripture when it comes to that point, to the exact definition of Sotāpatti. But when you experience it, reality itself shifts. Reality confirms it for you. You will know, right? So it's not, I think I'm enlightened. It's an experience, not a thought.

And I'm going to go into more detail in future episodes. But for now, I just wanted to clear up a misunderstanding between this dichotomy of extremes. Enlightenment is either you're already enlightened, you just got to realize it, or enlightenment is so far in the future that it's practically unattainable. And realize that it's actually not even a yes or no question. It's on a scale, it's on a gradient. And on that gradient traditional Buddhism distinguished between four levels, four thresholds. And in other words, there are four levels of enlightenment, not one.

And on that note, let's get into the practical stuff, the how to meditate more. Today I want to talk about a few different meditation techniques. So when I first started in 2005, the first techniques I tried were actually techniques by the infamous guru Osho, who recently gained notoriety again almost 35 years after his death with the Netflix series Wild Wild Country.

And Osho teaches lots of different techniques. Probably his most famous technique is dynamic meditation, which is a combination of four different techniques in one. It's a one-hour meditation where you do four different techniques for 15 minutes each.

So that's one of the first ones I tried. Then I also got a book that had dozens of meditation techniques in one single book, and I tried many of those. One I thought was really interesting is a technique where you imagine yourself to be a flame. And you do this meditation all day, not just when you're sitting on a pillow. You imagine you're a flame while you're walking down the street, while you're eating in a restaurant, you always imagine that you don't have a body, but you're a flame. Very interesting meditation has some very interesting effects on the mind.

I also studied Tibetan Buddhism early on and tried some of their techniques. The one I used most was Mahamudra meditation. I tried Hindu techniques like mantra meditation. Om Shreem Kleem Lakshmi Ye Namaham. Om Gam Ganapata Ye Namaham. That kind of stuff. Very interesting techniques. I encourage you to experiment a little bit as well.

I've also tried the techniques from the famous Goenka retreats, which are three: Anapana, Vipassana and Mettapana meditation. And I've tried all kinds of modern meditation techniques, like guided meditations, smartphone apps, Binaural Beats, one called Global Relaxation meditation, and the list goes on.

There's a lot of different meditation techniques. And I just want to share with you what worked best for me. Look, like, I can't say this is the only way, because that's just the way that worked for me. So all I can say is I vouch for this technique from my own experience. This worked for me. And what worked best for me are Goenka's three techniques: Anapana, Vipassana, and Metapana.

And one reason why I like them is because they cover all three modalities of consciousness, right? The human consciousness really has three forms of expressions. We have thoughts, we have feelings, and we have actions. So that's the mind, the emotions and the body. And these three techniques work on all three. Anapana works on the mind, Mettapana works on the emotions and Vipassana works on the body.

So specifically what should you do? I recommend that 99% of people start with Anapana. That's the technique that I told you about in Episode 1. Keep that up for now, but also keep up the POM technique, the progressive overload, meaning every day meditate a little bit more than you've meditated before.

Because here's the thing, even at the famous Vipassana retreats, you don't actually do Vipassana. Not at first. For the first 35 hours straight, you practice just Anapana, just focusing on the breath. Because that's how calm the mind needs to be to actually practice Vipassana effectively. So I would say Vipassana has been my favorite technique, but you always want to start with Anapana to calm down the mind to where it's extremely focused before you want to even begin the real Vipassana practice.

And you know, interestingly, Osho, my first meditation teacher, agrees. I heard a talk by him once where he stated that Vipassana meditation is the perfect meditation. The way he put it was, nothing can be added to it for it to be improved, and nothing can be taken away from it without diminishing its effectiveness. So it's just right. You can't add anything to make it better, and you can't take anything away from it without making it worse.

So, in summation, I found Vipassana to be the most effective meditation for me. That's the path that's gotten me the most results. And for 99% of people, I recommend work on Anapana meditation for now to get started.

So, again, quick review. You sit on a pillow with your eyes closed, you breathe normally, and you just observe your breath. You just focus your attention, your consciousness, on your breath. And you will realize that your mind will keep drifting away to things you have to do tomorrow, to things you remember, maybe to a discussion you had with someone. And every time you notice that your mind isn't on the breath, you bring it back to the breath. That's all.

And then, again, there's a common piece of advice out there these days that people should just make a meditation practice part of their daily lives. So every day, for 10 minutes in the morning, you meditate. I say don't stagnate like that. Don't meditate for the same duration every day. Try to push yourself just like you would push yourself in the gym. Try to every day extend your meditation practice a little bit. Extend it by one minute more than you did the day before. And so gradually you can push the envelope and take your meditation deeper. And the results will follow, right?

But I want to move on. I want to get into the most important part of the podcast, the Dhamma Discourse. Let's talk about the Dhamma. The Dhamma is the core teachings of Buddhism. And I'm not a Buddhist, but the West got meditation from Buddhism, mostly from Buddhism. So it's worth having a look at the source, at the origin of this thing everybody's practicing. Meditation. Where did it come from?

And the topic of today's Dhamma Discourse is truth. Truth. And this is actually a very debated topic these days. What is truth, right? In Episode 1, I left you on a bit of a cliffhanger. And I want to zoom in on three of the questions today. Question one, does truth exist? Or is everything just perception? Question true. Question two, can truth be known or is truth elusive?

And question three, is truth objective or is it subjective? In other words, is truth the same for everyone or is it different for everyone? You've probably heard expressions like you have to speak your truth. So does that mean you have your truth and I have my truth? Are they different? Are they both valid? How does that all work?

And I can't stress enough how important this question is, because this is the foundation of everything else. Without truth, you got nothing, because nothing else is true without truth, right? Think of literally anything else, any other topic other than the topic of truth, rests on the foundation of truth. Because without truth, no other topic, no other statement, no other idea is even valid.

So let's just pick a random example. I could make the statement that vegetables are healthier than processed junk food. Is that true? If truth does not exist, if there is no truth, then that's not a true statement. I actually have a family member who does not believe that to be true. He does not believe that vegetables are healthier than junk food, so he lives on simple carbs and sugars. And as a result, he's in and out of hospitals all the time.

And that brings us to one of the most important lessons right off the bat. Ignoring truth has very serious consequences. Ignoring truth causes much of our suffering. And it's a conversation ender because it shuts down any serious inquiry into anything. And therefore, it's also a spiritual path ender, right? If there is no truth to be found, then why seek it? Why seek truth? Why get on the spiritual path if there is nothing to be found? Or if whatever you find isn't true, then why would you seek it? And this philosophy, this philosophical idea, is called solipsism.

Solipsism is the idea that there is no objective truth and truth cannot be known and perception is reality. So this idea is related to relativism. Everything is relative, right? There is nothing definitive. It's related to subjectivism. Everything is subjective. Nothing has any objective standard. And that's a very dangerous idea that will lead to a lot of suffering, but we'll get into that.

First, I want to give a quick definition of what I mean when I speak the word 'truth'. Truth is simply that which is. In the future, many things could possibly happen. There are many possible futures, many possibilities. But in the present, one of the possibilities that existed has solidified into what is here and now, and that is truth. Of all the possibilities that could have happened, one did happen, and that is truth here and now. In the past, there is also only one possibility that has solidified.

For example, if you had coffee for breakfast this morning, then that is the one singular possibility that has solidified as truth. You could say you didn't drink anything, but that would not be truth, would it? That would be a lie. So truth is that which is in the present and in the past, where possibilities have already solidified into one outcome. So, again, the simple definition, truth is simply that which is, of all the possibilities, that possibility which has actually taken place.

So let's have a quick look at scripture again. And we'll do this quickly. We'll just look at Christian scripture, which is the main religion of the West, and Buddhist scripture, which is the main religion of the East. And there's a very important reason why I focus on those two, and I'll probably talk about that in Episode 3. But for now, let's have a quick look at Buddhist scripture first.

In Buddhism, objective truth is described as reality as it truly is. And you can find that in several suttas. Suttas are the Buddha's sermons or discourses, right? In Christian scripture, there's the famous Sermon on the Mount, the discourse by Jesus in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. In Buddhist scriptures, we have the Buddha's sermons or discourses, and they're called suttas.
And one famous example is the Satipatthana Sutta. And in that sutta, the Buddha talks about objective truth. And in Buddhism, again, it's called reality as it truly is. And in Pali scripture, this is called yathābhūta ñāṇadassana and that is objective truth.

And one example of truth in Buddhist scripture is the famous first Noble Truth. You've heard about this if you've ever looked into Buddhism. Yes, Buddhism is actually all about truth. One of the core teachings of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths.

And the first Noble Truth is suffering. That is the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, the first step, the first truth we can all know, right? So I always start there. Whenever there is doubt that objective truth exists, suffering is something we can all know from our own experience as objectively true, right? You know from your own experience that suffering is real.

If you jump off a cliff, you will experience suffering. That's an objectively true statement. It's not dependent on your perception. It's not dependent on your belief. It's true, which again shows, ignoring truth has very serious consequences and causes suffering. And that's why truth is so fundamental to spiritual inquiry and literally to everything else. It's the foundation which everything else rests upon.

Another example, if you hold your hand in a fire, it will burn, right? Unless you perform some magic trick with some chemical that will protect it, but we're not talking about trickery here, right? We're just talking about a very simple situation. You put your hand in a fire, it will burn. This is objectively true. It's not dependent on your perception. It's not dependent on your belief. It is truth. And again, it shows, ignoring truth has very serious consequences and causes suffering, which is why truth is so fundamental to spiritual inquiry.

So ignoring truth causes suffering, and the first Noble Truth is suffering. If we ignore truth, we cause suffering, and if we suffer, we experience truth, which forces us to stop ignoring truth, right? It's almost like a self protection mechanism built into the universe.

Now, suffering is only the first Noble Truth. There are other truths discussed in Buddhism as well. There are the other three Noble Truths, because there's four of them. There's the truth of Anicca, which is impermanence, everything changes. That is a truth in Buddhism, and so forth. But Buddhism really focuses on the discussion of truth, and it's a very interesting aspect of Buddhism.

And there's a famous quote that's attributed to the Buddha, which, by the way, is not actually in Buddhist scripture, but it's a very good quote regardless. And it goes, "There are only two mistakes one can make on the path to truth: not starting and not going all the way." So the spiritual path then, the path of meditation, could be described as a path towards truth.
Now let's move on to Christianity. Let's have a quick look at Christian scripture as well. And there is a verse I want to look at in particular that's in the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verse 32, where it says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

And I want to call your attention to two things when it comes to this verse. First, it says, "You shall know the truth." It does not say you shall believe, right? A belief is a feeling of certainty about something we actually do not know as a truth. It doesn't say, "You shall believe the truth" because if you believe something, then you don't know. And if you don't know, then you can't be sure that it's truth.

Let me give you an example. If I ask you, "Is there still any milk in the fridge?" And you say, "Yeah, I believe so." What are you really saying? You're implicitly admitting that you don't know for sure if there's milk in the fridge or not. Versus, if you looked in the fridge five minutes ago, and you know there's milk in the fridge, then you wouldn't say, "Yeah, I believe so." You would say, "Oh, yeah, man. There's three bottles on the top shelf on the left there. We got plenty of milk. Don't worry." But when you say, "Yeah, I believe we still have milk," then you're implicitly stating that you're not sure. And I want to call your attention to this because we have to be very careful with belief. Belief is a feeling of certainty without actual certainty, right? That can be a dangerous concept.

And the second point I want to call your attention to is that in this verse, the concept of freedom shows up again. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. In Episode 1, I pointed out that the goal of meditation is enlightenment. Enlightenment is another word for liberation, and liberation means freedom. And now in Christianity, there is a verse in the gospels that says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

So freedom is at the core of Christianity and of Buddhism as well. So in both of these major religions, we have the concept of truth, we have the concept of morality, and we have the concept of freedom... at the core of both of these religions. Okay. We'll revisit this point in future episodes. For now, I would encourage you to think about this: truth, morality, and freedom are at the core of both the major religions of the West and of the East. For now, I just want to point out how these concepts are related. Truth and morality are intimately connected. We've determined in Episode 1 that morality is objective. And if you think it through, therefore truth must also be objective.

Let me give you an example. There is a lot of debate about the finer points of morality, so let's go to an extreme just for the sake of argument so we can get on the same page. Let's take an example, something everybody will agree with. Torturing small children for fun and pleasure is immoral. Yes? Everybody agrees on this one, I hope? 

Now here's the thing. Without truth, the statement that torturing children for fun is immoral is not true. And that insight should send chills down your spine. If you throw out truth, you throw out any morality. Without objective truth, morality is also relative. Morality is subjective. Morality is perception. And that means anything goes. And that is the source of all the atrocities we see in the world. That's the source of the atrocities we see in the news, that we see in human history, and that we see in our future, if there's not a major awakening happening very soon.

So, again, in no uncertain terms, good intentions without truth lead to atrocities. An example are atrocities committed by dictatorships. They had good intentions. They were trying to create a utopia, right? Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao Zedong. Another example is terrorism. Often done with good intentions. God wills it, right? For God. But without truth, there is no morality.
There's a famous quote by Voltaire that goes, "Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And I know that's not a verbatim translation, but he did say this. It's a paraphrase from his Questions sur les Miracles from 1765 and that wording is from the translation by Norman Lewis Torrey.

So, again, anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. That's why truth is so fundamental to everything. Without objective truth, there is no morality, and without morality, we have chaos. That's why it's so dangerous this idea that's floating around: my truth, your truth. I have my truth. You have your truth. Everyone has a truth. They're all equally valid. Very dangerous idea, and I'm going to prove to you really quickly that it's wrong.

Let's just do a thought experiment real quick. Let's say we're both interested in the gold market and the precious metals market. I think gold will go up in price. So I buy gold for $100. You think gold will go down in price, so you short gold, right? Well, a week later, a month later, one of us is gonna have more money, and the other one is going to have less money. There is one outcome, one objective truth. Truth is singular. Perception is not reality. One of us is right and one of us is wrong. If you think gold will go up, and I think gold will go down, or the other way around, one of us will end up being right and the other one will end up being wrong.

Perception is not reality. You don't perceive a dog whistle, but it's there. The sound is there. You can pick it up with a meter, with an instrument. Your dog can hear it. Your dog can prove it by his reaction. You don't perceive radiation, but it's there. You can measure it. You can even get sick from it and die from it. And that's another example that shows that denying objective truth and objective reality causes suffering.

So perception isn't reality. Rather, perception needs to align itself with reality. How do we do that? How do we know that our perception is actually aligned with reality? And that brings us to our next question. Now, we've talked about, does truth exist? Is it objective or subjective? Now, the next question is, can truth be known? Can we know truth? Can we really find out?

And, again, there is a false dichotomy floating around these days. You see, the internet is full of all kinds of misconceptions and wrong ideas. And many of them fall into these false dichotomies, where it's either one extreme or the other extreme, and both are false. So the one extreme is the idea that we can't know anything. That's solipsism. And there are some famous quotes floating around that state that we can't know anything.

For example, a quote by Einstein, "The more I learn, the more I realize I know nothing." That's actually not the quote. That's a misquote. It's a very frequently misquoted sentence. What Einstein really said was, "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." It doesn't mean I don't know anything. It means there is still more to learn. That's a big difference. Another famous one is by Socrates that goes, "I only know that I know nothing." Look it up. That one is completely bunk. He never said that, never uttered the words. Of course, Socrates knew quite a lot. He never said that he knows nothing, nor did Einstein.
So that's one extreme, this idea that we can't know anything, right? And the Buddha debunked that thoroughly with the first Noble Truth and many other truths that you can experience yourself through an inquiry into the nature of this reality with meditation and with other practices.

The other extreme is the ego. The ego is the: "I know it all!" Right? That's the mind that is closed to new ideas and to new information, rejecting new information. That's like the famous Buddhist story about the cup that's already full and you can't pour more tea into a cup that's already full.

So these are the two extremes, that's the false dichotomy. So let's correct it. The question is, can truth be known? And the answer is simple. We can know some things, but we can't know all things. And there's always more to learn. Okay? Let's zoom in on these three points.

We can know some things. There are truth discovery methods, and they have been lost. Just like the missing key to meditation from Episode 1, there is a truth discovery method we can apply to find truth. And I will talk about that in future episodes. So stick with me in this podcast. I'm going to teach you this lost truth discovery method in a future episode.
But we can't know all things, right? This should be common sense. Of course, we can't know all of infinity, all the mysteries of the universe, the entire mind of God. Of course, this is beyond human comprehension, right?

And the third point, there's always more to learn. So just like meditation, I want to encourage you to start learning more. Study more. Because just like meditation is so worth it, studying is also so worth it. One piece of information you come across can completely transform your life, right?

Let's say you become an avid student, you become a reader, you become someone who devours podcasts and information and be very selective about the information as well. I'll talk more about that in future episodes too. But let's say on your quest for information, you find a business model and you become rich, or you find a new way of eating and you become leaner or you become much more healthy, have much more energy.

There are so many examples of how one single piece of information can completely change your life for the better. So, personally. I got hooked on that a long time ago. I'm a voracious reader. I've always liked reading. I've always had a thirst for knowledge, for understanding the world. Honestly, I’ve probably read about 2,000 to 3,000 books by now. I still study one to two hours every day. At one time, I took a six-month sabbatical just to read 24/7 for six months, and I must have blasted through hundreds of books that year. It was amazingly mind expanding. You don't have to go that far, but I do want to encourage you. Meditate more and study more also, because truth is absolutely crucial.

And finally, to conclude the episode, if there are any solipsists who are still listening, who didn't get too turned off by this episode so far, I want to propose a wager to all solipsists, to all those who still say, "Truth doesn't exist." Is that a true statement? You say, "Truth doesn't exist." Is that a true statement? How can that be a true statement if truth itself doesn't exist?

To all those who still say, "Truth can't be known," well, how do you know that? If truth can't be known, then how do you know that truth can't be known? To all those who still say, "Truth is perception," if the example I gave you didn't send chills up and down your spine, I propose Pascal's wager to you, but with a twist. You may have heard of Pascal's wager. Blaise Pascal was a famous mathematician and he was an agnostic, meaning he wasn't sure maybe God exists, maybe not. So what do we do here?

And he calculated mathematically, since he was a mathematician, that it's most rational to live as if God existed. Because, I don't know, it's a coin flip. It's a 50-50 bet. Heads, God exists. The gain is infinite for following God and the loss is infinite for not following God. Tails, God doesn't exist. Well, I don't gain or lose much by believing in God, even though he doesn't exist. So it's the rational choice.

Now, that's not the wager I'm proposing. I'm proposing Pascal's wager with a twist, and here's my twist on it. I would say it's most rational to seek truth, even though you can't be sure it's out there, because that too is a coin flip, right? From the perspective of a solipsist, from someone who's trapped in this mindset, truth might exist or not, 50-50.

If heads come up, objective truth exists, then it's the foundation for everything else. That's kind of important, kind of a big deal. If tails comes up, objective truth doesn't exist, and you've just lost some time. Maybe you've read some interesting books. Maybe you've made some interesting experiences. No biggie, right? So that's Pascal's wager with a twist.

And here's my suggestion. Start with the first Noble Truth of suffering. For many, the spiritual path starts there. I would say for most people, the spiritual path starts there. Most people get on the spiritual path because of some kind of suffering. Maybe they have an illness. Maybe they lost a loved one. Maybe they have a very difficult financial situation. And that's when people start to ask questions. That's when they start to ask why. Why this suffering? What does it mean? What are the causes? Why me?

But there's a better way. There's a famous saying that you may have heard, "An intelligent person learns from their own mistakes, but a wise person learns from the mistakes of others." And I'm gonna put a twist on that one too. An intelligent person seeks truth because of their own suffering, but a wise person seeks truth because of the suffering of others.
And that was actually the Buddha's story. Buddha is not a name, as you probably know. 

Buddha just means the awakened one. His name was Siddhartha Gautama. And he was a prince who was very sheltered from the world by his parents. So he had never seen any suffering in his life. And then one day he left the palace, and he saw a sick man, he saw an old man, and he saw a dead man.

So as he encountered disease, old age, and death, and he was shocked, he was like, "We live in a world of suffering, and everybody is just ignoring it?" This is the most important thing there is, right? The first Noble Truth of Buddhism, suffering. There is suffering. Now, let's figure out what's going on. Where does it come from? What can we do about it?

So the Buddha got on the spiritual path when he saw the suffering of others. Seeing the suffering of others should be a reason enough to get on the path to truth. For most, it isn't. For me, it wasn't. But that would be the wise choice. An intelligent person seeks truth because of their own suffering, but a wise person seeks truth because of the suffering of others.

So in conclusion, the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, which is suffering, proves that morality is objective. We talked about this in Episode 1. We experience suffering. We don't like to suffer, therefore, others don't like to suffer. Therefore, obviously, we should help them if they're suffering, and we shouldn't cause them any suffering, right?

But the first Noble Truth of Buddhism also proves that truth is objective. Because suffering is a truth we can all experience ourselves. It's the first Noble Truth, and for most people, it's the first step on the spiritual path. And that's the answer to the one question that's on the test. What's the difference between right and wrong?

In the mental realm, the difference between right and wrong is the difference between true and false. What's right is true; what's wrong is false. What's right is in line with objective reality; what's wrong is lies and illusion. In the physical realm, the difference between right and wrong is the difference between moral and immoral. Right action is moral; wrong action is immoral. Do good, don't initiate harm. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It's not terribly complicated. Up is up, down is down, right is right, wrong is wrong, true is true, false is false, moral is moral, immoral is immoral. These principles are not subjective or relative. Up is up and down is down is only a subjective statement if you are crooked. And the same is true for true is true and false is false.

All right. I hope you enjoyed the second episode of The Meditate More Podcast with Manny Mandala. I had a lot of fun creating it for you. And if you're one of those people who say, "I know I should meditate more, so why don't I do it?", if you struggle to make your meditation practice really stick, I used to have that problem, I don't anymore. And that's why I created the Meditate More Challenge for you. It'll show you how I solved that problem. I want you to have that too.

You can get that for free. Just go to meditatemorechallenge.com and sign up for the challenge. It's seven concise power-packed lessons to take your meditation practice to the next level. I think you will love it. It's free for a limited time. If you listen later, it may not be free. At the time of recording, it's still free. So check it out now at meditatemorechallenge.com.

And if you know someone who might enjoy this podcast, who might find this interesting, please tell them about it. The more you spread the word about The Meditate More Podcast and Manny Mandala, the more episodes I can make. I have a giant pile of notes from 20 years of spiritual study and meditation practice. And there's a lot of gold I still want to share with you. So share the podcast and subscribe, because in the next episode, we'll talk about how meditation can end suffering.

The first Noble Truth is suffering. So now what? What do we do about it? How do we end suffering? Second, do you ever feel like you're bad at meditation? I hear that a lot. People tell me, "I'm just not very good at meditation. My mind is all over the place." If you've ever had this thought, we'll solve that next time. So you don't want to miss the next episode.

And third, we'll talk about the real law of attraction. You've probably heard of the law of attraction. It became popular almost 20 years ago with the movie The Secret. It's all about manifestation, visualization, affirmations, those kinds of things. Getting rich, attracting your dream partner, getting in top shape. We'll talk about what it is, is it real, how does it work. If it didn't quite work for you, why is that and how to fix it?

There's also three missing pieces in the way the law of attraction is being talked about these days. And no, I'm not talking about visualization and I'm not talking about feeling. I'll give you the three missing pieces in the next episode, so make sure you catch that one.
For now, just go to meditatemorechallenge.com and sign up. You'll get seven concise, powerful meditation lessons. You'll get some of my best content free for a limited time. So go to meditatemorechallenge.com.

So thanks so much for listening and very special thanks to Lex Van Someren and Mariano Roguin of Mantra Tonic, who were very gracious to provide some of their music for this podcast. Thank you for the music, guys. I really appreciate it.

I'll see you on the next episode, so make sure to subscribe to the podcast now. And remember to meditate more, meditate more, meditate more, because it is so, so worth it.