Original subtitles

When I was 16, I got really sick.

Was run down, working hard in school, not eating properly,

and I got pneumonia, and an abscess developed on my lung.

Well one day the abscess burst and I hemorrhaged.

I needed blood.

Pretty sure everybody thought I might die,

obviously I didn't.

But some say that god saved me.

Believers think god communicates to us through miracles.

That miracles are proof of the divine.

Now I'm going on a journey to discover

the power of miracles.

You fell from up there down to here?

What did the doctors say?

You are a miracle.

To discover what's luck and what is fate.

In the Chinese thought everything has a

reason for why it occurred.

To see how belief in miracles

can change history.

The miracles symbolize the beginning

of the Jewish people.

And how faith can change lives.

You are looking at a true miracle of god.

To achieve what appears to be impossible.

The real miracle is to transform the human mind.

That's the miracle we need.

Most who believe in god believe

god is watching over us.

Every moment of every day, guiding us, saving us.

To me it has to be a miracle that he can look out

for all seven billion of us.

So when I heard about alcides Marino

I had to come to New York and hear his story.

Well here we are.

Eight years ago, alcides came to work as a window washer

at this 47 story tower in Manhattan.

Tell me about it, what happened?

I woke up in the morning, take my car in,

commute from New Jersey and come to the building.

Did you take the elevator?

And go all the way to the top.

The top is 47 stories high.

47 stories, yes,

and climb to the platform.

Alcides had just begun to lower the

platform when one of the two cables holding it snapped.

I just grabbed the scaffold and

just hold up until another cable snap.

911 what's the emergency?

9-15 responding,

transport is on the way.

The paramedics they found me right

in the middle, the scaffold like that.

Between the two buildings.

Yeah between the two,

it was right in the middle, they took me out from the.

Alcides fell 47 stories, 500 feet.

He broke ten bones, his lungs collapsed,

he needed 43 pints of blood and plasma.

He spent three weeks in a coma.

Do you remember the day you woke up from the coma?

- I. - woke up December 24th

right in the bed and my wife was there.

A fall from just ten stories is something

hardly anyone survives.

Doctor's say alcides's 47 story plunge was beyond belief.

I've seen it all, or at least I think I have,

until something like this happens.

You fell from up there down to here?

Yes.

And here you are.

Yes sir and look I'm walking and everything.

Give me a name for that.

I mean the doctor told me,

"you are a miracle."

He said, "you are a miracle."

What do you think?

I don't know, still I don't know.

Alcides has a hard time accepting this

as a miracle because he was not alone when he fell.

His younger brother was on this platform with him,

he died the moment he hit the ground.

What was your brother's name?

Edgar.

Edgar.

There we are.

There he is.

Yeah.

Still feels the same.

Very nice.

My brother's a big loss.

Were you close?

Really, really close,

that was a great man.

I'm sorry alcides,

it must be very painful.

Yes, I just bring him to work with me,

to help out, because.

He's younger.

Oh yes he was younger than me and

he was a good man.

You think god saved you?

I think so, I believe that yes.

So that makes you the miracle,

but at the same time, your brother is gone,

the one you, do you worry about that?

Do you try to reconcile that, try to figure out why him?

And not me.

Not you.

Well yes I asking why, why, why,

what happened, why?

If it was me, I would wonder every day.

God give me a second chance,

I mean to keep going, to keep going with my life.

I still looking forward to find out what

exactly I have to do.

Alcides is no longer a window washer;

he and his wife have a new life in Arizona,

where they're raising their family.

He's still trying to understand whether

god has a plan for him.

Why me, does god has a purpose for me?

Alcides wonders, "why did I survive when"

my beloved brother did not?"

Why, I mean is there some entity that makes that choice?

Or is, do we live with randomness,

just pure mindless randomness?

For christians, miracles are proof that life is not random.

They believe god intervenes in the world for a reason.

Jews also believe in the power of miracles.

In fact their faith was built on a bedrock

of divine intervention.

I've come to Jerusalem to see how Jews celebrate

the miracles of their exodus from Egypt.

On a night that's different from all other nights.

Passover.

Hi.

Hello there.

How do you do?

I'm very well thank you, this is for you.

Thank you very much, I'm aviva.

Hello aviva.

Welcome to my home, you do.

Oh lord, oh.

Rabbi Maya.

Nice to meet you, how wonderful.

Maya leibovich is the first Israeli

born woman ever to become a rabbi.

I've known a few rabbis, never a lady.

I hope you enjoy the seder and

we'll do our utmost to make it.

If there's food I'll be okay.

Food, of course.

Yes.

This is the charoset, and you can taste it and you can

decide if it, it's got to make you feel as

if you're getting drunk, is it winy enough?

To tell you the truth I think it's enough.

I think it's enough too.

Okay guys let's get started,

seder pesach is starting.

Come on, everybody sit down.

One of the most important traditions in judaism

and this has been ordered to us from our ancestors,

thou shalt not speak on your cell phone during the seder.

So we have a cell phone basket here.

The month that we came out of Egypt

is called in Hebrew Nissan.

And the word Nissan comes from the word nissim,

which is miracles.

It's the month of the miracles,

which will symbolize the beginning of

the Jewish people, and the people as an entity.

The way we go with the seder is that

we read through the haggadah so Morgan as our guest

we would welcome you to start with

the bread of affliction.

This is the bread of affliction that

our fathers ate in the land Egypt.

Let all that are hungry enter and eat,

and all who are in want come and celebrate the Passover.

This year we are slaves,

next year we shall be free men.

The Passover meal is a celebration of the bond

Jews feel with god, and it's an occasion for children

to understand the foundation of their faith.

The seder recounts how the Jews escaped slavery.

Thanks to god's striking the Egyptians with

a series of ten plagues.

So rabbi...

Yes.

Why Passover,

what does the word itself refer to?

When god brought upon Egypt the tenth plague

of killing the first born, he told the israelites

to put blood on the thresholds of their homes and

the angel of death passed over the homes of the Hebrews,

and only took the first born of the Egyptians.

Many Jews believe god's sparing

of their children was proof they were his chosen people.

But this was not the only divine sign.

The miracle of getting out of Egypt was

followed by the miracle splitting of the sea.

God made two miracles, one was splitting

the sea before the Hebrews, and then closing it

before the Egyptians.

So god wants us to remember the Egyptians are just his

sons as we are, so by putting drops of wine on our plates

we're actually putting drops of sorrow that god had lost

so many of his children while saving the others.

This acknowledgement that the

exodus miracles didn't benefit everyone,

reminds me of alcides moreno.

Divine will is not easy to understand.

So what is your take on the whole idea

of the series of miracles?

I don't think anybody's gonna split

the sea for us today.

I wish somebody would bring peace to us today,

but the Bible is not a book of history.

The Bible is a book of ideas.

The question is what can we learn from it?

What can we take into our own life?

It's a way of saying thank you, you know.

It's a way of teaching the kids that every small thing is

not granted, that you need to say thank you.

It's nice to have parents,

it's lovely to have a roof above your head.

That probably the biggest miracle of

all of them that Jews are still here.

I want them to come out with the

idea that miracles can happen.

That's the story.

The israelites saw these miracles

as proof that god cared about them.

Not all modern Jews believe in the miracles of Passover,

but these stories still define them as a people,

and that deep well of tradition and moral strength

has sustained them, been called on by them for

thousands of years to get them through hard times.

Around the world belief in miracles

gives people strength.

In Mexico City the basilica of our lady of Guadalupe

marks the spot where the virgin Mary is said

to have appeared to a peasant 500 years ago.

In Hong Kong, Buddhist pilgrims flock to the statue of

guan yin, who they hope will Grant them

medical cures, a spouse, or good grades.

And in Rome miracles can turn ordinary people into saints.

I've come to the Vatican to understand how

the catholic church verifies miracles.

I think the first time I was at the Vatican was about 1983.

I'm meeting monsignor Marcelo Sanchez sorondo,

the head of the pontifical academy of sciences.

So let's talk just for a moment about miracles,

do miracles really exist?

For instance Jesus walking on water.

In the life of Christ,

if you don't accept the miracles it's

impossible to understand.

Each page of the gospel is a miracle of Christ.

To consider a person is Saint the church needs a miracle.

In order to have saints you

have to have miracles.

Yes.

Unless you are a martyr,

the only way to sainthood is to be deemed responsible

for performing two miracles after you die.

Pope John Paul the second became a Saint in 2014,

after two women who prayed to him after

his death claimed to be miraculously cured.

One of Parkinson's disease, another of a brain aneurism.

The Vatican spends years investigating these claims,

sometimes decades.

The church has a devil's advocate who goes and

whenever anybody claims to have seen or

experienced a miracle,

the church sends the advocate to investigate.

Yes, they have to advocate

and have scientific people, special doctors,

to prove that this is a special intervention of god.

So if I come and say I have experienced

a miracle, would the church then say,

okay well we'll check that out.

Exactly, we've got to check.

Does the hand of god really intervene?

Not just in matters of life and death,

but also in the ups and downs of our daily lives

or does everything that happens happen by chance?

ORIGINAL SUBTITLE BY INNUIT RESYNC BY TEDI FOR x264-RBB

What, if anything,

governs the seemingly random moments that change

our lives and send us into different directions?

Like a poor boy from Mississippi

ending up in Hollywood.

I always loved the movies,

always dreamed I would be in them.

I was a believer, and I actually made it,

now was that a miracle?

Most of us have a turning point in our lives,

a pivotal moment where you wondered, how did this happen?

Mine was 1989 I made three films,

'Lean on me', 'Driving miss Daisy'

and 'Glory'.

Did I make it happen?

Was someone up there calling the shots, or was I lucky?

To try to understand this I've arranged to meet a psychology

professor who thinks we often mistake

random chance for miracles.

Danny Oppenheimer.

Nice to see you.

How are you today?

I'm good, you?

I'm good.

Good.

What are you doing?

I'm flipping coins.

Why?

I'm looking for streaks.

Streaks?

Yeah if you flip a coin enough times

you're gonna get a streak.

Really?

That's a lot of tails.

Well if I flip a coin twice and

I get heads both times is that miraculous?

No, if you do it 50 times

and you get 60 that's a miracle.

Well yeah if you get more

than you flip certainly.

But how rare does an event have to be before we would

call it miraculous, one in a million, one in a billion?

I'll choose billion.

Alright one in a billion,

well let's try something.

Alright.

Jack of diamonds, 6 of spades, king of spades, 2 of hearts,

7 of diamonds and Ace of spades.

Is it miraculous to have gotten this sequence?

No, I mean it's just a random

selection of cards off the deck.

Well right but this particular sequence

starting with the Jack and then getting

the six of spades and then king of spades,

it only happens one in about 14 billion times

you draw six cards.

So it's pretty miraculous by your

one in a billion standard.

So you're telling me that

this is miraculous?

Well no as you said before

it's just a random set of cards.

What if it was the first six digits of your

social security number, what if it were the last six

digits of your social security number?

The first six digits of your phone number?

Sometimes it's not actually miraculous,

sometimes it's just probability playing

its tricks on you.

Alright so how do we include the divine

because there are people who really do think that

there is divine intervention in these kinds of interplays.

Absolutely and nothing I'm saying

here rules out the possibility of the divine.

The fact that probability predicts certain things

doesn't mean that there can't be divine intervention.

But miraculous things that are so unlikely that you

think it can't happen by chance alone, they do happen,

and they have to happen.

It would be odd if the didn't, because with six billion

people in the world there are so many opportunities

for something really unusual to happen,

we would expect it to happen to some of them.

Mmm.

It's human nature to make a symphony out of

the cacophony of events going on around us,

doesn't mean that divine Providence doesn't exist.

In fact as I learned when I was in Rome,

in the past chance and god co-existed.

The ancient Romans had a different take on miracles.

Before they became christians Romans had many gods.

They believed the gods controlled their fate and

everything that happened was decided by them.

Archaeologist Valerie Higgins tells me the gods even

determined the outcome of sporting events.

So we're here in the circus Maximus,

this was the largest circus in Rome,

in fact in the Roman empire,

and this was where they did chariot racing.

We are actually standing on the track?

Yeah the starting gates were down there,

and they would race through here up to the other

end where they would turn around and then go

back down that end, and they would do that seven times.

At least a quarter of a million people could fit in here.

Bedlam.

Yeah right, so this was a place

that was full of life and full of action.

Well it must have been quite a lot

like modern day horse racing, you know, betting,

and wagering, and.

For sure yes, we know there was lots of

betting, and lots of gambling.

Gambling particularly on dice games

was frowned upon because you were betting on the

will of the gods, but widespread gambling

began to change the way Romans thought about fate,

and opened the way for belief in miracles.

How did gambling fit with the idea that your fate

was already set no matter what you did,

you were going to wind up the way you were gonna wind up.

They did very much believe that their

fate was set, but, you know, it didn't make them passive.

They certainly did everything they could

to get the gods behind their riders.

Well if I were to ask like for instance

the day of a big race, you know, and the ancient Romans were

thinking well it's in the hands of the gods,

but we need to know what the gods want.

Right.

How would we figure that out?

How did they go about figuring out what the gods wanted?

What the gods wanted,

well you had to go to a priest who was specialized

in this sort of thing.

Just around the corner from the race track,

hidden in an alleyway and down in a basement,

Valerie takes me to see the remains of the temple

that dates back to the third century.

A place where Romans may have tried to twist

the will of the gods.

This is spectacular.

Yes it is,

what we're coming into now is a mithraeum.

A mithraeum.

Yeah that's right,

it's a special kind of ritual space for the cult of mithras.

He's the god, he's killing the bull.

Mithras was a god for men, tough men,

soldiers, powerful business men.

So we're here in this mithraeum which is

kind of like the original man cave.

We know they did a lot of feasting.

Would there be any of the

priests down here with them?

There would be priests down here

yes I think for sure, who would be overseeing the feasting,

'cause it was quite essential that you did the ritual,

you know, correctly to ensure that your team

was going to be successful in the Circus Maximus.

So here we are down here and

we're doing all of the rituals and so

are we really adjusting the fates to

take care of what we want taken care of,

or do we do a little?

No that doesn't stop you giving fate

a helping hand.

Certainly we know there was a lot of cheating

that went on in the Circus Maximus.

No.

Oh I'm afraid so,

they did everything they could to make things work,

to make them successful, and they certainly

weren't above cheating.

The fact that you were allowing the gods to decide your fate,

didn't mean that you couldn't help them along.

If you could.

If you could help them along.

Yeah, yeah, you know,

because their idea is that the god works for you,

and that's in every aspect of your life including

of course your team racing in the circus Maximus.

The Romans don't have faith, they just follow the rituals.

Have fates.

They have fates, quite right,

they have fates not faith.

That h makes a big difference.

The ancient Romans believe that if you

were good to the gods, they would be good to you.

Every single event from winning a chariot race to

rolling of the dice could be the result of

divine intervention, a minor miracle.

I'm just trying to work out how a couple of millennia of

catholicism might have changed the way the Romans think.

Do they still think god will intercede?

And reward their fate with a royal flush perhaps?

The idea that nothing in our lives happens by

chance did not die with the culture of ancient Rome.

It remained alive and well in the Chinese philosophy

and religion daoism.

Daoism dates back nearly two millennia.

Gods are not the focus of daoism,

the focus is the dao.

The ultimate creative energy of the universe

to which we are all connected.

This interconnectedness means our fates are

all set at birth.

So do daoist's believe miracles are possible?

To find out I'm heading to the heart of the

Chinese community in Los Angeles to meet

a fourth generation daoist fate calculator named Jenny Liu.

Jenny Liu?

Morgan Freeman.

Yes ma'am.

Nice to meet you.

Thank you.

Come on in please.

Thank you.

So did you do my life chart?

I did, we had you here as June 1st,

so 6-1, 1937; 2 am, is that correct?

Yes.

Your life map lets us know what over

120 stars are located at your time of birth.

These stars configure a certain energy field that

impact the quality and success of your life.

So in China we don't call this astrology actually,

we call it fate calculation, fate calculation.

Fate calculation.

Covers your life in ten year periods,

and we see from age six to 15 is one, 16 to 25,

and so on and so forth.

So what now between 76 and 85?

Right now you're in your friendship sector.

In the friendship sector the star that's there

is called wun-zong.

This star represents scholars, learned people.

These are the people that you want

to surround yourself with.

So far so good.

So far so good, and one of the reasons why maybe

you have not come here yet until today is one of the

stars in your personal sector is called din-sun

and din-sun is the adventurer,

somebody who likes to take things as they come.

So if my fate is already laid out,

does that leave room for like miracles?

Absolutely, we don't think of astrology

chart as predestined that it's your only fate

that's carved in stone.

We see a life map, just like we say life is a journey,

and you go on any journey you need to have a map.

There's gonna be dead ends,

there's gonna be multiple pot holes.

If you know where they are you're still in charge

of your own car, this is just a navigation system.

You can turn.

If you understand how you're connected to everything

around you, that is the miracle waiting to happen.

So is this connected to feng shui?

Feng shui this is based on the daoist thought,

everything around us is connected.

Everything is made of energy,

we're all connected through this energy.

Feng is wind, shui is water.

It's an energy that we cannot destroy or create,

it's always there.

But we can divert it, we can harness it.

In China we say.

We ride it.

We can ride it exactly.

I was gonna say in Chinese they'll say birds

do not fly they are flown.

Fish do swim they are.

Carried.

They are carried, they are swum by water.

We always think,

particularly in christianity,

that a miracle is a result of divine intervention.

In the Chinese thought everything

is connected.

Everything has a reason for why it occurred.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Feng shui, wind, water.

Birds don't fly, they ride the wind.

Fish don't swim, they're carried.

Everything that happens to us is a result of

all the things that we are connected to.

What we call divine intervention is merely

connections we weren't aware of.

Makes me wonder if we shouldn't maybe stop

trying so hard to control our lives

and learn to ride the wave of life.

Our lives are filled with unexpected twists and turns.

Some believe there's nothing beyond randomness.

Others say we are propelled by the will of god

or the energy of the universe.

Both those beliefs could make the difference between

life and death because the human mind could have

a hidden power to unleash a miracle.

I'm travelling the world trying

to understand the power of miracles.

And I've come to Cairo to find out if that power

could come from our own minds.

I'm visiting one of the world's oldest hospitals,

a place that was famous for combining medical science

with the healing power of belief.

So the writings around the building describe

the founding of this hospital, and of the entire complex.

Harvard historian of islam and

physician Ahmed Ragab has brought me

to the Qalawun complex,

which first opened its doors around 1285 ad.

This would be the entrance through

which patients would normally walk.

Wow, this is a dramatic change from outside.

This is actually by design.

When you walk into this corridor from the outside the

sunny and the dirty street, and it's very noisy.

You walk in here and it's a dark, calm, shaded corridor.

Patients came here hoping to be

cured by both cutting edge medicine and

a miraculous intervention from god.

I want to show you something here.

Oh okay.

Oh my goodness.

The construction here is the most impressive thing

I think I've seen anywhere.

This is the shrine of sultan Qalawun,

the founder of this hospital.

Patients would have come in and offer prayer

of thanks for the sultan.

Slowly Qalawun himself becomes connected to

the idea of healing.

It's like in this history we're looking at

the making of a healing Saint.

Does that mean that there becomes

a connection between faith and healing?

Medicine as a whole was seen as

the conduit of the will of god.

So at the end of the day we fall sick in part this is

something that god wills, and we would only be healed

through medicine but only by the will of god.

If god wills it.

Exactly.

So actually everything that happens

is a will of god.

Exactly.

Centuries ago muslims believed faith

and medicine worked hand in hand.

But can belief in divine intervention actually help

medicine heal us today?

Tom Renfro is familiar with the cliché the miracle of

modern medicine, because he's a practicing physician,

but he also believes in divine miracles

and that one happened to him.

It was 18 years ago that I stood there

to give thanks to god for healing me and what I told you

at that time was, "you are looking at a true miracle."

"A miracle of god."

The hunt for miracle stories has brought

Indiana university scholar candy Gunther brown to

Norton, Virginia to meet tom.

She's studying whether faith and prayer can actually

improve medical outcomes.

The question that really interests

me is what happens when people prey for healing.

Candy it was in 1996 in the fall of that year,

that I found a nodule on the back of my neck.

Later on that fall I found more nodules under my arm,

and I sought medical attention,

and the biopsy under my arm showed that I had

an unusual form of lymphoma called mantle cell lymphoma.

The prognoses was very poor, and they gave me months to

live, and basically told me enjoy what time you have left.

And the goal is to hopefully keep me alive through Christmas.

I was a physician, I knew the objective evidence

that was there.

I was in multi organ failure.

I had a disease that there was no medicine or cure for

that would wipe this disease out.

Instead of despair the lord wants us to remember,

I brought you all this way I'm not gonna leave

you here by yourself.

Did you have medical treatments?

No I did not have medical treatments,

not at that time.

The tumors continued to progress,

and as they progressed the people came together more and

more intense with prayer.

My pastor organized a weekend prayer to where

people would come and pray perhaps even all night,

and it was a remarkable time.

By now the tumors were the size of apples on my neck.

My arms stuck out because of the massive

adenopathy under my arms.

My abdomen was expanded, I was dying.

The lord actually spoke to me and said,

"now is the time to go to the hospital."

Chemotherapy typically only delays

the progress of mantle cell lymphoma.

It's not a cure.

So they started an infusion and it was

like the rock that David threw at goliath.

Before the infusion even completed there was something

that changed in me physically.

The tumors they became like a nerf ball, like a sponge,

and very soft, and they started disappearing

in front of your eyes.

And all of this massive adenopathy just disappeared

over the next 24, 48 hours.

It was gone.

Do you ever wonder did the

chemotherapy just work better than the doctors

expected it to work?

The chemotherapy it wasn't designed to cure.

No one expected the tumors to utterly start

disappearing or melting.

I should have died multiple times during this illness

from pulmonary embolisms, from pneumonia,

from renal failure.

But I had faith.

I had people that poured their words into me to encourage me,

and I believe through that that god intervened and healed me,

and here we are 18 years later me talking to you.

To me that is a miracle.

It is a miracle that I'm here.

Why did tom Renfro survive when

so many people who prey for healing don't make it?

Tom believes the power of his faith and that of

the people around him helped the chemotherapy achieve

the impossible.

It strikes me that much of what we call miraculous

starts right here in the mind.

We close our eyes in prayer don't we,

and I think that's because the goal is to focus the mind.

To transcend the distractions of everyday life.

To set our minds to achieve what at first

we might fear is impossible.

I've come to India to explore a religion that believes

we all have the mental power to perform miracles.

This is the mahabodhi temple in bodh gaya.

According to Buddhist tradition 2,500 years ago

a man named siddhartha gautama came to the

realization that the human mind had

immense untapped powers.

In doing so he founded an entirely new religion,

buddhism, and tradition says he did it right here

under this tree.

I want to understand what Buddhists believe

happened to siddhartha as he sat under the tree.

Tibetan monk losang tenpa has promised to help me find out.

So.

Glad to be here.

I'm glad you could come.

Oh me too.

So this is our holy spot where the

Buddha obtained awakening.

Losang tells me he'll get me to understand

the miracle of the Buddha's enlightenment,

and he will do it by challenging my mind

to get me to see the light myself.

So what do you know about?

Siddhartha, I mean.

What do they teach you in America?

I learned that he was of noble birth,

and he grew up very, very sheltered,

and then one day he wondered out of the compound.

That's right.

And began to see life as it really was.

Why did he do that?

That's the question you're

going to answer.

Well how would you like it if your father

had decided as soon as you were born that this

baby of mine's gonna be the king?

So I've got to keep him in this palace surrounded by

beautiful sense objects, flowers that never drooped,

beautiful young ladies who never look old.

Sounds perfect.

Isn't that perfect yeah, but this guy wasn't

satisfied with that.

Buddha left the palace, right?

Yes.

And do you know what he saw when he left the palace?

Well as I understand it he saw suffering.

He saw real life.

And what for?

Well there were old people, cripples.

Yeah.

Beggars.

Yeah.

People who had nothing,

people who were hungry.

Yeah it's like an eye opener, it's like a wow.

He saw death.

Yeah.

His father didn't want him to see death.

He made him think so strongly, he felt I've got to

leave this place and find out what is the cause of this.

Why do people suffer?

Siddhartha roamed for six years

seeking to understand the cause of suffering.

Until he finally came to the shade of a ficus tree,

and decided that he would stay right on that spot,

focusing his mind, until he discovered how

to end human suffering.

After sitting motionless for an entire night,

siddhartha achieved a mental transformation.

Buddhists say he became the Buddha, the enlightened one.

He taught us, he said you know what a good

doctor would tell a patient, "man you're sick, you're sick,

you're suffering, you know, you have a problem."

Second, I know the cause, basically craving attachment.

The Buddha realized that by letting

go of his desires and his attachment

to the material world,

he could rid himself of suffering.

But the Buddha and for generations of Buddhists

after him, this freedom from attachment seems to

allow a remarkable perhaps even miraculous mental

and physical focus.

You know he was so grateful to this tree under

which he'd sat and achieved this amazing realization,

he sat in this are for seven weeks and for one of those

weeks just gazing, unwinkingly they say.

Unmoving and unblinking for seven days.

It's possible, why not?

We haven't exercised our minds.

We're so busy with external things,

buying and selling, and doing all the things.

We've never actually seen

a yogi in action.

Well in a sense it's an amazing thing

but you and I can do it.

For Buddhists years of mental training

and showing love and compassion to others

can free them from suffering.

Walking around this temple you feel like a

miracle really could happen.

The miracle of people being content with their lives.

People getting along together.

Do you want to just come and

see how a Tibetan llama teaches western students?

Sure.

How are you?

I am well, how are you sir?

I'm very good, I saw your movie.

Oh you did, which one?

I don't know.

Who else likes my movie?

Bravo.

Shortcut we all need to care and

love and respect each other.

That is the source of happiness.

Whoever had that their journey's good.

Whoever not keep this in their heart, journey's not good.

Thank you, from today you are my friend.

Okay.

I like you.

I like you.

So a lot of religions are pretty

much miracle based.

I mean christianity, judaism.

Right.

Really.

Right.

You don't do miracles?

What's a miracle?

I mean flying in the sky is that a miracle?

It is, it is, it is.

Birds do it, birds do it.

But we normally think of miracles

as some sort of divine thing,

something that gives us proof of god or something, you know.

Okay so that we could ask where is god?

We ask the mystics or the yogi's were is god?

They'll point here, they won't point up there.

They'll say it's in here.

So then if you're being inspired by your inner god,

Buddha, Christ, you know, Christian or whatever

you want to call it, maybe then you can perform

what's called a miracle.

What does this world need the most?

It needs healing, right, love, it needs reconciliation.

I think that's a miracle, and that's the miracle we need.

We don't need people levitating three inches off

their butts, you know, while meditating that's stupid.

Right.

So let's stick to the real miracle which

is to transform the human mind really.

Alright, you know what you did there?

What?

Solved the problem of miracles.

Thank you, walk on.

You're alright in my book.

It's ironic that a man who wanted us to tap

into the power that we all have within ourselves,

is thought of as some sort of divine being.

The point of buddhism as far as I can see,

is to teach us that we're all capable of much

more than we might believe we are,

if we just concentrate on it, just put our minds to it.

I used to struggle to make sense of miracle stories.

How oceans could be parted.

How it was possible to walk on water.

But I think I was missing the point.

To believe in miracles is to believe there is more

to life than meets the eye.

To accept there could be something that connects us,

unites us.

So many souls pass through this world,

and as our paths cross miraculous things can

and do happen.

People get the breaks they always wanted,

people inspire one another, people fall in love.

And whether these events are orchestrated

by the hand of god, the power of the mind,

or just a one in a million chance,

I believe we should believe in miracles.

Because miracles however you define them help us to,

well they give us hope.

They drive us to create reality out of possibility.

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