End of Spiritual Elitism

End Of Spiritual Elitism by Ajahn Brahm I got a letter during the week where someone was asking me, basically, which is the best Buddhist tradition and how can you find out? Because they gave me some pamphlets from some teacher who was the Supreme Master, and they started me thinking about some of the experiences I have had in all this Supreme, or the best or the most. Uh, I remember a couple of years ago, I went to Cambodia for a big Buddhist summit, and I was representing the Australian Buddhist community there. And so when they gave me a little card which you have to wear in these conferences, it was V.I.P. So what does that mean? And that meant very, very important. Hello. My goodness. You know, it started off with just being a person and then this IP will be enough. That'd be pretty good to get important person. And then you get a VIP which is very important person. But that's not good enough these days. So you have to have a very, very important person. As soon as I gave me that, I was looking out to see who had VIP. Spencer's the end to this sort of, uh, spiritual elitism or like, you know, pride. You know, that sometimes even the, you know, sometimes you call yourself venerable boomerang. So but in another conference, which I've been going to because, you know, that I've been a monk for many years now. Everyone is a venerable. So you have to be something different. So they call them most venerable, whatever that means. But not everyone could be the most venerable. If you think logically, only one person could be the most vulnerable. Because what more venerable? But then, of course, you'll have an extreme venerable and the most extreme venerable. The point is the why is it that we have this tendency in human beings to always actually to up the ante, uh, to give ourselves more titles, uh, to compare and always to compare ourselves in such a way as puts us above others. What is this thing about elitism? And always wanted to be superior than the church or the temple down the road, or the person down the road? And this is going to be the subject of this talk this evening, because it becomes quite confusing to many people. Why is it that people of religion are actually getting into this game of like, spiritual elitism or superiority? It doesn't really make sense when you understand that the heart of all spiritual practices of religions, if you like, is supposed to be sort of understanding this thing we call ego, and not taking it so seriously and actually even undermining its very nature, its existence. One of the central features of Buddhism is the idea of no self. And so if everyone understood no self or the emptiness, how can we actually keep comparing ourselves as being better or even worse? And indeed that in traditional Buddhism, Buddhism made it very, very clear that there are something called the three types of conceit. And the conceit, you know, is like a conceiving, like a thought and measurement. And I was very fascinated the first time I heard this. To understand, to read this not just because the conceit that I am better than somebody else is, even the Buddha was very clear and very wise that even the conceit are you the same as other people is also a conceit. And the third conceit is that you're worse than other people, and those both are just an elitism or a sameness or a like a worthiness, which the Buddha said is all based on the delusion of measuring. Because when you look very deeply into the nature of, you know, your being, the nature of life, the nature of this world, and it becomes impossible to actually to compare anybody. Sometimes when we talk about elitism. Yeah, sure. There's some people know more than somebody else's. Some people are better meditators than others. Now my monastery is getting quite full now, and we just wonder just what to do. As more and more people are ordaining. We've only got a limit of 20 monks at our monastery. So I thought at the end of every year we'll give them a test and examination. Who can meditate the longest? And therefore the ones who fail can get booted out. As everyone is sitting there and I'm sitting with my stopwatch waiting to see who's moving first. But of course, that's only a joke. You could never do that. Because how can you measure? Just because a person sits a long time doesn't mean that they're the better meditator. And that's what sometimes happened. When I was a young monk, I started thinking, oh, just see how long you can meditate for. And I started off with 20 minutes and then I started, you know, working towards the 25 minutes. So when I wrote 30 minutes, that was a big landmark. But then I wasn't going to stop with just 30 minutes. I was going to go for 40 minutes even. I almost killed me when I first started, and then you got to an hour. Once it got to an hour, then it's very easy to go for 2 hours or 3 hours, and then you start thinking, how many hours have you meditated? And sometimes you talk to other young monks. Only three hours. That's nothing. I meditated for five hours. And then when Ajahn Cha started hearing about this, that's when he told his wonderful story. Because actually, I was just full of this very easy to understand but profound teachings, which were incredibly funny. He'd said, listen, monks, you're always trying to compare just how long you sit for. If sitting for long periods was essential to becoming enlightened, then all the chickens in this world would now be enlightened because they sit for more hours than you do on their eggs. They don't even have a soft sarfu a cushion to sit on. They sit on his hard, bony eggs for hours and hours and hours. So I remember that. And now I've looked at many chickens and they're certainly not enlightened. So the amount of time you meditate for, you're just making yourself a chicken. And maybe if you sit for long periods like that, not getting any depth in your meditation, maybe next lifetime you might be reborn as a chicken, but nevertheless. The point is that, you know, he saw quite clearly that it was just like a spiritual one upmanship who can sit the longest. And I sometimes I just recall, like just being a schoolteacher and looking at some of the different children in the classes which you were teaching, and sure that some people were at the top of the class, some people at the bottom of the class, well, what did that really matter when you started to inquire into, you know, where they come from, what they've been doing? And often I thought, well, look, you look at the whole school, the big picture in a school, you get kids in there from year seven to year 12, in a high school. Sure. The children in grade 12 know much more than the children in grade seven, but that's understandable. They've been in school longer. What do you expect? But it doesn't mean the children in grade 12 are better than the children in grade seven. Sure, they know more and there may be more skilled, but that doesn't mean the word better or worse, just different. That's all. And when you start looking at the way we compare each other and who is the best and who is the worst, it becomes quite clear it's logically untenable. How can you compare a grade 12 child to a grade seven child? How can you compare just a man with a woman? How can you compare a monk with a layperson? Because sometimes people say, oh, you monks, you sit up here and you know, you, you guys and girls have to sit down there. That's just elitist. It's not elitist. It's just practicality. You would not be able to see me if I sat down there. That's all it is. So a lot of times, sometimes that we misunderstand and we try and encourage this elitism. I am better than you. It's untenable. But more than that, it's incredibly dangerous. And it's a danger which comes from, like, the measuring of better and worse, which causes the biggest difficulties in our world. Because as soon as actually one person says you're better than the others, there's always a conflict there. You can see in our world, especially in religions, that sometimes that no one part of a religion thinks that they've got the best teachings, as she is in the Sunnis of in Iraq. They're both Muslims, but they think that theirs is a real one. The other isn't that I'm better and you're worse. And what happens when you have that comparison with better and worse? We end up arguing with each other. The arguing turns to violence. We blow up each other's temples. Fortunately, we haven't got that far yet in Buddhism. But hopefully the different strands of Buddhism never get that far. And we end up sort of saying, you're really bad, we're the best one, and we're going to go and destroy you. That is completely untenable. But this is actually where the comparisons lead to, the better and the worse. And those measurements, it's a strange thing, but the closer you are in your beliefs or in your religion or in your philosophies or in even in your relationship, the people coming together close to you are the more friction there is and the more antagonism. This. I seen this so many times that they say even in Buddhism, Buddhism can be so friendly with Christians and with Hindus. But you get to Buddhists from Mahayana or Theravada or Zen or whatever. They have big arguments for which one is the right Buddhism. Why is it the closer we are, the more we argue. And I remember hearing a joke about that some time ago. Here comes today's joke about this man. He was walking home one night across the bridge, and he saw this guy about to jump off the bridge, commit suicide. He went up to him and said, what are you doing that for? Please don't do that. I'm a Christian. I've come to help you. And the man on the bridge about to jump, I said, I'm a Christian too, and they sort of do gooders said, oh, what type of Christianity? And the man said, I'm a Baptist. Oh, that's amazing. I'm a Baptist, too. So what type of baptism? Southern reformed or the northern? Sir, I'm a Southern Baptist. Well, amazing. Same as me. So the the 1926 agreement or the the 1964 agreement said I'm a 1926 agreement. That's amazing. So am I said the guy was trying to help him. 1926 agreement second time revised. Now, he said in the 1926 agreement, the third time revised. You are, you heretic, and you pushed him off the bridge. Now all the rest of it is the so close together. The closer we are together, the more angry we get at each other. The big differences don't seem to matter so much, but the small differences. We fight the death over. Why is that? And again, you can actually see that there's a mind which measures which creates all these problems. And it becomes what we call this spiritual elitism. And it does create the problems and the wars and the violence outside of yourself. It stops us being friends. How can you really be a friend to someone else when you think you're so much better than they are that you are more vulnerable than they are, or more wise than they are, or more enlightened than they are. It is wonderful that in our monastery we do not have spiritual exams at the end of the year. In meditation classes, I never actually hold up these cards like they do at the Commonwealth Games. Gymnastics. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten and grade people. And you do that on purpose because it's impossible to grade people and it does not make sense. But grading those people, even in one human being, how can you measure yourself? And to say today that I had a good meditation yesterday I had a bad meditation. How can you compare? When you look at all the conditions and the causes which bring about this moment, sometimes you think that you could have done better or you could have done worse. The truth of the matter is you couldn't learn anything else. This is the way it was and you are just expressing the conditions of your life. So how can you measure that? When we try and measure other people, we're not understanding them. How often has it happened to you that someone has criticized you because you've come home, stay late from work and you promise to be home early, but you tried your very best, but the conditions just stopped it happening and you feel that you are being criticized. They're getting angry at you and you know you're being unfairly criticized. It happens so often that we feel we're unfairly judged that the person never really understood us. But how often is it when you're unfairly praised? You're saying, oh no, I don't deserve that. And you get upset because you're judged unfair. We only get upset when we criticize badly, but when somebody praises us for something we didn't do. Oh, thank you very much indeed. That's why some of the stories which I tell, they're not really jokes. But you still laugh because I got them wrong, but I still get very happy about it. The point being here is that when we have this thing called praise and blame, which is a part of this elitism, though, we can actually understood that what we praise and what we blame, we're not really understanding. And in fact, you can't really praise or blame much at all in this world, because this is just what people are, what people do. It's part of their conditioning. But you can understand what happens with praise and blame in the world. Sometimes people come up to me and said that this person said this or they did that. It's very unfair. Why did it happen to me? And of course, the answer is why not? It happens to everybody. We often get blamed for things we didn't do, and we often get praise for things we didn't do as well. This is part of life. It's part of the course. You can accept it. So when you get unfairly criticized, you think, ah, yes, thank you very much, I expected that. Can you do that? A lot of other problems in life is actually false expectations of life. And we have unrealistic expectations. We're not really living in a real world. The realistic expectations is understanding that other people will misunderstand us. Sometimes they will praise us for things we didn't do and blame us for things we didn't do. We should understand that and accept that and not get angry and think that something has gone wrong. In the same way that when we understand that praise and blame what the Buddha called worldly dumb is nothing to do with the spiritual life is coming from a deluded mind. We can actually stop if we're going to do anything, but those are both deluded. If you're going to do anything. Praise is much better than blame. You get much more out of a person when you praise them, when you blame them. So just if you're going to be deluded, be deluded in the praising. You get much further in life by sucking up to people than you do by blaming them. And it's a little bit of praise actually can actually help change people's views. This was actually an article which I saw recently, that if you actually praise someone, make them feel good, they're more open to listening. So if you are going to be talking with your husband or your wife, with your parent or someone about something very difficult, praise them. First of all, suck up to them. Make them feel good. And. And then when they are open, when they're listening, then you can maybe talk to them about some difficult thing, even though changing their view. It was a psychology experiment was done when you're kind to a person. Praise them, look after them, then they're more likely to change their opinion about something than when you confront them directly. So if you're going to do anything, praise is much better than blame. But in the deeper nature of things that both are completely diluted. You can't praise the person. You can't blame a person. Sometimes you don't know why they do these things, no more than what you do can sometimes. How can you praise or blame? So when we have an elitism, who's the best meditator? Who's the wisest person? Who's the best? Then sometimes you don't. You can't really judge fairly. And it wouldn't be a wonderful world if we didn't have such elitism, and instead we could have have understanding instead. But what is the barrier to that? And the barrier to that is always this, you know, this terrible thing we call a self inside of us and this self inside of us always wants to actually to exist, to impress, to be, to get people's accolades. Why is it that people in those Commonwealth Games work so hard, ran so hard, put themselves through so much pain to see, to do what they did? I recall one of my fellow monks. His best friend was a champion athlete. He was always winning these long distance races again and again and again. They thought he was an Olympic gold medal, a possibility for for England. And then he just lost the race and he never won any more. Since that time, he just retired. And when he asked him, sir, how come you lost that race? And he just replied, I realized I didn't need to win. For all his time up until that race. He always thought he had to win. He must win, and he put himself through so much pain and agony every time he was killing himself. And he got this wonderful realization, this almost enlightenment. I don't need to win. And from that time on, he never won any, uh, any sprint races. But he certainly was a winner of the human race. He had contentment. He had peace. He was at ease with himself, and he got happiness. So do you want to win the race? Are you trying to be a winner? If you are. Why? Where is that coming from? And what's it doing to you? If you want to be a winner in this world and want to be the best, if you are trying to become the most vulnerable in the monastery and the most enlightened member of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, if you want to be the holiest person in the whole of Australia, then you you're really asking for a lot of trouble. It is that spiritual elitism sometimes that people give up the worldly elitism of trying to be a winner in the world, and they come along and try and be a winner in their religion. But first of all, they want to choose the best monastery or the best teacher, and they go along and say, who's your teacher? And say, I'm a disciple of agile. And I said, well, that's terrible. I'm a disciple of a much more enlightened person than that. And sometimes people talk like this as, as if you're a teacher confers upon you some sort of elitism or lack of it. And because of that, that some teachers actually say that only come to me, don't go to anybody else, which is an elitism which breeds a cult. A cult is some place where you go and you can only go to that place. You're forbidden from going to other teachings. You can't read other books. It is a possessiveness, like a prison, which some religions or spiritual teachings sometimes do. And I told someone just before coming in here said, you don't just have one teacher in life no more than when you go to school. You only have one teacher who teaches you everything from English to maths to science to geography, to to the foreign languages and everything else. At this school, you have many teachers because one teacher is very good at one subject, and they're not so good at other subjects. But can you compare the history teacher to the maths teacher? In life we have many teachers and everyone will complement each other, and when they complement each other, you learn much more. You grow much more. If you're digging a well, you just you can't just use a spade. Sometimes a spade, sometimes a pick, sometimes a bucket to take the earth out. You need many different tools to dig a well, in the same way to learn the spiritual depths as truths which are found deep inside of you and the well within the heart. We do need many tools to dig out this truth of peace, of freedom, of enlightenment, of love. And that is why that the elitism which says just come to my centre and don't go to other people's center is wrong. In fact, I've been saying this for a long time now. As a teacher myself, I'm trying my hardest to get rid of disciples. Just like I was a teacher at school, I was trying to get rid of my students. By getting rid of them. I mean, they graduated. They didn't need to come back again. But I have some very stupid students. Some of you have been coming back here for the last 20 years, every Friday night, and you still haven't learned enough to sort of not need to come here anymore. I must be a terrible, terrible teacher. But the point is, isn't a successful teacher someone who gets rid of their disciples not actually amasses anymore. So the whole idea is actually for instead of an elitism where you say, just come to my monastery of my church, the real good teachers say, go to the other church, don't come here. In other words, I don't really say that. They say they just see whatever teaching works for you. And don't just think that one teacher or one tradition, or even in one religion. Why not to see if there's other things available. I don't really care sort of what tradition it is. If they say something useful, wise, conducive to peace, to happiness, to freedom for understanding, why not listen and put it into practice? And I'd stay off the Buddhist teachings there. He said, whatever leads to such things as peace, to happiness, to freedom, to tolerance, to unconditional love. He said that must be the good teaching. That's Dharma. He called that the teachings of a Buddha. So you know it. Not from where it comes from. You know it, not from what it sounds like. You know it from where it leads. If it leads to such beautiful things as peace, freedom, harmony, you know that it must be truth. And you know that you can get that truth from many places in the world. The point is, you don't compare one teacher to another teacher, nor one religion to another religion. Not one history teacher to one maths teacher. But you can learn from each other more than that. As someone just asked me earlier, they said, can you be my teacher? And I said, I will not be your teacher. I will be a teacher for you, but not the teacher. Because sometimes when you become the teacher, it becomes a transference of responsibility from the disciple to that person. And that is both unfair on the teacher, and it's also dysfunctional for the student. The whole purpose of a religious path or a spiritual path is not to take your power away from you, not to tell you what to do, because that is part of the elite that I know more than you, that I am more enlightened than you, that I've got more power than you. So you have to do what you're told, even though that sometimes I would love to have that. When I went to visit the Benedictine monastery in Tunisia, I've been there many times. I know the monks very well, and so I'm really their friends. But when I was very interested being an Abbott and Abbott Placid being, the advent of the Benedictine monastery was some of their rules and ways of doing things. The one thing they have, which we don't have in our Buddhist monasteries is the rule of obedience. And I thought that's an interesting rule to do. It was very attractive being the leader of a monastery to actually have obedience. But I would never do that because it's against the spirit of Buddhism to have that degree of obedience and that degree of control. The whole point of Buddhism is a freeing of the individual. Not I am disempowering of them, and actually controlling does disempower another person. So even though this part of me was said, that would be a great rule to have in our monastery. The other part of me, which is the wiser part. This is the lazy part, wants to have obedience. I have a much easier life. But even here that sometimes that once. Apparently I did a spelling error when I was wrote on a piece of paper. There was a spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. It was a typo, but one of those things he called a Freudian slip. I wrote down spiritual dictator what I would study. There's a nice joke for that can't be the way of things, because that degree of controlling would mean that somehow I thought that I was somehow better than other people, and somehow that I was privileged or somehow empowered to create such a role for myself. And that would always lead to a lot of difficulties and problems. And it's against the whole purpose of of spirituality, which is to free the individual, not to bind them in a power relationship between somebody who knows and somebody who doesn't. Even in a school these days, sure, the teacher has the authority, but the authority of the wisdom or the knowledge of a teacher is something which is imparted to the student to free them so they don't need to rely on their teacher anymore. It's the freeing and empowering of the other person so they can be independent. Well, the word we have in the teacher student relationship in Buddhism, in monastic Buddhism, they say it's like a it's a word which we call messiah, which literally means resting on a leaning on. But. But my role as a teacher to my young monks in my monastery is they lean on me for a while. Just like you can lean on a sort of a crutch until you're strong enough to do without it. But it's not a disempowering, is is there a temporary support for other people? And that should always be the role of a teacher to support, but always temporarily to inspire and lead and instruct and share wisdom, but never to tell you what to do. And I make this point very strongly, and you may notice that this is important part of the Buddhist teachings. We never rule from on top about what the right thing or the wrong thing is with things like abortion on euthanasia. I'll tell you what the right thing or the wrong thing to do with your sexual life. As Buddhists, we can only empower you, can give you good advice to make up your own decisions. That always has to be the case. It's empowering you, not telling you what to do, but helping you make your own decisions. And that is a good sign that this is not an elitism. Not to say that I know much more than you, that I have got some revelation from some divine being or some transmission, which means that I can tell you what to do. That is an elitist type of village. An elite force which knows much more and which just tells you. It may sound easier for you to actually to have this authority and to believe in that authority, but the person who truly knows would never assume such authority, because if they do, it just leads this terrible, terrible one upmanship and this infighting amongst the elites, which will always happen. So who's the most elite and who's the supreme, most elitist of the group? And that is one of the problems with our world. So instead of having an aristocracy in a religion or an elitist in religion, we understand that the different parts of Buddhism or the different teachings, the different teachers, the different traditions, instead of actually opposing each other and who's the best? We don't compare, but we make use of in the same way. We never say that a rose is more beautiful than the daffodil, but they all belong in the garden next to each other. If you know how to raise them. Together, we allow them all to be as part of the tapestry of our spiritual life. And that way that we don't need to fight or feel either aggressive or defensive against other people who come and say hi. Religion is much better than your religion. Instead, we can say that our religions are okay instead of mine and yours, and where we can have that degree of tolerance, you can see how much we can have a peaceful world we won't measure anymore. And when we stop measuring anymore, we'll have much more freedom because we realize, how can you do this measuring business? And if you someone comes along and say, my religion is better than yours, and you come along and say, no, no, my religion is better than yours, you can get into an argument which no one is ever going to win. And then of course, these days, you know, there are some very aggressive, uh, religious people. And sometimes they can run off, sometimes a good friend, sometimes because life is a man can be very peaceful. And sometimes when someone comes and argues with you because they were born again Christian, sometimes it's good fun having them come along and sort of, uh, start messing around. There's many sort of interesting stories about born again Christians. And this one, Mike was telling me that he was in a train in UK somewhere, going on a long journey, and one of these evangelicals saw the great opportunity to go to heaven quickly convert a Buddhist monk, especially a Buddhist teacher. And that must really get you into good, uh, stance with God after you die, if that's what you believe in. And so he came up to him and tried to convert him. And all the time this monk was just being kind of being gentle while all the other people in the carriage were being entertained, because a very boring being on a train in UK, going from place to place. And when this evangelical Christian and Buddhists were going head to head, it's like one of these, um, reality TV shows to see who's going to win. And so they're going off together. And in the end, the man was just so peaceful and calm, and in the end, just, uh, he said, this is my stop now. Now, I love you. There's no Buddhist monk said to this evangelical Christian man. He said, isn't that what all religions are about? And everyone cheered in the carriage, and he left just with those words. He won. And this simple things like that. Not saying that I am better than you, but saying a love which is actually binds us together instead of being better or worse. And that's why he won the argument there. Because how can there be an argument now when you don't compare? How many arguments do you have in your life? And is it always somehow others are better or worse, or should and shouldn't are good and or bad which comes up there? And after a while we see all these arguments which we have in the world, all these political problems which you have in places like Thailand and and France and other countries in the world, and sometimes you say, what's going on here? Can't no, people actually learn how to be at peace and actually to discuss things properly and kindly. Why is it. It's just because of this ego thing. I'm better than you. I know more than you. I'm right and you're wrong. Which means we never listen to each other. We just become. I have got the best truth. Your truth doesn't really count. And it's an elite ism. There is. I know and you don't know. So instead of that, we can stop this spiritual elitism and actually just learn how to be at peace and to listen. When you learn how to listen, you can listen from anybody. I know that one time that somebody asked the Buddha just before he passed away, and this was a very beautiful teaching, which gives a great answer about religious harmony and diversity. They asked him, is it possible to become enlightened in other traditions outside of Buddhism? The great question which is pertinent today can you become enlightened in other traditions? And the Buddha gave this beautiful answer. He said, in whatever tradition, you have things like an eightfold path, a practice of virtue, of meditation, development of wisdom. Yeah, sure. You'll find enlightened people. What he was saying was, it's not the name of the tradition. It's actually what you do makes you enlightened or not enlightened. It's not your belief structure. It's actually your actions, your practice. That is what leads to enlightenment. And it is so true because sometimes people can belong to a particular church or particular temple and think that that's enough and it's not as what you do there is most important. What you do is more important than what you pretend. Even in places like Thailand, I remember these monasteries in Thailand where all these Thais were supposed to be devout Buddhists, sure that they were devout on the outside, but on the inside there was something different. And we found this out once, when this time, people in Thailand, people were keeping the five precepts. Some of you Buddhists have kept the five precepts, and sometimes you've gone to ceremonies and you've seen the monks giving the five pieces. We put our hands up and we know we do the narrow tasks and the three refuges and the the five precepts, you know, refrain from killing living beings. And this is such an important ceremony that is done in most Buddhist events. And you can actually see this every Saturday and Sunday here at noon, at lunchtime we always give those five precepts. And once we saw these Thai people taking the five precepts and they had one finger down. And in all the years which I been in Thailand, I've never seen this before. What does it mean? Like, you know, putting one finger down. And when we asked them, they said, oh, today, Venerable Sir, I'm only keeping four precepts. But nevertheless, they charted all the five precepts. It was one way of actually preserving their ego, because they were chanting everything like everybody else, but keeping one finger down. And once I saw that, I started looking even more carefully. And sure enough, I saw someone with two fingers down. And after many weeks I looked, and sure enough, I found some with all the fingers. They were still chanting all the precepts, but they weren't meaning to keep them. What were they doing that for? It is because ego, pride there are just and on the surface, Buddhists. They weren't real Buddhists, they weren't really spiritual people. They were just playing. And it's not what you say. It's not whether you go to the temple or you don't go to the temple. It's not if you're a Sri Lankan, you, as I am a Buddhist because I'm a Sri Lankan. It's what you do. It is important if anybody does actually practice. The Eightfold path is virtuous conduct, which means not doing anything which harms yourself and how harms another person. And being a spiritual aristocrat is straight away harming yourself, thinking I am better than other people. I've been meditating for so long. Sometimes you know, you can actually, you know, we could do this. Actually, here in our Buddhist society, we can find out how long you've been a member of the Buddhist Society of WA, and the members have been here for 20 years. You can actually stand in the front. This is the 20 year row, and the ten year row is back over there and a five year row. And those people have only just joined you still outside. We don't have that aristocracy, sort of, you know, in our temples, they do have that in the churches, because I remember just seeing the front row, as always. They got a little crown on it in Saint George's Cathedral that's, you know, for royalty. We sit at the front. I was very, very pleased in the times I was in Thailand that whether you are royalty or a general or a very wealthy person, sometimes you sat at the back. And the villagers who were dirt poor, who had hardly no few parts that said Thai currency to their name. They sat right in the front. And I thought, why is this? And they said, well, in a monastery, if you're going to sit in the front, it's because of your precepts. No, because of your virtue. That's what really counts in a monastery. So if there is any hierarchy, it's, you know, your virtue. You can sit in the front. As soon as they went outside, then saw the generals and the important people, the prime ministers, then they were up front and the villagers were right down. It was wonderful that if you're going to respect anything, to respect virtue rather than wealth or rather than prestige. So it's great how in a place like this, you know, if a very wealthy person or famous person comes in, it doesn't matter. They don't sit in the front and sit wherever they can. It's great. You know, being like that as a mike, I remember going to give a talk in Sydney some years ago. There was only a small group of maybe about 20 or 30 people teaching and meditation. This lady was looking at me. She wasn't like a young, attractive lady and looking at me. I don't know why she was looking at me. I was getting a bit worried after a little while. Look at me all the time. And then afterwards I asked you. And I said, why is that lady looking at me all the time and said, don't you know her? I think she was some TV star in Water Rats or something. And she's very, very, very popular. Everybody knows her except me because I never watch a TV. And so she was looking at me just to try and be recognized. And I didn't recognize her. And that apparently that made her really upset because she was so used to being recognized. That was her ego. That was her position in society. There was her elitism of being a famous person. So at least as in in Buddhism, we don't have this spiritual aristocracy. That's one of the reasons why. And this is flows have been coming a long time, that monks never let on how deep their meditation is, or how enlightened they are, or what psychic powers they have. We keep this very quiet for the one reason that we don't want to start an aristocracy of monks or nuns within this anger. So you just don't know what the monks are up to inside. And the reason is because the Buddha wanted to make at least the group of monks and nuns, even without splitting them up into the enlightened ones and the dummies. Because you can imagine what happens, you know, if you did have that degree of elitism sometimes that, you know, unfortunately, that people assume that certain monks are enlightened. And this is what happened. My master Ajahn, everyone always thought that he was enlightened. He was a great aroha. And it's true you get more good karma by offering to an enlightened being than you do offering to an ordinary Joe Monk. So what would happen in these early days when the food was so scarce that sometimes you did just get a ball of rice and a frog on top? But on this one occasion, I remember sitting there just expecting such a disgusting meal, which is the only one meal of the day. Day after day after day. But you knew when Ajahn was in the monastery lots of people would come because he was an enlightened being, so they thought, and so they'd bring all the delicious food to him. So there I was, sitting there and one day this big truck came in, had pots and pots and food from town. This is stuff you could eat, not the village food. And I thought, great, I'm going to have a good meal today. But the driver got out of their car and said, is our Jan Char here today? I'm sorry, he's gone to another monastery. So they turned around and went home. We got nothing. And that hurt to set a frog and rice again. Now I can understand just why you don't want that type of elitism. And it's true. You can't tell sometimes. One of my favorite stories from the time of the Buddha was when these monks were going on arms round, and they had one of these small novices. If you see gone to Thailand or Burma, you sometimes see these little fellows ordain as monks, maybe only 12 or 13. Sometimes it's because they've got no home to go to them. Maybe orphans or their parents are so poor, or even sometimes have been abused at home, and they're so afraid to go to a monastery as a refuge. At least they get kindness and an education and looked after in a monastery. So in the time of the Buddha, this young man had become a monk, and he seen amongst were teasing him, as sometimes you do to young people. And the Buddhist told those monks, come over here, you don't know who you're teasing. Because that little knob is only 12 or 13 years old. Actually was only seven years old. I think he was Sumana. His name was. He was fully enlightened with great psychic powers. And a Buddha told him a story that he'd just. He'd done battle with this dragon who lived in one of the lakes up in the Himalayas and defeated him. And like he may not believe in those psychic stories, but that's part of the original Buddhism, because you don't know what you've done. That monk is fully aligned with great powers and you can't know. And that's when he sort of told the story. Like the thing, the four small things you'd always be careful of, like a small snake. Just because it's a baby snake doesn't mean it hasn't got great venom. It can kill you or a small fire, because a small fire can sometimes turn into a big bushfire, which can destroy hundreds and thousands of of acres of property. Also, be careful of a small prince. There may be only a small prince, but one day they may take over the throne. And if you're in their kingdom and they remember what you done, you'll be in big trouble. Revenge. These days we say be careful of small politicians. And the last thing he said. Be careful, those small monks or nuns, because sometimes you don't know who they are, what they can do. And so because of that, you know, you can understand that the Buddha's wanted to have this evenness, this lack of elitism within his group of monks who called the sangha or nuns. No superiority inferiority because that goes against the truth of the mind and the body. Just like in a school, you can't compare. So some people have been at the meditation longer. Not they're better or worse. Surely they're more developed, but other people are less developed. It's only a matter of time. So we don't have this elitism, for better or worse. But we don't have this relativism. Better or worse. We never feel this inferiority or superiority for this evenness and that evenness, lack of superiority, inferiority. Neither is really there. I mean, so we can actually love another person, be their friend, be their equal, be their. Their partner rather than being their their boss. If ever you have superiority inferiority, your relationship will be between a superior and inferior. You've probably seen that at work. You've had that in your life. Please don't have that in your home. If you do, you're going to have a terrible time there. We don't need to have that in a monastery. Sure, we have the different ways of seating. No senior and junior. According to the years you've been a monk. But that doesn't mean you're better or worse. And if we can do that in a monastery, if we can do that in a relationship show, we should have that in our religions. There's no such thing as a better or worse. There's just different, that's all. Which is sometimes why, you know, sometimes even in Buddhism, sometimes they say, what are they doing this for? Sometimes have all these different strands of Buddhism, whether it's Mahayana, Theravada, Zen, the forest tradition, the city tradition. I just remember this is a story from my own tradition, from Ajahn Cha's monastery. There was once this monk came to stay. He had these. I don't think I can. I think I just had I was sick at this time and he had bright yellow robes. Now we have like the the darker robes. And this is again, sometimes superiority inferiority. I had a much lighter robe, but it was wearing out. So I got this robe just last week. And so sometimes you have these monks with bright orange robe, and that signifies they're from the city. And so some of the forest monks were looking down upon the village monks or the city monks, saying, these monks know they accept money. They probably eat three times a day, they watch the TV and they're just like shameless monk. They probably never meditated. So this monk came, they just saw. You can just stay in. They stay in the hall. So he stayed for three days. No one talked to him. He went back again afterwards. We found out afterwards just how hard he attained. He was. He'd been attaining the third jhana, which is very high, a deep state of meditation. He wanted some instruction on how to go deeper. There's only because he was wearing so the robe, not of a forest tradition that people assumed he wasn't a meditator. Even in my home temple, they made a huge mistake there. Why is it that we sometimes have this even now within a tradition, this superiority inferiority business, that I am the forest tradition, I am adjunct to our tradition. I please never do that because sometimes we miss the truth, or we judge a person just from their tradition. The Buddha made a great point of this in his life. He wanted to destroy the caste system which was present in the at the time. He'd said very clearly, you can't judge a person by their family who their father was or where they were born. And even though he railed against the caste system in India, that was one area where he failed. The caste system survives to this day. But truly, how can you say that one person is better than another? Because now the cast in which they were born, or the country where they were born, or the profession of their father, that goes against reason. And so how can we say that the one person, because they're from the forest tradition, or because they're from the the village traditional, because they're from Zen or because they're Mahayana? Because they're from Pure Land or because they're from Theravada? How can we say again that that person's a better person? It doesn't matter what tradition you're from. It's what you're doing in that tradition which counts. As the Buddha said, wherever you see the practice of the Eightfold Path, there you find enlightened beings. It's not the name of the the the path. It's not the tradition you come from. It's it's not the country or the lineage or the name of your teacher. What's important is what you're doing. The sea axe was to find the person. Not so these outer packaging. And that's the same with all the religions in our world. It's not that Islam is the best of Buddhism is the best, or Christianity is the best, is what the person is doing in those religions. And if they are really practicing virtue, they're not harming other people, they're not harming themselves. If you really are practicing the meditation the way of inner peace, if you are really developing the wisdom which acknowledges the stillness, the peace, the freedom, the love, the unconditional awareness in life, then that is a path which will lead to enlightenment. And it cuts against all the spiritual elitism. It cuts against just how long you've meditated, how many initiations you've had, what teach you are, how long you've been a Buddhist, how many hours you can meditate. It cuts against all of that stuff. After all, how can we really compare? Another joke and I better put it in now because otherwise I won't get it in. Now these four ladies from Cottesloe. For it is for the internet. This is a western suburb, quite wealthy in Perth, and there were having morning coffee in Bayview Terrace, and there they were talking about their children as such women do. And one of them said, my child, he's just graduated from the seminary. I was going to say, send it to me, but I was wrong. What I read a few months after I graduate from the seminary, they get reincarnated. He graduated from the seminary and now is a Catholic priest and she was so proud of him. People, actually, when he comes into a room, they get off their chairs. They stand up and say, Your Reverence, I know what it's like the one upmanship in Cottesloe. The other lady said, that's nothing, that's nothing. My son is a bishop. When he gets into a room, everyone bows and they say your grace. And they kiss his ring. And a third woman said, that's nothing. My son is a cardinal. When he comes into a room, people grovel on the floor and they call him Your Eminence. And they looked at the fourth woman, and she was just sipping her latte and had to wait for her to respond. Well, what about your son, then? He said, that's nothing. My son is an ex Eagles player. He's six foot four tall, a blonde, blue eyed, a self-made millionaire. When he comes into a room, all the women fade and say, oh my God, my God. So that's what really counts, isn't it? I remember going to the old Hollywood school some years ago to be taken down there to having these different religions coming once every week, and I was the last one, a Buddhist talk, and the teacher said, I'm sorry, sort of. You failed. I said, why was that? He said, last week they had this Muslim guy. He was again, six foot two, blue eyed blonde. He said, you Buddhist monks don't don't cut the ice with the glass. But anyway. The point is, with spiritual leaders, there's too much of it about we should actually stop all this elitism. Who's the best and who's the worst and is the status practice the path, the path of virtue, peace and wisdom. And that can create more happiness in this world. It can open us up to wisdom coming from different sources. It can stop this terrible thing of I'm the best and I'm the worst, and all the terrible things which come of it, of exploitation, of power, of, uh, you know, trying to oppress other religions because I think ours is the best and yours is the worst of have to go and ban you. I've got to stop you, become violent to you, blow up your temples or whatever else you have to do. Or because of spiritual elitism. And for your own practical life. Please be friendly with other traditions. If another teacher comes along. Listen to them. They may be. Don't care where they come from. Man or woman, gay or whatever. Listen to them. See what they have to say. If it makes sense, then it's just another great teacher in this great school of life, in the great university. You can learn something from them. Don't just commit to one teacher because every teacher will have weaknesses and other strengths. The time of the Buddha that he had his two great disciples. So Pluto, Magellan, Magellan was just so great on the deep meditations. Sorry Prewitt was so great in understanding the wisdom of that. The two of them together made a great team by themselves. They probably would have made it together. They were great. This is why that sometimes you need more than one teacher. That's sometimes safe as well. So don't just depend upon one, 2 or 3. We can balance each other. And that way we don't even compare. Everything becomes useful for us. And it's terrible spiritual elitism of our world if you come across it. Whoever says, you know there are my I'm the Supreme. This is the best way. Don't go to other people's way. The red warning lights should start flashing. The alarm bells should start going. There's something wrong that feels wrong and actually is wrong. So let's end the spiritual elitism. Don't really judge a person from what religion they come from. What part of the religion they come from, what gender they are. Just listen to what they say. If it makes sense. And it's according with your experience. And it leads to peace, to freedom, to tolerance, to this beautiful, unconditional awareness called love. Then you can follow it. That's how you know truth. You can cut across and cut out this terrible aristocracy of religions. So that's the talk for this evening. The endless spiritual elite is. Okay. Anyone got any comments or questions about this evening's talk? Hope you don't think it was the best talk. Certainly not the worst. Not the same. It's just the talk, that's all. Any questions? Going going gone. Okay, so at least you remember the jokes anyway. Especially the Cottesloe four ladies joke that went down very well. Thank you very much. Mine furore. Just get it back. Actually, no, that's not true. He's not a spiritual dictator. And all the time I've known he's not. Once he told me what to do, even though there were plenty of times he was thinking about it. Yeah. Okay. No, no, he's very he's very gentle. And he always says please.