Does Life Suck?

Does Life Suck? By Ajahn Brahm Transcription I was having a very busy week last week and many things went wrong, but they always tend to do. Just because you're a monk. It doesn't mean that things go right. So little things like a monastery car has been to the, uh, to the fixes up to the garage about 2 or 3 times and now has to go back again. So black hole for the money, which you donate, it seems. It always seems to be going wrong. And there are people over in Bangkok. I'm going to Thailand this evening for the United Nations, where six ceremonies and messing around with everything. So I had to redo the whole tickets. And I just remember a few days earlier that I was busy working in the retreat center, just still doing some plumbing, getting myself nice and dirty. And I like boys being boys, and I'm still a boy underneath, messing around with the plumbing and the dirt and going back to the monastery. And if I did, there was no water in the shower. So these are just things which happen in life. And so just a couple of days ago on the vehicle which we're using, which somebody donated to us an old Magna Carta, no one had washed the windscreen. So I've used my finger to write on there that samsara sucks. Samsara is a Buddhist. Samsara is a Buddhist word, a sort of life. And we were using that car to come in this afternoon. And on the freeway we were behind a taxi. Another taxi. There was an advert on the back and all the bikes saw it burst out laughing because on the advert it was. If you hear anyone say that life sucks, send them to. And I just didn't say that. So we didn't actually see where you're supposed to send them to. And I must be the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, I reckon. So if you hear anyone say life sucks, send them here because we understand this. So that's sometimes what happens in life, isn't it? If things go wrong. So the thought this evening is what to do when things go wrong in life. You know, I'm not sure about you, but when I was young, I tried to fix up life. I worked really hard trying to fix things up, but didn't make much difference. Actually usually made things much worse. And some. Sometimes they you try to fix up life and try to make things better. It's worthwhile doing. Trying to fix up the world. But I don't know. The world goes its own directions in spite of me. And sometimes you wonder. You know what's happening. And in life we go around our life and our years and things go right. Things go wrong. Now, after a while, you know when you get old, you should start to realize that this is the nature of life. And the Buddha actually taught the first noble truth. He called it the truth of suffering. But I call it life Sucks. That's a the first noble truth that the Buddha said if he was speaking modern language, that's what he was saying. It's suffering. But you don't have to be depressed about this because there is a solution. What he's saying is that life is troublesome. We all get into disappointments, frustrations, things go wrong. And I notice in myself that sometimes you think, why did it go wrong? Why is it that when people put in the vanity units in the toilets never retreat center, they put the screws right through the water pipes? It's only a narrow water pipe. They've got this whole big wall. I was actually going right through the center of the water pipe. So you can't do. That, of course, because this is what happens, isn't it? This is like, if ever you build a house, I'm sure you've had even worse experiences. So after a while, sometimes I get the way to say, what do you expect? And it's a lot of times it's my expectations of the cause, of the suffering. And you should learn by now. You talk to all the other people. Now, just before we did our opening ceremony of our retreat center, I told you that we were working there till 2:00 in the morning. This man was working to 2:00 in the morning trying to finish things off. And then people say, yeah, that was like, that was what it was like when we had our house. Yeah. That's why when we did our project, the builders always take the very last minute to finish things off. I mean, what do you expect, really? I should have expected that from the very beginning. Actually, I was telling people we probably finished at midnight on the night before. I was actually wrong. It wasn't midnight. It was 2 a.m.. But a lot of times the suffering in life is when we expect life to be somehow different. And a few years ago, when a person in Singapore asked me, they said, I'm in a bit of a rush. I got an appointment to go to. Can you please teach me what is life in brief? And when I said that life is suffering and he said, why? Come on, be quick about it. It's what is suffering. We know what it's like in modern life. You don't want it. Sometimes people don't have time for a whole hour's talk. I mean, this is a luxury to be able to come here and actually listen to a talk. The only reason, probably, you can come to a talk on a Friday night is because you've probably been laid off because of the economic crisis. I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, are you just, you know, doing sort of part time work? But anyhow, most people are very, very busy. And so I remember just coming out, I love actually being challenged sometimes because when you're really challenged and you have to sort of teach very quickly, it really, you know, you dig deep and you get these great answers coming out. And the answer was that folks are the suffering is asking from life what it can never give you. I was like, that definition is asking from life what life will never be able to supply. And that's called stuff. That's why life sucks sometimes. It's not actually what life, because life has always been this way. But what it is is our expectations and our request, what we want out of life. And I want the best retreat center in the whole world. I want all the toilets to work straight away. I thought, I want to get a car and have it serviced and never go wrong. Especially just a day after the warranty expires. It never happens that way, does it? I remember this motorbike I had, the motorbike I had when I was emotionally in a motorbike, had long hair in those days and a big motorbike was an average sized motorbike. I'd go around backwards and forwards on my motorbike and it was only one year, had the warranty and I did believe it. The actual the day after the very day afterwards. It was going fine until then and it sort of started developing problems. And of course I don't know if they don't know actually how they do this. It must be very clever. These Japanese makers of motorbikes, they actually tie me. That is perfect for one year, but one day afterwards it breaks down and puts you a lot of money. Oh, this poor person is here this evening. We always sort of go on Armstrong on a Saturday morning. And he told me just what happened when he got his $900 from the government and Mr. Rudd. He sort of got it that morning, and he was driving and his car broke down that afternoon. The clutch had gone. It cost him $880. At least they made 20 bucks. And anyway, apparently that's what you're supposed to do with that $900. Put it back in the economy. And he did straight away. A really good Australian. But these are such simple stories to bring up, because you've got your own stories of what happens in life here. We always expect something else that never happens. And so life is always a struggle, and that's what life is all about. As struggle, if it was so easy, would be worth living life. It's those struggles as disappointments which test as they are. Our learning experience, what I always call the growing pains without pain is no real growth in this life. We have to learn from these things. And so after a while you say you expect things to go well. No. You expect to get sacked from work. Expect your partner to say bye bye. You expect to get sick, do you? And as so often, all I can do is. And if I come and get real. Guys, girls, you know you're getting old. You're going to get sick. Things are falling apart. You feel that inside. And you know you fall apart so much. And there's so much the doctor can do. And after a while, the doctor can't do anything else for you. So you have to be taken to the the wreckers yard, Karrakatta, Pinnaroo or Fremantle. That's what it really is. That this is our life. So what do you expect? The problem is in life. Why do people suffer when things go wrong? That very word. Things go wrong. Does the red light show come? What do you mean? Things are going wrong? There's nothing wrong with dying. There's nothing wrong with sort of people putting the the screws through the water pipes. There's nothing wrong. Just, you know, with with things being late. There's nothing wrong with this thing. There's nothing wrong with me sort of making mistakes or selling stupid jokes. Just who I am. Somebody told me this terrible joke last Saturday. I can't. I can't resist telling you because it's my birthday. Anyway, I'm going away this evening so I can actually get out of the country before the repercussions really hit. And it's just. I just reminded me because of that. Talking about sort of cars and car accidents and Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were in a car accident, and Minnie Mouse was very, very severely injured. But Mickey Mouse saved her life. And how did he save her life from mouth to mouth resuscitation? If you want to go down, I can completely understand. Anyway, so have you said the what to expect for the Friday night? You've been coming here for many years. You know my reputation. So it doesn't get any better than this. So I don't have to suffer for it because. But anyway, going back to what goes wrong in life, we understand actually how life actually flows. Understanding life and understanding the world. Understanding politics, understanding policemen, understanding other people. When you understand we actually have realistic expectations of life. Now on a Friday night. Can we move this place to where there's no dogs? And there isn't any place without dogs. There's always somebody barking. Anyway, if you move this where there's no dogs, there's somebody will do the lawn mowing. That's one of the reasons about daylight saving. I'm going to probably, you know, if I had a vote, I'd vote against it. Because sometimes if it's very early, when we have the evening talk, you get the people who are just out there running their lawns and make a big noise and you can't even hear what you're saying. But anyway, does it matter? Whatever you want to vote, when it comes down to it that these things actually happen. Now, what do you do when things go wrong in life or so-called go wrong? We think they go wrong. What happens? We get upset. We get angry, we cry. All this tension inside of us, which is not necessary. Why does a stupid dog make you suffer? This is a dog. Being a dog, what do you expect dogs to do? All the dogs I've ever met. They all bark. So what to expect? Or places you go to. Now they're all noisy. It's an amazing. Get. So many people here sitting quietly. But they're not all quiet. As always. Somebody's going to come in early. Somebody come in late. Somebody's got to let off wins and probably just right in front of you. There's always something going to disturb you. And that's the nature of things. And what we've got now, people are really worried about swine flu. What do you expect? I mean, these are bugs in the air in the world, and there are too many people anyway. You know, we need to sort of do a cull. Now, what are you afraid of anyway? You're going to die and you going to die anyway. It's much better to die soon and don't have to worry about nursing homes and old age and palliative care and all this. It costs a lot of money for the government for doing a wonderful thing for the economy by dying early. Why do people really obsess about these things? There's nothing wrong with this. If you look at history, there's always been this epidemic, whether it's another. Was it the plague or the Black Death or the sort of first? No. The influenza in this 1918 or the SARS. But I'm just really surprised that people just how people overreact to these things. Even today, somebody just rang me from Singapore, and they were they were just wanting to come to Perth. Well, is it safe to fly? Because so many people have got swine flu. And that's what happened to me once when I went to Singapore during the middle of the SARS crisis. I've been here, done that before. And as I landed in Singapore airport, I actually read the newspaper on the plane and on the front page, the headlines and decisions to make the newspapers so very well in big black, bold. 100 people there. G. And I said when I was in Singapore, they had all the cameras on you. And I was thinking, come on, think cool thing, cool thing. Cool. Can you never doubt these things? But anyhow, they're going to be probably there again tomorrow morning when I arrive. But we get these cameras and all my disciples, they were just lined up outside. What should we do? What should we do? What should we do? They'd hide the convention centre. Just for my thought. Just me alone. It must have cost a fortune to hire this place. And it said, should we cancel? The Singapore government had requested no public meetings. The schools have been closed. They put so much money into this event. Four days of talks. And I said, how many people in Singapore? They said about 4 million. That means 3,990,900 people haven't died of SARS. Why is it that when we see how many people have got a sickness, we forget that most people haven't? The chances of you flying and getting swine flu on those days, SARS was so small compared to sort of just crossing a road or doing the other things. We do it and I why is it that people just are so afraid of these things that they overreact? So when I said that, everybody laughed, relieved all their tension, and we went ahead with our with our, um, uh, programme and no one got SARS. No, no one went to my talk, checked it out because no one actually got sight. After that time we arrived, it was always already finished with basically. But anyhow, if you are going to protect yourself from sickness, what's the best to do that? Worry about it and stay at home. Look, every doctor knows there's a few doctors here. Your immune system actually gets gets improved when you're happy and when you laugh at stupid jokes like that mouth to mouth resuscitation jokes. I just improved your immune system. I made you even stronger. And especially when you laugh. You know, many of these things are respiratory problems. And when you laugh, your exercising your lungs and actually they get stronger. You're actually doing a very positive thing to actually to stop getting these sicknesses. So coming to a good talk at inspiring yourself and getting uplifted, that actually makes you more protected. So this evening you're getting your dose of anti swine flu. Venom. No venom. That's the wrong word. Virus or whatever it is you know. But anyway every time you laugh and happy you get healthier. And we all know that those are coming is a wonderful thing to do. So but the point is, I worry about these things. You're going to get it. You get it anyway. And I was actually telling the monkey if I do go. So I'm actually not really going to Singapore. I was going to China for this United Nations way. So if I do get swine flu, it'll be great. I can have a rest, I can be in a hospital and no one will be allowed to visit me, nor be able to ask me these questions about their personal life or their husband or their kids or their financial problems. They'll be able to ring me up out of a recipe, like be going on a retreat. And I really do need a retreat. I do work so hard. That'll be wonderful if that happens to me. That's one of the days I remembered if I ever get sent to prison for something, because sometimes you don't do anything. Sometimes people are put into prison for things they didn't do, like that. Andrew Moriarty was accused of 13 or 14 years in jail for something he never did. I thought it'd be great if I were to go to prison, you know. Have a nice bed to sleep on. Because I sleep on the floor down in my monastery. And at least when you get food, you actually get it into separate compartments. All my food goes into the same bowl, and you actually get more choice, I think in Australian prisons. And most of all, if I did ever get sent to prison, I'm very positive about this. I'm sure I'll make sure I misbehave so I can get sent to solitary confinement. And that was my goal. A monk in solitary confinement. Ah, that be the best retreat of all. So you can see just how you can deal with the problems of life. Attitude. There's one thing which I've found out, and I'm sure that you should know by now. Life is so hard to change. Other people that just so tough to change them or teach them or nudge them this way and nudge them that way. It's so tough to do. You can argue with a person that is so stubborn. What do you expect? Everyone's like that. I'm like that. You ask the other monks. You changed my mind. Oh, not actually, that's why, you know, you know that the. We have two rules for our monastery. This is, you know, we've got the monks rules, which is for all monks throughout the world, but every master got his own set of rules just applying to that monastery. And that first rule is the abbots always write rule number one and rule number two. If the abbot is wrong, go back to rule number one. But people are stubborn. That's just their nature. So what do you expect? But what I've found is that this is our life. I've learned to understand what life actually is instead of fighting life. Learn how to make peace with life and accept people for who they are. It's a wonderful thing when you don't expect too much out of the people you meet and you know, and you and you are with you. Don't expect too much out of them. You don't measure them. You don't measure them. Then you can love them. You would expect something out of your partner. You're going to have a terrible relationship when you try and measure them and compare your husband to Brad Pitt. Compare your wife to I don't know who's the the siren of these days. I know Angelina Jolie. I think Angelina Jolie is getting old now, isn't it? Let us do some more research on who's the siren of the modern age. Maybe on the aircraft this evening I go and have a look in the brochures for the movies and find out who's starring in them. So I've got some more idea who's going to be the modern siren or whatever, anyway. Whatever, you know what I mean. But if you try and measure your partner. Then you're going to get so critical and you're going to be be judging them and comparing them and expecting some out, something out of them they will never be able to supply. People are not like that. They're not like in the movies. Life isn't like in the movies. So when we drop our expectations, then we can actually love somebody because loving them is accepting them for who they are not fighting. That's one of the nice things about being a man, because, you know, you can love everybody. You don't judge them. And some of the people who come to me are sometimes they're so stupid. Sometimes they do the most amazing, crazy things. But a long time you just stop judging people. And actually you can like people then don't you? Don't expect anything out of people. You make much more peace and as you can be much kinder. And this is just with people. Even with the monks, I'm supposed to be training. You don't expect so much out of them and then they do much better. There is an old saying which are monks? Abbots used towards use to each other when they meet. This is almost like a traditional greeting in the Thai Forest tradition. When two abbots meet each other, they ask each other, how are your monks? Are they easy to train? And a few years ago I went to see the man, the monk who took over from Argentina. A monk called Adrian. Liam. Very good man. And I asked him one day when I was visiting Thailand. I said, how are your monks? Are they easy to train? And he said, oh, they're just no problem at all to train. No way. He said, it was such nonchalance. I said, well, what's your trick? How do you train your monks? They're so easy to train. It's very easy. They want to go this way. Let them go that way. They want to go that way. Let them go that way. It's so easy to try. So I am going to try that. But he was a very powerful man. What he was doing, he was saying, I'm not controlling them, encouraging them without controlling them. And this is actually how we live our life. Encouraging life but not controlling things. He was that same man. I was really, really impressed with him once. Now this was, you know, one of my master's senior most disciples. And he was looking after Argentina and doing all the jobs, basically being acting abbot. For many years when Argentina died. He was in charge of all the funeral services, and the King of Thailand attended the big show. But this monk built actually the funeral, the crematorium for him, which actually doubled as a as a stupa, a monument which is still there now. And he put all this time and money into building this place where his great master would be cremated. And I was there at the time, you know, I went there and I was there, that my predecessor and I just met all these monks, and the king was there. And when they lit sort of the pyre inside. The boxes. Came out from everywhere. It was a disaster. And they were monks with hoses trying to hose the thing down and capable of running around. It was just a complete mess. And what the man responsible is. And what did he do? Instead of worrying about anything. He took one look and then went to bed and had a sleep. I thought, wow, that's a real man. I wish I could do that when everything goes wrong. Just, oh, never mind. Just go and have a nice dress. Can you do that? No. You worry and worry and run around. What can I do? How can I fix this? And he said, oh, just never mind. He did his best. Doesn't matter. His master won't get committed that day. He always do it tomorrow. That's how you react when things go wrong. You can't fix it. Go to bed, have a cup of tea. Whatever happens. Great. People can do that. There is a poem which I remember because I read this in a Buddhist book, you know, when I was very, very young. It's a great poem. I just remember it 40 years ago. First read this. He says it's easy enough to be happy when life goes along like a song. But the one worthwhile is the one who can smile when everything goes all wrong. And you do that when things go wrong. One of the great monks, many of you know, in case you know, he's got a few books in the library. Sometimes it's very easy to write a book. But actually, can you live by what you write? And one of his greats of events, which was part of his legacy. And he died a few years ago when he was diagnosed as cancer. He burst out laughing. His doctor said, I've never seen this before. In Malaysia, someone is diagnosed as cancer and they just laughed. Could you do that? Someone says terminal cancer. Burst out laughing. Why not? Might as well. Getting anxious is not going to help you survive. Laughing. As soon as the doctor heard him laugh, he probably gave him a few extra months to live. Someone like that is not going to die very easily. But it's true that if our attitude can change the things in life, if he can't change, what do we expect? You're going to die anyway. So when we don't expect things which life can never give us. We don't expect what our wife can never supply and what our husband can never supply, what our kids can never supply. How much do you ask of your kids? And how many people come up and complain about their children? And when I listen to say, yeah, that's just exactly the same as the last parent said, that's what the last parent said. They're all like that. Don't think you've got a wrong one and you've done something bad and they're not sort of behaving. They're all like that. Even I've read this how hard it is to get your kids up in the morning to go to school. I read this, this is science. No facts. Teenagers are genetically programmed to stay up late at night and get up late in the morning. It's in their genes. They can't do anything about it. Poor thing. It's not their nest. They're not the problem. It's the school. It should start much later during the day. And not a lot of you know. What time is it? 8:00, 9:00 anyway. So you start too early for teenagers. And it just. They're not wired up. They're starting that early. Their wives are staying up late at night. Sao Paulo teenagers do feel sorry for them, and if so, what do you expect? But do you expect your kids to do well at school? Your expectations? I've mentioned this to the monks last night just to show how our expectations and how we don't live in a real world. This was a little party trip which I've done a few years ago here, and I can do it again now. You can do this if ever you're giving a talk. It makes a few people laugh, but it also makes a very powerful point of how deluded we are. I'm going to ask you to really be honest right now. Be very straightforward. If you think you're above average intelligence, please pull up your hand. Wow, how many dummies in this world is going to be honest, I don't need to sort of get you to pull up your hand because about this, as I 80, 90% of you think you're above average intelligence, don't you? Only 50% of you are above average intelligence. Only 50% of people can be above average intelligence. We always think that we're more intelligent than other people. That's a deceit which we live in in our life. I know many of you have been here long enough. I've already told you. If I asked you to put up your hand, don't do it because you always get into trouble afterwards. But anyhow, you know those people in this seat. We expect even more of ourselves than we can give ourselves. So if your kid doesn't do well at school, just be kind to that kid, for goodness sake. And you've heard me say before you. Many of you here are Buddhist, I hope. Of course, you could be spies for the Christians or the. Undercover agents. But at most this. And what's the most important teaching? Well, look, any person here who's a Buddhist whose children come in the top 5% or the bottom 5% of school, you're bad. Buddhist. That's not a good Buddhist family. Top 5%. 5%. That's not good. But in Buddhism, we believe in the middle way. And that is much better. As a kid, being in the middle is a lot of stress if you're in the top echelons. And of course, a lot of problems if in the bottom, but doesn't matter if in the bottom, because this I've mentioned this in usually in a monastery and in sort of retreat, if your kid is the bottom of the class and getting a really bad results. Remember this story. This was one of my heroes. This was a kid in Thailand who went to grade one and failed grade one. Imagine that. I don't know how you can for grade one. You know whether you couldn't draw properly or you couldn't. I don't know what else would I do in grade one? You could make sort of things out of a card or whatever. But anyway, you fail. So you had to repeat the year. And the teacher gave him extra attention, even with extra attention. In the best one in the world, she couldn't pass him. So all his friends went ahead and he had to repeat grade one for the third time. And after three years of grade one, it was a waste of time. So the teacher said, I'm sorry, we just can't actually educate you. You have to leave and imagine that failing grade one upset people. Sometimes you have to repeat the year at university for failing grade one. That really takes something special. So what do you do with someone who's so dumb they can't even pass grade one at school? In Thailand, they send him to the monastery to make him a monk. Not all monks started out like. I said, it's the monastery. And in the monasteries where the monks are very, very kind. And he got very patient. And so the abbot of this Buddhist monastery they sent this guy was so patient and tried to teach him how to do a little bit of chanting and learn something about the four noble truths. You know, what's the second one? Again, he kept on saying he didn't know the first one and chanting, na na na, what's the next syllable now? I thought it was hopeless. And after three years his. This monk was so patient. Just gave up on him. Just. You just can't deal with you. So there was really, really some big time. And what do they do with somebody like that in Thailand? They send him to the forest monasteries. That's now my life. But this fella, he was just such a simple mind that when they told him, just be in the present moment. He sat and watched the breath. He could do that with no problem at all, as long as he wanted. He got this incredible deep meditation and became a famous meditation teacher. And when he had to do the chanting, this is just the Messiah. The only way he could actually chant, which sometimes monks have to do because of his very powerful deep meditation. He could recall a past life when he did learn the chanting, and he'd actually access that past life when he had to do chanting. To actually get the chanting through so he could actually chant with all the other monks. But in this life, he just couldn't learn it. Amazing story. So if you got a child like that, send him to me. We could have this great monk or great nun for the future of Buddhism. A great teacher. So the point of the story is, it doesn't matter if your child is not so doing well. Love them for who they are. There could be a great monk or none in the making, and you're making them feel bad about themselves. I remember there's this story in the book. Open the door of your heart. As I was a school teacher and sometimes as a school teacher. You know those school teachers here, you know, you're in this sort of situation, you're supposed to do things, and sometimes there's some inside of you said, this is not right. Why do I have to keep marking all these kids and and making their life so difficult with encouraging them to pass exams? And there's always a dilemma in any sort of job. And it teaches the dilemma of, you know, what you really think you know, education should be and what the system says it is. But anyway, you had to play by the rules. And so he gave the exams and the end of the year. This gave out the report card in my class. There's this poor kid. When I gave him the report card, he read it. 30th. And across the 30. And I could see I saw his face on. You know who came bottom. People came top. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we came top. This poor kid. His jaw dropped. His shoulders had. He looked so sad. He was really suffering. Imagine you have to take that report card back to your parents. How'd you do, son? Bottom death. That's suffering for us. You know, a young kid, he must have about 12 or 13. So even then, I was very compassionate teacher, I was kind. You can't just ignore the person who's suffering like that. So I went up to him and sort of stood by him and said. He came bottom of the class. Yes. How am I going to show this to my dad said, look, you actually deserve a medal for this. So I taught him a little bit of Buddhism. In Buddhism, we got something called a bodhisattvas. Now a bodhisattvas is someone who sacrifices everything for other people. It's out of great compassion. And Buddhists have to sacrifice sometimes their whole life for the benefit of others. I think that's what you are. You've taken this terrible position at the bottom of the class, so none of your friends will have to actually to take this position. You've done this so selflessly, or they other conceited, arrogant people, they just want to become top. But you've taken the humble position and taken that suffering on yourself, so no one else has to endure what's coming to you from your mum and dad this evening, he said, you're such a kind and wonderful person in Buddhism, will actually praise you for doing things like that. And he looked at me as if I was crazy. But it stopped him getting sad and upset. He laughed afterwards. It's not the end of the world coming. Bottom of the glass was a big deal anyway. I keep on saying it's great when you fail an exam, then you don't have to take one next year. That's what happened to me. I kept passing the exams. They were endless, I never stopped. Because you're passing exams, there's always another one next week or next year. If you fail one, at least you get it out of the way. You failed. And so great that I do exams anymore. Much more important things to do in life and exams aren't there. But anyway, it was the attitude becoming bottom or the attitude becoming top. The attitude. So the things in life that was the problem, not the world, but the way people look at it. You cannot change the world, really. You can alter it a tiny bit and it's good to try, but come on. Are we going to try and make politicians not argue? Are we going to try to make, you know, people not be greedy and and fraudulent? We're going to try. We're going to try. So there's no criminals on the streets. We can try. It's worth trying. We're not going to achieve it, are we? But instead, we can learn how to cope. To make peace. To not take such thing so seriously. To expect life to just be as life is. And to love her as she is, not as she should be. And the same way you treat your partner, you can treat life. You'd be wonderful if we never got sick. Would be wonderful if if our cars never broke down, it'll be wonderful. If our flights were delayed. He'll be wonderful. If there was no stars, no wars. Oh, cancer would it? Sometimes he asked that question would it be so wonderful if these things never existed? The radical question to ask, but sometimes is something. I was talking to someone whose, uh, severe brain cancer. I don't know how long she's going to live. A wonderful experience. Now you're the center of this beautiful, loving her community. Your family and friends are now actually coming and say how much you mean to them. If they'd only said that before. And sometimes we do need the cancer. We do need the tragedy to actually to inspire ourselves, to express our love and our concern, our kindness and compassion, our selfishness. But maybe there is a reason for such things in this world. Sometimes it is the suffering, the so-called tragedies, so-called difficulties, which actually inspires something inside of us, something which we're too lazy to to really generate except in times of difficulty. Perhaps there is a reason for these so-called tragedies. And there is. And you see it. It brings out the best in humanity. It brings beauty into our world. And life goes along perfectly without any problem. I really doesn't encourage and incite the most beautiful part of human nature. That's why whenever there is climate change, economic disaster, when these so-called things go wrong, there's also many things go right as well. It's never all tragedy and tragedy. There's always a beautiful heart and beautiful edges. But if you are there and see, it is strange, but it's there. I remember reading a long time ago, sort of a book about a person who was in Auschwitz. This was, I can't say this, I wasn't there. Can only imagine the horror. And the terror of such a price. He said that we still told jokes. We laughed. Many days we had a wonderful time together. When I read them, I thought, how can that happen when you're in a camp, seeing your friends and relations die every day and you could be called out the next day. How do you do that? It happened. It does happen. Human nature is amazing. It's difficult times. We can rise above things. And when things do go wrong in life, when life does suck. Human beings don't need to suck. Our attitude doesn't need to suck. As they say, we can't change the world. At least it's hard to. But we can all change our attitude and the way we look at life. It is possible to be like that person worthwhile, who can smile when everything goes all wrong. It is possible to be less demanding of life. To be more realistic and not to think that the politicians are making the mistakes. That why do they do such stupid things? And not to think that the the bankers were just so greedy. What would you have done if you had the opportunity? Why do we keep thinking? My husband is just so insensitive. Well, how are you insensitive to or not me? When we actually see what life is, we can change our attitude towards it. The whole path of spirituality is gaining a wiser, more accepting, more loving attitude towards life and towards people and towards the differences which we have. Yeah, we got these little differences and we do say stupid things. We do do stupid acts, but that's no reason why to hate somebody or to get angry at life. That's why that's. I was actually taught. No one can make you angry. Only yourself. No, I can make you hate. You allow yourself to hate. You allow other people to upset you. You allow the dog to spoil your meditation. You allow your husband to spoil your marriage. You allow the telephone to spoil the beautiful story. Just a telephone when it does. Oh, there's so many people in this room. There's always gonna be one person who forgets. It just is not a big thing anyway. It's just a telephone. What's the big problem about it? We're not going to shoot you. Not until afterwards, anyway. So when we don't get upset and angry about things, we don't allow other people to upset it. Again, one of those great insights. Why allow other people to control your happiness? Well, there are other people who upset you. They can say whatever they want. They can do whatever they want. I'm not going to get upset just because you know you're being stupid. So why do I doubt other people to control you? Now let's extend that. Why do you allow life to control your happiness? So now you get diagnosed as cancer terminal. Why not? You do that. You get to die anyway. You just get reincarnated. You just go around a bit quicker than you expected. And you miss your plane a big deal. There's always another one going. And how you get on there somewhere. Ah, there you do, Mr. Pagan. You don't get to tidy because stay here. It's dead. There's always something positive in life. You've had many tragedies in your life so far. You've been divorced. You know, people die. People in love sort of dies in so many tragedies. You know, you've got married. That's another tragedy. But you've got through that. Why are you laughing? So you survived and you got through it all the time. At a time when there's a tragedy and a big problem. Sometimes we just obsess about it. We just overreact to things. Airs Sundays, swine flu. Big deal. It's only just terminal cancer. Big deal. It's only sort of divorce. Big deal. It's only. Can you do things like that? There's an old simile, and I love this simile because it's very easy to explain, especially in front of the camera. How big is my hand? Similarly, how big is my hand? I may say, was it four inches? In two inches? Yeah, I've been actually working. It's really interesting being a man who just was on the roof and digging in the trenches last week. It's been interesting being a man because, you know, next week I'm going to Titan hanging out with the Crown prince of Thailand or whatever. It's amazing that one day you're in the gutter, literally, and the next minute you're hobnobbing with royalty. Great life being a monk. I don't know where I belong, actually, I prefer in the dirt. But anyway, uh, I was saying there was. I say my hand. Oh. That's fine. Thank you very much for waving the hand back to me. Do you make mistakes? If you make mistakes and say something stupid, you know, that's sort of great. Saying if you make a mistake, say something stupid and people start laughing, you laugh as well. And then the world never laughs at you. It only laughs with you. Simple. Same to great. So you make a mistake. We all make mistakes or do stupid things. I've done my share of stupid things and it's not going to end. I'm going to make more stupid things and they're going to be on camera. You can actually get action Brahms bloopers later on. But anyway, the hand. Yeah. How big is my hand? And again, it's where you put your hand. Is what? How big it is. Because when my hand is right here, it's so big I can't see any of you. I can't see anything of the world except my hand. Is it my hands problem? No, it's where I've put it. I'm just far too close to it. I should put it where it belongs. At the end of my arm. Now I can see my hand. But I can also see all of you. And I can see the. The lights is actually the Buddha statue outside. This perspective is about death and dying. It's not. The dying is the problem. You got it in the wrong position. Yeah. You're dying. We're all dying. Well, what else is happening? Put it where it belongs. It's not the biggest thing. Get perspective, for goodness sake. Swine flu. Can't say anything else but swine flu. Should I travel today? Oh my goodness. I shouldn't go to Thailand. I'm going to get swine anyway. But no swine flu. But no chance of you getting it. This is so small. So, you know, divorce, death, retrenchment, climate change. How are things going to imagine how many tragedies are going to get you? If you actually survive swine flu, then you're going to get done by the economic crisis. It survived the economic crisis. You'll probably get cancer because cancers are on the rise. If you don't get cancers, then all these migrants in boats are going to invade and take over Australia. If that doesn't get you something else, we'll see. Is a very dangerous world, isn't it? No chance of getting. Got a very small. So just look at life in proper perspective. It's an attitude problem. Suffering. That's why you can get people who don't suffer cancer, who get divorced, who get his pains and disappointments, who can actually laugh in the greatest of tragedies. How can they do that? How come you just lost the person you love the most and you're at peace? How come you know you've got this terrible disease and you're hurting very badly, but you don't complain. How come you've lost your job? But you're laughing? How can you do that? You've seen people do that. They do that because they understand the simile of the hand in the attitude. There's more to life than just the tragedy. And we can expect that to be part of life. We expect that people will die and leave us. It's part of life. We expect economies to go up and go down. We can expect sort of wars to happen and then wars to stop. We can expect people to do stupid things and do some very smart things. You can expect yourself to do some really, really stupid things and some very, very kind things and sometimes some selfish things. There are human being. But don't feel proud when you do something wonderful. And don't feel guilty when you do something bad. It's just you being you. What do you expect? Then? You can be at peace with yourself. You'll be at peace with life. You can understand and accept things, and then life does get much better. Life will get so much better when people are not struggling so hard to change it. Actually changing the wrong things, changing people, not things. Being kind to people and get people more accepting of themselves instead of having economic development or material prosperity. Prosperity. This is the development of the heart and the inner wealth of peace, inner happiness and the ability to enjoy simple things. You can enjoy simple things a long time ago. So why do we have to worry about economic crises? So you get retrenched. You have no job where you can actually have a sleeping on a Monday morning. Why isn't it wonderful? You don't have to go to work and you don't. You got no money. You don't have to bother going to the shops. You can't afford it anyway. You can save so much time. There's so many benefits. No matter what happened. And if you keep that positive attitude and you can change attitude. So if ever you're suffering, it's not life support. Don't blame your husband. Don't blame your wife. Don't blame your kid. Don't blame the government. Don't blame the economic crisis. Don't blame swine flu. And please don't blame your monk. Nothing to do with that. It's just your attitude is wrong. What do you expect? Low expectations. Game expectations in life. In line with life. And then we meet. We can love life. Loving life. Open the door of your heart to life unconditionally. A wonderful word. Unconditional love means loving life as it is loving your partner as they are unconditionally and loving yourself as you are stupid, sometimes wise, sometimes saying silly things, sometimes being lazy, sometimes being energetic. To love yourself as you are. Can you see how it all fits together? Making peace with yourself. You can make peace with your partner. You can make peace with the whole world. You can be free if you want something else. If you just want. Right. That's a great name. If you want the formation to go so perfectly when it goes wrong, you really suffer. When he actually made peace with that. You say, I tried my best. You just go and have a nice rest. Sleep soundly when everything is going all wrong. Now that is a sign. So when it says how that taxi said if anyone says life sucks, then two it must have meant I never saw what was on the bottle. It must have said send him to a local Buddhist centre on a Friday night. Thank you for listening. Anyone got any questions or comments or complaints about tonight? Yeah. Yeah it is. I mean, kids do have another. Are you saying they, uh, have that, uh, chain childcare that the kids had to fish for dinner? And the fish fell on the floor and everyone was rushing around. Other fish was on the floor, and for them, the trouble was having fish. Yeah. People think anyway, there's not a problem having fish. Okay. Reason why human beings make more problems is because we get too much complicated. We lose the simplicity of life. Human beings think too much, and we're actually conditioned to be complainers. To be thought finders. And we're always fighting for what we think. That that's actually what we call the management training. What is the manager but finding faults and fixing them. And so we got on our way to looking for faults. And now we look for snow in our partner. That's why you can never find a perfect one because perfect ones don't exist. Believe me, they can't find a perfect partner. Then you want to find a perfect, you know, society or meditation to come to. And you come here. And after a while now, I don't notice anymore. It's not perfect enough. He goes to the the church next door or something. Then you go to the mosque, then you go to the synagogue or whatever. I don't know, you don't find it perfect, you know, and then we don't find ourselves perfect enough. We're finding fault with ourselves. That's the worst thing, because that means you can never be at peace with yourself. You know, it's something to fix up. You know, we're managers of our own life, and that's how we've been trained. Instead of, yeah, it's okay, the time to be a manager, there's also time to be an appreciator. That's one of these stories. I remember when I was working very, very hard. I said, you should start this again. Working very, very hard. And in the weekends coming up here to teach, you know, 365 days a year. I know how to take two weeks off in the range to be working really hard. I made a resolution for a while because every time I went back to my monastery, the first years I was in Napa, I was looking at all the things which were wrong, which needed to be done, and fixed up all the gutters which needed to be cleaned, all the roads which had to be swept, or the the additions which needed to be made in the buildings and all the things which needed to be fixed up. And I realized I was just being a grinder, and other people would come to the other monastery and say, oh, this is a beautiful monastery. It's so wonderful. I said, what kind of seal? The the leaves which are on the path should be swept, and all the gutters, which are full of all the things which are falling down. Not that I realized that they could see something which I couldn't see. I was living in the place that was the abbot of the place. I wasn't seeing it in the same way a visitor saw it. I can't see his beauty. I could just see the things that need to be fixed up. Because I was always the abbot. Every Monday morning for a couple of years, I decided Monday mornings I'm not a visitor. I walked around the monastery and tried to see it, as you would see, if you walk in there, see all the beauty and the wonderful things, instead of seeing all the things which need to be fixed up. So it wasn't for finding I was appreciated. It's a great little exercise for a couple of years. Like look at your partner or your mother, your mother, your daughter, whatever you've got to live with in your life, even in your house, instead of seeing all the things that need to be fixed up, I appreciate you've got a wonderful house, a nice little cozy place you can go back to. It's nice now you've got a nice friend, a partner, whatever. Yeah, they're not the best, but, you know, they're good enough. They'll do. And you look at yourself and say, you know, it's not the best. I'm stupid and do really crazy things. And I've made a lot of bad karma in my life, but it's good enough. It's wonderful. Unconditional appreciation of yourself. Now, when I started teaching, I want to get everyone enlightened, and I gave that up a long time ago. They know just love people who they are. In other words, you got unconditional acceptance. It's time for time when you're being an abbot, but most of the time you just feel like a visitor. But don't be the boss of your life, your friends, your life. That's unconditional acceptance and love. Kids are good at that.