Emptiness

Emptiness by Ajahn Brahm Just last week when I gave my talk, I was very tired after a long journey at that particular day from United States, from Los Angeles. Even though I've been working very hard the last weeks, I'm very rested, and so I thought it might be a good opportunity to give a more powerful talk than usual simply because as a monk, you want to change things around. Uh, I do get a bit tired of telling the same old jokes myself and talking about two bad bricks. And so what? I was in the United States, it was not just talking to, uh, uh, people buying a book. I was also visiting many monasteries and teaching some deeper teachings there. So today I'm going to talk about, uh, the Buddhist idea of emptiness, to try and bring it into the way we meditate and where we meditate in this way, and to also answer some of the questions which, uh, were raised when I was in the United States. Many of you will know that, uh, because the United States are so many, uh, fundamentalist Christians that they have huge power in the media. And they started this silly thing called intelligent design. And because of that, many people ask you about what's the Buddhist understanding of such things about life, the world consciousness, the whole thing. So today I'm going to try and answer all those questions in one hour. The whole meaning of life will be revealed to you. So stay awake. Again. So I'm going to start with the gist science and about the nature of this world. Uh, because I was a theoretical physicist and before I was a monk, I still keep in contact with some of the science which is happening now, but also the had a very solid grounding in that field. And I can say that I can understand very deeply the principles which were being espoused at the time. So I know roughly what I'm talking about. But I think many of you, even if you may not be scientists, just know that the nature of the world and by the world I mean what most people think is the world know the things of. Which you can touch, which you can feel, which you can see. You know, the the stool which you sit on the hall, which are in the, the country, the earth, the sky, the planets, the solar system, the universe. All of that is sometimes thought of that as a totality of the world. But I'm going to start with what people think is the totality, and then expand from there. And actually to see some parallels between what we know as a world and the world of our minds. One of the things which I knew or found out when you start studying science is just how this thing, which we think of and perceive as being very solid, is just so empty and vacuous. You all know, please, I'm sure you've seen this on TV documentaries or even read it in books. Just even this solid earth in which we're sitting now, seemingly so thick and so dense when examined in detail, you see, just full of space and holes, even the concrete underneath the carpet there, we all know. And it's a truth. This the atoms which make up that concrete at this space so far apart, that is hardly anything there at all. Think. What do they say sometimes? Like it was a if the atom of the concrete was a tennis ball, the next tennis ball, the next atom will be probably at the moon or somewhere is that distant away. So we can imagine night one tennis ball, another tennis ball at the moon and the next tennis ball the same distance away. You can imagine just how empty sort of this even solid piece of concrete is, which you're sitting on. But the thing with the scientists had never stopped there. They looked at even an atom and see what that was. And further, that to it is a smear of electrons and a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal little nucleus in the center, again in the same sort of proportions, like a tennis ball. And the the next nucleus. It is so far away. But then they went further north in the nucleus and found that two was empty. This, this flux of energetic particles called the quarks. And there was nothing there. And this was the amazing thing about looking in with deep, profound insight into what the nature of this particle world is. It's just completely empty of anything solid. It's just shifting, that's all. And I mention that because people ask when you talk about intelligent design in Buddhism, where did our world come from? And if you think about it, if you're going to mind which reasons, you'll understand that if there is actually something here in this physical world, then how can you create this something out of nothing? It's a big problem there. But how could you get this universe with its planets? And if there was nothing there to begin with. And because of that, the people have to invent this idea of a God Supreme being or something which changes nothing into something. It's almost like like some act which actually breaks the laws of science and the laws of reason, because it cannot make sense that we can get something out of a void. And if you think there's something here, you have to have some sort of god or some sort of creative impulse to make this world which we can see and feel. However, scientists also know that because literally this which you sit on is just full of emptiness and space, that there is actually nothing underneath your bottom. If you look deeply, it appears as something, but it's not. It's completely empty. Full of space, full of holes. And then maybe the solution to the creation of the physical matter of this universe might become clear to you. It is true. You can't create something out of nothing. But you can certainly create nothing out of nothing. Maybe there's nothing here now. Which is why this world can evolve out of nothing. The surprise of energy is. And it is being borrowed, which is actually what happens in the world. For those of you who know physics, it is that two particles, antiparticles, can suddenly appear. That's part of the laws of science. When the sciences are so finely balanced, like the avalanche just waiting to happen, you can get this huge effect from just no cause. This is what happens with this universe came from nothing is nothing now and therefore you can disappear into nothingness. That is hard science. Now what does that mean with regard to the other parts of the world? The mind, the thing which knows this. This is where Buddhism has always said from the very beginning, just as this world is empty of substance, empty of a core. So that would have said, is your mind empty of substance? Empty of a core? Is nothing there? It feels solid, just like the floor in which you sit feels so solid in your mind. The sense of I, the knower, the doer, the me. It seems so solid. But the Buddha said, there's nothing there, which is all very well. But. How can you accept that? The thing is that the only way you can accept that is with this path which we have of meditation. This meditation is learning how to find out for yourself the emptiness of the body and the mind, in the same way that a scientist who spent years and years, centuries, two centuries looking into the nature of this thing we call stuff and finding it is so empty they can't pin anything down. In the same way, the Buddha would look through meditation at the mind and again, not pin anything down. But how does this happen? So now I'm going to take you on the journey, the journey of meditation, which leads to enlightenment and how this whole process is about seeing the emptiness of things by allowing things to disappear. Here's a fundamental analogy which I'm going to bring up at this spot, which I've used many times in my talks to the monks. I love analogies because they put in very simple words what is sometimes very hard to describe, which give understanding by invoking a picture which you can all recognise. So simile metaphor of the tadpole in the lake. As you all would know, a tadpole born in a lake, lived in the lake all its life, will never be able to understand what water is. It has been around all the time. Surely it may understand the ripples and the currents in the waters. Maybe the temperature of the water, some aspects of the water, but not what water truly is. How can you, when it's been there with you all the time? But with the tadpoles, we all know that one day the temple grows its legs and grows into a frog, and then leaves the pond for the first time. But it's only when the tadpole leaves the pond. Couldn't really know what water is. Can know its true nature. This is a problem with the delusion of human beings. Sometimes it needed to do some astronaut rescue to leave the planet, to be able to get this view from, you know, 100,000 100,000 miles away, to be able to see just what this planet really looks like and send those images back to us so we can get their perspective or what it's like when we leave our home and our area, where we usually have our experience. And the way of meditation is extending your experience. Meditation is very much like the tadpole leaving the lake. You are leaving the body and your mind for the first time. So this is actually why when we sit down, we close our eyes. In meditation. Sometimes people ask me, can't you meditate with your eyes open and said, you're missing the point if you meditate with your eyes open? Because the whole point of this meditation is allow things to disappear, and there's just too much happening out there. With your eyes open. You tend to get distracted, pulled with the colors and changes of the world outside. And in fact, you spend all your life with your eyes open except when you're sleeping and just particularly just unconscious. And there's so much going on there. You're in the lake. You don't know what it's like when you leave that pond. So we close our eyes. In order for the world of what I call the body in the five senses to completely disappear. The point of the meditation is I mentioned at the beginning of the 30 minutes. Meditation is not to get things. The person meditations allow things to disappear, not to gain more, but to allow what you have to disappear. It is a letting go. And this is why what happens when you even close your eyes? Many things which usually occupies your mind disappear. Literally. The world outside vanishes and all you have left is your body. And as you meditate more and more, this is one reason why we sit still in the comfortable position where we don't need to scratch or move. Because when the body is sterile, it begins to disappear. Sometimes people get afraid when the body disappears. I've had students who've on meditation retreats, or at other times they're sitting there and their hands are disappearing and they get afraid. And what's that? Why are people so afraid when your body disappears? This was supposed to happen in meditation. The point is, because for many people, we've always been alert to the feelings in our body. When it disappears, it's just strange, that's all. Just like the tadpole leaving the lake. When things disappear, we go into experiences we've never been before where we lack familiarity. There's a nature of our mind to be scared in areas where we haven't been before. Which is why the path of Buddhism and finding out the truth demands great courage from everybody. The courage to let go. Which is a tough one to ask. But fortunately, there's something which actually helps the letting go, some which can overcome the fear, something which does encourage you. It's not just the pursuit of truth. Although that that is a great incentive to find to go deep into the mind. But even more than the pursuit of truth is the sheer peace and pleasure of this path of letting go. It just feels good. It feels very good. And it's that attractive nature of letting go, which actually pulls a mind deeper and deeper into states of literally abandoning. Sure, that if you think about it, the hands aren't there. You might get worried, but it feels so good when you become peaceful and parts of the body tend to disappear, and the more your body disappears, the more peaceful and the more blissful you start to become. As you get deeper and deeper into the meditation. There are many times when you can't feel your body at all to the point that when even if a mosquito landed on you, you wouldn't know it. Even if it puts his nose into you, you wouldn't feel it. Where there's no itches or aches, no heat nor cold, where the body starts to completely disappear. These are wonderful states of meditation, simply because when you have nothing to worry about, it's like finishing the work on the weekend. Many of you have been working hard and now it's the weekend. You're free of all that business. Isn't that a delight of the weekend? So we have our holiday period vacation. Don't have to go to work on a Monday morning at last free. When you understand what happens when your body disappears, you understand that this body gives you so much work to do. It usually tells this little exercise now that sometimes you have to scratch your nose. Sometimes you have to play with your hands. Sometimes you have to move your body backwards and forwards. Sometimes you have to scratch and move your jacket. Sometimes you have to blink your eyes. Sometimes you're scratching your lips. I'm just describing what I'm seeing because everybody's moving all the time. You can never stay still. Why? Why do you always have to scratch something on move something scratching your arm, moving your legs and moving your knees and scratching your foot? It is all of these things you do. Why? Because this body will never give you a moment's peace. It's always asking for something. Asking to be scratched. Asking to be fed. Asking to be adjusted. Asked to be taken to the toilet. I asked to be sort of bent this way or that way. Because actually you've never noticed this. You think it's normal, but when someone pointed out, you just look at the people around you and see how many can actually sit absolutely still without fidgeting or doing something, or why they fidgeting while they're doing something. Because this body is just so demanding. And when you meditate and get into a state of stillness, when the body disappears, it's like a tyrant has gone to sleep. It's like a busyness has now finished. It's like the work has been completed. A large. You can leave your body alone and attend to other business. It's like the great weekend of meditation when your body can be put down. Forgotten about and you can attend to other things. Which is one of the reasons why when people meditate, they get to this stage. When the body disappears, their mind feels so free. They start to think about all sorts of things. At last, they're free to think without being disturbed by the body needing to be taken to the toilet or scratched or whatever. Now, this is interesting because we're starting to leave the world of the body and with it the world of the five senses we're letting go of. Some think when we really let go of this body, when it gets so still. In Buddhism, the Buddha called that capacity the tranquility of the body. When it gets tranquil, it disappears. Now, the point I made in the talk I gave to the monks on Wednesday night, the sign of tranquility and peace is the disappearance of those things. When your body begets peaceful, it literally disappears. It falls off the radar. It's not a problem anymore. It's finished with. It's disappeared. You've let it go. And now this is the most important point. Meditation is to allow things to disappear, to let them go. And the way that happens is we just make it tranquil and peaceful, and then the things disappear by themselves. So we just sit comfortably. We sit still, eyes closed, in a place where there's not too much noise to disturb us. If there is a noise, a Hummer, the traffic in the background is okay as long as it's not sudden noise. The five senses turn off, and with it, the physical world disappears. You've let go when you actually start to let go of the body. The next thing you notice is a world of the mind. Sometimes that people have great discussions on what the nature of the mind is. Sometimes I've given a simile to people. I was giving the simile very often in my tour of United States is a simile of the Emperor in the five pieces of clothing. Imagine an emperor and you don't know who the emperor is, whether it's male or female, whether it's Republican or Democrat, whether it's because I was in the United States. I know all this stuff now, whether it whether it's a Chinese or Caucasian or African, old or young, because this emperor is clothed in boots which go up to his thighs, he's got a trousers which cover his waist and go, or it's waist and go over the boots has got a jacket which covers a trousers to its neck and down its arms, gloves which go over the top of the arms, and a helmet which covers its head and overlaps the top of the jacket. The five clothings. The boots, the trousers, the jacket, the gloves and the helmet cover the emperor so completely you can't see who's inside. You just don't know what it is you miss. Similarly, I'm describing the mind and the five senses, otherwise known as the body. That mind is like the emperor inside. The one who's responsible for so much, the one in control, the one who's actually sees and understands things. That's why I call it like an emperor. Because it's such an important thing inside the human being, actually inside all beings. But it's always covered so much by the five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and physical touch. Though many people have got no understanding of what this mind is. I have theories and inferences, but I don't really know. The path of meditation is to take the clothes off the emperor to take away seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching and see what's left when all of those five senses disappear, when the body disappears, when it's all let go of. And what you find when that happens. It is beautiful states of inner bliss where the mind is released from the body. I don't mean going floating out into space, because space is all part of these five senses. It's all part of the body. This is not just the mind floating out in the near-death experience. This is the whole world disappearing. No space left. This is the realm of the mind. What we call in Buddhism. The jhana experiences here. What's happening is you've let go of the body and the five senses, and you're left with this mind business. This mind is incredibly important thing to understand. One of the great things about I really enjoyed about the Buddhist path is this is not theory anymore. You're going to direct experience so no one can argue with this. This is actually what you're feeling, what you're experiencing, what you're seeing, what you're you're knowing directly without anybody having to tell you about it. So you don't have to rely on some authorities, which is I always sound very, very annoying when people actually tell you what to believe. You say, why so? Because I told you so. And although these authorities, sometimes they could be right. Most often they are wrong. So as a young man, as a spiritual seeker, I wanted to find out for myself. And this is the way to find out. And there's a very simple simile which made it very clear what you're supposed to do, but most importantly, how you are supposed to do it. What happens is when you're letting go of things, when they disappear, you find they're not so important. Going back to the sermon in the beginning, just the nature of the ground in which she's sitting on it, you find there's nothing there in this body of ours, the five senses, because they disappear. You see, there is nothing there. Sometimes that people make a big thing about race or about gender, about age. And very often I've told those people to be coming here long enough. You know, you should never think of yourself as a woman or as a man as old or young, as Asian, Caucasian, African or whatever. That's just surface stuff, for goodness sake. Just what's on the surface is defining your those sinks. But when you go deeper and deeper beyond the body, you're not a man anymore or a woman. That's why it was great being a monk, because sometimes you're not either. In Thailand, I was taught when I was young. There are three sexes, three genders, male females and monks. I quite like that idea. It's great sort of being out of all of this. No dualism of male or female. And actually, you might notice that, you know, the the monks and nuns who come and teach here as soon as you shave your hair and you wear this loose fitting robes, no makeup, it's very difficult to tell who's a monk and who's a nun. That's the only reason why here we've insisted that monks were the lighter robes and the nuns are sisters. Wear the darker robes just so you can tell. But if they, being a woman or being a man, was so essentially part of you, you should be able to tell, even if you're a monk or a number, you just can't. This is completely superficial. And so when we get into these things, we understand those sorts of things which we argue about. We make a big deal about which sometimes run our world is just empty of real meaning. When they're empty of real meaning. We can play with them. We can leave them alone because they're not substantial. They're not important. We can leave them alone. But the most important part of this is actually to get into this realm of the mind, to find out what this mind is. Already you've done the way of calm, calming this body until it disappears, and then you go deeper into calming this mind until it disappears. This is actually the way of the deepest stages of meditation, which few people actually follow. Even in that first stage of meditation, we call the other first jhana. In such a stage, because you've left the lake as you've known it, the pond of your normal experience has been has been transcended. When you experience a freedom and a bliss which you've never had before, a oneness of mind. And whenever I read the Christian mystics or even the Hindu mystics, it's very clear to me that those traditions which claim a union with God. That's actually what the describing is here, where we get to the mystical experiences as defined in our world. You can imagine where everything you've known is disappeared, and you've got this incredible bliss and stillness of mind and joy, which is I've used this as a marketing tool. Joy better than sexual orgasm. And there, it's still not moving for hours and hours and hours. And you wonder, what is that? If you were and sort of in the Middle Ages and got to some of those states which some of you here have done, you'd be considered a saint, this great, powerful experience. But in Buddhism, we take it deeper than that. You see, this is only the start. The body has disappeared, but this still left its mind. And as you stay in those states, more and more and more, even the mind starts to disappear. This is a fascinating experience of the deep stages of meditation to see as you go calm and calm and calmer, because these are all stages of letting go. You see how much you can abandon seeing through stillness, how much disappears and see what's left. This is where one gets stiller and stiller and stiller. One of the great stages of these journeys in the second stage is where Will disappears. This thing we call intention and choice will the choosing. Sometimes people write great articles about the nature of the will. What actually motivates you? What is the process which makes you decide what you do? Decide? How does that all work? I've had great fun talking about the will and experiments which have been done with the will, and choosing. But when one goes into it. Into these deep meditations and you find the will disappears. This flightless tadpole has now left the water for the first time. You've left the realm of will of choice. If that was you, which is thought of as being freedom. When you experience a state, when the potential to do, the potential to choose, the potential to move your mind or your body is completely removed, but you're still incredibly aware and alert. This is like the experience of the frog. Only when you've moved out of the water can you know what water is, only when you've moved completely beyond the potential to do things. Only then can you understand what this thing we call will choice truly is. This is a place where great insights arise from strange but powerful experiences. So often we think that the will is coming from us, that we are the ones who choose, that we are the ones who do things. So many examples of that. I think that before I go too deep, I just tell a few funny stories about the will, just to give people who might get lost in this deep talk a bit of relief. One of the stories which I'd like to tell you about the nature of the will is when you understand it's not really coming from you, it's completely conditioned and brainwashed. Because I remember once, well, not just once, many, many times, you can see the way that advertisements work and how they condition the mind and how they make you do things which you think that you're doing, but someone else has been completely controlling you. One of the first times I noticed this was when I was a young man. I remember watching the television and this particular advertisement, which really got me sucked in, was for Saint Bruno Tobacco. I still remember it clearly. It was a little advertisement in which this ordinary looking young man. For some Saint Bruno tobacco. Put it into a pipe. Lit it. I was walking down the road of a typical English town, and the aroma from this tobacco wafted into a bank. And one of the tellers behind the counter was incredibly beautiful. Girl. Some model who, as soon as she smell the first fragrance of Saint Bruno tobacco, became completely besotted, jumped over the counter and started following this man fully in love. And then she passed a new stage. And the same thing happened to the gorgeous redhead, who also had to leave her job as a newsagent and follow this man and there's somebody in some laundry also came out in the face of 1 or 2 minutes. This ordinary looking man was being followed by the most gorgeous, attractive girls you could imagine. Stupid isn't it? Advertisement either. Who would believe in something like that? And I did. Of course, that tobacco lit it in a pipe walk down the street, but no one jumped over any couches for me. It's just as well, because they did. I might not have ended up as a monk. But when you look back upon that, I thought I was an intelligent, sensible young man. Why did I do that? Now, some years ago, I remember being in Melbourne at is a very, very cold day. And I saw all these girls in these tank tops. They had this huge area of exposed chest around their midriffs. I felt so sorry for them. They must have been freezing. What do they do that for? Did they really have any choice? Or was it the fashion? The dictates of the media of advertisements had conditioned their will into doing something which was a completely barmy. Why do you do all this fashion stuff? Is it really your free choice or have you been completely conditioned? What is actually free will? Are you free? I know because when you get to these deep states of meditation and actually you come out with, you know, the nature of the will, my goodness is completely conditioned. The reason I tell bad jokes is because my father told bad jokes. This is for nothing to do with me. He conditioned me completely. And that's the way it is. So don't blame me. When you understand the nature of the will, when you've allowed it to disappear, it shocks you to the core. You really think that you were in control, but you're not. It's a process. A process which goes through a very complex web of cause and effect. Once you know that, you have to be very careful because you notice how you can be conditioned by others, but how the media, especially how politicians, they could know how to press the buttons, they know how to book it. I remember a few years ago, Princess Diana's funeral. Why was it that so many people who were even related to her, sort of watched her funeral and also cried and thought it was so sad you were being manipulated? And so it is. Why in movies do you get sucked in and start crying solely a movie? For goodness sake, what do you do that for? And you pay for it as well. It's crazy. But a lot of it is. You can say that the entertainment industry is brilliant or be able to control people. They can control your emotions so easily. Even this is a Christmas time, you get to control your emotions. Then, for those of you who come from the Caucasian background, you see a little Christmas tree, a few carols, and you start getting all soft and mushy. It was great when making use of that, because I know the way the mind works so well that when I was going in England, even the first time, the people weren't at all sort of used to seeing a monk. But I would say Merry Christmas. And that put them in a difficult spot because no way they had to say Merry Christmas. Back in the United States, in some places in which we're very heavily Christian, you just say good morning to somebody. Psychological pressure. They had to say good morning back when you know the way the mind works, you notice how many of our responses are completely conditioned. They even predictable, you know exactly how people are going to behave, at least if you know that you can use it to your advantage, as we do here every week. But for good purposes. That's why that, you know, monks have got this incredibly high virtue. So we will never abuse or exploit you. But if we do, um, do any brainwashing, it's always just for good, for peace, for kindness, for charity, you know, looking after you. And it's true because if you whatever you go that actually affects your will. If you listen to these teachings long enough, you will become enlightened yourself simply because you can't avoid it. You will guess we conditioned. I've been doing that in my monastery for the last 1011 years, since I've been the ever putting these suggestions into the minds of my monks to be peaceful, to be virtuous, to be kind, to be peaceful. And it works as I'm doing it for you. You find if you come to places like this afterwards, you're a more peaceful, kind, compassionate person. Why you've been brainwashed into doing. And that's why, you know, some people as the United States, sometimes people put all these talks which we have on the web, on iPod, and they go down the beach and they listen to it. They're in their car 2 or 3 hours in LA going to work. They listen to these talks, a completely brainwashed brain. They imagine 3 or 4 hours a day listened to the same talks. It's not that you just hear the jokes again and again. The message. The jokes are just the sweetener. The message is peace, kindness, compassion for those sorts of things. So understanding just how this always works, you can also recondition your own mind. And this is something which I've been using for the last few years. When you understand just how the mind works and what the will truly is, you can play with your own will. I call this programming mindfulness. If you've got some bad habits, you know, say that you're always arguing, you know, with your partner always saying this, these snide remarks, which is quite common when you've been married 4 or 5 years or more. And I've heard it is crazy that people love each other. But again, this bad habit of always finding form, pointing out the other person's weaknesses. So all you really need to do when you see any bad habit, the reason you do that is just conditioning, that's all. It's just you've done it for so long. It's just the way you do things in order to reprogram the mind. I tell people when you're feeling quiet, calm, relaxed, only those times when you feel good, you've got a bit of energy. Not when you're stressed out or burdened with so many other things to do in a calm, quiet time of your day. Think of that problem. And just tell your mind when I meet my partner. I will never say anything hurtful to him or her. When I meet my partner. I will never say anything hurtful when I meet my partner. I will not say anything hurtful. You say that to yourself. I usually do this three times. Paying full attention is most important that the attention which you give to what you are resolving is for listening completely. And then you forget it. Leave it alone and you'll be so surprised that when you meet your partner, you're about to follow the old habits of saying something mean and nasty. But the thought comes out, no, I will say something nice and you do that thought, which you you may have imagined was on the spur of the moment, came because you programmed it in there. You put it in there sometimes days before, and now it's come up. It's a great way of understanding how to change behaviors. Even with smoking, drinking or whatever else you think it is, whatever is a bad behavior, something you want to try and change in your life, try programming your mindfulness. Remember, just to sum it up again, quiet times of your day. When you feel relaxed, energetic, at peace, make a resolution three times. Listen carefully, then leave it alone. It's gone in. It will happen. It will work great way you're doing things. It understands the nature of the will. So as you go deeper in the meditation, the potential to do disappears. The will has vanished. Remember, this meditation is all about being still, being peaceful. And it's this will things which keeps on moving the world. The strange thing has mentioned this today, that the nature of the Western world, we're very willful. One of the reasons we will fall is because we are neurotic fault finders. I don't know what it is about our Western world, but because we always fighting for it, we never satisfied with ourselves, with our partners or with life. Because of that, we're always so active trying to change, develop and make things so-called better that our civilization has done so much, we've built so much, we've got so much technology, but we can't ever stop. We can't ever stop to enjoy what we've achieved. Our Western world is completely neurotic in that way. It works ever harder and harder and harder. More and more things, more and more adventures. More and more work. Why? Why can't we say this is good enough that I. How many of my so-called disciples were very happy in their house, and they decided to buy a bigger house? The investment for the future. No investment for the future always means more housework. That's all. More worries. Why always, always trying to change things? We don't have any appreciation of what we already have. We're always seeing the faults and which is the same when we look at ourselves. Too many people of lack of self esteem. And I always think, I think there's a huge correlation there, an absolute correlation, I would say, between the pace of our life, which is fault finding, trying to make things better because we'd never actually experience or appreciate what we have. And so the lack of our own contentment, we don't think we're good enough, so we just want to force it go more and more and more. The thought finding mind drives our civilization, and the same time it creates this enormous angst, unhappiness, discontent inside the mind. To be able to get this deep space of meditation, you have to oppose the thought fighting mind. Develop a mind of appreciation, of loving kindness. Adore my hearts. Open to this, whatever it is. The ability to be at peace with things, to appreciate things, not to see the force, but to see the good things there. To learn from your successes, not learn from your mistakes. That I've been saying the last few years. This positive energy, rather than negative energy is the only way you can get stillness and peace. This is good enough. What more do you want? You start wanting more. There's no end. There's only an end with contentment. Because contentment gives stillness. Stillness stops doing this wanting, and everything becomes calm in a great stillness of the mind. That which wants the will stops. Often wondered about the nature of time. Time is driven by craving, by will is actually craving and will creates time. So the more we want, the more time is important. Where we are not wanting anything. When we are still. Time disappears. The whole flow of life stops. And I'm not just saying that as a theory, because that's what happens when you get into meditation. How many of you sit still and experience timelessness? Ten minutes, half an hour, two hours have gone by and you haven't been asleep. People can actually take photographs of you being perfectly upright. You haven't been snoring perfectly alert. But time has lost its meaning. Why? Because you've been content. The mind has become still. Craving creates time. And for those scientists here who want to know this thing about the arrow of time, because the laws of physics can go both ways. Why does things flow in one direction? Not because craving flows in one direction that actually directs a movement of time. When craving stops, when the mind stops willing and doing everything becomes very still as it becomes too. Just like your body disappears gradually when you start moving. So does the mind disappear. The deeper meditations. The seeing the mind vanish. This whole experience of seeing the mind vanishing. And here I mean that which knows the knower vanishing. These give even the more powerful insights to see that even that which knows that twisters, just like the ground underneath you, is empty of everything. There is literally nothing there. When you see it vanish, you investigate deeply. You understand just how insubstantial it is. It is just a process and interplay of energies, if you wish. Just like the solid matter underneath you. Just like this solar system, this universe, which any scientists will describe to you in the same way your mind is the same. These are the insights which people have in the deep meditations. It challenges us to our core because we think the evidence in front of us is that this thing is solid, or I can hit it, but the evidence is sometimes misinterpreted. Misunderstood. It's not as straightforward as people would want to see, and sometimes it's not what you want to see. One of the great things about truth when we expect truths to be what you want to believe, there's too many people have vested interests in wanting it to be this way, wanting to be that way. Insight takes you out of your comfort zones, challenges you, and sometimes makes you very afraid. Strange thing, but it's a joy. The bliss of freedom which would overcome that fear. Even though you're losing so much of what you really thought you were in this deep space of meditation. It's so much bliss, so much profound stillness. You can't avoid it. It's just too attractive. Freedom. Real freedom is just too attractive for you. So you just get pulled along as your mind disappears. As everything goes, as it really is, nothing left. When you understand about the nature of the mind of consciousness, of knowing and doing and seeing it that empty. Only then can you understand just where did this mind come from and where would it go to? When is nothing there? Even now, when you see its full emptiness, you'll understand. They can come from nothing. And you can also more importantly, understand. You can go back to nothing. You can only do that. If it's nothing now, you can't destroy anything. You can only change it. Even if you blow up a building, you've got rubble left afterwards. The only way things can disappear if they weren't there in the first place. This is why when we meditate, we allow things to disappear as they disappear. We understand just how empty they were as the whole world disappears and with it your mind, then you can understand the deeper teachings of a Buddha. You understand? It is nothing here. After a while there would be nothing left. All that arose will one day disappear and pass away. So when this story of emptiness. I want to repeat one of the great moments of my life with my master at hand, to use a teaching which he gave me personally. I don't know if he gave this teaching to anybody else. No one else has taught me. He taught like this. But there's one occasion when I was going to help out and this great teacher at the sauna, because I. Changsha, was getting very sickly. We built him a sauna at our monastery in Thailand. His monastery was just a little ways away. I was mentioning just this on the side. The one of the great gifts of this teacher Shankar was. He didn't just teach us to be monks. He taught the Western disciples how to be teachers, because he got some land a little ways away from his monastery. And he told all these Western monks, here you are. You run your own monastery. Of course, we made a lot of messes many times, and he had to come and sort them out. But that's the only way we could learn. And so that now whenever I. When I went over to United States, when he went to Europe, there's so many monasteries of his tradition in the West and they're very, very popular. Even actually, this is another aside. I'm going off on a tangent. I'll come back to the story of ancient China. So on in a moment. But the CEO of Ford Corporation, I think it's called John Ford. He is a Buddhist, but I always thought he was like a Tibetan Buddhist. But apparently he went to Thailand recently, uh, to negotiate the opening of a car plant in Thailand. And obviously he had to meet the Prime Minister, Thaksin, to discuss the plant. And when they had the meeting, instead of discussing, you know, the plant and the economics of it and the deal they're going to make with the government. The CEO of Ford said to the prime minister of Thailand, have you heard of a market called Asian Car? Because the CEO of Ford had read many books about Shanghai and of course, the Prime minister of Thailand, his previous teacher was Argentina's secretary, a man called Isabel Mooney, because I remember him when I first went to, uh, Argentina's monastery, he was a secretary, the one who did my visa for the first time. But he left because it was too busy. Set himself up, became a teacher in his own right, and was teaching the prime minister of Thailand. And of course, that meant that Thaksin also had huge numbers of books of Argentina. So it's fascinating just how these teachings have actually reached even like the CEOs of a top company in the United States now. So Agent Chao is an enormously powerful monk. And this actually shows the depth of his power. Because when I was, he came for a sauna one day. One of the reasons why we built that sun was just to get the teacher to the monastery every week, because he would give us a dharma talk like a sermon before he had his sauna. And now and again, he just really hit the spot. And this particular occasion, he gave this incredibly profound talk. When you have a profound talk and it inspires you, it's so easy to meditate afterwards. The whole mind has been moved in one direction. And so instead of taking my body to the sauna to help my teacher, I just went around the back of the hall and meditated. And it's so easy to go into still peaceful states when you're inspired. So there was in the back of the whole city meditation, enjoying myself. Because when you meditate, there's so much bliss, so much peace is profound. It's deep. You feel that it's beyond all sort of theories and dogmas and arguments about what religion is right, and what's the right tradition, and what's the right teacher, what's the right thing to believe or what? Just shut up and be still. And so when you ask, do you feel it? When you feel it is so beautiful and wonderful liberation when you just allow things to disappear and everything becomes so still. It's the best place in the world. That's why some reminders of monk. That's why people become nuns, that beautiful stillness. So there I was, enjoying myself, and I don't know how long I was in that meditation when I came out. And through this thing, I thought, wow, this was really nice. But then I thought I should go and look after my teacher. That's, you know, the the job of monks to look after the ones who teach you, especially in the Asian tradition. So then I went off to find my teacher. Maybe I could do some little service for him. But I was too late. I had finished his sauna because I met him on the path. I was going to the sauna. He was coming the opposite direction. There's one of these wonderful encounters there with a great teacher because he took one look at me. And I'm not joking that sometimes his great masters. I look at you, they look right through you and you feel they're getting right into your mind. Some of these people do have psychic powers. They can read your mind. And that's what he was doing because he saw, you know, the features on my face. When you have a good meditation, you're relaxed. You've got a big smile on your face. Just a whole body language shows you you're peaceful. So he saw that. He saw that. I've been in a nice meditation. He decided to try and enlighten me because sometimes when you're ready, all it needs is just a little piece of information just to create an enlightenment experience. So he looked me in the eye and said, so why? That's how he said it. Sharp. Right to the point. Why? The biggest question of all. And I promised you at the beginning of this talk, I should tell you about the meaning of life. He was asking that question. Why? I answered, I don't know. Because I was only a young man. I was stupid, I didn't know what I was doing. I had a nice meditation, but I didn't really know what it meant. So I was honest. I said, I don't know. And this great teacher, you know, was obviously disappointed it didn't work, but he just laughed. This is great teachers too. They never put you down. Sometimes when you're really stupid and do something idiotic, they think it's so funny. And that's where I really learned. Making mistakes and being stupid is a wonderful, compassionate act for all other people because it makes them happy. I mean, it is so stupid. I remember this one time when I went up to see Adrienne Charles just learning Thai, and because I needed some soap for the shower, I went up to him and asked for some soap in Thai. I was just learning Thai for goodness sake. But the word for soap is Sabu. I said Sapo which means pineapple. So I said, what did you want? And I said, I want pineapple, you know, to wash with. That's how he heard it. And he thought, these Western bugs are really weird. Is it really true? In England, you wash with pineapples? He never let me forget that. But from that time, I always knew the difference between the pineapple and the bar soap. But he never sort of, uh, criticized you. Just thought it was a big joke. And what a wonderful entertainment it was, having this stupid western mucks about. So we made him happy. So that was a wonderful gift for a teacher. So there I was, being stupid again, saying, I don't know. But then he looked me in the eye again. He stopped laughing and he gave me one of his other big looks right inside you. He said, I'll tell you the answer. He said, if anyone ever asked that question again, this is the answer. This is one of the great teachers of our modern times. The answer to the question why, he said, made me a lie, which is Thai, for there isn't anything. There's the answer. There's nothing. And then look to me to understand. And I said yes. He said, no, you don't. Do you understand? No you don't. What a brilliant teacher that was. What a great answer. The answer. The question. Why? Emptiness. Nothing. There. It's powerful. And this is what you see when everything disappears. That's the only place where there can be any stillness. It is something left. There's always some business left. They can never be an ending of things. Never any stillness, never any freedom, never any peace. Whenever there's something left, there's always something to do. When there's nothing left at all. Only then do you have real freedom. So that's what the banner is. When everything disappears. When there's nothing left. How can that happen? Because the Buddha said there's nothing here to begin with. There's nothing here now. As the answer to the question why there is nothing. So all you. Nothing. So just wasted your time listening to sweet nothings. So that's the talk today I did a little deeper tour today. I hope I entertained you, but also provoked you, giving you some powerful, deep teachings because that's what I felt time I gave a deeper teaching rather than to bad tricks and all these other jokes. So has anyone got any questions or comments about the talk about nothing, emptiness and the meaning of life? Any questions or comments? Yeah. That would be very cheeky. But also be missing the point because actually that I'm glad you asked that question because sometimes that I've seen people ask questions like of monks, of teachers, and instead of getting a straight answer, you've asked a question back. I think that's very unfair because, you know, if you're a teacher, you're supposed to be giving the answers. Students are supposed to ask the questions. So I know that would be the wrong thing to do. I don't know if you've ever been a in a teacher student relationship, but if you go to somebody like a psychiatrist and say what has happened to me and they say, why not? You know this, they're not really doing their job. So I don't know the answers. They should be charging the fees basically. Yeah. But I much prefer it when people if I ask them a question, they don't ask a question back because that's what politicians do. Very often they avoid the the question. And I think that's being slippery. So if ever I do that, please tell me off. If ever you asked me a question and I say, you know, why did you ask that question? And then I'm just avoiding. So the straight answer. And I don't know. I've had enough experiences of actually asking questions of teachers or gurus or something and never getting a straight answer. I've had enough experience of them, so why can't you give a straight answer if you don't notice that you don't know? But stop so sliding around and shifting the grout. Ask me directly, and I think that's really being dishonest and lack of integrity on part of the teacher. So if anyone asks you a question, I want to give a straight answer. And if I don't, please ask back. So when you ask the question, you know, is it okay to say, I've got to remember this? I remember in the United States, I say, whenever a question is asked, please repeat the question for the tape. So the lady asks, why didn't you answer the question? Why with why not? So now you had the answer first. The question comes afterwards. So I hope you don't mind those people listening on the tape. Are you going? That's. Absolutely. So stop bothering. Stop craving. Just shut up. Sit down and disappear. Okay. Let's say yes. That we do do things because we don't understand. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And. Then you. That's right. He's saying that. Why bother if we have no choice? I think that's a question you answer asking because you have no choice but to bother. It's all part of the beautiful process. Sometimes people say, if you got no choice, why bother to even come to the temple? Because you've got no choice but to come to the temple. You try not to come to the temple. You try not to meditate. You try not to to go into the pursuit of truth and peace and happiness. Yeah, this is actually how it's answered. You find you're almost like on this journey of cause and effect, this process. And, you know, a lot of times, even in your life so far, you probably have thought that you made all these decisions. But a lot of real life has been out of control. And as soon as you realize that that's not just part of your life, basically most of your life, the sooner you can be at peace and harmony. Stop trying to control life so much. This being a control freak, which creates all the problems of life. The more we can just actually flow with things and just embrace things, allow things to develop, you find the more peaceful and harmonious and also the more prosperous you will be. One of the stories was in a newspaper in Israel. The doctors went on strike for two weeks, and during that fortnight the death rates in the hospitals in Jerusalem plummeted. Sometimes the more we control, the more we mess things up. Isn't that so in your life, even your relationships and what you try and control your relationships. The more difficult they become. So it's a great thing about you're not controlling so much. And look at our Western society, which is so into control. And one of the nice things which I learned in ancient societies, the village societies, people generally flow with things. And I was wondering, what's a big deal? We got a house is in the good enough. We got one water buffalo. We've got to feel this. You used to have this whole saying this, this water in the fields, there's fish in the water. What more do you want in life? And we had that simple contentment before until we thought this is not good enough. So how much do you want? How much do you need? So after a while, we found that contentment is the best way. But with contentment, the world disappears. That's the problem. The people, they don't want the world to disappear. That's why they keep doing things. So make sense? Thinking. Okay. Nothing is a process. Which. What? Yes. Okay. There's a process which is void of anything. I love the simile or just the nature of this physical world, because that is almost like a direct paradigm of the nature of the mind. So just because there's nothing actually physically here has any scientists just a flow of energy or basically even the energy is actually nothing there. A balance of energy, of negative energy, of positive energy. Put them all together and just disappears. Vanishes. Nothing is underlying the process. A process coming out of nothing, really. Nothing now will end in nothing. Isn't that really beautiful? Nothing is had. Nothing gained, nothing lost. Okay, I've won this question over here afterwards. Yeah. No, no, you've been thinking. So. What have you got for your thoughts? Can anyone. Of course. You have to be. Yeah. Can anyone become enlightened? How do you become enlightened again without meditation? What meditation is, is letting go. So you kind of become in line. You can't disappear without letting go of things. I know what meditation is, is the path of letting go. You just sit here and just let go. You allow things to disappear. That's what meditation means, allowing things to disappear. So obviously, you have to let things disappear to get to nothingness. So that's why I meditate. Just to be still. When still. When you're still. The whole world disappears. When you move, you create the world. That's why we create such a big world. Because we move so much. We move so fast. So what are we creating? We're just creating this turmoil. So I think if the world you more stillness and people just didn't do so much, rested more and with because they didn't have such a thought fighting mind a more grateful appreciative mind. I think we'd have more happiness. We'd have less progress. But more happiness and peace. Take your choice. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Feelings of awe and wonder. By the nature of the world and nature of relationships. Yeah. Sure. Especially when you see what's underlying it all. So the more deeper you see, the more you have the more wonder you have. And it's a whole way of the path of awe and wonder gets you to investigate deeper and deeper. So awe and wonder is not a finishing point of the path. This actually generates more, deeper investigation into things. Wow, this is wonderful. I wonder what's deeper in here. The thing is that the Or sometimes becomes a bit too much for people and they get scared, and that's where the joy and the bliss takes over that even. Actually, I remember reading, I think, in the Christian Bible that the idea of a God is fearful and frightening and awesome, and what could that maybe mean? But maybe just you have to let go so much to go into those deeper stages. It's frightening because we're all fear is about something so precious to you is about to be taken away. Fear is always about losing something when you know you haven't got anything to lose. There's nothing there. Of course, all fear disappears and vanishes. And then maybe in a Christian paradigm, you get as close to God as you want. So there's nothing there. It is why in the Christian paradigm, you have to let go of yourself or your soul have to let go of your ego, your person, your being, and surrender. That is a part of Christian Christian mysticism. What does surrender mean? But just letting go of will doing, moving. Being still that makes sense to you is another question over there. Yeah. Okay. You've heard emptiness described as bright, as emptiness have qualities. A relative, uh, depends on how much emptiness which you you developed. How is you empty out more and more. The mind becomes brighter, more beautiful. This is actually the brightness of the jhana. So just before the Chinese, this is where there's a term in party called the pervasive Gita, the brilliant, radiant mind. And that's the stage just before you enter a jhana. Well, I called in the book cinema to this beautiful bright light which comes out, which it gets incredibly brilliant, more brilliant and, and sort of anything you've ever seen before in this world. What that means is the mind is becoming energized, is seeing the purity, the brilliance of all this. But that's quite coarse as you go deeper into the the deep states of meditation. And then the whole concept of brightness disappears as peace and stillness becomes even more delicious than his coarse ecstasy. The different types of happiness in this world. As we taste each one, we find the one which is most effective. What is the bliss of peace? Utter contentment. Stillness. Wow. That's nice. How many of you've got an idea of what that's like? Because you've been meditating here. Why did you meditate here this after this evening, instead of going to a movie or going to a party? What are you doing this for? A lot of it. Because you find that when you meditate, even for half an hour, there's something at the end which feels so nice. It's more delicious, you know, than sort of the joy and happiness of seeing a movie or listening to music. So it's fascinating that you get led into deeper and deeper happiness and peace. And that's what takes you into emptiness. It's the same thing burning power monks who come. The banner is the ultimate happiness. Emptiness is the highest bliss.