law are happening. And sometimes people in their dream realize that they're dreaming, that they go on with that reality, right? So that's like the world. So we perceive the world and our individual selves as ultimate and nature as real, but only Brahman is real. And we are all Brahman. Again, I'm speaking in the first person. I don't mean to say we, as in Muslims, are saying this. Don't take these things out of context. These are not things that I necessarily believe in. But I'm speaking in the first person because I'm representing, it's a more sort of effective way of speaking the tradition. Everything is Brahman, right? Everything is Brahman. Everything is one when you reach moksha. Okay. So our jivas, right? Again, the jiva is the what? The individual mortal soul or the Brahman clothed in prakriti, in matter and mind. That jiva must be transcended in order to unite with the atman, which is the incorruptible soul, which is Brahman. In other words, when our atman realizes that it is Brahman, it is in reality Brahman self actualizing, right? Brahman actualizing himself. So it is the jiva with all of its acquired karma that will reincarnate, right? What is karma? Karma. So just as there is, you know, the physical law of cause and effect, you have the moral law of cause and effect, right? So the karma, so the jiva with its acquired karma will reincarnate, should it not reach moksha? And this can go on indefinitely. When one reaches moksha, all multiplicity and materiality and illusion will vanish. And one will come to the realization that there is only one, the Brahman. So this is, if we're to classify this, what type of theology is this? So this is probably best described as pan-antheistic monism, right? Pan-antheistic monism. So what does it mean? Pan-antheistic. Everything is in God, right? God is, sorry, all is in God and monism. God is all there is in reality. So, Kabbalistic Judaism also espouses this type of pan-antheism. But unlike Kabbalistic Judaism and Nirguna Brahmanism, the world, the jagat, is totally illusory. It has not created ex nihilo. It's not created out of nothing. It wasn't created at all, right? It's not actually there. Everything is actually Brahman and we're just blinded by illusion. So in Kabbalistic Judaism, the universe exists and is created, but God is greater than the universe, although the universe is nothing other than God. So in Kabbalism, we have this paradoxical language, which is basically used to communicate the idea that God is both ontologically superior to His creation and simultaneously, mysteriously inseparable from His creation, right? But at the end of the day, both Hinduism and Kabbalistic Judaism and not all Jews believe in the Kabbalah. But at the end of the day, both religions, Hinduism and Kabbalism, would seem to agree with a statement in the Torah, where God is called, that there is nothing else but Him. There's a verse in Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 39, which is used as a proof text by Kabbalistic Jews who believe in pan-antheistic monism, this idea that everything is actually God. This verse says, I am the Lord and there is none else, right? So it's not I am the Lord and there are no other gods. I mean, there are verses like this. They're called in Hebrew, in the Tanakh, in the Hebrew Bible. But this particular verse says, I am God, I am the Lord and there is nothing else. It is only God. God is all and all, right? So in this tradition of Kabbalistic Judaism, as well as in Hinduism, to say that God is separated from creation, to say that God is definitively separated from His creation, is to put a limit on God, is to say that there is some sort of existence separate from God's existence. And that's to put a limit on God. So that can't be true. Okay. But Hindu scholars, they say most people need sort of pointers, right? They need to put their love in some place or upon some form, right? Something tangible, something visible. So hence you have this idea, this concept of the avatars, right? The dash avatara in Sanskrit means the ten incarnations of Vishnu. Vishnu is just one of the manifestations of Brahman, right? So according to this other understanding that we're going to get to called Saguna Brahmanism, S-A-G-U-N-A, Brahman does have attributes and they're positive attributes. And you can describe God as having positive attributes. Remember in Nirguna Brahmanism is Satcitta and Ananda, infinite being, bliss and knowledge, or knowledge and bliss, right? And that's it. Everything else is neti neti. But in Saguna Brahmanism, this allows for a more cataphatic positive expression about Brahman. So Brahman is now described as creator, and sustainer, and destroyer. Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, right? Or Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Vishnu is the sustainer, right? So you have like the ilah and you have the rub. This is how it's taught, right? This is not three gods, right? These are manifestations of attributes of Brahman. And these aren't actual people, right? So Hindus don't believe that Krishna, for example, who was what is it? The ninth or eighth, I don't remember. He's one of the incarnations of Vishnu. They don't believe that he was actually a historical personage. Maybe some of them do, right? But these stories are mythos. It's a myth that's teaching a lesson about God, right? So what does it mean to be an incarnation of Vishnu? Again, Vishnu represents the attribute of Brahman, describing Brahman's concern and his ability to sustain the world, right? So in other words, right? Just like there's an ilah, ilah. The word ilah in Arabic denotes the transcendent God, whereas the rub denotes the one who's close to you, the one who takes care of you. We use this rubba, you rubbi, means someone who takes care of you, right? Your marabbi is the person who raises you, right? So the avatars are then revered and worshiped by most Hindus, right? And they also have and how are they worshiped? Well, they set up idols. They have iconography, right? Because again, according to Hindu scholars, most people need these kind of pointers. They need to see something. It's hard for them to conceptualize things. They need to represent them with some sort of physical form. It's like a C.S. Lewis, the famous Christian author. He says that he has a story where he was a little boy and he was going to go to sleep and they make a prayer with his parents. He asked his parents, what is God? And either his father or his mother said to him, God is formless and infinite. And then C.S. Lewis, he wrote years later that immediately I started thinking about this infinite ocean of tapioca pudding. That's where his brain went as a child, right? Because he's spiritually immature, infinite infinity. How do you conceptualize infinity, right? Formless, formless infinity. What are you talking about? His brain immediately what needed a visual. This leads us then to our second theological approach. And this is sort of the Hinduism of the masses. And this is what most people think is actually all of Hinduism, but it is not. But it is the approach of Saguna Brahmanism, S-A-G-U-N-A. Saguna Brahmanism also known as personalism, right? The Hindu of the masses. So here, oh, there's one more point I wanted to make. Going back to this idea of trying to conceptualize things versus representing them. So remember when we talked about the trinity, right? Remember the diagram of the trinity that I tried to explain, although not very effectively, the triangle of Peter of Poitiers. He said, the triangle is equilateral at every point. There's the person of God, Father, Son, the Spirit. In the middle is God. Three who's, one what. So that's good for starters, but it's also very inadequate compared to the concept in the mind, right? And the concept is nothing compared to the reality, right? Because the reality is ineffable. It is beyond speech. There's this idea of representation, conceptualization, and actualization, right? So Albiruni, who was a great Muslim scholar. He's called Albaronius, I think in Latin, Abu Rayhan Albiruni. He was arguably the founder, Bawadir, right? If you're going to use, you know, the, if you're going to do a paper on the 10 foundations of comparative religion, Albiruni would be probably, and this is by admission of Western scholars as well, Albirunius would be the founder, Alwadir, of that topic. And so he has a very famous book called Tariqul Hind, right? The History of India. And in this book, he distinguishes between what he calls the Khawas, like the elites, and the Amma, the vulgar, or the masses, right? Just like ordinary Hindu believers. And this is, this model is still used today. It's called the two-tiered model of religion, right? So what does he say about this? He says, the latter, the Amma, the vulgar, because they are not philosophically adept. They needed concrete manifestations or representations of the higher being. Therefore, shirk or polytheism became an accidental deviation. And in Hiroth is the word that he uses from Hinduism's essence, which according to Albiruni is monotheistic at the essence of the religion, because everything is Brahman, one God, right? It's a monistic religion. Everything is the same substance, and that is God. So he's saying here, so it is, it is, in other words, it is to heed at its sort of elite philosophical core, but shirk at its popular level. In other words, polytheism is caused by common people's inability to understand non-symbolic language or non-symbolic philosophical and theological matters. They need symbols. For the elites, the religious tradition is monotheistic. But at the popular level, it is manifested as polytheistic and highly anthropomorphic, right? The Scottish philosopher, famous Scottish philosopher David Hume, he actually agrees with Albiruni in his essay. He wrote an essay, he was an atheist, but he wrote an essay, The Natural History of Religion, where he says that he says, the intellectual and cultural limitations among the masses concerning original monotheism caused the vulgar to fall into anthropomorphism and the need for representation. So he says that the whole thing, the whole, the whole history of religion is characterized by, quote, the tension between theistic and polytheistic ways of thinking, right? This two-tiered model. Okay, so that leads us now to the second approach. Saguna Brahmanism, we said personalism. So here God is ishivara. Ishivara means Lord, right? So that's the focus of this approach is the rububia, if you will, the lordship of God, the proximity and nearness of God, ishivara. He's personal with attributes, correspond to his concern for humanity. He's loving, merciful, sustaining, so on and so forth. He assumes unlimited forms, incarnations, called avatars. And of course, we said the most famous of these is Krishna, right? Krishna, who is a major character in the Bhagavad Gita, right? He is the charioteer and interlocutor of Arjuna, who is sort of the protagonist of the story. The Bhagavad Gita is the entire book is a discourse or dialogue really between two men, between Arjuna, who is going to fight in the battle of Kurukshetra. This is a famous battle that might have been historical thousands of years ago in India. A massive battle. The winners would win or take all. He was on one side of the battlefield and then there was other, his cousins and whatnot, called the Kauravas. He was from the Pandavas against the Kauravas. You'd have to read the text to get the details. But anyway, his charioteer was Krishna and Arjuna doesn't know it, but Krishna is a divine incarnation of Vishnu, the attribute of Brahma's lordship, right? And then they have this incredible dialogue, culminating with Arjuna because he doesn't want to fight. He said, these are my brothers. I don't want to fight. And he's actually convinced that he should fight because sometimes fighting is necessary to create peace. Some people, they misinterpret the text and say that it's a text that advocating violence. This text was quoted by Oppenheimer, very famously, one of the chief engineers of the Manhattan Project that developed the hydrogen bomb. They've completely missed the point. The point is, you have to do your duty. Do your dharma. Right? You have to do your duty. Okay, according to Saguna Brahmanism, the perceived differentiation or duality then between God and the soul will always remain. Right? This is indispensable in order to bask in God's beatific vision. Right? So like, how would you appreciate the Grand Canyon if you are the Grand Canyon? You can't appreciate it. Right? How does the sun enjoy a beautiful sunset? These are things one of my professors, a Hindu professor, who's given me these analogies. Right? How does the sun enjoy a beautiful sunset? It can't enjoy it. It can't experience a sunset. It is the sun. So in order to experience God's beatific vision, one must not know that one is God. So this is not a total dissolution of the individual consciousness. Right? The perception of duality is indispensable. It remains. In the Upanishads, the analogy is a single salt crystal dropped into a freshwater lake. Right? So the salt only appears to dissolve completely in the vastness of the water, but something of its existence. However, infinitesimally small, however infinitesimally small, enjoy, remains to enjoy the water. You have a question here? Hearing about the Khawas and the Amma of the Hindus makes me think of the Khawas and Amma of the Muslims. There are also different understandings about Shirk between the two groups. Yeah, I mean this two-tiered approach. Right? I think it's across the board. Right? And you'll notice that people who do not safeguard their Aqidah, it's very important to study Aqidah. Right? Because things can creep into the religion. Sometimes they're harmless. So like the belief that, the belief that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is the initial creation, and that all of creation is derived from his light, that's a permissible belief. It's not, you know, it's not, it's not haram to believe that, not shirk to believe that, because one still maintains that he is creation. Right? So it's jaiz to believe that. But the hadith that the, that is based upon, I mean there's indications and other things in the Qur'an and things like that. Nothing explicit. But the explicit mention of that in the hadith is almost universally believed or maintained by the muhaditheen as being modour. It's a fabricated hadith. It could still be true. It doesn't mean it's definitely false. Right? But that's an example of something coming into the masses that was embraced. And that's a different situation because it's still a permissible belief. But there are other things that could come in. Cultural ideas can come into the religion. Right? That could impact one's sound akhida. Right? The beautiful thing about Islam though is that the fundamentals of the religion can be understood even by the simplest of people. That doesn't mean that the religion is simple. Right? But it means that the religion is really comprehensive and speaks to all of humanity. And it speaks to people in different ways. Right? So a simple Bedouin can grasp, hola wallahu ahad, allahu samad, lam yalid, walam yudad. One of my teachers told me what, he said that, and he was a convert and he said that he was overseas. And he said that one of the Bedouin said to him, what were you before you were Muslim? And he said, I was, my teacher, he said, I was a Christian. And the Bedouin said, what do they believe? And he said, well, they believe that Jesus is the Son of God. And then the Bedouin said, well, that kind of makes sense because Jesus didn't have a father. And then he said the other Bedouin hid him with his stick and said, lam yalid, walam yudad. Right? And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, I knew that. Right? So, so that's, that's, that's simple. God does not be getting, nor does he be, nor, God does not be getting, nor was he begotten. Now, you can write a 500 page dissertation on the theological intricacies and nuances of surats of ikhlas. That's fine, but that's not necessary. Hinduism, however, such as, it's such a deep philosophical religion. Right? I mean, the question is, how does one get to moksha? It's really a type of, of, of meditative learning that is very difficult for the fast majority of the people. And that's why you have these castes, right? The Jati system, the caste system, which is, you know, in theory abolished, but still practiced in, in India. I mean, like a consciousness of the caste system, still very much there. So like the Brahmins at the top, these are sort of the scholars and, so they don't have to do, I mean, they're just sort of, they have comfortable lives, they can, they can, they can take time and, and read and study and practice these yogas, right? Because it's expected for them to enter into a state of moksha quickly, whereas the people below them, especially people at the bottom of the caste system, right? And the caste Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. The Shudras are sort of the servants, the unskilled labors. I mean, what type of meditation can they do? So what, so the, the yoga that's prescribed for them is really a type of worship or devotion to these representations of Brahman, right? So basically worshiping idols, right? But the higher ways, the more enlightened ways is a type of learning and meditation. And then you have the Dalits under them, the untouchables, which is a sort of new caste that we'll maybe talk about in a minute here. Yeah, so definitely this two-tiered approach. You know, it's, it's a, there's also a type of, I would say, a type of providential protection for the Muslims, right?  And he's Harithun Alaikum, right? He's the most covetous or he's the, he's, he has the most concern for us. So he's giving us this advice, good advice coming from him obviously that I don't really, I don't fear shirk for you. It doesn't mean that people won't enter into shirk. It's just not a major concern. But I fear these, you know, these fitan in these, in these, these other areas, right? So, I mean, nobody in the history of Islam, no sect or group that claimed to be upon Islam ever came out and said, we worship the Prophet. That's our aqidah. This, God has protected the Prophet from that. I mean, people have come out and worship said Ali, right? The Alawiya believe that he's God. He's a divine incarnation. He's an avatar of Allah, this type of thing. This happened with Ali, but not with the Prophet, right? So we see a type of, you know, a type of preservation. God protects the Quran. He protects the Ummah, right? Okay. But thank you for your question. And then the other question. Oh, are you the one who debated David Wood? Yes, I debated, I debated Woody, as I call him, 2007, a long time ago. I debated David Wood. Yeah. Okay. So the question then becomes, how can both approaches be true at the same time? So you have Nirguna Brahmanists saying that God is transcendent. He's not represented by idols. He doesn't incarnate. You have the Saguna Brahmanists saying God has personal attributes. He can be represented by Murtis and Ishtas and avatars. So either Brahman, so either Atman is Brahman or he's not, right? God is either represented or he's not. Now the truth is, according to Hindus, that Brahman is above representation and Atman is Brahman because the world is, at the end of the day, illusory and ultimately God is all in all. However, this method of Saguna Brahmanism and this realization are not necessarily a requisite of moksha according to Hinduism. In other words, what I'm trying to say is, because representation and continuing to conceive of Brahman as other can and does lead to moksha, then it cannot be wrong. It's just not the higher way. It's not the best way. Right? So there's two ways to Brahman. One is better because it's more philosophical. It requires more thinking, more thought, more meditation. But the other way, Saguna Brahmanism, the way to God through devotion is also a valid way because it does lead to moksha. The achiever of moksha is called a sannyasin, usually an old man, sannyasin. He's described in the Bhagavad Gita, one who neither hates nor loves anything, cut off from the world like a wild goose, no fixed home but wanders north and south in the lakes and the skies. So basically he becomes like a homeless mendicant, taking no thought of the future and indifferent about the present. He lives identified with the eternal self and beholds nothing else. So in Islamic sort of Sufi terms, we would say like there's no baqa ba'ad al-fana. Again, fana is not the same as moksha. There's some similarities but it's not a one-to-one. But just to use the terms in technical terms of the people of Tasawwuf, there's no sobriety. There's no coming back to one's senses after one experiences annihilation in God. So one remains either raptured in the beatific vision if his method was saguna Brahmanism or immersed in the thought of divine realization if his method was nirguna Brahmanism. Okay, the last thing I'll mention here, how do you get to moksha? The four yogas. Yoga means a path, the four turuk if you want or madhahib. And what are they? They're called niyana yoga, spelled with a J, J-N-A-N-A, niyana yoga, which is usually practiced by the Brahmins. Then you have raja yoga, which is practiced by the kashatryas. Then you have karma yoga, which is practiced by the veishyas, those are farmers and artisans. And then you have bhakti yoga, which is practiced by the shudras, the servants and unskilled laborers, the vast majority of the people. So what do these four yogas represent? Basically, niyana yoga is experiencing moksha through knowledge, learning, studying, meditating, karma yoga. Sorry, raja yoga is through these sort of psychosomatic experiences, where there's reading coupled with movements of the body. Karma yoga is through work, right? Finding God through labor. And then bhakti yoga is through love, right? Or devotion, the worship of representations of the Brahmin. So we'll stop here, inshallah. Again, I highly recommend, if you're interested in learning more about Hinduism, getting the Bhagavad Gita with a good commentary and reading it, inshallah. So next week, we're going to finish our course with our final class, and it's going to be on a religion that is derived from Hinduism, like Christianity derived from its mother religion, Judaism, and that is the religion of Buddhism, inshallah. Subhanaka la ilmah, subhanaka la ilmah, la ilmah illa ma alam tana illa ka antal alim al hakeem, wa la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahil ali al-adheem. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. This is our final session of this course, inshallah. So we will be looking at our final religion, which is the religion of Buddhism, inshallah. I'm just seeing if I can get to the video here so I can follow along with the questions and comments. It doesn't seem to be coming up. I'll check back again, inshallah. So Buddhism, like Hinduism, is an extremely vast and nuanced religion. We'll just touch on some basics, inshallah. It is a sort of Hindu Protestant reform movement, if you will. It's like Islam is a Judeo-Christian reform movement, so Islam is kind of like a legalistic reformation of Judaism as well as a theological reformation of Christianity. So Buddha is sometimes referred to as the Martin Luther of Hinduism, the great reformer. The word Buddhism comes from buddh, which is a Pali word. Pali is an ancient Indian language. It's related to Sanskrit. It's kind of the language of the masses, the Amia language, whereas Sanskrit is more language of the elite, the language of scripture. It comes from buddh, which means to wake up or to know something. So buddha can be translated as the enlightened one, the awakened one, post-modernist might say the woke one. So like Islam, Buddhism is named after the attribute. It seeks to cultivate. So with Islam, I'm bringing up the video now. So there's very few people watching live, but you're free to ask questions, inshallah. So Islam hopes to engender submission to Allah and so Buddhism hopes to engender a type of enlightenment. Okay, so Buddhism is not named after the Buddha. That's a common misconception. Like Christianity is named after Christ, Judaism is named after Judah. Buddhism is named after the enlightened state or state of mind, state of being that the Buddha experienced. So first of all, who is the Buddha? Well, the Buddha was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama in 564 before the Common Era. This was a time, the sixth century before the Common Era, where you have this kind of proliferation of prophets all around the world, really, and sages. It's really called the axial age. That's a term that a German philosopher coined, Achenzeit in German, the axial age. So you have, for example, the Buddha here in India, the Mahavira also in India, you have Confucius in China, you have Zoroaster in Iran or in Persia, and then you have a fair amount of prophets in ancient Palestine during this time. So he was born in Lumbini, which is modern day Nepal. It's near the Indian border. He was a prince. His parents were royalty. His father was King Sudodhana and his mother was Queen Maya. They were the royalty of a family of a small kingdom called Shakya. They were of the Kshatriya caste. That's the administrative and ruling caste. You could read about the biography of the Buddha in books, but according to his biographers, or his sira, if you will, the sacred history of the Buddha, the Buddha's mother, Queen Maya, had a dream one night that a white elephant offered her a lotus flower, and then the elephant entered into the side of her body. Now, Buddhists do not believe that this was some kind of miraculous conception, like a virginal birth of Christ or something like that. They accept that King Sudodhana was the Buddha's biological father. The dream simply made Maya aware of her pregnancy and certainly of its importance. So the Queen had her dream interpreted by Brahmin diviners. These are kind of spiritual fortune tellers. They were the intellectual class. And she was told that her son would become either what's known as the Chakravartin, which is kind of the universal king of India, the one who would unite all 16 kingdoms of India, or he would become one of the greatest of spiritual masters. So either super king or super sage, but not both. So Prince Siddhartha Gautama was born, and according to his biography, he was born with 32 distinct birthmarks on his body, which was interpreted by the diviners to mean that indeed he was sort of destined or marked as it were for some sort of future greatness. Buddhist hegeographers also mentioned that Siddhartha actually began walking immediately upon birth, and wherever his foot touched, a lotus flower would spring up. And he also spoke as an infant according to his biography. And he's reported to have said, I am the chief of the world. I am foremost in the world. So we have these kind of highly realized I am statements, not unlike what we saw, for example, in the Gospel of John. The Brahmin seers told his father that if Siddhartha remained close to the palace, right, if he remained attached to palace life, if he if he sheltered his son within the confines of the palace, then he would indeed become the universal king, right? He'd become the chakravartin. And so they said to him basically, you need to keep him interested in the throne and political power. So surround him with beautiful young and healthy people. Don't let him see the true society, the problems of society. So Siddhartha had a luxurious upbringing. He had three palaces. He had access to 40,000 dancing girls. He was very handsome. Yet he was profoundly unhappy. Okay. So his father thought, well, we'll get him married off. Maybe that'll cheer him up. So he was married at 16 years old to a girl named Yosadhara. And so his father concealed from him three things, right? Because he was advised to by the Brahmin diviners. So his father concealed from him sickness, decrepitude, and death. And the servants were literally instructed that one that they would do a kind of a clean sweep of the area whenever Siddhartha would go out on his daily chariot ride with his charioteer Chandaka. And then we have what's known as the legend of the passing sights, the legend of the four passing sights. So on one occasion in his 29th year, Siddhartha's curiosity got the better of him. And he ventured beyond the palace grounds. And he saw a very old man hunched over who could barely walk. So he said, Chandaka, who is this? What is this? And Chandaka, his charioteer said, this is decrepitude, right? And then Siddhartha said to himself, well, that's going to happen to me. So it's not like he didn't know that he that he was going to get old. Of course, he knew that he just never really thought about it until now. It's like all of us know we're going to die. But go into a hospice, work in a hospice for a few days, and you're just surrounded by death.  It's end of life care. And it's a very sobering experience. So like one of the positive effects of the pandemic is that it really forces us to remember death. And when we do that, and it's not sort of a morbid fixation, when we remember death, we actually begin to appreciate life, the importance of life. Right? So it really sort of hit Siddhartha like a ton of bricks, I'm going to get old if I even get old. And then he saw a diseased man lying on the ground with boils all over his body. And he said, what is that? And the charioteer said that is sickness. And then he saw people carrying a corpse wrapped in a shroud. And he said, what is that? And he said, this is death. Those are the three sites. And then a fourth site, he saw a monk with a shaved head wearing a yellow robe with a very serene appearance and a flashing insight, an epiphany suddenly came to Siddhartha at finding fulfillment in the physical and the pleasures of the flesh is in vain because all things in the world are impermanent. They perish. Right? Psychologists say that the apprehension of death is really the end of childhood. When a child suddenly comes to this realization that they're going to get old and die, that's really the end of their childhood. They can never go back to that age of ignorance and bliss and fantasy. So Siddhartha had a son in Brahula, which he named, it means fetter or bond, like handcuffs, like ball and chain, something like that. And the idea here was that he thought that children, the idea is basically that children can be a source of distraction for people who are highly intelligent, people who are very contemplative, people who are very academic and being a parent is basically a full-time job, so it's seen as a distraction. So his hedonistic lifestyle kind of just left him dead on the inside and his family responsibilities prevented him from finding contentment. He felt like he was literally in a prison, which is interesting because there's a hadith that says, a dunya siginul mu'min, the world is a prison of the believer. Now shortly thereafter, you have what's known as the great going forth. So there's a key element to what's known as the monomyth, the monomyth known as the hero's journey. What is a monomyth? So a monomyth is a series of events in a story that seem to occur in multiple stories across multiple cultures. So one of the most common monomyths is called the hero's journey. And the hero's journey really has three parts. The first part is called separation. There's some sort of separation. The hero is separated. The second part involves trials, victories, and some sort of apotheosis, apotheosis, some sort of enlightenment experience. And then the third part is a return. So we see this in, for example, in the story of the Buddha. We see this in the epic of Gilgamesh. We see this in the story of the biblical Jesus. We see it in Star Wars with Luke Skywalker, the hero's journey. So Siddhartha, he leaves the palace in search of meaning in his life. He went from a sheltered prince to a wandering ascetic. He went from being royalty to being a homeless mendicant, someone who just begs for things. He left his wife and his child behind. He learned Raja Yoga from Hindu sages. And eventually Hindus claimed him and deified him. And he actually became the ninth avatar of Vishnu. Even though Siddhartha was very critical of Hinduism, at least the Hinduism of his day. And he certainly never claimed to be divine, at least not in any unique way. So remember, in Hinduism, we're all divine. We're all unrealized avatars. We're all God, but we just don't know it. The Buddha did not claim to be an avatar like Krishna did. In fact, he denied the very existence of the atman. So this is very strange. This is very un-Hindu of the Buddha to do this. That he denied the existence of the atman, the eternal divine soul within each of us. We could talk more about that, inshallah. Okay. So during this period, now it's in his early 30s, he met a small group of monks who practice an extreme form of self-mortification, extreme form of zuhud. What is self-mortification? This is when the flesh is deliberately punished or agitated in order for the mind to focus on the spiritual. So fasting in every major religion has a form of self-mortification. There are different degrees of it. Some are more excessive. It's like fasting is a form of self-mortification. Abstinence is a form of self-mortification. The shia, they flog themselves. The sunnis would say that's an extreme form. They have something seen as zani, where they strike the chest. It seems to be okay. And then they have something called zanjir zani, where they take a chain and they whip themselves called matam. And then they even have something called qameh, where they take these knives and they cut themselves and they bleed. That's certainly something that is condemned among the ahru sunna wal jamal. But you see that there are different forms of self-mortification in different religions. So the Buddha, he met this group that was into this type of thing. And he thought that this must be the answer. So he practiced a highly extreme form of fasting. I mean a lifestyle that was basically the polar opposite of his previous lifestyle, 180 degrees. So he ate, according to his biography, he ate six grains of rice a day. He's quoted as saying, when I thought that I would touch my stomach, I took hold of my spine. So he's basically completely emaciated. He's wasting away. And his extreme lifestyle almost killed him. There's this iconic story that Siddhartha was on the brink of death about to lose consciousness when he perceived this little girl come out of nowhere with a bowl of rice pudding. And he and she fed him the rice pudding and that revived him. The experience taught him the futility of extreme self-mortification. No moksha, remember this term moksha, released from samsara enlightenment, the super conscious state. No moksha resulted from him torturing his body. However, the experience also taught him the principle of the middle way, very important concept in Buddhism, the middle way between prince and pauper, between indulgence and asceticism, between hedonism and self-mortification, between ifrat and tafrit, these Arabic terms, excess and shortcoming. The middle way is called madhyamika in Pali, madhyamika. So sensuality slowed his spiritual progress while mortification weakened his intellect. There's a question somebody's asking me about questions about Christianity on email. Will I reply here? Oh, I'll answer your email, inshallah. I've been behind on my emails. I'll answer them later after class, inshallah. Okay, so the middle way, what is the middle way? Giving the body what it needs to function well and keep the intellect sharp. And more than this is considered excess. So six years after the great growing fourth at age 35, okay, one night he entered a city called Gaya in northeast India and he sat under a fig tree called the bow tree, which is short for the buddh tree, the tree of knowledge, the tree of enlightenment. And he started his yoga as usual and suddenly amazingly profound truths were revealed to him or were intuited by him. And he sensed enlightenment. He sensed that the mystical experience was near. So he vowed not to rise from that spot until he had achieved it. And that spot is called the immovable spot. And Buddhists to this day, they make pilgrimage to this site. Apparently the tree, the actual tree is still there. Some say that it's not the actual tree, but it's a fig tree that grew there after. But they're certain that it is the exact spot, at least the Buddha store. Now while meditating in that spot, the god of pleasure and desire named Kama came to the Buddha and and paraded these three voluptuous women in front of him to distract him. And Siddhartha remained focus. Then Mara, the god of death, assaulted him with a hurricane falling boulders, torrential rains, and his minions of demons shot arrows at Siddhartha, which Siddhartha converted into flowers, and they fell harmlessly on the ground. Now buddha scholars mentioned that Kama and Mara here were really just aspects of Siddhartha himself. These are just modalities of his own mind symbolized as gods of temptation. So Raja Yoga, one of the steps of Raja Yoga, the sixth step, is to completely control one's thoughts, one's khawater. Great Sheikh Abul Hassan An-Nadoui, he said, if you can pray, and some say this is a hadith, Allahu Alam, that if you can pray two cycles of prayer without one extraneous thought, then without any khawater, then you've achieved wilaya at sainthood. So with Kama, we might say this was sort of his khawater nafsani, they're being activated and being mastered, and then with Mara, the khawater shaitani, which are activated and being mastered. So basically he's mastering his thoughts and impulses. Then Mara came a final time just before enlightenment and asked him, okay, you're almost at enlightenment, but who is going to witness to your teaching? Who's going to follow you? So like shaitan, he advocates nihilism. What's the point of this? Who cares? Just do what you want to do, just do you, this type of thing. It doesn't mean anything. So then Siddhartha lifted his right index finger and he struck the earth with it, and the earth began to rumble and quake. The meaning is that the earth will bear witness to his teaching. Then Mara fled and his constriction had passed and he experienced the great awakening, the great buddha. There's a term for this called nirvana that we'll talk about. And so he was there for seven days in that spot, seven days of bliss, and then on the eighth day he thought, well maybe I should leave, so he intended to rise, and then another wave of enlightened bliss washed over him, so 49 days total he remained raptured in that spot. So that was his apotheosis, right? That was his apotheosis. So according to the commentary tradition of the Dhammapada, the first words uttered by the buddha after his awakening are actually recorded in chapter 11 verses 153 and 154. So I'll read those quickly, the very famous passage. Again, like I said last week, and let me just read this here, middle way similar to virtue ethics. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way. And I forgot to mention what's happening in Greece during this axial age, right? You have Plato and Aristotle, and they're all preaching the middle way, Confucius also, the golden meme, Aristotle, the golden meme, Zoroastra, the golden meme, right? Oh yeah, I'll answer your question about Thomas, the Lord of me and the God of me, how to refute it. Okay, I can answer that very quickly. Just kind of, we'll take a break from the Dhammapada for a minute. So in my videos and in my writings and lectures I say that there's nowhere in the New Testament in the four gospels where Jesus is addressed as Ha Theos, the God. He's called Theos, but I said that has a nuanced meaning. It could mean a sort of sanctified agent of God, and that's how it's used in the in the New Testament and outside the canon in Greek by Philo, etc. But now in John 20, I believe verse 28, when the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples, Thomas is there, and when Thomas realizes it's Jesus, he says, my Lord and my God, right? He says Ha Theosmu, Ha Kuriosmu, something along those lines. So he used a definite article, the God of me, the Lord of me. So this, this is obviously, this is obviously Te Adjubiyah. It's exclamatory. It doesn't mean that Thomas is calling Jesus God. Thomas is not saying you are my God, you are my Lord. What is he saying? Oh my God and Lord, right?  Right? Your reaction would be, oh my God. So even some Christian commentators, they say that Thomas' words here are really addressed to the Father, not to Jesus. How does being resurrected qualify Jesus as God? A resurrected body doesn't equate divinity. That's a non-secretary argument. There are many people resurrected. Jesus himself resurrected Lazarus. When Lazarus showed up to his friends later, did they say to him, oh my, you are my God. Right? So I think it's obvious here. It's, this reminds me of a scene in a movie, Superman 2, an old movie, Christopher Reeve, Superman, or General Zod, right? He's in the, he's in the Oval Office and he says, and he says to the President of the United States, kneel before Zod. So the President kneels. And then the President's kneeling, he says to himself, he says, oh my God. And then Zod says, oh, that's, that's Zod, not God. Right? So the President was not talking to Zod. He was talking to God. Right? So Thomas here is not, is not calling Jesus God. That doesn't make any sense. Why would he call Jesus God? Because Jesus was resurrected. So I mean, that's, that's my answer for that. So I think Daniel Wallace, I think he calls it something like a, a, a vocative of a dress or something, a nominative vocative. That doesn't make any sense. He considers it some sort of vocative. I have to look up the, in other words, a vocative is actually like calling on somebody, calling on the Father here. Okay. Okay. So, sorry. So he said that the Buddha experienced enlightenment. Okay. And, and after his awakening, he, he, his words, the first words that he said are recorded in the Dhammapada. So I was going to say that just as the Bhagavad Gita, right, has, is, is a very good comprehensive text, very short, very comprehensive, kind of distilling the entire religion of Hinduism into one text. The Dhammapada is like that for Buddhism. Buddhist, the Buddhist canon of, of scripture is extremely vast. The Dhammapada is a one-stop shop unless you want to get more deeply into these things. But anyway, he says, through many births, I've wandered on and on, searching for but never finding the builder of this house. So the language here is, is, is kind of veiled. It's very symbolic. You have to kind of decode it through many births, right? I've wandered on and on. So he's talking about the cycle of reincarnation, it seems like, searching for but never finding by finding the commentators of the Dhammapada, say that means mastering. I never mastering the builder of this house, the builder is desire, the house is the ego. I've never mastered, I've never mastered the, the desire of my ego to be born again and again is suffering. And then he says, house builder, in other words, desire, you are seen and seen here means like exposed, right? I've, I've exposed you. You will not build a house again. You will not build a self again. So now he is selfless. All the rafters are broken rafters meaning defilements, like these vices, these diseases of the heart, these are the rafters, they're broken. The rafters are holding up the house, which is called ego. The ridgepole, that's kind of like this, like the main sort of support destroyed. So the ridgepole is ignorance, right? Which holds up the ego. That's destroyed. The mind gone to the unconstructed, he says, right? So the mind has experienced the real al-haq, right? The real with a capital R, that which is not a construct, right? The house is a construct, the house is constructed, right? The mind has left the self. The mind has destroyed the self and has gone to the unconstructed, the real. He has reached the end of craving, he says. He has reached the end of craving. So he has reached the end of house building or ego building, no more ego, right? So after this experience, the Buddha walked over a hundred miles to a place called Benares and delivered his first sermon. What was the title of his sermon? It was on the four noble truths and the middle way. So the four noble truths is what he actually intuited before reaching enlightenment. It is really the heart of his teaching. We'll come back to it in a minute, inshallah. But with respect to the middle way, his way was between basically trends in Hinduism. So at one extreme, you have being overindulgent, right? Too much focus on the first two of the purusharthas. Remember the stages of life in Hinduism? The first two are kama and artha, the pleasure and wealth. So he noticed a trend among the Hindus that they're really focusing only on these two really. But also the trend of being overly superstitious and speculative about things. So the Buddha wants us to experience things. He doesn't like this kind of empty speculation and superstition. He's not about theorizing, he's about doing. He's not about pontificating, he's about experience. And the other trend that was developing on the other extreme, and he had experimented with this, was this extreme self-mortification. And this was the way of the Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, who was about 37 years earlier than Siddhartha. And one of the two major sects of Jainism called digambara, which means skyclad, only naked male monks who practice an absolutely extreme form of non-violence can achieve moksha. Only naked male monks, and they call it jina, that's a different term they use, who practice an extreme form of non-violence, which is called ahimsa. Now all dharmic religions, by dharmic religion I mean Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, all of these dharmic religions, they all stress a level of ahimsa, they all stress a level of non-violence. But with Jainism, I mean you can't cook meals at night because you might kill an insect.   Jain monks, they pull their hair out because they think it's too luxurious, this type of thing. The Dhammapada, it was all Buddhist scriptures were written well after the death of the Buddha. So the Dhammapada was written several decades, several decades after the death of the Buddha. It was compiled by some of his students, but it is accepted generally amongst all Buddhists. There may be different versions of it. I didn't do much textual criticism on the Dhammapada to prepare for this class, but inshallah ta'ala I can expand on that later. But nothing was really written during the lifetime of the Buddha. And if it was, it wasn't compiled until much, much later. Okay, and that's the same with like, like Plato, you know, didn't write anything. Sorry, Socrates, Socrates didn't write anything. We know about Socrates through Plato. Isa alaihi salam apparently did not write anything. His students wrote about him. Okay, so soon after the Great Awakening, so Dhartha formed, actually at this point, we're going to, yeah, I want to get to the noble truths. So the heart of the Buddha's teaching is called the Four Noble Truths, right? This is the Buddha's path for attaining salvation. So Four Noble Truths, three of them are theoretical, but they're based on experience and observation. And then one is practical, it's a method, it's a yoga, right? So this is mentioned in Dhammapada chapter 14, Verses 186, 192. Again, this is really sort of the central elements of the faith of Buddhism right here in 14190. So I'll begin actually a little bit earlier, 186 to one night. So 186, it says, not even with a shower of gold coins would we find satisfaction in sensual craving. Knowing that sensual cravings are suffering, that they bring little delight, the sage does not rejoice, even in divine pleasures, meaning like higher or heavenly pleasure. One who delights in the end of craving is a disciple of the fully awakened one, in the Buddha. One who delights in the end of craving. People threatened by fear go to many refuges, the mountains, the forest, the parks, trees, and shrines. None of these is a secure refuge, none is a supreme refuge. Not by going to such a refuge is one released from all suffering. But when someone going for refuge to the Buddha and to the Dharma and the Sangha, these are very important. This is called the three jewels of Buddhism, right? It's called the sort of the triple refuge of the Buddhists. You go to the Buddha, right, the master, you go to the Dharma, the Dharma is pronounced Dhamma in Pali, the Dhammapada, the path to virtue, the path to truth, right? The Buddha, the truth, or the path to truth, and the Sangha, the order, the order of monks, right? So one who is going for real refuge goes to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, sees with right insight the four noble truths, the four noble truths that lead to the end of suffering. So what are these four noble truths, right? Okay, so, okay, so first of all, to use sort of a medical analogy, wrap our head around this type of thing. So you go to the doctor and you say, I feel sick, I'm suffering. So the doctor says, what are your symptoms? What are your symptoms? And so, yes, inshallah, brother, I'll give you my, I'll respond to your email, so you'll have, inshallah, my contact information, inshallah, can the Vedas have prophecies of the Prophet Muhammad SAW? Yeah, there's, there are people who wrote books on this, you know, and there's different ways of understanding the Vedas, you're right, that the Vedas are really sort of the, the, the most holy of scriptures in Hinduism. And there have been many studies on them and many scholars have extracted prophecies there. That's certainly true. Okay, so going back to this medical analogy, so what are your symptoms? And so you say I have sore throat, cough and wheezing. So he says, ah, you have strep throat, that's called a diagnosis, right? So you have symptoms, diagnosis. And then you say to the doctor, what are my chances? Like, give it to me straight. And the doctor says, good, your chances are good. That's called a prognosis. And you say, okay, what can I do?  So that's a, it's called a prescription. You have symptoms, diagnosis, prognosis and prescription. Okay, keep that in mind.  And the word for suffering is dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A, that's the Pali word, dukkha. It literally means dislocated. It's actually used for like dislocated joints, right? So when your joint is dislocated, it's hard to move. It's painful. It's frustrating. So life is like this. It is frustrating physically, intellectually and spiritually. And in fact, this truth had a profound, the first truth of the Buddha had a profound effect on Western philosophers, especially those who are considered pessimistic or nihilistic philosophers. For example, the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who was a great influence on Nietzsche. Schopenhauer was a nihilist who said that our lives are just meaningless tragedies and we fulfill one desire just to become a slave to another desire in his endless cycle until death. Our very existence is a source of suffering. So death is a type of sweet relief for Schopenhauer. He calls it a triumph, although he did not advocate suicide enigmatically. So this sounds very similar to Buddhism. Schopenhauer said, however, if you could practice a bit of compassion and engage in the arts like music, and that gives you a bit of relief from the suffering, but it's only temporary. It's just kind of a bandaid. So his prognosis is bad.  But the Buddha is more optimistic. You can overcome suffering, right? There is a cure for suffering. Okay. And in these philosophers, many of them admit, I think Schopenhauer's dog's name was Atman. I think he named his dog Atman or Jiva. I think it was Atman, one of those terms. So he's also highly influenced by Hinduism. You can make a case that Kant is also influenced by Hinduism because Hinduism talks about this illusory world, the jagatismaya. It's not real. The real world is behind it. And Kant talks about the phenomenal world, phenomena, right? That we see, but that's not the real world. The real world is called the numinal world, which is behind that world, which you can't have access to. So this is where Kant differs with Hinduism. But there's a strong thesis that can be made that these Western philosophers are highly influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism. Okay. So according to the Buddha, there are six moments of dukkha in life, six moments of suffering. These are the symptoms of dukkha. So trauma of birth. Freud actually denied that. Sickness, decrepitude, right? Decrepitude fills you with fear and anxiety.  And this relates to the next one, phobia of death. It's called Thanatophobia, fear of death. He mentions to be tied to what one hates. You know, think about the, you know, millions of people sitting in a cubicle going to jobs that they hate, right? That's a big symptom of dukkha, right? Or think of like a woman who is maybe pressured by her family to marry some guy and then he turns out to be abusive. So then she becomes very bitter. She becomes very resentful. So then she starts abusing her own daughter-in-law because she was abused. And then finally, separation from what one loves, separation from what one loves. Yeah. And that's interesting that no self of Buddhism similar to a bundle theory of you. Yeah. I never thought about that. We're just a bundle of ideas. That's interesting. I'll look into that, inshallah. But yeah, I mean, the influence, and some might say maybe they weren't directly influenced, but sort of great minds just sort of come to similar conclusions. And I think that's true as well. Obviously, we disagree with David Hume on many issues. Okay. So that's the first noble truth. The world is in a state of suffering. The second noble truth, the cause is tanha. What is tanha? Desire, selfish craving, private fulfillment, egoism, attachment to stuff, attachment to an identity even, right? So that's also causing suffering, an identity of some sort. Also, fake concepts, fake beliefs or false beliefs, false philosophies, right? So when we're self, when we're selfless, we're free. Remove the ego and you'll remove the suffering. So what is causing the symptoms? What is causing dukkha? It's called tanha. Tanha is the diagnosis. Tanha is the disease. Extrep throat is the disease that's causing wheezing and coughing and that suffering, right? In other words, the only reason why you're suffering is because you have tanha, desire and attachment. So it said that a man came to the Buddha and he said, I want happiness. And the Buddha said, look at that sentence. I want happiness. Remove the eye, eye, ego in Latin and Greek. Remove the ego. What do you have left? He said, well, want happiness. Want is tanha, desire. Remove the desire. What are you left with? He said, happiness. He said, well, there you go, right? So remove the ego, remove want and you're left with happiness. Now, what is the prescription? Oh, sorry. Before we get to that, the third noble truth is that tanha can be overcome. It's the prognosis. What is a prognosis? Hopeful, right? It's hopeful that there is a cure, right? And this is obviously Contra, Schopenhauer. He said there's no cure, but only band-aids. And then the fourth, so that's the, that's the third noble truth. You can overcome tanha. The fourth noble truth is the prescription. What's the medicine? The eightfold path, the eightfold path. This is his yoga, his method for overcoming dukkha by extinguishing tanha. The Buddha called it the path. The path is practical. It's a treatment by training, eight-step program for overcoming selfishness, or maybe it's better to say overcoming self-identity and thus eliminating suffering. So there's one preliminary step before we get into the eightfold path, the sort of prerequisite step he calls it right association. In other words, you have to hang out with the right people or else the path won't work, right? So there's a famous parable he gives, the parable of the wild elephant. He says, how do you tame a wild elephant? The best way to do it is to yoke it. Remember the word yoga is from yoke. It's to yoke it to a tamed elephant. How do you tame a wild elephant? Tie it to a tamed elephant and it will learn its comportment by association, right? But don't punish the tamed one if the wild one makes a mistake. So be with the truth winners. This is what the Buddha says. Moukounu ma'a sadaqeen, the Qur'an says, be with the truth winners. Converse with them, serve them, observe them, learn by osmosis their compassion. It's said in a tradition of Isa a.s. that the disciples asked him, how did you learn your comportment? And he said, well, I just watched people with that character and I did the opposite. Now, that's a bit difficult to do. The best way to learn your comportment is to be with people of virtue, but he's a prophet, right? So it won't affect him. Okay, so step one of the eightfold path, okay? Again, the fourth noble truth of the Buddha is the eightfold path, the prescription, the medicine for overcoming tannha, the disease. There's eight steps. The first step is right views. That's what it's called. Right views means to exercise reason, right? Be reasonable, be practical. Don't put yourself in harm's way. So the self-mortification of the Jains is unreasonable, like pulling out hair, nudity, extreme ahimsa. That's not reasonable. See, set reasonable goals for yourself. Have temperance. So you'll be amazed how many perfectly rational people allow emotion to dominate them. So here we have to learn to be dispassionate, practice apathy. This is the most cherished virtue of the stoic philosophers. Apathia. This doesn't mean to be like cold and unemotional. It means to be emotional, but within reason, to be in control of your emotions, right? Nowadays, the one who is emotionally incontinent and screams the loudest is usually the winner of a debate, right? That's how we're swayed. We're swayed by emotion. The first person who cries, oh, he must be telling the truth, right? The one who shouts the loudest. And this is why children shout, right? Because they want to make an impression. Okay. Now, part and parcel to having right views is to accept the Buddha's rejection of the extreme existentialist positions of eternalism and nihilism. So the Buddha rejected both of these positions, eternalism and nihilism. He actually says, according to the Dhammapada, kill the two warrior kings. And the commentary says, what he meant by warrior kings was eternalism and nihilism. So the Buddha rejected eternalism. What is eternalism? The proposition that anything in the world is eternal, including a soul, right? So this is based upon what he called a fundamental mark of existence along with dukkha. So dukkha, the world of suffering is a fundamental mark of existence. A second fundamental mark of existence is called anika, A-N-I-C-C-A, anika, impermanence. Everything is changing, transitory and perishing, right? Thus there is no abiding element or everlasting or eternal thing. Thus, there is no atman, right? And this is the third fundamental mark of existence. You have dukkha, anika, and anatta. Anatta means no atman, right? We don't have a real self. We don't have an immortal soul. Well, if there's no atman, then does that mean there's no brahman? Or at least this is what can be concluded by induction, because atman is brahman. So is that what the Buddha is actually teaching? Was he an atheist? Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to tell. And there's a debate about that. So when the five khandhas are stripped away from the mind, what are the five khandhas? These are the five aggregates. Sorry, five aggregates. These are five things that make up the self, right?  These are called the five aggregates, or the five khandhas. When the five khandhas are stripped away from the mind, the so-called self dies and suffering ends, right? But when that happens, what is left of the individual person? What is left of the individual person? The answer is not much, only what's known as residue. So this is called sopa di sessa nirvana. This is what the Buddha experienced under the bow tree. Sopa di sessa nirvana. Nirvana means extinction. Sopa di sessa means with remainder. In other words, near extinction, near extinction. So, or sometimes this is called nirvana with residue. The residue of the, what's what they call the fuel of the five khandhas. So something extremely minimally residual remains of the five khandhas when one enters into a state of enlightenment in this world. So there's fuel, but there's no burning. In other words, there's no desire, right? There's no greed. There's no delusion. There's no hatred. What's known as the three fires in the Dhammapada, right? So the person still has a body. The person, you know, still feels pain. The person still has a name. The person is still conscious, obviously, right? So it's not a total extinction of the self. There's a residual effect. There's a residual remainder of the khandhas that are basically the building blocks of the self. But when the aspirant reaches this state of sora di sessa nirvana, he becomes a transformed, selfless, wise, compassionate sage. A bit detached and aloof at times, but he's still there. This is called the arhat, A-R-H-A-T or arhant, depending on Pali and Sanskrit. This is the name of the sage, right? So this happens when you realize that you are nothing, so you let go of everything, right?  Then when the arhat dies, what happens? He experiences what's known as nir-ud-ud-upad-disesa nir-upad-disesa nirvana, also called para-nirvana, nirvana without remainder. And that is the end of it all. His body, his consciousness, he is absolutely annihilated, total extinction, the end of all suffering. So this is why many western philosophers considered Buddhism to be basically a form of existential nihilism, because Buddhism culminates in para-nirvana, which is entering into a state of nothingness, emptiness. It's called sunyata, nothingness, emptiness. Life is transitory. There's nothing to hold on to, so just let go and be free, goodbye permanently.   It's over, everything's done. Now, Buddhists, however, also reject the extreme position of nihilism. Remember I said at the beginning, the Buddha said, kill the two warrior kings, eternalism and nihilism. But what I've said subsequently is that western philosophers will argue that Buddhism is essentially a form of nihilism. But Buddhists will retort and say it's not. They'll say that pointing out, they'll point out that the process of karma, right, or karma, the reincarnation of your, they don't use jiva, atman, they don't use these terms, the reincarnation of your stream of consciousness, right, along with its karmic imprints indicates that existence does have meaning. Existence is not meaningless, that meaning, I mean it can be uncertain, but it's certainly there. They do say, however, that there are annihilationist or nihilistic aspects of Buddhism, like you have to annihilate, lust, delusion, hatred, right, attachment, suffering. But because of karma, you can't say that Buddhism is a nihilistic religion per se. It's kind of like in Islam, Islam's sort of mystical psychology, there are elements also of annihilationism, you know, fina fila, things like that. However, the rejoinder from critics would be, well, at Paranirvana, there is total annihilation, right, there is nothingness. The Buddhist rejoinder to that is, but the wisdom and teaching, an example of the arhat, right, the liberated Buddha that reached Paranirvana, is left on earth for people to benefit from after him. And then again, the response to that would be, why? So other people can eventually join him in the void of nothingness. Everything leads to nothingness, right? Okay, so I'm actually out of time. Do you think Buddhism had some influence on Islam, e.g. Sufi metaphysics? Yeah, it's possible. I think Hinduism, Buddhism had some influence on Islam, definitely. I think there was an influence going both ways. I don't think the foundations of the usul of Islamic metaphysics was affected by anything from Buddhism or Hinduism. Buddhist scriptures were collected 800 years, I think, where the rumors start reading as good learned, but how can we identify the real thing from where? Yeah, you really can't. Like I said, there's many, many opinions about the Buddha. So, I mean, you have Theravadi and Buddhists who are total atheists, then you have Mahayana Buddhists who are kind of polytheistic and everything in the middle. And again, that kind of goes back to Albiruni's two-tiered model that we talked about, that this sort of Amma, the masses gravitate or trend towards polytheism. And it's because they have this massive corpus of literature and all these things attributed to the Buddha. And there were many things that were fabricated. Many, many sayings of the Buddha that were fabricated was really difficult to know what's true and what's not. The Buddha prophesied the problem. Yeah, the Buddha talked about the matreya, the universal mercy. And some have identified that. He says that towards the end of time, a bodhisattva will come who will teach the dharma. So, he's certainly prophesizing people to come in the future. There's an opinion that the Buddha is not necessarily a classical opinion, but there's an opinion from modern scholars that Khidr in the Qur'an is the Buddha. It's an interesting opinion. You know, Khidr according to the Salaf was a prince who left his kingdom and lived in the wilderness. He's called Khidr, which comes from Akhtar Green, because he used to sit on green foliage. Of course, green is the middle color, the spectrum, the middle way. Zen Buddhism can be very bewildering. You're not supposed to really ask questions of your teacher. You're just kind of supposed to submit to his guidance and do what he's telling you. And it's kind of like the karate kid thing where the master, the Zen master, is teaching his padawan, if you will. He's telling him to do all this manual labor, and the kid doesn't know what he's doing. He's doing it. He doesn't know the significance of it. He's not supposed to ask questions to see that kind of discourse with Khidr and Musa and Surat Al-Kaaf. Allahu Alam. Ibrahim Ibn Adham, one of the great Sufis of the early period. His biography is similar to Siddhartha Gautama, that he was a prince, and then he left his life of opulence. He went and lived in the forests of Bulkh in Afghanistan, and according to his biography, he met Khidr, alayhi salam, on several occasions. Yeah, so if Khidr is the Buddha, and Luqman is Confucius, because people always, they criticize the Quran and say, why is it so Middle Eastern centric? What about the rest of the world? Well, he chooses whomever he wills. So that's one answer. The other answer is, yeah, that's true, but if we look at the Quran more broadly, I mean, the Quran name, probably Cyrus or Alexander, so that's, you know, the Greeks, you know, Hellenism, you have Khidr, who might be the Buddha, right, that's, you know, that entire area of South Asia, you have the Far East, if Luqman is Confucius, you know, it's, you know, taking wisdom from all of these different places in the world. Anyway, I have to go now. Nice talking with you, Crypto Cat. So I hope you benefited from this class, inshallah. Please make dua for me. You're in our prayers as well. And if there are questions, additional questions, contact MCC, the Muslim Community Center in the East Bay, inshallah. I'd like to thank the MCC for having this class. MCC is a fantastic organization here in the Bay Area, very active, very beautiful, righteous people, and they are just doing an incredible service to the world, benefiting with their outreach programs, different types of outreach programs. So may Allah SWT bless the organization and continue to bless them and bless all of us and keep us all safe.