Dreams and Other Things In Life

Dreams and Other Things In Life by Ajahn Brahm Well, this evening stole my talk. As usual, I've been inviting some suggestions. I know that I taught the receptionist who I supposed to talk about. He said "nothing". I've done that before. There was a fax to me that somebody I forget who they were, was saying, can I please talk about the idea of dreams in Buddhism? And as I was just reflecting that twice this week, other people have talked about dreams and asked me their significance. So this is this evening's talk. Dreams and Buddhism. So those of you who are very tired, you can actually go to sleep and you can give me some more input afterwards about what I was supposed to talk about. But I always say that practice is much better than listening to things. But one of the main reasons people asked about dreams is because sometimes people have these strange dreams and others strange dreams. Are they real or are they just fantasy? And what place to what we call like prognostic dreams have in Buddhism? I'm not sure if any of you have had these dreams. And sometimes they've been so clear, so vivid, that you remember them easily when you wake up and they leave an impression in your mind, and later on you find that they do bear some relation to the real world. It's somehow other that those dreams which we have do convey some legitimate information. And many, many stories about that. And of course, during this talk I'll give some of those stories, some funny stories, some scary stories, but all interesting stories. But the first story I'm going to mention about dreams is just how unreliable they are. Because one of my friends who I became a monk with, and he was an American, and because we were monks together, we'd always be chatting and talking about what was happening. And he said that throughout his life he'd always had these dreams, which later on turned out to be true. He said as a young man living in California, in Pasadena, his father was quite wealthy, so they had quite a big house with a swimming pool. He'd always had this recurring dream. He told me that his younger sister was born into the swimming pool. Drown and die. He said one day he was just as a young 16 or 17 year old. He would just sitting around the pool, just doing nothing. And then the dream, which he had seen so often started to unfold was exactly as he dreamt. But because he remembered the dream and he was going to happen next. He actually intervened and saved his sister's life. And he said it was weird. But if he hadn't had that dream, his sister would be dead. And that gave him such confidence in dreams, especially in those vivid types of dreams that he believed in them. Except for once when he said he was made about 2122 and he was in New Zealand. Remember, this was 30, 40 years ago. Uh, shows how old I am. But this was a time when young people were really into smoking marijuana, and he was in a house over in New Zealand with a few other young people, you know, sort of taking those recreational drugs. And he had a dream. He said many times that the New Zealand police came into their house and arrested everybody. And he said he was kicking himself because he never took preventative action. And it happened and he got deported. And so he had two dreams. His third, which actually turned out to be true. And he said the third dream, which he had, and this was the one he kept on telling me. This was in 1974 when I became a monk. And it was just it was the end of the Vietnam War. And the Viet Cong were taken over Vietnam. Pathet Lao had taken over Laos and the Khmer Rouge had taken over Cambodia. And our monasteries were very, very close to the border between Cambodia and Laos. Right in that sort of west northwest corner of Thailand. And I remember looking at a map once, and the distance from my monastery in Thailand to Bangkok was twice the distance, as it was to Hanoi, but much closer to Hanoi, let alone the other sort of communist places. And there was an evacuation plan, which we had to register for our embassies, because most Western diplomats at the time subscribed to what was called the domino theory. They thought once Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell, tidal would be next, especially the north east, where we were very close. And so he thought he had this dream of the Communist soldiers invading that part of Thailand, him running away across a paddy field and got him shot in the back of the head. He was so convinced of that dream, he said, that's how I'm going to die. I know I'm going to die from this, are going to invade, and I'm going to be caught and killed. Because two out of two times he got it right. That never, ever happened. Now he just fell in love, got married. And one year after he got married, he got killed in a head on car crash in California. So it never worked out. But I always remember that. That sometimes his dreams, you do get it right and sometimes you don't. Which is why the first thing to know about dreams is you cannot rely upon them. But sometimes they do tell you the truth. Of course, the classic tale and many of you have, uh, hopefully know this tale because you bought the excellent book, which is available in the library. But open the door of your heart. And this was a tale here in Perth, this amazing tale about this fellow who had, again, one of his very vivid dreams early one morning. I know if you ask the monks in Thailand about these dreams, they always say, the reason you have these vivid dreams early in the morning is because you're sleeping too much. We don't sleep very much this month. We're supposed to get up at 4:00 in the morning, every morning. And that's actually, that's been quite lazy because in Thailand we had to get up at 3:00 in the morning. So, you know, I never used to dream when you were asleep, as you used to dream when you were meditating, getting up at 3:00 in the morning, but not when you were asleep. So at dawn in our monastery, we got up at 4:00 every morning. But as I tell many people, getting up at four in a monastery is optional. You can always get up earlier if you want to. That's the only option. But this person, sir, in Perth, he had one of his vivid dreams. And this dream was of these four angels. So now five angels. These five angels. And now you can dream these amazing dreams that each angel had five pots of gold like this. Big like what? Not water pots like. Almost like vases. Like these urns which we have in the monastery for people's ashes. But this was a gold. Gold was inside. And they lined up and gave this guy five pots of gold each. And especially now, with the falling dollar and the rise rising gold, that'd be worth a fortune. And so he woke up. And of course, the first thing he did was look around and there was no no angels in his room. But even worse. Huh? No gold. It was just a dream for one of those very vivid dreams which, you know, he got dressed, had a shower. Was it playing in his mind when he went down for breakfast? And he couldn't believe that at his breakfast table, his wife had made him five boiled eggs with five pieces of toast. He was wondering, what was this magic number five. Five angels. Five was a goal. Five birthdays and five bits of toast. And you can imagine what he felt when he looked at the newspaper in the morning. West Australia. It was the 5th of May, the fifth month. So thinking this is really weird. He looked into the, uh, the horse racing, you know, the horse racing course just south of the River Ascot. A SCOC five litres. And he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw in race number five the afternoon in race number five. Horse number five was called Five Angels. It was the air fryer. Angels was running horse number five. Race number five. And of course, these sorts of dreams that only happen if ever. Only once in your lifetime. So he thought he can't waste this opportunity. He never told his wife because sometimes the girls don't understand these things. That's what he thought anyway. But he did take the afternoon off work before going to the racetrack. He went to the bank and he drew out $5,000. If you're going to do it, you might as well win, big or not at all. You only have one chance at a lifetime 5000. So you want to keep the lucky number five. 5000. When he went to the racetrack, he chose a bookmaker to keep the lucky number. Five, $5,000 to win. Horse. Number five. Race number five. Five angels. Lucky number five. Could not be wrong. It wasn't wrong. His horse came in fifth. Just goes to show you. Dreams. They're true, but you sometimes misinterpret them and get them wrong. Well, it's just like another couple who know they come to a monastery every Thursday afternoon. And there's a lovely couple. They were there yesterday giving us some food. So when I told that story to him, he told his story because we've all got these little stories about him. And his story was, again, an interesting one where he did get a correct dream. But some other people misinterpreted it too, because he was an English man, he was in the British Army. He was just not a fighter. He was like a dental technician or something. So, you know, pretty sort of easy job. But he was posted off to Singapore when the British were still in Singapore, and he met this nice girl and married her. So he had a Singapore wife. And they then moved down to live in Perth, where they've been living for many years. And he told me that once when he was visiting Singapore, there with his wife's family and his wife was chatting, nag nag, nag nag. And he got really bored, you know, talking about all this stuff. You know what it's like no meeting, you know, your other partners, your partner's family. So well, they were all sort of, uh, talking and chatting and eating. He was getting very bored and his brothers in law saw that and said, look, we're going to the racetrack this afternoon. We'd like to come along. And he never likes gambling, going to the racetrack. But there was much better than racing his wife's family. They said, okay, I'll go. So they took him to the racetrack. But this is Singapore. No Chinese? No Chinese. Buddhists. Before you go to the racetrack, you have to visit the Lucky Temple. So they went to a lucky temple, you know, in the backstreets of Singapore somewhere. And as soon as I walked in, it was a mess. You know, it was just ash everywhere, papers and stuff. So. And this is an important part of this process. If you're going to be lucky, you got to do some good karma. First of all, please remember that. So if ever you go to the racetrack or the casino, come to the Dharma Center and do some sweeping or some weeding, first of all. Otherwise you've got no chance. So he went to the temple and they saw it was a mess. So they spent about half an hour or an hour cleaning the place up. At 116, the place up. Then you know what? Those we call them just Buddhists, you know, in our tradition, getting a few Joss sticks and no one actually knows why they do this. They just do that because their grandmother did it, and I don't know what it is. It doesn't make any difference how much you shake these things. But anyway, they did the shake of the sticks and they put it in the, um, in the, uh, the whatever it is, the joystick holder. And then they went over because we don't do this sort of stuff in the forest tradition is very simple and very rational. We don't have all this superstitious stuff, but nevertheless, I know that, um, you know, I don't know why this is or where this came from. And all this lottery outlets in Perth, you have this big, fat Buddhist, and you're supposed to rub their tummy for that. Then what you do that for? And sometimes I'm getting a bit fat now, sometimes people come up and they want to rub my belly. No way. Anyway. Actually, I did open a lottery store. I was just really going off the closet because sometimes some people, friends say, you know, they're opening up a new business or going into a new house, and sometimes it's part of the tradition. Now come invite a man who actually to visit the place. So some time ago they said, oh, my friend, they're opening up a new shop in some shopping center. I better not tell you which one it is. And so I said, okay. Yeah. They never told me it was a lottery shop, and I supposed to get involved in these sorts of things. As soon I was supposed to tell people not to gamble. And it's probably the Buddha actually said gambling is like, um, is an addiction. It's the wrong thing to do. But nevertheless, I got caught that way, and I was there and just. I should have asked what shop I was going to be blessing. And one day people asked me to bless a pub, or sometimes even worse, but don't ask. But anyway, I went into the place. It was too late now, so I did a bit of blessing, but actually a couple weeks later they got a jackpot there. So these blessings are really good. But anyhow, where was I? I was back in this. Um, Singapore. Singapore. So they cleaned up the temple and I did lots of good come and they went to the racetrack. Amazing. No, the result they all lost. But nevertheless, I had a bit of fun. But that night. That night. This Englishman old, the Singapore girl, he had a dream. And again, one of these very clear dreams which you remember. And so he woke up. And the dream. Guess what it was he dreamt of, uh, of a horse race. Now, seeing in his dream. And he dreamt the horse which won the name of that horse, his true story. He remembered that name when he woke up. And just for interest, look in the morning paper, the Straits Times. In the horse racing. It was running that day. Exactly that night. So the first thing he did know, being fairy. He ran up all his brothers and said, hey, that temple which we blessed while we cleaned up the other day. There must be some sort of heavenly being or some spirit guide in the place, because they told me the name of the horse which is going to win today. Listen, look, this is the name. It's in the straits time. So racing today. Let's all go to the racetrack. We get our money back, which we lost yesterday, and make a bit more. Sounds reasonable, but his brothers in law said, listen, so you're what we call an ang mo. People are laughing here. Now that means like that means like a Westerner, like a foreigner in Singapore. He said that was a Singapore temple. Any spirit there, there would not tell one of you guys. Certainly not an English guy. They would tell us we never had any dreams. So you just you you just you just imagining it. They said so because they thought that a Singaporean, like a Chinese spirit, would never, never tell an English person. Whenever he went to the track, he went alone. Now, of course, fun. And he put a lot of money on it, but he was convinced he dreamt it. And that horse ran and he made a lot of money. What he lost yesterday was insignificant for what he meant, what he won. And the worst thing was that when he went home and he told his brothers, hey, that horse I told you about, it wasn't that day. It made a lot of money. Ah, his brothers in law, they were able. They were so upset and angry. Not at him, but at the Singapore spirits. I don't look after their own look after these visitors is blowing from Australia. They help them. Never the guises of worship in the temple every week. They are really upset. True stories. But how does it work? How do these things actually happen? Because when you're actually sleeping, when you do have a vivid dream, now your mind is actually working and it's not. So, um, oppressed by all these thinking and worrying and planning, which you do most of the time, your poor mind has got no freedom. But just look at what you've been doing today and how much freedom your mind has. Instead, you're so busy thinking, planning like I've been doing today. But I retreat centre thinking, planning, remembering, doing so much. Very rarely does your brain have space to actually touch anything else. Of course, when you learn how to meditate, there's another way of getting this of ability of the mind to be a little bit more perceptive, a little bit more sensitive. But for many people, they can't do that in meditation, but at least when they're dreaming. It means that all of the the controls, all of the even the fears which stop you from actually investigating interesting things, all those things tend to disappear, be taken away in a dream state, and especially in the early morning, because when the brain has sort of it's got its energy back and it's had its sleep and it's got energized, but you're not really awake because you're not really controlling anything at that time. You've got the mental energy, you're about to wake up, but you're not controlling things. And that's got the time when the mind can actually sort of be a bit more sensitive. It's amazing just because of how much we control our mind and force it and block it up. We can't be sensitive. Just one of the things which you'll learn as a monk learn how to be still and silent, an echo of all the thinking and all the planning and all the remembering. And be really still. You can get incredibly sensitive. You can pick up things, pick up some weird things sometimes that as part of a still mind, a powerful mind. But many times people do this in the early morning, just before they wake up, the controller was gone. Her mind is energized and he could sometimes become sensitive. The thing is that sometimes it is just the fantasy, just the dream, and sometimes it's a real thing and that you can't tell which one it is. That's the trouble with these dreams. But it can happen sometimes. And also, it's a time when other beings can actually contact you in the sense that if a ghost came up now, I mean, you'd run a mile, you know, some sort of other spirit came along and said, hey, sort of, I want to tell you what your future is going to be. Now people be terrified because it's really weird human beings with anything which we're unsure of, which we don't know, we get afraid of. It's just a fear of the unknown. And after a while, especially if being a monk, or if you listen to these things and have a bit of confidence, you know, you don't have to be afraid of anything. But how many people are afraid of ghosts? When I was telling somebody the other day that when I was at university at Cambridge, I joined three societies. The first society was a Buddhist society because I was a Buddhist even then, and there was a very thriving Buddhist community in Cambridge, only sort of a group of us. You know, maybe 20, 30, 40. But we were very active. That's where I first learned my meditation. That those of first. The um, society I joined was a Buddhist society. Number two was the Astronomical society. I was always interested in the stars, and he had these great resources. I had a whole telescope there, which they I think they discovered, um, one of the major planets. Um, because they don't use, um, the, um, visuals satellites anymore. They use radio telescopes. It was abandoned. And so the students could go and play with it. I remember one evening just going out there just after those of you old enough 2001 A Space Odyssey solo with my friends and afterwards say, hey, let's go out to the the, um, uh, the Observatory because I was a member. We can go and sit in the, the chair and watch all these amazing stars. I remember seeing Saturn out there just the first time, as you saw Saturn live with all its life, with all its rings. Not a picture. You actually there watching it. Amazing. And anyway, the third society I joined was a psychic research society where we investigated ghosts. That sort of stuff. I was, and I wasn't so afraid. I was intrigued and interested. All these things of ghost, do they really exist? And if they do? What are they? How are they? And so we had this great society, had his marvelous lectures and also that. So that's why I made friends with this fellow doctor, Tony Cornell, who became the head ghost hunter of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He had this amazing business card. He would give out. You got a Tony Cornell head ghost hunter. And he was it wasn't just a joke. He was this huge society of professors and scientists in London, and he had such experience that he was the number one expert on ghosts in UK. And every now and again, reading a Sunday paper here in Perth to see some article about a haunting in England, because there's lots of ghosts in England, and he would be the expert they'd interviewed to find out. And he was a great friend. 2 or 3 years ago, when I went to visit Mudd and had lunch with him. So he and I still sort of keep up and see what's going on with him. He's spent his whole life investigating these things. An amazing sort of man to talk with and a great sense of humor as well. But. One thing which he told me, which I've known ever since I was part of the society in Cambridge. Never once as a ghost ever harmed anybody. Never once in all the research I've done in UK over 130 40 years. The ghosts can scare you. They can terrify you, but they can't harm you at all. No one knows why, but that seems to be the rule. So if you do see a ghost, please, please, please don't be afraid. If you dream of a ghost, remember this story. Because sometimes ghosts can come in your dream and help you. This is a story of the tsunami ghosts. I think I told this a year or two ago. There's always a turnover of people who come to the center. So when I tell this story, shall we turn the lights down? No, perhaps not otherwise. Or I'll be able to see me either. Again, these are true stories. This was actually for those of you who know Argentina, Damo, the Somali monk who who stayed for many years in in Perth, is now over in Thailand. This was one of his close disciples told us. True story three days after the tsunami hit Thailand. There was a Thai girl who lived in a town of grippy, had a dream in the middle of the night, and the dream was of this English girl coming up to her. But this English girl, her hair, blonde hair was all tangled and tousled, and her face. She must have been quite a young girl, 19, 20 or whatever, was all bruised and gashed, and her body was all broken with huge gases and blood in it. Imagine seeing that this bloody blues corpse coming to in your dream are. But because it's in a dream, you know you're too sleepy pretty to be too afraid. And the ghosts kept saying, help me, help me, help me. And the ghost said I was on Peepee Island when the wave hit. I'm dead. And at this moment, he said Thai soldiers are lifting up my body. And they're placing me in a temple, a Buddhist temple in Bangkok. And she said the name of that temple. And my mother, who lives in London, is desperately trying to call me on my mobile phone, but my phone is at the bottom of the ocean. Please help me. Can you do two things for me? Said the ghost. First, I want a Buddhist funeral. I got a Buddhist, but I want to put his cremation. Can you arrange that for me? This is my name. This is the temple where my body is right now. And number two, can you please ask my mother not to come until the commotion is over? I don't want her to see me like this. Please. Can you do this for me? And here is my mother's telephone number. She gave this long list of digit, after which this tiger woke up. Middle of the night. She was married to an Englishman. Maybe that's why this ghost came to see her. So she woke up her husband and told her the dream, which she had perfect recall on. And the husband was surprised because the telephone number was a legitimate London phone number. He said call it. He said no. Call it. Hello? Rang the number middle of the night in Thailand. Late afternoon. Early evening in London. A woman picked up that phone. Two story. One picked up that phone after a short conversation. It was the mother of a girl who was missing on Peepee Island. It was that Ghost's mother. The name description was perfect. So the mother was thankful. At least now she knew for sure what she expected deep in her heart. If you are a mother, sometimes you can feel whether your child is alive or dead when they go missing. So she gave permission for them to do the funeral service and to let her know when it was completed so she could come and collect her daughter's ashes. The next morning they went to Phuket, found the temple, found the body, got permission to the ceremony and cremated the corpse. They said that the body looked exactly as it did in the dream and having done a commotion, the mother from London came on an aircraft from Heathrow. They met up at the airport, handed over the ashes, cried, and then the mother went home and a tiger went home with her husband to Groby. And a couple of nights later. They had another dream. And in this dream, the girl came to me. This English girl came to this tiger again in a dream. But this time her hair was immaculate, as if she had been to Elizabeth Arden's or something. I don't know. Are they still in business? Elizabeth Arden's been a long time since I went to any hairdresser. I do my own. But I had the best hairdresser in town. Just beautiful hair and a face. No bruises, no cuts. As if she had, like a makeover. And her dress? White and shiny. Immaculate. She said in a dream. Look what's happened to me. Look what you've done for me. I'm a heavenly being. An angel. Thank you so much for arranging that ceremony for me. And thank you so much for letting my mother know I've come here one more time to say thank you to you. Thank you so much. To express my gratitude, said this angel in the dream. Here is another set of numbers. Which she also remembered when she woke up. But they never tried to dial those numbers. Because if you all suspect that was not a phone number, that was a lottery number which won and they made quite a substantial amount of money. And that is a true story. The moral of that story is, if ever you see a ghost, don't run away yet. Ask it for some numbers and then run like. Wait a minute, a dream. Don't get afraid. Oh come on. Let's have some numbers, please. But remember, because you heard that story in a Buddhist center. 10% of your winnings should go to the temple. But anyhow. So sometimes these dreams actually work out to be true. And sometimes these are ways where actually beings can actually contact, especially if they're recently dead beings. Because a lot of times it happens and this is serious stuff. I mean, you lose someone in death. It's tragic because they even know. We know we should be letting go of people and we have to let go. We know we can't keep our loved ones forever. Nevertheless, because we're not enlightened beings. Yet when somebody close to you dies, we do feel a lot of sadness, a lot of grief. Now imagine it was you who died. Now you still care for your, you know, your wife, your husband, your relations, your friends. So what would you like to do when you die? First thing you want to do is actually to go and see your loved ones, the ones who are still living and say, look, I'm okay, I'm fine. Just, you know, you. So take it easy. Don't worry about me. Look after yourself. We had a wonderful time. Now. Now I have to leave. Please. You look after yourself. And sometimes those beings have freshly died. They want to look after their loved ones. As obviously you would like to so much that the only time they can gain access to you is when all your defenses are down in a dream state, you know? But when you're sort of alert enough just before you wake up to actually be able to be contacted. But it's not that uncommon. I have many sort of tales of recently deceased people contacting their wife, their husband, their children, or their mother or something in a dream state. And you get some very interesting information here. One of the fascinating tales, and this is why we have a ceremony in Buddhism to actually to for 49 days, actually to make merit for the deceased transfer merits or whatever, because in Buddhism they say there are 49 days, the person who's die can still be around listening, hearing and being able to be contacted by you. If this gives like a time before you have to go, your next life is like a waiting time before you can, uh, go go off to your next existence. And in this particular story, The disciple is the early when I was in Thailand, disciple of the monastery, the whole family were very devout disciples of the monastery, that the father was the treasurer of our monastery, and one of his daughters got cancer early on in her 20s. Every treatment didn't work. And sometimes it happens that way. It's like, must be some karma from the past or something. No treatment manages to stop. The cancer got worse and worse and worse until she eventually died. But she died very well because she becomes the temple a long time and meditating a lot. Never underestimate the power of meditation, especially when the chips are down. When your body is breaking up, you've got cancer or pain or whatever. It's amazing what meditation can do just to make those last days so peaceful and so happy. She never complained because her mind was powerful enough to let go of the pain. No fear of dying. She died beautifully. But because she was a disciple of the monastery. After her death, we did the funeral ceremony, and it was a few weeks later that the father came and saw me just very early in the morning, and the monastery came up to me, the personal story, and he said, I see what he's doing at the monastery so early. And he said, because something happened early this morning, you got so afraid you took the first possible, um, not really a track. It was to the monastery to come and speak to somebody about it. What happened? I said. He said we were having our breakfast in Thailand, in Asia, especially 30, 40 years ago. People put the food on the ground. They all sit around it and they just take a bit here, take a bit there, and they talk to each other. It's all done on the ground. And this is a big family, maybe 13, 14, 15 people. I can't remember the exact number. They're having their breakfast chatting about all sorts of things. And one of the daughters, one of his other daughters, said, oh, I had a dream about my sister last night. They came up to me and said, I've been here long enough. I'm taking leave. I'm going now. When she said that. Very simple statement. Everybody around that table stop eating. And one by one, they all recounted having exactly the same dream that night. 14 or 15 people had precisely the same dream. And it was so strange. Coincidences. There was impossible as a coincidence, though. He got on the next track and came to the monastery to try and see him and said, what's going on? I said, he's come to take leave. What do you think? And the only way he can do that is in a dream state, when you know you guys are not fearful enough and not protecting your mind enough to be able to be reached by a person like that. But the interesting thing was, as soon as he left, because I knew all the details of her sickness when she died, when the cremation was, I looked in the calendar and it was precisely 49 days, 49 days, and then she took leave to go. It's as if people do that. They hang around for a while to make sure the family and friends are all safe and happy, and everything else is settled before they disappear. And also sometimes I stay around just in case there's been some funny business. For example, there was a Thai Chinese girl here, very strong support of our temple, but her husband was Chinese. Chinese. She did not trust him at all. So much so that when she was about a year before she died, she came up to me and said, look, I don't trust this guy. He said, I don't even think he'll pay for my funeral. So he said, she said, I'm going to leave a will that half of my estate will go to my husband. The other half will go to the Buddhist society here on one condition that you arrange the funeral service and the Buddhist society pays for it. So I took over my committee. So, you know. Fair enough. That's what you want to do. So we had a will. We would pay for the Buddhist society here. From our funds, we'd pay for the funeral service for this lady and return that half of her estate. Only had a small house in mainland. So we agreed on that she died. And if I make a promise, I keep it. So now, even if the Buddhist society sort of, you know, wouldn't do it for the Buddhist society, we also keep our promises. So we did a funeral service for him. And we're not sort of all that materialistic minded. So we never sort of bothered the husband about the will. But then after 3 or 4 weeks, we asked him, I got that sort of well. He said, oh, actually I've been looking for. I can't find it. Oh never mind. And then a couple of weeks later, have you found that I haven't found the widow at all? No. It's lost. I don't know what's happened to it. And then a few days later, he came to the lodge. I've got the word. I've got the will. Oh. Where did you find it? And he said, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I heard my wife. George, George, get the will. Get the will. There is. Please take it. He knew where it was. But it is right in the middle of the night. Scared to bits. He could give us that were clicky that. Sometimes you got to be very careful if you promise something. Sometimes it goes. Make sure that you do that. But sometimes they can come in a dream. But remember, most of the dreams which actually happen are just not really prognostic at all. They just give you some insight into actually what's happening in your day and what's happening in your mind. And so anybody who actually tells or interprets dreams, it's really interpreting just, you know, the mindset, the, the facts of the matter. What actually dreams are, you know, they're not so important is your emotional reaction to that dream and just what you make of that to be, whether it's being afraid or being being worried. That tells you much more about you rather than the dream. And that's one of the best things about dreams. It gives you an insight into the state of your mind and how you're dealing with life and what what's going on inside of you and the spiritual path that can be quite useful. It's not so much what you're dreaming of, but how you react to it. What sort of part of that dream you remember? Because you know that. You know, many of you have known me for a while. I'm a like a fun loving monk, sometimes a bit of a joker. But I remember one of my own favorite dreams. The one which I remember probably more than any other dream I've had, is that one night I dreamt of having this great psychic battle with this Hindu saint, Hindu monk, and we're flying. It's a great dream, just so vivid, flying out through the air and zapping each other with psychic lasers and having this amazing fight. Just for fun. There's a sort of playful Max. So? So my dreams. That's the sort of dreams I have having psychic battles in the air with with with Hindu meditators. Really good fun. But I also remember just having some really great meditation some time. I remember sometimes, you know, the, the meditation we do get in the mind really, really still and getting huge amounts of energies up this beautiful rise we call the limits and then go into these incredible deep meditation states. I remember just having some really good stretch of meditation once, and even in my dream, just dreaming of this, this great Nimitz is beautiful lights in your mind. And as soon as you see this light, you get so much energy. You wake up and just have a nice meditation. Even in dreams, you can meditate. So that's my type of meditation. Meditate. Having psychic battles against the powerful deep meditations. So that's really nice. If you can't actually get these genres in real life, you can actually dream of them and have really great fun. Best dreams you can get. But anyhow, this just actually shows you what you're doing at that time. What's happening in your life in that day? It gives you a way of reflecting on what's happening. But the most important thing, if you have like bad dreams, which sometimes people do, they have bad dreams or they wake up in the middle of the night a lot of the time it's anxiety, worry, fear, guilt, whatever. Something is negative emotions playing on your brain. So people who suffer those bad dreams, the way to overcome them is when you go to sleep at night. Really, what you put in your brain just before you go to sleep. That's almost like a seed, like a yeast, which can actually multiply, you know, in the dream state and make these terrible dreams. So what's really interesting and useful and even what the Buddha suggested 3500 years ago, if you're subject to these, you know, really bad or debilitating dreams. Laying down in bed. You rested before you go to sleep. Start developing some positive states of mind that I'm thinking of, like loving kindness or compassion. The most peaceful time you've ever had. Just not thinking about anything which is peaceful, happy, inspiring. Spiritual if you like. If you're a devout Buddhist, you can think of a Buddha or think of the favorite monks or nuns. Think of some amazing peaceful experiences. If you put that into your mind as you go to bed and before you go to sleep, you have beautiful dreams or no dreams at all, because you sleep very deeply. It's actually how you program your sleep state, and that's exactly how you program your mind before you die and what you put into the mind just before you pass from this life to another life that is crucial. This as you pass on this waking state, to this sleep state. See if you can put some positive thoughts in the mind. For example, if you remember like a joke before you go to sleep, you'll have some very, very hilarious dreams. If you have some beautiful, loving kindness, some inspirational story which you know happened to you that day, you remember, then you have like an inspiring sort of night sleep. It's actually what you put into the the mix just before you go to sleep. That's what's most important. So really, you can control those dreams in a sense of like influencing them. So be careful. You may have had a difficult day. I know a bad time, a painful time. But be careful. Please don't take that into your sleep state with you. Just let it go outside before you actually go to sleep. Substitute those negative thoughts or negative emotions, those bad memories with something positive. Even if you're worried about some something which is going to happen tomorrow, and maybe tomorrow, you're about to be executed for your bouts of hotel operation or saboteur. What's going to happen to you tomorrow morning? Don't take that into sleep with you. In other words, you don't know what's going to happen in the future. Who knows what's going to happen if you're just totally uncertain? One of my favorite stories for this is from the Sufi tradition, because it's this great monk. If any of you want us of no really beautiful Islam going in the internet, go and get a book on Nasrudin Nasrudin a mullah. He was a great fellow. Very hilarious. And also some very wise sayings of Nasrudin. So he was like, you know, a wise guy in the time of the Shah of Iran many hundreds of years ago, and beautiful stories about this guy. And anyway, that once he'd said something wrong, like in those days, if it was like I was living in those days, I'd get sort of put in jail a long time ago for some of the things I say. But this guy had got away with it for many years, and he said something which was heretical. And so while some of his enemies took him up on that took him to court, it was obvious he was guilty. There was no way out. So the Shah said, look, I really like you, you great man. You really entertain me. You're very wise. But law is the law. You've got no alternative. I have to condemn you to death. You've got to be executed. Have your head cut off. And his mother Nasrudin said, oh, that's such a shame. I was just about to teach your donkey how to fly. Really weird. Shah said. The Shah of Persia said, you can teach donkeys out. I said, oh yeah, well, I need a bit of time. I can't do it just overnight. So I said, okay, I will stay your execution for 12 months so you can teach my donkey how to fly. But if you can't, if you teach my don't care to fly, you're free. If you don't teach my donkey how to fly. In 12 months time, you'll be executed. Okay. He said yeah, sure. Fine. Thanks very much. So he got a stay of execution for 12 months to teach the Shah's donkey how to fly. Another way I caught one is that it's amazing. I never realized anyone could teach a donkey how to fly. And I just said, yeah, you're right. No one could teach donkeys how to write. Why do you say that for? I got an extra 12 months to live. The shark would die in six months. I might die in nine months. Who knows what's going to happen in 12 months time? I'm a winner. And that's a wonderful story there about sort of the uncertainty of the future. So when you are going to sleep, you don't know what's going to happen next. One thing I can promise you about the future is always things you don't expect. They're what happened. I never expected to be like a mug sitting up here and just talking to people all day. I thought I always be in a cave, in a cave, a lone hermit having a wonderful time. Deep meditation. How many years ago I was. I fantasized who I dreamt because I heard, you know, in the Nullarbor. There's lots of caves there. And the one thing about living alone as a hermit, you can do without food for many days. But one thing you can't do without is water. You need water. And apparently in some of those caves under the Nullarbor. Is that water? Underground water there? So I thought, wow, that's what I'd do. I'd say no, I'd forget about being an adamant spiritual director for his committee meetings and ATMs, which, by the way, is that tomorrow ATM, tomorrow at 430. Seven employees. Hmm. I'd be like a hermit. I'll find a nice cave in the Nullarbor. And go and stay in there. You know, maybe 3 or 4 days. Go out to a roadhouse and get some food and get some support. You know, people would actually pay the bill, and I could just eat maybe once or 3 or 4 days and just go into deep meditation and just have water to drink and wash. I thought, what a beautiful life that would be. Then I started thinking, what would actually happen if I did that? Sooner or later somebody would find me. And when they find me, they do an article about me because it's it's newsworthy. It's odd. Like, you know, sort of like a person who was from England, a Buddhist monks sit in a cave alone for all that time. Now, that's the sort of stuff, you know, you see on the weekend supplements, you know, in the West Australian or the Australian. That's newsworthy. And so, of course, after they get their first newspaper, then of course, who would go there 60 minutes. They got a TV crew to go there to interview the hermit of the Nullarbor. And once it gets on TV, then, of course, you know, you start to become a bit famous. Then all the tour buses would actually make a detour so they could go and actually see, because it's interesting. Go and see the hermit, the Nullarbor. Maybe have some wise things to say. Have your picture taken with the hermit of the Nullarbor. And then after that, they'd have a little shop in front of your cave selling Devonshire teas and little models of the hermit of the Nullarbor, which you can put in the back of your car, and a little sort of sticker. I've seen the hermit, the Nullarbor, and over the end of my hermit days. You know, I just can't do those sorts of things. The one thing which which I know now is you don't actually plan your life. You just, you know, just let it happen. Stop arguing with it, and it's all out of control. You should know that now. You're old enough now to know that all this controlling business just makes matters worse. You know, you might as well just accept it. Except you're not in life and just make fun with it. Make the best out of it. So, you know, you don't tend to sort of control your life anymore. Maybe just nudge it this way, nudge it that way, but make the best out of it and have fun with it, no matter what you have to do in life. So that means you don't worry about things. You know that, for example, that in four four weeks today we're having the opening ceremony of our Jhana Grove Retreat Center, this huge $5 million project for our retreats. And we're starting our retreat that some of you have already booked to go in that retreat. It might not be ready in time. The builders are still cement all over the place. There's still many things that have to be done in the water. Water is not on yet. The water tanks and the council. They've got to approve all sorts of things which haven't been done yet. I'm a worry now, and I've always got plan B. I've got an air ticket out just in case. It's not finished on the tail. I might. Just make the best of what ever happened. So don't worry about it. But one thing you do know is the future is totally unpredictable. Sure, you can have these dreams like the five angels. Yeah, there may be real dreams, but you know really what they mean. You only know what it means after the event sometimes. And that's the difficulty with with prognostications or with omens. No one really knows for sure. That's when the beautiful parts of life. If you really didn't know what was going to happen, that would make life so terrible that you don't know. Makes one life interesting. Makes mindfulness more important. More aware. Can I know what's going to happen next? Makes his whole spiritual path focused in this present moment. This is where you're making a future. You don't know what it's going to be, how it's going to be. But if you really put forth a lot of love, I mean real selfless love, care, compassion, peace right into whatever you're doing in every moment right now. You know, you're doing the very, very best for a beautiful future. So I mentioned you in the meditation. This right here, right now is where you are making your future. You're building your future right now. How can you make the best possible future by putting positive qualities into this very moment? If you're afraid or anxious right now. This negativity of creating a negative scenario for your future. This is how you create a future. In Buddhism, we call this karma. This is how you make your world. You make it right now. So even when you go to sleep tonight, put forth beautiful, positive spiritual things in your mind in this moment when you're going to sleep. And you know you're doing your very, very best for beautiful, positive sleep. A happy, restful sleep now being refreshed in the morning. And you know you're doing the very, very best for your health, prosperity, peace and happiness for the future. It's actually how you sleep. And these days, so often that people do get sick. And sometimes you've got so many things to do. That's because we don't sleep well and be wonderful to sleep like a baby every night with no worries. Can you do that? Why not? If you've understood some of what's been said here tonight, it's not just about the funny stories about dreams. It's actually how to sleep and how to sleep. Well, you go to bed, let go of all the past and all the future. Don't worry about things because that will just make bad futures uncertain. Let's wait until tomorrow to see what it's going to be. Past this old dead stuff. Finish with. Can't changed it. Good or bad. It's all gone. Let it go. All the kindness, the joy, the peace. In this moment. That's all you can do. Make peace with this man. Be kind to him. Be gentle. You're doing the very, very, very best. He'd do that before you go to sleep. You always have a very deep and restful sleep. Do you wake up in the morning, really are refreshed. Your body is refreshed. Your mind is raring to go. You can be far more efficient in your life when you know how to sleep well and rest deeply. This is what you can do. Present moment of no past, no future. Stop thinking about things. Just rest with the body. Then you never need to have a sleeping tablet ever again. You can wake up in the morning instead of being grumpy, said buddy Doo-Dah. Another wonderful day. Oh, yeah. Monday morning. Back to work. Oh, yeah. Saturday morning. Yeah. Hmm. Oh, let's go for it. Sunday. Food fair. Oh, p instead of. Gotta get our food fair today. Why did I get myself into this? Don't do things like that. The positive energy in every moment. That's the best thing you could do. Beautiful dreams or no dreams at all. You sleep so deeply, and that's the best possible thing you can do. So that's a little talk this evening on dreams and other Things of life. So I hope you enjoyed it, because that's all you're getting. Thank. Thank you very much for listening. So any questions or comments? Did anyone go to sleep and have a nice dream during my current year? Yeah. Yeah. Are. You saying that when you're asleep? Uh, is your mind really in the body? Are you sort of, uh, physically in here or. You're sort of in another place? Most times. No, you're not in any other place. You're just in a fantasy world. But sometimes. Sometimes people do. I see as they will leave their body in sleep, but that's quite rare. That can be done sometimes is done, but is usually quite rare. Most times when people are in the body, they may dream that they are in some other place. But if you check out the things which you have didn't really happen. So it is. It is made up by the mind. But sometimes you do leave the body, but it is rare that's the case. This way you can actually check it out. So for example, you can, uh, if you want to come and visit me tonight. And then you can actually see which side do I go to sleep at night. And you can check out and see if it was true or not. Going to check these things out is such a thing as like this astral traveling. There was probably a whole had these cases see them on the on the documentaries of people like leaving their bodies when they were dead on the operating table. And this lady, the famous, the tennis shoes, they see that her body went doing an operation and went high up in this operating theatre. And they had these like high windows. I've got my windows here, but like in the community hall of next door, high windows here. And actually she saw a tennis shoe was on the ledge of the window of the operating theater, and it could not be seen from down below. When she came back, said, oh, by the way, there's a tennis shoe on the ledge. There was a tennis shoe doing in the operating theater. Can't be. But of course it's insisted on it. And of course, they had a look. There was actually a tennis shoe up there. It was a fascinating piece of evidence because it was something which really shouldn't be there. No one could imagine it so applied to a spider's web, you know, that could be there by chance, a tennis shoe on that ledge, completely sort of, uh, unpredictable. And she saw it. So she did. She did leave her body. But that's her. A real living of the body. Yes. Oh, yeah. When you meditate, the biggest thing in some places you go to. They say, don't meditate because you can leave your body and you don't come back. It's very number one. It's very rare that anybody leaves their body when they're meditating. It's very, very rare. And if you don't meditate, it's far more dangerous meditation. Ask any doctor. Good for this part of the health. That part of the health. It's not dangerous. As I mentioned when I was in Indonesia last week, it's far more dangerous not to meditate. That's really dangerous because you get angry, you get so tense, you get heart disease, cancer. Look at all the information which scientists have amassed. The benefits of meditation are huge, which is why the probably many people here have come to meditation, because it's been sent by the doctors not to be religious at all. This is basic, but if anybody does give their body, they can come back again. I don't know of any case like I've been a monk for 30 or 35 years with teaching meditation a long time. I haven't known one case in all my life as a meditator, when someone has left their body to meditation and haven't come back again. Yeah. So you'll be fine. Guarantee money back. But be careful. Because some people are fear merchants. They always make you scared. You know, if you don't do this, you get in big trouble. And if you don't come to our food fair on Sunday. Oh, I wouldn't I wouldn't know what your chances are going to be. But we don't do fear in this place. We don't. Sort of. Because fear is a way of controlling people. We don't do that. And people use fear to control you. That's just unethical. Immoral? So they say that number one is not true. Number two, they're being unethical to use fear. Meditation is great. But how many people come and meditate here? How many people have actually left their body and didn't come back this evening? Zero. But very, very very very very very very very, very, very safe. One our special committee at the back. Long ago. I beg to put the time. Exactly what I would say. He was saying. He read somewhere into Buddhist scriptures. The. When the monks asked the Buddha about what's the significance of dreams, the Buddha said, oh no, don't pay too much attention to them, for 95% of them aren't true. So that's correct. That's just what I said. But every now and again, some are true. And even the Buddhists, he had his great dream that his head was on the Himalayan mountains. He was facing east and his feet were pointing south. And people often look at the significance of that because we have these dreams and it's up to us to interpret them. And I've told many people, you know, in Sri Lanka, in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the meaning of that dream was the way your feet are pointing. That's where you're going to be traveling. So his feet were pointing south to Australia. So that's where the Buddha was going to go. Obvious.