A Take On Fundamentalism

A Take On Fundementalism by Ajahn Brahm Transcription Okay. For this evening's talk, I'm gonna be discussing the Buddhist attitude to fundamentalism, because I was watching a couple of documentaries in the last few days about some of the extremes of fundamentalism in our world, and it does affect the reputation of all religions. And it's a problem which we face, whether it's somebody knocking on our door or somebody trying to convert us to this or that sort of religion or cult. And obviously it has political ramifications in our society and also ramifications to the harmony between our societies. So today I'm going to be talking about, you know, what does Buddhism say about this? What is the causes? And more importantly, what's the solution to the extreme views which some people have in our world? And what's the Buddhist attitude towards like fundamentalism? And I know that sometimes people think that all religions are somehow wrong. We should sort of abandon all religions and spiritualities and often make the joke, yeah, we should get rid of organized religion, but we're exempt here in this Buddhist society because you all know that we're not an organized religion. We are very disorganized religion. And you try and get things done here and it's always disorganized. In other words, you're just a group of volunteers trying our best. And it's no work somehow or other, you know? But it's chaos and it's nice. Chaos. It's human chaos. We're not that organized. But the important thing is that we cannot sort of abandon all sort of religion or spirituality. Even today, I realized that I started off this morning with a funeral service for a young man who committed suicide and of course, know the family and friends. They needed some sort of spiritual help to get through an enormous crisis. You know, if you've lost somebody who's in their 20s to a suicide, then that's a time when a spirituality can give a deeper meaning and another, deeper meaning, which makes you more upset or creates more problems in life, but a meaning which can help and and ease the pain and suffering which is real. Her losing soul of a 28 year old, and it was obviously very successful that, you know, sometimes I've given funeral services and people rather than reaching and saying, wow, that was really good. And can you come and give my funeral service? I've got many bookings from Greek Orthodox, from Catholics from anywhere. Please, could you do my funeral service for me? And I remember I don't mind blowing my own trumpet the best. One of the best comments I ever got was when I did a funeral service over in Karrakatta, and the funeral director came up afterwards. You know, these are the professionals who said that was the best funeral service I've ever been to. And he should know he does it for a job. I said, well, no, when I die, can you do mine? I brought you to. The rest of it. Some of the interesting, the best funerals. One of the most interesting funeral service. I'm going to write a book one day. My favourite funerals. Was a bikie funeral in Fremantle. You know, the bikies. And I couldn't believe it. Just one of their members died and their mother was a Buddhist, and she wanted support. And her mother, she wanted actually to do the funeral service herself. But he can't do that for mother's love for her son, who died in a motorbike crash. It was too strong. She got so emotional. She cracked up after the first 1 or 2 minutes, and then she looked at me and said, Brian, Brian, come over here, there's a professional, please come up and do the service. So I did the service for all these bikies and they were all in their black leathers and all their girlfriends, their moms, they were hardly in anything at all. It's a very interesting funeral service. They're just really nice people. Afterwards they came up and thank me. They're really polite. They have some good manners, some mangling. But the point is that even they wanted something spiritual, you know, for the loss of one person who was their friend, someone they loved very much. And really, we just can't do away with the spiritual side of life, especially in the crisis which we have. And I just say, I'll just get on with your life just doesn't work. Or this afternoon I did a a marriage ceremony this afternoon. And you can't just go and say, okay, let's have a scientific marriage, okay? We bring together these, these two groups of molecules. I was expressing the fact that their hormones get on with each other. And that would go down very well, wouldn't it? Sort of in a sort of a marriage ceremony to say that a quarter, because I remember this reading in the time magazine, The Chemistry of Love, to say, when boy meets girl, you don't fall in love with him or her. You fall in love with the way he makes you feel. Because when he's around, he stimulates all these hormones going through your body. And that's really nice when she's around. That stimulates all your male hormones. Wow, that really feels good. So he's just really loving the way that they make you feel, that's all. And like any chemical reaction, any sort of biologist, notice after a time, you know, you get some sort of immunity to it. So after a couple of years, don't turn me on anymore. It's true. Crabs. But if I said that, which is the size of marriage. They would have been very happy on that wonderful, magical day of the year. So you had to inject a bit of spirituality within the marriage, which is important. And it's not just blind faith. You know, if I did an old joke for marriage, my favorite marriage joke if love is blind. We always say that though we love is blind. There was marriage, an institution for the blind. We don't answer that at all because it's a marriage. And look, if they don't get on together, especially if they're Buddhist, if I married them, they don't get on together. Who do they come to for counselling me? So to get an easy life, I have to add a bit of spirituality into it to make it sort of more movie to try and keep them together. So it's much more than chemicals or hormone or it's something a bit deeper. And that's why people, they do want some sort of religious or spiritual part to these events of their life. It's meaningful. It actually works. So you can't really dispense with religion. You never will be able to dispense with some sort of spirituality. These days we use the word spirituality instead of religion, just because religion has got the bad name. And just like anything else in life, when somebody gets a bad name marketing, you know you'd keep the same product, but you just change its name and then it's sort of. It's. It works much better. So it's just a little bit of spin cording its spirituality rather than religion, which takes away the bad connotations which have come about because of, you know, the fundamentalists. So religion is important now, but we have to sort of make sure that it's something which is meaningful. And already I've given some validation for spirituality or for religion in those two circumstances, a lack of death or as a marriage, because it actually does do something and what it does is meaningful and positive. And one of the things which I always remember about Buddhism, which stops it being fundamental, is a basic teaching of the Buddha himself, though sometimes you have to go back and see what the Buddha actually taught and is a really very wise pieces of advice, he said. If if it really is Buddhism or truth, you'll know it by its effect. It has to lead to such things as peace and harmony, has to solve problems, not make more problems, basically. And as the advice he actually gave to the first Buddhist nun ever, his, uh, foster, his, um, uh, yeah, his foster mother, Maha Bodhi. So this was amazing advice. If it really is Buddhism, Dharma, truth, real spirituality, you'll know it by its effect. So, you know, if you understand what's being taught here every Friday evening, if you go home and you can't live with your husband, with your wife, have more arguments rather than less. If you find you lose friends rather than being able to make more friends, if it makes your life more miserable and gives you less peace, less freedom, less meaning, you're obviously not understanding the message or I'm giving the wrong message to you. If it really is sort of truth, you understand the truth has to lead to peace, to freedom, to meaning, to more joy, to more harmony. More peace in this world has to solve problems, not make more problems. Which is why that when you do teach that type of Buddhism, the funeral service and even a Christian, even this again, one of the other lovely experiences I had when I sort of wrote that book, Opening the Door of Your Heart, I got one of the nicest clothes from a Baptist minister in South Australia who was missionaries, and he said, can I use your book to missionary in my missionary work? See. Of course you can. Obviously that that was for him very important because those were stories which he knew would lead to peace, happiness, freedom and harmony with his congregation. And obviously because they came from a Buddhist monk that would make his congregation much more open to Buddhist teachings and Buddhists more open to other teachings as well. There was something which was really creating harmony and peace in this world. That's why it is truth. It solves problems rather than making more problems. And one of the reasons many people come here, sometimes they even call themselves Buddhists. They come here because they come here. They do some meditation. They learn some of these strategies of life. It helps their life. They become better husbands, wives, workers, uh, children's, uh, students or whatever. It makes them better people. In other words, it solves problems and it gives us a greater chance of creating more harmony in this world, which is important. We don't live in this little island. It's actually a big island, Australia, but it's connected to the rest of the world. And it's important that we look after the rest of the world as well as our own country. And it's not just looking after the environment, it's looking after people and the relationships we have with each other. Why the heck do we keep on going to wars and blowing each other up? Makes no sense, but we have to find out why that happens and see if we can use spirituality to solve that. What is the problem with with fundamentalism in our in our world? Some people have some strange beliefs and I think they're strange, but as far as they're concerned, they think that's truth. I know that some this when I did read a book about fundamentalism, that someone made a very important point that said there is no such thing as blind faith. If you go to any sort of, you know, fundamentalist, uh, Pentecostal or whatever, there will always give reasons for why they believe in the way they do, because all of those fuse ideas are all based on some sort of reasoning. The only point is that the reasoning is very, very faulty. And that particular reasoning they have is obviously supported by their in-group. Sort of what we used to call Cults now. 20 years ago? No. There was an organization called Cult Watch here in Perth, and they used to come and investigate the Buddhist Society of WA. And I thought we were a cult. And I remember once when they came to our first, our first little temple we had in North Perth, a little house with a beautiful Buddha statue which was sent over by the current Sangha Raja of Tara, the head monk of Tali, still alive only just. But he sent that over many years ago, maybe 25, 30 years ago, we had this little house and this guy from Cult Watch came along to check us out. And of course, he met this very nice, uh, Australian lady who's, you know, one of our caretakers. Now, that was Lyn. And then it's just a nice Australian lady and said, oh, who are you? Oh, yes. Please come in for a cup of tea. And when he was invited in for a cup of tea. Oh, this is okay. This can't be anything bad. And then they went. We went for a cup of tea. Was only a small house. They went past the shrine with this big statue of the Buddha. And they went. Ah. And ran out the. In some ways they don't think a big Buddha statue is something evil or wrong. It's just air conditioning the way they've been taught. Obviously it's not reasonable, but they think it is reasonable. And so people actually have these ideas though, because it's based on reason, based on the limited experience, because this is actually how we justify things. We justify everything on our experience and also how we reason with that experience. And if ever you do meet a fundamentalist, never think that they're just being unreasonable to. Then they're being very reasonable. Never feel that sort of know that they're being stupid because they're feeling they're very wise and they're doing the most compassionate thing. They certainly have compassion. The only way it seems to understand where they're coming from and how the problem is solved, is actually now using reason and widening a person's experience. I know that, you know, being a monk that sometimes, like, I'm a target for fundamentalists. Because they're supposed to convert people. And converting me will be a great price. Converting any one of you. Oh, that's easy, but converting a leader of one of the religions in Perth. Wow, that would really get them. And an extra few verses when they get up to heaven, if that's where they're after, I don't know. But so as monks, we are prime targets. But many of us monks, we come across these people who try to sort of convert us or try to sort of talk to us. We know one of the most wonderful things which we can do is just to be kind. Because when one is a fundamentalist, one thinks that one has the whole truth and no one else has that the sense of like black and white and us and them, when really, as far as I see, the only way forward is not to own truth, but to share truths. If we own truth, we say I have it and you don't. If we shared truth, it is that you know. You know some things I don't know. I know some things you don't know. So we can work together to enhance our understanding of the world, to grow together rather than for me to control you or me to be superior than you. And it's important that we understand that this is sharing of truth which creates the harmony and the peace, rather than the owning of truth. Now sometimes I say, you know who can own truths like owning the air now the air. I know that sometimes we own water and we own land. Now, even though some of the indigenous tribes say, how can you own land? The land is for everybody. But it's the same way that even now we look at air. Now can we actually own air, you know, in our block of land or in our apartment? This is our air. You can't breathe it or have to charge you for breathing the air. This is a Buddhist society's air in this compound. You can't own air. Air is there for everybody to use freely, in the same way that truth is all around us. And it's there for anybody to see. And no one can own it. No one can actually bottle it and charge people for it. I know we have this bottled water these days, and somebody pointed out a long time ago the most famous bottled water, Evian water. Evian. If you look at that, that's actually naive. Spelled backwards a bit. I thought he'd get good water from the tap. But nevertheless, we like to buy things because we think if we buy it, if somebody owns it, it must be more important. But when a person thinks they own the truth and that you don't own the truth, one of the most is things to combat that fundamentalism is so that you have truth as well. Well, one of the fundamentalist truths which all religions value in Islam, we call it mercy in Christianity. Life in Buddhism. Matter is actually to show that, to show that. Certainly the Buddhists, we have lots of love and kindness as well. And I've always found that a wonderful, disarming thing to do to somebody who thinks that they have an ownership of truth and love, and no one else has that just to be kind. I remember hearing years and years ago in Thailand, where I grew up, a summer, there was one of the evangelical groups, I think it was the seventh day Adventists. You know, the ones who go and knock on doors, you know, here in, uh, in Australia. Was it the Mormons? I forget which one it is. Anyway, the door knockers. And the door knocker religious group. They had a terrible time working in Thailand because every time they knocked on a door in that country, they would always be invited in. Oh, please come in and please have something to eat. And as soon as they were given something to eat, the Thai people would ask, oh, how many brothers and sisters, oh, what country do you come from? Oh, that's really interesting. They were so interested in their personal details. They spent all day talking about gossip and rubbish, and they never had any time to spread the gospel, so that one day they'd only visit one house and get no converts. So their production quota was never met. They were just simply just overcome by kindness. And that certainly happened to me. I remember when I was visiting my, uh, mother in London, going on the choo train to go and give a talk somewhere. And of course, being on a choo train, you're stuck in a close environment. And this lady sitting opposite to me, usually you don't speak to one another in a London shoe, but the fundamentalists couldn't couldn't resist the opportunity to reveal to me sort of the sweet teachings of the Lord Jesus. So she started talking at me and she asked us to be quite loud. So all I did was say, look, you must be hurting your voice. I actually walked over and sat next to her and just that little gesture of kindness, instead of running away, go towards her. Is that what you want to say? And that kindness and all the other people in the train who's a couple of Afro, uh, English people. They said, oh, nice one, nice one, Mr. Monk. I didn't know who I was or available or whatever. They knew I was a monk. Just the very fact you went over to see them rather than running away. And that completely disarmed her. And I remember when the other monks were telling me that he was on a train, not an underground train. One of these trains in England, going from the north to the south, and was stuck next to this fundamentalist Christian for a long time. And they started discussing religion. And this person was really trying their hardest to get her one of the prized scalps of Buddhist monk to become a Christian. And of course, and in the end he said, well, look, I have to get off now, this is my station, but you know, I love you as well. And that completely confused. So the the evangelical, the fundamentalist, the very fact that someone else could be kind to them didn't make any sense because they thought they had just the franchise on kindness. So one of the great solutions to the problem of fundamentalism is not to argue where they're wrong because bad ideas, wrong ideas, and never really countered just with arguments with negativity. Sure, you can say you're wrong, but they understand that's what you're supposed to say. You can say that no, this is not right. This is not right to say, yeah, I understand. I'll accept that. That's what you're that's what I expect you to say. But they never expect people from so-called evil religions or wrong ideas to be kind, to be gentle, to be loving. And so we never actually fight fundamentalism. You know, by arguing in their wrong ideas. We actually present experiential evidence for them to work on the fact that these Buddhists or these Jews or whatever, these people who are not the same as them, are as kind, as gentle, or even kinder. That has a powerful message. I know one of the things which I was talking about when I was in Malaysia recently, that people were saying, oh, you know, these Buddhists are just into, you know, becoming enlightened, you know, sitting down doing nothing, not really helping the world, just know learning how to solve their own problems, but never really giving out to other people. Because in a country like Malaysia, apparently maybe in Singapore, it seemed to be that the Christians are the ones who make the hospitals and who have the orphanages and the old people's homes. And I think that sometimes as Buddhists, we don't really publicize how much we do enough. And we all know just over Christmas that this particular, uh, organization here, we actually basically run and support 90% of an orphanage in Bangladesh. You know, we run orphanages and we have appeals. We had a huge appeal for the tsunami. And still that fund which we collected for the tsunami, mostly in Sri Lanka, built many houses in Sri Lanka in a gala district, but is also continuing to support, you know, an orphanage just in Khao, like in Thailand, which the Buddhist Fellowship, our sister organization in Singapore is looking after. And when actually you think those there's many Sri Lankans here. How many hospitals are there made in Sri Lanka. You know, which is funded by the Buddhist schools, orphanages, old people's homes. And it's the same in Thailand, in Burma. You know, one of the biggest organizations, relief organizations is the Suu Kyi Foundation, a Buddhist organization, got their pamphlets in the reception area here. And it's like equivalent to the Buddhist idea of a red cross or a red crescent. And they were the first on the ground in, in the earthquakes in Pakistan a couple of years ago. There were the first on the ground in the floods in the south of Malaysia a year or two ago. I think they're the only organization which is allowed to run relief efforts in Indonesia. Now, the only non-Muslim organization, it's got a huge reputation. It's very active. It is caring. It is loving. It is there on the ground. But, you know, sometimes I think as Buddhists, we should publicize this more. One of the troubles with being a Buddhist who's supposed to be so humble and into non-self, we never actually say what we're up to. And so a lot of the time, the world doesn't know just what we're doing. A lot of times that are, um, are what people understand. We do is just meditate, have retreats, you know, give tools and do nothing else. I think it's important that we do show that all good religions show just how much we care and how much we do. There is actually a saying, which I sometimes tell people who try and convert us and saying, you know that no, you Buddhists worship the devil because there's a saying in the Christian Bible I remember, I think it's in Mark the. So I think this is one of the sayings which Jesus as reported to have said, if the devil went around doing good things, he would explode. So the very fact that people do good things will convince those fundamentalists is can't be coming from some sort of bad devil. It has to be good. It feels good. You know, it's good to help other people and to care for our society and to be compassionate. Nothing is growing in compassion. The spreading of compassion. The acting in compassion is, I think, one of the best ways of ending the the, uh, isolation of the fundamentalists in this world. We're going to have the evidence to say, yeah, there are people who are as kind, as good, or even kinder and more compassionate and gentle than they are. That is evidence which no one can actually deny. The fundamentalist they do base their beliefs on evidence and also on reason, but sometimes even the reasoning, it's because it's limited experience of life. Sometimes their reasoning never reaches a proper conclusion. So with evidence, with engagement, with kindness, I think there's a huge amount we can do actually to soften the hard edges of some of our religions. I know that some people get very worried and they think, oh, all these kids are going off to become, um, born again Christians, or some of the people in the Muslim countries are going to madrassas and turning into terrorists. What can we do about this? I say, some of the reasons why people do do that is because, you know, the young people, they do want some meaning in their life. They do want to express their compassion and kindness. One psychologist once told me something very important that young people, in their sort of from teenage years, they're not just interested in the other sex and not just interested in music. That's one of the most sensitive spiritual times of a person's life. You know, maybe 13, 14, 15, or 16. That's the time when spirituality has an important power over. You want meaning in life? Teenagers are very spiritual and I can put my hand. I chose my religion when I was 16. So this is a sensitive time for our youth, and because it is a sensitive time for our youth, we should understand that and actually obviously give them an opportunity to find some better meaning in life. You don't stop wrong meanings by arguing with them, by pitch, by offering better meanings. Things which are more attractive in the marketplace of ideas. You don't just. Increase your market share if you want to put it in a materialistic way like that. You know, you don't sort of stop the bad products by blasting them. You put better products there for our youth, and then maybe that they will come and see that it is something which is more meaning, more rational, more evidence based. And by increasing the evidence, I know that one of the things which I think as a society we should be very careful of is that the segmentation of our society into our religious schools, into our religious universities, into our little ghettos of society. And I am before that. Those ghetto ization of society cause a huge number of social problems. And I know that one of the things which we can do, which is an easy thing to do now on the surface, but politically very difficult, is actually to put an end to religious schools of all denominations and all types and let sort of the kids of all religions meet together. Because I remember as a kid myself growing up, because I came from a poor area of London and I was, uh, you know, Acton, central part of Acton, the west part of Acton was quite it was quite wealthy. It was the Middle Eastern part, which was quite poor. So it was a council flat because my father was poor, going to this school with lots of migrants from different religions, every sort of different colour of skin was there. And it was great growing up that way because East Europeans, people from Pakistan, afros from the Caribbean, I didn't care who was who. As long as they were good at soccer. They were in my team. And there's wonderful actually growing up with so many different nationalities. It made you what I call these days colorblind. You know, because you grew up there as a young person, and that was in your formative years. There's no way you could get racist or dogmatic about the different religions. It was your friends. You grew up with them. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing is the Muslims are Christians and Buddhists. The Catholics, the Jews all went to the same school. So these were your friends, your mates. And even if you know you're intermarried as well. When I was young, you could not marry anyone outside of your own race. Now the idea of, you know me as a young man going out with a black girl would be sort of frowned upon by my friends and by my elders. That's a terrible thing. We had that type of racism. But now, of course, you can go out with anybody. Isn't that a wonderful time we have. But why is it that sometimes we say, okay, like, you know, Muslim, you can't marry anyone else except another Muslim or Buddhist? You have to find a nice, nice Buddhist person to marry. There was one couple who came to see me in Singapore and she was a muslim. He was a Buddhist and they got married having a wonderful life together. And I said, this is great. Now when you have children, can you please make one a Christian, another one a Hindu, and maybe the third one, be a Jew? One. Wouldn't that be wonderful if you could do that? Because what that would mean is say, yeah, even in a family, you can live together in harmony. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that was possible? Unfortunately, we can't do this yet because some of our leaders are religious leaders. Say, no, no, you can't do that. Why? I think it's just fear, that's all. It's a wonderful thing if we could be able to do that. And when you can start to do that, we can actually start to say, well, from all these different religions, you can actually have a greater exposure, more experience. And then those little experiences you have, you've seen a bigger context. You know, even in Buddhism, we have these incredible healings. Only when we do healing, when we do some charting and someone gets better, we just don't jump up and down saying hallelujah and plays a lot. As we do say, praise the Lord, praise the Lord Buddha. But these things actually happen simply because it's the power which you have for focusing the mind in. Meditation has enormous power, and it's not coming from the power of, you know, the Lord or outside of you. You have that power and people know it's time. I'll ask me, as Buddhists, you know who created the world. And of course, now the answer is again, it's a wonderful answer. Don't go to science because, you know, some of these dogmatic, dogmatic people just don't believe science. Even though science, a great definition of science is like, you know, the the accumulated reasoning, evidence based reasoning of our culture. And it's not just Western culture. Now, some of the greatest scientists was now from India, Sri Lanka, from China, from Japan, from everywhere. And so this is our world culture. You know, the evidence based reasoning, which we call science in all of its forms. And when you say no, we own this, it's not sort of belongs to any particular country or group of countries, but it's a world phenomena. Then we can actually embrace that culture. And we can see that it doesn't challenge our allegiance but enhances our religions. Any religion worth its salt? If it really is truth, they can be tested. And that's one of the great things which one of the reasons I sort of accepted Buddhism as a young man, because I say, yeah, test it out, argue as much as you want. When I argued with these great monks, they would actually respect my arguments. They wouldn't say, I just you're being sort of stupid or you're just being possessed by a devil. You know, you're wrong to even argue with me. Just believe it. In Buddhism, it's not a good tradition. Don't believe what I say. Do you believe what I say? Well, no, I said of course. You thought you argue. I once said that. Says people. I said, don't believe what I say and they believe me. They say we don't believe what you say. Now, it's great to be able to argue, to question, because that argument is it's a tool by which we can test all these theories and dogmas and truths. And that's one of the great things about modern religions. We actually test these things out. And without testing these things out, obviously, that we never know whether we've arrived at truth or not, whether it's a Buddhist truth or a Christian truth or any truth. So really that we have to develop and encourage and enhance that truth seeking, which is why the ability to question and to challenge, which is why any one of you can come and challenge me at any time and challenge any of the other monks, or in a challenge to hold of the teachings of the Buddha. The Buddha invited that and encouraged it. Otherwise, there's no way you can actually trust what's being taught. Which is why that one of the stories I love to tell was of a young couple in in England many years ago. They were took on Buddhism. They were Caucasian. They decided as a religion, and Buddhism was what suited them the most. But then they had a child. And like any sort of concerned parent, they wanted the best upbringing for their children. So I wanted to. How should we bring up our child? Should we take him to the temple? Or is that just going to indoctrinate them as being a Buddhist? Or should we not take them to any temple? Then we have not given them any guidance. Or should we take them on Saturday to the temple, Sunday to the, uh, to the AME church and Friday to the mosque? It's very convenient, actually, that because mosque has their services on Friday and they can do meditation here on Saturday and Sunday, you can go to church. I don't know what time the Jewish community have their meetings, but it's quite convenient that sort of you can go from one to another and it's not all on the same day. It's like an A roster system. But whatever. That was an important question. How can you bring up your kids? And they went to see their monk who gave them this wonderful answer. And I can't better this answer. He said he has no need to teach your child to be a Buddhist or a Christian or a Hindu, a Jew, or on Muslim or whatever. But what you should teach your child is two things. Teach them to be honest and teach them to question and encourage those two aspects of the human intellect. Honesty and questioning the honesty would mean there would never stop at something which never made sense to them. It would not be just telling the truth to others. It would be telling the truth to themselves. So never deceive themselves on something which doesn't make sense. And number two, teach them to question. Encourage their questioning. Even if it if it bores you or it troubles you, at times you encourage their questioning because questioning is at all. It's a spade which you use to dig deep into the treasure which is underneath the ground. With that questioning and honesty, if you're encouraging your child in those two things, you're equipping your child to find the truth. And if Buddhism is a truth, that's what they will find. If you too got it wrong and I've got it wrong. So this monk of Buddhism is not the truth. Your child will find that out themselves. Your equipping the child to find something which is really meaningful with honesty and with questioning. And that is the advice which you don't just give to children, you give to the monks. I train in my monastery and it gives to each one of you. Continue to question. Continue to be honest and with that sincerity and that questioning that your understanding of beliefs will be evidence based but really hard. One worked out, not easy. And the chances of you falling for some of this are quite silly. Dogmas and ideas are very, very limited. Which means that when people ask, you know who created this earth? I know what's creation. The Buddhist answer is you did, because that's a meaningful answer to say was from a big bang. I know the most scientists believe that. And as heaps of evidence, Earth in this universe, that's probably where it started from. But that's not what we really mean when actually people ask that question, you know, where does this life come from? You created it, and that makes much more sense to each one of you. Actually, science says that as well. It's now that's the quantum physics of collapsing or destroying requested an observation creates the universe as you know it. But that's also something which is experiential. Each one of you, no matter where you are, no matter what you face, you create your reality. You know? Okay. You know, you have something to work with. You're poor, you're rich, you're talented, you're beautiful, you're ugly. But it's what you make of that is your world. You create the world with your attitudes and reactions and responses to life, which comes at you. And it's amazing when you realize that you create the world. We don't have to pray to a God. We don't pray to a Buddha. We don't have to sort of ask for favors because it's up to you. When we say that we create the world, all that is is just explaining the law of karma. You create your happiness and your suffering. No one else does. It's not God, it's not a Buddha. It's not some sort of terrible demon which is creating problems. Now you create this. It's the same. When I saw this movie and all these Christian fundamentalists were supposed to be speaking in tongues as the Holy Spirit coming down, it wasn't a Holy Spirit. It was a crazy spirit, and it came from them. They created that. No one else very obvious to me. It is true. It's we create this world. We create what's happening. And so when we understand that, that we are creating these things, we give a much better answer. And that's an answer which actually does open the door to creating peace and harmony, solving problems when we realize that, yeah, if there are problems, we're creating these things. If we're creating them, we can actually solve them. In other words, we are not are just recipients of some whim from some powerful people up in the sky. And we're not victims, in fact, that just we are the people who create our future, who create our world. That's one of the most relieving teachings of Buddhism. Sometimes you can't choose whether you're poor or rich. It just happens. Sometimes you can't really choose whether you are healthy or sick. Even the the best people exercise, take the best food. Sometimes they still get sick. Sometimes you can't choose the you know the what happens to you in this life, but surely you can choose how you react to it. And that is where happiness and suffering and pain comes from. It's how we react to the things we have to deal with in life. We look upon the positive or the psychologist say no matter what, you have to deal with your life. You can always look in in a positive way. Whenever you tread in the dog shit, remember, you can always dig it under your mango tree while you lay to have a sweet mango. When you're tasting that mango, you're tasting dog shit. But it tastes so sweet, doesn't it? Transform. It's what you've created with dog shit. It's made of beautiful mango that's not similar, usually because it's very easy to remember. This is how we do create the world. So this is the creator. And you know this from your experience, isn't it? It's not only a document, it's not only a breed, it's something which actually works and positive and is useful in your life. One of the problems I have with the fundamentalists is, yeah, okay. If you want to believe that God is responsible for all things, you know, maybe that's your opinion. You can keep that opinion. But sometimes I think I don't even want to keep that opinion for themselves because it's dangerous. It hurts. It harms their lives. When you put responsibility onto some other unseen being, it means you don't take responsibility for yourself. You think God will fix it. One of the terrible things which I saw worrying things in one of these documentaries was global warming. What do we have to worry about? Global warming? God will fix it. If you think like that, you're just big, heedless, irresponsible. Each one of us has to take that action. You have to take responsibility when you realize that. Yeah, we are the ones who create our future. Us. Not some God in the sky. Then we do actually take responsibility when we realize we can do anything. We never get so negative and despairing. What's the point is going to happen anyway? What's the point? We don't think like that. There's always something you can do with what we what you have. That's one of the messages of my life now, which I've seen in meditation in my life is, oh, there's no such a thing as a tragedy. It's always an opening for some great wisdom, for some compassion. It's always an opportunity to make something wonderful happen. And I say to each one of you, if you get your, your, your husband, so your husband just runs away with your best friend. It's a wonderful opportunity. You're rid of a husband now you can become a nun. What a great thing that is. Why are you so sad? If the stock market goes down, you lose all of your investments. Wonderful. You can live simply, just like me. All these things we worried about that wonderful things which happened to us. Opportunities. You have cancer. Great opportunity for learning of the meaning of life. So you can create anything with whatever happens to in life. That's what creation is when you realize you're the creator. So this is a powerful, wonderful teaching, which means we don't have arguments anymore. Wow, this makes sense. I can do something when we get on with creating a good will. When we start to think like that, it's not only a love, it's a wisdom which actually transcends all these dogmas because it does not come from a book. It comes from you. What is the holy book in Buddhism? Christians have the Bible. Muslims have the Koran. Maybe the Jews had the Torah. When is the holy book in Buddhism? Meditation? That's the holy book of Buddhism. Where did the Buddha get all his wisdom from? Who's sitting under a tree meditating? Whatever wisdom I have here, where do I get all of this from? Not from reading books. From meditating. Like a story. I tell someone an old story. I was telling someone a couple of days ago that about 3 or 4 years ago now, because we were fighting these trucks coming past our monastery. Now we actually won there. We wore the company down in the end because we were committed. They were just as prophets. So this was our life. So eventually one they should have known that from the first. Never mess with the monks. But anyway, because of that, that actually got me a bit politically involved. That's where I started to get to know all these people in the opposition, the Labour Party at the time. And of course, you got to know a lot of McTiernan now when, you know, the Labour government got into power, one of the first things she did was that she'd have a road transport summit. And because, you know, I'd been active in fighting trucks that, you know, I've invited along to this summit. And it was really boring, pretty much a waste of time. But but during the teatime lunch break, this guy came by. He was a journalist, and, uh, he interviewed me. Not because I was an expert, because I looked straight. He interviewed me, and he asked me all these questions about transport in the world and especially shipping. And I gave all these answers, you know, what do I know about shipping? Yeah. But apparently he came to see me a year later, and he told me, you know, he wrote that article. He gave it the the title now pretty sort of obvious titles Z and the Art of shipping, he called it. He didn't. I was terrified. But, you know, Zen Theravada who cares as Buddhist Zen in the art of shipping. And he came and told me, he said, you wouldn't believe how successful that article was. That was syndicated to almost every shipping magazine in the world. It was reprinted. It was a famous article. And he got emails back saying, we don't know who this action drama is, but he certainly knows what he's talking about. But what I don't know what I was talking about, why did I? Where does that wisdom come from? Not. I never read a book on shipping. I haven't got a clue. I've never gone to university in the shipping or transport. But you know, when you meditate, it's amazing just what can come out of your meditation. So that's that is our holy book. So if there are any fundamentalists, what book is your holy book? What do you worship? Meditation. Now what that actually does. It actually shows that the words in the book. Yeah, they're important, but it's what those words, where they come from, what I said before, one of the reasons why, um, fundamentalism misses the point is because they mistake the container for the context, the container for the context, where that comes from. I don't know when I last told this story, but probably not that long ago. Could have been last week. But I'm getting older. I give so many talks during the week, I don't know which talk I gave where. And so there's that old story about the Marines in Guantanamo Bay many years ago. About 4 or 5 years ago, they were accused of flashing a copy of the Koran down the toilet. And so as soon as that happened, hit the newspapers in Perth, one of the, I think, from the West Australian, and they called me up and the monastery and said, you've heard this news, I'm doing an article on this. As a Buddhist leader, what would you do if someone flushed a Buddhist holy book down the toilet? And without hesitation I'd said, sir, I'd call a plumber. The great response. I'm a very practical man, you know. So we got to use the toilets. He liked that one. I think he printed it right. But the point is, I said I would never get violent because someone flushed the Buddhist holy book down a toilet and said, you can flush a Buddhist holy book down the toilet. You can destroy a Buddha statue, you can kill monks, you can blow up temples. But I'll never allow you to blow up Buddhism or to flush, piss forgiveness, compassion down the toilet. So that's what I draw the line at your books. Temples. Because these are what we call containers. The books are containers. It's a message contained in that which is important. That's what we want to keep. So you can destroy a Buddha statue. But the compassion, the peace, the virtue of the forgiveness which the Buddha statue contains, if you see it properly, that we're always going to preserve. So you never flush that down the toilet or destroy that. One of the problems with fundamentalism is, again, people mistake the container for the contents. What's inside the books is important, not the books. It's not the mosque or the temple. It's what that represents. The mercy, the truth, the peace which is supposed to be inside of that when we protect the contents. Peace. Truth. Forgiveness. Friendship between all beings. Softness and gentleness. How on earth can we ever have wars over books, over containers? That's why it doesn't matter how many Buddha statues you destroy, how many monks killed or imprisoned. As long as there are the containers is kept. I heard a talk on ABC which was recorded, and I listened to it by Sam Harris, and he said, have you ever seen Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? You don't have them. Even though the Tibetan community lost their country. Many of their monks have been imprisoned and tortured. You can't have suicide bombers because you can take our country, can destroy our religion. But don't destroy the the container, the contents. Let peace, forgiveness. It's so obvious in Buddhism, but this is actually what we worship, not the. These outside secrets are the containers. So when that message gets across, it's the contents which are most important are the containers. So don't fight over the containers and and flush the contents down the toilet. Well, we understand that maybe we can have some peace in this world because as I started with, you know that what real religion is, what real spirituality is, the sort of stuff which gets me going through even more marriage. So it's got another one tomorrow afternoon which gets me invited to give more funeral ceremonies. It's because the spiritual message leads to peace that souls and heals the grief of losing a loved one. It gives meaning to the troubles and difficulties we all have to face in life. It puts this life in a bigger perspective. It solves problem. It heals separations. It creates harmony and peace and togetherness. It doesn't make violence, but it heals anger. That is what spirituality is. And if we could actually practice that, and if we could actually show that more and we could actually celebrate that, celebrate it. So it's seen the example. The example would be a wonderful thing to see, to stop the silly ideas of the fundamentalists who think that only they own the truth when they see a better truth, a wonderful truth of truth, which makes sense. They'll obviously respect that. First of all, when they respect it, though, eventually accept it. Respect comes first. Acceptance comes next. And then there may be some peace and harmony in our world. And many of the moderate Christians. Moderate Muslims, moderate Hindus, moderate Jewish people. There are my friends. Have some great talks together and sometimes even life. Good old Albert Placid, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery in New York. He's a really good mate. I remember going now as a UW, where chaplains conference about a year or two ago, and he was asked that question by, I think father Frank Brennan is one of the, um, Christian, uh, radio. He's got a radio show, I think, on ABC, and he's sort of said that in his work in chaplaincy in universities, he has no problem with a Buddhist as a as a Catholic, no problem with the Protestants, no problem with the Muslims or the Hindus. The only problem he has with the fundamentalists. And he asked Abbot Placid and ah, this Benedictine monk, what's your advice? What should we do with the fundamentalists? And Albert Placid looked at him and said, take them out one by one. There's no major thing for a monk to say, but that is played. You've got a great city to take him out. Does it mean shooting them? That's what it means in the movies. Take him out. He was using it, he said. Just take him aside and be kind. Be gentle. And show them that yes, other people have kindness, gentleness, wisdom and truth themselves. The message will come. The evidence will be so strong, then they won't feel so isolated. And then, instead of thinking they own the truth, they will realize we share the truth. And when they share the truth, rather than owning the truth, the barriers which are set up between us will not be there, and the urge to convert will not be there. Why do you want to convert someone who is as kind and loving, even more so than you? That way maybe we can find an end to this. I know that sometimes that people think are these fundamentalists are growing and the other religions or Buddhism is not growing so much, but it is. Buddhism is growing fast. Still, the fastest growing religion in Australia is over 2%. Now it's not just 2% because this was an interesting, uh, research which was done in the United States a couple of years ago because the Buddhist community in the United States is pretty similar to his community in Australia. You know, you've got sort of Caucasians, Asians, a mix of everybody. But. Is a group of sociologists wanted to find out. Not a person who called themselves a Buddhist, but people actually went to Buddhist temples regularly, meditated regularly, and read Buddhist books. And they said, you know, if you go to temple regularly, Buddhist temple, and you meditate regularly and you read Buddhist books regularly, said, basically that's being a Buddhist. And they found those people who who, you know, qualified to other people as being a Buddhist, attending temple regularly and, uh, meditating regularly and reading Buddhist books regularly. Only half of them claim to be Buddhists, and half of them claimed to be just, well, just interested. Or freethinkers was actually saying that really, if 2% or just over 2% of the last census puts their name down and says they're Buddhists in Australia, the people who actually meditate regularly, go to temples regularly, and read Buddhist books regularly. That's probably about 4% the same demography. So that's a huge number of people who respect and value this. So we're actually growing enormously. Nevertheless, an old Buddhist saying, it's a wonderful saying from nature, it's the big rivers which flows silently. It's a small streams which make all the noise. And so sometimes the big rivers, in a way, are very silent as Buddhists. We're big rivers and small streams. Hallelujah. They make all the noise. And everything's just because they make the noises lot softer. There's only a few of them, so don't get worried. They're not taking over the world. Buddhist. So windy. But rather peace. Truth. Common sense. So winning in our world. And they will continue to win. Truth must prevail. And there's a truth which leads to peace, harmony, freedom which really works in your life. And that's the talk. The Buddhist attitude towards fundamentalism. Thank you. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I'm so happy. What? So I caught up. Among some. Society panel I was also a single.