Episode Transcript
Don’t Rush To Your Grave by Ajahn Brahm
On this horse. Heavy fighting right here on my rock. I tried to use Buddhist principles to address one of the problems of our modern daily lives. Uh, Buddhism is not just a theory which you read about and discuss over coffee tables. It's something which helps you become a happier, more peaceful person. The main framework of the Buddha's teachings is the Four Noble Truths, which I've rearranged to be the secret of happiness. That what actually is happiness? How to be happy, that we're sometimes unhappy. Why we're unhappy. The four noble truths and the reason why, which I express it in this way, is because when we understand that the problems of life are nothing to do with, you know, something out there, it's always our attitudes, the way we regard and look at life, which causes the problems, and that as such, it means that we can do something to alleviate those problems if the problems were inherent in just life itself. Then we'll be able to do nothing. We'll be really victims of the ups and downs of life. But because from the earliest of times, the Buddha and the enlightened monks and nuns, laypeople realized that that one cannot change the world. But one can certainly change the way one looks at the world. And that is enough to create the alleviation of the problems and difficulties as the way we look at things as a problem. And so I usually choose a subject on every Friday night and apply those principles to that subject so that we can live happier, more peaceful lives, not by changing the world, but by changing the way we look at it. And the problem this evening I'm going to talk about is very relevant to our modern times. It's excess busyness and why it is that sometimes people have rushed to get here this evening, and maybe they've got a rush to check the email when they get back home, and they've got a rush tomorrow morning to get back on the computer to catch up with all the work they should have lost, they should have done. And as always, catching up with just so busy people. And sometimes that we wonder, is this really what life is all about? Just being a busy person. And I know what I'm talking about because I do a lot. Just look at the newsletter and see when I get up to. But as a monk, you have a different level of, uh, resources to use. Because as a monk, even though that I have many responsibilities and duties. And if you don't believe me, just have a look at what I get up to. Some years ago, when I gave a talk in Singapore, I talked about this wonderful, beautiful attitudes of Buddhism peace, kindness, being in the present moment, not worrying about things. And someone said in Question time, that's all very well for you to say such things. You're a monk. You don't know what it's like to live in the real world. And I was not going to stand for that. I am a monk with attitude. So I said, listen to what I was just doing today. From the time I got up early in the morning, 4:00, I think it was. And just working all that time until that evening without any break. And this person got the microphone again and said, my goodness, I never realized that monks worked so hard until I heard that. I always thought that one day I might want to be a monk, but not now. I lost my. Brother. The point is that I do work very hard with lots of responsibilities, but there is little strategies which you use in order not to get stressed out with the duties you have in life. You only have to go and have a walk through any hospital to see how many people are struggling with cancers, how many people are getting divorced, how many people suffer guilt and depression? They can't stand their bodies, or rather, the bodies can't stand them and get cancers, can't stand their wife, their husband, they kind of understand themselves is the symbols or symptoms of our modern life. And these problems are on the increase, and they are directly related to the pace of our modern life and to the stress which many of us have to face, that it is a problem. But there is a solution, and a solution is an attitude problem which makes you far more efficient. You can get much more done without getting upset, without getting angry, without getting frustrated. So what a focus on this evening. The attitude problem. And the attitude problem is very much. Just one of changing the mind around to be able to have some rest. And the only way a busy person is able to have some rest is when they learn how to change the attitude from looking at what needs to be done instead, to look at what's already been done to what has already been achieved. There was a time after I took over being the abbot of Body Jhana Monastery. I was getting so busy working physically, working hard, building a monastery with my own hands, allowing the bricks and all of that, and at the same time just teaching Dhamma to all the monks, training them in the rules of discipline and in the teachings, and working so hard for money to. Friday. In my weekend I would come here to do more work, and I always remembered that as I was coming in the car from Serpentine to Perth, you'd pass all the people leaving Perth to go on a holiday. I wasn't going on a holiday. I was coming to work. And you work all Saturday and Sunday, and when there was a public holiday like New Year's, then you really had to work hard because everyone was free and they wanted to talk to the monk. So when everyone else was having holidays, I was really working hard. When everyone else was working, so was I. And so it was like that from Monday to Friday I'd work at my monastery, and from Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday I'd work here. I was holding down two jobs, not two jobs. Those are the early days helping out Dharma and then Buddhist fellowship in Singapore, and then Buddhist societies in South Australia, in Sydney and goodness knows where else. So it got to the point where I was going to get stressed out. And I remember going back to my monastery one Sunday evening, really tired, getting up early in the morning and taking all the work which I had to do and said no, enough. And I got into a habit for the next few months and every Monday morning, even though there was work to be done, led us to be written, telephone calls to be made, jobs to be completed. I got into the habit of every Monday morning after a cup of tea, going for a walk around my monastery, not looking at what needed to be done, but looking at what had already been achieved. There was a different way of looking that I saw, because I had noticed that all these people come to my mind to say, oh, what a beautiful monastery you have. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it so peaceful or so? Are you kidding? Look at all this stuff which still needs to be built. Look at all the gutters which need to be cleaned. Look at all the the paths which need to be swept. But look at all the things which need to be done. What do you mean? It's a nice, peaceful monastery. You don't know what it's like to be the abbot of the place, but I realised I was seeing it from an abbots perspective, and everyone else was seeing it from a visitor's perspective. So I decided to change my perspective and look at my monastery from the perspective of a visitor. I got the visitors mind, not the owner's mind. When I stop the owner's mind to change the visitors mind. Then I started to see the monastery, just as the way as everyone else sees this. A beautiful monastery there, and it is so nice and so beautiful. And the leaves which have fallen on the paths, so they make it look so sort of natural. And the gutters in the and the leaves in the gutters. Where else expect leaves to fall but in the gutters? That's where they belong, as we've got gutters for to catch the leaves, and also the rain as well. But whatever. I started to see it in a positive way. I saw all the things which had already been achieved, all the things which had been done, all the hard work which many, many people had done. And because of that, I appreciated my monastery because I could appreciate how much had been achieved. It was all right for me to take a rest. One of the reasons why we can't stop is because we see that there's so much to be done, and we forget how much has already been achieved. That is the way to take a rest, because sometimes we think we don't deserve to take a rest. There's too many things to be done. Let's get this out of the way before we take a rest. And as you all know, especially if you read my book. But I realize that not many people have read my book. Even those who have read my book don't remember it because we had a quiz night on New Year's Eve. And I found out just how many people haven't read my book, and how many people have been coming to this place for so many years. They don't know anything about Buddhism yet. My goodness. But anyhow, just I realized that I could rest. So much had been achieved. I deserved to take a rest. That's one of the problems. People don't understand that they need to take a rest. And in my little book, I mention a story that the only time in our society where people rest in peace is found at Calcutta or Fremantle or any other cemetery you care to go to. Because they're always there. A couple of times last week there you see engraved on the headstones R.I.P. rest in peace. Isn't it too late by that time? Why can't you, for goodness sake, spend some time resting in peace now when you can enjoy it? So it makes a lot of sense to give yourself some space, some time to rest in peace, to enjoy all that you've done so far, to give yourself permission to start, to be able to give yourself permission to stop. Realize you deserve it. And look at how much you have already achieved. So when you go back home tonight, when you look at all the dishes which are dirty in the sink, please also look at all the dishes which have already been cleaned and wiped and stacked in on the drawer or on the shelf and think, wow, I'm tonight I'm just going to look at all the dishes which have been cleaned and that's good enough for tonight. I'll do it tomorrow. Never do today what you can put off to tomorrow. All these people say you're never going to achieve anything that way in life. The whole planet is going to sort of stop. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the planet could stop for a little while? One of the reasons why people can't stop. They don't allow themselves to stop. They don't know how to let go because you're or as I keep on saying, control freaks, we think they fry. Don't work hard. If I don't do all of this stuff, then no one's going to do it. It's all going to fall apart. The whole thing is going to be a mess. But the truth is opposite. Usually what happens when people don't control, when they don't like, when they do let go? Things actually flow more smoothly. Apparently there was more power outages last week when it started raining. When the traffic lights don't work, when they stop, the traffic flows more freely. As I quoted, I mentioned this one of my favorite quotes somewhere in Israel. I think it was in Jerusalem. The doctors went on strike for a couple of weeks, and during that time the death rate in all the hospitals went down. It's sometimes makes you think that when we really get involved too much, we mess it up. So you are dispensable. You don't need to be at the controls. And in fact, sometimes when you're not in the controls, it does actually flow more freely without you. Now, sometimes that's a bit challenging for people. It takes a lot of courage and guts to actually to let go and to realize that you are dispensable. You don't need to always be pushing this thing along, but you find in life, if you don't trust other people, if you're always a control freak. Not only do you get stressed out and tense because you always have to be the one who does things, but also you find that you never trust anybody. Other people don't learn. And after a while, you have no one to actually to delegate authority to. Trust is important. It's almost the opposite of controlling. Controlling is done out of fear. And too many people are so afraid if it goes wrong. As a monk. I have this wonderful attitude. I don't care if it goes wrong. When I took over this job as being an abbot, I realized there were two possibilities. First of all, I was successful and got lots of monks coming to my monastery. What a wonderful thing that would be. Then I could actually serve Buddhism, do something good for the world. If I was successful, that'd be great. But I thought if I was a hopeless abbot and no one wanted to come to my monastery, and I gave terrible talks and people fell asleep when I started coming, and being an old tomato's on a Friday night and throwing them at me, and I thought, wow, that'll be wonderful, then I can stay in my monastery, be quiet and have a bit of a bit of stillness, and not have to worry about coming here every Friday night. That'd be even better, actually. There's my big mistake. By giving good talks, I should have really given terrible talks like I did when I first came here. But either way, I realized that nothing could go wrong. Whatever what happened would be okay. I could make use of it. I could look at the positive side of it. And so, because I never had any fear, there was no problems. What are you afraid of anyway? Sometimes, you know, you look. I look at all possibilities because. Okay, I'm going to make some list now. I thought I shouldn't do, but I'm going to. I've already started. I can't stop myself when I start. I've received an invitation to actually to go and give some talks. In Indonesia and in Bali there is a seminar in Indonesia and in Bali. I felt very sad for the violence, as many Buddhists in Bali who because of the the double bombings in that country, are just really suffering because the economy is shot. There's hardly any money coming into the island was based on tourism and now sort of they're in trouble. But people were saying there's a travel warning by the Australian government, you'll get kidnapped. I thought, wonderful, if I get kidnapped, then I don't have to come to Friday night talks for a few weeks. I can have a real rest. I can have a really nice meditate and who knows, if I get kidnapped, I might even be able to convert some of the terrorists into being good Buddhists. Who knows. So you can always look at the positive side of things. But the people invited me, guaranteed. So there's no possibility of that, which quite disappointed me. But never mind. Imagine how many stories I could come back to come back with on a Friday night. But anyhow, back to the thing. The point is, you don't worry about anything because whatever happens, you can always make something positive out of it. And this is like lacking in fear when you don't have any fear. You don't tend to control things. When you don't control things, you can let go and you don't have to work so hard. Hour after hour, making sure that everything goes perfectly. You're not a control freak. People who are run by fear become control freaks because the control freaks, they have to work so hard. Because they work so hard, they get stressed out and everything does go wrong and they think they have to control even harder. When you get this vicious cycle of fear, lack of trust, things go wrong and they have to work even harder. And this is a problem with our modern life. We're so driven by fear of what might go wrong that we control too hard. And that's in our relationships as well. People who have a partner and they're so afraid what might happen if that partnership breaks up because they have so much investment in that relationship. They're so afraid they control the other person. They're afraid of what they do. They don't trust them when they go out by themselves at night. And because of their fear, because of their control, the whole relationship becomes dysfunctional. It's not a happy relationship. It's not built up on this wonderful part of love called trust. The whole thing falls apart. The thing that we're afraid of happens. This is a problem with our life. Instead of thinking what might go wrong, we think of what might go right. The positive part of it. And this becomes so negative in our modern life, always looking at what might go wrong. Look at all the things which are wrong, all the things which need to be done and that mourn. Monday morning at my monastery, walking around. I wasn't going to be a control freak for at least 2 or 3 hours. Just enjoy the place as it is. Be appreciative of all the things which are already there. Not look at all my jobs which I had to do, but forget about all of those. Live in the present moment. Appreciate grateful joy. Peace. And because of that, that's an attitude which I developed. So whenever I do go overseas, I'm not afraid what my monks get up to when I'm away. I don't go ringing up every few minutes. Remember, there's this one guy here, he's not here, and I thank goodness. Otherwise he'd get embarrassed about this story. But he was one of these guys who was. He could actually, you know, astral travel and leave his body and go floating around visiting people and remember him telling me that he got this job up in one of the other cities of Australia? I won't tell the city otherwise. I give the game away who it is. And he got this job in another city in Australia. He was there on a contract for about 3 or 4 months. His wife was back in Perth. He didn't trust her. So every week he'd astral travel out of his body back to Perth and check up, see what his wife was up to. And his wife could actually tell he was around because he was sensitive enough and said, get out of here, I'm being faithful. But he didn't trust her. Imagine what that's like, having a partner like that. Especially they could astral travel because they could really find out what you really are up to. If any of you sort of, you know, can't afford a detective, I'll come here and I'll teach you through meditation how to astral travel so you can find out what you know your partner really does do on a Monday afternoon when you're at work. But anyhow, it's just a control freak problem, which, because of fear, it means that we have this dysfunctional relationship with our partner, with our children, with everybody, and even with our job. We can't trust, we can't let go, we can't allow things to run. I don't have that with my monks and leave them alone. I trust them. When you actually trust the person to do their very best, they usually do a much better job than when you're always on top of them trying to control them. It is all about what we call delegation. Being able to allow another person to do the job without looking over their shoulder all the time, telling them what to do as an abbot, as a manager of a monastery. That's something which I learned. You know, you learn because my teacher didn't just teach you like intellectual dharma. He made sure that you understood this, these teachings of Buddhism. You're in a practical way. So you could run your own monasteries, eventually be successful. You know, just even running a monastery is like running a family. So what he actually taught is have this beautiful, loving kindness towards everybody. And a loving kindness is something which is forgiving, which is encouraging, which is trusting. That's part of this beautiful thing of a human being called embracing the other person as they are appreciating them, not fault finding the opposite of loving kindness you might call like for finding seeing what's wrong with your partner, seeing what's wrong with your your job, seeing what's wrong with the government. Saying what's wrong with yourself is completely fault finding. And that's what I was always doing when I was walking around my monastery. Always finding fault, seeing the things which need to be be fixed. I was the manager. And managers are fault finders. That's what they're supposed to do. See the problems and fix them up. And that's why we get crappy control freaks. That's why we get stressed out. So instead of being a manager, the opposite of that, of being the fault finder, loving kindness, embracing, being grateful for the person you're living with, being grateful for yourself, being grateful whatever happens to in life, embracing life as it is. All of it, no matter what happens. This is a great thing about life. It doesn't matter what happens to you, you can always make use of it. Everything can be used in life. I learned this from my teachers over in Thailand when they said everything in the forest needs to be there, even the flies in the bush, and has been more flies this season than has ever probably been in many years because the weather is very changing, very strange this season. Instead of people saying, oh, there are too many flies in the bush, wonderful. There are so many flies. That means there's more birds. And I love the little birds in the monastery. It means it's one more wonderful waking up in the morning and see the dawn. Chorus at 430. Do you get up that time? You're missing a lot. The point is there that you can see the positive side in everything. You don't need to become so negative when you're not so negative. You don't need to control things so much. We don't control things so much. You can flow with things so more. You don't have to be such a manager, such a business person. You can let go and you find your company, your monastery, your family, even your body tends to flow more smoothly. It actually works. I should have been worked a bit harder before I came in here, because I had this article I was going to read out this evening, and there was an article from an engineering journal from the UK about this company, who won a prize. It won a prize for best business practices because it banned overtime. They said everybody goes home at 5 p.m.. That's it. And the reason I did this is because they realize that when people work too long, number one, they become inefficient. Number two, they get grumpy and angry. And politics starts in the workplace. People get upset, they start to leave, and they have to have this huge staff turnover. They always have to keep training new people to do the job. That is bad company policy. So. The directors of this company, they band over time. It was a company which was maintaining, uh, buildings, elevators, stuff like that in, uh, big buildings. Once they band, over time, the staff turnover plummeted to almost zero. People stayed in the job because they realized these bosses actually cared for their staff. They had time with their family every evening. They were happier, there were more efficiency, and the turnover of that company trebled in one year, let alone the profits. That's why it won the prize. It's not just theory, it works. The other quote I actually saw this on the plane going up to Penang, and I cut it out of the newspaper. I'm not sure if I should have cut it out of the newspaper. It might've been for the next person on the plane, but never mind, I did, because a great article simply about this, uh, Journal of Psychology, I think, was in the U.S., uh, University of California in San Francisco. Of course, they realize it's not just a successful person becomes happy. They say no happiness comes first and then you become successful. That was a big finding. They found that happy people who are happy first then become good at their sport. They become successful in business. They become good in their love life as well. And you should all know that. Who wants to marry a miserable person? Even happy people also become successful in the monk life as well. See? But the point was that that was showing that the happiness is also important in your business, in your success, in your productivity, in your ability to sell your product to your customers in order to run the business or whatever else you have to do, their happiness comes first. So how happy can you be when you're doing 15 16 hours a day when you're so tired and you're stressed out? How many angry people are there in the world? How many of you met this week? Why are they angry? So common that people come up to me as I did this evening. Every day they come up and say, why do these people shout at me? Why do they get so upset? Why did they swear at me? Why do they do this? The reason I asked that question because I've done nothing. I never did anything. But they shouted at me and they swore at me. They're upset at me. What have I done is unfair. And of course, you know the reason why that people get upset. They get angry. They swear, they shout. Nothing to do with you. It's because they are tired. Very, very tired. They're stressed out. I realised this the first time in my monastery in Thailand. I noticed that people would always have arguments. I'm talking about monks now. Monks have arguments. Sometimes the monks would have arguments. And I noticed after a while because maybe because I was a physicist before I started notice the the patterns. They'd always get angry that one day a week. And that was the day after we'd spent all night without sleep meditating. Once a week. Wait for. Go asleep. Meditate all night until dawn after dawn. Go under arms round after arms round. Have a meal and afterwards we can get a rest. But before we had the rest. That's where the arguments always started. And I noticed myself falling into the same trap one day when I noticed a couple of monks who were supposed to be sitting up all night like I was, and they sneaked off and they thought that no one saw them. But I saw them. They weren't going to get away with that if I had to stay up all night, I can't see why anyone else could sneak off. They. I wasn't going to stand for this. That wasn't playing by the rules. That wasn't fair. So I thought, I'm going to really tell those guys off, going back to their rooms and sleeping when I should have been up at night. That's really wrong. But I noticed that arguments would always start because of things like that. And the day after staying up all night. So I resolved I will not confront those scallywag, lazy, good for nothing monks until after I'd had my rest. But I was afraid I might forget. So I wrote their names down on a piece of paper to remind myself, to tell them off. To give them what for? To give them a piece of my mind. After I've had my list. I wrote it down, had a nice rest, and when I woke up after a rest, I looked at that piece of paper. And this is true. I thought, why am I going to say something like that? The poor monk is actually the reason I got angry was not because I thought they were doing the wrong thing. The reason I got angry because I was jealous. I wish I had the guts to have done that instead of being so proud. That's the reason why, when I realised what I was about to do, it wasn't worth it. So I threw that piece of paper away. And I never did scold those monks. But what I realised I would have got very angry and I started an argument. Some bad fitting in the monastery. Not because they'd done something particularly wrong, but because I was tired and I realised that that is a main cause for arguments. The main cause for problems and difficulties because today's people are just so tired. When people come on my meditation retreats, I tell them for the first three days, I want you to meditate flat out. Which means they're flat out on your bed. Sleep because you got sleep deficit. You're tired. Sometimes people don't realize how tired they are. That's why they have the word in in medicine, sleep deficit. People go to these holidays or these monasteries or retreat centers like mine. They spend the first couple of days and they're so surprised sleeping a lot. They just can't get up in the morning and they feel guilty. I say, stop feeling guilty. The reason you can't get up in the morning is because your body won't let you get up in the morning. It's got this opportunity to catch up, to rest, to be still and peaceful. Take it. Because of that sleep deficit which many people have. And why do they have that? Because you work so hard. You struggle so much to get by. There's so many things to do. That's why I retired. It's obvious. It's nature. Stop trying to be a control freak and seeing this. Not that's not happening. And think that you can be the super person who doesn't need to sleep. So because of that, you can understand sleep deficit. Tiredness is there. And that's why we get grumpy. That's why we get upset. You know, a lot of marriages will be saved if you just send your husband, your wife to the monastery. And I just put them in a room and tell them to sleep for 3 or 4 days. So they can get rid of their tiredness and relax. And they come out with, oh, yeah, you know, she's not such a bad girl. My wife after all. Yeah. He's not just a bad guy because when you're arrested, you don't tend to get negative. When you're not negative, you don't start arguments. That's where the negativity comes from. So you can imagine if you are someone who works with such a long period of time, you're stressed out. No wonder you can't hold a relationship together. While your kids sort of just. They don't like being around you. You're grumpy, you're negative, you're tired. And that negativity, it always eventually ends up in these physical problems. So it is in your interest actually not maybe in your interest but in other people's interest. Think of all the people that have to put up with you. So you give yourself a break. Give yourself a rest. If you can do that. You will find the truth of that philosopher, Blaise Pascal. I wrote this in the book saying all the troubles of man, he said, but he also meant all the troubles of women as well. All come from not knowing how to sit still. To take a rest. That's where the problems start, because we don't give ourselves a break. Well, that's one of the reasons why we teach meditation here, why meditation relieves stress. How does meditation relieve stress? It's not something magical. It's just giving yourself a break, giving yourself a rest, allowing the energies to come back into the mind so you feel bright, you feel energetic, and you feel positive and you're happy. So many people say that when you come to meditate and you go on the retreat, you go back. Such a nice wife, such a lovely husband. It's like a brand new model. You send it to me. And you get back all glasses, shiny and bright and happy and positive. So this is actually what happens. And the reason is because you rest, you give your mind a rest, you give a body arrest. And this is why we have to rest. Because it makes our mind happier, more positive, and then we become more efficient. And that's the wonderful thing about that company. They knew what efficiency was and how that their company could do better without the necessary necessity of so much stress in their life. So give yourself a break. Even that many corporations up in the United States, Sara was told they have time out rooms, timeout rooms for the senior executives. What for two rest? They have these timeout rooms where the mobile phone will not work. They have some sort of gizmos there or so. The message cannot come to any mobile phones. If you even if you have got it switched on, no one can contact you there. When you get in that room, you're on contactable for a long time. Now because of that. They have those things there because they know that their executives can work much more efficiently once they've rested. And it's important if you're going to be successful in your career, if you're going to your company is going to be successful, if it's going to have the competitive edge on today's cutthroat society, this is your Buddhist competitive edge. You can take time out every now and again to increase your efficiency, to make sure your brain is working to the peak of its capacity so you don't get grumpy and waste all his time in office politics. So you have so much loving kindness that people want to work for you. They want to actually to do their very best for you because you're such a kind person, never gets angry at anybody because you know how to rest. If we don't know how to rest, our whole life starts to go wrong. Which is the problem of our modern world. We get into this cycle. Tiredness. Negativity. Controlling. Working even harder. Just getting more and more negativity. We wonder what's going on. Is that really what you want to do for your life? Many, many people have lots of wealth, but they've got no time to enjoy it. So problem is, some of those stories. One of my favorite stories is about the child who, when his father came home, asked his father, daddy, how much do you earn at work? Shut up, said the father. I'm tired. Daddy. How many dollars do you earn? Look, I told you, be quiet. Daddy, how many dollars do you earn? What? Shut up! Go to your room. And the angry father said his poor little five year old up to his room. When his father had a cup of tea and a sandwich. When he got his energy back, he felt so guilty he'd shouted at his five year old. So he went up to his child's room and knocked softly at the door. Can I come in? He went in and said, look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was so angry at you. I was just tired. I just come back from a busy day at work. I don't know what a why a five year old wants to know this, but I earned $20 an hour and the child smiled and said, daddy, can I borrow $10? And the father was about to blow up. But. He got angry at his child once. He bit his lip and said, I don't know what a five year old wants $10 for, but here you are. I'm not going to get angry angry at you again today. And so he gave his son a $10 note, and his son smiled and reached underneath his pillow and in coins and $1 notes, he got out another $10. And here, daddy, here's $20. Now, can I have one hour of your time, please? Isn't that an interesting story? The little son had to buy one hour of his daddy's time, because that's the only way he could have time with his daddy. Now, I do understand why the problems of our modern life. Why does a little son have to ask like that? Why does a wife have to ask for my husband? Can I just can we just go out tonight? Why do you always have to work? Can't we have a holiday? Can't we just enjoy each other's company as we did when we were young? Is this really what life is all about? Just working. Working, working until the only time you can rest in peace. Is it character? So after a while, we look and see. No, we can have everything and we can have the company. We can have even a good house. Look at me. I've got my my townhouse, not townhouse. I've got this whole compound here. One acre. This is my town complex. And I've got my country residence at serpentine. So you can you can have a lot, but you have a lot. Not by working yourself to such a point. You get sick, tired, negative, and you can't stay with anybody and you can't even stay with yourself at night time. You're just so tired. Your negative. So often people work because that's one way of not spending time with oneself. So this way we can be very successful in life. We can become very productive, even more productive, but without creating too many problems, physical problems, social problems, and even our own mental problems. People get depressed because they're angry at life for themselves. They realize they can't control life. They get angry at their spouse because they can't control them. They get angry at life because they can't control anything. Surely you should learn now to be able to let go. I've been trying for years to not make sure that people aren't angry, but they still get angry even here. I try for years to make sure the world's a peaceful place, but people still have wars. I realize this is a nature of the world. You try and influence, but you don't try to control. You try and be kind. You don't try to make people different because kindness is embracing people as they are, not wanting them to be different. To realize that everyone in this world has their place everywhere. So when you realize that everyone has a place in this world, even the criminals sometimes have the place. When a burglar comes to your house, they're all teaching you non-attachment. Hard practice outside. But there it is. When the traffic light gets red, they're telling you, slow down. You can't get there as fast as you want to. There are many things in life which are teaching us, but sometimes, instead of teaching us and listening to the lessons of life, we think that something's gone wrong. The traffic lights shouldn't be this way. There shouldn't be any burglars. There shouldn't be any cancers. Cancers also teach you a lesson. There's something there. Is teaching our world. I'll be going a bit too fast. Are we really missing the point of life when I do have funeral services. And I was there on Tuesday. Tuesday? Yeah. Tuesday afternoon. Down at three O. Again Sunday before. As a character. Tell the story of one of the friends who was living in Sydney, a big business person working many hours a day. Just very successful in life, but not so successful with his family, always having arguments, kids having trouble. You know what it's like? Is that you? But anyhow, he had a medical checkup a few days later. His doctor, a personal friend, called him at home, and the first words the doctor said, is your wife there? If you get a call from your doctor and that's the first thing he says, you, my friend, are in trouble. And he was. And it comes back from the lab. The tests, the blood tests. He had a rare but lethal form of cancer. There was no treatment. He was going to die. How long did he say? The doctor said we can't say three months, maybe four. Certainly not six. Like many people who have those experiences, it comes literally as a shock. You know, when you first get these cancers, you feel okay. You wonder, why me, I feel okay. But the tests are there. He was philosophical. Stoical. Sensible. Thank you, he said. And he talked it over with his wife. After they got through the shock and the the grief, he decided, like many people do when they have cancers before it gets worse. To have the trip of a lifetime. He'd always promised his wife and his children. One day they'd go and visit Europe. But of course, busy. He never had the time. Now he only had three months. He sold his business almost within a week. Even though if he'd waited long, they negotiated, haggled some horse trade you got probably got some more money. But he didn't have time. He sold the business, and he bought first class tickets on five star hotels for him, his wife and his children to go to Europe on this trip of a lifetime. Apparently, he had those tickets in his hand. When the telephone rang, he picked up the phone. It was his doctor. I don't know how to tell you this, he said. There's been a mistake. Two surnames the same. You are perfectly healthy. One of these true stories which happened. And he never sued that doctor. He keeps calling that doctor his teacher. He's one of his greatest friend. He was so grateful for that experience because he went on that holiday overseas with his family. Had a wonderful time. When he got back home, he had enough money left. Apparently he bought a little truck stop somewhere outside in New South Wales somewhere. That experience taught him the meaning of life. Sometimes you do need the kick up the backside hard. To learn what this life is all about. Is that really what life is all about? Just working 9 to 9 and 9 to 9 maybe, I don't know, 9 to 11, seven till nine. Now you've got your computers and you've got email. You can work at any time. Then the terrible saying that before you can only work in your office. Now you can work, you know, at the beach. You can work at the cafe, you can work in the toilet. Even. I think these days like this, you should have, like, internet free zones in the toilet. So the broadband can't reach somewhere anyway. But the point is that that person learned what was really important. And look, I go to so many funeral services and that's part of my job many times a week. I know all these funeral directors. They will say, hi, how are you doing? When I leave? I say, very nice to meet you. I hope I don't meet you again soon. I tell the funeral directors, it's not that I don't like you guys, but if I come, it means another Buddhist is dead. And we're trying to keep as many Buddhist as we can. But it's not just that. The point is that at each of these funeral services, they're brilliant. They're great because that's what you learn about what's really important in life, what's really important in life. You go to someone's funeral service and listen to what people say about them. Listen to the eulogies. That is how people will remember you when you die. It's the eulogy. Sum up the meaning of life. They never talk about how big their house was or how much money they have in the bank. Accountants never read out anything at a funeral service. At a funeral. We should talk about the qualities of the person, how kind they were, how well they were loved by their children. Some of the funny stories. You know, when I was a child and I blew up the toilet. You know, the list of things, the funny stories. And that's what life is all about. You know, the times you spend with your family, sometimes it's, you know, making an idiot of yourself or doing stupid things, but it's with others. And you enjoy it with people, not with your computer. We never get a eulogy from your favorite computer at a funeral service. You know your computer doesn't attend. People do. Because really, this is what life is about, the meaning of life you hear at funeral services. But unfortunately for many people or for one person, every funeral service is too late to really understand what the meaning is. For everybody else. It's quite clear. Put value back into your life. You can still be successful. It's not an either or. It's a win win. You can be successful in your business, successfully in your life, and happy with yourself and not so grumpy. You won't create so much anger and negativity in the world because you are not tired. You can love others and even love yourself. You don't need to think that another bottom line of your your salary, or the amounts of money you have in the bank is what's really important to yourself. Respect. You can respect yourself because you are kind. Could you have time to enjoy the people in your life? You may even have time to come to the Buddhist society on a Friday evening. And this attraction bombs old jokes. Whatever it is, you have time. Our modern life. We are rich in material things, but poor in time. Why is that, sir? And because we've lost our sense of how to be efficient and what's important in life. You can do both. You can spend time with your family. You can enjoy yourself in the evening time. And you can still work as well and be successful. If you know that beautiful balance, what we call it, even that the middle way, you will be in very efficient person and maybe you two or your company can win one of those prizes by batting over time. By learning that happiness is the key to success. And that negativity which comes from tiredness just ruins your body, gives you cancer's ill health. The negativity means you just no partner is good enough for you. Negativity means you're not good enough for yourself. You get depressed, upset at yourself, never thinking you're good enough. That negativity to spoils a whole life. Is that why you're working so hard for just to get more negative, more down, more suffering? To get sicker, to get to that character faster. Instead, slow down. When you slow down, you can achieve much more. There's an old saying, you can write this on your desk. There's not much time. Therefore, we must go slowly. Receives a paradoxical. When you say there's not much time, it means we think we must go faster. But because it's not much time. Number one, we can't afford to make mistakes. Therefore, we have to be efficient. Slowly, carefully. And number two, because we've got not got much time. We have to enjoy the days we have. Instead of wasting them, there's not much time. Therefore, we must go slowly. If ever I start a company, that will be my motto. Not just do it or not. Just things go better with whatever. Just because this is going on now, I shouldn't actually mention any sponsors unless they give a donation to the Buddhist society first of all. But that will be my motto. There's not much time. Therefore we must go slowly. I learnt that when early years at Bojana monastery, we were doing some building. We had to blast some rock and when the person, the expert, the engineer put the the explosive in the rock and he lit the detonator. And then we started to run. He said, don't run, because when you run, when there's like an explosion about to happen, that's when accidents happen. You trip over. There's plenty of time to walk. Stop panicking. It's the same I learned when it's bushfires, when it's a bushfire. You don't run away from the fires and you run. It's when you fall over, you break a leg and that's when you die and it's not much time. Go slowly, go carefully. And then you always succeed in life, even in business. Don't panic. Go slowly through life and then you get there faster. There's not much time, so you must go slowly. And then we feel more at ease. We got our energy. We're sensitive to each other. We sensitive to life. And most importantly, we're sensitive to ourselves. We care. When you care, you will be successful. Have a wonderful love life, a wonderful physical body, a wonderful business. You have everything you ever want. That's that is key to success. If it doesn't work. Then you can actually come and ask for your money back. Come and sue us. I don't know. Anyway, I sure it does work. It's been proved over the centuries to work. This is actually how you enjoy life. So don't. You can still get a lot of lot done. You don't need to be so busy. Take time off. Appreciate. Feel grateful for what's already been achieved. Trust other people. Sometimes go slowly and take time out. You deserve it. And so does your company. So does your partner, and so does your children. Thank you. Okay. Anyone got any questions or comments about this? You have to do the questions quickly, please. We've only got a couple of minutes. That's a joke. Any questions please. About tonight's talk? Yes. How do you make an appointment and make an appointment with the present moment now? So you find that all time is created by craving. By desire. It's actually the craving creates the time. And the more craving does, the less time you have when you actually let go. More and more. You have all the time in the world. In fact, like time expands when you learn how to flow with things and being in the moment rather than always be in the future, always in the past. We're making appointments. With what? Most the time our appointment was is with their own death. And half the time. How old you are, sir. But sometimes. Where's all these years gone? How fast is life go when you're rushing around. And after a while you think, why 20, 30, 40 years? Where's it all gone? You always been running to get somewhere. That's why you're never here. You find out the most important thing in life is stopping every now and again. Have a metaphor of a journey. You work all day, but then at the end of the journey, you sit down and rest in some sort of hostel or hotel or quiet, calm place. We're not going anywhere. But you're resting for the night. In the morning you can carry on your journey of life. If you walk all day and you walk all night, then you don't get very far. Because you die when you're very young. So appointment every evening. Give yourself rest. So you can just enjoy your family. Stop doing so much. Give yourself time. In the morning, you're refreshed and you can walk on your journey in life refreshed with more energy. You get further in life that way. So your appointment is now because now is the evening time. Now's the time to stop working, to enjoy it, to be at peace. Make sense? Any other questions anyone has? Time is running out. And right.
