Compassion and Stillness | Ajahn Brahm

Compassion And Stillness by Ajahn Brahm Okay. Tonight's talk is going to be about passion. Compassion. Because I was just thinking when I was, uh, meditating. What can I give a talk on this evening? And when I started saying, be kind towards your breath. Be kind towards your body, I thought, hey, that's a really nice, uh, topic for this evening's talk about compassion, but also because I and been talking a lot about tsunamis and many of you have been swamped with talk about tsunamis. One comment which I did read, which I thought was very pertinent, is that we still think that we should do something when it's so many people still suffering. We think, what can we do to help? And no, last weekend we had this big fundraising, which I'm sure our president will talk about at the announcements. But one thing which we can do is not just to give funds, but actually to develop more compassion in our world. And that's actually something very, very positive we can do as a result of people suffering. So compassion is the result of suffering in the world. And we only if we can only learn exactly what compassion is and how to develop it and where to develop it on. And I think we can build a much more wonderful world. So tonight's total beyond the Buddhist idea of compassion. I know that if you read books, rather than actually come to see the reality and books aren't real, sometimes they just miss the point too often. If you read books, sometimes you hear that Theravada is a selfish part of Buddhism, and Mahayana is the compassionate part of Buddhism. And I'm supposed to be a monk who's just concerned about his own enlightenment and doesn't go around helping anybody at all. That's the theory. But as you know, I work my backside off, as they say. I was going to say something else, but this is on tape. I work incredibly hard helping and serving other people. But you know, it's also for myself as well. And that I have found in my monastic life that when you're compassionate to others, that's the best way of being compassionate to yourself. When you're compassionate to yourself. That's the best way of being compassionate to others. And the compassion just goes both ways. And so that that old idea of there's two types of Buddhism, those who put off their enlightenment to help other people, and those who put off other people to help their own. Enlightenment is just there's no difference between those two. It's very easy to see in theory. Yeah, maybe makes sense, but in practice there's no difference whatsoever at all in any which way. And you can see that by example, by the monks and nuns, the sisters at Dharma Sara, just to see how much we give to the world and how much we get for ourselves as well. And so when we're talking about compassion, it is just a unified process which is part of not just Buddhism, but at the spiritual path. Unfortunately, sometimes we can misunderstand compassion. Sometimes people are so busy being compassionate, they argue other people for getting in their way when they're trying to be compassionate. Get out of the way. Stop disturbing me. I'm doing my metta meditation. And of course, you understand they're missing the point of what compassion truly is. So even that in our life we develop compassion in many ways. But it's important to develop that compassion towards oneself or even more towards oneself. Compassion to the moment. It's important. It's a starting block because compassion, like every other quality, has to be developed. We can't just say, right now, I'm going to be compassionate and think that we can just do it. Sometimes people think that the spiritual part is so easy, they just need to come to a temple to learn meditation one afternoon, and they can become enlightened by the next week. The point is that like any other quality in the mind, it takes years to develop it. It's a training. It's a development of the mind and of the heart. But sometimes people get frustrated and say, how can we actually be compassionate? We all realize that love, compassion, kindness is what makes the world a happy place, a smiley place. But sometimes, why are there just so many miserable people around? Why is it just some people are just so negative? Why is it that it seems that they just the whole life is about making other people unhappy? And if they want to be unhappy themselves, it's fine. But why? To make me miserable as well? But the point is that when we understand what compassion truly is, we understand that sometimes the compassion is going in the wrong way. It's too often we try and sort of you can see just the way that some politicians work. We try and sort of wage wars, actually, for compassion to have a battle so people can be free to actually to have a war to liberate people. You see, sometimes there's something wrong there. War, liberation. The two are just opposition opposites of each other. But when we understand what compassion truly is, not as a theory, but as something we can feel in our own heart because we're practicing compassion, we know what it is, we get a feeling for it. Then we're on the path to the compassionate lifestyle, and you find that if it's real, true compassion, it always works. It's very powerful because usually what people keep on asking me, they say, oh, it's okay being compassionate as a monk, but in the real world, compassion doesn't work. I was in Java just a week ago. Just how busy I am just going around Indonesia giving dharma talks. So what I would say is that one of the questions was a businessman was asking me. He said, look, I've got to get angry at my workers. That's the only way that I can get any work out of them. If I don't tell them off, they'll get too lazy. And I sort of argued with him and said, no, that's not the way to get the best out of your workers compassion. We'll get much more work out of them, because what happens if you're angry and if your, uh, your, um, aggressive and you shout at people, yeah, they will work when you're there. But as soon as you've gone, oh, he's gone now we can take it easy. The only doing what you want out of fear. And of course, you can't always be there. You can't always maintain that presence of fear. Which means that whatever you get out of your work is out of your family. Just through that. That harshness is only a temporary measure. And in the end, people just they're not interested in working anymore. But when one develops compassion and kindness, you get much, much more out of the people you live with. But it has to be able to be learnt and coming from the right way. And that's why that we always tell people to learn meditation and to be compassionate to the moment. Still, people miss that point when they start meditating. They say, I can't meditate. And the reason is you're trying to meditate and that's not meditating. Try compassion. Be compassion to this moment. Whatever's happening now, your mind's all over the place. You're dull. You're tired, you're aching. Be kind to that. Be compassion towards it. You know, another meaning of the word compassion is like passion with something. And when you actually look at it that way, you can understand how it works. You're passionate means your mind, for you are engaged. You're putting effort and energy attention into what's happening. That's what passion means. It's like when you're doing things passionately. I give my talks passionately. I give 100% into these talks. Whatever else I'm doing, I give it 100% because that's how I was taught by my teacher. Whatever you do, if you're having a cup of tea 100%, this is really nice. And if you're arresting 100%, are you just really rest? We were fundraising last week, 100% fundraising. Did you hear how I pronounce that? There's no d on the end of fun fundraising, we call it. So we raise a lot of fun. In other words, we're compassion. It's not just getting the money which is involved, it's how it's made. We put passion into this. And when you put passion into things, you're passionate with something. It's amazing just how successful it is. So when you're doing a meditation, you're passionate with whatever's happening now, you're engaged, having fun with it, uh, paying attention to it. Enjoying this moment. And you can understand how if you're compassionate to this moment, there's a mind if if the mind is all over the place. Be passionate with that mind. Then you're making peace with it. But energetic peace with whatever's happening now. And so that's why that's so often when I start meditating. I mean, I'm very busy as well, you know, running around doing all sorts of things. Even when I've got nothing to do, I just sit down and do nothing. And then people think, oh, he's not doing anything. I can ask him my question now, but I'm not doing anything. People think I'm free. Free to, to help you. I don't care because. Because you're compassionate to the moment when you're compassionate. At the moment you're with every moment you're with the person in the moment. Then you can communicate. You're happy, you're peaceful. You're being with things. And the whole point of meditation is learning how to be compassionate with the moment rather than fighting against it. When you understand that it's not fighting, it's not struggling, it's not controlling. It's not fighting. A battle is kindness. It's gentleness. You find its way of meditation so easy. It's very, very easy. And it's not just a way of meditation. You find out this is a method in life. Because when you give yourself a bit of peace and you slow down and you get this wonderful sort of relaxation inside of yourself, you're You're giving yourself one of the greatest gifts, the gift of peace. My goodness, you all deserve that. Sometimes, you know, we think we run around all day. We've got so much business to be done. Isn't it wonderful to give yourself a gift every now and again? Once I remember teaching a meditation technique. And it's a beautiful technique because there was a time where just before Christmas three years ago, and at Christmas is a time when people give each other presents. Also because we have many people here from Asia. It's almost Chinese New Year in a sort of when is it a week or two, his time in Chinese New Year. You also give each other gifts. So I said, do this gift meditation. In the gift meditation, you close your eyes. Doesn't matter what your mind is, is like. Just leave it alone for a few moments just to relax. And then you imagine giving somebody a gift and that someone is you imagine that like a box, like a shoe box, and you're going to give yourself the gift of peace. So imagine you've got this little box. It's empty, and you put peace inside. And then you, you, you cover it over with the lid, and you do this in your imagination. And then you get some paper, some really like gift paper. And you're very carefully wrap it, because if it's a precious gift, you make sure you wrap it really, really well, and then you tie it with a ribbon very slowly and carefully, and you get one of these little tags and you write in your best handwriting. To me with love for me. And you put it aside. Let me forget about it. You allow yourself to think about something. You're just pretending. And then you pretend. You find this presence. You find it there. And I wonder who this is to what's it doing there? And you look at the label to me. Ah, isn't that nice? Who is it from? From me. Ah, I care about myself. Isn't that wonderful? At least it's somebody in this world who loves me and that's me. And then, just like you, get any other present, you get excited when you have presents. And we don't just rip it apart very slowly. You take off the untie the ribbon, unwrap the paper, and you unwrap the paper. Excitement to see what's inside. You deliberately forget what you put inside and then you open it. Peace. That's what I always wanted. Oh, thank you me so much. And in that little exercise, when you just done a little bit of imagination. You will find. The psychological result of that is that you've given yourself the gift of peace. What a wonderful gift that is. This is what we call compassion. You're being kind enough to yourself to give yourself peace. Sometimes in that box meditation, sometimes you can put all sorts of other things in that box. Sometimes I put forgiveness in that box. If I've done something, I think, oh, why did I do that for? That was a stupid thing to do. You remember, look at that box and you put lots of forgiveness in there. It doesn't matter what you imagine forgiveness to be like. Just bung it in there as much as you can get. No more in and cover it up. Wrap it up. Write your name to me with love for me. Hide it and then find it again. Open it up slowly and there are forgiveness. That's really what I needed now. Now you can understand from this that compassion is understanding what to give to yourself and what to give to other people. I've made this point before that you know, compassion is a form of life, and love is always a form of giving. And giving has got many types. You know, we give in for give when we're compassionate to another person, we give ourselves for something else, for a bigger purpose. And that compassion is not just for other people in the world. It's also for us. And it's a problem with human beings in our world, because if only compassion goes out, it never goes in as well. If only goes one way, not both ways, then we find that compassion never works. And that is the big problem. We have to be compassionate to ourselves, inside and also outside, to both sides of the world. The Buddha actually made that point. There's two parts to the world. He actually gave it this name AJ, Tang and Barreda. Internal and external. We need to balance both worlds. And so if you just give compassion to yourself, you just care about yourself. You don't care about any other person in the whole world. It doesn't work. And that's an all types of Buddhism. Selfishness is no part of any religion. In Buddhism, we're supposed to have no self. So how can we be selfish? We have no self. It doesn't make sense at all. In fact, it's true. It is. It's nonsensical. But if you just give compassion outwards and never go inside, it doesn't work either. And so we make it very clear that the compassion has to go both ways. If you give yourself a moment of peace, if you give yourself a gift of peace, remember it's giving to yourself as well as to others. You will find, then, that you have the ability to be compassionate to other people to offer, because we only give compassion outwards. We get grumpy. We get angry. We get upset. We become incapable of doing the right thing to others. Sometimes people think they're compassionate, they're kind, but they're not. They've got it all wrong because they've never learned how to love themselves by loving themselves, or don't mean thinking of themselves as great human beings. What I mean is being able to give to themselves. And I mention this because this is what we can learn from the tsunami. Each one of us in this room has given a lot to the victims of the tsunami. But have you given much to yourself in the past couple of weeks? I don't mean giving yourself another check, you know, to me. For me, if you said that to you back there, laugh, you know, drawing in your own account and putting it back in your own account. But I don't mean a check. I mean the other things which are really important in the world. Not money things, but spiritual things. So, you know, you give yourself, you know, the gifts of peace. Give yourself the gift of forgiveness. Give yourself the gift of acceptance or even just a rest, because those are very important gifts for us. The reason there is just so much turmoil in this world, so much anger and so much even cruelty is because this people are just so stressed out. They never have any time for themselves. They're never peaceful, they're never resting. And so inside of themselves, they just they're sick. And the only way to solve their inner sickness is just to give moments of peace, moments of stillness. I've seen that so often in my life as a monk. People who are stressed out, who are at their wit's end. They come to a monastery and all they need is just a few moments of peace. Remember this this person who once went to this monastery in Thailand, and in that monastery in Thailand, they saw a a woman come in and she was crying as she sat on one of the benches in the monastery. And they didn't know whether they should go and ask what was going on. What can I help? But they just left them alone. This lady cried, arise that for over an hour. An hour and a half. Poor thing. But then afterwards, when she stopped that it this the Australian he went up to and asked her what was the problem. Can I help you? And she said, I said, okay, I feel okay now. But what happened was I lost my car keys. Because that can be very stressful for you, can be very upset. But she didn't really need to find her car keys. Well, she did, but the most important thing was to overcome her feeling of upset. And all she really needed was just a quiet place to sit down and give herself a time just to relax and see that losing her car keys is not the be all and end all of the world. Too often. What happens is when we have no peace, we lose perspective and small things become just so huge that sometimes we can kill ourselves. We can kill other people, but certainly we kill our sense of happiness. We think it's all gone wrong. What's going to happen next? All we really need to do is to find some peace in our life, just for an hour or two, to get perspective. The other story was when this man came to see me at my monastery in Thailand. I was about 3 or 4 years of the monk, but I was in charge that day. He asked me, can I stay? As I said, sure, you stay for three days. And he said, can I leave now? Because I was the one who gave him permission to stay. He thought he should come and take leave of me. I said, sure, if you don't mind me saying, why did you come here? And he said, I came here because I had an argument with my wife, had a terrible argument, so I ran out of the house. I didn't know where to go, so I decided to come to the temple instead. I said, can I help you with your wife? He said, no, no, I'm okay now because I just relaxed. I for 2 or 3 days. I become still and peaceful and I've got perspective. I'm going home to my wife to say sorry. And a wonderful thing to do. Instead of going to the lawyer, instead of going to the pub, instead of going to this sort of psychiatrist, come to the temple and just hang out in the temple for a couple of hours or in a couple of days, if it's been a really big argument and you calm down, where do you calm down? You get perspective in that piece. You think, wow, such a small thing. We argue on why am I going to sort of wreck this marriage, this wonderful person. I really love them and I live with them so long and they're such a great person. Am I going to wreck this marriage over a small thing? I'm just going to go back and say, sorry, and I love you and let's make up. And this is what happens when you give yourself some peace. In that peace, you get perspective and all of those really, really big things which you think it is life threatening or relationship threatening. They all fall into perspective. They're not such a big deal anymore, I think. I'm not sure when I told this last story, but it just comes to my mind now. Have I always noticed in a monastery the time when we have arguments? So this is in our monastery back in Thailand, because we don't seem to have that many arguments in my monastery, at least not when I'm there. Maybe they argue when I go away. But not when I'm there. But I always notice in this monastery people have arguments on one day every week. And it was the day after the monks would stay up all night meditating in the forest tradition of northeast Thailand under Raja and Shah. Once a week would forgo our sleep and spend all night sitting meditation and doing some walking meditation. It was on the moon night supplier days, the one prayer in Thai, and it was always the day after when there was arguments in the monastery. And it didn't take me long to understand why, because I used to almost get into arguments. I remember one evening I was, you know, because my meditation wasn't all that good at the time. That was the reason why. Now I know that. But at the time, instead of like, you know, thinking it was my fault, I saw all these other monks sneaking back to have a sleep, having a cup of tea and coffee when they weren't supposed to, you know, slacking off. And I thought, they can't do that. And so I'm going to sort of go and tell them off. After we finished, I'm going to go to their hearts and just tell her what for. They can't do this. This is wrong. It's against the rules of the monastery. You shouldn't do this. But of course, I realized that that would just create arguments. I seen many arguments happening because of that. So I decided this one time, and it's really showed me just how the, the how piece can solve conflicts. I wrote all those complaints down on a piece of paper because I didn't want to forget them. They were important. I decided to have a sleep first of all, and then I would go and tell those monks what for. So I wrote it all down on a piece of paper. I put it down by the my mat where I used to sleep in the huts. I had a nice sleep because after staying up all night, meditating all night, we're allowed to have a sleep just after our meal. And I had a nice sleep 2 or 3 hours. And when I woke up afterwards, I looked at that piece of paper and I thought, this is just small stuff. It's petty stuff. Do I really want to have an argument with my friends because of this? It was amazing. The perspective changed just after I had a rest and I learnt a lot from that experience. I realised that most arguments would never happen. If you have a bit of a rest physically and mentally, make yourself peaceful and calm and then you look. Why do we have a war in our family over these small things? Why do you have a war in our world? Most of the wars in the world over small things, weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any. There's some tiny little things. And why do we have these big wars? We create so much trouble. Why do we have wars in our family? The arguments we have with our loved ones. Why do you have wars between religions, for goodness sake? So when we give ourselves some peace and you find that you are less aggressive, less grumpy, less angry, you can be more kind to other people. You can give them more space. You can be more compassionate. Now, do you get the point of why I've been talking in this way for the last five minutes? If you give yourself some compassion, that's the way you give compassion to others. Give yourself the gift of peace. The gift of forgiveness. And when you feel calm, you feel good. You feel happy. What are you going to give to other people? You're going to treat them with peace, with happiness, with kindness as well. So I'd love to get all the leaders of the world to come and do a meditation retreat at my monastery for a few weeks. I'll invite Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair. Osama bin laden. Invite them all to come along. And when they were peaceful and calm and having a good time, then I don't think there could be any wars at all. Because you can't. If you give yourself that peace, that forgiveness, then what you have to give to the world is only peace and kindness as well. So that compassion always has to go both ways. Remember some years ago there was I think there was some. I think it was a student riots in Burma where many students got killed by the military government. And a few of the Burmese Buddhists here in Perth wanted to do something, some sort of demonstration or some sort of action to try to bring some more consciousness to what was happening in that country at the time. So they decided to have a meditation. Sit in a opposite high street mall. I think it was on the steps of the Uniting Church or Methodist Church. I forget which one. It was the Wesley Church. That was it on the steps there, and they invited me to come along to actually, because they were all meditating on the steps throughout the day from early in the morning until late, late at night. And I did a two hour meditation there on the steps and opposite the Hay Street Mall. And as I was just coming out of my meditation, I always remember this. This man walked past and he sort of looked at us, is sitting there. He realized it was because of some sort of political problem in Burma. And I remember he's saying, that'll do a lot of bloody good, wouldn't it? Okay. Just sitting there. But I thought afterwards, no, sir, you're wrong. This is doing a lot of bloody good if you like. Because it was actually teaching by example is doing a huge amount of good because actually if you give yourself that peace, you can actually react to those problems in the world in a peaceful way. Whenever you're in conflict. If you have conflict in your office, go and sit meditation five minutes beforehand. You've got to go and sort out that conflict. Don't go thinking about it. What am I going to say? What am I going to do? How can I deal with that problem? Give yourself a few moments of peace. First of all, if you're going to give peace to others, give it to yourself first. Give yourself that compassion and I will guarantee if you give yourself five minutes of real peace, real compassion, and you go into that hothouse of what could be an aggressive situation. You will find something happens. Something beautiful happens. Oh is it? I forget who this was. It was one of the later. I'm not sure if there's some here for Singapore. Malaysia travel around so much. They went. Oh that's right. Yes. This, um, a lady from Sydney. None of those places. One of the disciples from Sydney. She was in marketing PR and so mostly she goes to London, Sydney and New York. She's actually helping market my book, but she said that she had to go to this meeting, this high profile meeting in London, and she just I just talked to her about my book when I was in Sydney. And so she flew all that way. She was jetlagged and she had this meeting with this very, very tough boss. And, uh, when she got to the, the boardroom or the other directors in this very big company just said, you better look out. He's in a bad mood today. And so she took my advice. She made her mind peaceful and kind and calm, had a bit of compassion for herself, first of all. And then she said it was amazing. When the boss came in, he just came straight out of her. She said, oh, now you've got such beautiful blue eyes. You remind me of my my daughter. And she got a young daughter back in Sydney who's just the, uh, her name is Holly. And actually I called her sooner. I gave her a Buddhist name, so why not me? It's like. Like gold. And she said the boss just melted immediately. And they they talked about the contract. No arguments at all. Everything went really, really well. And all the other directors afterwards say, how do you do that teaches us. Because she managed to calm that boss down immediately and get a proper conversation when all the other directors thought that was actually impossible. That was almost like a psychic power. And all it came from is giving herself a bit of peace and kindness before she had that meeting. And when I saw her again, she said, you wouldn't believe this, and this is what happened, and amazed her. It just showed the power of kindness, compassion, peace towards oneself. Give it to yourself first of all, and it will go out to others afterwards. So if you want to spread more kindness and peace in this, well, please start with yourself. If you don't give yourself peace and kindness, you will find you will never be able to react in a proper way. You'll find that you little things will become magnified out of all proportions. You won't be able to remain calm and still because you got no calm and stillness inside of you. You don't know what calmness stillness is. You haven't got this foundation of peace in sight. Which is why that really encouraged people to learn meditation. Encourage people to learn compassion, which is exactly the same thing. Encourage people to give themselves some peace to forgiveness and stillness. And once you know what that really means, is so wonderful in the world, you can give kindness, peace, compassion to anybody. It's just so often that are just when we were fighting the clay truck business. I remember going because one of our local members in Armidale was alive and retaining. We went into office a couple of times. The last time, you know, this was when she was in opposition. The last time we came out of the office, you know, she was the last client of the day. So she took us to the door afterwards and she said, you know, it's so nice to get a couple of calm people in my office. I remember that because a politician is very, very rare to actually to make calm people or quiet people. It's either media or problems, and it's always people arguing about you. And just she appreciated just quiet people in her office. And a short time ago, a year or two ago, I had to go into the flight center to do my travel arrangements, and that's over in Mirrabooka shopping mall. I was actually there this afternoon picking up a ticket. I call it like a monk hanging out in the mall, but I don't hang out. They just go in and go out very quickly. But one of the monks with me at that time, we just sat down in our chairs waiting for me when I was waiting to be served, and he just sat meditation and just the the person behind the counter just looked at him and said, ah, I wish I could do that. It is. People really appreciate peace and kindness, a peace and calmness. And if you can just be peaceful and calm and just do that much, you can give so much to other people in this world. Just having a calm, peaceful influence in the office in Amarillo, anywhere. People really appreciate it. It used to be the tradition in Thailand still is in many places that the monks would go on alms around every morning. And one of the wonderful things about the arms round is every village in those days, the first thing they would say, or one of the first things they see when they woke up in the morning, is this line of peaceful beings. Just walking into their village. Not speaking. Walking slowly, mindful. Just taking a bit of rice from whoever had a bit that morning. At first I thought we were begging. Now I realized we were giving. Imagine if you saw that every morning, one of the first things you saw a line of monks and nuns just passing by your house. Peaceful, calm, not really concerned about the things in the world just being silent. What a wonderful gift that is to our neighborhoods. People who are angry would calm down. People who were desperate would find some solace because just even the sight of peacefulness. It sort of resonates with something inside. We remember what peace, what kindness is really all about. So being compassionate to yourself means giving yourself peace, giving yourself forgiveness, giving yourself just a few moments. And then it leads to compassion for others. So when we're giving, we're trying to find something to do for the tsunami victims. Maybe one of the great things you can do if you haven't done it yet. It gives yourself a gift of a retreat. We're having a nine day retreat soon. Do it for the tsunami victims. If you can't do it, do it for the tsunami victims. A whole nine day retreat. Do a weekend retreat for all the victims of oppression, or the people who are having sorrow and trouble and pain in the world. If you can't do a weekend retreat, just learn a little bit of meditation on a Saturday afternoon. And if you think that's going to do a lot of good. I've got to say that word again, but I shouldn't. It is doing a lot of good because you are creating the causes within yourself by just taking time out and being peaceful to be someone who doesn't add to the troubles in the world, but someone who can calm those troubles. You can actually learn those wonderful skills, those conflict resolution skills, by, first of all, learning how to solve that conflict within yourself. What is meditation anyway? You've got a conflict within yourself. When you start meditating, you want peace. You're not at peace. You want to be still. The mind is all over the place. How are you going to solve that conflict? Letting go. Being at peace doesn't matter. I allow things to be. Be compassionate, be kind. You don't try and change the world. You allow the world to be. You make peace with the world. You don't think the world is going to make peace with you. You let go of craving and control. You allow things to be your compassion at the door of my heart is open to this moment. If you can do that with your meditation, with every moment you find peace comes inside of yourself. It's like a microcosm. It's like an example as within, so without. If that's how you meditate for yourself, you can solve the conflict inside your own meditation. You'll understand how to solve the conflict out there in the world. So by giving yourself a few moments of peace in a meditation or a meditation retreat, you're equipping yourself to solve the conflicts in your home, in your office, or out there in the world. As one of the disciples in our south of the river groups, he used to be the deputy principal of rolling Stone Primary School. She used to teach meditation to a year, six year after year after year. For many years, she's retired now. But I remember visiting that school a couple of times and going to have tea with the principal, and he said, look, I'm not a Buddhist, but I really respect that lady, and I really respect what you're doing because you said it was amazing just how that meditation on year six is, how it's working is, is that I've been, I know, year six as I've been in this school in the the education system for such a long time. And when this lady taught meditation, she started off with, she called it quiet time so other religions wouldn't be really upset. She called it quiet time. She started off with five minutes in the morning and three by the end of the the year, the school year, she was up to about 15 or 20 minutes. The children loved it. In fact, they always look forward to it. And amazing things happened when these children had just a few minutes of peace in the morning. Remember, they were in the playground, coming home, coming from home, rushing around to actually to get there as soon as you're in school or the assembly or whatever is finished, then 15 minutes of quietness. The principal saw that those kids, their ability to concentrate was the ability to assimilate. Information rose. The academic performance increased enormously, but the most interesting part of this was some of the other results of doing this quiet time. Whenever there was a conflict in the classroom, one of the children would automatically put up their hand and say, miss, can we have quiet time now? And everybody would just sit there, close their eyes and meditate for five minutes, and that solved the conflict. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, when you were having an argument at home, that no matter who it was, the wife or the husband, say, can we have quiet time now? And the both of you just shut up, sat down and meditate for five minutes? Wouldn't that be wonderful? Wouldn't it be wonderful if that happened in Parliament? The speaker said, okay, quiet time. And and I don't know if this is it, Mr. Beazley or Mr. Latham. I haven't seen the newspaper. It's Beazley, is it? As of today, Mr. Beazley and Mr. Howard and whoever else is there. Okay. No argument. They sit down and meditate for five minutes. Wouldn't that be wonderful? They get much more done because their mind will be in a good state. It'll be compassionate working together. That was what happened in the year 60s. But also they found, and I think this is Parliament. Is it above or below? Yes. Grade six. I'm not quite. I'm not quite sure about that, but I shouldn't say things like that. But you find actually that if you give yourself moments of this is the other thing they found, sorry, the other thing they found in the school, which the principal told me, said. The other strange thing was that this particular class or this class, every year there's a couple of year sixes in the school. This particular class who did this quiet time, he noticed that the children in that school were more kind to each other and more sensitive to each other's needs. Whenever any child was upset or something was troubling them, the other children would come around and he saw this was a very strange result of this quiet time. People were actually more kind, caring, more cooperative. Were able to work together. Why is it that we find it hard to work together? Why is it in companies? There's always so many splits in families. We find it hard to maintain a relationship. I tell you why. Because we don't spend enough time being quiet. Too stressed out. All the grumpiness, the arguments, the negativity, the fault finding. So coming because we don't have compassion for ourselves just to be peaceful. For you know this when people have been on retreat, they come back after retreat. There's so much easier to live with. So many parents have come to meditation because they've been sent by their children. Mommy, you must go. Daddy, go to meditation. You're such an awful daddy when you don't go to meditation. The kids know that. So you can understand what it does. If you give yourself moments of peace, forgiveness, whatever, that's the most compassionate thing you can do for others, let alone for yourself. As for me just meditating just for a few minutes, I feel so happy, so at peace and I find I can work more afterwards. It's compassionate to give yourself some time out. So when we're talking about compassion, we're not saying, right, you go out there in the world, you go to Archer, you go to to Sri Lanka. You really work hard. Stop being lazy. Don't think about yourself. Sacrifice your life for others. That's not how it works. You just create more problems in the world that way because you haven't got the ability to help. You tend up to become part of the problem rather than solving the problem. Too much out there. You create more difficulties in the world, more arguments. You've just seen people like that. I've seen people like that. You need to give to yourself and then to give to others. Compassion for yourself. Compassion for others. And I know that because that's the path of Buddhism. You spend your first years just being alone in the forests. You're being compassionate to the moment, first of all, until you become peace with now. For passion with this. So you completely with this moment. Energized, passionate. Enjoying every moment. You're compassionate towards a silence. Too many people are afraid of the quietness of the mind. That's why they can't remain quiet. They disturb the silence. What is it that person said? If you can't improve upon the silence and be quiet. What a beautiful saying. If you can't improve upon this silence. Silence is beautiful. When you get to know it. And so when you are passionate about silence. If you don't talk so much because silence is important, it's wonderful. Is this say how we've lost the passion for silence in the world? It's so hard to find a quiet place, even in the house. And if you're passionate about watching your breath. Not just breathing in, breathing out, breathing in beautiful breath. That's why I called it the beautiful breath. Because when I watch my breath, I'm passionate about my breath. This is marvelous. This is a lovely. And that's when you're passionate with something. That's when you get so peaceful. You're giving your energy to this, to this breath, to this moment. And that's why you're getting into really deep meditations. You're giving passion to this peaceful moment, and the peace obviously grows. Whatever you're passionate about, it's easy to pay attention to. I don't know what you're passionate about. People think Arjun, he's got no passion anymore. He's been a monk for such a long time. But no, I'm passionate about my meditation. You're compassionate to it. And he gets so much peace inside. And that peace gives you energy. It gives you joy and happiness. And that means you can really work hard for other people. That's why I do end up going around all over the place, working hard and helping and serving and making a difference. So to be kind to other people, to really work hard for other people to do something in this world, to learn how to solve the problems of tragedies, big tragedies, medium tragedies, small tragedies in the world. There's going to be another tsunami, if not another tsunami, another war, another earthquake, another something or other. You know, the tragedies keep on coming. We have lulls periods when things go well in the world, and then we have a crisis, whether that's in the world or whether that's in your life or your family or your monastery. You know, there's always another crisis coming. Just we don't know when. So in order to prepare for those crises, to learn from it, to learn what to do next. How about giving yourself some peace so you can learn compassion. You can learn that power. The story of the Buddha. As many of you know, for years he just was by himself in the forests, learning peace, learning stillness, learning how to communicate that stillness and peace with others. And after his enlightenment, then he could really work hard for the sake of all beings. And that's why there's a whole big religion called Buddhism. You have to learn compassion. Coming from peace. Some years ago, I gave a talk at Saint Hilda's, the Anglican girls school. After the after the talk, the school had tea with the headmaster. Had. No, the the had mistress actually called him headmistress, not principal in those days had tea with her. And then we were talking about religion because she was actually a devout Anglican. We talked about light, love and she said, love comes from God. I said, no, no, love comes from peace. And we had this great argument about where love comes from. And I think I won that and I still stand by what I say. It's from peacefulness and calmness. That's what you get love from. That's my experience anyway. Have you ever seen people who aren't peaceful? Can they give love and compassion? Oh, not at all. If it comes from God, sometimes they just want to convert you and that's not peace at all. That's just harshness. I don't know if I last told this story. I think I told it over in Singapore that remember those first years as, uh, in my monastery in serpentine, the first years in serpentine, 21 years ago when we had a quite a bit of building material in the monastery. But we had no security system. It was just like a wire fence all around the property, and much of that was rusted through and people could come and go. Actually, the first few months there, because I was teaching over in Nakano Prison Farm that the people in my meditation group, they wanted to come and give a hand and do something, do some, some work for us because we'd be helping them and they wanted to help us. So we had all these lupins, and we've got about 6 or 7 of the, the prisoners to come over and just do some weeding. And I was with them, and they're supposed to have at least two guards looking after them, but they were just sitting over there just meditating, I suppose. But they weren't looking after the guards. And then one of the prisoners called out to me, hey, look at this. What was it? And it was actually is about 3 or 4, uh, marijuana plants. I want this to be the first years. And what actually happened is some sort of Jojo instead of actually grown marijuana in their own yard. They thought, there's no one living in this place. So they put it in our property. And the idea was, if it's somebody else's property and no one was there, they could actually go and get it and harvest it when it was ready. And I told these prisoners, oh, you better sort of take that out and said, do we have to? They told me, Sam, please. Yeah. No. Do we really have to? They said it really hurt, but But they did it because they respected me. But to actually to keep like, sort of, you know, people away from the monastery. I was told actually to put a sign up there now trespassers will be prosecuted. And I told Agent Jacobo at the time, I said, that won't work. It doesn't matter who people go in. So we change the sign to trespassers will be converted. And that worked. Trouble was, somebody stole my sign. It is a very good sign. It's true, isn't it? If you say trespassers will be converted and no one will go in there. But anyway, that's not kind. Trying to convert somebody else. So. And if it comes from sometimes a god, sometimes it's not really kindness and compassion at all. Sometimes it's too much aggression training other people. But it comes from peace, from silence. That's where compassion comes from. You try that out. Sometimes you get so still. I remember one of the first time I got into a really deep meditation too. So still, amazingly still. If you get into this meditation business, you get so much happiness, but you get so peaceful and so still nothing is moving. That's a wonderful state to be. But when you came out afterwards, the first thing I wanted to do was to get this teacher who taught me meditation and just go and kiss his feet. Whatever. You just you had so much joy afterwards. You just wanted to go and do something for other people. Certainly my experience is the more peaceful peace you have, the more compassion you have. And to me, it's quite obvious that real compassion, real love comes from a peaceful mind. It was because someone like the Buddha was absolutely peaceful. That's why he was so compassionate. That's where it comes from. The silence within the stillness. When you get the perspective, you've given yourself the gift of peace, the gift of them. Then you can go and give that out to other people. Not only can you give compassion out, but you can know what compassion truly is. You understand converting other people. That's not being compassionate. That's just being stupid or just, you know, going and giving people material things, okay? They need food. They need a house. Yeah, they need much more than that. Sometimes just friendship. You actually know the right thing to do, even to the point when you are in any situation which you have not been prepared for and you've got to act compassionately. The only thing you can do is to shut up and be quiet and listen. There was one of the doctors. I don't know if he's here this evening. He still comes along. When he came up to me once, he was in turn at one of the I think it was at Royal Perth. His pager went. One of his patients had a cardiac arrest, rushed to the bedside, resuscitated the person, but not quick enough. He was brain damaged. If it awaited a few minutes later he would have been dead. And he thought, why couldn't I wait? Because I know my patient is in the prison of his body with have no quality of life. For probably many years he felt so guilty about what he did. And so he came to me with this question what should I do next time my pager comes off? It goes off. Should I let the person die? Should I try and resuscitate them because I don't want to do this again? So now, to confine a person to being half way between life and death, which is what this person was. I totally look to be compassionate, to be wise. Next time that happens, rush to the bedside. Spend a couple of seconds being quiet, still in silence as you possibly can. And from that place of silence, listen for anything and you know what to do. Because that's how I've been taught, and that's how I've been practicing. My compassion comes from silence and where the wisdom comes as well. I was never trained in psychology and counseling and how to deal with crazy people and many crazy people I've met in my life, sometimes very dangerously crazy. I could have been hurt many, many times. And how was my training for that? I just make my mind silent and peaceful, as quiet as I possibly can, and feel what needs to be done. My compassion comes from silence and it's saved me. It's protected me for so many years and now I'm very confident. Wherever I go, whoever I meet, you can always know what to do. Quietness. And in that peace you know the answers. And in that peace you have the energy to be compassionate. In that peace you have the passion for the moment and the passion for the moment. You can truly listen and you can care for somebody else. So when I talk about compassion and meditation, serving in the world, serving in silence, they are exactly the same. Bodhisattvas path our heart path. People who only read books think they're different people. No meditation. Understand they are one and the same. Peace is love. Stillness is compassion. Compassion is stillness. If we could only build more stillness in the world. Will have more compassion. What a wonderful world that would be. Thank you. Very good. Go on. We are so proud of you. And she clapped from stillness. Okay. Any questions about this evening's talk? You are so compassionate because you're so peaceful. Okay. Thanks very much. We just have some announcements now. If you have any questions, you can always come up and ask them personally afterwards. But now we have the announcements from our president.