Episode Transcript
AB20030509_Enlightenment
Transcription
Blown. Enlightenment is happening. I'm sure you can catch it on the internet or catch it on the tape. It here we go. Okay, as many of you know that we're coming up to one of the biggest festivals, holidays of the Buddhist calendar, which is called WASAC, which remembers the birth, enlightenment, and final passing away of the Buddha. And in particular, the central thing of all of that is the enlightenment, because we wouldn't really celebrate the birthday of someone if they weren't so special. And what makes the Buddha special is the enlightenment. Even the passing away wouldn't be important, or it might even be a sad occasion if it was for the meaning of enlightenment is a final graduation from the round of rebirth, what we call samsara. So the enlightenment does always form a central part of Buddhism. And one of the features of enlightenment, it was not just confined to one person in history, nor is it confined to one gender or one race or one age. But one of the lasting features of Buddhism is that enlightenment is freely available to every human being and even other beings as well. And if we talk about Buddhism exactly, whether it's a philosophy, a religion or a way of life or whatever, and always has to sort of include in one's understanding of the Buddhist path the fact that it leads to this wonderful thing which we call enlightenment, as if it's the final goal of a human being, of all beings. And so it's important to have some understanding and feeling for what enlightenment truly is. And of course, this is one of the hardest subjects to talk about, but nevertheless, I'm always so stupid. I always like to give the hardest talks and just see what happens. So this is the talk about enlightenment this evening especially because this is a few days away from our great wasack celebrations on Sunday and also on Thursday evening. So it's nice to be able to know what you're trying to celebrate on these days. So in a good way to understand what actually enlightenment was, was go a little bit back to the story of the person who was to become the Buddha. Just like many other people, like searching for meaning in life, searching for happiness in life, searching for security in life. Like everyone else, we try and find our security in our material possessions. We still do that, even though we should know better by now. And many people invested lots of money in the stock market. And it all goes, it disappears. Some people invest all of their energies in having a family and a good family, and sometimes tragedies strike that family. And sometimes people invest all of their energies in their work, in their fame. But every time when I go and take a funeral at the cemetery, like I was doing last Thursday, just yesterday, always remember, just coming back from the cemetery, you always look at all those headstones there, and people who are very important and people who had families are well known in the community. And now all that's remaining of them is just words unrecognizable on the old headstones. As they were, we now are. As they now are. One day we will be. So sometimes the idea of status and fame, there seems to be just something without a core, something without a true meaning. So, just like many people these days, the person was to become the Buddha was searching for something deeper, something meaningful in his life, as we all do, and going to many different teachings, trying many different paths, trying the path of sensory pleasure, fame, whatever else you want to name, trying all those powers and finding nothing which had satisfaction. Just like one of my heroes of use is to say, Mick Jagger, I can't get no satisfaction. I didn't realize Mick Jagger was a Buddhist. But nevertheless, that starts off an understanding about the angst, the underlying pain, the underlying suffering. Even though it might not be explicit, there's a sense there must be something more to life, something deeper to life. Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where do we go? And all the different religions which give all this answer to these questions how can we trust any of them? Even Buddhism, how can you trust it? How do you know whether it's right or wrong? And so, after getting incredibly frustrated by not having any way of fighting the truth from outside, from external sources, from teachers, from books, buddha started a path which was to prove one of the most successful, meaningful ways to find out the answers to all those questions. It was a part of introspection, of going within, to find the truth of things. The idea of going within, going into things, rather than going out of things seems to be a very easy thing to state, but incredibly difficult thing to do, because the nature of us is always to go on to the next thing, to go out into the world and. It's very hard to come in side of things. It goes against a stream. One of the stories before the Buddha became enlightened was actually floating his bowl on the waters of the river Nirandura close to Bodgaya, where he was to become enlightened and making a resolution. If that bowl floats upstream again against the current, then maybe I will have what it takes to find this truth. And of course, that bowl did go upstream against the current, which actually taught him a great lesson that the truth will be found and won't be found going with the stream of the world. But by going against that stream, the stream of the world is always to do more things, is always to manage, to control. But the other way is actually to let go, to go within, to be still rather than being active. Such a difficult thing to do. It goes against what is natural to the human being. Even from the time one is born, one tends to crawl and explore the world outside of oneself. But how many people, when they are born, when they are young, when they're middle aged or old, have the courage to explore what is deep within themselves or even know how to do that? So the person was to become a Buddha, explored within. He didn't go out trying to seek for knowledge outside of his body, outside of the place where he was. Later on, he used to tell a story about a hermit who lived many years before the Buddha, a hermit who was called, if I remember correct, recklessly Rohitasa. And Rohitasa was the first astronaut way before any other people were taken into space on the tip of great rockets. The first astronaut was a monk, the first monkey. Naut, I call him, because as a hermit living in the jungles, he developed enough meditation to be able to develop the psychic power of levitation and flying. And not just levitating just a few feet in the air. This guy was an expert at the job. And so he got such a great facility in flying through the air. One day he decided, I wonder where the end of the universe is. And so he went it. He went outside this is in the suitors in the old teachings, 25 centuries ago, 26 centuries ago, he went outside of the solar system to the places where the light of the sun never reaches, to the dark places on and on and on and on, trying to find the end of the world. And. On and on for year after year, never finding an end to this universe. And according to the story, he died on the journey and was reborn in one of the heavenly realms and came to ask the Buddha, he said, I went so far to find an end of this universe who isn't an end of this universe? And the Buddha said, you stupid monk, you silly hermit, that's not how you find the end of the universe. You find the end of the universe not by going out there. You find the end of the universe by going inside of yourself. Monk, you went in the wrong direction. There's a fascinating little story there because it showed that truth, enlightenment, freedom will never be found going out there into the world, but it's found going inside. And as you all know, even if you're not Buddhist, everybody knows enough about Buddhism to know that the enlightenment happened sitting under a tree as you're sitting right now, sitting, going within oneself. This has always been the path of enlightenment. Sometimes that word enlightenment has got another meaning, which many of the monks of my monastery always talk about. It's called, like, Awakening buddha actually literally means an awakened one, as if the metaphor is that one is asleep, one is dar, one is not seen clearly. One is deluded into seeing things in the wrong way. We all know what delusion is. In negativity, we call it denial. We don't see what's there because we hate to see it. A good example, which I was telling people a few days ago in the University of WA, was a disciple of mine who was, many years ago, whose husband was sexually abusing her two twins. And. It was one of these very painful cases where a so called or believed happy relationship, a lovely husband and two beautiful children was suddenly thrown in intense turmoil when she found out the man she loved and thought had loved her kids was actually sexually abusing them and worse. That incident was compiled by the guilt she he felt at first they'd been going on for a long time, but she hadn't noticed it. Why? Because it was such a horrendous thing to accept. Although the signs were pretty clear, her denial refused to see what was actually happening. It actually found out by the teachers in school and it was true. Fellow eventually went to jail. However, being a Buddhist, she forgave very quickly and came to terms with it. Forgiving doesn't mean that she's ever going to be able to love that man anymore. But at least she wouldn't hate him and feed herself from the extra pain of hatred and still keep in touch with her. She now moved to England and her children are doing very well. Got over the scars because of the beautiful Buddhist forgiveness. By the point of that story don't want to go too much off an intention about forgiveness and how to deal with huge problems of life in a positive way for all the point of that story was you couldn't see that for so many months and. Because of it was too horrendous to see. Too much of what we think is true is covered over with denial. It's not covered over with denial. It's covered over with the opposite. We see what we want to see. We see what we like to see. We actually filter the world to our likes and dislikes. That's why it's so hard to see the truth, to awaken to the nature of life, to the nature of our mind, the nature of things. So what the Buddha did to become enlightened was actually to sit under a tree and do exactly what you were doing before, to let go of time, to let go of the words, to let go of the body. And find out the nature of the thing underneath this all the powerhouse, what sometimes I call the Emperor, the simile, which I've used many times, especially in my meditation retreats, which is simile of enlightenment and also the way to enlightenment of meditation. Imagine an emperor, a person with great power, in control of so much, and. Who is covered with five garments. The emperor has boots which reach right past his knees. Halfway up his thighs, he has trousers which cover the top of his boots and around his waist, he has a tunic which covers the top of the trousers up to his neck and down his arms as far as the wrists. And on his hands, he's got these huge gloves which go halfway up his arm and on his head, there is a huge helmet which goes past his neck, covering his shoulders. These five garments overlap each other, so there's no part of the emperor which can be really seen apart from the garments which cover it. We want to know who the emperor truly is, who this person is underneath all these clothes. And this is what we need to find out. The only way to actually find out who's behind all of this, who's underneath all of this, is. Is actually to unclothe the emperor, to take off all the clothes so you can see what the emperor truly is in this simile, which shows a way of enlightenment, finding out the truth of things, awakening. Those five clothes are the five senses of a human being sight, sound, smell, taste, and physical touch. Behind all of that is something we call the mind, the heart. That which is doing the seeing, that which is doing the hearing, that which knows. Want to find out exactly what that is. And so we take off the five clothes of the emperor to see what's underneath all of this. In our meditation, this is what we do. We go against the stream of activity we quietly senses. So the sight turns off when you see something. When you close your eyes, you see blackness, because that doesn't change. After a while, the sense of sight turns off because all consciousnesses depend upon change. This is like when you hear a sound and it's a constant sound. After a while, you don't hear it anymore because even hearing depends on change. We sit in a quiet place. You don't hear anything anymore. Don't smell. You don't taste. Even physical touch disappears. Five senses completely go. This is what the Buddha did of the Bodhi tree. Allowed all the five senses to disappear, to come to this magical world. A world of the mind where the Emperor lives. This becomes a way of awakening oneself to the truth. To get into this. Deep states of meditation, I call them. Deep states of meditation. Perhaps that's missing the point. These are steep states of letting go. Deep states of peace and deep states of bliss. Recently, I've been doing lots of interviews. There should be an article in the Sunday Times summing Gavin Symptoms column on the Saturday paper tomorrow for our Waysack ceremony. One of the questions are often asked is why amongst celibate? Because sometimes people look at other religions and see that celibate priests get into all sorts of mischief. Do our monks get into mischief as well? Why are you celibate? Is it hard to be celibate? How long have you been celibate? This is my 29th year as a monk. 29 years of absolute celibacy. How can you manage that? Is that weird? Is that strange? And my constant answer is and when you have to go in front of newspapers or on radio, you always have to give quick answers which catch the attention. So my quick answer is the bliss of meditation is better than sex. Sunny Times report. I like that one. It's a good line, isn't it? The bliss of meditation is better than sexual orgasm. And that actually tells you something very deep. I'm not joking about this. This is a reality which is one of the reasons why monks become celibate. Why none? To celibate, you got another happiness which is much deeper and more profound. That shocks people. And it's meant to shock people. It surprises people. It's meant to surprise people. It's meant to lead people into seeing that something much more than they ever thought existed. This is what happens when you first get into mind states, pure mind states. When you take off the clothes of the emperor, you see who's underneath all of this we call the mind is very powerful. This is what the Buddha did to become enlightened. So much so that when we have this famous Buddhist scripture called the Dharmapad. It begins by saying the mind is achieved, the forerunner of all things, the. That you get to know this when you meditate, you're finding out for yourself what's going on. And when a person accesses the mind, when these other five senses aren't there and what you're left with is this beautiful consciousness, when I say that all these other five consciousnesses are gone. When a person gets into these deep meditative states, when the Buddha got into these states, when monks, nuns, lay men, lay women get into these states today, they cannot hear anything, nor can they feel anything, nor can they smell, taste, obviously not. See, those five senses are completely subdued. One man you've heard one of those stories of the guy went to hospital when he got into deep meditation. This is another story about a man who was in the British Army who, because of bad migraines, would actually go into deep meditation sometimes. So just to get away from the pain of the difficult Migraines, he said. One day when he was on maneuvers somewhere in Europe, commanding a small number of soldiers, the word came through on the radio they could have a 15 minutes break. So his other soldiers made themselves a cup of tea. He found a barn close by so he could sit in the dark ark and go deep inside where the Migraine couldn't reach. After about ten minutes, the orders were changed. The soldiers had to go. Apparently, he found out later they got in the truck and they forgot him. They had to turn around, got into the barn and saw him sitting so still. They called him. He wouldn't move. So so soldiers, who are not the most delicate of people, picked him up and put him in the back of the lorry in the back of the truck. 15 minutes later he came out of his stillness. He hadn't realized he. That someone had picked him up, hadn't heard the sound of the men calling him, hadn't known that he was going in a truck. This is actually one more case of what happens when you go into such a deep state of meditation. Your five physical senses sight, sound, smell, taste, even physical touch completely disappears. And what you're left with is it's just a very beautiful and blissful mind. It's important that people actually, if they want to become real Buddhists, they want to sort of know the truth of things. They get in touch with their mind. This is a fascinating, wonderful thing to know. When you come in contact with this mind, certain truths become very clear to you. And the first truth which comes very clear to you when you get into deep states of meditation, which came very clear to the Buddha, was that this mind is not affected by the body. The mind is something completely separate from this body. And it soon becomes very clear to you that this mind will carry on when this body dies. In fact, this way of meditation is very much almost like a practice of dying. Before you get into those steep states of meditation, you usually see a beautiful light in the mind. We call that light the nimeter spring beautiful light which comes along with great degrees of bliss and happiness. If you want to know more about this, I talked about it in our latest edition of the journal our sort of publication of the Buddhist Society. And, of course, many of you know of cases where people have died in accidents or on an operating table if had what we call out of the body experiences. When they have out of the body experiences, what happens to them? They see what's going on around them, and then they go towards the light and. What you see in your deep meditation. Before you did, you're just practicing dying. That's all. Address rehearsal, seeing what it's like, what's happening. That light is your mind manifesting for the first time. Yet he's seeing your mind. And if you're lucky, you can go right in it and be with the mind for long periods of time. You understand what happens when a person dies. When you die, you go into the beautiful mind states. So anybody who attains to that degree of stillness and peace will have no doubts at all about truths like reincarnation or rebirth. For some people still, they say it makes no sense. Reincarnation, rebirth, fair enough. It might not make any sense at all, but go and find out. In those deep states of meditation, you become awakened to deep truths which you can see for yourself, which you don't need to believe. One of the wonderful things about Buddhism was you don't need to believe anything at all. You can challenge the very heart of Buddhist meetings. Please challenge, please investigate, please question as much as you can. But also please do the experiment to find out whether these things are true or not. Not only do you actually know just a process which carries on from one life to the next and just how this mind is that which carries the memories of the past, but you can also use that mind to do amazing things. One of the things you do, and I teach this very often now at meditation retreats, is to ask people once they get to deep states of meditation, to ask themselves what is the earliest memory? I like doing this because too many people question without really investigating the great truths such as reincarnation or rebirth. Isn't it important to know whether you've been before? Isn't important to know whether you'll live afterwards? Isn't these truths which are fundamental to knowing the nature and truth of things? And here we're not telling you or asking you to believe or to trust. I'm showing you a way to find out for yourself once and for all. Don't wait until you die to find out about rebirth. It's a bit late then. You might not have backed the right horse. Maybe the Christians were right and you're wasting your time coming here. Oh, that's a rotten thing, isn't it? Who knows which is right? Isn't it important to find out which is right to start off with? Even Buddhism? Which is the right type of Buddhism? The temple down the road or this temple or your own temple? You isn't important that we give people a chance to find out the truth themselves. Not to check it out in the books, not to check it out in the sermons, not to check it out with the philosophers in the universities, to. How can you trust anybody? I know one person was telling me that the youth these days is just so flooded with information on the Internet, in books, TV, so many channels giving so much information. The problem of our society these days is finding out how to sift through that information to know what's true and to know what's misinformation. And the only way we can find out what's true and what's misinformation is not what we like to believe, not what suits us. Because we all know that that's a very uncertain standard for truth. The only way can we can really know is through a direct, clear experience. So basically going there and seeing it for ourselves. Which is why that we always encourage people to go there and see it for yourselves. Because when you get into these deep meditations and ask yourself, what is my earliest memory? For some of you. Eventually it will happen. You're sitting there and a memory from the past will come up, a memory from the long distant past, the past before you were born. One of the great things about these past life memories, amazing thing about it is anyone who has these memories know it comes as one of the trademarks, one of the qualities that you know that was you. You have no doubt about it anymore. You're there back in that past time, that past life. Sometimes it shocks you, sometimes you were woman before, women were men before. Different races, different religions, different times. It puts a different perspective on this thing which we call life. One of the reasons why Buddhism has always been so tolerant and peaceful is because one life and one death are not so important when we think of the great perspective of many lives and many deaths. So what, you die young, you died an old woman, an old man many, many times. We travel with us these days. We've got such a narrow perspective just of this one life, this one little life and me and what I can get out of it. We get so disappointed when it goes wrong because we think we've blown our only chance. We've blown our only chance for happiness, for freedom or whatever. Don't worry. You'll have many, many chances. You've been here and done this many, many times. Life is kind enough to give you as many chances as you want. To find peace, to find truth, to find happiness. You live many times. You'll live many times in the future. It also gives us an understanding of where we've all come from and why we should have kindness towards one another and tolerance. I always used to say it'd be wonderful if George Bush could access his past lives and find out that he was in Iraqi in a previous life. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Ozama bin Laden could find out that he was a capitalist Westerner some years ago. I really want to find pauline Hansen was born as an Asian in a previous life. Fred Nile was gay in his previous existence. Wouldn't it be wonderful? Because what that means is people will be more tolerant of each other, of different ways of doing things and different races and different religions. And instead of finding I am the only one who's right and all these people are other than me, it's always other than me, the rest, the others, which creates just the intolerance and the wars in our lands. It's marvelous if we can only know that we've been brothers and sisters, we've known each other before so many times. Why is it that we make friends? Have you ever come across a person and you just hit it off straight away and something inside you says I've known this person before. I've met them before, I don't know where. You ever had that feeling so common? The reason why is because you have known that person before, but such a long time ago, before you were born. So in these deep meditations, you can actually ask those questions in the story the Buddha's enlightenment, that was what we call the first knowledge which arose under the bodhi tree on the night of his enlightenment, the knowledge of past lives. It brought this whole question of the meaning of life into this great perspective. Not something to believe, but something which was known inside. That's why, of all the religions, that Buddhism is not a revealed religion. It's not revealed to you from somebody else or from some divine being. It's a discovered religion is found out inside of each one of us, which is why there's no authority in Buddhism. We haven't got a pope or an archbishop who's in charge of everything, and. Because it cannot be somebody outside in charge. You are in charge of your religion, of your Buddhism. It has to be that way, because the truth, the authority, is inside. So it would just be going against the very inner philosophy of Buddhism to have, like, a pope or to have some sort of head of Buddhism who lays down the law and tells you what to believe and what not to believe, and excommunicates you. So that'd be nice to excommunicate people, wouldn't it? As Abbott? But, no, I can't do that and I won't do that. It's impossible to do that. So Buddhism never takes away your power. Cannot do it, can only empower you not to tell you what to believe, but tell you how to find out, so you, too, can have the same experiences as many thousands, millions of men and women have had over the years. Sometimes tell people to inspire them, especially the traditional Buddhists, that anyone who gets in those deep states of meditation is literally standing in the footprints of the Buddha. Those of you who are from Sri Lanka may have heard that you find a footprint of the Buddha on Adam's Peak, on Siri Pada, or in Thailand. There's footprints of the Buddha in places like Paputa Bhat. Sometimes this was like almost like a sign, like a holy place where people go on pilgrimage. But according to the ancient scriptures, what Buddha actually said himself, you don't find the footprints of the Buddha outside of yourself in this place or that place. The real shrines, the holy places, are not great cathedrals or great temples, but the holy places, the shrines are temples found in your meditation. When you get into the Janas, you're standing in the footprints of the Buddha. You're feeling what the Buddha felt. You're knowing the first taste of enlightenment, the. What it's like to be enlightened because you're freeing yourself, you're letting go. You're finding the real meaning of peace. Even though we say this word peace, we say this word silence, we say this word happiness. I made a point years ago that really all religions, all philosophies, all it's all boil down to two major questions what is happiness? And how do we achieve that? It's all you really want to know in life the meaning of happiness and the way to be happy. Sometimes people think that that is through your relationships, through having children, so becoming wealthy, becoming famous, success in life, being fulfilled. How many people you know are really fulfilled? Maybe temporarily, but it comes a time of great disillusionment, great people. It's fascinating. People who are supposed to be so successful, in their quiet moments, when you get to know them, they feel just so empty. Remember a man who was a friend of mine in my early years. He was from La. And being in La. At the time, many years ago, he used to sort of hobnob with all his film stars. He remember him telling me that was that film star in Dirty Harry, what's his name? Clint Eastwood. That's right. Clint Eastwood went to the same university as he did, so he invited a couple of these young students, actually, to be bouncers at his party. So he went in this tuxedo to be bouncer at Clint Eastwood's parties. And he said one day, so that the word came out that Bob Dylan was in town. So somebody knew one of the people working in the motel, I think, where he was staying and got around the security and suspend the evening with Bob Dylan. And I remember him telling me that once he sort of he talked to Bob Dylan. So it must be great being famous like you and Bob Dylan swore back at him and say it's basically saying it's terrible. It's awful. That really shocked him because what he aspired to in his life of being rich, being famous, being well known and. When you actually ask somebody what it's like, they say it's one of the worst things, one of the worst tortures in the world. To be rich, to be famous, to be well known. So what really is our happiness in life? What we take to be happiness, most of us is not happiness at all. We know that deep inside something is missing. We have to find out a deeper happiness, a real fulfillment happiness. Somebody very often the last few weeks been asking me why did I become a monk? Why do I stay as a monk? Sometimes I tell the joke that I used to be a school teacher. And teaching high school is enough to make anyone become a monk. Kids haven't changed all these years. You're teaching a girl school, you become a nun, anything to leave the world, get a bit of peace in your life. But that wasn't the reason why I became a monk, or NAN reason why I became a monk was just because of the happiness in meditation. It. Deep meditation just blew me away. Remember the first time I got a deep meditation? I was having a sexual relationship with a young girl. That was much better. Meditation. Couldn't believe it. What was going on there? Why is that the biggest pleasure I've ever had? Those sorts of things start to rock you. Because all my friends, all my mates were saying sex. Sex is the best way to go. And look at our life, as most of our life is about sexuality. And there we go. A pleasure which so many people in the world don't even know exists, that really starts to rock you, make you ask questions about what happiness truly is. And why is that happiness? You let go so much to get into deep states of meditation. It's abandon. You don't do anything. You don't even control. You just let go and everything happens. It goes against the stream of the world of doing and controlling, trying to get happiness. It's amazing. Just the whole way of letting go, of liberation, of love, all coming from the same angle. You start to see, as I was saying last week about giving. Why people give you, you give in order to liberate the love giving, expecting nothing back in return. How many of you got kids? And you give to those children. You give, give, give all your life. That's loving them. You don't expect much in return. Loving is the door of my heart's, open to you no matter what you ever do. It's another giving you'll give yourself, not expecting anything back in return. It's letting go of controlling the door of my heart's open. You don't have to do anything. I'll still love you, I'll care for you, I'll give to you, no matter what you do or say. It's letting go, this very pure thing, which is love, generosity, letting go all in the same thing. It's a heart of happiness, the heart of freedom. Love is freeing the object of your love. If you really love somebody, you you let them go. You want them to be happy, be happy. You give to them, not expecting anything back. You give because you love them. This is what we mean by letting go. When you do these sorts of things, you just do really get so peaceful, so bliss, because you're not owning anything anymore. You're not controlling it, you're not attached, you're not craving, you're not desiring. You're going against the stream of the world and going into such peaceful states that eventually leads to the peaceful states of bliss inside the mind. What you're learning about is just the law of cause and effect. When you do, when you control, you just get more suffering. When you let go, when you love, when you're kind, you get freedom. Second watch of the night the Buddha broke through to the law of karma. So often people misunderstand the law of karma. Don't see what goes in the heart of the law of karma. The law of karma is if you give, if you love, if you let go, if you're kind, you get happiness. If you control, if you want, if you amass. You're just putting so much weight on your back. How much do you need to be happy? I got a big shot when I first became a monk because I was living in poor part of Thailand, northeast of Thailand, 30 years ago. People were literally dirt poor. Used to eat dirt food, dirt rice and say, dirt rice. There's always bits of gravel in it, getting your teeth. Lots of monks had to go to the dentist because of the gravel in the rice. You know, those people would work so hard. They'd have nothing. They wouldn't have hardly any money at all. They'd have rice and fish to eat and that's all. Frogs in the dry season, rotten fish which they'd store up during the very hard times. These have a saying that where did it go? The old Lausan saying it that there's water in the fields, there's fish in the water. How much more happiness can you have than that? I remember once, the first time, one evening when I went with some other monks into the village to do a little ceremony, a chanting ceremony, a service and just walking silently through this village in northeast Thailand which was a type of village which wouldn't have changed for hundreds of years. This was before electricity had come through, before roads had reached the place and. All the houses were made out of wood from trees they cut down themselves from the jungle which was plentiful at the time, made of thatch on the roof. Just natural things because they couldn't afford to buy anything like iron for their roofs. And I remember just going past and seeing this wonderful image which is in my mind forever back of the upper story which was open to the streets being filled house after house after house with semicircles of old men, middle aged men, old women, middle aged women, young men, young women, kids all sitting around a semicircle around a small oil lights. They used to use the top of toothpaste tubes and put a bit of rag through the hole and float the lot in some kerosene. That was their wick. That was their oil lamp. And you could see the faces in this golden glow of an oil lamp of this whole family great grandparents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, children, parents, uncles all in the same house talking to each other, telling jokes, scaring each other with ghost stories. And every night they would do the same. I came from a rich home. Well, reasonably rich according to their standards. Poor by English standards. Maybe you'd see a TV there. And even then, I remember in those days there was only two channels in the TV and you couldn't believe the arguments we had on which channel to put on. And there was a whole family just talking together in harmony, being together night after night after night. It gave me a different idea of what being rich and being poor was. Sometimes in the western world, we thought that was poor place, that was poverty. Okay, they may not have had enough to eat. I think they probably did have enough to eat. Maybe they didn't have televisions, radios and stuff like that. They had something I never saw in London. They had happiness, family, relationships. Had so many people to look after them. They never were lonely. Loneliness, depression just wasn't known in that part of the world at the time. What is being rich and what is being poor? Sometimes don't believe just what being rich is by the world trade organization. What being rich is this. And what sort of some agency says the poverty line? Because look at this. All the monks at our monastery are well below the poverty line. I've got a health care card. I'm one of the richest people in the world. That is a bit of a scam, me having a health care card. I really shouldn't have it, but nevertheless, I'll be having it for so long, I might as well keep it. I'm below the poverty line. Please come and join me. It's lovely down here. What we're saying over here's, the law of Calm is what is happiness? What is a cause of happiness? Law of calm is actually teaching people about how to be happy and what is the cause of unhappiness. Not that happiness and unhappiness descends upon you because of some fate or because of some sort of terrible sort of demon in some sort of heaven realm who's always got it in for you, but but actually it's under your control, your happiness and your suffering. That's also part of Buddhism. It empowers. You don't go and pray to a Buddha to become happy. You're just wasting your time. Don't blame him if he sort of you don't become happy. You got no one to blame, no one to ask favors for. You are in complete control of your destiny. It's. It empowers people and doesn't matter what you have to deal with in life. You can make happiness out of anything. You know, you see these little kids making a football out of rags while I have a teen can. They can make happiness out of anything. They can. Why can't you? But can't you make happiness out of your husband, out of your wife, out of your kids, out of your life? So what? You've lost your job, so what? You've got cancer, so what? Somebody's died in your family. Can't you make some happiness out of that? Little kids finding a team can and making a beautiful football out of it. This is what karma is here. It's up to you. You can make enlightenment out of anything at all. In time of the Buddha. Some people were enlightened. They were just poor hunchbacks street sweepers. You didn't need to be intelligent to be enlightened. You know why? Because you just needed to let go and. To love, to give, to be free. You didn't need much. In fact, the more you had, the more difficult it was to let go. So it's beautiful teaching of how you can abandon everything and be free. So this is what the Buddha did. He went closer and closer into the center of things to see what happiness truly is, to see what the mind is, to see what life is, to see what real meaning was in life. The meaning of life was to know, to learn, to understand not the things of the world, but to understand the things of the heart, the meaning deep inside of us. That's what the Buddha did. It penetrated with deep truths of life. Who is behind us all? Who is the one seeing? Who is the one knowing? Let go. Let go. Let go. Free, free, free love until everything ended. Let enlightenment happen. For the Buddha, that enlightenment after it happened. They say for the next seven weeks, just blissed out, just looking at the bodhi tree, just walking, just reflecting on his enlightenment. Imagine how much happiness that would be. And enlightenment so much bliss, you can hardly contain it. So what happens when you have enlightenment experiences? Wow, this is something. Seeing the truth is blissful. Meditation is blissful enough, but this surpasses it in all the ecstasies of the world. Sex is weighed down. There meditation, you're getting somewhere. It's getting higher. Higher and higher and higher. Until you have enlightenment experiences and they really are ecstatic, you're free. When the Buddha was enlightened, then quite obviously there was the movement to go and share that with others. Because meditation, enlightenment is letting go. It's also giving, it's also love. Three words expressing the same thing. So the bud went out and taught, not expecting anything back. Not expecting to be regarded as a great teacher, not being expect to be put on a pedestal. Not expecting anything because you don't need anything anymore. The only reason why we want something back is because we think we need something more than we already have. All we need is freedom. All we need is peace. When you add something to peace, you disturb it all. Never add anything onto nothing. Nothing is so pure and so beautiful, so free. So this is what the Buddha did. Went out to teach, to teach, teach, teach. Not to tell people what to believe, but to tell people how to find out. This is actually what we do here, what monks and nuns have been doing for the last 26 centuries, teaching a person. You don't need to come to this Buddhist center to become enlightened. Just go and seek that truth within your heart. All the words are just mirrors so you can look deep within. You should know all these truths intuitively by yourselves. One of the reasons why, when I first picked up a book on Buddhism, it wasn't teaching me anything new. I knew those things, but I hadn't put them in such clear words before. They were resonating with an inner truth. Where they had come from, who knows? But certainly these things resonate so deeply within the smells tastes of truth and of freedom. So this is actually how we do become free, how we know what enlightenment is, how we know what awakening is. And sometimes when those enlightenment experiences occur, sometimes you look back how stupid you were. How could you miss these things and wasted so much time? We do need more enlightened people in this world. More enlightened people daddy. To show the way for others. Wars are just so stupid. Consumerism materialism is just such basically a waste of time. It's okay to have a nice house, have a car, have a monastery to stay in, have decent food to eat. But how much do you need? My goodness, haven't you done enough? Why don't you all retire and take it easy for the rest of your life? Don't worry about your kids. Send them out to work. They can look after themselves. You looked after them at 2030 years. Why not have some peace in your life? Do you really think that when you get your superannuation, you're going to be secure? Do you really think that? Sort of when you pay off your mortgage, everything's going to be nice and happy forever after? See this so often that people actually they pay off their mortgage. Just before they pay off their mortgage, they go and buy a bigger house. That's stupid. It'd be better actually, to actually before you even pay off your mortgage, sell your house and buy a smaller house. Then you got no debts anymore. Just how many rooms do you need to live in? You got to live in one room at a time. You don't need a big bathroom, just a little dunny out the back. It's more than enough. You it. Why'd you do this? Because this would impress on your neighbors. See, I've made it in the world. See, I've got a pool in the back, I've got this garden. Come on. How much stress does that take? Going to work, working so hard, not having any time for yourself or your family. Some people die that way, you know. Work so hard all their life trying to get somewhere, trying to amass things in the end. What for? Why meaning in life is so important? The meaning of life is what enlightenment is all about. It's okay to have things, but keep it all balanced. Middle way. Don't go the way of the world where you just think they're massing possessions and family, the be all and end all of life. There's a spiritual truth to be found out within. There's enlightenment there waiting for you. Freedom, happiness, bliss. Better than sex. A fulfillment of your own knowledge of the truth, which doesn't depend upon what anyone else says, what's written in any book which doesn't challenge other people. And one of the signs of enlightenment is you don't go and challenge and say other people are wrong. There's freedom from all of that. No more pride, no more having to be right. No more worrying what other people think of you. No more measuring. No more measuring yourself. Great freedom of the mind coming from enlightenment. So this is there for you. This is what this life is all about, to find that enlightenment. So we're celebrating our waysack because we're celebrating that truth, the enlightenment of a Buddha. The enlightenment which followed of many, many human beings of all races, nationalities and genders, men and women seeing that same truth, that truth of the mind has got no gender at all. That's got nothing to do with it at all. Intelligence, race, caste, nothing to do with it at all. This is something which is inside, internal to all of that. Doesn't matter what race, religion you think you are, you're none of that. So this is the internal peace, the freedom of the heart enlightenment, finding that truth for yourself once and for all. So this is why we're celebrating, celebrating the enlightenment of the Buddha which led to the enlightenment of so many other beings. And that hasn't stopped. Will not stop, cannot stop. Many more beings will become enlightened. And you are among those beings who will become enlightened, free and happy. I really mean happy ever after. I know that it was a fairy tale used to see in the old days, and they went off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. That's what happens when you're enlightened, go off into the end of Samsara. Happy ever after. Isn't that nice? So that's a talk today on Enlightenment. Hope you enjoyed it.
