Buddhism’s Biggest Mistake: Hidden Evil Teachings (Ep.7)

This Buddhist I talked to considers himself a Buddhist, but the spiritual path he's actually practicing is the religion of Satanism.

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 another episode of The Meditate More Podcast. And if you're here for the first time, make sure to subscribe because we have some power-packed content for you. Today we'll talk about the biggest mistake in Buddhism as it's being taught today and the real reason why there is so much suffering in the world. 

Next, we'll also talk about how meditation can help you to have a better life and specifically we'll talk about how to use meditation to become more productive, to get more done, which of course is going to translate into better results in all areas of life. If you get more done, you can make more money. If you get more done, you have more free time. If you get more done, you can fit everything else in better, be it working out, relationships, meditation. 

And third, we'll also talk about the nuts and bolts of meditation, the practical how-to stuff. And today I'll teach you how to stay in a meditative state 24 hours a day. Sounds very advanced. It's not as advanced as it sounds and I'm sure you can do it once you get the neck of it, once you get the idea. It's actually really simple. So I'll teach you how to do that today. 

And of course we'll go in depth on the why of the first Noble Truth of buddhism: Suffering. And this is a core spiritual question, it's also known as theodicy. If there really is a higher spiritual order, if there really is karma, if there is divine justice. And given that most people are fundamentally good, that's the common assumption, right? I mean the vast majority of people aren't out there stealing and killing and raping. And why is there still so much suffering in people's lives and in the world? And spiritual traditions and especially buddhism teaches us that our suffering is self-inflicted. So how does that work exactly? 

Very important stuff. So we'll talk about all that today. Should be a pretty awesome show. Before we do, I want to recommend you listen to this podcast at 1x speed because all the fast listening accelerates the mind and hence works counter to our meditation. And if you haven't listened to the previous episodes yet, I highly recommend you do that first because these episodes build on each other, kind of like a TV show. 

Final point, before we get started, the best way to follow the podcast is on my website mannymandala.com. That's where you find everything else. I have all episodes there in audio and video format for you, including links to 21 different platforms I'm on, plus all my social media, download links, transcripts, and of course my complete meditation course, The Meditate More Challenge for free. So go to mannymandala.com to check that out. That's M-A-N-N-Y, mannymandala, mandala, mannymandala.com. 

All right. With the housekeeping out of the way, we'll get started and I gotta take a minute to vent again, guys, because the unmeditative state of people's minds, I mean, maybe this is my punishment for not starting to teach this stuff sooner. 

But there's a bank account that I hadn't used in two years because I was traveling and then the next time I tried to use the account, my bank sent me this message. “Your account is still open but currently dormant in status. To activate, kindly visit our branch to update the account info with details below.”And I wrote back, “I will be in Latin America this year, so I cannot come to the branch personally, nor can I reactivate the account remotely.” 

Sit down for what they wrote to me next. “To activate the account, kindly mail to the branch the consularized and apostilled account updating documents, personal info sheet, deposit account application form, specimen signature, terms and conditions, privacy consent, cybersecurity form, passport, and current visa.” So they held out eight bureaucratic hoops for me to jump through just to reactivate an account that was already open for almost 10 years and always in good standing with this bank. So this makes no sense. And they want all the documents consularized or apostilled.

Like I always say, humanity is suffering from severe spiritual illness and this kind of bureaucracy is the most blatant outgrowth of that. One step below outright communism, which my first piano teacher was from the Soviet Union, so I've heard firsthand reports of what that's like. And this bank is one step away from that. 

But you see what I mean when I say life is a tale told by an idiot, right? I mean, reactivating that account would be one click on her computer. And in fact, why should it even be deactivated? Or at least if they want to deactivate it, why not send me a message first and ask me if I still need it. 

Then the worst part, to reactivate, eight documents and get them all consularized. Why not nine documents or seven or 300 or one? So why do I talk about this in the context of a meditation podcast? Because this is the nonsense the mind comes up with when it's totally overactive. These people need to meditate more, right? This is a problem of an overagitated mind coming up with all these ideas. Meditation would be the solution for anyone who thinks this is normal or that this makes any sense whatsoever. 

But anyway, that's enough for me on that topic. Let's get into the heart of the episode into the real meditation content. And I mentioned this briefly in Episode 1 of the podcast as well. But I'll go a bit deeper today. 

So 20 years ago, I was a piano teacher in Singapore. And I had one student who was also a Westerner. And back in those days, that was pretty much enough to become friends with someone. Because until about 10 years ago, there weren't a lot of people traveling to Asia. So we ended up having conversations as fellow expats, right? Not just as a teacher-student. 

The topic came to meditation. And we were in a restaurant and he said something really interesting. He said, “Look around at all the people walking around in this restaurant, sitting there having their meals. Do you think any of these people are present? Do you think any of them with their consciousness, their focus, they are with the meal they're having or they're with the step they're taking as they're walking around the restaurant?” No, they're not. They're all completely caught up in their mind. They're constantly thinking and thinking and thinking, right? Like we all do until we start to seriously meditate. 

So he introduced me to his teacher who was a sanyasin. And as I mentioned in other episodes, that means someone who has dedicated their life to the spiritual path. She had even changed her name as a symbol of her devotion to spiritual practice. And I started reading the books of her guru, which by the way, was Osho. Fascinating guy. I'm going to make a whole episode about Osho soon. So stay tuned for that. And I'll tell you a whole bunch of stuff that you probably haven't heard about Osho before.

And Osho is a bit of a mixed bag. But he had one of the best ways of explaining what meditation really is. The way he put it was, if our legs were as sick as our minds, working even when we don't need them, then we would use our legs to walk somewhere and then we would sit down and our legs wouldn't stop walking even though we're already seated. Imagine someone sitting in a chair and legs still walking. 

That's basically the state of our mind. When we're done solving a problem or thinking through something that we have to do. Does the mind stop when it's done working on the issue? Oh, it keeps running and running and running. Even when we sleep. Imagine if our legs kept walking while we sleep. That's how ill our minds are before we seriously start to meditate. 

But we can get past that. And that's why we meditate more, right? I do at this point stay in a meditative state all day long. And I'll talk about that in a second and how you can do that too. Like I always say, it's really so worth it because it will magically transform your life for the better with every step you make on this path. 

And so today I want to talk about how you can use meditation to become more productive, to get more done, to achieve more of your goals, to get more of the things you want out of life, right? The more we get done, the more of our goals we can manifest into the real world as per Episode 3 about the real Law of Attraction. 

And as I always say, there is always time to meditate because time invested in meditation is time you get back with interest. So we never really spend time on meditation. We always invest time in meditation. So I like to describe meditation as a time bank account and it's an account with staggering interest rates. Because for every hour you invest in your meditation practice, you get more than an hour in increased productivity back. So meditation never really costs time, it gives us time. 

And the way that works is because meditation enhances our mental clarity, right? We become more focused, and we can concentrate better, we get better ideas. And that's why we become far more productive when we meditate. Our output increases, wasted actions decrease, you work faster, you find better ways to do things. That's the ideas that pop in your head while you're meditating. 

You even stop doing some things altogether. You know, sometimes in your meditation, you get an idea of how you could solve the problem in a much faster, easier way and entire tasks drop off completely, you realize you don't have to do those anymore. You may not be able to see that just yet but you will. 

Because these satori moments, these little insights that hit you during your meditation, right? That's why I teach insight meditation in The Meditate More Challenge. By the way, meditatemorechallenge.com, check that out if you haven't yet. Your life will begin to streamline. 

So make this your mantra: For every minute I invest in my meditation practice, I get more than a minute of free time back. And it makes so much sense if you think about it, right? When you sit down and you meditate even just for five minutes, and you realize we can't even focus our mind on something as simple as breathing, right? 

We think we can. We think we have the ability to focus on something. But when we actually put it to the test in a meditation session, we realize we can't. We cannot focus even on breathing something so simple. And we don't even have to do any special breathing techniques. We're just supposed to watch the breath. And the mind can't even do that, because it constantly drifts off. So that proves we're not really concentrated, we're not really focused. 

So how could we possibly truly focus on more complex tasks, right? They're very immersive, the complex tasks occupy our consciousness and our mind completely. So we don't notice just, like we don't notice that we're dreaming at night when we're sleeping, it all seems normal. 

Meditation practice proves that we're actually not really focused and we're actually not really concentrated on what we're doing. The mind does drift constantly, it's not under our control. So the more we meditate, the more we strengthen that focus muscle, and the more we can stay concentrated on what we're doing. And that's another reason why we become more productive. 

There's a famous saying that you probably heard. “If you don't have 20 minutes a day to meditate, then you need to meditate 40 minutes a day.” That one's really famous. And it basically just means that if your life is so chaotic and so hectic, that you don't even have 20 minutes of free time, that means that your mind is extremely overactive to create this situation in your life, right? 

And of course, some things are created externally, although a lot of advanced spiritual teachers would say, “No, actually, we create everything ourselves,” but that's a topic for another episode. For now, I'll say that if your life is too hectic to meditate, take the time to do it anyway, because that will fix that hectic state of your life, that will solve that problem for you as well. 

So there's no time. Start small, just do one minute a day, start meditatemorechallenge.com, can start with as little as one minute a day and then gradually work your way up. So meditate more to get that benefit, right? To become more productive, to stop wasting time on wasted actions or bad ideas when you could get a much better idea just by taking the time out to meditate a little bit. 

So my complete meditation course is free at meditatemorechallenge.com. Check that out. And I want to give you one meditation tip right now. And that's been among the most life changing for me. And that is how to practice meditation 24 hours a day. And it's actually really simple. Here's what you have to do. 

You just keep doing the same thing you do on the pillow, but you do it during your daily life as well. So on the pillow, whenever you notice that you got caught up in random thoughts, you bring the mind back to the breath. And in everyday life, you do the same thing. Whenever you notice that you got caught up in random thoughts, bring your mind back to what it is you're doing. 

And start this with the most boring chores you have, right? The kind of chores that are so boring that you want to listen to music or podcasts or keep the TV going in the background while you do them, such as doing the dishes, cleaning the house, walking somewhere, standing in line. It's kind of boring, tedious situations that we like to distract ourselves from with audio or some kind of screen stuff. That stuff is very easy. Those tasks are actually a great opportunity to practice meditation during your day. 

Very easy stuff. You just gotta remember to do it. And it'll probably take longer to catch your mind running away. You know, maybe when you're sitting on the pillow, maybe every couple of minutes, you notice that your mind has drifted away. And maybe in your everyday life, it just happens once every 20 minutes. But as you practice, you get better at it. 

And remember that every time you catch yourself, every time you realize that your mind has drifted away, and you're not present with the dishes you're doing or the walking motion of your legs, that's a win. Because every time you notice, you become a little bit more present in your life. 

And it's really going to make a big difference in the quality of your life. Because becoming more and more present during your whole day, and not just when you sit on the pillow, means that all the benefits of meditation are going to translate much more into your everyday life. All the stuff I talked about in Episode 1—that negative stuff affects you less, positive stuff brings more pleasure, and so on. There was a long list of benefits. I talked about them in more depth also on Day 1 of The Meditate More Challenge. So check that out meditatemorechallenge.com. 

By the way, I got another comment on that challenge from a listener and she writes, “I started with hardly managing seven minutes and can now at least sit for an hour.” And I replied, “Yeah, that was the same for me.” I really had phases when even five minutes felt like a strain, because I was just getting antsy, even after five minutes or less than five minutes. But eventually I worked my way up to doing two hours a day and even 10 hours a day at times.

 
And we do that with progressive overload meditation. I already talked about that on the podcast. And there are two more techniques that will help you to build up to an hour a day or two hours a day easily if you want to. And that's the inner arcade and stillness stacking. Game changing techniques. But you'll have to grab my course to learn about those because I need to move on. Sign up to the challenge for free at meditatemorechallenge.com. 

And now we'll get to the main topic of today. That's, of course, the biggest mistake in Buddhism, the way it's commonly taught these days. And the question, why is there so much suffering, even though most people are basically good, or at least they aren't fundamentally evil, right? 

So to set the stage real quick in Episode 5, we talked about cognitive biases. Go back and listen to that one first if you haven't yet. It's very important to understand that aspect of our mind from a meditation point of view. But as a quick review for those who have listened to Episode 5, cognitive biases are mistakes in thinking that are systemic, meaning they're inherent to the mind and especially to the unmeditated mind. 

So a famous example is confirmation bias. Conservatives tend to watch Fox and liberals tend to watch CNN. And if you say, “Yeah, I do that,” or “That makes sense,” then definitely go back to Episode 5. 

Another example of cognitive bias is the normalcy bias. And that's underestimating the probability of a disaster, because it hasn't happened yet. And humanity is big time affected by this one right now, but also a topic for another show. 

Here's the cognitive bias that will shock you. There is one called moral disengagement. And it was studied by Albert Bandura. He's a Canadian-American psychologist. That's a scary cognitive bias. Here's what it is. It says that people mentally justify unethical behavior. And they say things like, “Yeah, this is causing harm, but it's okay.” Because remember, in Episode 3, when I talked about the ‘yes, but’. The ‘yes, but’ can be an aspect of the ego. 

An example is a soldier who kills dozens of people, but they call those people animals. And psychologists call that dehumanization. And it's an example of moral disengagement. And it happens a lot in war, it's not an uncommon thing. Or a police officer who participates in a genocide, and he might say, “I was just following orders.” Psychologists call that one displacement of responsibility. And it's another example of moral disengagement, the cognitive bias, right? So we're going deep here. 

First, we talked about cognitive biases in Episode 5, then we talked about the specific cognitive bias called moral disengagement. Then there are examples that psychologists have studied, such as displacement of responsibility. 

And a specific example of that particular psychological phenomenon is anyone who says, “I was just following orders.” Famous sentence from the Nuremberg Trials. What stands up in a court of law does not hold up in the eyes of the divine, does not hold up in the eyes of the Creator. Or a company dumping chemicals in a river, they might say, “Oh, it's just a little pollution; won't really hurt anyone.” That one psychologists call minimizing harm. And that's also moral disengagement. That's also a cognitive bias, right? 

So that's the principle in a nutshell. Moral disengagement lets people violate their own moral code while still feeling like a good person based on some kind of justification. Okay, that's really important. There's a cognitive bias called moral disengagement. And that's when people violate their own moral code while still feeling I'm a good person, based on some kind of justification. 

And now let me give you some extreme examples. So you really get where I'm going with this. Bandura, the psychologist that studied this phenomenon of moral disengagement, he found that even murderers, rapists, home invaders, gang members, thieves in prison, think they're genuinely good people. Even dictators who commit genocide think they're genuinely good people. 

And it gets even worse. Because there's another data set by a researcher by the name of Constantine Sedikides. I hope I pronounced his name, right? Looks Greek. I'm not sure. So he's from the University of Southampton. And he discovered that these incarcerated hardened criminals actually tend to view themselves as more moral than average. I think they are kinder, more trustworthy and more honest than the average person. So not only aren't they bad people, they think they're actually particularly good people.

And that raises the question, if we all suffer from cognitive biases, all of us, this is a normal inherent systemic part of the human mind. But does this cognitive bias of moral disengagement only apply to hardened criminals? Or could it apply to the average person as well? Let's find out. 

And I will make the case that the answer is yes, most people aren't quite as good as they think they are. And in three major ways. Today, we'll talk about one of those. And I'll have to leave the other two for the next episode. So stay tuned, because each one is a pretty big topic in and of itself. 

And if we want to talk about this, we have to first define the term, what really is a good person? What does that mean? And the most basic way we can define it is by going back to podcast number one, a good person is one that lives by the Golden Rule. But here's the thing, there are two versions of the Golden Rule. Have you ever considered that? Have you ever given that some thought? 

There's one that says, “Don't do unto others as you don't want done unto you.” That's known as the apophatic Golden Rule from Greek apophysis, which means negation. So this version of the Golden Rule tells you what not to do. Don't murder, don't steal, don't rape, don't assault people, don't trespass in their homes, don't coerce people, don't lie to people, basic, basic stuff, right? And most people would agree. And most people live by this law. Or do they? 

We'll get to that in a little bit. But first, there's a second version of the Golden Rule. And that's “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And that's known as the cataphatic Golden Rule that comes from Greek cataphysis, which means affirmation. So that one tells us what to do, right? 

So there's a negative and a positive version. There's one that tells us what not to do. “Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.” And there's a positive version that tells us what to do. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That's not at all the same thing. They're actually very different in meaning and what they imply. 

And the cataphatic Golden Rule is where it suddenly gets difficult to be a quote unquote, “good person.” Because now suddenly, it's not enough to not initiate harm to others. We also have to proactively do good. Because most people would say, “Hey, I'm a good person. I don't steal, I don't kill, I don't rape, I try to tell the truth whenever possible. I really care about the people who are close to me. I'm nice and polite to strangers.” But how many people are truly spending their time proactively trying to do good? That's a step beyond, isn't it? 

And at this point, I want to call back to Episode 6 to Allan Kardec's books. I told you there were two points in The Spirits Book that I did not like. Not that I disagreed with them, necessarily. They just made me uncomfortable. And that was one of them. 

And specifically, it's question 642 in The Spirits Book by Allan Kardec. It says, “In order to be acceptable in the sight of the Creator and to ensure our future happiness, is it sufficient not to have done evil? The answer is no. It is necessary for each to have done good also to the utmost limits of his ability. Each of you will have to answer not only for all the evil he has done, but also for all the good which he has failed to do.”

Wow. So that's a tall order, right? But if you think about it, that's what the Buddha taught as well. Remember the three tenets of Buddhism we talked about in Episode 1? Purify the mind, meditate, good, a lot of people are doing that. Number two, don't do evil. Most people aren't actively doing evil. 

And then there's the third tenet of Buddhism, cultivate good, do wholesome actions, do good. And that's also all over the New Testament of the Bible. For example, the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, in the parable of Lazarus and Luke 16, and any number of other places. And if that's really the standard, and we'll analyze more if that really is the standard in a bit. But if it is, how many people can really make that claim that they're doing good to the utmost limits of their ability? Because that's the wording here. 

And I want to make one thing clear, I'm really not pointing fingers here, because I can't. I wasn't doing that myself before I truly got this lesson. I also thought, hey, I'm not harming anyone. So I'm a good person, right? And in fact, as I said, this whole concept made me really uncomfortable, which should have been a clue that maybe I need to look at myself when it comes to this. But yeah, I didn't like reading that one bit. 

So let me give you an analogy. Let's say planet Earth is a house, and that house is on fire. Not the whole house is on fire. Only some of the rooms are on fire, right? Only a few countries are at war. Only a few countries are suffering from famines. And we're in a room that's not on fire right now, right? There's no famine in our countries. There's no war in our countries. We're pretty much okay. 

So here's the question. Can you really say you're a good person if you're in a house that's on fire if you don't help to put out the fire, if you don't help to save the people who are in the rooms that are on fire, people who are trapped in the burning room screaming for help? Can you sit in the living room and watch a movie and say, “Hey, what do you want from me? I'm not harming anyone. I'm a good person,” and meanwhile, we're hearing the screaming people in the upstairs bedroom begging for our help?

That always reminds me of that song, We Didn't Start The Fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning. Okay, fine. So the fire has been burning since before we came into the house. Are we going to put it out? Or are we going to walk into this burning house and just do our own thing? 

And if you look at it this way, I think it becomes pretty clear that this question 642 makes complete sense. Of course, we have the responsibility to do good to the best of our ability, because there is so much suffering in this world. 

And I will put even that in perspective, there's another part of the book where it says, of course, we also have a certain amount of freedom, the Creator knows that we need some rest, some recovery sometimes, or if you want, you can say the universe knows that we need some rest and recovery sometimes. But I will say this Earth is a world of suffering, not everywhere all the time. But everywhere is some of the time, all the time in some places. So since there is a lot of suffering, of course, we all have the responsibility to help those who are suffering. 

That's actually even enshrined in human law, flawed as that is, failure to render assistance is a criminal offense. If you pass a traffic accident, and you don't stop to help, you will be found guilty of a crime, even in a human court of law. 

And of course, look, sure, there are people like that, there are people who really dedicate their whole lives to doing good. But the vast majority of humanity is focused first on making enough money. That's the priority for most people. And then second, when that's done, and they have time left, then I think if we're honest, most people, including myself in the past, spend that free time having fun in some way, watching TV, going to the beach, going on vacation, going to parties, playing video games. 

And that's actually a spiritual path in its own right—focusing only on yourself on your own pleasure and sense gratification. And again, I don't want this to come across too preachy, because I was guilty of this myself big time for many years of my life. I was a straight up hedonist before I came back on the spiritual path in earnest. 

But this living only for oneself is actually known in spiritual teachings as a path. And specifically, it's called the left-hand path. There's another name for that that is also called Satanism—embracing the ego fully, as opposed to trying to get past the ego and try to attain oneness with the all. It's embracing the isolation. It's all about me, me, me—ego. 

Embracing ego is essentially what the religion of Satanism really is. It's not about sacrificing animals. It's not about worshipping the devil. It's a way of looking at the world that truly embraces the ego. And I want to go in depth on that topic in episode 9, when we're going to have a closer look at the religion of Satanism. Fascinating topic. So stay tuned for that one. 

For now, let's have another look at Buddhism. Because as I said, this is one of the biggest mistakes in Buddhism, the way it's being interpreted by most people these days. Because the basic Buddhist teachings about what makes a good person, about the difference between right and wrong are the Five Shilas. They are: Don't kill, don't steal, don't rape, don't lie, don't drink. Those are the Five Shilas, the moral teachings of Buddhism, the basic rules of how to be a good person. And I'm giving a very simplified version. But that's the five basic rules. 

And I asked the Buddhist a couple of months back, “Do you think if you just follow these five rules, that makes you a good person? We don't have any responsibility to proactively do good?” And he said, “Yes, I like Buddhism, because I can do whatever I want, so long as I don't do those five things.”

So he chose his religion like someone might choose a job based on the benefits and based on the freedom it gives him. And this Buddhist later sent me a message. And he wrote, “You're free to do whatever you like, so long as you don't break the five rules. These are 100% in the Pali Canon, that's the core Buddhist scriptures, solid and unambiguous.” 

And you know, that's an opportunity to point something else out about scripture. I call this kind of spirituality, lawyerism, where people will say things like “Here it says written on black and white in paragraphs such and such, in verse such and such.” 

Here's the thing. These scriptures are guides. They're meant to make us understand what's really going on in reality, in spirituality. The scriptures are the famous finger pointing to the moon. You may have heard of that one. But it's really about the moon, it's not about the finger. The scriptures point to deep truths. But it's about these deep truths, the scriptures point to, it's not about the scriptures themselves. It's not about the written words on a piece of paper. 

So, yes, the Five Shilas are a great starting point, right? But as always, we need to go beyond them, we need to go deeper. Everybody needs to go deeper. I still need to go deeper, I still have a long way to go, of course. I'm still on the path, I'm still learning more every day, I'm still meditating every day. 

But in conclusion, this is where almost all people fall prey to the cognitive bias we talked about—moral disengagement. Not just hardened criminals, not just mass murderers, not just dictators. But the vast majority of everyday people will say, “I don't harm anyone, therefore I'm a good person.” As it turns out, the bar is a little higher than that. Because most people pass the apathetic Golden Rule test, right? They're not out there killing, raping, stealing, but most people fail the cataphatic Golden Rule test. When they're done with their work for the day, they try to have fun while the world is on fire. They're not out there proactively doing good. 

And again, this is more a mistake in the way Buddhism is being interpreted rather than in actual Buddhist teachings. Because Dhammapada verse 183, it says, “To avoid all evil, cultivate good, and to purify one's mind.” This is the teaching of the Buddhas. Meaning anyone who doesn't teach doing good proactively isn't a Buddha, right? If the teaching of all the Buddhas is to cultivate good, to do good, to do wholesome deeds, and anyone who's not teaching that is not a Buddha is not enlightened. 

So I've just given you a measuring stick to size up spiritual gurus out there. I hope you caught this. This is a big deal. And you can tell by now that the selfish variant of Buddhism, what I call me-ditation, only following the Five Shilas, and other than that, do whatever you want, isn't actually Buddhism. The Buddha specifically said you're not a Buddha if you're not teaching proactively doing good in the world. You're not enlightened if that isn't part of your focus. 

Just being focused on ourselves actually qualifies someone as a bad person. As per the analogy of the burning house, it's not neutral. I don't either do harm, nor I do good, so I'm neutral. In a burning house where people are screaming for their lives, if you don't run to get water, you're not in a neutral state of consciousness. That makes one a bad person. 

And that's why, as I said a few minutes ago, embracing selfishness and the ego is actually the first rule of the left-hand path and of the religion of Satanism. So unknowingly, this Buddhist I talked to considers himself a Buddhist, but the spiritual path he's actually practicing is the religion of Satanism. Total focus on himself only. That's the ego. Ego is that me-me-me thinking. That's separation thinking. That's the very ego Buddhists are trying to get out of with their meditation. 

All right, this was a heavy one, right? I hope I've given you a lot to think about. I've been chewing on this one for over 21 years. And as I said, I've been more guilty of this particular moral failing than anyone. So, again, please don't think I'm preaching or pointing fingers. This is a lesson I had to teach to learn, right? 

They say we often teach that which we most need to learn ourselves. Because 10 years ago, I was straight up focused on making money, traveling the world, partying it up, bottle service at the beach.That's what I was really living for. And I can't say I'm proud of that. And I'm still chewing on the finer points of these moral lessons today. But honestly, after some reflection, even back in 2004, I did come to the conclusion that yeah, it's true, we should actually do good in the world, right? And I have always tried to do that. But I can't say it was my main priority. 

And one reason is because I was breaking my head, what should we do exactly? What can we really do about the problems in this world? They're so big, right? What can we do about the wars in the Middle East, like go to the street and wave signs, and I'll go in depth on that question in a future episode as well. But that question did paralyze me. I was thinking, should I now just give up on my career and go to Africa and build schools or like what exactly should we do? 

Because if we're going to do good, we want to have the biggest positive impact possible, right? I'll talk about that. But for now, if this isn't an active part of your life yet, and I'm sure that for some of you it already is. A lot of spiritual people are on that path already of proactively doing good. If I'm not talking to you, then I'm not talking to you. But if it's not part of your life yet, I would just start with two rules: Start small and start anywhere. Do anything at all. 

Here's a very, very small example that's not going to end the wars, it's not going to heal the world, but it's going to move the needle a tiny little bit, just like we start with as little as one minute of meditation, and then we build from there, right? So here's the equivalent of your one-minute meditation for the cataphatic golden rule. This is just one example, it doesn't matter what you do, just do anything. 

Next time a asks you for money, don't just shrug him off, or don't even just give him a quarter, talk to him for a few minutes and see if you can give him some encouraging words. And I know some of those people have mental illness and can't be helped that easily. I know some of them are dishonest and just want to scam you. 

What I try to do is I try to hear them out and I try to get a feel for what they're really all about. And sometimes you'll help someone and they'll break down in tears because nobody's given them even five seconds of attention all day. And they got five kids at home, one of them needs medicine and is coughing up blood or whatever their story is. 

See what I'm saying, guys, this isn't about whatever moralizing finger pointing, it's just trying to remember there's real suffering in this world. And it'll affect us at some point to write and if we can help even just a little, let's try. So instead of saying, “Oh, if I give him money, he'll just spend it on booze.” One thing we can do is just buy him a meal. And if we have the time, sit with him, hear the story, because maybe we can give him some pointers, maybe we can give him some encouragement. 

This is a huge topic that I can't really do justice without making a whole episode about it. But just to say, start small, start anywhere, but start. And this is also one of the things that I found very appealing about the spiritist centers that I talked about in Episode 6, ones that were focused on Allan Kardec's work in particular. 

They are very focused on doing good. They have a lot of charitable projects to help people, you can get involved with your time or by donating simple things. Even sometimes people who don't have much money themselves, they frequent those centers. And every week they go they bring one package of rice for a family need, right? That kind of thing. 

Does that sound cheesy? I almost feel like this kind of talk sounds cheesy in our society. But honestly, then I think that just goes to show where our society is at. 

Today, I want to leave you with a quote from Edmund Burke. And he says, “All that's required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” And I would adjust that quote a little bit. If you do nothing, you're not a good man. So we have just a few really bad people in the world. That's true. A few real psychopaths. But they're very active, they get into governments, they get into powerful corporations, they get into big institutions. And the”good people” are mostly pretty passive. And that's why the world is such a mess. It's not rocket science. 

All right. Heavy episode today. But I think it’s very important that we talk about this. And now I have a few more very important points. Make sure you stick around for these because we have some absolutely life changing killer content coming up next week. And I'll tell you all about that in a second.

First, if you like this episode, you'll probably love The Meditate More Challenge. That's my complete meditation course. And it's absolutely free for now. Go check that out at meditatemorechallenge.com. 

And I'd like to ask you a quick favor. If you know someone who's interested in spirituality and meditation in today's topics, send them to mannymandala.com. That's M-A-N-N-Y mandala, mannymandala.com. It's not Mandela, people confuse that sometimes. And if you want to share a specific episode, there are links to make that easy. Episode 1 is mannymandala.com/1. Episode 2 is mannymandala.com/2, and so forth. 

And if you haven't listened to the other episodes yet, I recommend you go over the archives. Start with Episode 1 and go in order. I honestly think it's going to change your life. And subscribe to the podcast, of course, because next week we'll talk about how you can use meditation to increase your attention span. 

So my sister is a dog trainer and she has an Instagram page for her dog training business. And here's what she told me. She said we used to have seven seconds with an Instagram post to get someone's attention. Now we have three. But within a few years, people's attention span has reduced from seven seconds to three. 

Here's a hint. If you're on social media, if you're on these apps, if you're on the screens, that has affected you, you have been part of this transformation. So next week, we'll talk about how to get our attention spans back. They're getting scrambled by screens, by apps, by short-form content, right? 

Short-form content these days gets about 20 times more traffic than long-form content. Not a good state to be in. We're basically training ourselves to be more ADD by constant notifications. Here's a bing, there's beep conversations and tiny chat snippets, accelerated listening, on and on. 

This is scrambling our minds. This is all anti-meditation, we have to talk about this. So we'll talk about that next week. And meditation, of course, is a big part of the puzzle. I'll give you the other part next week. 

In the how-to part of next week's episode, we'll talk about daydreaming, how to deal with it if it happens during your meditation, or if it just happens during your day, and how to even use it to your benefit and for spiritual growth. Probably not what you think. 

And next week’s Dhamma talk, we'll talk about the other two ways a lot of people fall prey to the cognitive bias called moral disengagement. Heavy stuff but important stuff. Oh, and I said, we'll talk about the question, what is God? But I'll have to leave that one for next week, too, because this was pretty long and pretty heavy already. 

So all that and more in the next episode of The Meditate More Podcast. Subscribe if you want to be notified when the next episode is ready. And the best way to subscribe is to hit the big yellow button on my website, mannymandala.com. 

One more thing. After last week's episode about the spirit realm, I got an email from a reader that was fascinating. And I want to read you this email before I sign off today. Here it goes.
“This happened 10 years ago. There was a night when I woke up with a feeling of shock. There was a strange deep and rhythmic humming in my head. It was more like a vibration than a real noise. It was not coming through the ears. I sat up and looked at the door of the room. 

Over there was a person. It wore a dark cloth and the sensor smoke was coming out of it and he was swinging it while looking in my direction. I was not able to move and he came closer by teleporting. Always a little bit closer till he was standing directly in front of my bed and looking down while I was looking up. And I could see the face. It was very old and pale and there were a lot of scars. He did not talk but put a golden coin on my forehead. I lost consciousness and fell asleep against my will. 

Just to startle again, the heart is still racing. He was gone. The strange noise was still there. It sounds like a scene out of a horror movie and it's the creepiest thing that ever happened to me. But it was exactly like this and I'm very sure that I was not dreaming. In addition, I found out later that what he did with the coin was something which was done to people a long time ago for real and the clothes he wore was what occultists wear for their ceremonies.”

And she goes on and she says, “I hope you believe me.” And I said, “Yeah, I don't have any reason not to believe you.” Because I've heard many dozens of stories like that firsthand from people I know personally and I have experienced some myself. Some that you really don't want to experience because it's a jungle out there in the spirit world. There is dark and light so to be taken with a lot of caution. That's also why I told you last episode, don't try to experiment at home and experience people before you mess with this stuff yourself. It's not to be trifled with. 

And I just read this to show people what I said last week. If you only ask a few people if they ever had experience with spirits, you will get firsthand accounts pretty quickly. And I said ask 20 people. That's just to be really sure. But honestly probably asking five people is enough and in Brazil probably asking two people is enough. 

So I'm going to leave you with this creepypasta for today. It's not fiction. It's a genuine email I received and it's genuine experiences I've heard from friends and that I've made myself. But that's all for today. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you on the next episode so make sure to subscribe to the podcast now. 

And special thanks to Mariano Roguin and Lex Van Someren for providing some of their music for the podcast. Thank you for the music, guys. I really appreciate it. And remember to meditate more, meditate more, meditate more because it is so, so worth it.