Busy Life

Busy Life by Ajahn Brahm The thoughts which we give here on a Friday evening. Always applying some of the teachings of the Buddha to the daily life of modern people. And even though these teachings began over 25 centuries ago, we make use of them in modern and new ways, totally to help people with the problems of their life and give them more sense of freedom or sense of peace, more sense of meaning in their life. And the subject which comes to mind today is a very personal reflection that, like many people, I uh, these days I have a very busy life as a monk for some times. Uh, very early this morning I was on the radio show and then interviews and then running around for the opening of a, uh, Buddhist story exhibition and then doing all sorts of other stuff for people who are dying or dead and, uh, looking after our conference. I live a very busy life as a monk. Am I really busy? Sometime ago, I made a reflection. That's what real business is. It's not the amount of work which you get through in one day. But the busyness is how much work you do at one time at the same time, which gives you the appearance of being very, very busy. And the reflections on busyness, especially Buddhist reflections on busyness, are very important in our modern world. The reason I said this is because I know what I'm talking about. I am a CEO of many companies, Buddhist companies, the oldest franchise in the world given by the Buddhist monks from different countries. And as such, that is much to be done. So just the talk this evening is actually how to deal with that in a in a good Buddhist way, because many of us have to face such busyness, whether we volunteer for such things as helping with our global conference or whether it is one's job at work. It does seem to be that the amount of hours which are demanded of us gets longer and longer, and sometimes people get more and more stressed out. And sometimes wonder just how a mark like myself could have so much energy to do so much. Recently, last week I was in Melbourne on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday giving talks from 7:00 in the morning till about 11:00 in the evening with hardly any breaks at all. I really think I should start a union and ask for some more, more recompense. But then again that when you're faced with so much work to be done now talking many different, uh, lessons on Buddhism and meditation throughout the day, through many different audiences, the way that I've learnt to handle such a large amount of work is always to go back to the Buddhist practice of meditation in daily life, of one thing at a time, though, one thing at a time. Practice is what we learn in the first stages of meditation called present moment awareness, where we learn how to focus on the task at hand and not worry about what's happening next. But too often, the reason why people do get stressed out is not because of the amount of work which they have to do, but the way they approach to work, which is before them. This comes back to a fundamental attitude in Buddhism, which is not what's before you, but your attitude to what you do. It's not a problem with the world, but a problem with how you relate to the world. I remember hearing this in my first year as a monk in Thailand, where I think it was such an Sumita used to tell us that in his first years in Ajahn monastery, it was so tough. It was so austere. Uh, the food, the accommodation, the heat, the mosquitoes, everything was so foreign to what many Westerners were used to that it was just culture shock. Big time. But once, when he was grimacing. And of course, when you're suffering, everybody could see it, even though you try and hide it. Actually, until I came up to him and said, is the monastery suffering? Are you suffering? Where does the origin of all the pain and suffering in life? If it said in the monastery, then the best thing to do is to leave. If it's in yourself, then you're stuck because you can't get away from that. But obviously the suffering is neither in yourself nor in the monastery or whatever you have to deal with in life. The suffering is always in the relationship, the attitude you have to what you have to do. And this is one of the problems with busyness. We all have to do some busyness from time to time. It's how we relate to it. And I've found that sometimes people hardly do anything at all. They're very, very busy people. How is that? What's going on there? And so it shows it's not the amount of tasks which one gets through in the day. It's how one gets through them. That's what makes one busy or not. That's a cause of stress. And you can understand why you said cause of stress, because it's how much you carry in one moment is how tired you get. So it's not so much of how much you do, but how much you carry in each moment. And when you really think about, you've only got one moment at a time. So why can't we just carry one thing at a time in each moment instead of many, many things at a time? A lot of the time it is because people are afraid. If we don't do too many things at once, then we'll forget everything. But you should know by now from experience, the more things you do at the same time, the more things you can stuff up at the same time. So at least if you're doing only one thing at a time, you're only stuffing up one thing at a time. But the point more than that is to you're less likely to stuff up if you're focused. I've found a lot of people in life, especially if they want to know or have to. They've got lots of things on their plate, aren't very focused. So it's not just learning how to do one thing at a time. It's learning how to focus on what you're doing and giving it everything you've got so that you get that task done. And the art of focusing in life is actually what you've just been doing. In meditation, we call it like a one pointed ness of mind, whether it's you're watching the present moment or you're watching silence or you're watching your breath is a training. So you just focus on that one thing. I think it's sometimes one of our problems in our society. People say, talk about attention deficit disorder. One of the reasons for that. And if you actually see how many people actually entertain themselves, you see on a TV or in a radio, things move so quickly. Now, I was a monk for many, many years before I first saw the television. I think it was about seven years I've been the market, hadn't seen the television screen at all. And then one day I was visiting England and I was with another monk as we went to give some talks in Glasgow. And before we gave the talk, we were in a person's house. He gave us a cup of tea. And he had the television or his wife had a television on. In the next room he could see it through the door. And if you hadn't seen TV for seven years, that when actually you first looked upon it, it was just so harsh. The colors were just so glaring and the things were moving so fast. And this must have been what I'm now 32 is 25 years ago, and I thought the content was so dumb. And those were the days when actually there was a bit of quality on TV. So I don't know what it's like now, but it's probably really dumb. But in order to keep people's attention, things have to move very quickly. And because it moves very quickly that we don't learn how to stay on one thing for a long periods of time, to be still with it and get the juice out of it. Sometimes it's just like when we eat, we don't actually eat anything. We shove it in our mouths and swallow before we get all the taste out of it. It's a waste of time. And so instead of rushing. You get more done if you do it more mindfully. More attention on things. Give everything you've got to watch the task at hand, and don't go on to the next thing before you finish this one. It's one of the great things. One of the great blessings of being a monk or a nun is you don't have to have a mobile phone. Oh, what bliss, what joy. I think that's enough to make anybody want to join a monastery. The point is, the problem with the mobile phone is because you are put any time and interrupts just your flow of mindfulness. I just read in a newspaper, just, I think this morning that some research, which was done by a business group in the UK, found that a lot of businesses were suffering because the amount of over communication, too many emails and because there were too many emails, the really important ones weren't being dealt with soon enough and critical business decisions were being delayed. Because there's no way of filtering out the rubbish from the important stuff. And that was really causing a lot of problems for big business in the old days, where decisions could be made very easily because when you talk to somebody, you can actually tell them to get to the point. But how can you tell your computer to get to the point? It usually sort of takes a long time that you've got to find the point of all this rubbish which is on there. So again, it's a great thing that in our monastery down at serpentine, we don't have internet. And over my dead body you will have internet at that monastery. No way. I'm a low tech monk. And I'll stay like that. Because you get more done that way. What we're saying here is that the busyness of life, it's just too many things come at you. At the same time. There's not much control over how these things come. You can't access the information that quickly. And because of that, too many things done at the same time. Not enough clarity. And that's why we struggle around trying to find out how we can do our work. Without feeling so busy and so stressed. It's not that hard to learn how to do just the one thing at a time and to focus on that task. It is that focusing which we learn in meditation, it's a one thing at a time practice, which we learn now by practicing Buddhist wisdom. And by doing such things, we're empowering ourselves with abilities which we can use in the real world of modern life. Now, obviously, that these sorts of teachings are helpful because next week I'm going off again to Singapore to talk at the 11th Human Resources Conference with all his other gurus of motivational speech or motivational. What's it called? Motivational seminars. So you invited over there because it's not just Buddhism which gets people enlightened, it's Buddhism which helps people in their daily lives, actually in the business world. Simply because it learns how to use his beautiful techniques of meditation or good attitudes in order to basically to get by, to succeed, to make something of the things we have to do in life. But of course, one of the problems which we have, which also causes the stress of the apparent busyness of life, is this thing called complaining, because sometimes we're doing a task and is also behind that. One of the reasons why we can't focus is, is that we always complain as we're always saying, why me? Why do I have to do this? Why do I always have to give the talk? Why do people always come and ask me these questions? Why do people come and ask me about the marriage problems? I'm a monk. I became a monk to get away from all of that. It's unfair. Why do they come and tell me about the sicknesses of life? Because I'm not sick. Why do they keep bothering me with their problems? And it's very easy for someone to complain like that. No, no, but that sort of mind, of course, will not help get the task done. But it just puts the mind in another direction. You're not focusing. So instead of complaining, you just shut up and do it. One of the key stories of my life, which actually shows this how we can deal with the busyness of life in a beautiful way. It's not so much the busyness, but the complaining mind. I learned this in that old story. It's in the book, but it fits in here. That's the book. Open the Door of Your Heart, which is actually ten languages. Now it's been translated into but not by me. Only wrote it in English, and someone else did the rest of the work. But this one story was the story when I turned to was building the main hall in this monastery in Thailand, and because that monastery was on the flat, he wanted to raise the main hall above the ground, basically so it wouldn't flood, but also because it was lifted up as a symbol of its importance. So built it up on a hill made of earth to as much earth left over. And once all that big earth was left over, it had to be moved. And who had to do the movie? But the monks with wheelbarrows and spade. He was exploiting us. We were cheap labor. I know there was a I saw it in newspapers. A builder over here in Perth was being accused of importing foreign labor. Actually, I chose to do that years ago. He imported me and other Indiana and other monks from overseas. But anyway, so one morning he brought us all together and showed this big pile of earth. And he said, I want you all to move this big pile of earth. And he pointed out the spot he wanted it to move. We wanted us to move it to. And that was actually a huge job. We we used to eat just one meal a day, and that was much earlier than we eat in Perth. We used to have it finished by 9:00 or 930. So as soon as it was finished out with the wheelbarrows and spade, shoveling earth, pushing it, shoveling, pushing the barrows, moving all that earth, we worked till about 9:00 at night. When it got dark, we got lanterns out to work by. So about 12 hours straight. And this was not just like in Australia. This was in jungle. It's humid and dirty. And the more you sweated, the more the mosquitoes were all over you. And I've all told you before, at least if you were a Christian, you could swap those mosquitoes. But as a Buddhist, you had to just leave them. And your two hands were just, you know, on the wheelbarrow, and they just had free rein and they were by to you your heart. You were tired, but. Because I was a Buddhist and because I was living with this great teacher, I had faith. And that faith kept me going. Not just one day, but two days and three days until we finally finished. Now, when you have a task and finally you finish, you think, oh, at last, it's all done. Now, I know there's many people here who are working so hard for the global conference coming up and you think, oh, in two weeks it'll all be finished and done. I can imagine that's what I felt after three days, it was all done. Now I could meditate, relax and have good fun. But that night my teacher had left for another monastery and the deputy abbot, who was now in charge. He's been here. I certainly am a great monk. But that morning, after we finished our meal, he called us all together and said, you know, I've been thinking that is the wrong place for that earth. Move it. If we just like, after our conference is over, I bring everyone together, congratulate you all, and tell you the good news that we're going to hold another conference. Now, many of you would sort of rebel. It would never come close to this Buddhist society again. But I had faith. I was an unarmed pamby cream puff monk. And so I decided, oh, let's just do it now for our teachers, for Buddhists and for the Dharma. It's good karma. We all heard about good karma and doing things which are good for other people. So I got myself inspired. Really good karma. Helping build a monastery. Making it nice and tidy. So off we go. Another three days of sweat, toil heaps and mosquitoes all day without a meal. And actually you do lose a lot of energy. But you know, actually, by 930 when we started at 9:00, let alone by 12:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, you get really tired out. But now with a camaraderie with faith, another three days we'd finished are a last. I can now relax and enjoy my meditation. But that night. That night I tend to return it. And the following morning, he saw that pile of earth. And he said, what did you put it there for? I told you to put it over here. Move it. Now, I think you understand the sorts of feelings which I had at that point. It was a point where all my faith disappeared. When I started to think very much like a rational westerner. Say, can't these monks decide amongst themselves where they want this bloody earth? Now, I said something worse than that, but I'm just trying to sort of give you some indication of how you think in such situations. And of course, I was very, very angry. They can't do this to me. I didn't become a monk just to push loads of earth. Why did they go and hire somebody? They got enough money coming to the donation box. I'm not just a labourer. They can't exploit me like a slave. This is not fair. So there we were, pushing these, these barrows of earth. And I was just really upset and complaining. And it was at that time that somebody came up to me and they saw, even though that I was swearing in English, that's what we used to do as Western monks in foreign countries, so people can understand what we were saying. But still, you didn't get away with that because the people could see, you know, body language was so strong, they could see you really upset. And so one of these time monks who could speak English came up to me, and they gave me a beautiful lesson on the how to do a lot of things without getting stress and how to live in a modern world were, they told me, was pushing a wheelbarrow is easy. Thinking about it is the hard part. Pushing is easy. Thinking is the difficult part. And of course I was so right. The work I had to do that was not the problem. It was my attitude. Attitude towards it. Thinking this bloody barrow, this bloody monks is bloody this and bloody that. That was the problem. And as soon as I stopped complaining and just pushed. The amazing thing happens is the wheelbarrow gets lighter. This easier to do. The burden is lessened, the busyness disappears, the stress vanishes and is easy and it's fun. You got to do something in each moment. Why not push his wheelbarrow? And that way, the next three days flew. Pass. Peacefully. Happily. We move the earth to where it was supposed to be. But I learned the great lesson. Doing things is not difficult when you have a lot of work to do in your office, whether you have a lot of work to do at home no matter what's happening in life. It's life is not the difficult part. Thinking about it, that is the cause of stress and of course a problem in life. So instead of focusing on the task, I've had it. Just enjoying it. We complain because much of our thinking is negative y b we don't need to do this. Can we get something better than this? I should have known because of all the religions in the world, Buddhism is the most disorganized. We haven't got a pope. We haven't got sort of a leader does. Everyone is for themselves. And there's a point in there because the idea of Buddhism is empower the individual not to tell you what to do. Because of that, you know, what is a democracy, a very disorganized democracy. And because of that, it is. Uh, sometimes that it's going to be a little bit of messy sometimes, but you know that sometimes that that has like a sense of what is it called, like humanity to it. If any of you ever come to some of our functions, you've been to many of you been to some of the functions that are monasteries, or you build the functions here at way SAC. Now we try, oh no, we sort of do a sort of half hearted attempt at organizing something. But even though we have a half hearted idea of organizing something, we're always amenable to change it this way, to change it that way. It's always done at the last minute anyway. And when things go wrong, that makes it enjoyable. That's what makes it human. That's what actually makes it fun. For example, this afternoon at the opening of the, uh, history exhibition, uh, I think they changed the minister this afternoon. So, you know, we had one minister and he didn't come because he was being sworn in or change or sacked or something. I'm not quite sure what, but, you know, ministers come, ministers go. The great sort of lesson. Impermanence. But anyway. We had another sort of politician who was the member for the city of Perth, John Heid, come and I forgot his name. So please welcome John Howard. That, and I think quite obviously and quite understandably got quite upset. But we made a joke about that. And when things go wrong that breaks the ice and makes it a lot of fun is. The big mistake. But anyhow, never mind. I don't think he's going to come again to any of. This talk a few times. I remember I was performing a marriage ceremony. That's what some of the things I have to do sometimes. And we're performing this marriage ceremony for this man who is marrying a Thai girl. And the Thai girl came in who's just next door. And I came to hold a few years ago, this young Thai girl came in and she looks about 18. She's probably about 23 or 24. And, uh, bringing her in was this old Australian guy. And I said, oh, you're the father in law. He said, no. On the group. At the close has a great start to a marriage ceremony. But fortunately one of his daughters, who was actually older than his bride. So she saved me very kindly by saying, yeah, but you're old enough to be a father in law. And as soon as she said that and people started to laugh, it was a wonderful service because a little mistake made it fun, made it human, made it something everybody could relate to. So when things do go wrong, instead of getting tense and messed up by no mistakes, we embrace the mistakes of life. We don't complain about them. We don't think it shouldn't be this way. We embrace them so we don't make more suffering out of the way that things turn out. We laugh at them and that way there's no stress or tension or problem. I don't want to know what it's like at your work. If someone makes a mistake, do you laugh or did you waste all his time complaining and blaming and getting angry and getting sort of all stressed out when instead you should just forgive it, laugh and just do some work instead of shouting at people. You can't be shouting at people and doing work at the same time, which means you waste too much time and by the end of the day, you don't get your task completed, which means you have to take them home and you get stressed out again and argue your life and it keeps on going on. Too much complaining. Means that we don't get the job done. So instead of complaining in life, which is okay, we've got to do this. Don't just don't think about it, just do it. And that way you find that the task gets done pretty quickly and pretty easily. We've got this attitude to life, you know here it is. Task at hand. Let's just do it and stop complaining and stop blaming. Obviously that people who do work hard, who have got lots of work to do, are usually in such positions, and most of them, especially in the world, you wanted that promotion. Sometimes I advise people, if you're living in a world and you're sort of living or working in some sort of office, and it's a promotion coming up. Please be sensible. Don't take it that someone else will have the extra work, because when you contemplate it, every time you get a promotion, it's more work you have to do. And they don't pay you more money for nothing. They pay you more money. As I've said before, here, the salary you get at work is a bribe for making you do something you'd rather not. And obviously, the more they pay you, obviously, the more detestable the task has to be. Least that's my theory. Just because they don't pay me at all, that all my task are a lot of fun. Because I enjoy it so big and because of this, that sometimes, you know, you can expect to have more work to be done if you get a bigger salary or promotion. So if you can't handle it, just don't take the promotion. But if you really want to get on in the world, you can use these Buddhist techniques of mine for this in a moment, one thing at a time, and focusing on the task at hand, putting everything you've got into it. Don't worry about what's coming next. Turn off your mobile phones, focus on this, and don't try and doom too much multitasking at the same time, because that what makes you busy and stressed out. And also watch the mind at the same time. Don't complain about what you have to do, because if you're complaining, you're not focusing. Half your mind is on the task and the other half is on the complaint. And most people have only got half a mind anyway, so I don't know how they can get a whole mind on these things. Sorry about that. So the point is, it's all a question of efficiency, and his Buddhist techniques makes you more efficient. You know, if you come here long enough, I'm sure many of you are going to get really, really good at your jobs and get all the promotions. I reckon that some of you, given a few more years, will be multimillionaires who become successful by listening to these wonderful motivational speeches on how to make $1 million with no stress. The hope that's the case because in a couple of years time, we're building our retreat, said, we need your donations, but but nevertheless, that's only when it comes down to it. We're not doing this to get something out of you. The whole point of Buddhism is learning how to empower another person to give them the means to lower the suffering in life. So you can work in our modern world and not get upset and tense. Because if we can teach people how to do things at work, to be able to handle a lot of work without getting stressed out, having fun, enjoying laughing, and especially when things go wrong, being able to enjoy the moments and is carrying on because all those mistakes are is where we don't just we learn, but that's also where we can have fun with what's going on in life. There's not only sort of like in marriages where we make mistakes. I still can't forget the the best funeral I ever performed. And I've got lots of funeral stories and they're very good fun. For those who think of funerals are morbid. I think you should look at the person in the coffin because they're always smiling, because they're enjoying what's going on, apparently. But anyhow, one of the best funerals which I ever performed was where actually there's a couple ones which I really like. One of the ones was where we lowered as a burial. We lowered the coffin sort of into the ground, and it got stuck halfway. They put too many handles on it. You know that some of the handles they put on the coffee. And sometimes people think, this is my father. We've got to make sure it's really, really special. And the all the handles they had in the shop weren't good enough. So they've got some handles themselves. There's huge handles on the side of the coffin and they forgot actually to build the, uh, the grave the whole wide enough. So the lowering it down the Bloomington got stuck halfway and there I was. I usually do like chanting when I, when we sort of lower the coffin, uh, when it got stuck. You know, the one son I used to do, the metal shooter had to do it 4 or 5 times over and over and over and over and over and over again until they got the blooming coffin out. And that's before I knew that I was out there being and having to do this very, very long chart. And when things go wrong, actually, people start to laugh. One of the times it was, uh, a Fremantle crematorium. And if you ever go down there, there's like an external committal place where you don't get to see the chapel, it's outside and the, uh, conveyor belt is outside, you can put the coffin on the conveyor belt, press the button, it goes inside because people say goodbye and that's it. However, this time that I told the, uh, the family that I found out something about the rules about cremation so you can actually build your own coffin. You don't have to have one of these ones from the shop. If you're a bit of a woodworker, you could make your own. It has to be out of order. You can't get a cardboard box from Woolies. It has to be something proper. I, I know that a few people, I think that saved a bit of money for. This particular person that they were in, I think whitewater rafting. And so they built one. They wanted to try and make it like a boat. I had a cup of oars on the top. Now, the trouble was, you know, because they weren't very skilled carpenters, the wood was really thick, so the whole thing made a ton. So when they put it on the conveyor belt, the poor conveyor belt could hardly move it. So what happens is when you press the button, it's all done sort of by timers and usually serves the conveyor belt would actually take, you know, the the the glass door opens very, very slowly. And once the conference on the other side and it closes behind it. Trouble is this time, because it was just so heavy and so slow, the glass door open. But when it closed, the coffee was only halfway through. And it was all on some sort of system jammed into the coffin, and they couldn't move it. It was stuck. So there was this poor sort of fellow in the coffin, stuck halfway between the in and out. And I can also remember the wife. She comes in. I can't see it today, but she got on top of the coffin and started pushing. And people said, are you really that keen to get rid of him? And the poor funeral director. There was an old door. He went through the door on the other side and started pulling. Everybody also jumped up. Some were pulling, some were pushing. And it took completely away from the solemnity of the occasion, as you could expect. And one of the people commented, actually, they could remember because they had all your old friends and relations when you go to these funerals. And one person commented that they remembered when he was a young man, when he got his first car on the first day he had his car, he crashed it. They said just the first day he has his new coffee and he crashes that as well. But. But the point is, eventually they managed to sort of prise it open and push him through. But it was the most memorable funeral service because at that time, everyone was enjoying each other's company. And remembering this person is a bit of a joker and they say, probably did this on purpose just to make sure that it didn't go according to plan. It all went wrong so people could talk to each other, and so it could be a funeral to remember of great fun and jollity as the person who died would have wanted. But most importantly, it went wrong. It didn't go the way it was planned, and it was much better than if it was planned. Life is always much better, more enjoyable, more fun. And if it went goes according to plan. And really, how long have you lived so far in this world? Has your life gone according to plan? It hasn't. Not at all. It's gone completely wrong. I should never be an abbot or a teacher. My plan was to stay in Thailand and find a nice cave somewhere and hide out for the rest of my life. I supposed to be like a hermit. Look at me now. Talking to so many people, even on the internet. So that was. That was not my plan at all. So my life has gone terribly wrong, but I've enjoyed every moment of it. So when things go wrong, we don't complain. We enjoy it. We adapt. If you have solid plans in your life, then that's what makes you busy. You spend all this time trying to resurrect your old plan instead of discarding it. Being in the moment, adapting for things as they happen and enjoying it, and valuing the uncertainties of life and just moving with them. That's called what's it called in business? That's called NetHack adaptive. Being resourceful. What did that say in that little book about the two mice following the cheese that like a bestseller? Uh, just about this philosophy of always being, adapting. Don't do things in the same old way. Don't do too many plans. Be resourceful. Be intuitive to be able to adapt to the different situations, to the market forces as they change from day to day. See the opportunities rather than just living in the past. You can adapt and become rich. You know, if I currently have like a nice suit and a hairstyle instead of a bald head, I can make a fortune in the Hilton hotels around the world giving speeches like this. But I can't because I'm pretty disorganized myself. But whatever it is, you could understand that the reason why we get pissy sometimes is because we complain, or because we stick to schedules. We stick to plans which really are well past the use by date by the time they go wrong. We should jettison and be more intuitive and adaptive. That is a way to get you to deal with the many things which come into our laps, in our work, in our family during the day. But as well as that, you all know that one of the biggest causes of stress in our modern world is when we do get home, we can actually just relax and recharge the batteries. There's a lady today was interviewing me for the Sunday Times, and she was saying that she hardly slept last night, planning what? She was going to ask me for the interview. And actually, we found out this afternoon after the interview that because of the tape recorder was wrong, much of it got lost anyway. So she's going to come. She's going to come was on Sunday. She's coming to sort of redo half of it. So the poor lady is not going to sleep again on Saturday night as well. But why do people worry so much about such things? And why do we lose sleep over what's going to happen tomorrow? We all know that one of my key experiences, even when I was a young kid, I hated the dentist. I was very afraid of the dentists. And one day were not one day, many days. But this particular time I had a dentist appointment in the morning. I was so worried I hardly slept at night while I slept, but I was worried. Now these sleeps you have. You keep on waking up and so in the morning you didn't have a really good sleep. And I had to go to face this dentist that morning. I didn't want to go as only a small kid. Please, mummy, don't send me now. You got to go. I don't want to go, but you have to. So I had to go to the dentist. So when I arrived at the dentist surgery, what did I find out her? Your appointment is being cancelled. And I don't know how many times that's happened to you. Maybe not the dentist, but other things. You worry about it so much and it never happened. So why do you worry so much? It's a complete waste of time. So instead of doing that, when you're worrying, you're doing tomorrow's work this evening. Now, why do people get stressed out? So just do one job at a time. You do tonight's job tonight, and tonight's job is sleeping. So I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll find out later on. But tonight I'm just giving a talk, that's all. So I just do one job at a time when this one is finished, and I'll see what comes up next. That way you don't worry about anything. You could do a lot of stuff, but you never get this frantic stress of our modern world. And I don't think it's the case that people today do too much. I really think if they don't know how to be efficient in what they do, they don't focus. They carry too many things in the same time, not really in the present moment. They do tomorrow's job, this afternoon's job, and also do yesterday's job all at the same time. Keep thinking about it or worrying about it. That's of course, why people can't achieve while they get stressed out. Well, when they go home. When you get that sort of tiredness and stressed out, you start to argue and get upset at your family. These are the people you love. And when you have an argument with your wife at home, wow, that's really going to stress you out because you know you're going to have to sort that one out. And that takes hours and hours and hours of work to get that one right again. So if you're a very, very busy person, please don't ask me to argue with your wife because you know, you've already got a lot not on your plate already. That's just too much. So, you know, if you're really, really stressed, that doesn't matter what she says. It doesn't matter what he does. Leave it alone. Who cares? Just be a bit more peaceful and more forgiving and kind. It's a great way of forgiving and kind. It actually lessens your workload. When you forgive another person. Your task is done. If you think that someone's got to tell them, well, let it be someone else. Actually, they know if they've done something wrong. You never need to tell anybody. They know if they've misbehaved. Northcom will catch up to them eventually. You don't need to be the executioner. You'll happen by yourself. So it's wonderful, actually, to have one less thing to do. To be the teacher of other people. I know my agent, I don't. I used to say, why is it that people, we always look at other people's thoughts or what other people are doing wrong? And he said to us, monks, just look at other people maybe 5% of the time. Look at yourself 95% of the time. And if you don't, so look at other people that much. But you look at yourself, you can see what you're up to, and you could actually be more soft on yourself. Not complaining so much about what you have to do, or complaining about others, or complaining about your situation in life. Learning how to accept it and be at peace with it and that way. You've got a much kinder mind. And if you could do that to your job at work, you're not complaining about the task which you have to do. Just get on with it. Don't think about it. Just do it. Just like pushing us. Barrow barrows of Earth having a bit of fun when things go wrong. Being innovative. It means when you get home you have the same attitude towards your family. You're not so demanding of them. You're more intuitive. You don't have these strict plans. You have to have your dinner at 8:00. You have to have it this way. You have to have, you know, the the rice on the one side and the curry on the other side. I don't know what you do when you eat, but sometimes people are just so demanding on what they eat and how they eat it that sometimes it's a huge problem when it doesn't go right. Why can't we be more intuitive and more adaptive? So often I see things in my life go wrong. You know, the sort of the person I can't choose my food. And sometimes people think that that's what I like and it's exactly what I don't like. And things all go in the wrong place. They all get mixed up. But who cares anyway? To shove it in your mouth to it down, swallow it without complaining. I think the most stomach ache doesn't come from the food you eat. I think the stomach ache comes from actually how you relate to the food you eat. It's all this thinking, thinking, thinking, worrying, worrying, worrying. So I know actually that if you eat bad food, you get blocked arteries. But if you think too much, you get a blocked head. And I think that's more dangerous for people's people's health. So where we've got heart attack, you get a head attack. In other words, you can't think straight and you get angry. And when this actually happens, when we get home, we really sometimes take it out on our family simply because we haven't been really efficient in the way we deal with our work life. You see that sometimes when you're in the traffic and people are driving, sometimes they don't let you into the traffic. Sometimes, as you're a Buddhist, if you come here very regularly and somebody wants to try and get in in front of you, please let them get in front of you. Be kind. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to get to where you're going, at least it's the way you get there is important. And if you can let somebody in, you make them feel happy. So be kind to people in the traffic that other people come through. If there's a little old lady just wants to sort of cross the road, slow down so she can go across. Be kind and gentle. I remember hearing this case of this guy, you know, he got road rage these days because people get so stressed out at work. Just the smallest thing on the road, and they get really crazy. And this actually happened in New York. I like collecting this story. There was a case of road rage. I don't know exactly why, but these two cars were racing against each other and we can get mobile phone rage as well. So remember, do one thing at a time. So these two cars were getting very angry at each other, or rather people driving. The cars were getting angry at each other and they managed to pull up alongside each other at the red traffic lights. And that gave one of the occupants in the car the chance to jump out and start banging on the windows of this other car, trying to get in so he could really have a go at the driver in the other car. He was really incensed and apparently driving the other car was probably quite scared. You don't know when people are mad with rage what they would do next. But you know, the windows were strong and they couldn't really get in. And fortunately the light's changed and so the guy could drive off and the guy sort of obviously not being able to get in the car was was raising his fist at the traffic lights that this guy managed to escape. Obviously thought he'd turn around and get in his own car and chase him again, but when he turned around, he found his car had gone. A street kid in New York had seen the guy left his car with the keys inside, the ignition on the engine running. And so while the other guy was getting so mad and crazy, he was banging on the window of the other person's car, the street could have got in the car. And when the lights changed, he was off. And so this poor man lost his car. That's what happens when you have anger. You sort of lose everything. And of course, it's not losing your car. When you get angry, sometimes you lose your wife, your husband, your kids. Sometimes you get so angry. Sometimes you can lose your life. Certainly all the time you lose your happiness. Why do we do that? You've had such a hard day at work. Why do you have such a hard day at home? Really? You make that extra work with stupid attitudes. You know what it's like when you've had done so much at home, so much at the office, or so much at work. Do you really need that at home? You make that problem. So you just do whatever you need to do. But don't complain about life. Do one thing at a time and give people a bit of space. Give yourself a bit of space so don't get too angry. So when you get home, you can really rest rather than having all these arguments. You can enjoy your kids and do a bit of meditation, whatever you wish to do. But don't stress out at home because you've already stressed out at work. And if you follow these sort of attitudes, it's very easy when you can enjoy your family, have a nice dinner together, you know, maybe. So if you don't like watching the TV, you can even go on the internet and get another wonderful talk. Or maybe Sister Yammer. It's much better than Big Brother. It's called Big Sister. I'm going to get in trouble for that, I'm sure. So if you don't like Sister Wire, you can get sort of Big Brother action drama one or the other, but whatever happens, you can enjoy the evening, you can settle down, relax. And so when you go to bed at night, you can actually sleep properly. There's another reason why people get stressed out in life. I just said efficient. When you're working, are you efficient when you sleep at night? Again, it is to one thing at a time. Now's the time for sleep. You just sleep. Why do people worry so much when they go to bed at night about what's going to happen in the morning? Who knows, the morning might not come. Or they mentioned that story about the dentist. Maybe you're going to have a heart attack tonight. He won't wake up in the morning anyway. So what you are worrying about? So the point being here is that when you go to sleep at night, just let go. What you're learning is attitudes of meditation, the attitudes and Buddhism just being in the moment, letting go, but in particular, the reason why people can't sleep well at night is because they're trying so hard to get to sleep throughout the whole working day. And even with their firm, they're big control freaks. They think that if they're going to go to sleep, they're going to make themselves go to sleep. And if they can't go to sleep, they're going to just, you know, do more, have more force. Now, have you ever seen, like a mother, like looking after a child who can't go to sleep at night? Maybe you've done that or your mother did that to you. Maybe you were scared or upset or something. What did your mother do to try and get you to go to sleep at night? Did she grab you by the throat? Say, get to sleep or else if you don't get to sleep, you'll be in big trouble. What would happen if you had a child and you shouted it get to sleep or else is. That child will get more wound up, more upset, and will take a much longer time to get to sleep. So what does a mother do to a child who can't go to sleep? I just stroke their hair. They. Everything's all right. God, just. Remember when your mom did that to you? And after a while, you go to sleep. So that's what you should do to yourself at night if you can't go to sleep. Don't keep thinking. I better go to sleep, or else I'm going to be tired in the morning. Come on, get to sleep. Come on. You know how to get to sleep. Get to sleep, though, so, no, no. Grab yourself by the throat and throttle yourself. But be like a man with loving kindness, as if you're stroking your own hair. There. Everything's going to be all right. The contract will get signed in the morning. The boss was only joking today when he said he's going to fire you. Hey, that was gonna be all right. Everything's gonna be alright. Whatever it is. So when you actually, like, act like a mum to yourself and what actually is, that's a symbol of loving kindness and compassion. So when you're at work, you know you've got to work hard. But don't think about it. But when you're at home at night, make it loving kindness, especially when you are sleeping. So this is why the Buddha said, if people practices matter loving kindness, they usually sleep well and they wake up refreshed. So the loving kindness is not just may all beings be happier, well or else it's like just may I be happy and well, I have a nice sleep. Which is why when I go to sleep at night and I'm not joking, I do this. I usually the last thing I do is say good night me have a nice sleep. I wish myself good night. And that's actually almost like a psychological trick though. A little bit of loving. That's good night. You work so hard today. Have a nice sleep. See you in the morning. I'm not crazy, I do this. It works. They said that they go crazy. That's the trouble being crazy. You never know. You're crazy. Other people find out. But anyhow, the first thing when I wake up in the morning, there I am again. Good morning. Me and I start off with this beautiful feeling of kindness towards yourself. And that means at nighttime, you don't carry all the burdens of the day into your sleep. You really relax, have a wonderful night's sleep because you're relaxed, you fall asleep easily, and because you fall asleep easily, you sleep deeply and you wake up refreshed. What a wonderful trick that is to actually to be more efficient when you work. You've had a good rest. Sometimes that's one of the problems. Why people don't are not efficient at work. Well, they make too many mistakes and while they get grumpy and angry, they haven't had a good night's sleep. So I don't know how much you spend on your bed. My bed is just that. People have seen it. Just a small map. We've got one here. Maybe. Yes, about this size. When I sleep. That's what I sleep on. So I don't spend very much at all on my bed. But I do spend a lot of time with knowing how to lay on it with my mind. It's not just your body lays on your bed. Your mind lays on there as well. So if you know how to have a slumber king mind. Rather than a big mattress. Because the most important thing is having a comfortable mind. And then you can go to sleep very easily. So that way you understand how you can sleep well at night, and you wake up in the morning refreshed, enjoy a nice breakfast and off you go to work. Wow will be another way, another day, actually, to help and serve. Because when you work, it's not just for yourself, it's for your family. Maybe for your Buddhist society as well, but certainly it's for other people that all the jobs in this world they hold have some sort of meaning somewhere. You may not be able to see it at the time, but it's always got some sort of purpose and meaning. Know for the happiness of our world. So that way that we can see the positive side of our contributions at the office, the contributions that helping out with the history exhibition or the Buddhist society or our conference or whatever. No way. We just don't get stressed out. We can enjoy the moment. You know, when I started this talk and got a clue what I was going to talk about, and I was just so exhausted because I've had a very busy day because I've enjoyed this talk. I don't know if anyone else says I got lots of energy again. Now this is the way to adapt, to innovate, not to plan too much, not to complain, to enjoy the moment. And there's nothing which you can't do. And you tend to do it very, very well. So that's Buddhist attitudes to learning how to deal with modern life so you can be far more efficient in life. It's not the world's problem. It's not your problems, our relationship, how we deal with these things. Somebody dies. Dying happens all the time is how we relate to that. Die. Someone gets a cancer. It's not a cancer. So much is our attitude towards the impermanence of life that things sometimes go wrong. It's not. The work we have to do is how we do it. And there, each one of you has full freedom to do it in a skillful way, rather than complaining and moaning and stressing out. Getting angry at your husband, angry at your wife, road rage on the way back from home and creating a miserable world for yourself. No matter what you do, you can still do that same amount of work, but doing it with fun, with peace. Then he had a rest at night, adapts not to many plans, and enjoy the whole journey of your life without worrying too much about these destination. That's the talk this evening at John Brown's motivational talk for how to become rich, efficient and get by in your workplace. Thank you very much. Okay, as a half hearted clap, but you must be tired to any questions. Any questions, comments or complaints today about this talk about modern life. No comments or questions. You know that some years ago that somebody in Singapore said, oh, you monks, you don't know what real life is. But then I told them, I said, how hard I work and all the places you see some of the schedule, some of the monks have seen some of the itineraries which I have there. You can't do that. And if I look at it, I say, yeah, you're right, I can't do that. When I look at it, I can't do it. But you can always give one talk at a time and you can do that. And after a while you're given about ten talks in one day. So. Okay, so that's how it's all done. Just don't think about it. Just do it. Okay. Don't think about it. So just do it. What are you going to do next? You can work for a very famous shoe company I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much. I jump around. Okay. So that's all the announcements for tonight. So I'll hand back to a prompter plug for the global conference. This is the chance of not a lifetime, but many life types. So if you don't get your ticket you'll miss out. And if you're especially if you're a member the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, you don't come with very bad karma. That's bad, isn't it? Well, it's not really that bad, but it's very good karma to go. So we've got some actually some surprises coming for that conference, some very interesting events which I've sworn to secrecy, I can't tell you, but when you come, you'll really enjoy some of the interesting aspects of Buddhism which you never hear about here and you can't see here. Only at the global conference. Okay, let's play this festival. The devil's not joking are also really good surprises. Ah, God my God. Oh my God. But I'm glad I got one. Got up. You are David. So I got a bag of da da da da da da da da da da me. So, Patti, part of like a model. Ah. Like a soccer star. And now, mommy.