Community and Tragedy

Community And Tragedy by Ajahn Brahm Transcription So saving this evening I'm going to talk about, uh, taking responsibility because, uh, earlier this week, uh, had a visit from the, the Gravity Center. Uh, that's over in Gingin. Uh, as many of you know, that before I became a monk, I was a scientist. I always keep in contact with my friends in science. And obviously, Professor David Blair, UWA is a good friend. And when he started his gravity center, he got me involved in little things here and there. And it's nice being able to, um, contribute. And the latest thing they're doing is having a bit of a, uh, exhibition about the different types of creation theories in the different religions. And basically, the Buddhist creation is pretty irrelevant because we've already said during our meditation we'd let go of the past, even what happened a few moments ago. But of course, we can let go of what happened a few billion years ago. And bring that into your minds. Whatever happened. And it's strange that many people just devote so much attention to what happened into such a long, distant past, which no one can be really sure of. That some idea, but certainly not certainty. And as far as Buddhism is concerned, certainly there's nothing um, uh uh, no difficulty there with accepting science. The accepting the Big Bang theory. And of course, many of you may have heard me say that, uh, modern science, the M-theory membrane theory, but it is not just one big bang, but a series of big bangs, a whole series of universes, one after the other, after the other. This was modern science. So even universes reincarnate just like you do. So when we say that, does Buddhism believe in reincarnation? Yeah we do. And it's not just human beings, but even whole cosmic systems reincarnating one after another after another. That's really quite a cool idea, but really. So what does that really help? The problem is that sometimes people use the uncertainty of the past to justify the beliefs of the present moment and the beliefs of the present moment. When you justify like a past where there is a big boss somewhere in the sky, when there's a big boss somewhere in the sky, there's always little bosses in between the big boss and you. And that creates what we know these days as religion. And the worst thing about it. It takes away. Your responsibility. In other words, instead of actually doing something about things, we end up spending too much time praying and hoping. Every now and again, there's a bit of prayer might be helpful, but it's not really praying for help. It's more like using the power of your own mind to affect things. And you can affect things in the world. But more than actually with the power of your mind, with the power of your wisdom. It's not so much what happens to you in life, but the way we regard it, the way we respond to it. It's what I always say is our relation to things in life. And so often you see whether it's the bushfires in Victoria or is this the personal tragedies of your life? I'm sometimes surprised that people don't use enough wisdom power to deal with what happens in life. For example, even this afternoon you spent this afternoon at a funeral service for a 19 year old, a young boy who died unexpectedly. So don't know what the cause of death was, but I was struck by just how many people were sad. The death of a young boy. As if that something had gone wrong in our society. We are sad because we don't expect these things to happen. And that's the big problem. The way we believe in life is not the way that life actually is. Sometimes we believe that a person should live to 60, 70, or 80. I don't know how long should you live? How long is the person's lifespan if it's 80? I'm sure there's a couple of people here. Over 80. You should be dead by now. What are you doing? You're breaking the rules. The point is that there is no rules for when a person dies. And we should actually know that a person can die at any time. It's only when we have expectations which are not in line with nature, with truth, with the laws of physics, with the laws of life. Those are the sorts of times that we suffer. Some years ago when I was in Singapore, somebody asked me this question. Okay, now they're very busy. You know, Singapore people are very busy. Even more busy than in Perth. And they said, look, I haven't got much time. Now I want to understand about Buddhism. What suffering. Can you please tell me? I've only got a minute. I've got an appointment. I love challenges like that because instead of actually just becoming really philosophical and just going into too many words, why not just, you know, get to the heart of things? And I sort of answered and I thought, it's a beautiful description. Suffering is expecting from the world will never give you. Expecting what? This world can't, can't, can't provide. And you can see that with that sort of definition, we understand what is the cause of so much tragedy and so much tears and strife in this world. When we expect something which the world will never be able to give you anyway, which can't happen, which goes against the laws of nature. Expecting children of 19 years of age, always to survive. Some people will die is that classic story which I told this afternoon, which understands by by realizing the laws of nature, how nature works. That's how human beings work as well. Could we're part of nature? We're not so separate from it. We're not masters of the universe. We're part of the universe, and we belong to nature. And that's that story of the the leaves and the forest. Beautiful story. A month years ago in Thailand, one with a story, living in a forest in a small hut made of bamboo and thatch. There was a storm, a violent storm. The winds were so fierce the trees came crashing to the ground. Around his heart, his heart, just with the bamboo and thatch, offered no protection from any falling tree, or even a branch that fell on his heart would go straight through, injure, break bones, probably killing. He was awake all night hearing these trees come crashing down around him. But fortunately, the reason he could tell this story. Was none hit his heart. He was safe. He went out to see the damage in the early morning. Sure enough, the first thing you look at is the branches and trees, which had just missed his cut. But what he really saw was something which gave him an understanding of the nature of life. He never looked at the the trees or the branches. He started looking at the leaves on the ground, as you would expect, and a forest floor after a storm. Most of those leaves were old brown leaves, which had lived a full life on the twigs and branches. But amongst those Brownlee's there a few yellow leaves. Amongst the yellow leaves. They were green and even saw 1 or 2 freshly grown green leaves of their very young pale colour, which showed him that Dursleys must have only shot forth the day before. They too, they scattered on the forest floor, ripped from the tree, lying dead amongst the old brown leaves. He looked back up to see what leaves were left. Mostly Greenlees was given a tree, but even though there were some green leaves lay dead on the ground, still there a few curly old brown leaves still clinging on. Even no young green leaves had died. He realised that this is the nature of storms which pass through a forest. They take most of the brownies, but a few of the other leaves as well. It's the same when death passes through our families and communities. They usually take the old ones, but not always. Sometimes 19 year olds die, leaving 80 year old, 90 year old. The old curly brown leaves are now a bit brown and curly, still clinging onto the tree. Now this is the nature of life where we understand this. We can accept it. When we accept it. We embrace it. We don't ask the world to be different. We don't demand it to be different. We made peace with the world because how can you fight nature? You can only learn to be with it, to accept it and make the best of it. As we learn from life, these are just examples. Examples of even when you live in a bush. When you build your houses in the forest like the monks, the nuns who come and teach here do. You can expect bushfires to come and some of those bushfires. You'll survive. Some will kill you. That is the nature of life. You live in a forest. You have less chance of being raped. But certainly you have more danger of bushfires. Wherever we go in life. There are dangers. And even if you don't live in the forest, is one of the ladies here? I just remember when I just talked to her a moment ago, she was living in one of these blocks next to Kings Park. Even the city. She almost got burnt out by the bushfire. Wherever you are. So when these things happen, we have to accept this is part of the nature of life. We are part of it and it's not. Having lived through the bushfire over in our monastery in serpentine. About 20 years ago, when I was 1991. I was 18 years ago, on January the 30th. And that day was the hottest day ever recorded in Western Australia, 4647 degrees. It was according to the metropolitan forecast and I monitored the monastery. We saw 49 hottest day of the year later on, two weeks later, there was a day which was hotter, but still that ranks as the second hottest day ever in this state, in this area. And that was before the fire came and it got hotter after. The whole monastery, those of you who've been here a long time know what happened. The whole monastery engulfed in flames and fire. And I was there at the time, whole trees exploding. It was a wonder to see. It was like a bomb going off. And the noise was great and just the whole tree exploding in one go. And there you were, in the middle of it all. And of course, you are quite prepared as much as you could to be with your fire pumps. And we are overall fighting that fire. And actually, at the time, uh, the fire officers were the ones who made the mistakes. We were more prepared than they were because they panicked and told us to leave. Get out, they said. And so he had to follow the orders, even though I know now as I knew them. But I was following orders in a fire. You flee before or after, but not when the fire is hitting. But we followed the orders and we went down. And I remember even being interviewed by channel 9 or 7 or something at the time. It's actually a funny experience because of my training as a monk. There's no fear. It's just part of life. You just do what you can, and if you die, you die. Amazing the training you have. You're not afraid of these things. You're at peace with life. One day you're going to die. If you die in a forest fire and the Buddhist society doesn't have to pay for your cremation. Monks. They got a very sick sense of humor. I thought this is a blast. It's actually last Friday. I didn't think I told us last week, but I was visiting a man who had cancer. He was telling me about how expensive his treatment was that he'd spent in private health, cover over about $2,000, and having some sort of tests and these amazing robots. When he told me this, you know, he said, well, what happened? You just found more cancers. And I said, well, you know, $12,000. A lot of money. Now cough it only cost about $500. Of course he got the joke and he laughed instead of kicking me out. But we're not so afraid of these six. So because you're not afraid of these things, you're a peaceful throughout. And during the interview, apparently the interviewer at the time was actually quite impressed because the first time she told me this afterwards, the first time she'd seen somebody in such a sort of a life and death situation, be so cool and calm about the whole thing. She was so impressed. She rang me about a month later on and said, I can't get you out of my mind because I can't never seen anybody so peaceful after such a dangerous situation as huge bushfires, ground fire, a whole tree, not just on the ground. And she said she wants to do an interview with me on her new program. What was that? It was actually the Hinchey report, and I didn't know what that was. But I asked the president at the time and said, don't go on the hinge report, because apparently that was just looking at all sorts of scandals and everything else. So anyway, we never got on there. But anyway, the point was that you learn how to be more at peace and accept these things. And at that time when we evacuated and I could see just I was there when the forest was on fire and you could see from the distance just the huge flames soaring up into the sky and the explosions because, you know, the eucalypt trees in such hot weather, they sort of the oil evaporates and that oil evaporating and mixing with the oxygen in the air is an explosive mix. So when those trees ignite, they explode. It's a bomb going off. He saw those bombs going off in your monastery. And I thought all those hard years of work. I've lost it all, including those two bad bricks. And he disappeared as well. I lose a whole lot. And there's a wonderful thing there to also test yourself, to realize. Yeah. Doesn't matter. Even if your whole life's work goes up in smoke, it was still well worth doing. If you've had a son, the only lost 19 years. It was well worth having you for those 19 years. Thank you so much for being with me for that time. Even though such hard work building a monastery, it was worth it. I was totally willing to let it go and allow it to be totally destroyed. And thought that when I went there the next time, I just stopped building it again. But of course, those of you know the story that when we went back the next day when we're allowed to go back by the police and the fire department. The monastery was still standing. Only a caravan had been destroyed and everything else was still there. It's amazing to see some of the power which, like monks had. I remember being with the fire. The chief fire officer came to inspect a couple of days later, and I had to be to take him around. I remember him looking at one of those huts and saying, Brahm, this should not be here. It shouldn't be here. Why is it here? And of course, I know why it's there. And I think you should too. Sometimes there's some power which, you know, you can have every now and again. It also reminded me of another bushfire story. I'd never seen this, but I tell this quite often now when I go to do some chanting of people's houses, there we have all these little ceremonies in Buddhism, chanting and stuff. But why does it really work? This was apparently part of a segment on a TV show which was broadcast throughout the World Network called The Unexplained. It's a sort of show which I would look at if I could watch the TV, because I always like weird stuff. And this was called The Unexplained. And apparently this particular programme took weird, strange events which had happened and trying to find out why. And on this particular show, this segment, there are panning a hillside in California after a very, very severe bushfire. And just like in the Victorian fires, you see house after house, which is the smoldering ash trees with nothing green left on them, people with their whole savings, her whole life reduced to rubble. And as they pan this hillside house after house destroyed that, they came to a house which didn't even have a mark on it was standing and scarred. They carried on to the other side of that house. More total destruction. Above. Below. To the left. To the right of that house. Everything had been destroyed. So they were asking why? Why was this house saved while everything else was destroyed? He had explained. So they interviewed the owner. The owner was a Korean American. A person had migrated to United States with nothing, had worked hard, save and build their first house. They said, when you built the house, did you have sprinklers on the roof? No, he said, fire shutters? No. Did you have fire pumps? No. Well, how was your house saved then? What special thing did you do? Which the other houses didn't. And he said, maybe this is the reason why my house survived. He said, when my house was completed, I invited my brother over, who was a Buddhist man, to do some chanting in my house, and he did the chanting and sprinkled all this water over my house. And once he had finished, he said, now your house is safe. So I never even got insurance. They need it. There you go. You come here. We can save you a lot of money. Who knows? Sometimes these things happen. So anyway, you can see that sometimes there is some sort of other things happen in this universe which protect you. But what you can do is you can say, well, you know, this happens in life and all the stuff which you accumulate, all your possessions. This is actually the lesson of those Victorian bushfires. Expect the unexpected. Never to put all of your security know in houses, in your possessions, because they can be destroyed, if not by a bushfire, by economic collapse. When you lose all your shares and you have to sell your house and you have to pay off your debts or, you know, divorce or some of you guys, someone finds out that in your youth you fathered a son or daughter. You've got to pay all this payments, which means you have to sell your house. There's lots of stuff which can happen to you where you lose all this Social Security and material things. And that's why, like, uh, with agents like Buddhism, I keep on encouraging you the stuff which you have now, your house and your possessions. Please don't feel that. That's your security. There's the other stuff which is even more important. Now, what I've said here is called your social and your emotional capital. And that's far more important. And you can see those communities, say, in Victoria, which were devastated. The reason why they survived. The reason why they rebuild is nothing to do with money. It's their social capital and their emotional resilience. That is what will pull anybody through any crisis of life. The social capital is our friendships are togetherness, whether we belong to sort of a community such as that which comes every Friday night, and all of our, our family, our friends, our place of work or whatever. This is what we call like the social capital of life. When people meet together and develop the friendships and these social bonds, we help each other. There's that old story of fingers of her hand. Have fingers of her hand. If one finger gets hurt, if one finger gets gets infected, the whole hand cannot be used. Which is why every finger has to look after each other. Little finger has to look after the big finger, big finger after the middle finger. They all have to look after each other because they know when one finger it is hurt. The whole hand cannot be used. Like a family. Like a community. We know when thousands of miles away in Victoria and people hurt over there. We hurt over here. That's why we help. Why we share. And it's that which we builds community. And sometimes in tragedies, they have the silver lining, the silver lining of just how people come and help and how people just drop what they're doing and come and look after you. Even in our bushfire of 18 years ago, it was wonderful to see. Even though there was nothing destroyed, there was still a lot of infrastructure which was complete. There was no water for the first almost two days, and people would come up and help and look after and serve. Even our local hardware store came up as soon as they heard to replace the pipes. They just went out of their way to look after and help us as we do. Even a local greengrocer. A shop in Armadale sort of came out with a whole big bag of carrots and apples. Not for us, but for the kangaroo, who are also part of our world history. That's really thoughtful because those kangaroos had nothing to eat. Nothing at all. It's wonderful to look at. That's probably why the kangaroos are still around, because they realise yet. You monks, did you put a stuffed after us in the hard times during the fire, so we could be out looking after you here? I did sometimes in those times of tragedy, you have. This beautiful thing happens when somebody dies. That's when you just see who your friends really are and how many friends you have, and how many people care about you, how many people look after you. That's one of the wonderful things about life in tragedy. You see some of the beautiful parts of life. I remember just over in London when I was visiting my mother many years ago. She lived in a tower block. Again, I did come from the fourth family. It was just owned by the local council. Rented out. It's one of these places. I never seen that, uh, TV series of Bill. But I know that many people are completely addicted to the bill. And, uh, someone was telling me about it last Saturday, and, uh, apparently many of those episodes are in these so-called sink estates in England. That's where my mother lived. That's where I grew up. I came from a sink estate. So now you can do pretty well. Going to sink estates. I did what in life? But anyhow, this was supposed to be a hotbed of crime. So people said. But listen to this experience. Stay with my mother. I was going out to the. The local temple is Franklin Temple is about an hour's walk away. And I liked exercise, so I decided to go and walk there to give my evening talk. So as I went down the elevator, when it reached the the ground floor and the, the sliding doors of the elevator parted in front of me was standing there with a 60 year old woman covered in blood. I just wonder what had happened to her. He said she'd fallen down the stairs to the basement. Concrete said she was terribly injured and at least she could stand. There was no telephone there. So I took her back into the lift and up to my mother's apartment, trailing blood. My mother, she said, I'm not very good at this. Which is his blood. But being a monk, he used to anything but very adaptable as monks. So I took her in. We started bathing her. My mother called the ambulance. But wonderful thing happened. People in that so-called tower block who got to know each other. And they saw a trail of blood leading into my mother's apartment. They followed that trail of blood to find out what had happened and how can we help? But within a few minutes, they had so many people in my mother's apartment trying to help and look after this lady. She had her her lunch on, so they took her key and turned off the gas. They called her daughter and they did all this other jobs for her. At that time, I realized this is not a sinking state. This is a community, a place where in times of difficulty and trouble, people are willing to stop what they are doing and look after one another. That's a beautiful part of life, to see how people really care and why. Sometimes we need a tragedy to be able to see the beauty in human being. And to me, that is worth much more than a big house and a big car and a big bang pan. So with my whole life, instead of trying to accumulate wealth, I try to accumulate good karma, accumulate kindness and generosity of looking after people. My social capital. That's why when I ever go traveling, very rarely take any health insurance when I go travelling. Just recently returned from Sri Lanka. I never took any health insurance there. You know why? Because there's so many doctors in Sri Lanka. And if I ever got sick, there'll be a fight about who had the right to look after me. It's just wonderful to have that. And why are they doing that? Because they care about you. Because I care about them. So that's my insurance. Now look at me. I've got no money, no superannuation. What are you going to do when you retire? You won't let me retire. I often say the older you are as a mark, the harder you have to work. I'm only sort of 57 when I get to 67. Then you're really venerable. 77. Wow. The wise old monk of serpentine 87. And wow, that's where the souls of the Prime ministers will come and be asked for blessing or advice. So I know what my future is like. No retirement for this one. So I don't need soup. I'm not going to be allowed to retire. Even I'm not gonna probably be allowed to die either. If ever I get sick, say no. No, you can't die. So I've got no freedom. But I can understand that social capital, that kindness, that goodness. That is what's really important in life. And that's whenever there's a tragedy. Please don't go looking at those papers. The Victorian tragedy. Yeah, there's a tragedy over there, the bushfire tragedy. But there's also some beautiful things happening. We must always focus on the beautiful stuff as well. People caring for one another, looking after one another, donating to each other. And those are the ones which I really like to focus on again recently in Sri Lanka. There's no seeing as well as an army. Tragedies, many people losing their lives, but many people having beautiful, wonderful experiences. One of the places where I visited over there and the people taking me around said, this must be the place where that story happened. There's only one river down south where there are crocodiles. Man eating crocodile. Many people apparently have died in that river eaten by the crocodile. There was one man, apparently could actually feed fish in that river. Just take some bread and throw it to the fish out of kindness to the animals, he said. One day, as well as a fish, a crocodile came and said he thought crocodiles were just big fish. They must be hungry to save you. A few threw a few slices of bread. The crocodile. From that time on, the crocodile will come every day to get his couple of slices of bread. And he was feeding the fish. Apparently, when the tsunami hit. And that was one of the worst places where the tsunami hit them, is just outside of Gaul. I remember correctly, and he got swept away by the power of the wave. The coward was so strong you couldn't resist it. And as he was being swept out to sea to join the many other people who would die, he grabbed on to anything which he could find. First of all, a chair you would seek that you could hold on to these things. The force of the current was so strong. Swirly, blowing. He got parted from the chair. So the next thing he grabbed on to was the lock. He could hold on to that lock. He could imagine the confusion. And it took him a few minutes to realize something very strange was happening while everything else was floating out to sea. The log was floating towards land. And you know that story. When he got to the bag, he could climb on. And as only then he looked at his cloth and found it wasn't a lock. It was the crocodile he saved by the crocodile he'd fed. It may have been compassion. It may just be a crocodile's desire to get some bread tomorrow. But I don't think the crocodile thinks so much. It's probably just this kindness to someone who helped him. Beautiful stories. When there's tragedies, there's also some beautiful things happen in life. And there's those beautiful things happen, which are what inspires us and gives life its meaning and makes the darkest hours is always beautiful things which we can focus on in the the deepest depressions. There's always opportunities to see beauty. And it's this which inspires us and also helps us to maybe contribute to that beauty, to that sort of inspiration in difficult time. Yeah, this is what life does. We do have bushfires. We do have tsunamis, we do have earthquakes. We do have the tragedies, even in Perth. But they're not so, so, so newsworthy. Just ordinary deaths, car accidents and other tragedies of cancer which happen in our communities. These don't get publicized because they're not so newsworthy, but they happen. But when they do it, they give us amazing opportunities to develop this compassion, to develop this service, develop this selflessness, to understand what it's like to be a human being and to celebrate the opportunity to care, to give and to serve. There's an old story about generosity which comes to my mind. Now it's a story from the Dalai Lama. Before he was very well known. This was when he was still over in Tibet. He was a famous monk. He would travel from place to place just so people could see him. It's a tradition of monks to be travelers. So don't blame me when I spend so much time in Sri Lanka or Singapore or other places. This is just tradition. So anyway, he was travelling in Tibet around the poor villages, and there was a journalist traveling with him from United States. During one of the very early articles on His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the journalists source of very strange things, which he couldn't really get his head around. There was a tradition in that place that people would line up to hand and give gifts to the Dalai Lama, many gifts. I remember before the Dalai Lama left India, he lived in a palace, the Potala Palace. He was head of state, had the very best foods, nice robes, everything you could ever want. And here he was being given gifts by some very, very poor people. And this was getting really under the skin of the journalist, making him more and more upset and angry. And apparently the journalist was with the Dalai Lama, an extremely poor village. And there he saw a woman, an old woman. Maybe she wasn't that old, maybe in her 40s, but in those hard, subsistence villages at 40 you look like 70 or 80 in Perth. And this poor woman in rags handed the Dalai Lama a gift. The gift was a skirt, a piece of woman's clothing. And at that, the journalist exploded in raid. You talk about religion and kindness and compassionate. No, you're. You live in a palace. You've got so many nice robes, so much. And this woman is so poor. And you're a man. You don't need a skirt. What are you doing? You should be giving her something. She shouldn't be giving you these seats. Oh, you don't need these things. And then the Dalai Lama pause. And with this beautiful wisdom, he said, you're right. Now, whenever you're being argued with or is, tell the other person, yes, you're right. But. That's always the best way of solving any sort of argument. Yeah, sure. Right. But and this was the killer statement from the Dalai Lama. You're right. I don't need a skirt for that woman needed to give it to me. She needed to give it to me. And there the Dalai Lama was actually revealing just how, as human beings, we just need to give to each other as an expression of our love, our respect, our kindness or whatever. It doesn't matter. Where do we need it? The other people need to give it to us. Ever since. I understood that when people give me things, they haven't given me a woman's skirt, but they have given me a comb. What would you do to get a cow? Thank you very much. Do you receive it? Because I need to give it to you. Then you go and give it to somebody else. Why is it one of the stories many, many years ago. I'm just looking. Whether she's here this evening, I can't see her. But this this woman who's a regular over here knitted a pair of socks. I don't wear socks. I see that the last year, I think when I went over to Japan in the winter, I wore some socks. Maybe I'm getting old now, but usually I don't wear socks even in the cold weather. Even when I was in England visiting the monasteries over there, even though it was snow, I still didn't wear socks. I've got really good circulation on my feet, so I don't really feel too cold anyway. I don't wear socks, but she made some for me, especially just for you on a Friday afternoon before the tour. I said thank you so much. And I put them on. Even though I made my feet sweat. But I did more than just put them on. When I was giving the talk like I'm giving now. I started fidgeting and as I was fidgeting, those people who are on my right can see I've put my foot out and I wiggled it to draw her attention. And she was sitting to my right over there, and now the corner of my eye, I saw her. He noticed. She turned around in the middle of my talk to her friends. He's wearing my socks. He's wearing my socks. I made her happy by putting her up. Why not? Even if I was uncomfortable, I took him off afterwards and gave him to somebody else. But it was needed to show that beautiful care and generosity towards one another. You see how beautiful spiritual that is? But how are people to care for you? And even if you don't need it, accept it and say thank you very much. You can always give it to somebody else. You pass it on. And that way a gift never loses its value. I'm not just talking about socks. The gift wasn't important. The care which went into it. She knitted it herself. That was the most important point. And so that we can say whenever there's a tragedy. It gives us the opportunity to care, to give, to help, to serve. Because sometimes it's very difficult in life to find people to care about. Because everybody is so damn self-sufficient. You don't need anything, do you? I can do it myself. Thank you very much. No. Even if you can do it better yourself. Let a person help you. That's why I say I don't know if they do it these days, but when I was growing up, we always had Boy Scouts. No, it always helped. No. Old women across the road. At that time, I used to say, if ever a Boy Scout comes to help you across the road, please say, oh, thank you very much and let them help you across the road, even if you don't want to go. This lady did to help you. Thank you very much. Young man or young girl? Whatever. And when they just got around the corner, you can cross back over again by yourself. If you allow them to care. Because every time you allow people to care. You're actually encouraging that beautiful caring in society. So if anybody ever says I could do that for you, let them know if you can do it better yourself. It doesn't really matter sort of what it is, because we want to be able to encourage that beautiful compassion and caring in life. So this is actually what happens whenever there are tragedies. It can have a beautiful part to it, the opportunity for us to care. And also the opportunity to realize that this is the the wealth of a nation. Wealth of the nation is not in bricks and mortar that gets destroyed, but what really survives. They have lost every sacred Victoria. They haven't lost much at all. They've lost their house. Their possessions. Maybe some relations. They haven't lost their heart. They haven't lost their goodness. They haven't lost the spirituality. Sense of community being part of them. However, people focus on things all the time. You know, on your house. Because sometimes the only reason we focus on these things is because they just take up so much of our time. You work many hours to build your house. You also work many hours to build your family, to build your friends, build your own sort of friendliness, to watch yourself. Your own sense of integrity and self-respect and softness towards yourself. That takes a lot of time to build as well. But sometimes you always focus on some things, material things. And this is what happens when we focus overmuch on material things, when these things disappear, which they have to. The nature of life is the law of nature fires, deaths, whatever. If we focus on these things that when they do disappear, we'd always get frustrated, disappointed, and sometimes even angry. Why did these fires happen? We got all these stupid responses. Knee jerk responses. Let's just burn off all the fires, relocate people do this and do that. So looking in the newspaper today, all these arguments about should we do control burn us or not control burn us? I know in our monastery we did control burn off that never saved our monastery. That sort of fire destroyed everything. All the trees anyway. So all this was light was back and forth. That's not, I think, the most important thing which comes out of the tragedy of a bushfire or the death of a tsunami, of an earthquake. The most important lesson is not so much how to preserve our houses, not even our how to preserve our lives, but how to preserve a sense of community and care. And working together and helping one another and learning how to embrace these uncertainties of life. Expect them. Doesn't matter how many preparations you do. Fires will always destroy. It doesn't matter how many early warning systems there will be still sooner. It doesn't matter how much you meditate and eat brown rice and exercise, you still get fat. It happens. Believe me, I know from personal experience. And you still die. So this is our life. So we look at something which is more stable, more important, more valuable than all of these material things. This is what I'll be talking about tonight. Sometimes build a house. It's not a home. Now, a home is where you have kindness and care in that place. No joy in that place. So be wonderful. If instead of just thinking about the next plan of the the the the most modern architect, it's actually the way that things look just at the moment, because I'm really working hard finishing off our retreat center. And yeah, there's always problems when you come to the end of a of a big project like that. But I've always made sure that we're always kind. Because for me, it really doesn't matter when when you go down it is more than two bad bricks. I assure you, when you go down to that place, there's many beautiful pics as well. But the most important thing is not the fact it may look beautiful, but how it was built. Because I remember just some years ago going, I was visiting another Buddhist centre and they just built something and I said, never again are we going to do any more building the amount of arguments and tension and who want to do this way and that way. This is a nightmare. Never again. When I heard that. What are you doing? Is this a Buddhist building or not? It's a building for a Buddhist or a Buddhist for building. What is the priority here? And for me, it's always not what you actually achieve in terms of the results, but as the process is more important, how it's achieved. And to me, the success of this project, you won't see it when you go to visit the place or you'll see it's just the the bricks and mortar and whatever else is there. But you haven't seen just the number of people who've served and helped and the fact there has been problems. But we don't get angry. You don't shout at the builder when they make a mistake. We talk to them. Sometimes people have said, I'm just too soft, that if I was more fierce, though, we might get a higher standard retreat center. But I said no. If I was more fierce, you'd never get any money to build anything at all. So because I'm kind and soft this we get a retreat center. It may not be the most popular. Stood your ground and shouted. Maybe he might have get it more perfect to look at, but not more perfect to live in. To me the process is more important than the results. The material things which you get at the end are not as important as how you achieve that, how you got there. And to me, it's always about the process. Whether you live long or live short 19 years or 91 years. Does it matter the length of time, the process? How have you lived those 19 years? How have you lived those 91 years? It's the quality of those years, not the length, the length, the price, the size. That's material stuff, the quality that's more important. Doesn't matter about how much money you have, it's how much you're enjoying that, the quality of that, how you got there in the first place. You may be poor, still be happy just like me. You don't have to be a millionaire to have a smile on your face. But how you got that million or how you didn't get that million. Or how you got that $1. Haven't got $1. Actually, that's more important. The whole process of thinking. So the bushfires, deaths, tsunamis, economic crisis, whatever it is, that's not important. What's really important is the whole process. How are we dealing with this? Forget the buildings. Remember the people. There has been deaths, tragedies and loss. There's amazing opportunities. You all know the Australian bush grows from fires. It regenerates the bush. Just look at any of you. Go down to Serpentine Monastery. Sometimes you wouldn't believe the sort of 19 years or so was it? 18 years ago. There was a huge bushfire down there. I just never taken photographs. Straight after the fire and 12 months later, you couldn't believe there was a fire there and there was not any green thing standing at all. The bush regenerates. So do human beings. We grow from tragedy and we lose our loved ones. When we lose our homes and we lose our money. It's not all lost. Something else grows in its place. Humanity, care. The spiritual qualities. They grow like the phoenix out of the ashes. Life goes on. And people have been through those tragedies. And sure, they'll say never again. Will you also say, what a wonderful experience that was. Tough part about the time you grew so much. Certainly having been through that bushfire and serpentine 18 years ago, it was because of that one thing that we became part of the local community. We had to work together. It was there who we really got to know. Our local council and shire and our neighbours and everybody else who came to our assistance. That's when we became parts of our locality, and that's when in tragedy we become part of our community. After that experience with that lady who fallen down the stairs. From that time on, I was a part of that tower block. My mother said people kept talking about you and asking, why aren't you coming back? Before that time, if they saw me, people would look at the ground. Look at the other way. Who is this guy in a woman's clothes? Because that's what they thought it was. They didn't know what a man was. But after that little experience, he became part of the team, accepted part of the little village which lived in a 20 story block in tragedy. This is where we build our community, our friendships, our care. It's not all ashes. It's some beautiful flowers. Grow out of those ashes. That's what we're talking about this evening. So when we talk about life. Please never expect more than this life can give. There will be difficulties and tragedies and disappointments in life. Many of them. You know that you've had many yourself. Please put them in perspective. Now they're going to have and know that when they do. There's much you can do. You aren't helpless in face of the fire or the tsunami. It's not just an act of God which you just have to submit to as much you can do. Not with your hands, but with your heart. These are places where spirituality can really grow and can help you. We call it karma. Doesn't matter what your face is, what you're doing with it. That's what's the most important thing in life. You've lost a son. You've lost a house. You've lost a boyfriend. What are you doing about that? It's amazing what you can do. And you ground in the most dirtiest of soils. The most beautiful flowers can grow. That's why people come to places like this. Why? Spirituality will always be more important than economics. Because it teaches something which is more resilient than even the hardest of concrete. The heart, the kindness, the love. Things which fire can never destroy. Things which could never swamp. Things which are always going to be there for you, which grow and grow and grow. The beautiful part of life. Thank you for listening. Okay. I never expected to talk on that subject that these things just come out. So hope you enjoyed it anyway. So is it it? Oh. Questions? Yeah. Anyone got any questions about anything whatsoever? Yes. Go on. Well, I'm not counting my previous lives. That was a quick answer. I don't know what I meant, but I said that. But that's a decent answer, because. How old are you? Sometimes it's something. I look at some of your kids and maybe any sort of 10 or 11 years of age, but you look at them, they're older than that. They come from many, many places into this life. This is not their first life. How old are you, really, to your previous existences? You may be thousands of years old. 100,000 years old. That's cool. Yeah. You did pretty good for a hundred thousand.