Deeper than reason - Beyond belief

Deeper Than Reason, Beyond Belief by Ajahn Brahm As is my custom, and I am not to plan the talks which give on Friday nights. But today I wanted to, uh, not follow, uh, some of the procedures I've done in the past when, uh, people send emails or, uh, phone requests or come and ask me, can you give a talk on a certain subject? I do that very often, but today I decided just to leave it alone because I've got a few requests. But I'm not going to follow those this evening. But at the beginning of the meditation, I thought, what should I talk about this evening? The thought which came up was to talk about faith and reason and the path of truth which lies somehow beyond those two. And the cause of this is, uh, for those of you who read the religious news, there is some sometimes, if you look carefully in newspapers and magazines. Uh, the Catholic pope said recently that his was a religion, a religion of reason, a part of reason, and attacked the Muslim, uh, what he thought was the unreasonableness of some of the Islamic ideas. And it got me sort of contemplating the difference between faith and reason. Because all religions think that they are reasonable, not just religions, but you think you're reasonable. And how much are you running on faith and belief, and how much are you running on reason? And if there's reason or that pure anyway. And the other stimulus of this talk this evening was that a few weeks ago, I received a request to give a rather interesting talk at UWA next year with Professor David Blair, uh, the Abbot Placid, who's the leader of the Benedictine community in Tunisia and myself. So it'd be very interesting to see science, Buddhism and Christianity. Is there any connection between them? Is there any differences? So you're sharing the stage with a physicist, a Buddhist and a Catholic. And it's an interesting thought, because one of the things you're obviously going to be confronting in a talk like that is the the boundaries between religion and science and two types of religion. What is the difference between reason and faith? Is there a difference? And perhaps that I am qualified to speak on this, not just because that I am a Buddhist monk, but also that I was a theoretical physicist before, always following what I thought was the path of reason. And it was only after some time that I started to doubt whether science really was a part of reason, and how much faith it had in certain tenets. And this is important in our lives, because it's not just going to be a theoretical talk this evening, some academic academic philosophy, because actually, I saw this rather amazing quote in a book from none other than Karl Marx. It was Karl Marx who said, philosophy is to real life, like masturbation is to sex. Our Marx said that philosophy is to real life as masturbation is to sex. And you can see that sometimes philosophy could say it's reasonable and rational, and sometimes that people take that philosophy as their faith and they create all sorts of mischief in this world. So even reason can cause problems and troubles, both in your personal life and in the world at large. We all know how much religion can cause troublesome problems, both in your personal life and in the world. So what can we do to find some meaning? To find some truth? And how can we use that meaning and truth to create some sense of peace and happiness and harmony in this fractured world? So that's basically the summary of the talk and is hopefully a summary, which I will follow, but I usually don't because that's life. But anyhow, we'll start off with the idea of reason and faith often. That we can attack faith quite unreasonable, unreasonably, and sometimes we can accept reason without questioning it enough. I know this from experience that when we look at so the reason which people give in the world for their actions, you always think that what you do is reasonable. But sometimes we have to look very carefully and investigate and question even the very fundamentals of our so-called reasonable hypothesis in life. And I know this very truly, because part of the experience of studying theoretical physics at a university like Cambridge was, fortunately, you were encouraged to question, and you questioned enough to actually doubt the very fundamentals of such science. And one of my favorite quotes from that period was, I forget who actually said this, but it was a very powerful quote that the the prestige or the fame of a scientist. Is measured by the length of time they obstruct progress in their field. The more famous they are, the more they stop, more progress, simply because, like many paths, there is a huge belief system which underpins it, and a belief system is the received knowledge. What you learn in universities is the truth. All those theories and understandings which people take to be true. And it's very hard for our new frontiers to open up in science. It's not that easy because very often even science is very faith based. And many of you who read the stories of those Nobel laureates at UW, or the Nobel laureates who discovered that the stomach ulcers were caused from a bacterium, that he, uh, he faced many, many years of disbelief from his colleagues who said, no, it cannot be back to him. Everybody knows it's from stress. But he proved it was a stomach bacterium and the. When you read a story about, you know, his discovery, his discovery was the easy part. The hard part was convincing others. So what he found out was actually true because that science, just as anything else, resists things which go against the received truth. They too have a some fundamentals which they just believe in. Absolutely. And they hardly ever question. So when we talk about reason, we talk about faith sometimes is hardly any difference between them. Faith people. Faith based people think they're reasonable. And reason. People always rely on some faith somewhere along the line. And you know this in your own personal experience. When you ask your partner, come on, be reasonable. And they say, I am being reasonable, you're the one who's being unreasonable. So sometimes reason isn't that clear and it can conflict. Even philosophers argue. So because of that, we have to try and find some way of finding some path between reason and faith in this world. And Buddhists aren't exempt from the problems of faith. Even modern Buddhism sometimes thinks itself the most reasonable of religions. Could we question everything? But sometimes, even then, the questions don't go far enough. Because so-called modern Buddhism, sometimes it does have huge amounts of belief structures. You only have to go to traditional Buddhist countries to see these great statues, which people worship by worshipping. They're not using them as a reflection as we've taught here. When you bow to a Buddha statue, you should not just bow thinking that by bowing enough times that you will win the lottery or that girl which you like will fall in love with you. You don't do this for asking for things. The symbol of Valerie is a symbol of respecting something, some qualities which you think are embodied in that statue. So when I bow to a Buddha, I always bow to three things. First of all, to virtue, to peace, and then either wisdom or compassion, because those two, I think, are connected together. And I'll explain why they're connected together later. So that way you're using a, uh, a ritual for meaning by saying that you vow to virtue, whatever you bow to, whatever you lift up high, and you are, uh, ritually by putting your head on the floor, you're bowing up to your raising. What you're bound to is higher than you. In other words, more important. Most important, if you bow to virtue, what you're doing is acknowledging the importance of virtue in your life and in the world. You're saying like, virtue is important to me, therefore I bow to it. You're saying peace. It's just so wonderful that I will bow to that as well. And wisdom and compassion. I said the most valuable things in the world. I bow to that, too. And when you bow with meaning and you remember what you're bowing to, you'll find that whatever you worship, you'll find will grow in your life. Whatever you pay attention to, whatever you respect, you'll find, is reinforced just by an act of bowing. For people who just bow, bow, bow without any meaning. I call those like dogs bow, bow bow or bow wows. Because they know what they're doing. They're just bowing. Just for some empty ceremony. That's faith based, and it's not really reasonable. And it's not truth, as you all know. And some of those are, um, uh, mindful rituals cause the problems in this world. I know that some of the rituals which we have in Buddhism, that sometimes people wear all these amulets and Buddhas around their neck, especially Asian people, and they're always giving it to me to bless, hoping that somehow that will stop them are getting misfortune in this world. But as a Buddhist monk, I'm so compassionate. I bless everything just about until this one man came to me and he had this thing which was hanging around his neck, and it was like a phallic symbol for his fertility. And I drew the line there. I'm not going to bless that. Anything else? Just about guys. But that's just to encourage people's happiness and give them some confidence in life. But really, all those external symbols which people have sometimes you think, are they really reasonable? And sometimes the faith can cause enormous problems. I was talking to someone in Singapore because they had this amulet around their neck. And I told him the story, which was in the newspapers about a couple of years ago, about this Thai man, a general in the army, a major general, who, because of his position, had an enormous amount of money, and he spent half a million us on an amulet. Because this amulet was supposed to be very, very old and very powerful. It was so magical. Those stock bullets. He paid half $1 million for that. Not only would it protect him in this life, but, you know, just like house prices hammered up, prices have been going up. So it's a good investment. So he thought, but we I read the story because apparently what happened. Like many generals, they're supposed to be Buddhists, but they're only Buddhists when they go to the temple. When he was in his officer's mess, he was having a lot of whiskey with one of his friends, a junior officer, and he was bragging about this very expensive amulet, which he had just bought. Half a million us. It cost me. It stops bullets. Here, take my gun. I'll prove it. And he asked the major to pull the trigger. He ordered him as his commanding officer. And this amazing armament failed and he got shot and killed. That's where I was in the newspaper. Unfortunately, he was dead, so he couldn't ask for the money back. But people have such faith and that sometimes, in that case, the faith killed him. Which is why people like Agent Chavez. Tradition, as always, says, to challenge those faiths. He was great at doing that because you remember might remember the story when somebody asked him, can I have an amulet? Can I have a Buddha statue to put around my neck so they can protect me from bullets? Because this fellow had just been drafted into the army, and he was a close disciple of my teacher, Ajahn Cha. This is going to be dangerous. I need something to protect me. I should just keep five precepts. Be a good person. That's the best protection you want. No, I want something better than that. And he argued and consoled, and in the end, my agency gave it. Is that okay? I'll give you a little Buddha to put around your neck. It's the only Buddha which will protect you from bullets. It's a big Buddha in the main hall. Put that around your neck. And that's the only thing which will stop bullets. And that actually did would stop bullets. Well, he was actually saying there is. Look. Be reasonable. Don't be so faith based. But be careful of reason, because that sometimes is associated with faith and sometimes that, you know, I try and teach here like a Buddhism with reason, but sometimes even then, that people get so unreasonable about what they think Buddhism truly is, and they go into all sorts of rituals and chanting. You know, sometimes that people ask you to chant the death of a person, especially if they've been a bad person. They want the monks to chant because they think that's the only way that's going to save them from a bad rebirth. So the more desperate you are, so the more you want amongst the chap discharging really work. Well, the Buddha said this is one of the ancient teachings of the Buddha. He said, suppose you had like a jar of oil and the jar was a clay jar. I suppose you broke it over a pool of water. The clay fragments will fall to the bottom. The oil will flow to the float to the top. Suppose you've got the most famous monk or priest or whatever to do some chanting. Do you think by chanting that that clay would rise to the surface and the oil would sink to the bottom? And the monk said, no. Of course not, because it's the nature of oil to float of clay is heavier than water. I was saying, he said just the same. If you go chanting for a person when they're dead, if they have good karma, they'll float to the top whether you chant or not. They got bad karma. They will go to the bottom. Whether you chant or not. The only time chanting does have an effect is whether sometimes in the middle, and they just push them up slightly and never actually pull them. Push them down slightly, or just push them up slightly, but that's the only time it has a minimal effect. But a lot of times that people just ask the monks, please chant for my father, please chant for me, please chant, I've got piles, I've got sickness, I've got this and I've got that. And a lot of times we do that chanting, but a lot of times, quite reasonably, it's just to increase their confidence, to give them a boost, to show them that somebody cares. Other than that, it has minimal effect. And I say that personally because I spend so much of my time chanting because I can't say no. So trying to sort of convince people not to sort of ask me so much to make Buddhism a bit more reasonable. Look, there was one famous story many years ago, but not myself. It was another monk. Adrian Jacquot was the abbot here. I was his number two. And as normally happens about this time of the year, a young lady came to him because she was about to have her exams at university. And it always seemed many, many people come and offer dharna and do donations at this time of the year, just before their exams, because they're desperate. And so she came to us, the monk, to please do some chanting for me. I've got my exams next week. And being a kind monk, you know, we always say, okay, we'll do a bit of chanting for you, give you a bit of confidence. But we never saw her again. She disappeared, never came back to this temple. But we found out from one of her friends why she had failed the exam. And she was blaming this monk. All the monks that. Not on our temple. They're no good at chanting. Their chanting is hopeless. Why should I go support them if they can't chant? So I could pass my exams. And of course, the lady who told us that explained why she failed her exams because she never went to lectures or very few. She never went to the tutorials. She never did her assignments. She did all the party things, having a great time at UWA, and she expected the monks to take care of her exams. And obviously that you can't do that and if you want to be healthy, you create the courses of health, a strong mind, a peaceful mind, a kind mind is number one and number two is actually a healthy body. Be very careful what you eat, exercise, the normal things, but the stress in the mind is most important. The doctor gave this interesting information a couple of weeks ago. Research in the medical community found that when you laugh, the arteries in your body expand. Which means that you can tolerate more cholesterol before you have a heart attack. So if you are a little bit of overweight, it's desperate that you laugh more. The counter efforts, all that greasy food which is so delicious. So that's why traditionally in most cultures, the fat tubby people are always the happiest because they're the only ones who survive. But they said when you're really miserable and depressed, your arteries actually contract. And so they're more likely to have heart attacks and strokes. So just basic idea that when you're happy, when you laugh, you do find that you're healthier as this were very, very well known. So for good health, instead of going to do some chanting or listen to some chanting, it's probably actually better for you is actually to listen to a few more jokes and laugh a bit more. However, that being said that the actually there's a good Buddhist joke which comes up now. Truth and reason. Many, many of you know the traditional Buddhist story. They are the seven blind men, and the elephant is actually quite useful here with faith and reason, because the story of the seven Blind Men in the elephant is a very famous Buddhist story. It's actually in the, uh, the original scriptures of Buddhism. People are always arguing who's right and who's wrong, which is the best religion? Which is the worst religion? Is Islam. The only truth is Buddhism. Whatever. And like many people in government, this king had trouble with his ministers, always arguing what was right, what was wrong. Just in current Parliament, it's always the same. So that the king decided to call a holiday to teach the ministers a lesson. Part of the holiday. He brought his royal elephant into the center of an arena with a big crowd watching. And he took the first blind man to the trunk of the elephant and said, blind man, this is an elephant. The second blind man to the head, the tusks, the body, the legs, the tail and the ears and the blind man feel the elephant saying, blind man, this is an elephant. Now a blind man never seen an elephant before. They've heard the name. This is the first personal experience of what an elephant truly is. And then he asked the blind man who felt the trunk was an elephant. He said, is a snake. One who felt he is saying no is a fan. It can't be a snake, you idiot. One I felt this sort of was it? The head said it was a rock. Oh no, it said a water jar. I think the head would have felt the, uh. The tusk said it was a power one. I felt the body said it was a big rock. One who felt the legs said it was a tree. The one who felt the tail said it was a fly whisk. And I had a big argument about what an elephant was, which is understandable because everyone is basing their understanding on limited experience. And the joke about this. I'll come back to the elephant in a moment. The joke about this is there were seven blind elephants. The seven blind elephants one. They want to find out what a man was. They'd heard the word man, but they'd never seen one. So they decided, let's touch a man, and then we can find out what what a man really is. So the seven blind elephants, they touched the man. And when they all came together, they all agreed. Because they touched the man with their feet. They all agreed that men were flat. And that is, I think, a Buddhist joke. We're back to the end of story. And of course, you're now healthier because you laughed if you didn't get the joke. I'm sorry about your cholesterol problem. But now the point is that this is so similar to real life that we sometimes take our limited experience to be the truth, and that's as relevant for scientists who have a limited experience of truth as it is for every religion. So sometimes when people say that I'm reasonable, everyone else isn't. The elephant simile is always a very good one to reflect about. Have you got the full truth? Only half of it. Now, why is it that from our experience, we always tend to jump to conclusions and think that what we see, what we hear is really the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. One of the problems with reason and belief. Too often it gives people the false sense of certainty, and once we are truly certain, then we never listen to anybody else. Whenever we investigate deeper and we become bigots either scientific bigots, Buddhist bigots, Christian bigots, Islamic Buddhist bigots, or even, um, humanistic bigots thinking that we know everything and no one else understands. And you know, the dangers of that in the big bad world. However, sometimes we don't realize the dangers in ourselves. We think that only applies to Mr. Bush or Mr. Howard. We certainly think it applies to our partner. We never think it applies to us. We have had an argument with your partner and think, how come they can't understand? They're so stupid. But do you ever ask that question to yourself? How come I don't understand? How come I am so stupid? Now the path to truth is beyond reason and beyond faith will always be the path of almost eternal questioning. Always delving deeper and asking questions sometimes is a very, uh, fearful path, the path of truth. Because when we ask questions, sometimes we're challenging some of the fundamentals of our belief systems and also of our reason systems. The reason why the cause for stopping before we find the truth, stopping at belief, or stopping at reason is because we are not strong enough, courageous enough to let go of our attachments to our ideas, our attachments to our beliefs, and our attachments to reason. That happens in all aspects of our life. As soon as we say to our partner or to our friend, to the people in the office, you're wrong. It takes a lot of guts to say, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Too often when we take a stand, especially in our social interactions, we find retreating from that stand is almost impossible because of the strength of our pride. It's our pride which stands in the way of truth too often. There's an old story in the Buddhist text about these two men who they found that a certain area was being in trouble, and many people had evacuated that region in a hurry. So they decided to go to that town and see if there's anything valuable there which people may have left in their hurry to evacuate. And when they went there, that some people found some old hemp. And I thought, wow, people have dropped this valuable commodity. So they both made bundles of hemp. And as they made those bundles of hemp tied up and were carrying them on their backs. One of them, while they both found some hemp cloth and one of them thought, well, why are we going to have for two actually to make into some cloth? And here's a cloth I already made. So one of them threw down the bundle of hemp and picked up the cloth. The other one thought, no, it took such a long time to sort of bundle up this hemp. This is good enough for me. And so he kept his bundle of hemp. And as they were walking along, they found some, uh, some flax. Some like, uh, what you make linen out of. And one said, ah, flax is more, well, more valuable than hemp. So he threw away his hemp cloth, then picked up the flax and said, oh, I've carried this bundle of hair long enough. Now it's good enough for me. It didn't change. And then a bit later they found some linen, so the guy with the flax changed it for linen. The guy who had the bundle of hemp carried on. And from linen they found some silk, and from silk they found some silver. From silver they found some gold. And all the while one was willing to change for the better commodity. While the other thing. Now I've carried this hemp so long, why should I change now? It was so hard to bundle up and put in my bag. Why should I change? And so when they got back to their families, one had this big bundle of gold and his family were very happy with him, but his mate only had a few pieces of hemp and their family were not happy with him. And that was at all. But his story is why is it? We may have an idea and we stick to it too much, never willing to let it go to change it for something better. There is an attachment there to our belief systems, which is that the man with the hemp would then be willing to change incrementally to something better. And that is one of the reasons why we have bigotry. We get stuck because we are unwilling to change why we are willing to change. It's because we've got personal investment in our beliefs, in our in our society, in our family, and in our religions and philosophies of life. So the path of real religion, of real truth finding is challenged, challenged, challenge, always asking the tough questions. Otherwise it sometimes that our understandings we miss too much. And my favorite traditions. My favorite story. Not traditions. My favorite anecdotes about sometimes how faith. Because sometimes being misplaced is the whole story of the pastor who's in this Queensland. This was many years ago when they did have rain in Queensland, when there was actually a flood there, and a pastor of his church. When the floods came, he climbed on the roof of his church for safety. And soon, soon a rescue boat came to try and save the pastor. They said, jumping the boat, we've come to save you. And a pastor said, you do not need to save me with a boat. I have faith in the Lord. God will save me. And no matter what they said, they couldn't make him jump into the boat. He thought God would save him, so they had to leave to pick up other survivors. And the waters rose. And so he was clinging on to the top of his steeple. When the rescue boat came and said, the waters are still rising. Jump into the boat. This is the last chance for the boats to come. If you don't jump in, you will die. And he said, no, I've got faith in the Lord. God will save me. I said, come on, don't be stupid. Jump in. No, this is a test of my faith. So they couldn't make him jump in and the waters rose. So there he was, clinging on to the TV aerial. When? A helicopter came and a helicopter dropped the rescue line and they shouted down to him, grab hold of the end of the rope! We've come to save you! And he shouted up! I have faith in the Lord! God will save me! They shouted down, don't be stupid! But no matter what they did, they couldn't get him to grab hold of the end of the line. So they had to fly off. Now what happened next? Waters rose and he drowned. So when he went to heaven, he was in a bad mood. When he saw God, he was culpable that I had faith in you. Why did you let me down? I believed in you. Why did you do nothing to save me? When God replied, what do you mean I did nothing? Didn't I send you two boats and a helicopter? There's a great old story about. Sometimes we have faith, but we just missed the point. So the moral of that story is the Buddhists. I mean, sometimes it's not the real faith or the reason. It's what we do which is most important. So taking away the faith and the reason to actually our actions, it's our actions which give us the experience of life. And it's on the experience of life that we should really do our questioning, which is very useful when we want a question, what is the best religion in life? We have experience and we question and we find out. Always asking those new questions, never stopping at reason, never stopping a belief because one of the limitations of reason it still can't get close enough to the truth. Reason is based on thinking, and thinking always goes around the point. It goes around the truth. Like a satellite always orbiting the earth but never falling to ground. Too often it's always in the head and never really in the heart. It's never really based on the truth of our experiences of life, because sometimes it's a shock to people who have a very strong faith in their own path and their own religion, to meet somebody else from a different faith, from a different path. And to realize, my goodness, they are just like me. They are also good people. They are also kind. Well, the wonderful things about our present age is we in a mixing pot of faiths and religions, that mixing pot has to happen because of migration, intermarriage, just the way that because of a globalized economy, we move from place to place. Very few people live in the region where they were born. We have a migratory society, and because of that, we move from city to city, place to place. And so many people live far, far away from the place where they were born. We're mixing. And in that mixing there's the interaction, and in the interaction is an opening of the eyes to people of different races, people of different sexual orientations. Different religions and different parts within those religions. It's a wonderful time to be alive because Buddhists, even the traditions of Buddhism, which have been separated geographically for centuries. Mahayana, Theravada, Zen or whatever, you find that those were geographical anomalies. And when they come together, they found how much they share. They stop attacking each other and instead live together in peace and harmony. But more than just a different types of Buddhism, the different types of religion. As we meet together, explore and find out how much we have in common. For example, just 2 or 3 weeks ago I was sharing the stage with, again Abbot Placid, the abbot from the Benedictine monastery. We get on so well together that we start thinking of actually starting a road show, the two abbots and touring around Australia. And maybe, if that's successful, around the world. Because not only do we get on together, but sometimes we bounce off each other because there's some questions I would never get in this place, which you can get from actually sharing a stage with a Catholic. And there's some questions which he gets from me, which he will never get from his congregation. And one of those questions which was thrown at me of that session, he said, Do Buddhists believe in God or what actually is the idea of God in Buddhism? And the way I answered that question, instead of just taking cover behind religious truths or especially just quoting scriptures. And that's the biggest trouble in interfaith dialogue. Too often we just hide behind whether the Buddha said this or someone else said that. We all know that if we want to find that out, just read the books. But what do you think about this? So I actually quoted the person sitting next to me, the Catholic Abbot Placid. I quoted him. It's something he told me a little bit earlier. He said his it was one of his most basic and profound beliefs that all human beings are searching for God. Well, that's actually what he said. And so I said, well, let's take that saying. If all human beings are searching for God, what am I searching for? What a Buddhist search for. I said, what Buddhists are searching for. They're not searching for the Christian idea for God, or what many people think is a Christian idea for God. What most Buddhists are searching for is peace. Freedom, forgiveness, love. So why are you here this evening? What is your inclination? What is your search? What is the meaning in terms of like the goal of your life? What are you inclining and searching for? I said, as a Buddhist, that thing I call that peace, freedom, contentment. That's what Buddhist search for. So that's the Buddhist meaning of God. I said. And everybody got the point where we go much deeper than just the names and the symbols which those names evoke, and they can only go deeper with questioning. You get a deeper truth. So instead of having faith, instead of having reason, we question and go in thinking. Philosophizing just runs around the edges of things. We call this in Buddhism. This is our name for insight. We look into things. Go into the center of things. Keep questioning until you go to the heart of the matter. And that path of insight is what I say. The way to truth, the way beyond reason, the way beyond faith. Insight. As I mentioned the other days, has an opposite. What's the opposite of insight? Excite. That's right. You know that joke? The opposite of incite is excite. So ex excite is what excites you, which actually takes you outside of this moment, outside of the the present situation and especially outside of yourself. Insight is in the opposite direction. And I mentioned that, you know, obviously it's not grammatically correct and linguistics have a good cause to actually argue with me. But the point is, the insight actually calms the situation. What the thinking, belief, even reason, excites people. So you see reasonable people arguing, arguing vehemently with each other. That's why you have parliaments and maybe secular parliaments, and they argue so much about who's right and who's wrong. And some religions blow each other up because they don't agree with each other. And that's exciting. Get excited with either sort of very often with violence, with arrogance. But insight goes in the opposite direction and a sign of insight is always peace and calmness. So as reason and belief usually cause excitement and the problems which come from that. The arguments and also the are the anger which come from those arguments and the feeling of having been defeated and not really being understood. That is not the way of truth. The way of truth is always going inwards, beyond reason, beyond faith and apart of insight, seeing into things, into the centre of things. Who? Buddhism. We always say that path beyond reason, beyond belief, is going in to the stillness in the middle of things, for the excitement of the hurricane is on the outside. In the middle there is always stillness. We always say it's the stillness from where wisdom arises. And most famous simile which I have given there is in the new book Marvelous and Beyond. So simile, which I have used many, many times, but it shows how truth is found, and how you can know its truth as well. And sometimes we say, well, we think we're right, but how do we know for sure we haven't got lost and just stopped in either a belief system or reason, which is not really true. There was a simile of a monastery, a serpentine on top of a hill, nine years, going up and down that hill in the car for the first time. After nine years. I walked up that hill and I started walking up that hill. I could not recognize that hillside. Everything looked completely different. I stopped, stood, and the hillside changed again. When I stood still, the hillside looked so beautiful, could see all these blades of grass and these rocks which I never noticed before. I saw so much more detail and it also looked so beautiful when I stopped. It was such a strange experience to me that I had to reflect upon it afterwards and find why. Why had I been up and down that hillside for nine years and not noticed? These things became very obvious that when you're looking through the window of a speeding car, your retina does not have a time to form a proper image before the new information, the new light, the new scenery dislodges the old image, and you have to attend to something fresh. So colors don't fully form. Detail does not appear. What you see is smudged and washed out. When you go slower, your eyes have more time to form a proper image. More detail appears and the colors become richer. You literally see more and when you stop, only then have you got all the time in the world necessary for the back of your eye to form a proper image of what's there, for all the detail to emerge and for the colors to fully form. Only then do you see the truth of what's out there. The great thing about that simile is, for nine years I thought that I knew my surroundings. It was a reasonable assumption, but it was based on faith. The faith that I knew. Many of the people in the world live life as if in a fast car, looking out the window. Not only do you think you know what life is, but you think you know who your partner is. How many times have you been surprised the person you've lived with maybe for nine, ten years, does something what you say is completely out of character? It wasn't out of character. It's just you didn't see it. You've been going too fast, and you've assumed you've known the person who lays next to you every night. You've been rushing through life. You think you know what life is just like me. Who thought I knew the surroundings of my hillside? You find when you slow down and stop. You see more. You see detail. Which you never expected to be there. This is what truth is. You see deeper than reason. More truer than faith can ever give you. The personal experience which opens the eyes of the mind. But more than that. When you slow down. When you stop. Not only do you see all the detail or the truth, but it's also incredibly beautiful. The colors are rich. The detail is sublime when you slow down. And this, I think, is the acid test for truth. You know it's truth because it's beautiful. Because it's ecstatic. Not only does it make sense. It makes blissful sense to often people stop at a truth. Intellectually it's satisfying, but emotionally it's dry. Real truth has to be inspirational, beautiful, blissful, and also so sublime. Making sense that simile is the best I can give you. Not only to tell you what truth is. How we can go beyond faith and reason, but to show how it's achieved. It's in the stillness when people stop and be stilled in a meditative stillness of the heart. Only then can one truly see what's going on. The faster you go, the less you see, the less you see. The more depressing is life. Colors are washed out. The tastes just do not come into your mouth. And colors feelings. It is dark. You don't spend long enough. Just being still and feeling in stillness. Traditional Buddhist meditation or any religious meditation. This is stillness when you see things as they truly are. This is one of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha. When he said, I'm going to quote him now, samadhi. From the stillness only there do you see things as they truly are. It is a wisdom which is beyond just reasoning, beyond faith. Born of stillness, of stopping and allowing the world to actually explain its meaning to you just by seeing it. An experiential wisdom. Not reason. Not faith, but experience of stillness. And not only do you know it must be true because of its ecstasy, because it's making sense. It's not a wisdom which goes against reason. It's not a wisdom which confounds faith. But a wisdom which underpins both. That's why I call it the wisdom beyond reason, beyond faith. And you know that it must be wisdom, not just by its happiness, but also because of its result. Twice in the ancient Buddhist teachings, the Buddha was asked by two very famous people in the time of the Buddha. I haven't got much time. Give me a basic teaching. One of those was eventually the man or the monk who became the expert on the monastic discipline. And the other one was the first person, the first Buddhist nun. And what the Buddha said was very profound. So profound that those two people, the man and the woman, both monastics, eventually used that saying to become completely enlightened. What the Buddha said. No. You can know the Dharma, the truth, the wisdom. By the following things. If it leads to peace, to freedom, to harmony, then you know it must be truth. It must be the teachings of the Buddha. So when people ask what is truth? It's that which leads to real peace, not only in the world, but in your marriage, in your life, in your heart, which leads to harmony. That's why when I give inspirational talks and you give talks like this. People think this must be true. Because this is not to say Buddhism is the only religion. Everything else is wrong. It's something we can create harmony, which can break down the bridges which separate people. Or rather, I say the bridges. If you look upon another way, which join people. Which break down the walls which separate us. You know that must be truth. It feels right. And that emotional test of truth is perhaps one of the best. Not that it makes sense, but it feels right. And it works. So any teaching which creates more problems in this world, which creates an enemy to fight against someone on the other side to you, it cannot be wisdom. It cannot be truth. I don't care what religion that is. If it creates another somebody else different than me, someone else is wrong and I'm right. That cannot be wisdom because it does not create peace and harmony and a sense of freedom in this world. But the other path. The path of insight and stillness can actually see deeper than those ideas. Faith based hypotheses, even intellectual truths, beaten out by wisdom, by by reason. So you can see so deep. It does create peace. It does create harmony. It solves the problems of life. It is wisdom, the Buddha says, which stops suffering in its tracks. So you can know what truth is by its source, coming from the stillness of the mind. You can know it by its emotional feeling of bliss. Inspiration. You can also know it by its effect. He creates peace and harmony. So if you make a stand and have an argument with your partner, you are always in the wrong. Don't think that it's their fault is an argument. It's your fault. There's an argument. No matter what she says, what he does. If it's truth, it stops the argument. That's why many people say compassion and love is an ultimate truth. It's not an ultimate. It's not the ultimate truth. It is an ultimate truth. Now the door of my heart is open to you. Darling, no matter what you've ever done. No matter what you're doing. Now, there's something in that sort of saying of unconditional love and acceptance and forgiveness with people recognize as truth why? To grace, harmony and peace in our world. Last talk I gave here was a couple of weeks ago. Did I tell the story two weeks ago about the Aboriginal elder who broke tradition? Who's here two weeks ago? Did I tell that story two weeks ago? Okay. When I was. Where was I? In one talk, somewhere or other. I thought it was in UW. No, it was in Curtin University. I was giving an annual lecture on Buddhism and human rights. And in the class there was an Aboriginal man who told me of a great story happened here in Perth just a short while ago, and that it fits as an inspiring ending to this evening's talk. Many of you living here in Perth read newspapers, watch the news. You know that every now and again there's car chases. People who steal your car are either on drugs or alcohol, racing through the streets middle of the night at huge speeds, sometimes chased by the police, sometimes the police give access to dangerous. Some of those people on drugs are Aboriginal indigenous people. Sometimes they kill others. Sometimes they slam into pedestrians. They slam into other cars. The Aboriginal elders were saying it's a huge problem in the community. But recently it got even bigger with a couple of indigenous young men on alcohol or drugs, stole the car, were racing down some highway somewhere, they slammed into another car and killed the occupants. And at this time the other drivers of the car were Aboriginals themselves. Young men with great careers in front of them. According to Nuna tradition, most indigenous traditions in Australia. The Basic Law is called payback. Or payback means if a crime is done against somebody else, there is like an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, if any wrong is done. Sometimes the wrongdoer has to endure a spearing where the leg is pierced, using the thigh many times as a punishment for their transgression. It's also apparently the custom that the person inflicts. The punishment has them to care and nurse that person until they receive that they recover their full health. They have not only the job of inflicting the punishment, but also the responsibility for healing that person afterwards and looking after them. However, for an event like killing two Aboriginal use the Payback medal and return death. The culture would mean that someone would have to kill either the people who drive in that car for killing their son, or if they could not find the actual agent who committed that transgression, they would have to choose the nearest relation. So, because of the connections between families and clans, the punishment would be meted out on the nearest relation if they could not find the miscreant himself. Because the two people are the person driving that car was in police custody. They knew that the payback could not be meted out on them. Had to be on one of the relations at the funeral service here in Perth. The man who told me this story said the whole community in Perth were feeling electric with fear. Payback was their tradition, their custom for 30,000 years. Probably more. I did not know when it would happen. They knew it had to happen according to their law and custom and tradition had the funeral service where everyone had to attend, not just the family of the deceased, but also the family of the two men in custody. They had to appear in the funeral service together. The official told me the story said there were almost more police in that chapel, as there were Aboriginals there expecting trouble. Trouble eventually came in the middle of the service. The father of one of the deceased boys got up. And everyone froze, including the police. He walked right up to the father of the driver. The father of the boy who killed his son. Everyone steeled themselves for payback. It was the duty. The father of the dead boy to kill the father of his murderer. Instead, the father dead boy just held out his hand, shook his son's killer, said I forgive you, and went to sit down. He's now regarded as one of the elders in the Perth indigenous community, and one who people go to seek advice from. He'd broken 30,000 years of tradition. What a great man that was. He just shows us what truth is. Goes beyond traditions. People who hold to traditions and say this is the way. Because it's always been this way. But it's a Buddhist tradition. Islamic tradition, Christian tradition, whatever tradition. Sometimes that's not truth. When we hold so strongly to traditions, we create so much problems in this world where the thing is belief or reason, it doesn't work. Every now and again, someone has the guts, the courage to go that one step beyond belief, beyond reason, to a deeper wisdom. And everyone recognized in that chapel. Then that person did a beautiful thing. What the Aboriginal did was truth because it created harmony. It created inspiration. It created a new way forward. Now you understand what reason is, what faith is, and how wisdom is way beyond the two of them. So that's tonight's talk. Beyond reason, beyond belief. Okay, so anyone got any questions about tonight's talk? Are there any questions going to come up? For the second time. For the third time. Okay, good. Hopefully they're inspired and pieced out okay. So now you can pay respects to the diamonds. And then we can go and have that cup of tea or find someone who you think knows what they're doing. I have some somebody but a while. Ago and the AP was me. So I can't talk about what I am. Now my song. Search party, party girl at all. So walk a song. Go song. Come. Not for me.