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 haemorrhaged.
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.
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 too.
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,
is, '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.
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 of 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 aneurysm.
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?
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.
It's human nature
to make a symphony out of the cacophony
of events going on around us.
It 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 Taoism.
Taoism dates back nearly two millennia.
Gods are not the focus of Taoism,
the focus is the Tao.
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 Taoist'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 Taoist
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 a.m,
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 Taoist 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 not 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.
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
that 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 cliche
the miracle of modern medicine,
because he's a practising 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 pray 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 tumours 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 tumours 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 tumours,
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 tumours 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.
In what form? In what form?
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... 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 Lama
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 'where 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.
We can 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.