Dealing With Your Emotions

Dealing With Your Emotions by Ajahn Brahm Curtin notices a few people with sore throats who got coughing. So to make it nice and peaceful for the during the talk. Can we all cough in unison at the beginning and have it done already? So communal coughing. First of all, please. Thank you. Okay, now be quiet. Although, of course, there's no way you could follow these things. So we have the coffee. Just make peace with the coughing and just let it happen. But the title of this evening's talk is going to be, um, on dealing with your emotions. Uh, it's somebody else. Me? A couple of people ask me, uh, for subjects to talk about this evening, and I wanted to focus on, uh, the big, uh, subject of your emotions and how we deal with them, especially in Buddhism, because this will cover a couple of requests for which people are given for the Friday night talk. And you may notice that quite often when I give these talks on a Friday evening, that I don't really spend too much time talking about the theory of Buddhism and the intellectuals part, which is just really the realm of thought. Uh, of course, that's part of Buddhism. And, uh, you can read about that in books. And sometimes I do go into those more intellectual, ephemeral parts of, uh, philosophy of Buddhist life. But what's more important I found in practice, uh, is this the emotional world and how to deal with life as we face it in our modern age, and especially how we deal with emotions which have a huge effect upon our physical and mental well-being, from those emotions in a range from from despair to raw anger to inspiration, to love to compassion. And all those emotions are a very important part of our life. And sometimes the theories and the intellectual abstractions, sometimes they don't address the reality of our emotional world. And I want to talk about that this evening. How we deal, you know, with those emotions, how we identify them and make sense out of them and learn to move forward with those emotions, because I do. And also the Buddha identified a distinction between emotions. There are some things which we do call the negative emotions, which are problematical. There are things such like, you know, grief, uh, being angry, being afraid, you know, wanting revenge, having the broken heart, whatever else those negative emotions are, we realize that they do impinge upon our happiness and our success in life. They do hold us back from progress. And so those are what we call negative emotions. And there's many more you can include upon in that category. There's also what we call the positive emotions. You know, things like inspiration, the things like compassion. And one of the great positive emotions which too many people forget about is a positive emotion of peace. And I put that in the realm of emotions because that's something started which empowers and motivates you. I'll be talking about that towards the end of the talk. Usually we have to start with a negative emotions first of all. And of course I have to deal with that a lot. People usually come and ring me up or come and send me emails or come and talk to me about their negative emotions. Very rarely do they come up and say I just bomb. I am so happy. I'm having a wonderful time. Everything is going well in my life. I'm just having so much joy. They say, nah, I just broken up with my boyfriend. Oh, just my husband's just run away with my best friend. I just got the sack from work. I've got cancer. Someone has died. That's what the stock market has gone down or the Eagles have lost. Whatever it is. Fever. They're always complaining about the negative part of their life. And so that's what you have to deal with. First of all. And even sometimes in my monastery, people actually ring me up for counselling and we call that dial a monk service. But sometimes it gets so busy. Sometimes I made this, uh, suggestion to actually to have one of these answering machine services, you know, you know, that you're getting these governments like, you know, press one for something. And because, you know, it has happened that sometimes people sometimes their dog has died or someone else who probably can't. You do some chanting for me over the phone. Okay. Do some Buddhist prayers they asked for. I've done that sometimes up in the middle of the night to the opposite side of the world. They know the dog is sick. So I've done the chanting over the phone for sometimes I'm too compassionate, but. So decided to actually to, um, that if you if you want to I can actually we can record these charts and have them on the record is. So if you want a prayer you can just press number one. Why not? It's very easy. And then if you want to speak to Agent Graham, you haven't got a prayer. So press number one anyway. So that way I get rid of everybody and have a nice, easy time. But you have to deal with people. That's only a joke you have to deal with. It's much nicer actually being accessible to people even though you're tired. I'd rather be accessible than actually be sort of somehow separated from the people who support you and feed you and clothe you, look after you and your friends. So even though it's a lot of work, I enjoy doing it. But when you're dealing with people's emotions, you know sometimes that you have to let people understand, number one, that those emotions are real. They have a place in life, but also where they come from, because it's great when you have an emotion in your heart to find out, well, why is that there? Where did it originate from? Because it's great when you actually track it back. You can actually see just how emotions arise, how they build up. I don't know how many of you been to movies, but you can actually see that the the trick of a movie is actually to start with the music. You know, the different music to get your emotions going and just know how even the lighting starts to change. If you want to get people afraid, you turn the lights down and the music is very, very soft. Bum. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. And it gets people. Because that's your heartbeat. When you get excited, your heartbeat goes to that level. And if the music or if the whatever else the beat gets that it actually encourages your heartbeat to sort of get very, very, very strong. And you can even use your speech to see there's something coming to make people afraid, but you can see just how emotions can be generated just in movies, especially by the music, by the way, the speech is actually said and also by the lighting. And one of the first times I saw this. How people can play on your emotions. Is actually when we started our nuns monastery down in Jiji, Ghana, because that was before Sister Wiremu was here. Now we were looking for a nice piece of land. We found this nice piece of land over in Reen Road, but it was on auction and so I went there to for the auction, you know, with. I don't know if he's here this evening. Um, Eddie Fernando was a bidder, but when the auctioneers started the auction, it was very calm and saying about this beautiful block of land, a wonderful place for a retreat, lovely forest and a river. And then he started mentioning the figures. He said, I think we should. This is worth so much. I think we should start for at least $1 million and straightaway thought, oh, no. And then he. Then he bids for 1 million. And of course, no one bid any for 500,000, 400, 300. Let's start 250. And so I can put that hand up to 50. And that's when he started. Two 5250. We got to 75 275 235 any one two said got to 35, three out of three out of three. And even I was a monkey when I started getting excited. And you can see just how they do this. Just the way they spoke. They suddenly raised their voice and they started speaking very quickly. And you do get excited. And how emotions can be generated when you see that, how those emotions can be generated, you can actually sometimes be in power over other people's emotions just by acting slowly and by speaking softly. You can calm people down. One of the first times I saw this and it was very impressive, was now the former abbot and spiritual director of Buddhist Society of Western Australia was I turned chakra and he was. I was with him when he was a monk, just learning his trade in Thailand. Could we do learn a trade? This is a training which we go through. And we were having our morning meal when a Thai lady ran into our dining hall. She ran in and she was obviously very upset because they don't usually do this interfering amongst meal. And she was saying something in Thai and I actually caught it after a while. She said, Su chin is dead. Suyin is dead. She shot herself. She's committed suicide. And I got really quite excited, too, because I knew that lady, she had cancer who'd been going to see her talking to her, counselling her. She was a close disciple. The monastery. And that morning she had shot herself. And this was her best friend who'd found her body. And she came into the monastery just straight away, completely distraught, having found her best friend who committed suicide. He could understand what she felt like. And I understood that. And I looked at Ajahn Chakra, who was the head monk at that time, to see what he would do. You know, he understood what she said and he put his head down and carried on eating. And this lady, she shot herself. She saw she killed herself. And the man just carried on eating as if nothing had happened. And after about 1 or 2 minutes, she stopped moving her arms up and down. She stopped shouting, and at that point was when Agent Crow put down his spoon, pushed aside his bowl and said, what happened? I thought it was a beautiful piece of psychological calming a person's emotions down because he was not responding with anxiety to her great distress. He was just calming her down, bruised by his actions and by his softness that she too calmed down in the space of 1 or 2 minutes. And his most brilliant piece of counselling I'd seen for years. It was giving her a sense of perspective about what had happened. So by having someone who is calm, who's not being agitated, she could calm down too and see the bigger picture, which is what happens sometimes that when we just see, this is my boyfriend who's left me, this is my child who's died. This is my job, which is someone else's taken. These are my shares, which have just all disappeared. This is my team. The Dockers have lost. I'm being fair cause I mentioned the Eagles first and I mentioned the Dockers. Sometimes when we lose perspective, we can actually get emotionally distraught. And it was a very beautiful way that he dealt with that by calming her down to see a bigger picture. Not not, uh, negating her feelings, but acknowledging them, but calming them down because you see just how these emotions can get built up, what actually builds them up, and how they created. I just was at a funeral service this afternoon, and I enjoy, um, taking funerals because had a funeral service. You know, you do have a group of people who are emotionally raw. They've just lost a close member of their family or their friend. And it's I've seen many, many times just how grief can be created or how that feeling of grief can be calmed down to get a different emotion coming up. I could actually see that. I remember even when my own father died, that obviously I knew my mother so well. But when my father died, she knew he was going to die. He and I came very close many times when he actually did die. She was at ease and peace with it. But it was only when her cousin came in to the house and opened up her arms to my mother, said, oh, you poor thing. And of course, that meant the floodgates for my mother's tears started coming, and I knew that if that cousin hadn't said that stupid thing, my mother would be much more at peace with the death of her husband and my father. It was as if that there was a social trigger there, that you've lost your husband, that you must cry. And that was pressed by this cousin when before that happened. She did not need to go on that path of grief. And I have seen so often that our social conditioning creates these emotions. And one of the things which I love doing, if you're teaching at a funeral, is actually to give people other triggers, triggers not to actually to generate these emotions in the same old ways, but look at them in a different way to give different triggers to different emotions. Let's look another sort of emotion. Emotion of anger. Where does that anger come from? And I know the old story that someone calls you a pig. I don't know if anyone's called you a pig today, but now I'm going to call you a pig. And what happens when somebody calls you a pig? You think they have no right to call me a pig? Who does he think he is to call me a pig? I am not a pig. He shouldn't call me a pig. And every time you remember that, I called you a pig. You allow me to call you a pig one more time. Every time you remember that, I'm calling you a pig again. Why do we do such things? Why can't we just say, hey, call me a pig and then forget about it? Instead of allowing us to trigger that emotion of anger or ill will, whatever else it is the anger which comes up in you. You actually. You allow it to happen. There's no reason for it at all. You don't have to follow that path. If you trace anger back, where did you get angry from? You can actually see it as a series of irritations which you dwell upon. You think about and you create the fire. Anger is like a blaze, like a forest fire. But all forest fires. They start just with a small spark. And even that small spark that starts at just a small little fire in the twigs or in the in the leaves. If you catch it quickly, it's just so easy to put out. But a lot of times we don't notice it that easily until it gets so big. So big is the forest fire and living in the bush and having experienced major bushfires, I notice how difficult they are to put out once they are fully alight. It's much better to catch them earlier if you can catch these negative emotions earlier. Now through your mindfulness, for your awareness, for your mental training, it's not that hard to actually to transcend the emotions such as anger or fear or grief. If we really want to, we can train ourselves. But it's not like a training of willpower. It's always a training of wisdom, power to see where these things come from. To see the their cores, how they're built up and catch them earlier. Even some of the people who have panic attacks, who get very afraid in certain situations. Sometimes you think the panic or the fear just comes up almost immediately, but it doesn't know a sign, sir. And trouble is that sometimes we're so busy that we're not really aware of what's going on, either in our body or in our mind, because we're taking up with the needs of the moment. We don't actually notice just how these emotions are getting built up in us, and how they are being reinforced by unskillful thought patterns and even like depression. With another negative emotion, we create that and again through some unskillful thinking, not being mindful, not actually understanding where these things come from, we build up the negativity. Minute by minute, day by day, until it gets so strong that only then we notice it like the huge fire. So what are the ways of understanding these emotions, especially the negative emotions, is actually to trace back where they come from. If you're angry, if you're afraid, ask why. Over in Thailand. The tires are just so, so afraid of ghosts. And it was amazing that sometimes, like, the one thing that I'm most afraid of was actually being with a newly dead body and being a Westerner. I wasn't afraid of that at all. And I remember once, when I think it was that John Charles brother had died and was being cremated. I just told one of the monks, I was just going to go and do some meditation by the corpse. He said, what is this, a meditation, brother? He said, have a cup of coffee. And I thought, that's really nice. And I couldn't understand why they've given me all this coffee. And the reason was they were just so impressed that and anybody could actually sit meditation next to a newly dead corpse, because they were just so afraid of that. So once I found that out, I always went to say, I'm going to sit by a corpse. I got all this nice coffee, a bit of a scab, because I wasn't afraid. Maybe it was because in a university I was part of the Psychic Research Society. And one of the things we found out that I never, ever, once in 100 years of ghost hunting in UK has a ghost ever harmed anybody. So armed with that information, I had my research. So why be afraid? They can't harm me at all. So that way that I wasn't conditioned through fear. But the Thai people. And there's a few Thai people here. They have grown up with ghost movies ever since they were small. They saw these ghosts, and they're usually like heads with just entrails following behind. And they would do terrible things to people. And because of that, just even a mention of a ghost, as I remember this story of this poor little novice staying at our monastery in Thailand because it was a cremation monastery. That day was the the moon day when we saw meditate All night, that poor little novice. We did a funeral that day was supposed to meditate all night in the hall. Now, usually little novices are only about 1112 years of age. There's no way they would stay up all night. There was sneak off in the middle of the night back to their house. We knew they did this as breaking the rules, but they were these small little monks, so we didn't mind. And we got to be kind. Not this day. This night. That little novice. He would not leave the hall. There is just so afraid of the ghost. See, even they say those dogs must have been be born in Thailand last lifetime. The greatest special effects nowadays. There they go again. Are you going to shut up, dogs! Now this. Where are we going now? That is ghosts. Oh, well, this is a novice. The poor novice stuck in that hole. Now. 10:00, 11:00, 12:00. And too scared to go out. When he got to. About 2:00 in the morning. He just. He couldn't hold his his urine any longer. He had to go to the toilet. And the trouble is, the toilet was about 20m outside the hall in the darkness. So this point, you can imagine what he felt like. I know he had said the pain in his bladder. Okay. There's a fear of that ghost getting him. And so he made a run for it. Desperation. He ran and he got to the toilet and locked the door. He'd only been in that toilet for about a few minutes, and he heard the steps. And he came right to the toilet cubicle he was in and started scratching. For this. I tried to get some special effects for this, for the tape and scratched at the door. And this poor novice didn't come out of that toilet cubicle for about three hours. And when he came out, he was telling us the ghost came to get him the ghost. And he heard it, and he heard it scratching. Another monk saw that ghost. Know what it was? It was a civic cat, like a possum. Now, because those of you who've been to Asia know they have squat toilets. So the toilets are actually on the floor. And that little possum civet cat every evening would go into that toilet cubicle to get some water to drink. Now, from the toilet bowl, there was this drinking place. And so that evening, all that happened was this little possum walked to the toilet and was just scratching the door. Please don't be. And I'm thirsty. For that little, little laugh. It's. He was a ghost and they were coming to get me. They could actually see just how, because of wrong thinking and because there was a funeral that they'd been thinking all day, thinking all evening. And what was just a little jungle cat just coming for a drink. He thought it was a ghost. And he was in that toilet for about 3 or 4 hours. Poor little novice. Now, what about you? What do you get afraid of him? Are you any more intelligent? Emotionally intelligent than a small little novice? Why is it that sort of these emotions, they catch us? And why is it because we don't see them coming? We. We encourage them too much every time we think negatively. Oh, the ghost is going to come to us, or do we think negatively? I'm going to lose my job or we think negatively, I'm going to get that cancer. I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it now. No, but I am. When you think negative about that, you're building up the emotions. The emotions you get are built up by many, many moments of unskillful attitudes and thoughts. But now we have them. So once you know where they come from. You know they actually they are created. At least if you know that you create them, you actually bring them together. Even like grief. Why do you have to have grief when somebody dies? Why can't we just celebrate the fact we've known these people for such a long time? How? What a wonderful time we had together. And now we just let them go. You never cry for the person who's died. You always cry for yourself. No. Your loss. Nothing to do with them. So when we understand that we can do something about these things, it gives us a possibility for actually to transcend those negative emotions. Because when you think about it, reflect upon it with what good does grief do? It doesn't help the person who's dead. It doesn't help yourself. It's not what the dead person really wants from you. They don't want you to be unhappy and to cry all those hours and days. If someone really loved you and you loved them. And I want you to be happy to live your life in as much fullness and joy as you possibly can. If you really Revere their memory, surely that's what you should do, not to grieve for them, to be happy for them, for you to be happy for them. So when we can change our attitude that way, then we can actually do something about our grief or like our anger. What good does anger do? Every time you get angry at your partner. They don't do what you want them to do. They don't get better. They usually get worse. So I get angry and shout at them, for it just doesn't solve the problem and doesn't actually fulfill its promises. And I just. Was it, uh, in January, this when I was going off to Indonesia to give a series of talks, I got to Perth Airport and find the Garuda flight was cancelled. Was actually delayed by about 18 hours. And I, I was a monk. So I just went out to the counter, said, how is it delayed as when is he going to leave? I hate it now. Okay. Thank you very much. And I sort of, uh, called a monastery and got a lift back to the monastery. But the people behind me, they were thumping the counter. You can't do this to us. I've got all of these arrangements and plans. I had arrangements and plans as well. The thousands of people waiting to listen to my talks. I couldn't do anything about it. You know that. All that anger and all that thumping and all that shouting, it did make the plane leave earlier. It didn't do anything good at all. It's just sad making people upset themselves, upset and other people's upset. So really, just what is the use of anger? You can intimidate somebody for a short time, but they'll always want revenge and they won't respect you. And if you're a boss, they'll only do what you want. But don't do what you want. Only for the time being. Only cos you're there. They won't sort of do what you asked them out of respect. Just out of fear. And that's no way to have any sort of relationship or any sort of business. Really? Anger doesn't make any sense to me. So anger and fear and grief and depression. These are negative emotions. So when these first of all, when this happened, what should we do about them? There is something in Buddhism called the second noble truth. Second fact of the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is a way to happiness, to enlightenment. And the second factor is one of my favorite factors of that path is called right intention or right attitude. I love that because it is an attitude which we have to everything we we deal with in life, whether it's a physical world or the emotional world. The path to enlightenment hinges on our attitude to things. So if you have depression or anger or grief, what should one's reaction to be? Attitude. And the three parts of right attitude in Buddhism. Second factor the Eightfold Path is letting go kindness and gentleness as three factors. Letting go one is the hardest one for people to understand. They don't know what they're supposed to let go of. It's not letting go of the grief. It's letting go of the person who doesn't want the grief. It's letting go of the controlling. Because sometimes when people have grief, disappointment, broken heart, anger, fear. What we try and do, we think letting go means destroying those emotions, us disrespect to those emotions. Instead, we let go of that person inside us, trying to do something about this a controller who what it says. I don't want these emotions. I have to get rid of them. That's the thing. We have to let go of the control freak. So if you have those emotions inside of you and you try and suppress them, get rid of them, destroy them. Of course, what happens? They get worse. If you're fed up and you say, I shouldn't be fed up. That's what we call being fed up about being fed up. We have some we call suffering the word for suffering. And Buddhism is dukkha. We call such things double dukkha. It's like I'm angry. I shouldn't be angry. I'm a monk. You're getting angry at being angry. You're depressed. I fed up with Dean. I don't want to be depressed anymore. You're being depressed about being depressed. Are you afraid of fear? Those are called double dukkha. Double suffering. And of course, from double suffering, we go to the next stage of troubles free. I'm angry about being angry about being angry. I'm so sad about being sad about being grieving. Now, this is actually what people do. They actually build it up by their reactions of trying to get rid of things, controlling things. The first part of the Buddhist reaction, the wise reaction, is just accept this is your reality. Let it go. Let it be if you like. So stop messing around with these emotions in this moment. Stop adding negativity. The emotions you're experiencing right now. If someone is grieving for the loss of a child, they are disappointed because the relationship which they cherished is no longer viable, or if they're afraid. Be honest to that fear. It's just part of life. It's just your reality in this moment. Don't take it personally as as an affront to your arrogant idea of who you think you are. When you accept it, you start to undermine it. It's a wonderful thing to know that when you're at peace with fear, fear disappears. Bringing your anger, your anger. The anger just loses its power source. It was dissipates when you're just at peace or accept the grief. The grief doesn't last very long. It's when we try and control these things and get rid of them. We actually feeding them. So we let go of this controller. We are kind to our emotions, even our negative emotions. So when you have, you know, a negative emotions, you're disappointed. You're fed up. Look at those emotions like beings in this world. Be compassionate to the beings which exist in your mental landscape. And we should never be cruel. Who should be gentle to ourselves and allow these things to be. Because too often we do violence to our emotional world. And because we do violence to our emotional world, is against the gentleness of this second factor of the Eightfold Path. Because we do violence to that world. I shouldn't be afraid. I shouldn't be grieving. I shouldn't be angry. You can see that that makes more negative emotions for your future. Basically, we call this the law of karma. The emotions you have now are being generated by what you've done in the past. But they're there. You can't undo the past. You're stuck with this. The results of your past. Come. I don't mean past life. I mean, what you've been doing today has created this moment you're feeling now. But now, what are we going to do about this? It's a karma we do in the moment, which is most important. And if we face this moment, we may be a moment of grief. It may be a moment of fear. It may be a moment of sadness, a moment of anger. We can face this moment. And so this is a result of past karma. What am I doing about this now? I'm going to make good karma with this feeling. I'm going to let go of trying to control it. I'm going to be kind to it. I'm going to be gentle with it. I'm going to respect it, allowing it like every other being in this universe to be. They have a reason to be here. I'm going to allow them to be and accept them and be at peace with her. When you can make peace and be kind to the emotion, to experiencing in the moment. So wonderful thing happens. The emotional pain loses its sting and the tightness of that emotional knot starts to unravel. Whether it's a broken heart or whether it's grief for the loss of a child when you really let it be. We call it healing. We call it sort of fixing up the problem. We call it moving on. We call it just growth out of that sort of dark part of the heart. Things change. But when you fight those emotions, when you think they shouldn't be there, when you're not kind to them, when you try and get involved with it, you always mess up. So this is actually using this law of karma. These things are because of the past. What am I doing about it now? And that way you can actually take these negative emotions and they start to disappear. You know they don't last all that long. Here is a story, a wonderful story in my book and the reason I mentioned it just after the at the funeral, the reason I mentioned it because I got a letter from United States last week and somebody has listened to the talks on the internet. They read my book, Opened the Door of Your Heart, and there's a story in there about the Emperor's Ring. This, too, will pass that story. If you haven't heard it before, it's a powerful story about an emperor, a young man who took over the kingdom when he wasn't really a mature enough to know how to lead. And so whenever things were going well in his kingdom, he'd always have celebrations and parties. And because he was spending too much resources and too much time celebrating and not actually, you know, doing the running of the kingdom, the good times never lasted all that long. And when the terrible times of bad times, bad economy, unrest, social disorder, whenever there was trouble in his kingdom, he gets so upset and depressed his he'd stay in his room and sulk and cry, which meant he wasn't working. During the difficult times and the ministers, they realized that their leader, their king, the emperor, wasn't really working properly. And that's the reason why there's too many bad times, not enough prosperous times. You can't just tell these people what to do. Now, even these ministers in the Howard government, they can't tell John Howard what to do. They've got to be sneaky. They've got to be wise. And so what his ministers did. Instead of telling their emperor what to do, they just went to a goldsmith, asked for him to make a ring. The only difference between that and that ring and ordinary rings was what was engraved on the outside, which was the words. This too will pass. And they gave that ring with the engraved words just to pass to the Emperor, told him to wear it on all occasions. That's all. And the Emperor did. Whenever he it was bad times, he would look up on the ring. This too will pass. He knew by nature he didn't have to force those negative emotions and those bad times out of his kingdom. He knew there would pass naturally, and because he knew the bad times will pass. He gave him what's called hope. And where there's hope, we can work where it's hopeless. We think that grief is going to last forever. The broken heart was always going to be there. You'll never find another partner ever in life, or you'll never find that money again on the stock market or whatever is your chance to win the the Cup is gone forever. When you think it's forever, that just makes life hopeless and you don't work. You don't make karma anymore. But when actually you have hope, there's always something you can do. It gives you that motivation to work, even the difficult times of your life. And actually, the reason that I saying this was because the photograph, which someone said to me was actually from the graduation ceremony at Virginia Tech University recently, and I think you all know what happened at Virginia Tech in April. So I was in London at that time. I think it was 39. Young men and women were shot down by that murderer. Now while they're on campus. Another graduation ceremony. One of the graduates, you know, their funny hats. They were. They called mortar boards with a flat top on the top of his mortarboard. He'd actually painted the words, this, too, will pass in memoriam of the pain of what had happened in that university. And the biggest serial killer murderer in the United States history. It's a wonderful little. That's why he said, I don't know if this guy's read your book or what, but no, he's obviously got the message. And it is a powerful message because it gives you hope. It allows you to let these things pass away. So this too will pass. But the other part of that story, which is very valuable to consider, is that that emperor wore that ring not just in difficult times, but also in the happy times as well, because it's in the prosperous, happy good times. And we should always remember this too will pass. Because he knew that the happy, prosperous times were also fragile. He had a few set of patients, but not many, because he knew he had to work hard to make sure those prosperous, happy, good times lasted as long as they possibly can. And they did. He became a very successful and well-loved emperor because the bad times were very short, and the happy long times were longer than anybody could ever remember. Now, of course, you know who that emperor really is is you and your empire is your life, your body, your family, your environment. When we have these negative emotions, well, we're actually saying with sulking, we're forgetting this too will pass. But also when you have the positive emotions, when you have happiness and joy and inspiration, please never take them for granted. They also need to be guarded and cherished and nurtured. Otherwise, they go too quickly. So when we have our positive emotions, when things are going well. Be careful. Don't get heedless and think, oh, my life is going well now. I am healthy, therefore I don't need to exercise anymore. I have a wonderful relationship now, so I don't need to put effort into caring for my partner. I have a wonderful Buddhist society now, so I don't need to put donations in the donation box anymore. Now you got to keep caring. Otherwise the whole thing sort of falls apart. I'm happy, therefore I don't need to put effort into my happiness anymore. Be careful there. Because all these positive emotions, they're fragile. You know where they are. Cause from, if you have the happy emotions. Well done. If you feel well, you're happy. You have these beautiful inspirations of kindness and generosity. Now, how does that feel? The positive emotions are great. They need to be cultivated. Where do they come from? Just like the negative emotions. When you're happy. Where does it come from? You can actually see the positive thoughts get more and more and more like in the movies when you have a romance in a romance movies. Years since I've seen these movies, but I'm sure they haven't changed. They don't fall in love at the very beginning and get married. That happens at the very end of the movie. It all builds up to this. So the whole movie is building up to the suggestion of these two people going to meet and be happy, and everyone's problems are going to be solved. And that thought has been in your mind again and again and again for about an hour, an hour and a half. So when they do meet, oh, at last, they make you get emotional. You start crying. Oh, isn't it wonderful? Because that emotion has been built over the whole course of the movie. Now, once you understand where these positive emotions come from, you can actually start building them up inside of you. One of the things which I teach my monks and teach nuns teach yourself as well. The negative emotions, they come basically for what we call the fault finding mind. We always see what's wrong in other people. You see what's wrong in yourself, what's wrong in the monks? What's wrong in the Buddhist society? What's wrong in the government? What's wrong in the whole world? And that means a lot of negative emotions. Why would we look at the other side? Not the fault finding mind. What we call the gratitude mind where we see the the beautiful. In our Buddhist society, you see the beauty. You know, in your partner, you see the beauty in yourself. You see the beauty in our wonderful Prime Minister, Mr. Howard. Are you laughing for you cynics? Now you can see the beauty in these things. And, gee, I mean, yeah, I, I wouldn't like to be a prime Minister, would you? It's a very difficult job. So when you start to see the positive part in these people, we actually you generate generating the positive emotions. Such as respect. How many people actually have respect for their parents, for their partners? For their people in authority? Why do we disrespect our our systems? Because we've been cultivating those for finding negative thoughts in our media, in our newspapers, even our conversations. No wonder we have a lack of disrespect. Now, if you ask any people other countries, the local Australia, this is a beautiful land. It's pretty well gathered. It's not that it could be better, but could certainly be a lot worse. So why don't we have respect for our institutions? Why are we so negative? You know, if we have so negative with our institutions, we get very negative towards our partners. Why is it that in our modern life, people have such a hard time finding a life partner and keeping them sticking with them because they always find fault with each other? And why have people always have lack of self-esteem and get into depression? Because they start finding fault with themselves as well. I'm not good enough. They're not good enough. Life's not good enough. Be careful, because that path leads to big depression. We're actually building up those negative emotions, and instead we can build up the positive emotions. We deliberately look for something in our path that we can respect and love and careful. We deliberately look in something in ourselves which we can love and care. Respect. We deliver. We look for something in life which we care about. We love and got passion for. And that way, by focusing on that, we're building up the generating the positive emotions of life. And when you start to learn how you can generate those positive emotions, the path becomes clear. Just how you can have a sort of control of this emotional world of yours. You're not just like a rudderless ship. Always go through these storms and this calms and the ocean of the emotions. But you can actually have some guidance there. You can generate beautiful emotions. That's basically just, you know what our whole path of Buddhism is. Letting go of the negative emotions and generating the very positive ones. Compassion is a positive emotion. It's not just something you talk about and just throw that word out. Compassion. Yeah, we all know we should be compassionate. And I'm sure that in the Dalai Lama's talk, everyone say, yeah, we should all be compassionate. But then afterwards, you know, when somebody sort of, uh, cut in front of them in the in the traffic jam, you stupid. You shouldn't do this. We have to actually have compassion and be compassion to generate this positive emotion. This is actually how we do this now, through our mindfulness and our care and our understanding of life, we realize whatever we're faced with in life, that's the result of old karma. What's the harm we're doing now by generating this beautiful, allowing this moment to be respecting this moment, but being kind to it, being gentle. We are actually developing this positive, wonderful emotions of respect, of gratitude, allowing things to be compassion. He gave an inspiration. What a beautiful emotion inspiration is when somebody says something or does something, and it just raises your heart and gives you happiness for hours, sometimes days, sometimes years. These are the emotions we should be developing. Imagine if we were a nation which a world which ran more on inspiration rather than its opposite. Desperation and inspiration. It uplifts us and gives us energy because the positive emotions empower you to do something really worthwhile in this world. The negative emotions anger, fear, depression, grief. What does that do that immobilizes you? Anger sometimes gives you some energy, but it usually just wears you out after a while. You can't do anything in this world. You can't do things. The positive emotions give you power. And open the path to achievement, achieving something really worthwhile in this world. Things like love and compassion are not something which is your birthright. You develop these. You train for these things. Just like an Olympic athlete. You train and train and train by guarding your mind, changing the outlook, making good karma, mental karma with whatever you have to deal with in life. Be. Allow it to be. Be kind. Be gentle and you get this beautiful kindness and gentleness. This wisdom, this compassion grows and grows in you. This is not just in your life. Even in that book which I wrote, marvelous bliss and beyond, I made an important point, even in meditation. Successful meditators are those who have an understanding of their emotional world. There's even a path of meditation. There's an emotional path. Very early on. You have to suspend your intellectual thinking and feel your way through. Part of peace. To allow that peace to develop into the amazing emotions which sometimes you get into meditation. There's so much joy and happiness. And why does that come from? Because you're grateful just to be in this moment. No false lightning. So gentle to every breath, to every mind moment. So accepting that builds up the most powerful emotion which I know the inspiration of peace in deep meditation. And that has moved me to tears. I've cried many times as a monk, but not out of grief, or out of anger or out of frustration. Just cried out of just pure inspiration. Beauty. Joy delights either in seeing the amazing, inspiring feats of others, or to seeing the beauty and peace in your own heart. This is actually what happens and why. I've often said that it's the females in general do better in deep meditation, simply because they have more familiarity in general. I'm saying because there are many exceptions and you're probably one of them. But I noticed that because you do need that emotional sensitivity to be able to allow these positive emotions to grow and be able to develop them in the first place. Deep meditation is a powerful emotional state and a blanking out. It's not an intellectual state. It's what you feel deeply. The whole point of mindfulness is being deeper where you already are feeling it, being it not with thoughts. With this mindfulness, which can accept the power of a still mind, and those forces get very, very strong. I say the highest emotion which I've ever felt is the emotions in deep meditation. So still, but incredibly powerful. They moved you to become monk. They move you to stay as a man. They move you to teach. They empower you. So these are the very highest emotions. So in Buddhism, we're not saying you should be this. This, like emotionless zombie. Like a robot. Because that's what sometimes people think. They think when you meditate, you know, you can't get any, any rise out of you. You're not supposed to tell jokes or laugh at jokes. You're supposed to be just like this automaton who doesn't feel because you're supposed to have no craving, no emotions, no attachment, no never unhappy. You're never happy. You're sometimes in this middle, just like we thought. If that was the case, I would never be a monk. We start the path with the corners of our mouth turn downwards in the middle part of the path. The corners of our mouth are horizontal. As the path develops, those corners are higher and higher and higher and higher. It is great seeing some of these, these enlightened masters in places like Thailand. And they were the happiest people. They would really laugh. That told me something. The goal of this is not being emotionally dead. The goal of this path is having those negative emotions transcended and replaced by this beautiful, inspiring, peaceful, kind, compassionate, empathetic emotions caused by letting go of control, caused by kindness, caused by the great gentleness with respect to every moment. That way, whatever's happening to you in your life, the negative emotions make peace with them. They're going to pass. They're all part of things. You may not know it at the time, but I call them growing pains. Your heart is growing. When it's crying, when it's hurt. That's part of things. So allow it to be. Be with it and you'll find out why it was there for you. What it's teaching was when somebody dies, it tells you the value of life. When you break up with someone you love. It tells you how valuable relationships are. When you get disappointed, it tells you just how your expectations were. Far, far too unreal. When somebody dies, it shows that your time here is not that long, so I must make better use of it. All of these so-called negative experiences are all teachers, so we should never reject them. Allow them to come into our heart. Make good karma with the bad karma you experiencing now. And that way we grow and those positive emotions become stronger and stronger inside of us. We become beacons to the world. People who don't get afraid, don't get angry. You don't have grief, but have lots of kindness. Lots of joy. Huge amounts of peace. Positive emotions grow at the expense of the negative ones. They grow and grow and grow. This is actually the path. What a wonderful thing it is to cherish and nurture this beautiful, positive emotions of life. Understand where they come from. Nurture them. Grow them. Negative ones become less and less a part of your repertoire. You don't get angry. You get very kind. You don't get depressed and just get wonderfully inspired. You don't get so thought finding. You can be grateful in the smallest of things, even in the how shouldn't say that I was going to say the small John Howard, the smallest of things. I shouldn't give him a hard time. He's not a bad guy, and that way that we can have a happier life and we can understand the, the, uh, the role of emotions in life, how to deal with them, how to embrace them, how to generate the positive ones, and how a happy time. So may you all have a happy time by developing the positive emotions, understand the negative ones and understanding how this all works. So that's the talk for this evening. Thank you very much for listening. Okay. As usual. Are there any questions or comments about the talk this evening on emotions? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're talking about that one. That's the old story because 3C3I don't know what the thumb is doing, but one is pointing that way. But yeah. Yes that's right. So if you criticize somebody else this is actually this was actually a saying of the Emperor Asoka, who was a Buddhist. Was it 200 years before, uh, the birth of about 2200 years ago or something? And he wrote in stone, we know what he actually said, because those stone monuments are still there using the museums. Now. Some are in the original place. He said this wonderful thing that anybody who criticizes another person's religion thereby criticizes his own face. That's a wonderful thing to say. 2200 years ago. What a beautiful way of tolerance. If you criticize somebody else's religion, then you're showing your own faith. It's not really up to scratch. It's not just religion. You criticize somebody else. Then you're showing your own understanding of life is lacking. How can you criticize others? How much do you know about them? Why they did that? How many times have you been criticized unfairly? So why do you go criticizing others? Give them the benefit of the doubt. And you have a happy life and this much doubt to give people the benefit of. Okay. Thank you for that, Eddie. So we've got a question here and then over there. Yes. Yeah. Oh! Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. 000. Oh. Yes. I. Think. You love me? Yep. I agree with you. With respect? Yes. Yeah. Uh, I think. Okay. Uh, it's a long question, then. Usually I try and repeat this for the, uh, the tape, but that was too a question to repeat it for, and it wouldn't actually catch it. But the first thing, I'm just going to do this in brief, the main question was about is grief intrinsic to love? And I certainly thought that way when I was very young. But I know that I never had grief when my father died, but I loved him very dearly. I couldn't understand why that was, and only later on when I went to Buddhist countries and spent nine years in the northeast of Thailand, which, unlike Sri Lanka, had not been, I would say, influenced by Western civilization. The West had never got to Thailand, or rather, they never had colonized it. And so it was what I could actually possibly call a pure Buddhist culture there. In the nine years I was there, I never saw grief. And this was living in a village very close to those people, were part of the family. And many times I saw people die. The funerals were held in our monastery. I never saw tears. It wasn't part of their repertoire. What that proved to me was that grief is not intrinsic in the human condition. It was a culture which didn't have it. And it wasn't just the funerals. You'd see them afterwards, the next day. Weeks, months. These were part of your family, the extended family of a monastery embedded in a couple of villages in the northeast of Thailand. And those people loved each other. But there's another type of love, which is the love which will let go. Which will let a person go into death. So grief is and we're not saying that grief is wrong or bad. We're saying that it is a negative emotion because it does. And I've seen it many times. There actually are stop a person's growth for weeks, for years. As for your disabled. For the time that you are grieving. And so that usually comes a time when you transcend that. You go through it and past it. And the quicker that happens, the better I would say. And certainly if you look in the Buddhist texts, the grief was never encouraged by the Buddha would always actually say that the wise person is beyond that grief could understand the nature of life and death. And in that understanding could let that nature be. I never fight the battles which you can't win. There is the famous Buddhist story in the Dhammapada. I just go on with this. It's the man who cried for the moon. A man who lost his only son and would go to the cremation ground every evening to cry and cry and cry. And his family let him cry for a while. But when he was crying over much, they wanted to find some way of overcoming his grief, which was going on far too long, ruining his health and his business as I've seen happen. They hired an actor and the actor went to the cremation ground also. And the actor was crying more than the father lost his son. And when they met together, these two men crying their eyes out and he had to cry more. The actor asked, what are you crying for? He said, oh, I've lost my son. He's dead. What are you crying for? Said the father to the actor said, I'm crying for the moon. We may cry for the moon as my birthday last week and my father asked me, what do you want? And I said, I want the moon, please. My father wouldn't get it for me. And I'm so upset. I'm crying for the moon. And the father said, you're stupid. You're crazy. And why are you crying? But you know I can give you the moon. You call me crazy, said the actor. You're crying for your dead son. At least you can see the moon. Where's your dead son? And at that. This is a story. An old story in the Buddhist text. At that. So the man realized what he was doing is crying for some. He can never get grieving for something which he can't change. That was enough for him to stop his grief. Go back to work and move on with his life story. The Man Who Cried for the Moon and Dhammapada. But as for John, how do we respect him when we crack jokes about him? People crack jokes about everybody in Australia. It's our nature. And he crack jokes about me. Maybe not in public, but I'm sure you do when you go home. Okay, so thank you. That's really. Do you mind if we don't ask you a question? Do it because we've gone over time, so maybe. Can we? Sorry. No announcements. Okay, so the announcements is there's no announcements tonight. So if you got any other questions or if you'd like to come and discuss that matter with me afterwards. So please come up after the talk is finished. Ah ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, I forgot one. Gonna be watching. The cards on the go at the bottom of the monomer, dummy. Third party. Can I go out to the cars and go on? Kinda. Mom.