Episode Transcript
Okay. As I just mentioned a few moments ago, the title of today's talk is Buddhism and Sex. But I'm sorry to disappoint you because the sex part is spelled s e t s because. Because next week, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is coming, and he's a Tibetan Buddhist. And some people of Mahayana Buddhist and weird Theravada Buddhist. So we have nuns, we have certain monks, we have all sorts of different monks and nuns and people from different sects of Buddhism. And I thought, it's a good time to talk about Buddhism and the sects of Buddhism. I've decided to support you. But I couldn't resist that sort of, uh, not really deceptive, I was quite honest. But there are, I will say, with the arrival of His Holiness the Dalai Lama next week on Wednesday, that people will be asking the question, well, you know, Dalai Lama, is he the same as you guys? And and is he the leader of Buddhism? And how does it all work out? And are you guys friends and how do you have arguments? And if you do have arguments, why do you have arguments? Is it just the same as, you know, the Shiites and Sunnis? Are you going to go to war soon? You know, what is it with all these different types of Buddhism? That's going to be the talk this evening. Now, the point is that if ever you read the books, I'm talking about the ancient scriptures, or you read the books written by scholars in universities who never come out of their rooms and haven't got really much of a hold on real life. And that's unfortunately that's the case sometimes, you know, I'll just come back from a conference in Bangkok and some of the stuff which the university professors say, even though they're really, you know, nice people, sometimes they say, are you talking about Buddhism? Do they really know, you know, what's happening on the ground? And obviously they very often don't. But if you read those books or read those scholars, they start saying there's three different types of Buddhism as a Hinayana, the small vehicle, the Mahayana, the big vehicle, the Riana, the diamond vehicle. And the problem is that once you have any difference, the next question is which one is the best? And you know the answer to that. Whichever one you are to say are what is the best? Because that's the trouble where we have differences. Once we have differences, we start to sort of judge and we usually judge out a can see which is the best vehicle. And that really basically upsets me. I'll use the Australian word pisses me off when I sort of have a Buddhist saying I'm better than you are. My teacher is more enlightened than your teacher because I had enough of that when I was a, you know, a kid with Christians and with other people know who was the best. But unfortunately, that that was actually said in the books in ancient times. And sometimes those things are repeated and they both confuse people and also the disappoint people. That's why hopefully you'll never hear monks or nuns here say that we are the best, because that is just pride and arrogance. It's much better to see that, unfortunately, that those monks and nuns, those Buddhists of these traditions who didn't really understand what these teachings were and what they really meant, who just saw the outer shell of these teachings. It's natural because of our pride, because of our arrogance, always to think that we've got the best temple and our teacher is the most enlightened, and our nuns are the best in the whole of Australia. Actually, they're the only ones in Australia just about. So they are the best in Australia. But what actually happens is that when we start their arrogance, we're missing out on an important part of Buddhism. The arrogance has no part in spirituality. Instead, it has a mutual respect which doesn't charge from one person to another person. It doesn't matter whether you have whatever tradition, it's how you use that tradition makes you worthy of respect or not worthy of respect. It's the same with any other sort of religions. It's not really which religion you are, it's but how you use those religions. It doesn't matter what sort of gender you are or what sexual orientation you are, whether you're gay, whether you're straight, or whether you're celibate like the monks and nuns is how you use that vehicle, which is most important in life. So just making blanket statements such as one tradition is better than the other goes completely against the truth, the reality of what Buddhism actually is. So if ever you hear the different traditions and one is better than the other, please understand that that has no grounding in Buddhist teachings at all. And number two is that sometimes the people stress that there are differences in these traditions. And according to the books and the scholars, now, the tradition of Theravada, the one you see here every Friday night, we're supposed to be the selfish tradition. That's what it says in the books. And the Mahayana tradition is supposed to be the unselfish tradition, which goes out to help all sentient beings or doesn't care for themselves. But all you need to do is actually to go on the internet and see my itinerary so far this year. And if I have been selfish, I don't know how much more I can give for others. I've been travelling around so much, even the last month. It's we have waste like day on Sunday. The celebration of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and final passing away. And it'll be the fourth one I've done this year in three countries. Four cities doing six ceremonies. In any way, I'm very actually happy with my travels, because even last Tuesday. Yeah. Last Tuesday night, on the way back from Bangkok, I stopped over in Singapore not to have a rest, but to do an opening ceremony of the group, which I lead in Singapore about 2000 strong, called the Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore, which has been building up over the last 6 or 7 years and finally moved into a temple. And I was very proud not to be giving a speech, you know, at this temple, because it was a Mahayana temple and we had basically a Theravada group. What we've done. Actually, we've joined those two groups together. So two different traditions are sharing the same temple space. And I thought, that's a wonderful thing to to do. And that Buddhist fellowship, we do have a patron who's a Mahayana monk. He's the the head of the, uh, the Buddhist Federation in Singapore, Venerable Kwang Sheng, and I've known him for many years. He was a good friend and we get on very well together. He's also got a great sense of humor, which helps him being a good friend of mine. People who don't have senses of humor I just cannot get on with. But nevertheless, okay, that's maybe it's a good time for the this evening's joke. I got this this morning from our Jen Sujata, who's in our monastery in Sydney. There are these angels. They're divers, and they were flying through the air on a cloudy day and they got lost. So one asked the other, where are we? And so he put his hand through the clouds. And we must be in New York, because I can feel the Statue of Liberty. And they flew a little bit further and say, where are we now? I'll put my hand through the clouds. We must be in Paris, because I feel the Eiffel Tower there went a little bit further and they were lost again. Where are we now? They put their hand down. Oh, you must be in. In India I can feel the Taj Mahal. And they went a little bit further and said, where are we now? And the fellow put his hand down. We must be in Northbridge, in Perth. How can you know that? He said. Oh, because I've just lost my wristwatch. Okay, so that's the joke. So anyway, that was from Sujata. In what? Cente in Sydney from this morning. Thank you. Sujata. Hey. So I was sitting next to this fellow, and he keeps on calling me the Theravada man with the Mahayana hat. And also, when I was in Bangkok, I saw a doctor, Iifa, who was at our global conference last year. And we always argue, not argue. But no, it's an argument. It's say they, um, uh, banter we have between us. She's say, uh, from the Taiwanese, uh, Fo Guang Shan group, and she's based in San Diego. She's a Mahayana nun, an amateur bravado monk. And I said, when are you going to have some disciples? Because she goes around from place to place, but she never trains any other nuns. And I said, look at me. I train all these disciples. We've got all these monks with me at the monastery, they said. And I tell her, so you are a Hinayana. You're selfish, doctor, you and I'm the Mahayana bodhisattvas. And of course, what we're doing is a trading places. Because according to the books, it is a tarot. Vada is supposed to be selfish, and the Mahayana is supposed to be giving themselves, not think about themselves to all sentient beings. I say this to show that the truth on the ground. The reality is there is no difference between these traditions. Now you'll see sort of so-called Theravada monks like myself going around the world busting your gut to sort of, you know, teach other people, working really hard, spreading the dharma, helping out, looking after other people, serving and giving until it hurts. What is the difference? And actually, in reality, there is no difference. Because no matter what Buddhist tradition you, you you follow. No, the the general. Uh. Training, teachings, principles of Buddhism. In her light, virtuous conduct, which is common sense, that's why it's common to all traditions. Know being kind to others. Being kind to yourself. You know, one of the reasons why Buddhism is strong in that virtue is because there are all these beliefs and these dogmas. They actually confuse your virtue. They they stop common sense having any power. Because when you believe the books, when you believe in the god or the priest, sometimes you know, it goes against common sense. And so, okay, we better believe the book because God said that, oh, we better believe the priest because they got a direct line to Allah, or you got to believe, you know, the source of the great, uh, whatever it is, because they're the head of the tradition. And sometimes it's those beliefs and dogmas actually stand in the way of obvious common sense. But Buddhism, we don't have those beliefs and dogmas, and so common sense has the freedom to express itself. So what you hear here is common sense. But the amazing thing here is there's nothing to stop that common sense. There's no dogmas or texts to say common sense is wrong. Believe me. Instead, that's not there in Buddhism. So all the Buddhist traditions, because we are free of that dogma, we're free of this sort of the God principle or some ultimate being which is telling you what to do. It gives that common sense, the freedom to express itself. And when you, those of you will go and see His Holiness the Dalai Lama next week, he said, wow, this is down to earth. This makes sense. And just the same as you hear from the monks or the nuns here, or from any other teachers of the Buddhist religion, this makes sense. Why doesn't other people teach this? It's because Buddhism or the Buddhist traditions have this common characteristic of being free from those things which obstruct this obvious common sense. And that's true for all our Buddhist traditions. And so that way we have a virtue which actually does make sense, which people can relate to, which they know is true. A good example is like, you know, Buddhism and sex. Sex, you know, with so homosexuality or contraception, these are some things which people know in their heart. What's wrong with this? And you know, in your heart when you ask that question, there's nothing wrong with this at all. It's your feelings, your understanding of what virtue is, which is the natural ability of the human being to know what's good and know what's right. They put us in freeze, that natural ability to express itself. So instead of believing, you know, somebody else says this is wrong, but it feels right to me. But they said it's wrong. I better not do it. Instead of being confused, those obstacles are taken away. So even the natural understanding of virtue is there for you. Because one of the other standard things about Buddhism is something. I mentioned this in the radio interview this morning because, uh, some years, about some months ago, I did write an article to the West Australian complaining about the Dalai Lama or a quote of the Dalai Lama which said that, um, that, uh, homosexuals cannot be Buddhist, and that's nothing to do with Buddhism. But that was brought up again, uh, in the newspapers. And one of the things which I mentioned is that, you know, we don't have a pope in Buddhism. And this goes back to a statement made by the historical Buddha just before he passed away. When people say you're about to pass away, who's going to take over leadership from you? Who's going to lead Buddhism? And he made his powerful statement. That when I pass away, there will be no personal leader for you. Let the teachings, let the training. Let that be your teacher from now on. And because that was very clearly made and stated and remembered, it meant that there's no justification for having, like a pope and Ayatollah, a head monk or a head leader or anything. And that was actually unique amongst the religions of the world that the Buddha prohibited specifically having like a head of Buddhism, and instead the principles which he enunciated. Let that be your leader. What that meant was Buddhism could never be organized, but because it could never be organized. We avoided the problems of corruption. You know, when you have power, invested in one person or one group of people. And we all know what happens in religions when we do have people who have enormous amounts of power. It just happens that sometimes even good people, when they get in positions of power, you know, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And so there was a Lord Acton said that I always remember this Lord Acton, because I was born in Acton, and he was the Lord there many, many years ago before I was born. But that's what he said. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And even a good people sometimes get corrupted by power. So because of that, Buddhism never had that sort of powerful person or group of people who could control the religion. That's why the every monastery, every temple stands on its own. It's successful or it doesn't successful, not because of who they are, but how they behave and how they teach. The only reason this place is successful is because it's good teachings. We've done the right thing. We've struck the right chord. That means that it's prosperous. Now when we have that no leadership, it means we do have different groups, we do have different emphases, we do have different sects of Buddhism developing because there's no universe unifying hierarchy in this teaching. And so because of that, we know when Buddhism went to the vet, it developed the Tibetan form. When it went to China and developed a Chinese form, when it went to Japan, it developed a Japanese form. And a lot of these different types of Buddhism are very much like cultural. And now we're developing like an Australian type of Buddhism, you know, where you sort of tell jokes and you say, I'm pissed off because of this. You know, we use the language of of Australia and we have to do that, that has to develop in that particular way to relate to the culture and to the language in the situation you're in. And as we develop the different cultural Buddhism, we should never think that those cultural Buddhism's the cultural traditions are making Buddhism different. And that's better because that's more original or that's more effective because it's effective in different contexts. But not only do we have, like this common understanding of virtue, what's good and the ethics of Buddhism, you know, which I've given many talks about here are very useful to people because it's an ethics which you can respect and you can practice, because sometimes I remember when I was a Christian, when you go to church, you'll keep those ethics. When you go out afterwards, you wouldn't keep them. You know, you're only sort of a Christian when you went to church, or if you did try and keep them, you know, your friends say you're being stupid. What are you doing that for? Doesn't make any sense. And so sometimes you will not be proud of your ethics, or you'd be defensive about your ethics because they didn't make sense under. For most people, the Buddhist ethics is just wonderful because they are respected. Even a year or two ago when I was going through a Perth airport, as I do very often these days, one of the talking with one of the immigration officers, you know, he just mentioned the Dalai Lama and he, you know, just read his one of his books and he said, that guy's got his feet on the ground. And I thought that was a wonderful comment about Buddhism in general, So the Buddhist monks and nuns, you know, they have their feet on the ground. What they say relates to you. They relate to the life. And it's not some airy fairy dogma or superstition which may be true or may not be true. You'll only find out after you die when it's too late. It's much more important to have some which people could relate to. And they think this makes sense right now. This was what he meant by. They have the feet on the ground. So it's a virtue which people can understand. And again, all those Buddhist traditions there isn't this selfish Buddhist tradition. The idea of like one group of Buddhists being more selfish and the other group of being people, being more compassionate. That doesn't make sense to me. I've seen monks and nuns from all traditions being quite selfish, but I've seen monks and nuns from all traditions being incredibly compassionate. What sometimes I've seen is this made me cry. There's some of the the stuff that was one of these. I won't say who it is. Is quite a well-known monk now in Sri Lanka. I was very inspired by him because he was a blood donor and because he was a blood donor. He put his list on there for being a kidney donor. And in Sri Lanka, the health authority rang him up or called him because they had a match. Somebody needed a kidney and had a perfect match. And can he supply his kidney to this person who needed one? But the problem was. So this monk, the donor, was a very devout Buddhist, and the one who needed the kidney was a fundamentalist Christian who was going around Sri Lanka converting Buddhist to being Christians. And said, would you like to give your kidney to a Christian so he can convert your followers? He said, what do you mean? I don't care what she uses it for. She needs it. Take it. And so he gave his kidney without a second thought. And that's like compassion. You know, sometimes I think, you know, giving donations, giving $10 or $100, you know, to the retreat center or the nuns monastery or whatever. That's one type of generosity. But giving your kidney to someone who needs it. Now that we're getting to be generosity now. And especially to someone who needs it. You don't think who they are or why they need or what they're going to do with it. They need it. Please take it. Now, those are inspiring or some of the Theravada monks, because I have to make a confession now. Last month, while I was in Singapore, I went to the movie theater. The first time in 35 years I've been to a movie theater, the Lido in Singapore. Now, of course, I wasn't doing anything bad here because it was a Buddhist film festival, and I had to give a talk that there wasn't a Lord remove. It was actually a documentary about a Zen monastery in in San Francisco. It was the first time. I was very disappointed because when I used to go to movie theaters, they used to give you ice cream to get any ice cream. I'm very disappointed. There was a Buddhist International Film Festival that wanted me to give a talk, so I gave a talk there. But the film before that, which I didn't see, was a film about this Thai monk, you know, who was born up in the slums. And he was helping these scallywags, his drug dealers and street kids in Bangkok by actually teaching them kickboxing, because he used to be a kickboxer before. But now the reason why they had this movie. But he was just doing such a lot of good work, taking his kids and giving them a life. Of course. You know, you think that that's not what a monk is supposed to do, but no. Heck, he's helping somebody. Why not? Not helping somebody. Helping a lot of people. And so you see these incredibly compassionate and kind acts coming from all corners. It doesn't matter what tradition you are from. You see it happening. And that's why you can't say that one tradition is more compassionate than another. But what you can say that people in some way, in any tradition, some of the compassionate, more compassionate, some of the more, um, you know, inward looking, but who cares? They're all doing good things. And that's respect everybody, no matter what their tradition is. Even when I was a monk, I was supposed to be in the meditating tradition. I know that sometimes that we're in the meditation. The forest monks, sometimes some forest monks did look down upon the the city monks. Those sitting bank status indulged, and they just read books all the time. Whether that was that ever going to get you? Until I came across a saying of the Buddha, he said, no, it's actually in the text there was a saying one of the Buddha's chief disciples, he said, look, you meditating monks, you shouldn't look down upon the study monks. They're important because they write books and you study those books to help you understand your meditation. You meditate, study. Monks shouldn't look down upon the meditation monks. In fact, that everything which I read in there was saying, we don't look down upon anybody. We respect the diversity within our traditions. And that's been so important to me as I travel the world, because you do hang out with all sorts of monks and nuns from all different traditions. And I'm so proud of being friends with all those traditions and making those bridges between the traditions and seeing that, yes, we have different colored robes and we have the different genders. The only reason in here in Perth, these the monks, our monks wear the lighter brown and the nuns wear the darker brown is so you know who's who. That's all. There's nothing special about that. You know, you know, if it's a monk or a nun. Because that's that's quite important sometimes. Because sometimes this actually happened here some years ago, you know, that we had one of our first nuns here. I think it was actually Sister Jitendra, and she was visiting for a while. And just after the morning lunch on a Saturday, one of the ladies decided to take her for a little tour around the sites of Perth for the first time. So she was in the car and I was sitting next to another lady there, just the two of them in the front seat of a car, and they drove off from the community hall just around the corner here, and as soon as they drove off, I think it was a Thai lady started shouting out, hey, look, there's a jumper! I'm sitting next to a girl, where are they going? And it was actually a very close call because it was very lucky at that time when she was pointing to this brown figure with a bald head sitting in the front, the passenger seat of a car next to a young girl. I happened to come out and said, a jumper over there had some bumps over here. And because she recognized that that couldn't be me, because I was actually standing right next to her, I said, I'm here. She realized she there was a nun in the car. It wasn't me. But if I hadn't come out there, she'd have gone around and say, this, Agent Brown, you know what he gets up to when? That's why we have the different color robes these days. So, you know, you know who the monks are and who the nuns are. That's the only reason we have the differences. And the only other reason why we have the differences and the colors of the robes. You've seen these monks from Bangkok having these bright yellow robes. You know what that is? If you've ever seen the traffic in Bangkok. So that's why they they can avoid the cars they can see them coming from. That's only a joke. That's not why they wear the bright yellow rose to avoid being hit by traffic. The the. The main reason I do that is because just the natural dyes in the northeast of Thailand, where our tradition comes from, we use the dyer robes in jackfruit when they come out of this brownish color. In other parts, you know you die your rows with other natural colors. They come out more red. Or in, um, places like Korea that don't have that type of wood. They actually they use charcoal, which is why they've got the gray robes. And so the different colors of robe they originated, just because there was the natural dyes available at the time, just for simplicity, there was nothing else other than just simplicity and just what was available to dye your clothes at the time. And so it doesn't signify anything. That's why I say the different traditions of Buddhism are just like different. Same cake with different icing things. So this over here, this is the milk chocolate icing. Now, Sister Wang and the nuns, that's the dark chocolate icing. So the Tibetan monks, like the Dalai Lama, that's strawberry icing. And the Marxists say, you know, that's just the way you can. That's the sort of the, um, the combination of vanilla with a bit of BlackBerry, because it's a bit gray, I see. But if you go under the icing, it's the same type of cake. And that's what's really inspired me by going around the world, visiting other monasteries, visiting other teachers, and seeing that, you know, when you actually get into what's underneath, what the books say and how monks and nuns, they men, are they women of this different tradition, what they actually do, how they practice, there's no difference. So any differences between the sects of Buddhism is completely superficial, which is why that I can get invited to these other temples to give talks and we can have these discussions, had this amazing discussion on one of these conferences some years ago with a, a Western, a German Tibetan monk, because I wanted to find out now, what's your meditation? What have you been doing when you go on these long retreats? There is a form of Tibetan meditation and mahamudra, which they call it. Is it different than what we do here? The jhana meditations. And we had a wonderful discussion because being like a Western, Michael could speak English. You could actually really get a good discussion going. Some of the problems why we have difficulties with understanding our different traditions is because the language, because many of the traditional Buddhist monks there may be, you know, the Chinese monks, you have to understand Cantonese if they come from Hong Kong, or Mandarin if they come from somewhere else, or if they're Vietnamese tradition. You have to understand the Vietnamese, and sometimes it's the language creates those barriers. Even the Tibetan monks, only a few of them can speak good English. But here was a time when there was a Tibetan monk to speak perfect. Tibetan German monk spoke perfect English. We had a great sort of conversation. I valued that for a long time. It was a lama long drop. His name was, and I found he was doing exactly the same thing, the same deep meditations of calming the mind down. Present moment, awareness, silence, watching this breath, getting these beautiful lights and images up and going into the darkness. And it was so wonderful. And actually to say this was traditional Tibetan teachings, traditional Theravada teachings, traditional Mahayana Jaina teachings. Because when you were going to the very deepest part of Buddhism, you're finding absolutely no difference whatsoever. Not an iota of difference. And the only difference is, is what's superficial on the outside, even the now the idea of the bodhisattva is sacrificing yourself for all other beings, as if that's different than the other half way of becoming fully in line for yourself. And I don't know how many times I've taught in meditation retreats. If you want to get enlightened, no way you can get in line, because it's a one thing the desire, the craving, which is what agitates the mind, which stops you becoming still and peaceful. So the how many times I've taught this simile, you know, holding up a glass. This is for the camera in front of me, holding up a glass and saying, can I hold this? Absolutely. Still I try, try, try. And I've been trying for years holding a glass of water. Absolutely. Still, those in the front row can see it's still moving. So what do I do? I try harder to keep this still. I still can't hold it. Still I try even harder. I can try for years holding this still I'd never be able to do it. How do you hold a glass of water still? Put it down. Yes, I want you put the glass of water down. Actually, it moves more at first. But after a few seconds, you'll find those in the front row can see. That's much more still than I could ever hold it. That is the way to meditate in the Terada tradition. That's how I was taught by Edmund Cha to let things go. Not to crave, not to grasp, not to hold, but to abandon. That's the way to deep meditation. That's the way to enlightenment. You can't want enlightenment if you want it. You're putting this big obstacle. So what's the bodhisattvas way? You give up your self concern. You give up wanting things completely. The same people who write the books because all they know is the words, never the practice. They can actually manufacture differences and they can argue differences. But when you get to actually doing something, doing that, practicing calming the mind, seeing the truth, seeing the stillness of the heart, the peace of the heart, the truth, Nibbana. It's not to Nibbana or three. Nirvana's for each different tradition. It's all precisely the same. And the only way that we get that peace in meditation is to give up the sacrifices sense of self, which is always wanting and grasping and making it happen. The more you want, the more you make a stronger sense of self. The more you just disappear and let go, the calmer the whole world becomes. That's why the bodhisattvas way of abandoning self concern is precisely the same as the other half way of realizing anatta. non-Self. There aren't two ways or three ways, or four ways or six ways. Absolutely. Exactly the same. Even some of the things which they say is a goal, you know, of, uh, giving enlightenment to others and or one thing which, uh, I always really respect to make use of. You know, it is the Buddha nature that's supposed to be a Mahayana concept that all beings have Buddha nature. But I have extended that just because it's a very useful teaching. Not just all beings have Buddha nature, but all experiences have Buddha nature. What do we mean by Buddha nature? Like the Buddha is like the awakened one. Buddha nature means that every being not only has the potential to be fully aligned, but they also have a part of themselves, which is like a Buddha, a part which you can respect and value. And I've used that when I've gone into prisons and seen these criminals who have done gross crimes. And I've advised that to people who are facing their enemies, people who have been cruel to you, abused you, and really hurt you badly by using the Buddha nature method, we look at that person and we look at something inside of them, which is like a Buddha now of a small spark of purity and goodness in that other enemy. You're seeing something in them which you can respect, which is apart from their cruelty, the hurt and their abuse which they've given you. Even your enemy in the worst enemy in Osama bin laden, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, John Howard. I don't know who your enemy is. You can always see some beauty in there, some goodness, some Buddha nature. That's a powerful way of overcoming the hatred and the resentment which stops you being happy. Now, we all know that Buddhism is very, very strong on forgiveness. So much so that, you know, when I was asked, you know, at a concert in Singapore based on my book, Open the Door of Your Heart, when they said, how many times should you forgive? You know, when people have hurt you again and again? How many times in Buddhism should you forgive? The answer is always one more time. In other words, you can always forgive because forgiving is letting go. It doesn't mean excusing or forgetting. It means saying, I'm not going to allow that to hurt me anymore and giving another person a chance, seeing the something inside of them which is worth. Forgiving sight, seeing a Buddha nature in somebody and a worse criminal. Certainly the Buddha did that to this fellow. Angry Mala, this serial killer, 999 lives he took according to the tradition, but still could forgive and made that person into a saint. Sometimes, when there hasn't been forgiveness, there's been wastes of human lives, people being killed or being imprisoned when they could be helping and serving. See, that punishment, according to Khan, will come in its own way. You don't need to punish them anymore. But what that forgiveness does, or rather how you can start the forgiveness, seeing the Buddha nature in somebody else. But I've extended that not to just to people, but to experiences, to seeing every experience which you have in life has Buddha nature has the ability to awaken you. To give you wisdom, compassion and growth. And I found that very, very powerful. Now, whenever this something goes wrong in my life or some disappointment or sickness or pain. If you can't go to sleep at night or you fail your examinations or you stuff up somewhere. It was very, very dodgy when I first went to Bangkok all the way from Perth, getting up really early in the morning to get to the airport to get on the plane. I think I got up about 330 in the morning, and by the time I got to Bangkok and I, late in the afternoon, found out they'd scheduled me for a TV interview at 10:30 p.m.. I just had time for a shower, quick shower and back to the studios. Which is not so bad, but it was in Thai. Sometimes you think I'm fluent in Thai, but once, once here in Perth, there was some visiting Thai people and they asked for teaching and teaching. So I taught them a maybe 15 minutes of Buddhism in Thai. And afterwards they were said that was so impressed. We didn't realise that you could give a speech in party, which is like Sanskrit. So there was a party that was Thai. All the Thai people said really? In other words, they didn't understand a word of it. Not one word. And here I was on live TV, making a complete idiot of myself. I thought speaking in type I did really well. It was actually, uh, two other Thai people there to our time monks being interviewed. One was the rector of Maha Chulalongkorn University, uh, Venerable Dara Costigan. And of course, he was very good. But the other fellow, uh, being interviewed, he was a Thai monk who was a resident in a and Buddhist monastery in Oxford, and apparently afterwards my Thai and even I'm a Westerner that came across much more fluent than this Thai guy who has been staying at Oxford for the last few years. And I thought, how can that be? And I remember well, I was from Cambridge, he was from Oxford. Cambridge was always superior. Oxford. That's just a joke. But there you are. You know, you can actually do this thing. And so what happens when I, you know, you're really tired, you know, 1030 in Bangkok is 1130 here in Perth. I've been travelling all day and now you've got to speak in a foreign tongue on live TV. Ah, so what I do is this is Buddha nature. This. It's there's a possibility here not to reject this, but to say this isn't important. I'm going to learn a lot from this is going to be very interesting. So by not rejecting anything, but seeing it has an opportunity of has a value. It's like a Buddha experience and especially the tough experience which I face. These are like the ones I really like the most, in the sense they're the ones where you really learn and where you you hone your abilities to be really tired, but still be able to teach in fluent Thai. Every experience has a Buddha nature, so it doesn't need to be rejected. It doesn't need to say, I'm going to get this out of the way to go back to real life. Otherwise, how many hours, days, months? Years of your life are you wishing away to get this out of the way, to do what you think life really is? If you're one of those people always wishing away hours, days, weeks, years of your life, you're missing out. You've already got so many years you can't afford to waste even one day, one hour, one moment. So when you say every experience, every moment has Buddha nature, you're valuing everything, even the painful experiences when you have to go and have chemotherapy. I have some terrible operation that has Buddha nature. That's important. These are opportunities for awakening. Awakening to what? Awakened to the truth of life. Your body is out of your control. You should know that by now. You just have to be with it. And the more you fight that body, the more you say, I don't want to be sick. I don't want to have that chemotherapy. I don't want to be better. As soon as you want something else, you are creating this mental suffering. When you respect the experience you have as being part of things. You don't discriminate between the nice experiences and the bad experiences, but you respect every experience as teaching you as a Buddha, as a moment for awakening. Then you never try and wish away any part of your life. When you never wish away any part of your life or any person in your life. Imagine how much peace and compassion and width you have in your life. Everything is now respected as the old simile which I learnt in Thailand, and also I really learnt it very strongly when I first came to Perth. When we moved down the serpentine, we brought this forest monastery where a lot of jarrah trees were suffering from dieback. There were dead trees. And what did a person like me, a perfectionist? Let's cut down those dead trees. They're ugly. Who wants to have these dead skeletons in your beautiful forest? When I try to cut them down, someone stop me! Don't you realise they said in those dead trees? That's where you have the homes of the possums and the cockatoos and the lizards and all these other beings who depend upon those dead trees for their homes. They're part of things. When I realized the value of those dead trees, they weren't ugly anymore. They were parts of an Australian forest. The same with the dead parts of your life or the ugly parts of your life. You don't see their value. There have to be there. That's the place where compassion and wisdom live. In the dead trees of your life and the ugly moments of your day. That's why we see that these things have Buddha nature as well. We are compassionate to every moment of our life. It's easy to be compassionate to the wonderful moment. So once you enjoy. Imagine being compassionate and seeing the Buddha nature when the eagles lose and so do the dockers. Apparently did that last week while I was in Thailand. Probably because I was aware. That's why they both lost, I do apologize. Well, I'm here this week so probably both went, but anyhow. You can see what I mean there. That the Buddha nature is seeing something positive in every experience you have in life. So amateur of a monk teaching a Mahayana doctrine, who cares if it works? We make use of it. And that way, with the idea of the compassion and the bodhisattvas, we have this. We can make use of anything. And in the end, anyway, I've used this now this, this so-called idea of like Hinayana being selfish and Mahayana thinking of the other person. I make use of these contexts to show that both, you know, I just only one way of looking and perhaps one of the most successful use of those concepts, you know, is in relationships, in marriages. Because I often seen in a marriage, because you do a lot of marriage counseling as a monk, I'm the last resort. Either they come to me because of the last resort, and they come to me as the first resort because they can't afford a real marriage counselor. And of course, you all know that I'm cheap. Then I put a spoonful of rice in the bowl of banana, and then you can get sort of half an hour with me sometimes. Gee, it's really chia I've exploited. But anyhow, that's what a boat is for, is being exploited. We don't charge anything anyway. That's one of the great teachings about marriage is in a marriage. You know the two people. It can be a gay marriage. It can be a straight marriage or whatever. There's always one partner who's the Hinayana, and there's one partner who's the Mahayana. The Hinayana is a selfish one. They're just in it for themselves. And what they can get out of the marriage. And the Mahayana is the one who sacrifice gives themselves up to the other person. And unfortunately, it is true that Hinayana is usually, but not always, the man. The Mahayana, the women. They want to sacrifice themselves for the marriage. And you will find that both are wrong. Both are what we call dysfunctional. They doesn't work. If you're the selfish one in the marriage. What? I can get out of this? Just thinking of yourself. That's no way to have a relationship in the end. You're missing out on what? A relationship. What a marriage, what a partnership is. You just get selfish. You just get frustrated. You never get what you want. But the other person is even worse. The Mahayana who's sacrificing themselves for their partner or for their marriage. And many of you may have been there and know what it's like. After a while, you're getting nothing back in return. You get again, frustrated. Despondent. There's nothing there for you anymore. It is give give give give give give give give. You get nothing back. You get dried out, burnt out. Nothing left and you split. Both are dysfunctional. It's not Mahayana giving to the other person. It's not what you're getting. It's instead of Inayat and Mahajan. It is the middle way. It's not him or her. It's not me. It is, as I said, that he would. Couple of days ago, I had a marriage telling people that this was a couple who, in Bangkok are quite a high class couple. And I've known the, uh, the, uh, the man for a long time now. You know, he was in Melbourne studying, being a doctor. I've known him since he was quite small. Now he's found a bride. So they came to see me in Bangkok a couple of days ago. You know what it's like when they love about to get married. It's really big eyed and looking at each other. Just really daft. And I said the same old thing. I said, no, no, no, no, you're going to get married soon. You know, to Dal, that was a girl so numb. You know, from now on you must never think of yourself. And now you know the girl. You must never think of yourself. Now. You soon get married. And it was. They nodded. Yes. You know, because when you get married, you're supposed to be selfless. And I said to to Nam, Doctor Nam had said, now, from now on you must never think of her either. And that's when he could say, getting confused. I love this moment, confusing people because when you're confusing people, you open their minds up so you can actually teach them something. If you tell them what they already know, they're always close. Yeah, I know this. You've got to confuse people first of all. So said Nam, from now on, you must never think of her. And he was really scratching his head. What do you mean? This is my wife. Of course I got to think of her. I said, no, don't think of her for no one. I looked at the wife. Doubt. Never think of your husband from now on. And she was really confused because both are wrong. Thinking of the other person. Is Mahayana thinking of yourself as Hinayana? I say from now on you must think of us. You're a pair. If you think of him or her, you think of me. You're missing where the action is. A relationship does not happen in the partner, does not happen in you. It happens in the space between the two of you. It's the US where the relationship happens. And they got it pretty quickly as many people get it. Once you see the problem of a relationship, you're looking in the wrong place. Either you're looking in yourself, what's in it for you, or you're sacrificing for the other person looking at them. You're not looking at the space between the two of you, whereas exists. Would you like the Hinayana Mahayana idea in Buddhism? Those two ideas are completely ridiculous. The Buddha never taught Hinayana, never taught Mahayana. The two are completely slow, dysfunctional. It's not about me. It's not about you. Even as a monk living in Perth for such a long time, I never sacrifice myself for you. I never sort of think of me. It's always and always will be us. We're in it together. Wherever I am, it's not sort of me and you and them. It's always the US, the relationship. Every Friday night when I open my mouth and the words flow between myself and you. This is where the action is. So real Buddhism. That's why they call it middle way. What's between us? What's even between, you know, the observer and the observed in meditation? It's not what we do, but how we do it. Our relationship to every moment of our lives. So it doesn't matter if you're having a hard time. It's how you're having a hard time. It doesn't matter if you're having a wonderful, happy time, it's how you're having that happy time. Whether you're sick or whether you're healthy, it's how you're sick. How you're healthy. Whether you're celibate, whether you're gay, whether you're married, whether your old or young is how you do these things. What's between you and the world? The middle way. We understand that. You understand all these different traditions the Tibetan tradition, the Zen traditions, Theravada tradition, forest tradition, the city tradition, all these other traditions which we have. They're all pointing in the same place. The traditions, such as externals you may chant in different languages may may use different similes. These days we borrow from each other because, look, there's no sort of copyright in Buddhism. Monks aren't going to sue nuns. So I'm quite free to use any sort of teachings of anybody else. And this is wonderful, to be able to have that sort of trust because the Dharma is important. The teachings are the truth. That is our leader. That is our boss. Truth, compassion, virtue, honesty. And no one, no one can own that. No group, no sect, no leader, no pope can actually own that and be the infallible owner and franchisee of Buddhism. That's why it is very appropriate to our modern world, why it is like free, why we don't charge for things. Because I don't own these teachings. Never have, never will we always give. Because we give. There is no hierarchy. You feel free to argue with me in anything I say here that, gee, I wished I could excommunicate a few of you over these years. No, not really, because you could do whatever you like. You could take these teachings and make use of them whichever way you want. And there's no controller which will tell you what to do. You give these teachings, and it's an empowerment for you to find your own way of using these great teachings. And really, there is as many types of Buddhism, not just the three vehicles, there are millions of vehicles, whatever. However many Buddhists there are, there are that many different types of Buddhism. But as long as it follows that same basic principles every now, like a virtue which comes from within, not taught by a Supreme being, or a supreme monk, or a supreme nun, or a supreme layperson in Funny Hat. It's from your own heart. It's a teaching of Buddhism which counsel within you, which explains the relationship, which you have to the world, which you have towards your part, of which you have to yourself, which you have to your life. It's teaching that relationship the middle way, seeing the Buddha nature and everything. And as far as compassion comes, that's the natural part of the whole thing. As far as peace comes. Just what happens when you follow these teachings? If they are teachings which reflects our modern world, which address the problems which each one of you face, if they are really getting to the nub of your life, they solve those problems. And when those problems get solved, you have peace. You have meaning. You realise what truth is. Truth is not what's found in a book. And you can't say that you've got the truth and other people haven't. Or your truth is better than the truth of the next group or monastery or temple. The truth is, in everybody's heart, you can no longer own the truth and you can own the air. People actually have been bottling water often, actually noticed years ago. Notices that Evian water is naive. Spelt backwards. Evident. Write it down. Spell it backwards. It's naive, spelled backwards. So sometimes people try and bottled water and sell it. And what we do now, I'm sure that people try and bottle er and sell it soon. You can't only air, but certainly people bottle truth and sell it. But we'll never do that. The truth is in your heart and you don't sort of distinguish between the different traditions. And so those traditions which we had. Mahayana. Theravada. Zen. Hiragana. This traditional tradition, if anyone ever comes along and says their tradition is happier than others, just. To shake your head. Truth is, truth is truth. No tradition. Answer. Truth is no hierarchy of truth. And we can share our traditions. What we see is just cakes. The same taste, the same cake underneath with just different icing. We can make use of all these traditions, which is why that we do have harmony. Why that. That monk I was mentioning in Singapore when he became the abbot of the biggest temple in Singapore. Big Mahayana temple. He invited many great Chinese monks, Mahayana monks. He also invited me. And I was the one who gave the keynote address. As he became an abbot of the biggest temple in Singapore. Biggest Chinese temple. An English Theravada monk gave the keynote speech for him. What a wonderful gesture that was, because we were actually showing not just in speeches. We're showing in actions just how it doesn't matter what tradition you are from. We also were children of the Buddha. Same family, different clothes, different speech. But brothers and sisters in the Dharma. And we mean that. No distinctions, no separations, too many distinctions and separations in this world already. It's about time we take them down. We're taking them down. Already in Buddhism has taken it down between different religions, different races, so we can have mutual respect. If you like seeing the Buddha nature in all beings and all experiences, opportunities to learn and grow. Thank you. Okay. Has anyone got any questions about Buddhism and sex sects? So I was waving out there. Do you want to come in? Any comments or questions about the Dalai Lama or about. Yeah. How's that? What? Is a Dalai Lama going to visit serpentine? No, the Dalai Lama will not go and visit serpentine. So serpentine will go visit the Dalai Lama so bad. Dozen of us will be going to that talk. Only about 2 or 3 monks will be looking after the shop there. Because though apparently that we found out it was actually the the Australian police don't want him to go very far because, you know, being a sort of a big celebrity, there's always a few crazy people might like to knock him off. And so because of that, he's just staying in town. So not not even to. No, no no no, I'm sorry. And unfortunately, you can't come to your house either just to drop it. But sometimes it's nice to have a celebrity Buddhist because that's no, that's the role. He sometimes does be like a figurehead. And you know, he does a good job because he does. Um, he's like, what? I, I was talking in Bangkok about the leadership and he leads by example. Now, because it's his lifestyle, the way he talks, what he does and there's so few people actually lead by example these days. No, you can have like no politicians and there's always some scandal coming up. And I'm sure that, you know, if there was a scandal with the Dalai Lama, you know, if, you know, he got caught in Northbridge on Wednesday night. No. Stoned, drunk in the pub. Oh, that would be big news all over the all over the world. So it's obviously that never happens because you would have got caught out by now. So now he is someone who does lead by example. He is actually a virtuous leader and that's rare in our world. All the other celebs are always going to detox now in Betty Ford Clinic. But don't think the Dalai Lama will ever go there, except maybe do some chanting for his celebrity friends. But he didn't wonderfully have actually a religious leader who is pure and is worthy of respect, who's actually been scrutinized over many years. Good, good on him. And then I said sensible things as well. Any other comments or questions before we finish off? Yes. Sorry, I did say yes. What does it say? It means freedom from hairdressers. I when I shaved my head, what does it mean for me? That was the question. I hated going to hairdressers when I was a kid. They would never get it right. And finally you shave your hair and it's right. As a monk, you never. Or a nun, you never have a bad hair day ever again. Do you have to shave your head as a Buddhist? So you can see there's many Buddhists here that don't shave their their heads. It's only monks and nuns shave their heads. And it's quite a great thing to do. It makes you very feel very free. You don't have to have a comb and a brush in the morning. You just stand under the shower. You wash your hair at the same time. Oh, it's so wonderful actually being bought. And that's actually a good question because on Sunday, where is she that, uh, uh, we're with, uh, our training. The children. Yeah. So one of our members is, uh, shaving off her hair. A lady, she's got a permission from her husband and to shave off her hair as a fundraiser for our retreat center project, where you can all learn meditation. She's doing that on Sunday at 3 p.m., shaving off all her hair. Uh, you know, she's not a monk. She's not a nun. Audrey. Ladies shaving off her hair for charity. Any other volunteers for Sunday? Give it a try. It's great fun. And get sponsorship. And you can get sponsorship from people, actually, you know, to shave off your hair. But then if you say get sort of $100 or $200, you can actually tell your husband, look, $200 to shave off my hair if you want to keep it will cost you 250. I should have been in marketing. But it's also such simplicity because we don't have to worry about personal appearance, because a lot of times there's a lot of ego involved in your personal appearance and what you look like, especially your hairstyle. Shave it off, and there's no sort of a lot of ego is disappeared, no sense of self. That's one of the reasons why it just gets rid of your ego and attachment to your self appearance. There's another question over there in the corner. No. Okay. We got over time. Now it's almost, uh, getting 9:06. So we're finished off today. So thank you for coming. Hopefully see some of you on Sunday for our Wasatch celebration, which you're going to talk about now. Uh, some awesome Buddha ago are dying, Padawan. Da a b what day me. So, ah, after a what are the more common ah Masami. Sur party piano bar a quieter song. I like a circle song Kang Tomomi.
