Episode Transcript
Don’t Be A Sicko! By Ajahn Brahm
So I'm thinking what to talk about this evening. I've got to talk about being sick and the and the Buddhist attitudes to being sick, because it's something which happens to each one of us from time to time. You can't stop it. It just happens. I'm not that sick. So I'll say this with a bit of trepidation, because what happens sometimes when a man says this sick is everybody goes to the chemist and gets you some medicine. And once they've got the medicine, they give it to you and say, actually, and you must take this, you will take it, won't you? You have to take this, and they won't let you go until you promise you will take it. And then the next person comes up and gives you their medicine. You have to promise to take this as well. And after about half an hour, an hour or so, you've got about 20 bottles of medicine which you promised to take. And I do keep my promises, and I take all that medicine. It makes me really sick, which is one of the problems of being a monk. But nevertheless, being sick, first of all, is one of the great teachings of the Buddha. He once said, and it's the essence of the Buddhist attitude to being sick. Even if the body is sick, the mind does not need to be sick. So as a meditator, as a monk, as a Buddhist, you should be able to separate your mind from the body. Because the body is one thing, the mind is another, and the sickness stays in the body. It doesn't stay in the mind unless you make it. And if you allow the sickness to go to the mind, then you become a sicko. And that's not a nice thing to be. But what do I mean by being a sick? I mean having the illness go into your mind. This is where I have this sickness which you have no matter how profound it is or not profound, it is by being able to separate that there's just a body. It's just feelings, that's all. So this is actually where we use Buddhist mindfulness whenever you have any illness actually to see what truly is going on. One of the great things about mind meditation is we develop this ability to look within, not to go somewhere, not to get rid of anything. What I said in the beginning to be more fully where you are. So when you're sick, you don't try and get better. In this moment. I don't try and get rid of the pain or the ache or whatever else it is, but to go deeper into it, go right into the middle of that sickness or that cold, or that lack of energy or that fever or whatever it is, to feel it more fully. Now, the mistake of most people is whenever they have a sickness, they try an escape and they would take sort of painkillers or they they go and just watch a movie, or they just try and dull themselves out with sleepiness, or sometimes they try and fight the sickness. Now what a waste of a great opportunity. Well, we fight that sickness because if we fighting that sickness and trying to get rid of it, we're not learning about some of the most important lessons of life and the most important lesson of life. Somebody asked me today, suggested the talk this evening should be the meaning of life. This is an important lesson the meaning of life. You get out of a sickness and that is everything is out of control. That's the meaning of life. It's out of control. Which means that you don't want to be sick. But you are. You don't want the inconvenience, but you have it. It shows you how to be humble and how to work with life, rather than always controlling your life. One of the problems of human beings, and one of the reasons why we teach Buddhism, one of the reasons why people suffer is because they don't understand that you are out of control. And the sooner you realize that, the more peace you will have. In other words, you think you're controlling your destiny. You think you're controlling your health and sickness comes along and just shows you how out of control you are. You don't want to be sick, but there you are. You are. And the sickness comes sometimes at the most inopportune times. I remember once I was the great sir said, I come up with a rotten. I was visiting, and I managed to wheedle my way into attending his retreat. And it's just so rare to be able to attend a retreat as a senior monk. You always have to give them whenever you go anywhere, you're always working. And now I could slipstream another great monk and just listen to his teachings. And I thought, wow, I was really looking forward to that. And so 1 or 2 days before he was to give his retreat, I got the flu. And so I could not go to his retreat and I was so disappointed. Actually, the reason I got the flu was this because for years one of the doctors here was giving me flu injections. I had a flu injection at that time and I got the flu. So I gave up the flu injections. I never had the flu since. Monks are weird. Like they're not like all new people. So give them flu injections and get the flu. You don't have them and you're fine. But it was just so, uh, uncomfortable. So inconvenient when you had this opportunity to go and listen to a great teacher and you couldn't go. But really, the sickness was my teacher. The sickness was so down by the truths because it taught me. Just look, all your expectations. But looking forward to that great retreat and all those wonderful things I thought are and the reason why I suffered there because of my expectations. The point is, when you're expecting, as I say, my meditation retreats. You are expecting. You are looking outside. And that's not the way of Buddhism. The opposite of expecting is inspecting. So you should inspect rather than expect or I don't know if that's good etymology, but it will have to do because that's all you're getting. And I hope you don't look into the future or the past, which is expecting you. Look into the present moment where you are now, and if you look into the present moment, where you are now, it was actually the sickness was a great, humbling experience as all sicknesses are when you're young and you're fit and you're healthy. We have the, uh. What? Actually, the Buddha called the delusion, the madness intoxication of health. Because we think that health is our natural state. That's all we ever have. But always be healthy and fit. And when you get your sickness is it shows you that that is not the truth of life. That's not the meaning of life. That's not the way of life, but sickness is part of life. Now, that may seem a sort of banal thing to say, but to many people saying this sickness is wrong, which is why one of the little sayings I've mentioned here before, which is why that when people go to a doctor and they're sick, what do you say to your doctor? You say, doctor, there is something wrong with me. I'm sick. If you were really wise, if you've been coming to this place for long enough, you would actually go to the doctor and say, doctor, there is something right with me. I'm sick because there's nothing wrong with being sick. Who said it's something wrong? However, somebody. I've been saying that for a long time here. Somebody came up to me once and they said they were sick. They tried that out on the doctor, and the doctor was about to ring Galen's because a lot of times people don't usually say, that. Is something wrong with me, doctor? I'm sick. But the point is, if you really want to understand the truth of life, you know sickness happens. It's part of our life. And once we start to think there's something wrong with me that certainly is wrong, that sickness is some sort of pause or time out where we can't actually proceed with our life's goals. There's some sort of horrible interruption in what we're supposed to be doing, something we have to get out of the way as soon as possible so we can get back to real living again. Then we're missing a great point. Unless there was a teacher or something. If we really understand what it has for us, we would actually sometimes welcome and investigate. This shows that we're not totally in control. The biggest myth and delusion of human beings that we think that we're in charge and their sicknesses is big sign in neon clothing. So you are not in charge to this body does not belong to you. It belongs to nature. It is the control freaks who don't know how to handle that sickness. And when they get sick, instead of allowing some of the body to rest or allowing people to heal you, you just fight and do it yourself. You say, I'm not sick. Leave me alone. And by the time the doctor gets through, it's too late. So because of this, we should actually have a much better attitude towards sickness in our Western world to be able to sometimes accept and embrace it, and secondly, to learn from it. I would say that if we didn't fear sickness so much, there would be less of it. Simply because the fear gives rise to stress, that the mind resists the sickness, never really investigates it, but fights it, and the stress makes it worse. Because where does this come from? It comes from stress. The reason I've got a cold is because I've been working too hard and going to. Was it just after the last Friday night talk? I did the following morning to Sydney for an afternoon. Another way sat another talk and then started that evening to Melbourne, three days from 7:00 in the morning to just past 10:00 at night. Continuous talking meditation, teaching, 15 hour days. I should start a union. There is something wrong with working too long, but I enjoy it. I get fun out of it and then over to Canberra to give some more talks, and then back again to Melbourne, then back here. So I dunno how many talks I've given to since I was last here. Maybe about 15 or 16 or 17 or something, I don't know. So lots of work. So it's just because the body sometimes gets tired, you get a cold, but that's natural. So understanding it, stress causes illnesses and even all the cancers and other illnesses, high blood pressure, whatever else you get, so many of them are stress caused when they happen. Then what do you do? You certainly don't add more stress onto your illness or your sickness, because if you do add more stress onto them, they're going to make it worse. The pain is going to get worse. The sickness is going to last longer. So instead of adding stress onto a cold or onto a cancer, you enjoy your cold. I'm having fun feeling awful this evening. Something you're not feeling or for you're laughing. That's just because even though my body is sick, my mind will not be sick. You know, this is amazing things which I've learned in meditation. Just sometimes in these sicknesses too. Sometimes you allow your mind is to get caught up in that sickness and your mind is sick along with your body and is a person experiences because I think the first year has a month, or just after the first year when I had typhus fever in this hospital in Thailand. I've met in that story a few times in other contexts. But there was a time this typhus fever. So like typhoid, this was a third world country. At that time in Thailand, the northeast was a backwater of that third world country, and the monks ward was the most poor ward in that hospital. So it's just really the pits. And I remember several times, you know, when you have to go to the toilet, there's no bedpans. You weren't looked after by nurses. There's one male nurse, only half the day from you would actually work 12 hour shifts from six in the morning to six in the evening. But then at nighttime, there's no one there to look after you. So, you know, the first time that happened, the first night I was still had enough energy to talk to the monk next to me. Hey, the night nurse hasn't come yet. And he talked back to me, said to his, no night nurse, if you get really sick at nighttime, that's just bad karma. You know, that didn't really satisfy me at all, but just made me more scared. And I was really, really sick. And if you wanted to go to the toilet, I remember doing this because it's like awarded about eight beds on either side. And the toilet was at the end of the room, and you literally had to sort of stand up, just holding on to the bed frame. And then when you had enough energy, after 3 or 4 minutes, you just make a lunge to the other bed and just hang on there until you had enough energy to get on to the next one. It was about half an hour to get from one end of the room to the other. I'm not exaggerating. When you went to that toilet, you sat on it for an hour or two because you didn't want to do this all again. You want to make sure. I remember being like this for a couple of weeks. I think I was in about four weeks at that particular time that I remember having a really bad fever, because they didn't know it was typhus. At first they thought it was typhoid or some other illness. It was actually scrub typhus. The reason was because in this forest, in this little area, to start in what manner? Argentina is here. But now there are all these mites over there. They carried the the disease, whatever. It was a virus, but all the local people had an immunity for it. And so the government health department in Bangkok thought there was no scrub typhus in that area because they hadn't seen it before until the Westerners came in. And we all got it eventually. But the first year when I was one of the first ones up there, I said, what was the first one under the one of the first six who stayed in that monastery, and we all got it eventually. It was just a really heavy fever, like typhoid, because you were young and reasonably fit and you wasn't deadly. But sometimes it is so weak. But I remember this one time having a fever. And you know what it's like, you know, a couple of weeks with fevers, you feel so weak. And also just you feel depressed as well. And I felt so depressed one afternoon was so sore and so weak. I decided I'm going to do my meditation properly for a change. Because you know you can meditate properly. If you really put your attention fully on what you're doing and follow the instructions, or you've all had those instructions so many times, but a lot of times you're lazy, you sort of do it. But I really have to do it this time. I thought, I'll get a really put this, do it properly, and really got into a very deep meditation. What it showed me one thing that you can the mind can so separate from the body. I don't mean floating above your body. That's what you do when you're dead. And that might be a bit too late. But. But just go into a space deep inside where that pain, in that ache, that fever wasn't. There's a great thing to do. But at the time, I didn't really think about this. But I know from teachings of my teacher because he said that he had malaria for about three years, because most monks in that generation had to get malaria because they lived in a forest and there was no maybe no real mosquito nets, certainly no repellent. And so you just had to endure the mosquitoes, and sooner or later he got malaria. It was just common. It's just what you had to endure. I know Steve's fevers were really debilitating at three years of malaria, obviously, that you sort of get better after a while, and then when you felt a little bit under the weather, a bit weak, the malaria would attack you again because all those parasites were in your blood. I remember him saying how he overcame his malaria. He said one time he had a fever again and also was basically fed up with it. So he too decided to do a meditation. But the interesting part of his meditation, in sickness, was not to try and get rid of the pain. Not to run away from it, but to go in the opposite direction. What you might call reverse psychology said to go right into the pain, to go right into the sickness, not to get rid of it, but to know it from the very heart. And when he did this, he said he got right to the center of this fire. He he called it like a bushfire, which was gotten more and more hot. And he was in the centre. In a sense it was cool. But the fire, he could feel it, sense it just around him and it got really intensely hot. And then it stopped. It burnt out and then he was just so cold and peaceful and he never got malaria again. I know other people who have done that who actually any sickness or fever or pain, instead of trying to get rid of it, instead of actually trying to run away from it, they've actually gone right into the centre of it, almost face the demon, gone right up to the enemy, nose to nose, to find out exactly what you're running away from. And what is the problem? What is fever? What is pain? What is sickness to go into it rather than away from it? Probably. That's maybe one of the reasons my scrub typhus went. I wasn't really aware of what I was doing at the time and why, but I always got this suspicion. That was the day when the fever stopped and I started getting my energies back and started healing. The power of meditation is very, very great, and the reason is because you have a sickness, you have a pain. The mind is not sick, the mind is not affected, the mind is not afraid. And it can go right to the center of things. That's a wonderful thing to have as one of your resources for the times when you get sick. Because if you haven't been sick yet, you soon will be. I don't know how many times you have been sick, but you got many more sicknesses to come. Usually the older you are, the more quickly they come. When you're over 30, you're already going downhill. In my youth group some years ago, I asked these kids they were 13 and 14. They'll say, what's old? It's a great little thing to to ask kids, the 13, 14 year olds, maybe 15 year old, they're in the 12 year old as well. They decide to discuss amongst themselves. So they said anything over 30. Like that. And why aren't you all over the hill? The further down, the faster you go. So you always have these sicknesses and pains and things going wrong with you. But the one great thing about meditators, especially Buddhist meditators, is that they have another way of dealing with sickness. They can accept it, go into it, be with it, and be peaceful with it. Not only does their mind have more fun, they're more stilled and more relaxed with the sicknesses, but also they find the sickness doesn't last that long. Which is why, and I've been told this by our monks in California. We have a sister monastery called Abbey Aguirre just to the north of San Francisco, and they told me this one. I saw nothing in England a few years ago. It is true, if in United States with this huge, um, health costs, such as to get a health plan, cost a fortune. But if you can get a letter signed by, say, a Buddhist monk or any other authorized teacher, that you're a meditator, you get a great reduction in the money you have to pay for your health cover. You get a reduction in health premiums. If you can get someone to say you're a meditator. And that's true. So I really think because there's a big shakeup of the medical system here in Western Australia, I think the medical depart of the health department should be subsidizing this place. We are good for health, and I'm not saying that just lightly. We actually save the government, both the federal and state government, thousands of dollars, thousands of beds, thousands of doctors and nurses. Time by teaching you how to meditate and be happy and be still with your citizens. So if there's any representative for the health department here, please let us know how we can make a submission for a grant. But the point is, it's true. In in California, you do get a reduction in the money you have to pay for your health cover. So why is that the case is because if you can learn how to be at peace and investigate that sickness, number one, because you're separated from your mind doesn't get upset. You my doesn't tense and get stressed. So it means you're not adding to the sickness. And number two, simply by being peaceful and being still, you fight. Very often the sicknesses vanish. So few times in my life. They're just. It's amazing. Just I already mentioned that one time when I was had the fever. Another time actually, it wasn't actually meditation, but it showed me another important way of dealing with sickness because I remember as a student once I just moved. After finishing my time up in Cambridge, I went up to Durham University in the north of England to do the teaching course, and I just moved into this farmhouse. I got a terrible cold and I'm not usually lazy, but that day there's no way I can go to lectures. Nobody other students in the house and they were sharing a house. They all went and I just stayed in my bed feeling really awful. Couldn't even get up to make a cup of tea or do anything. You know what it's like. You just feel like death just made the Grim Reaper come into my room. Now come, come, come take me. You feel awful. But there was a knock on the door and I was the only one left in the house. And I said, go away. I knew it wasn't the Grim Reaper. Otherwise I'll let him in. And they kept on knocking and knocking. So actually I sort of got up and I opened the door. There's a delivery man. Because I had this stereo system in those days. If you like music, you have to have a stereo system. Amazing how many bits and pieces you have to put together just to play a record. No iPods in those days, but it was the one which I said to myself from my home. I just moved into this place and it finally arrived and I thought, wow, great. And I didn't realize what I was doing because I was so excited and I took the whole thing up to my room. I am packed it, put it all together. It took about half an hour when I put my first record on, which was Jimi Hendrix, because I used to like to be Hendrix, and as soon as it started playing Voodoo Child, I remembered I have my my coat had completely gone. My eyes were watering, I had no cough and there was no stuff coming out of my nose. And it was amazing. It was like a sign. It was like this. Uh, what is it like as a miracle? Did you ever know that Jimi Hendrix would actually perform miracles? But obviously what was happening, it was just the happiness and excitement took my mind away from the sickness and it all healed. And I was actually remarkable to see how sick you were and how half an hour later, you're completely free. And it didn't come back. And I must admit, I didn't sort of immediately sort of stop listening to the record and go to lectures. I stayed there and listened all day. But the point was, I got rid of the sickness, and I realized that one of the reasons is like meditation is when you have happiness. So then the body relaxes. So a happiness, peace that is one of the great antidotes to sickness which Buddhists use. So if ever I go and see anyone who's sick in hospital, I make them laugh. I tell them jokes. So the last thing you should do when you go and visit someone in hospital is to make them feel miserable. That makes sense. Sickness worse. And how do you make them feel miserable? You ask how they're feeling today. So visitors should be banned from hospital until they've had some, uh, courses on visiting people who are sick in hospital because you want to uplift them. You want to give them happiness because when you give them happiness. Apparently there was this movie called Patch Adams. I remember that because apparently the Buddhist Society ran a fundraiser where they took people to see that Patch Adams. Apparently all he was, he just made people laugh. Uh, that cured the sicknesses. If they cure their sicknesses, they handled their sickness much better. Why does that happen? This is, sadly, meditation. Because these days, having taught meditation for so many years and looked at my own body, what happens when you have peaceful and happiness gives you that peacefulness. The body opens up the channels of energy in your body opened for those of you who for the Chinese system of medicine, that she has a chance to be unblocked. In the Indian type of medicine, they don't call it chee, they call it winds. Water goes through the body. That's actually how the Buddha described the body, the sicknesses. So the winds going through the body get blocked or they get unbalanced. So actually you feel this sometimes if you really relax and you allow sort of meditation to to make the body really still, you don't interfere with the body. You leave it alone. You start to feel things start to flow through your body again. Things which were constricted open up energy start to flow. Which is why what happens in meditation sometimes during retreats so people get hot spots in their body. When this happened, first happened, I was looking at my own experience and I recognized exactly what was going on. During the last retreat last November, a lady came up to me and her interview period. I'm not sure if she's here now. I can't remember exactly who she was. She said that she was meditating and her whole back and shoulders got really hot burning. And my first question to her when she said that, have you got a back injury? And she laughed, how did you know that? As I'm Brian has been reading my mind, so no, you just told me. Because what happens when you get into a reasonably deep meditation, reasonably peaceful, just enough to let go and not interfere and hold the body, which is what stress means when you really let go and allow the body to just relax. You open up those channels and you'll find these entities in the body. They will flow to where is needed. And for her, she had a back problem, shoulder problem for a long time. And that's where all that energy went. It got really hot and warm. I said well done, you probably feel so much better. Said you've been reading my mind again. How do you know that I haven't? It's obvious cause and effect. Whereas the energy goes up there, you are going to feel much better. It may not be able to cure it completely, but you are going to feel much better. Things have started to heal themselves. Because I've got incredible faith with the body's experience to heal itself. If you'd only give it a chance. In most cases, the exceptions are the karmic diseases, where it's just some really strong karma from the past. You can't do much about that. But for most sicknesses, if you can just really relax, the body will heal itself. I've seen that living in forests, in wild places. If any dogs or cats, jungle cats, elephants or down in serpentine, any kangaroos, if ever they get sick, they just go to a bush and they just lie underneath it. They really relax because what they want to do is just give the body the maximum chance of healing itself. That's nature. Unfortunately, we've lost that nature. When we get sick, we worry like hell. We tense up, we add stress to the stress which is causing the disease and the stress of the discomfort as well. And because of that, we make the disease much worse. So if we can learn how to just relax a little bit more and be at peace with the sickness is not wrong. It's part of life. This comes because we've been controlling. It teaches us not to control. We should learn the lesson. Don't try to control the sickness. Let go. Be with it. Relax with it. Open up to it. Now, chances are it's going to go very quickly. That's one of the reasons why I'm giving this talk was because was it on Wednesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning I was in Canberra and that's a very cold city. It's minus two that morning. And the last time I was in Canberra about 12 years ago, I also got a cold when I was there. It's tradition to get coals when you go to Canberra maybe. So on that particular occasion, I was going to give a talk at the Vietnamese temple that night. This was quite a few years ago and the people who were looking after me, they decided to take me to this monastery about two hours to the north. So we had to leave really early in the morning. I should have said, don't take me, I feel awful, I've got a terrible cold. But they insisted and I was a bit too soft, so they took me to this place and they took me walking around all the day they had the meal. We had to talk afterwards. Walking around, I felt really awful all day and they wouldn't let me go early. And so by the time I got back, there was ten minutes before I had to give the talk. I never even had time for a shower. You've been going since about 7 a.m. in the morning, and it was about 10 to 7, and all these people had already turned up to listen to me, to give the talk. It was advertised and I felt just really awful, and so was someone else around. And I said, you give the talk, I'm going to bet you know what it feels like sometimes. But there was no way out. So I asked for a cup of tea, maybe with a caffeine will help. And they gave me very weak Chinese tea. It's not going to help. That's why I don't like going to the Mahayana temples. You get Mahayana tea, you go to Sri Lankan temples, you get Sri Lankan tea, which is called Theravada tea. Very hard. I was only joking, but I got this very weak tea and it didn't do anything. And so there it was, 7:00 and all these people were waiting for this talk of it advertise in the press and everything. And I gave one of the worst talks I've ever given for half an hour, because every time he started talking, he had to blow your nose. If you weren't blowing your nose, you were coughing. And it really spoiled the flow of the talk. You know, everybody else had to wait until I wipe my nose. And so it was a terrible talk. I couldn't keep a enough flow of thoughts going, so it was really disjointed. People were just really getting really fidgety. And so it was supposed to be a talk for an hour. I gave it for about half an hour, 25 minutes. I said, let's meditate now. So I stopped the talk and said, we meditate. And people agreed because lawful talks. I meditated just for half an hour when I came out from half an hour. Then I gave the talk for one hour. Perfect. Just really smooth. Great talk. But the best thing about it afterwards, because the people who told me, they said, oh, it's amazing. How'd you do that? Because what they were noticing was there's no sneeze, there's no coughing, just a perfect, like, healthy atom bomb. This is the power of meditation. Because I had to do that because I knew that all these people, I didn't want to disappoint them, but that's what it had to get into deep meditation to get so peaceful. The cough and the car will disappear. It's amazing to be able to do things like that. Yeah, you do that because you have to, because people, they're expecting something from you. I don't know how that works because you get so still and so peaceful and also happy as well. Happiness is part of relaxation is part of it. Exercise. And when you're happy, you're naturally relaxed. When you relax, you should have natural happiness. Some of the sign of relaxation is to be happy. People aren't happier, always naturally tense. If they don't laugh, they're really stuck inside. So when you relax, you're happy you're loose. It's then that all these energies can come into the body, that things can balance and you can heal yourself, get rid of these problems, like sort of having a sickness. So not only was it very good to be able to do that as a monk, so you can give a talk when you're supposed to be giving a talk when you felt really awful, but you also learned a lot about this body and its mind and how you can deal with sicknesses. So whenever sickness happens. See if you can just let it go. Allow it to be. Don't fight it and bring up some joy and happiness with the sickness. That's a test for you because it goes against the grain. Everybody comes up to you said, oh, you poor thing, you must feel terrible. And that's one of the worst things you can say to another person. This lady got this out. You're so lucky you got sick today. No, what that really means is actually getting to look at sickness in a different way. Making peace with it. Relaxing with it. Following what the Buddha said. Even though the body is sick, the mind does not need to be sick. Her mind could be happy if another body is in pain. The mind can be energetic even though the body is incredibly weak. The mind can be polite even though the body is in pain. You can do this. I know because I've done that several times. You know how to do it just with the training of the mind in peace, knowing what the mind is, knowing what the body is, putting energy into the mind and leaving the body alone. Relaxing the mind. Relaxing the controller, the doer, the fighter. That's why one child's great teacher. That young man he was. Once they had one of his great disciples. Very tired people. He noticed among Jim Harbaugh, who was one of the great senior monks in Thailand now. And when I went to visit that temple years ago, this was a teaching which, as a boy, gave especially for me, because he'd only give a talk sometimes and got everybody together. And he wanted. I know he was wanting me to listen to this because after giving the talk in Thai, he asked one of the senior Western monks who translated form. He didn't realize I was fluent in Thai, but his time understood everything which was being said. And the story was that when this man was a very young monk studying with agile man, there was authority. And Charles teacher and Jim Harbaugh also had malaria. Everyone call it. And then when in the middle of a fever, when it came time for the chores, he also got the broom up out and started sweeping in the middle of a fever. He was a tough guy, I made it. Those monks were really tough. So even if you got malaria, he wasn't going to stay in his heart. You got out of the room and slept with everybody else, just with perspiration falling all over or from his face. When the teacher saw this. He sort of told him, you stupid monk, that's not the right thing to do. You actually called him a Yogi, a Hindu Yogi, not a Buddhist. That was his idea. He said, you're a fighter. You're a control. You're trying to suppress this thing. So the way of Buddhism is to investigate. There's actually very fascinating to hear that from a great monk, Jim Harbaugh, because actually, my ball was actually pointing out his own stupidity in a time a long time ago. And he was doing that as a lesson for everybody, but especially for me at that time. Because why I said translate it for this Western monk, me who just come to visit. And there was a case, this great master of our tradition was saying, when you get a sickness, do not fight it. That's not the way of Buddhism. Investigate it. Go into it. Understand it. And in that investigation. In that going into it, there you will find freedom. First, to get the mental freedom from the sickness. Even though the body is in pain, even though it's got a fever, even though it's burning with malaria, even though it's got a flu or a cold or pain or whatever else it is, you go right into it and having got into it, you understand it with the understanding comes as freedom. You understand the meaning of that great teaching of the Buddha. Though the body is sick, the mind does not need to be set. It can be completely free and separate from this body. You can know the pain, for the mind doesn't react to it. It is painless or just a feeling when actually you go into the sickness. Right. Sometimes I'm looking at the feeling in my throat now because it's all inflamed. You can feel that. What type of feeling is it? Sometimes people, you have to do this when you go to the doctors. So what does it feel like? Can you really give a word of description to these feelings of aches and pains in the body? Well, sometimes you say it's like feel scratchy or itchy. But the trouble with those labels, and this is one of the reasons why we try and get rid of those labels in meditation. If you give it a label, say it's a scratchy feeling in your throat. Then actually you change the physical feeling to meet the description, to meet the label, because people paid too much importance to labels. The feeling which I had in the beginning, if I called it scratchy, now the feeling appears scratchy, not the original feeling. You actually bend the feeling to fit the label, rather than use the label to give an indication of what you really feeling. That's a psychology of the mind. So that's why it's best not to get these labels. If you have some sort of sickness and they give it a name, then you look in the web to see what that means and all those symptoms suddenly come. It's a danger with sickness because psychologically, once you know you've got this sickness and you believe in it, you bring up all those symptoms is psychology. Any hypnotherapist would know that. That classic case where this guy was hypnotized and the hypnotist said, you and I'm now going to touch you with a red hot nail, and you touch this poor guy. The guy screamed in pain for being burnt and a blister came up from his arm, but everybody else said it was just a nail at room temperature. It's a classic experiment not to be repeated, obviously, because you don't want to burn people, but the point was that there was a room temperature being touched on somebody's arm. But because they were hypnotized, made to believe that that was red hot, not only did they scream was maybe understandable, but even a blister came up from the the skin as well, just as if it would have been red hot. The mind is that strong. That very often we create those symptoms and there's no difference between the symptoms we create and the symptoms which come naturally. So that's why sometimes it's not such a good idea to give names to all these sicknesses. I know that doctors sometimes have to do this for the best reasons, but sometimes I think any doctor would probably say there's no two. Cancers are the same. You may put them into sort of categories as similar, but never the same. No, two colds are the same. No two feelings in your body are the same. So be careful. When we label these things go. With the label comes all the other symptoms and expectations that we live up to, that we bring the other symptoms in there. So in this particular case we understand is how the mind can affect the sickness. But if we separate the mind out, sickness is one thing, the mind is another. So this is actually where when if we learn how to observe properly, without fear, without labeling, whenever we do have a sickness, we can actually watch those feelings in the body. Just be with them. Don't give them a neighbor. Because if we give them a label, usually we get into fear. And the fear gives stress and it makes a whole thing worse. So if I've got a feeling in the throat because of sore throat, you go to that feeling. Don't give it a name. Be with it and allow it to be. When you don't call it painful. When you don't call it sickness, you just call it feeling. Then you don't tense up. When you don't tense up. It relaxes when you relax. The energies of the body, the winds, the G, whatever it is, have a chance to flow there and the whole thing fills up. You have to relax it first of all, to heal it. So this is why be careful of those labels which we give in times of sickness or pain. Once we give them those labels, the tension, the belief makes it much worse. Which is why that when I was at that university once, because I was training to be a teacher. A science teacher that we asked. We begged, can you please get a GP, a doctor, to come in and give us half an hour lesson on first aid? Because if in some sort of laboratory you know what kids are like, they don't change. Sooner or later, someone's going to knock the bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid onto their friend, or somebody is going to put something into electric and burn themselves, or someone's going to electrocute something. Or rather, there's there's no kiss being kids. There's some dangerous stuff. This is only a matter of time. No matter how safety conscious you are. What do we do? And I remember this one advice of this doctor, which he gave me, and I'm sure anyone in first aid would appreciate this. He said, look, no matter how bad it looks, no matter how much blood there is there or how very much flesh is birds or whatever, always tell that person that who's just been injured. Are you all right? So these small things, he said, lie, please lie to them. Because the worst thing to say to someone who's sick is, oh, you look terrible. Oh. Oh, look at that. All that blood. Oh. God, is that what happens when you say that? People believe it. They believe the labels. They believe your reaction, and they bring out all those symptoms, and sometimes they kill themselves out of fear. I was told that shock is the biggest killer in terms of sickness. And where does that shot come from? Fear was that fear come from from the labels. So this is why that when you are sick or you see someone else is sick, be careful. Have a bit of understanding about psychology and just how the mind can make so much, um, trouble with sickness. You can make it much worse by thinking about it. And so because of that, a person who trains a mind who has a bit of understanding of meditation can have a sickness even if you cut your leg off. Well, I've got a spare one. Whatever you think, whatever. It's just saying something like that. Making a joke of it means it doesn't feel so bad. And because it doesn't feel so bad, the chances are you can have a much greater chance of survival. Remember, there was that little Vietnamese boy who, um, cut off his. Was it two to, uh, his foot at his to to, um, hands on the accident with the basketball ring or something. And I read all those articles in the newspaper about him, and apparently they were praising his attitude during the time that, you know, he just severed two hands and a foot. And this little boy could be a great teacher to anybody who has any sort of accidents. But he had a really positive attitude. That's probably one of the reasons why he saved a couple of his hands. I think he had to have a prosthetic foot. But, you know, it's just a great little guy who said, you know, even though I've just severed three of my extremities, I can still be at peace and have fun because I concern about other people. So that sort of attitude is typical of someone who says, if another body is sick. Mine won't be sick. And those are the sorts of people whose sicknesses either get healed very quickly or don't last that long. Not so severe. So these are actually the Buddhist attitudes, which are straight from the time of the Buddha, which I was taught in Thai, because there's all sorts of sicknesses going along. And this is how the mind is, is so important in sickness. So even though the body said the man doesn't need to be sick, even if you're in pain, don't give it a label. It's a feeling, that's all. So don't add to the problem with your thinking. Don't try and sort of look for all the other symptoms because your your disease has got some sort of name and it's like, wow, this is what's going to happen when you have these sorts of diseases. Remember just how much the mind affects the sickness of the body, but you know how much it can affect the sickness of the body. At least that's something you can do. Let the doctors look after the body. But you look after your mind. Train it to sort of let go. Not to fight, but to investigate. And if at all possible, extreme sicknesses, extreme pains go right to the centre of it. Don't run away. Investigate. Go in. And when you go into the centre of these things, that's where you can really relax the whole thing and allow energies to flow. And you're doing the best possible thing for your sickness to heal yourself, lessen your pain. And even be able to allow that thing to disappear and perform. But please remember, if you try and control this. If you're doing this to get rid of the sickness, it won't work. It has to be an understanding. I mention this because too often people think that these sorts of talks is so that you can't be sick anymore, so you can meditate so you won't have any more sicknesses. Next time you're sick, you can use these techniques to overcome your sicknesses, to get rid of them. That's not what I'm talking about here. We're talking about is relaxing with them, allowing them to be. Investigate them. Don't worry about if they carry on or they disappear. It's not your concern. Your concern is to know these things, to be at peace with them. The fact they go away is a byproduct of the state of your mind. If you wanted to go, they'll stay. This is not a strategy for overcoming the problem of all the sickness in the body. It's a strategy for overcoming the sickness in the mind, for being at peace even when you're sick and be able to give a talk to, you know you've got a sore throat and feel very terrible for over 55 minutes and no one has left. See. So I don't just teach by words. I just taught by example. So thank you for listening. So anyone got any questions or comments about being sick? Any comments or questions about. Yes. And if that's what I was when I was, um, healthy. Only mentally sick. I think mental sickness is. How mental afflictions are those ones? If you're really, really mentally sick, that's a big problem because the mind is the forerunner of all things. That's it chief. So the point is that once you got into those mental obsessions and sicknesses, that's a bit of old karma. So it takes a much longer time to heal that one. The body is relatively easy to heal, but the mind is just so difficult to hear. The only way you can do that with healing the mind is a different ballgame. Is to make peace with whatever you're experiencing in your mind. So the obsession which you have now, the anger which you have now. So the the dullness which you have now, the depression you have now is the result of old karma in the Buddhist way. It's there. You built it up. You can't just suddenly wave a one and get it to disappear. Or you can do you can create the good karma, the causes for those things to disappear in the future. So with depression, please don't be depressed about being depressed, which is what happens. You know what it's like. I don't want to be depressed. I want to be like everyone else. I want to be like I am. I'm always happy. I don't like this. I think being depressed about being depressed. So that's why when people say, enjoy your depression. So be at peace with your depression. When you're in peace with your depression. You're actually undermining the cause of depression. The little energies which you haven't got. You're not fighting. You're not wasting your energies. You're making peace with your depression, allowing it to be. That's why one of the great ways of depression is like this too will pass. So just wait. Don't interfere with the process. It will heal by itself. Leave it alone. So this is actually with mental places obsessions. Sometimes you get obsessed about getting rid of your obsessions and it just gets really complicated. So what is your mind doing now? What is this relationship with what you're experiencing? Make that pure. Then you're making good karma. You're making good karma with your obsession. You're making good karma with your anger. You're making good karma. You're not trying to destroy it. You're making peace with it. And then you find, because you're making good karma in your future. And it doesn't take that long since the anger is gone, the obsession is gone. The depression is gone. You're building up the causes for it to go in the future by making this environment pure, kind, compassionate, gentle, all these things which we have in the heart of religions like Buddhism, compassion, peace, sentiments, letting go. You can apply them at any time. They're pure. They're powerful and they hear all sorts of things. If you give it time. So that's how you heal the mind. But it takes a lot of guts to do that. When you're depressed, leave it alone. Because it's scary being depressed. And when you're obsessed, you know you're just always still running around it. Never peace. Never leaving it alone. Obsession very often is like a flight and escape, a distraction. Does that make sense? Thank you for the question. Is a good question. I wanted to just focus on the sickness of the body today and how to deal with that. Any other questions? Anyone has it. Yeah. You know, it. It depends actually what you're doing. So that if you say what a good night's sleep, take a painkiller. If it's really very intense and take a painkiller, remember. Right. It's my teacher Adrienne. You just had this operation where part of the reason why he went into a coma, he had, like, water on the brain. I think it's what it's called. His liquid was being secreted, which built up pressure which destroyed one of his brain tissues. But they put a chance. It was like an operation I did in those days. So a shunts, which actually had a tube, actually tried to drain some of the the liquid back into his stomach's had his big chew, which was around from his brain down the side of his head. And he actually pointed out you could see the long scar that fed it through. And so as soon as they came out of his operation, he refused the painkillers. It's there. I just want to find out what pain is like. I know there was a guy and he was talk to him and it had no painkillers after the operation. I know the anesthetic of the operation was obviously there, but that were off. He didn't take anything else. I know he was chatting to you and talking to us as if he was on painkillers. And sometimes you wonder, had that guy do that? Because that would be enormous pain, because I had to know how many sort of incisions to get this tube through, and he'd been actually fed the right to his body life. I must have destroyed a huge amount of nerves. But guys like that, you know, they separate the mind from the pain. There's a feeling that some. People can do that. You can do that. But a lot of times it's fear. Ah, it's gonna hurt. Ah, it's gonna hurt and it doesn't. But if you know, obviously that someone like that and Chas was just a master of the mind. So if you're not up to that, you've got to be honest with yourself. Do you really, honestly think I'd take a Panadol, morphine or whatever? It's up to you. See what you can do. Any other questions here about dealing with sickness? Yeah. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I think if any doctor. I think a modern doctor, if somebody said had motor neurone disease when you were saying that things happen, they say this is what you would expect. I think the doctor would actually would always say, this is what's happened. This is what's probable. This is what maybe you can expect, but it's not certain because I think any doctor who's been in the business long enough knows that they're very often confounded. I don't know. Many of you are just talking about this guy some time ago. Many of the old people who've been coming here for years and years and know one of our members, Keith, sought. And when I first came here 21 years ago, he was supposed to die of cancer. He's still alive. The 3 or 4 years ago, he walked from his home in Carrington to a monastery to raise funds for something or other and is. Well, when I see him again, it's like a standing joke. I used to know life. Keith, you haven't died yet. And this guy just keeps going on. When he goes to the doctors. Is there now, you said no, I don't know what you're doing, but carry on a little while. You come in to see us. Whatever he's doing is completely confounded. The doctors. He's just one case amongst many. And sometimes the doctors don't know. This shouldn't be right. But I always loved this little quote. A GP in Sydney told me once because he he was a young GP, he was taking a year off because of stress. It's a very hard life being a doctor a lot of times because you're you're dealing with complaining people, suffering people all the time. And he was saying that he did his med school in rope in Salford Hospital in Sydney, and he always remembered the opening lecture when he was welcome to med school and straight from school into the university, and the professor who was about to retire. This very, very well known doctor, who was the head of the med school in his prominent hospital in Sydney. He opened his, uh, lecture to the students saying, welcome to this med school. 50% of what we're going to teach you in the next four years is wrong. Our problem is we don't know it. 50% it is. And I do if there's any doctors here. But I don't want to sort of demean your profession. But that's what science. Things always change so quickly. And it's at this time that, you know, we have the best possible ideas of what works. But in 20, 30 years time, I'm sure that much of the thing we thought works would be found to be woke. And even harmful. So a great scientist would always say that they don't really know, but they're going to do their best to have compassionate heart that wise. They call the best possible ideas, but they will never know. They should never realize or never think they've got all the answers. And so if they say this is what you to be expecting, it's a dangerous thing to say. Because what they expect very often comes true. They make it happen. So it should only be probabilities. This might happen, but it might not leave everything open. It's not. Miracles happen. It's just we don't know. I've seen many people and you've seen happen. They should have died years ago. They're still alive. It's not just Buddhism in Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, atheists. They all have miracles. No one owns miracles. It doesn't belong to any one religion or faith. Just what happens is sometimes. For some reason. There are. Other times it's just the people relax and things open out and I go, was this guy when I gave her a treat in Sydney some years ago when doing the retreat, you know, people are supposed to be quiet. This guy was making this credible noise. When it was breathing. And so, you know, in the summer, he left me a note. And the note was saying, can you please tell people to breathe quietly? Another disturbing meditation. And so when I read, I read out that note and said, look, the person is breathing loudly. He's got cancer of the sinuses. He told me at the beginning of this retreat, this is his last shot. 2 or 3 months is what the doctor said he had left, and that's all. And as soon as I said that, no one complained anymore. But the strange thing was that during the retreat, he says, you know, you know how I teach meditation, the same type of method of letting go of breath, meditation. And he said that in one of the interviews. He was meditating there the usual way, uh, breathing into his mouth because he couldn't breathe. Twizzlers. And he heard a pop. He could breathe through his nose for about ten minutes and then it closed up again. This is amazing. As incredible. The first time in months air could go up through his nose and out again there. Really? No, I was very surprised about that. But I just thought it was a bit too late and I thought he would die for about six months ago when I went to Sydney, he came to one of my meditation classes, said, you remember me? And said, no, I don't said I was that guy. I couldn't believe it because he was in remission and a great guy because he's been so close to death. He was really doing a lot of good things with his life, and he killed himself. I've seen many things like that in my life as a monk. So sometimes if you say it is going to happen, then you it will happen. If you believe it. So don't be stupid and say it's not going to happen. I'm going to live, I'm going to live, I'm going to live because that's the opposite extreme. You just you don't know. The future's uncertain. You must give yourself the best chance. Relax. Okay, so there we are. I have increased your longevity this evening. You come here. You've not only just listen to a good time to talk, but you will be healthier. And if you are sick, you'll be able to enjoy it and have fun. And you know how to look after other people who are sick. So that's practical Buddhism and being sick. Thank you very much. Now the adverts.
