Episode Transcript
Facing Lifes Challenges by Ajahn Brahm
For coming here a few moments ago, picked up a whole sheet of requests for Tomahawks on a Friday night, and the top one was on facing life's challenges, especially whether one should literally seek out difficult situations to challenge oneself. So I'm going to see if I can weave a talk about challenges in life, whether we should seek them out, how we deal with them, what's their purpose, and see if we can get an interesting dharma talk on life and its solutions. From the title of The Challenge. And it is true that from an early age we are faced with many challenges, and those challenges are very important to us in so we can learn, so we can grow so we can reach some sort of potential. And if the challenges are obviously set too high, we get dispirited, even depressed, lose our self-confidence. If we have no challenges at all that our growth is limited and thwarted. So certainly we do need challenges in life, but in an early age, those challenges are mostly physical. Now, to try and be stronger, to try and be prettier, to try and be wealthier. And those challenges in life are usually what motivates most people. And that usually takes up a lot of your life. You know, it's your challenge to get on in the world, to form your relationship, especially your partnership with your mate. To bring up children to pay the bills is sometimes a challenge. Whatever it is, we have these external physical challenges in life, and certainly that I remember those challenges which I had myself. But there came a time, certainly, when I thought the biggest challenge of all is not the external challenge to get on in the world, because sometimes I looked upon those measures of success in life's challenges, and I thought those measures of success didn't have real fundamental meaning. What people told me was successful when I looked upon them was just a sham, like a con game, like somebody selling you a used car which had no real worth. And fortunately in my early life, even though I came from a poor family, I did very well with scholarships and went to a good university where there were some very wealthy people. Even though they were very young, they were still very wealthy, and it was fascinating to be at a university like Cambridge, where sometimes you would see a count or a Lord and just what a what a conceited people they were, at least the ones I saw. And so what was a measure of success in the world? What most people as seek for their challenges, became quite worthless to me in an early age. And I think that most people are here because those challenges in the world, you've either achieved them or you failed at them. But whatever, you've always found that they are pretty worthless. So whether it's being the wealthiest person, the greatest lover, the most beautiful sexual bombshell, whatever it is, which one goes in life? There's a challenge for you which motivates you and drives you through the years. For many of you, you come to a place like this and either you're so old now that you've seen through that, or even though you may be young and you've seen that there must be something more to life. And so the greatest challenges, and I think the challenges which my questioner was really pointing to, was not the physical challenges of climbing Mount Everest or whatever, was that the internal challenges, the inner happiness, the inner peace, the inner meaning, and for that the inner equilibrium, peace, fulfillment, happiness that is life's biggest challenge. And they were asking in particular that should one seek out sort of challenges to enhance and quicken up one's progress on the spiritual path. For example, should a monk just go and say, see her go to a skimpy bar just to check whether they still got any last left? So you go check out the box if you go checking out yourself. And sometimes some of those challenges which people set themselves in life are obviously really over the top. And you shouldn't really go for those because they're not really wise challenges. But then again, if you don't push yourself, sometimes it's very easy to get a lethargy and a lack of growth in one's life. So there has to be some sort of balance here. One doesn't go seeking out sort of challenges which you know, are not going to be helpful for your progress in your spiritual life. But then again, one shouldn't just sit on one's laurels, as they say and just, uh, stay where one is. Just, uh, not really getting anywhere in one's wisdom, in one's compassion, in one's peace. So because of this, that we have challenges, some of which come to us quite naturally in life and some of which we seek out. And certainly in my early life that, you know, because you may be a Westerner and you want to get enlightened very quickly, you decided to seek out some challenges, some interesting situations, and some of those were fun. They were fun and made good material for stories, but they were completely waste of time. For example, sometimes you challenge yourself physically by going without sleep. Sometimes you would lay down for days just to see what would happen. And all you learn by not laying down was how to sleep sitting up. Sometimes, even though the food we had in the first years in Thailand was already pretty disgusting, just to be a tough guy when you put it all in your bowl. I used to take a spoon and mix it all up into a sludge. You look disgusting. But after a while, when you keep doing that for a few weeks, even sludge tastes delicious. So that was also a complete waste of time. And also the bowl was so big people could actually see me doing it, so I couldn't sort of get any kudos from that for whatever. So pride. Pride is also sometimes comes up when you try and do these special practices. And I see even these days, sometimes people try and see how long they can even meditate for, thinking that if you meditate for two hours, you're better than the person who can only meditate for one hours. Who knows, maybe when the Olympics next comes to Australia, maybe comes to Perth, we may have a new Olympic sport to see who can sit. Meditation the longest two hours, three hours, four hours. Maybe we could have a contest between the different traditions. Maybe the Hindu monks and the Buddhist monks maybe could have a new form of the Melbourne Cup to see who could meditate the longest, and that we could bet on them. The Dalai Lama apparently is coming to Perth next year in June, so maybe we could have a contest between maybe myself, the Dalai Lama. Let's put it all on the stage. Maybe Sister Yama as well. Put him on the stage to keep gender equity, and Zen monk and a Mahayana monk put him on the stage and see who moves first. But the point is that you may have little challenges like that, but they're only a big joke because that is not the point. Whenever I teach meditation retreats and people come along and say, oh, I did two hours meditation, I sat still three hours, four hours. You have to tell the great story of Ajahn Char, who said, look, if it really mattered how long you sat still. If that was an important factor in your eventual enlightenment, just sitting still for hours, then all the chickens in the world would already be enlightened because they sit still for hours on their eggs without moving. So we call that chicken meditation to sitting still for hours. It's not sitting still for hours. Obviously, it's a quality of what you're doing inside, which gets to the point of the challenges in life. We do. A lot of them are actually quite stupid and dumb, and you wonder what you're doing that for anyway. Sure, you manage to sit still for hours, but so what? Sure, you managed to unearth too fast and go without food, but so what? You can even be in solitude for many hours that many of our monks. There we go in solitude. But then. So the hardened criminals as well. What's the difference? It's not so much being in solitude, but what you're doing when you're in solitude. So the challenges of life are not the external ones, it's the internal ones which are most important. And many of those internal challenges of life, they come naturally. You don't have to go around seeking them because life provides enough challenges. That is why sometimes people think, oh, monks and nuns, you just live an easy life. The real challenge is having a relationship. Without getting divorced. Let's see how long you can live together another person. That's a real challenge in life. And as a mark, you're just certain. And I say no. The real challenge in life is celibacy. You haven't lived until you've been celibate for 20 years. Well, you don't know that. If it's not whether you're celibate or you have a relationship. It doesn't matter if you're married or single, if you're gay or straight, if you're old or young, it's how you do those things. That's the biggest challenge in life, and it's successful. What is success anyway? It doesn't really matter in what field you're successful, whether it's in married life as a parent, as in gay life, or in celibate life as a monk. What's most important is that how? Do you deal with those situations? So life, your life gives you many challenges. Those challenges come quite naturally. And as I see it, you don't need to go seeking out those things, especially the challenge of life, because there you are. You get born and you go to school. And there's a great challenge in finding out why. What's this all about? And that's one of the biggest challenges of all. And that's why I became a monk, because I thought in this lifestyle I could challenge much more than anybody else because especially a religion like Buddhism, it should originally, from the beginning, was always challenging the status quo, challenging the way you think about life. Understanding that there is a sense of delusion going around, or illusory ness, and the world as it seems, is not the way the world truly is. And it's a challenging one's perceptions, one's thoughts, even one's worldviews, is part of our tradition, which is great because in Buddhism you are encouraged to ask questions. You are praised for asking questions, and they say a person who doesn't ask questions is stupid, which is why that when I ask questions of my teacher that I'm sure doesn't matter what question you ask, it would always praise you for that and encourage you to ask more questions. And there was no question which was considered offensive. A question by its very nature was always respected. And because of that, there's a monk. I've had some great questions in my life here in Perth. Perhaps the best question I ever got was when I was teaching in one of the high schools here in Perth, in a girls class. This 14 year old girl at Question Time raised her hand and said, well, the girls turn you on. That was one of the trickiest questions I've ever had to feel. But it's great to ask questions because without asking those questions, you're never really challenging people. And I enjoyed being challenged myself with the toughest of questions, which I always got from two places schools and prisons. There were the two places where people would be honest enough. It's a strange thing to say in prisons, people were honest, but they were straightforward enough to really ask direct questions. And it's when you were challenged by outsiders. You had to challenge yourself as well, to challenge your lifestyle, to challenge your ideas, to challenge your faith, even perceptions. How else can you actually find out what the truth is? So perhaps it was deliberately that I went to such places. Actually, some of those situations came to me, but I enjoyed being challenged because I wanted to find out for myself what I saw, what I understood, whether that was true or not, whether I was worthwhile or not. Quite frankly, when I was living in Thailand, living in Asian countries, I was just too comfortable being a manga. I know that sometimes people complain about the standard for monks in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma. The thing one of the reasons is because you're not challenged, sir. Because you're challenging. Become fat and lazy. Over here I can still become fat, but not lazy. I have to work hard. Actually. Interesting. I was saying in Sydney last week because I was over there in Sydney giving lots of talks because one of the doctors who comes here regularly gave me a piece of paper showing that. I think I mentioned this already, that when you laugh, your arteries dilate. When you're sad and depressed and angry, your arteries actually contract. So actually they're being depressed and being angry is really bad for your health. That's the time you get heart attacks because the cholesterol really is dangerous then. But if you laugh, your arteries are bigger than that. Balance is in excess cholesterol, so you can be fat as long as you laugh. And that's proven because in you all know that fat people are jolly. Yeah. You got the image of the Laughing Buddha. You know, whatever it is, fat people are known to be jolly. And because this is just basic Darwinian evolution, if you're fat and don't laugh, you die very young, so it eliminates those people. But if you're fat and laugh, then it's balanced and you live a long life. So you see lots of fat and happy people. You never see fat and depressed people because they die before you actually see them. So if you are overweight, please learn to laugh. Otherwise you're not going to survive. But sometimes fat invisible people because they're lazy. But over here, you know, in the West you are challenged all the time. And it's great to be challenged because that is important in spiritual life to open yourself up. To scrutiny and challenge. And it's only when you ask those questions and challenge not so much your lifestyle, but challenge your ideas and views. But if there's anything in there which isn't on a solid foundation, which is a bit dodgy, it soon gets taken away. And it means that all of the obstacles, all the silliness and stupidity of life and of dogma soon is eradicated. I know there are other parts, other religions, even other parts of Buddhism, were not allowed to question because you're not allowed to question and challenge. Some silly ideas persist for centuries, and sometimes you see some of those silly ideas. And they're not just just personal idiosyncrasies, because religions and philosophies have so much power in today's world. You can see that stupid ideas which aren't challenged, where you don't ask the tough questions and you don't. Uh, force a person to give a proper answer. It means that those ideologies create huge amounts of problems in this world, and we have to ask those tough questions now, whether it's of Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, the whole lot, or that problem with um, Sheikh Hilali and the wearing of those burqas, I can't see what the real problem is because it's an Australian tradition to wear such things. Have you never seen Ned Kelly, the first person to wear the burka in Australia? It was a better one on the cloth when we had a little slit for his eyes. Don't you remember seeing the first? That's only a joke. But anyhow. Anyhow says you have to ask the tough questions. Why are you doing that? And you have to have people give good answers. And it's also, if you're a religious leader, you shouldn't be protected. So we have to be able to face those questions without a mob of Buddhists surrounding you and saying, don't ask those tough questions. So because of that, when you do ask the tough questions, it actually is better for the faith, better for the religion, because any stuff which is not really worthwhile will soon get sifted out by the the great questioning exercise. So I'm very happy that everything which I say can be challenging question time when people come up afterwards. And without that challenging, there's no real growth. But sometimes that one of the nicest things which I can do is actually to give talks. Not here in a sort of a crowd, which comes here because many of you are Buddhist, but go to other places to give talks where they're not Buddhists in hostile environments. And sometimes I enjoy them much more than giving a talk here. So it's great to give a talk in a church or to give a talk. Have given a talk in a mosque in Singapore. Now, in front of it's only a few, uh, Muslims came along to actually to join in. More like a discussion on the talk. But it's great to be able to do that. But also, I love the, you know, the wonderful, uh, connection relationship we have with the monks at New Nauseum Monastery, because they're your challenge, because these are friends who are very articulate and very knowledgeable about Christianity. And you can have a great discussion. Between them, and I mentioned this as a little advertisement. I saw this today in Friday's newspaper. Today's newspaper. How many of you saw it? The UWA Summer school next year. One of the events in the advertisement in the newspaper today was a talk on, uh, religion and science and religion and science. Meet with Professor David Blair of UW. You know, the physicist myself and Albert Placid from the NACA. So we're going to have a three way boxing match between us and to really challenge each other on our beliefs, on our philosophy and our religion. And that's very important to have those challenges, simply because it drives everyone into a deeper understanding of where they come from. So certainly if you don't challenge your faith, don't challenge your religion or your philosophy, your way of seeing things, then your path is dead. You may have misunderstandings which, because of a lack of challenge, will persist for your whole lifetime to your great detriment. So challenge and questioning is a way of digging, digging deeper into the truth to find the real gems. So even as a month, you always have to keep challenging. Which is why that not only seeking out friendships with people of other religions, I've still kept my friendship with my friends from school and university who are not Buddhist, basically, so they can keep me in line. So whatever I say about Buddhism, you get some feedback. Not from your friends. You want to get some feedback from people who are different than you. How else can you get perspective? So even in our Buddhist lifestyle here in as a Buddhist, we try and keep five precepts. Not deliberately killing, stealing, lying and three committing adultery. Live or taking alcohol or drugs. Why? And it's great when people challenge you on that. So isn't alcohol good for your health? Just a glass of beer that's actually supposed to lessen your cholesterol in your blood. Isn't that good? They say yes, it's good for your blood, but bad for your liver. We actually look at the bigger picture. You have to question that. Is it? Why do people want alcohol anyway? You have much more fun. Challenge. I challenge you to give up alcohol for a year and see what it's like. Do you have less fun or more fun? My experience was actually I had much more fun. Strange story, but I gave up alcohol when I was a student simply because student life. This is. This was actually shocked me when I saw this student life in Cambridge was this bacchanalia. In other words, lots of alcohol. Every year we had what we called the Scholars Dinner because I did really well. I was a scholar at the Cambridge, one of the top 10%. So every year the scholars of the college, together with all the professors and lecturers, had this big dinner, the biggest dinner of the year. I only went once. And after that, I just was so disgusted I would never go again. We started with Sherri in the the gallery designed by Sir Christopher Wren, same guy who designed Saint Paul's and one of the great architects of the Renaissance. There's this huge mahogany table with all the students. You had to sort of dress up and the lecturers and professors attached to that college with butlers, the real English butler with tails, silver trays, and this best possible sherry you could buy. Now, I was studying physics like maths, and I saw those butlers going around the table in a clockwise direction. And I worked out that if I walked at the same speed in an anti-clockwise direction, then I would meet the butler twice on each circuit instead of once, thereby getting twice as much sherry as my friends. I thought that was a smart thing to do. That's how dumb I was as a student. So having drank twice as much sherry as my friends. Then we had the meal in the refectory again, this 17th century building, and it was a nine course meal. And every meal had a different wine. And there were many other butlers came in for that. And they were hovering behind you. And the instructions were, whenever that glass was lower than half full, they would appear magically and top it up so you could never drain your glasses. And that was a nine course meal after the nine course meal. We all went to the old library where there were cigars, fruit, and three more wine glasses one for claret, one for port and the other for Madeira, which were also kept full at all occasions. And the killer. The killer was the goblet. This silver and jewel encrusted goblet, which was huge, is about this size, which was filled with. I can't remember now was Madeira, claret or port. It doesn't make any difference by that time. And that was filled to the brim. And every student, professor, it went around the table one by one. We had to drain it and then say a college toast in Latin. The pronunciation was not all that accurate. And that was supposed to be the highlight of of academic culture. So what happened? I actually don't really know what happened at later time, but I know the following morning I woke up with a pile of vomit on my pillow. I found out later that was actually really dangerous. You die choking on your own vomit. But it was just disgusting. There you were, you know, with a pile of sick next to you. And that was all the food. Nine courses lay on your pillow. None of it did any good. And you went around afterwards for that 24 hours. You felt terrible. But everyone else was going around saying, oh, what a great night it was. It's really. And some of them, I'm not quite sure what I said. But I must have said something rude because all the college servants were looking at me and just shaking their head. So you don't know what you said. But I did say something really bad. I never found out. My friends would never tell me because they couldn't even remember. What I was saying was disgusting, what you did. And that was the last time I ever drank any alcohol. It was just such an excess. I stopped, I changed it. What are you doing this for? Everyone else said it was fun. But I was always into challenging. Why? Was it fun? Now. But while I couldn't remember much of the later part of the evening. And number two, for the next 24 hours, I felt terrible. I felt so disgusted with myself waking up with a pile of puke next to you. So I stopped. I challenged and decided to see what it's like when you don't take alcohol, and it was actually more fun. First of all, I was a bit concerned. If you gave up alcohol, would you be invited to any parties? Or would you be like a wowser who wants to invite, you know, some religious nut to their parties? But the truth of the matter was, I got invited to even more parties than before. You know why? Because they wanted somebody sober to drive them home. And that was me. And so that was the first advantage. But also the second advantage was actually I could remember the whole party from that time on, especially the last part of the party. That's where all the the action is, as you know, you can figure out what I mean. But then I actually knew what I was doing. I was there, I was I enjoyed it more. Actually when I challenges these ideas of our society to me, and it made a lot of sense, actually. You get much more fun, more enjoyment. And when you wake up the following morning, you're sharp. You're clear. You actually enjoy life more. So as many of those things actually challenge what's going on. One of those other little stories which happened because this weekend some people are absent because there's a weekend retreat on why I'm teaching the weekend meditation retreat at safety Bay when I was teaching there one weekend, just so the interview time, because it's at an old convent and it's next to the church on a Sunday, when I was giving interviews, there was a gap. For a couple of minutes, I looked out the window. The church service had just finished and a couple of men were coming out. They were saying goodbye to each other. They were friends. As they were saying goodbye to each other, they shook hands and one said to the other, be good. And the other one said, no, that's no fun. How many in Australian societies would actually agree with that? The only way you have can have fun is being naughty, whatever naughty means. But I challenged that and said no. If you're good, you actually have more fun. Challenge that. You know this idea of virtue. We understand what it really means about being trustworthy. Being honest, you know, being committed to your partner. Sort of coming home on time if that's when you actually promise to come. Keeping your promises. Just being kind. What we call virtue. That's the the, uh, the source. That's a fuel for a happy society. And it makes you happier. So, like being naughty and just doing stupid things just because you can. Because you can get away with it. And after a while, you find that doesn't create any happiness for you. I challenge that, and I ask people these days to challenge what is happiness? Don't be like a sheep and do what other people do. Go to Australia Day and take a sort of a whole stack of, uh, slabs of beer. Just go and get drunk and think. That's a great time. Is it? We'll go out, you know, on a Friday night down the pub and get drunk and see a few, uh, skimpy revues or strip shows that really happiness. So it's great actually challenging people's ideas of happiness and like, virtue and goodness when you keep challenging and keep asking those questions, whether it's wearing burkas. It becomes quite clear that that's a stupid thing to do. You don't have to do things like that. You understand by questioning, by challenging you challenge Buddhists as well. Challenge as much as you can, but also challenge yourself. What's happiness? What gives life meaning? Because in the challenging, you will eventually come to a truth. As long as you're honest about this and and go from your own experience of life where happiness and where peace comes. But the biggest challenges are not just, you know, with with no so-called virtue is actually what happens to you in life. The biggest challenge is what we call when life doesn't go the way you want it to go. When you get dumped by your partner, or you get sacked by your company, or you go to the doctor and get a biopsy and find you got a tumor. And there's the real challenges in life, right? When things go right. But when things so-called go wrong in your life and each one of you have had times when that happens, when somebody dies and they're too young to die. So we think, and those are the biggest challenges in our life. But what it's really challenging us is. That we aren't in so much control as we think we are. And it's also challenging our whole worldview of what to expect from life. And this is the biggest challenge. It's a challenge to our own truth. The way we look at life. It's not supposed to happen this way. All right. This is unfair. It is unjust. Sometimes you challenge with your ideas of what justice is. In one of my books, I told the following story, which taught me. And I learned this from a prisoner incarnate. He taught me the law of karma. When, after teaching him meditation for many weeks, he asked if I could stay behind because he wanted a personal interview. He said he had something he needed to tell me urgently. So after the normal class was finished, I stayed behind a little longer so to give him private time said, what's wrong? And he said, look, I have to tell you this. I never did it. The crime for which I've been put in jail for I didn't commit. I'm innocent. And he stopped me saying, look, I know that every prisoner would say this, but I wouldn't say it to you. Jim Brown, I respect you. You're a monk. You're my teacher. I never did that burglary, I was innocent. And I know enough about prisons and I how that you have very little opportunity to call lawyers and call friends and get injustices. Remedied. So as soon as he said that, I started thinking of all my contacts. What I could do to help this perversion of justice. There was a guy doing, I don't know how many years in jail for a crime he never committed, and I could do something about that. And I thought this, I'm going to help this guy. When I was thinking what I could do, that's when he interrupted me. With one of these cheeky smiles because when he said, but there were so many other burglaries where I wasn't caught, I guess this is fair. But I thought, wow, that's challenging your idea of justice, because how often is it you say unfair because you get caught by the speed camera? How many times have you been speeding and not been caught because the camera wasn't there that day? Do you ever say that was unfair? How many times have you lied and not got caught out while in a relationship? You cheated and not get caught out? When you think of it that way, sometimes our ideas of justice sometimes are fair. After all. That's where when I challenge the law. This idea of the law of karma seemed to actually to stand up to such challenges. It became like a natural law, which I could keep on probing and probing and say, yeah, this is actually a basic law of life. No, what goes around comes around. What you do has effects. It comes back to you afterwards. If you're kind to other people, other people become kind to you. If you're generous, people are generous back. There is a sense of a natural justice. Sometimes we can't see that unless we get the bigger picture. The wider picture. And we challenge a lot. So when we challenge the experience of our life and squeeze it to get out the essence of truth, of what's happening, what a wonderful truth this law of karma actually is. It gives us a sense it is a natural justice. The life is actually fair. It only appears unfair when we just say, I've been put in jail for something I didn't do. Yeah. What else have you done? There's a lot of fairness in life. That fairness gives you a sense of participating in life rather than giving up. Doesn't matter what I do. Life always sucks. I always get the bad end of everything. But if you start giving up, you get into depression. Life has no meaning, no happiness. Sadness. You always can do something. That's what the law of karma actually tells you. That you are in charge of your destiny. What you do is what you become. And you aren't limited at all. The karma from the past only gives you the ingredients of this present moment. What's most important is what you make with the ingredients. You have. To know what's happened to you in life. Where you're at right now. What pain, what sadness, what difficulties you are facing now. That's just all ingredients which you can put together in a wise, skillful way to create a beautiful future for yourself and the people around you. When you understand the law of karma, it doesn't mean that some gods fall upon the top there or some other persons for love. Karma gives you empowerment. Isn't it one of the important parts of a religion? It shouldn't be taking your power away and having priests or monks or archbishops or popes having all the power to determine your happiness or your pain, your punishments or your rewards. The whole idea of a religion or a philosophy is to empower you. This is what the law of karma does. You have the power. To define your future. What do you want to make out of your life? And karma says you can make whatever you want. Whatever. Happiness, peace, fulfillment. Because this is the ingredients you've got. Now, how are you going to put them together for a beautiful future? It's great you can do that. There is this huge possibility when you challenge life. It's amazing what you can do. And look at even my life so far. This is 23 years since I came to Australia. Nine years as a monk. We came here to Australia just with myself and another monk. When I first came, we had this house in North Perth. When I looked at the accounts, the house was worth $50,000. We owed 49,000 to the bank and our equity. Now, what we had above what we owed was only 1000. Unless I said that's $1,000. That's all we had in the bank. We had two bucks and people didn't know what we were, who we were. Just his weirdos dressed in bed, club bedsheets, walking down the streets and get all sorts of abuse from people, which was really good fun in those days. And people never trusted us. Even the Buddhists, even the traditional Buddhist attires and Sri Lankans, Burmese laws. They looked at us and say, who are these white monks? Are they for real? Are they going to stay? Sometimes we never even get fed. Sometimes people won't come and feed us. So we had to fast that day. It was really tough in those early days. When we did get some money to buy a piece of land at serpentine, there's again a huge debt. Now that piece of land has cost 90,000. I think we had about 60,000. 30,000 was was loans and there was no place to stay. Just under the trees like kangaroos. It's cold at night in the forest. But more than that afterwards. When people came, they told us for the first year they don't know who we were. Why give any donations to you guys? You may be off the next year. We didn't know we had staying power. Took a lot of time to actually to build a site and we did that with hard work. Somebody was saying, if ever you go to Serpentine Monastery, the buildings you see there, most of those have got my name on the building license. For the local council. We couldn't afford builders. We built it ourselves. Hard work over 23 years building a monastery out of nothing. But not only that. Building your life. Going out there and teaching. And it's always like a challenge to keep, you know, an old religion and bring it to like a country like Australia, which has hasn't even got the language to express what Buddhism is really about. I was saying earlier, it's getting easier after 23 years when you talk about the law of karma. People understand what that means and it's got into local local usage. Even like meditation is now popular, you're not thinking like just goofing off. So a lot of stuff is actually much easier because you've worked hard. So you had some really poor ingredients trying to build a monastery here in Australia. And I know a lot of people are there at the beginning, said we didn't think you'd make it to get a monastery down a certain kind of city centre here, and a nuns monastery. That was hard work. But one of the things which I always remembered at the time, if you keep on going, no matter what challenges you have, just keep on going. One step at a time, one pick at a time. There's nothing you can't achieve. The challenges were always there, but there was something about understanding the law of karma that you were empowered. You could do something about it. No matter what happened, there was always something you could do. Even when we had this big problem with clay tracks past the monastery, you know, these incredibly noisy trucks. And you need you do need some silence to be a monk. You know, people expect to come to a monastery, have a bit of peace and quiet, rather than these really noisy clay trucks coming past every couple of minutes. But okay, we keep trying. I don't know how many court cases we lost, but we kept on until we wore them down. I remember going to one court case once, and somebody told me the guys who actually investing on the board know they were part of $1 billion company would alter our accounts. How can you stand up to people with such great financial resources? You just keep on going. Because the law of karma sent you empowered. I can do something. Just keep on, keep on, keep on. Eventually, one I gave up. There is something which is in the Chinese art of war, which somebody pointed out to me, which I understood very well. Doesn't matter how many more resources the opponent has, how big or how big the army is, what wins is the more commitment the side which has got a great investment in the outcome. The one side which is more committed always wins. That's what happened with us with the clay track issue. We were more committed. That was our life. As our monastery. You wouldn't give up. That's what little karma means. Whatever challenges you face in life, if you're really committed fully, 100%. Eventually you have to win out. So the challenges in life when they. They expose the law of calm. If you investigate them properly and they give you the idea that there is the possibility, no matter what you have to face in life for growth, happiness, peace, whatever you want in life, it's there for you. But you have to keep challenging. And the challenge doesn't actually come out there in the world. You find the real power source which does empower you is your attitudes. The real challenge in life is actually to see how the different attitudes which you have to the problems you face from time to time, all can be solved by looking at things in a slightly different way. This is why whatever comes up in life. Never look upon it as something difficult or painful. You know that instead of calling it painful, I call it growing pain. Instead of saying painful or difficult growing pain, then it means that there's something positive in there, something you're going to learn from. Become a better person as a result. So the challenge is always the opportunity to grow, and sometimes you forget about that. Sometimes we think the difficulties in life is something to just throw away, get over so we can get living again. Now the difficulties in life are the important parts of life. You know, just like in a relationship, whenever you have a difficulty together, if you can work through that difficulty, then you're bonded. You can't have a loving relationship except built on the problems which you've fixed up together. You've gone through stuff and that makes your partnership strong. It's the difficulties which you overcome which provide the longevity of your time together, and that's a standard for life. If you really work together, whether it's as a couple, whether it's a family, whether it's a Buddhist society or whether it's a monastery, you work together on these things. You get through it together, your friends forever. There's something where you grow, where you gain, where you become better for the difficulties which one overcomes in life. You understand that. You understand why I have in that little book the story of the truckload of dung. I'm not going to repeat it here, but the difficulties in life are like dung. You dig it in, it becomes fertilizer for your heart, for your your mind, for your spiritual life. The challenges of life are the fertilizer. Without those challenges, you just stagnate and will become a better person. This is what karma is. They give opportunities for growth, the challenges of life, the difficulties which one faced, no matter how bad those difficulties are. If you understand this, there's always something you can get out of it. You never get overwhelmed by anything which happens. And it's beautiful to see people in such terrible situations. Learn from them, grow from them and their inspirations. I remember read this one story about this guy who was in jail in the United States only for a minor crime is only about six months or a year in jail. But during his time in the jail, there was a riot in the jail and the authorities picked out about ten people to punish. Out of the many hundreds of rioters, he was one of them and got given two life sentences. So from a minor crime, he ended up realizing he would be in jail for the rest of his life. What would that do to you or your hopes? I need a few months. I'll be out. Because when it's the double life sentence in us, that means that you'll die in jail. No other way. Decides to make use of that opportunity. He embraced, overcame. And benefited. That was his life. He looked upon jail and life in different ways. It wasn't the situation he was in. It was a way in which he made use of. That was the key to his success. And I know you probably know many stories of people who had terrible experiences in life, but have never been bitter. Great. Obvious example is Nelson Mandela. 27 years, I think was in jail. What a great use he made of that. You may say injustice. See what I'm saying here is the challenges in life are there to be overcome, to be learned from. This is really where we grow. This is the cutting edge of our life. It's hard when you're there afterwards, when you're through, you realize how important they were. Because meditation is so well known to help people with such diseases like cancer and other stuff. I know for years I've been going to the Cancer Wellness Association, used to be the Cancer Support Association and other cancer groups around Perth, but its value in carrying up there is there how many times people with cancer who have gone into remission come and tell me that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them? I'm just reporting what people have said to me. I can't say that myself because I never had cancer. Can you understand that people have had cancer? Who had gone to the chemotherapy? Radiotherapy? Surgery? The months of treatment. The fear that they're about to die completely up. Turning their lifestyle, having to leave their job months in hospitals, saying that that was the best thing that ever happened to them. I can understand what they mean. They can understand. Maybe one day you might. That challenge taught them the meaning of life. They had to because they were pushed beyond their comfort zones, beyond their expectations, beyond all they were known. They knew about life into a deeper meaning, into a fuller exploration of what life is all about. It's a shame that people need such tough lessons to learn. Maybe you don't need to be challenged that hard. Maybe you can challenge yourself now to understand what we're about, why we're here. What's going on? What really matters. What really is happiness and fulfillment? That way, where we challenge, we come to the deeper truth. You read our deeper truth. Virtue. Kindness. Compassion. Peace. That's what really counts in this world. Huge challenge now with global warming. Flavor of the month in all the newspapers now. Why is it taking so long? It's a challenge. Never despair. Thinking it's too late. We can't do anything. What calm is. Here's the ingredients. What are we going to do about it? What are. What are they going to do about it? That's disempowerment. We take control. You take control of what you're doing. It's amazing that whatever we do, we can learn from it. Maybe that is. The huge, wonderful thing which we have, like the cancer on our environment, which teaches us how to change our lifestyle in the same way that the cancer in your breast has taught you to change and value things which you took for granted beforehand. The cancer on our earth. The warming of our planet. Afterwards, we might even say what a wonderful thing that was. Without that, you'd have gone on in the old dysfunctional, stupid ways, blowing each other up, religions bashing each other up with their Bibles and their Korans and their Buddhist books or whatever. Which is right. Which is wrong. Just trying to be have a bigger house than the person next door. Seeing how I've made it because I've got more money than my parents had. Whatever it is. These are lessons to learn. Challenges. So we don't really need to seek out these ones. Life provides us enough challenges for us. And they won't stop until you die. I often joke as a Buddhist monk, I can't retire. It's not that I haven't got any superannuation. Not like the politicians. Not just the Buddhist society doesn't put any money in the bank for me when I get old. The point is, as a monk, the older you get, the more wise you're supposed to be, so the harder you have to work. I'm only 55. So I'm only starting when he gets about 70. Then you're really in your prime as a monk. And when you get 80 or 90. Wow, that's really venerable. There is no retirement for me. It's great. It's a continual challenge as it is to each one of you. Okay, so you leave your job and you retire and get a caravan and go around Australia or whatever else you do. But you're still you're continually challenged by the aching of the body, by the fading away of your strength. Life is a challenge. Eventually the death which is challenging right to the very end. To learn. To grow. To know what peace is. Even when your body is falling apart. It can be done. It is done. It's just attitude, that's all. The body hurts, but the mind is the one which hurts most. That's why the Buddha often said there are two pains. They call them like arrows which pierce a human being. The bodily arrow and the mental arrow. Bodily suffering. You can't do much about. But the mind is suffering. You can do everything about. You can't change the world, but you can certainly change the way you look at it, the way you relate to it. And in that attitude change, you find the world changes also. It's amazing thing that you have the power. The challenges, hone that power and just show you just what life is all about. So challenges. They are welcome. You might as well welcome them because they're coming anyway. Like it or lump it. That was the menu on our school dinners when I was young. We had a choice. Like it or lump it. Life is like this. You can like life or lump it, whichever you want. But obviously it's the attitude change is the most important. So whatever you do in life, challenge to learn by a positive attitude. How to grow, to learn, to surpass and transcend. To be peace. No matter what happens. Effective peace doesn't mean lazy peace. Just doing nothing. Sometimes the monks in Thailand look at the water buffaloes grazing peacefully in the fields and the paddy fields outside our monastery and think, oh, those water buffaloes are so peaceful they must be enlightened. And that job is to laugh uproariously. Those stupid statements, they said they're not enlightened, they're just dumb. So being a Buddhist and all that, being a water buffalo and just sitting there being dumb. It's that beautiful progressive piece which can still build monasteries. We can still solve the problems of life. We can surpass the cancers of global warming. Whatever peacefully, meaningfully, happily empowers you to do that without any stress. That's what we mean. The challenges of life. That's your challenge. I'm now challenged. You see, if you can look after your life, make a positive contribution to your family, solve those difficulties with the partners you live with. Say sorry for that stupid speech or bad action. Grow in love and compassion and harmony. Learn about life. Learn about yourself so you too can be at peace and make for a peaceful, harmonious world. That's your challenge and don't have to seek that. You're stuck with it because you're born a human being. So that's a talk tonight challenge. Okay, now better get a question from somebody to challenge me today, because otherwise I get stuck in my own ideas. Any questions this evening? Oh my goodness. Sorry. Is everything due to karma? No. Most things are stories you tell. When I was in Kashmir as a 1920 year old, going to see the Kashmir Valley. We're going up these mountains. Now over from. What is it called? Um, Jammu. Over the mountains into Srinagar. The Kashmir valley. And these were dirt tracks. Up in the foothills of the Himalayas. Single lane. If you look out of one window, you see this vertical cliff going up. Look out the window. On the other side of the bar is a vertical cliff going down. And these drivers were tearing around these hairpin bends up in the mountains. If anything was coming in the opposite direction, there would be no chance. They didn't have any speed cameras in the Himalayas in those days. If there was a rockfall, you'd hit it. And every so often you look down on the window to the cliff. Going down, you see a bus just like yours. Which hadn't made it, many of them. But after seeing a few of those, I was in this bus only. It was mostly the locals with myself. And there's two other American tourists, the American or the German. I forget now, but anyway, there are three of us Westerners. So we decided to go up and tell the driver to please slow down. So we went up to the driver, who could speak a little bit of English because there was an Indian, Kashmir, Indian, Muslim. And we say, can you please slow down because it's dangerous? Look, no, sometimes I go over. And he came back and said, I'm a muslim. If his Allah's will, we go over. It's Allah's will. I said, but please, we're not Muslims. And afterwards I started thinking, if we went over, was that the law of karma? Was it Allah's will? Was God's will if you were a Christian said no. If the car went over, it was because of a bad driver, not karma. So not everything is due to karma. Sometimes it's just bad driving. I think you get the idea there. Yeah. Free will. Is there such a thing? I challenge you to do something different. Which way do you go? Home. Go a different way this evening. Can you do that? Tomorrow morning. This is one of the tests of mindfulness. When you go wake up in the morning, when you brush your teeth, which side of the mouth do you start? On. The top left. The bottom right or the start in the middle? Tomorrow morning, start from somewhere different. I challenge you. And when you do that, I should say why you did that. Did you have any choice? Or were you conditioned by Adam? Sometimes when you challenge the idea of free will. In the book, I tell this story. I was a student at Cambridge, and again, in those days, universities were great. Your coursework was only took a fraction of the time. At university. You were expected. You were told that other professors in this university, great sort of experts in the field, go to other lectures. I went to philosophy lectures. Um, I had to go to architect lectures. I was a theoretical physics physicist, actually, to get a wider education, to make use of all these resources and had all these other societies used to go to. One of the societies I went to was psychic research. No ghosts, witches, but importantly, hypnotists. Every year the hypnotist would come and give a demonstration. And obviously, you know, you stood there having a good time and they would ask for volunteers. I went up, but I was not a good subject. But there's always one who was a good subject every year. And they make a complete idiot out of this guy or girl. So the stupid thing to volunteer. But you know who cares about your student? So the first time I saw this is one of these young men, they sort of quickly tested him out. He was a good hypnotic subject. So the hypnotist put him in a trance. I made all sorts of stupid things and great entertainment and probably wouldn't get away with it. These days it's exploitation. But anyway, those days we could do anything. It was good fun. But the thing which really shocked me was when, in the trance he told his student, after you come out of trance, I'm going to touch my right ear lobe, and when I do, you will stand up and sing the national anthem. You know, God save the Queen in a loud voice immediately. And then you took the guy out of trance. And he was an entertainer, like many hypnotists. Every now and again he was giving his talk. He moved his hand and then take it away again. He just was. Just wait. He was keeping us waiting. But eventually he touched his ear. And in the middle of this auditorium. Maybe not as many people as here, maybe 100 people. This guy stood up and sang God Save. And we were almost weeping ourselves laughing. It was hilarious. But even though it had about 99 people laughing at him, he carried on till the very end. We thought it was uproarious, outrageous. But then the killer punch was the hamlet asked him, why did you do that? And this young man gave a cogent reason. What became clear to each one of us was, as far as that person was concerned, he freely chose to sing God Save the Queen. He could not distinguish what you take as your own free will from a purely conditioned order. When I saw that, I started to sing. Everything I take is my own free will. Is it free will? I just been conditioned, brainwashed, hypnotized. Had not realized it. Challenge your idea of free will. Why do you wear the clothes you do? Why do you like the music you like? Why do you like the food you like? Why do you like the religion or the monk? You come and see today. Is it your own free will? Or has the Buddhist society Western Australia completely brainwashed you? I'll finish off with the last straw, I get it. This is one of my favorite hope to be told a good joke today. This favorite joke. I try to tell this once at serpentine, but again, Jana Dharma pulled the plug on me and stop the microphone. I love this joke. There was a priest. Just started out in his career, had his first church, his first congregation. But a lot of times when you actually give talks, it takes a while before you get your into your stride and know how to give a public lecture. So the first couple of talks he gave, which is so boring. So when they pass the plate around to get donations to keep the church running, they only got a pittance, just a few coins. And this went on week after week. And the poor priest, he couldn't even pay the bills of his church, let alone save some money for other expenses. So where does he his bishop? He said, I can't raise enough money. What should I do? Bishop said, that happens to all of us. Happened to me when I was a young priest. This is what I did. He said I got one of these clocks. He said, I got out, I got a clock. He said. Now, first of all, he said, I turned up the heater in the church. And then I gave a very boring sermon in a monotone, very slow, like this. And when everybody was about to fall asleep, I got out my watch. I swung it backwards and forwards, and when they were all hypnotized, I said $20. 1020 1500s. But no fives. No coins on the plate. Okay, where do you leave this? What is said to tens, 20s, 50s, hundreds in the donation box?
