Happiness Industry: Joy At Last!

Happiness Industry: Joy At Last! By Ajahn Brahm And during the the week. I read an interesting article about the happiness industry, and I suppose that I'm part of that industry. But the point was is a very negative article about the happiness industry. It does say, well, maybe, uh, that the way we talk about happiness in our modern world is missing a lot of important points. And first of all, that there is a huge happiness industry out there in the world, uh, thinking that you can go to seminars on happiness and, uh, in British schools there are like wellness, um, classes and even in, um, corporations, there's more and more corporations want to try and make their staff happy. And this particular person was saying, well, maybe it's not just something which you can do with your mind. And just to tell a person who's very poor or very sick or going through a difficult relationship or having a very, very difficult time at work, is it really fair to say it's just your attitude, mate? Come on, change your attitude and everything will be okay. And basically that that can almost summarize what this person meant by the happiness industry. And his argument was that there are some things in this life. If you just tell people, I will just get yourself together, stop complaining. So you're in a very poor house and you got cancer and your wife is leaving. You and your children are in prison. So what? It's just it's only two bad bricks in the wall. Look at the rest of the bricks in the walls. My favorite story says. And just be at peace with it. And his point was actually quite a well made point. But maybe there is something you shouldn't just be. I tried to bring happiness to impossible situations, but I really should be doing something about it as well. Maybe that we should, uh, put more attention just on the, uh, social problems of our society. The things like the lack of equity in our wealth distribution, you know, or in the fact that some parts of our society are discriminated against. So should you do something there as well? And he was saying that the happiness industry is actually stopping you doing social action. But then it was quite easy for me to see that. Well, sir, you were actually saying that social action, that's part of the happiness industry as well. Instead of actually just changing your attitude, you're changing the situation again. It's trying to create this happiness in this world. Can you do it? Is the subject of this talk this evening? Can you be happy? Or is there something inherently wrong with the system that no matter what you do with your relationship, no matter what you do with your body, no matter what you do with your mind, that there's going to be problems suffering. And it smells very clearly and very wonderfully with a event which is coming up on Sunday. On Sunday, we're having our entry to the Rains Retreat, but for once it's on a full moon day on Sunday. And in Buddhist world is called a Salah Puja day ceremony on the full moon day of the lunar month of Azolla, which is July. And it recognizes an important event in the history of Buddhism. And there was the event where the Buddha gave his very first teaching in the deer park at Benaras, and it was called. The teaching was called the first Arati, the turning of the wheel of Dharma that started Buddhism off. I know that there are other parts of Buddhism which actually say, well, that was only the first turning of the wheel, and later on into the second turning and a third turning. And I just wanted to make the point that that there was no second or third. Turning to think of that, there was something more which the Buddha never taught was both anachronistic. In other words, it doesn't fit into this time scale of Buddhism, and nor is it rational. And I know that some people still do say that, but really, anyone who is reasonable, logical, who faces the evidence, who investigates and goes according to the facts rather than belief, we find such ideas untenable. There's only one turning of the wheel, and that happened on this holiday by turning of the wheel of Dharma. It was like getting the most the thing in motion yet in the idea of a very deeper truth, which is what's now known as Buddhism going. What he did was to teach the Four Noble Truths basis the core teaching of Buddhism. If anyone wants to ask what's the quotations of Buddhism? Four Noble Truths, you can't go much wrong with that, no matter what part of Buddhism you're in. It's all about the nature of suffering and happiness. But what is very important in that is that it will understand deeper into the meaning of suffering. This afternoon I just filled in at UWA. For a session with her. Professor David Blair, you know, the theoretical physicist or the gravitational physicist at the university. And, uh, you know, there's always an ongoing conversation, just, you know, with science and religion that is there a dichotomy there? Is it sort of either or either you can believe in science and then you reject or religion or you just religion is something which is separate than science. Is it like two different spheres of influence which don't really address the same problems and therefore could be separated? Or have they got, uh, a place where they overlap and which they contradict each other? And in our modern days, why do we need religion anyway? There is religion, even Buddhism. Is it sort of on the way out as scientific facts start to not just tell us about the origin of this universe and give an explanation which is far better and far more understandable, provable, reasonable than anything you could find in any text of an ancient religion. But is it also the case that, uh, science in the sense of the, uh, uh, neuropsychology, where the nature of the human brain is giving great insights into the way our mind works? There isn't even that part of religion. No, the part which can advise, which can inspire, and which can teach us how to use our brain or our mind more, uh, wisely, more compassionately. Is that something which is going to eventually be given away to science? Where is the area of religious have thought. And I know that sometimes many people say that as long as this death is going to be religion. In other words, the event of death is something which science can never really get his handle on. Now what is death? And why is death and what happens after death? But I think that it's more than that will always give science, give religion a place in this world. And that is because of the problem of human suffering. Why is it we hurt? Why is it we get so disappointed? Frustrated? Depressed? Why is life like this now, let alone the idea of a death? And as that understanding of, you know, the human suffering when things go wrong and how to get so deep an understanding of that, that you could even transcend that suffering otherwise, be free from it. Because it's one thing about pain and suffering. It demands attention, and it just screams for a solution. And just like a little baby crying again. I was in an aircraft going off to Thailand last week and coming back last Tuesday, and there's always these kids in economy class who drive you crazy screaming. And there's one thing which I am not a parent. I haven't had kids myself. It's one of the reasons I became a monk. But there's one thing you notice when a little child screams. It's one of the hardest things to ignore, to reject. It's the scream of a child is demanding, and you can't reject that demand to pay attention. Maybe it's genetically inbred in each one of us. There's a pitch and a tone and a loudness which we can't just turn aside and ignore. You may be able to ignore your wife when she speaks to you. Certainly your husband. But how many of you can shut out the noise of a child, even if it's not your own child? And there's something about that scream which reminds me of the scream of suffering and pain. Something which you just cannot ignore. You can't. So turn aside. I'll deal with you later. It's something which is really important. And this is what the Buddha started off with, sort of what is suffering and what's his solution. And the solution to suffering was the Buddha gave was unexpected. In brief, there is no solution. And that's the solution. In brief. Or to give it a A to give it a a more tangible explanation. Because saying there is no solution and that's not the solution sometimes seems like a contradiction. And sometimes you use contradictions and people think, wow, that's deep. But I want to go deeper than that, because sometimes this mystical statements, which seem to be a contradiction, people go away and they repeat it to their friends, thinking that they understand what's going on. They haven't got a clue. They just say these things to know to impress other people. But the the great image which I want to bring to you is an image which was one of the favorite images of my teacher at Jantar. And I remember this image because I saw this on somebody's shrine last week. It was a picture of Ajahn Chah, my teacher, when he visited England about 25 years ago, and he was just explaining this teaching to some monks by using a statue, which is in a monastery in the south of Thailand. Where there is this monk putting his hands up in absolute joy, it blissfully enlightened. And the caption is Joy at last to know there's no happiness in the world. Joy at last to know there's no happiness in this world. Now, what does that mean? To understand what it means, we've got to sort of go back to ordinary life and the happiness industry and how it works, for example, that people do come to monks or counselling. It's not really our job. It's like a sideline. Our job is to sit in a monastery and meditate. That's job number one. Job number two is teach other people how to meditate. That's job number two. Job number three is actually, you know, to give you some advice to make sure hold your hand, to make sure you're reasonably happy to get in in your life so you feel happy enough to put some money in the nascent box to pay for everything which we do here. But sometimes the when you do some counseling, you can actually really get deep into the problem. And I know that many of you have heard this little story before, but I repeat stories because they fit in to actually the the theme of the talk. And I use these stories in different ways. And this is that story of the two Thai ladies who came to me for counselling in my monastery some years ago. They were sisters, and a first sister came up and they after a meal and they watched your problem, and her problem was her husband. I don't know how many times I've heard that the same stuff, he never listens to me. Comes home late. We always argue. It's always picking on me. Our relationship is not going well anymore. You know. I when she started talking to me, that part of the happiness industry and the counseling is actually finding solutions where you you can work together. No little things, like I was saying a couple of weeks ago, like retraining the way you speak by doing some what we call, um, conditioning your mindfulness training, your mindfulness. So the next time you speak to your partner, you say to yourself, I'm going to say something nice. I'm going to say something nice. I'm going to say something nice. So that when you start opening your mouth, that thought comes up, that program starts to activate. And it's incredibly how powerful that is, because you conditioned train your mindfulness by making resolutions when your mind is the most susceptible, which is usually when you relax, you're at peace when everything is nice, making those resolutions at that time putting in your brain what happens later on is stored in there somewhere. When the trigger is pulled because you say, when I'm speaking with my wife, when I speak with my husband, when you start to speak, the connection is made, the button is pressed, and you stop yourself instead of actually saying something nasty, which is just your habits. You don't mean nasty things. Begin to these habits of speech, these reactive patterns. And when you program that mindfulness, you give that instruction. You're about to say these same old things. Remember, no, I'm not going to say something nice. You break the habits. And it's amazingly how simple, but how powerful that can be to change the way you speak to somebody which is dysfunctional sometimes, the way we speak. We don't really mean that. It's just getting a habit, and you're getting these terrible conversations and arguments you want to change. We don't know how this is how you change. So you can teach people how to do this. And people are so happy that you give them another way of looking. Or you do teach them about the similes, like the two bad bricks in the wall. Instead of just thinking about the two bad bricks and wanting to destroy the wall. See the whole wall? Yeah. Two bad bits in there. But they're not such a bad person. And that is actually quite true, because, you know, when I see people because I'm not married to either of any of you here, because I'm not related to you, I can actually be like an umpire. I can be fair. And so you're not such a bad guy. She's not such a bad wife. But still, people don't agree with my judgement. No, he is terrible. You just don't know. You don't live with him. Yeah, you live too close to him. You can't see the real him or the real her. And of course, I try my hardest to actually to give ways of dealing with the problems of life. For this particular case, after trying my best with this one girl, it just happened. Her sister had complete opposite problem. Her problem was not having a husband who was giving her trouble. Her problem was she couldn't find her husband. She was single and she was so trying so hard in dating agencies, singles clubs, trying to go out, trying to meet her partner in life because she was lonely without someone to share her life with. And she was telling me all these things that I was giving her some advice, you know, about. You know, just don't look at how you look and just how you sort of talk to a person you like, you know, give them time. Just be nice, be sensitive, blah, blah, blah. How to form a relationship. So I gave her all the possible advice that I possibly could, but in the end I looked at both of them. And of course, this was my solution. The obvious solution. And I'm sure you've seen it too. They're sisters. Shouldn't sisters share? The big sister's got a husband she doesn't want. The younger sister wants her husband. Obvious swap. But of course, that's a joke. Part of the story. The most important part of the story was I told her. Look, you've got what we call husband suffering. That's what it's like when you get married. There's a certain imperfection in that relationship. And it's when we don't accept that imperfection, we think, no, it shouldn't be like this. It should be better. I should be able to find a man to live with in life who's always there for me, who always entertains me. Who, when I don't need him, eats? No. He gives me space. Someone you know who is is caring and satisfies me. There's one marriage counselor once told me. He said when she heard a wife described a perfect man. She told him. He said you don't want a human being. You want a TV. Someone will always entertain you and make you laugh so you can turn off when you don't want them. Someone was always there for you at any time. And of course, a human being is not a TV. So there is what we call marriage suffering. Now, the other lady, I said, what if you do get rid of your husband? You won't have what your sister has. What your sister has is single person's suffering. So if you get rid of your husband, you'll get single person suffering and talking to sister who is lonely. When you get rid of your loneliness by finding a nice man, you won't have your single person suffering anymore. You will have married persons suffering. Now there is something very profound in that is so often in our life we really think if we can just change things, if we can actually change our partner or even make them better, you know, get rid of the wrinkles and the idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies, which really irritate us, then we can really be happy. Or if we change our job, or if we get rid of our cancer, or if we change the government, or if the footy team wins tonight, then we get rid of our suffering. But actually, what only happens in life? Haven't you noticed this? You just really change in one form of suffering from another. I think there's a lottery this weekend. Is this most weekend that somebody asked me today, I was giving them a blessing. Sort of. Can we have the lottery number, please, this weekend? Come on. Be kind. They always. They always promised 10% to the Buddhist society. And I said, that's not a good deal. I do all the work. We give you to 10%, we'll keep nice. But of course you can't do things like that. We're not into gambling that if you did win the lottery this weekend, you will get what we call rich person suffering. You won't be happy, guaranteed. Because I've known many wealthy people. That's part of being a monk. You. You move at all levels of society. You know, from meeting the Queen of England to going to working with people in prisons and everything in between, sort of the worst criminal. I mean, remember, meeting Ronnie Kray is one of the East End gangsters, one of the most notorious criminals. He's probably the most notorious person I've ever met. And Queen Elizabeth is probably the most famous person I've met. Everybody in between. And one thing you notice that none of those people. I'm really happy because of the situation in it. So if you're famous, you get famous person suffering. I'm not famous yet, but I'm well enough known that I do understand what that suffering means. What that suffering means is when you go to airports, people recognize you. Oh, hello. Well, actually, there's a problem with meditation. Can I ask you? And the worst thing. Where's the case? And one worst stories about this was when I was just returning from Los Angeles. And it's a long journey on that aircraft. And unfortunately, when I fly Singapore Airlines is people in the airport who know me and they meet me at the gates. You know, it is there in the internal area because they got these little cars, they can go anywhere in the airport. So it's very nice. They go and take me for a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and they start asking questions about the meditation or about Buddhism, about their family life, and see that, you know, if you're a counsellor, you've got an office and you can actually have a secretary have appointments. And certain times for me there is any time. And I got really. I must admit that that time I got a bit tired, I think. Just. Can't you leave me alone? And of course, you can't really say that as a monk. Instead I said, I need to go to the toilet. And I did. You know, I could hold on for a bit longer, but going to the toilet was the way of escaping and sitting down in a place I could have a bit of peace and quiet. But of course, what happened? As soon as I went into the loo, the toilet attendant recognized me. Oh, I said, Bram, can I ask you some questions about Buddhism? Even in the toilet, I can't escape. And that's just about being me. I imagine what it was like, you know, for somebody like, you know, Tom Cruise or Madonna, if they really needed to go to the loo, could they go into any public toilet? Imagine you were in the airport and you were, you know, you know, peeing next to Tom cruise. What would that do? I mean, you could start doing all sorts of stuff if it was Madonna or someone who just asked for autographs and they'd just go, I need to go to the toilet. Leave me alone. Point is that G fame has a lot of suffering to it and so does wealth. So if you become if you do win the lottery, you don't get rid of your suffering. You get rich person suffering. If you lose all your money, you get divorced and the lawyers take it all. You get poor person suffering. But there's something in there that is called mobile phone suffering. When you're a mark, you don't have mobile phone suffering and not having mobile phone suffering, you know, it's quite intense. Sometimes when I get stuck at the airport because the plane is delayed, I can't call anybody, so I have no mobile phone suffering. Now, this is very interesting here because sometimes the happiness industry tells you that if we can somehow have an equitable distribution of income, if we can have good schools. Hospitals. No waiting times for operations. Enough water to know water our lawns and to do things in our state. We can have prosperity. I don't know what else you think you aim for in a utopia you find. You'll still be suffering there. And this is actually where the Buddhism offers something far deeper. Much of my life, in the early life, I was wanting to find some sort of utopia, some beautiful place I could stay, a nice partner in life, a spiritual mate. You can live within. Peace and harmony. The beautiful existence. Not too much money, not too little money where you can live comfortably. Maybe a nice little dog or a cat just to keep you happy and nice children. And I had this idea and it was an idea. That's what we call it, idealistic. But I was smart enough to realize through observation that such a thing didn't exist in this world. The perfect partner, the perfect family, even the perfect dog did not exist. The dog would bark at the wrong times or get sick or even bite your friends. When I understood this, there was something. Isn't there something else in life? Some real peace and happiness? That's actually the why. When I first came across his teaching, which the Buddha gave on this occasion of first teaching, he said, yeah, life is suffering. There was a resonance there, the disappointments, the frustrations I saw. I realized there was nothing wrong with me. I wasn't making a mistake. There wasn't something which was left out of my brain or my education. What I realized is there's nothing inherently wrong with being stuck with experiencing suffering. He was failing exams but not doing well in your relationships. Somebody once asked me years ago, they asked me the question at Abram, why did you become a monk? Was it because you fell in love once and your girlfriend rejected you and you became a monk to forget? I said, no, of course not. And she said, aha, I was right. You've forgotten. Right. It's plausible. It fits. Said, is this logical? And I said, I don't know how to become a monk, to forget if I did, I've forgotten already. So she may be right, I don't know. But no, it wasn't slow to forget. It was actually to understand. Because when I first heard his teachings. Yeah. Suffering is. There was a sense of learning to be at peace with your suffering. To have more acceptance of suffering. To have more. Embracing the suffering. Being part of life. And nothing wrong with it. So the Buddhist happiness industry, if it's really Buddhist, is not trying to get rid of happiness. So I'm not trying to get rid of suffering, but learning how to embrace it and be at peace with it and learn from it and grow from it. Because otherwise, when we reject suffering, what's actually happening? Say going back to sort of relationship, partnership, husband, wife, guy and guy, girl and girl. I don't care when it doesn't go wrong when it isn't, but it's not joyful. Do you actually say there's something wrong with our relationship? You know that other example which I sometimes give when you get sick? And just to make the point here, sometimes I ask people, can you please put your hand up? If you've never, ever been sick in your life. Sources. Is anyone here who has never been sick since the time they were born? Please put your hand up if you have never been sick. No one is putting their hand up. So either your death, which is sick, or you have been sick. And in fact, every time I say this, no one ever puts their hands up. Everyone has been sick. Isn't it normal to be sick? Wouldn't it be really weird? You know, if someone said they'd never been sick since the time they were born? So. Because it's normal, isn't it right to be sick? But why is it when we go to the doctor. So we say our friends. We say there's something wrong with me. I'm sick today. We say that, don't we? There's something wrong with me, I am sick. What we're doing with that little statement is we are rejecting in denial to the nature of life, which is sickness is is part of life. And I have told many people that story about saying, when you're sick, there's something right with me, doctor. I'm sick. And a few people have actually done that. They've gone to their doctor and they said, no, what are you doing here? Said, there's something wrong with me today. Doctor, I'm sick and I'm so well. No, no, no. So you must go to a local Buddhist centre. Disciple of Brahm. Yeah, we we know that story now. But the point of me saying that when you say there's something right with me, I am sick. What does that actually do to the illness? Well, number one, it takes away the shame or the guilt which sometimes surrounds ill health. You know, when we think the sickness is wrong, sometimes we deny it. We don't go to the doctor early enough. Now, when we got the lump in our breast. When we got the problem P in. If you're an old man or because your prostate is enlarged or something, or you got some sort of stuff going on in your heart, which now means you've got some problem in there, why is it we don't go to see the GP in plenty of time? The reason is because we think that sickness is wrong. We are afraid of cancer or heart disease. Why? What is wrong with it? It's part of nature. And if we could be more embracing it and accepting. And so there's nothing wrong with being sick. There's nothing wrong with being cancer. Don't need to feel guilty as if you made a huge mistake in life and go into denial. Because if you regret accepting of the state of your body, you will go to see the GP earlier and probably have a greater chance of cure. Can you see that when we say there's something wrong with my body because it's set? That attitude is what causes a huge amount of problems. Same in your relationship again. When we were, we said something wrong because we're arguing together. How many people who have a relationship here never argue with each other? Does anyone ever argues? So if you say yes, you would. Denial, I'm sure. Because people do argue together the whole story that the closer you are, the more fiction there is two different people. So you do argue, so you understand. That's par for the course. There's nothing wrong with that when we know there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing evil about it. We can actually do something about it. We can embrace it and then say, you know, you got nothing wrong with you, darling. Does you argue? That's what happens. That's what. Why is the like? What do you expect? She should have read the small print about life before you got married. It's in there. So when she had started to embrace this, a whole different ball game starts to emerge. You understand that this is what it's like being married. This is what it's like having a human body. You get sick. This is what it's like, you know, being born into this human realm eventually die. People do die. No. When you have a loved one, they're not going to be around forever and ever. Sometimes they leave us. What you're doing here is actually embracing the truth and reality of life. You're getting real. An amazing thing happens when you can put your hands up and say joy at last, and know there is no happiness in this world. We're actually saying, is joy at last to know that I can never find a perfect partner, not according to my ideals. This one is actually good enough. I can never find a perfect body. This one is good enough. I can never find a perfect monk. This one is good enough. And you can see the change which happens in your mind there. There is an engagement with the world. It was an engagement with your partner as an engagement with your body, rather than a rejection of it. When I was at an engagement rather than the rejection, there's a sense of peace starts to come. When there's a sense of peace starts to come as a sense of freedom. The freedom from the business of having to change all of this, the freedom from having to change your partner, to change your body, to change your lifestyle. Instead, you can make the most of it. Instead of the fault finding mind which develops from this wrong way of thinking, you get the appreciative mind. And that's the sort of mind which, when I first heard about in Buddhism, the war was God's embrace, the faults and defects in other beings which embraces the suffering of life, which embraces just the defects which is there in every organisation. You can have this beautiful sense of peace, happiness and joy. That's not the end of the story, though, because when you have this beautiful sense of acceptance to the partner, which you live with, the sense of acceptance to the body in which you live and the situation in which you live, something else happens. And this was a fascinating part. The deeper teachings of life in that acceptance, things actually start to get better. You know what it's like in a relationship with your partner if they really understand you, respect you, accept and embrace you, not criticize you, and keep worrying about your faults, but they really embrace you. You show them more love back because isn't that what a partnership should be really about? Even the old marriage ceremonies, what did they used to say through thickness and, you know, through six thickness? Yeah. Okay. So thickness and thin through sickness and in health. Or whatever else they actually say, but it was actually to love you no matter what. That was in the old marriage ceremonies. What we actually say here, that all of our heart is open to you, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter where you go. Now you can see that is actually an accepting type of love, a relationship which embraces the suffering which will happen between you, the defects in your partner, the defects in yourself, and the reason why that story opened the door of your heart moves people. Because it actually does create this happiness almost as a side effect, unintentionally, if you like. You're not trying to change your partner, you're accepting them. But by accepting them for who they are, by loving them for who they are, by embracing them, warts and all, the partner becomes more beautiful, more soft, more laughing, more caring. That's exactly the same which happens with your body as well. We embrace our pain and allow it to be become one with it, rather than trying to reject it, the pain disappears. For those of you who meditate, if you embrace the difficulties in your mind, the thoughts, the feelings, the craziness, if you like in your mind, embrace it. It disappears. Even I don't know if I should tell. How can I stay like that? If I should tell the story, I'm going to tell it anyway. I don't know why I say that. One of my friends. This was in the 70s. Even though I never took these drugs myself. No. He took some LSD one day when I was at Cambridge, and I remember just seeing him now popping up to him, and he came up to me and said, I think I'm going crazy. I'm going mad. And sometimes people do go crazy. For years now he's a very wealthy actuary, one of the most conservative, um, suit ridden persons you could ever imagine. If I actually told his boss what he did when he was at college, he'd get kicked out of the company. But nevertheless, I would never say such things. But at the time that he took some LSD and he thought he was going crazy. And I remember just going up and said, well, nothing wrong with being crazy. It'd just be crazy. So I. And then, of course, he calmed down. There was a fear of going crazy, which was driving him crazy. I think you can understand that. A few of you giggled there, because it's a negativity which we give to the experiences which we have. That is the problem. It's a negativity we have. The sickness creates even worse sickness. The tension, the stress. We build up, the negativity, the guilt which we have, the negativity to you have to the imperfections of your partner. It's not how imperfections or his you know, imperfections. It's the negativity you have towards that. The lack of acceptance, the lack of embracing. That is what causes the pain. It's the craving to change. Said the Buddha in this amazing teaching. The wanting it to be different. That is the cause of suffering. As a powerful lesson there. We can accept our partner for who they are. You'll find a change if you accept yourself for who you are. You change gives that your sickness, the stress. Part of the sickness is taken away and it changes. Healing happens. It seems counterintuitive. When there's a problem, we want to fix it. Some of those problems they do respond to fixing. But some of these internal problems, they don't respond to fixing at all. They respond to accepting, to loving, to being at peace with things. This became the great teaching of a Buddha to make peace with the person in front of you, to make peace, even if they're attacking you and try to harm you. The point is, if you can make peace properly, you become invulnerable. The story which was in that book opened the door of your heart. I haven't told here for many years. When we first came to this center 22 years ago or something, quite a long time ago, we invited the then governor of Western Australia, Sir Gordon Reid. You know, we have the Reid Highway that's named after him, sir Gordon Reid to open our centre. We were just starting off in those days and we actually we wrote the letter to government House over in Saint George's Terrace. We never thought that he would accept. And he did. And I was just such a a boost for us. We got another big shot coming to our opening ceremony. So as soon as we got him to counter our opening ceremony, you know, I was the number two my coach and I was the senior man. And we had to do a lot of organisation. And even now I'm just really in the thick of things, organising things. And so I was a man who was organising the marquee and the chairs for our guests and was told at the time, even though we didn't have much money, this was our big show. We wanted to make an impression. So I was told by our treasurer at the time, don't worry about the funds. Get the very best, you know, making a show. Do it good. So what I did, I rang around the hire companies in Perth and got one in in Cottesloe. You know, it's hired out, you know, the tents to the Peppermint Grove set because we want to have a really good show. And I remember just calling them and ringing many people. I said, look, we want a beautiful tent, nice chairs. We got the governor of Western Australia coming with his wife and a few politicians. So let's have about ten special chairs, nice ones for the governor and the Polly's and two other nice chairs for everybody else. Beautiful marquee. Okay. And when it came on a Saturday afternoon, we're having the ceremony on a Sunday. I was busy working round about helping somebody else when the truck came to unload the chairs and the marquee. So when I came out to inspect, truck had already gone. I just could not believe just how dirty that marquee was. It was full of red dust, as if it had been in some sort of agricultural show, knowing the far walk ups of Western Australia. But that wasn't really a problem because we have a hose. We could hose it down. So we started hosing it down. Then I checked the chairs and the chairs were equally filthy. So immediately there was enough helpers. Here we got rags and started to wipe them down. It was a bit over the top, but at least we could do something. When I checked the VIP chairs that was just unfixable. These were chairs for the Governor of Western Australia, and of those ten chairs, there was not one chair. Not exaggerating, not one chair whose legs were the same length. They all wobbled. Not small amounts, but considerably. I think, gee, we can't have the gardener even worse, his wife falling over during our ceremony. And of course, that's something you can't fix. So I immediately rang up the the firm. So it wasn't it. It must have been a Friday. So not a Saturday. Must have delivered on a Friday. But when I rang them up, they were about to shut the office. The girl or the manager was just cleaning up. I told her what had happened. She said there was a problem because all the workers had gone home for the weekend. But being Australian, they hadn't gone home. They had gone to the other office, the pub. So she went to the pub to tell him that the Buddhists needed some chairs. They can imagine the scene now. You've been in Australia long enough. Imagine you're one of these workers. You're knocked off on a Friday, having a nice few drinks, you know, with your friends and you've got to go back to work because of the Buddhists. And those sorts of guys, you know. They don't know about opening the door of your heart and letting go. So when the truck came up this road, this time, I was waiting for it. And, you know, this was the road know from the corner of Constant Street up to this building over here. The trap was coming along. It was slowing down, but hadn't stopped. It was about halfway between, you know, this building and the corner. A guy jumped out of the truck. They came running with his fists clenched like this. Where's the bloke in charge? I want the bloke in charge. He was crazy. He was mad. He was so angry. So I went up to him and said, I'm the bloke in charge. And there was this wonderful moment where he put his fist about this far from my face. And his eyes were wide and worse. You could smell the beer on his breath. That was the most beer I've breathed in in all the years I've been amuck. And that is amazing. He was about to stop me. And everybody. Because there's heaps of people around. Because we were working, setting things up. They all stopped and looked. Not one of my so-called supporters. Came up to give me any sort of hand. Thank you friends. That's the amazing thing that everyone watched. See what would happen next. Gee. But of course, I never needed any help. It was amazing. Just. You were still. You were not afraid. You accepted that person's anger. I never tried to defend myself or try to explain. Look, you know, you gave us his dirty chairs. He's a dirty monkey. You got it. You got the blooming guv'nor coming tomorrow. What do you expect? You got to come and change his. This is not good enough. I never got angry. Instead, I was just so still and peaceful and kind. No one can harm you when you're like that. And it was for me, being mindful, just watching him. Just know a few inches his eyes were away from mine. His fist was right in front of my face. He could have knocked me out, as in a second, and I would not have had any defense at all. Instead, I just held him with kindness and this amazing experience. You had complete control over that guy 100%. He could not hit you. I knew he couldn't hit me because to have hardness, I needed to respond with some sort of anger, with a small amount of anger to irritate him, to get him to go to the next level. Because I was not responding, he couldn't go to any more level. He was stuck there because he'd ran out. It took him maybe 3 or 4 minutes for the truck to park, and I was just there with him, just frozen in time. I was actually enjoying this power I was indulging. I shouldn't have done that, but it was interesting. And then his the boss, the guy who was the boss of this crew came along, put the hand on this guy's shoulder, and that broke the impasse. Come on, we'll unload the stuff. And I said, yeah, I'll help you. We unloaded it all together. No problem whatsoever. We changed all the chairs. And it was a wonderful experience for me because it showed this know how this acceptance and embracing the situation rather than defending it or challenge it. How. It was an amazing way of overcoming the problems in a in a different way. Instead of arguing, instead of saying who's right and who's wrong? Are we doing a marriage? Are we doing the relationship we do with our body or we do with life? We have this amazing making peace with the moment. When you can make peace with the moment, you become free and nothing can harm you. This is not something which you learn from a talk like this. Those of you who do know how to sit down and meditate. You know that when you try and control your mind and challenging, get rid of all the stupid stuff which goes through your mind. You just know that is how that stuffs you up even more. He never gets still in meditation by trying to be still. By getting rid of all the difficulties and the problems. The reason why I can talk about relationships. Because I have a relationship with my mind. I know how to love and care for my mind. So my mind never argues back at me. If you know about meditation, stop arguing with yourself, with your mind, with your heart. You can sit down and make peace with every moment, not reacting despite that person who was very, very angry. If you got some very difficult experiences, make peace with her happiness at last. No, you can't change those experiences. Happiness are last to know this or other. Joy at last. To know there's no happiness in as well. When you start fighting. Then you have all the happiness you ever wanted. This is why it seems counter-intuitive. If you want success and happiness, you have to make it. You think? I want a good relationship. I'm going to change my partner to mold him this way and that. If I want to sort of have health, I could do this and do that and stress myself out even more. I don't know why it is that many people who exercise get sick. Here I am, I just set it out, play most of the most of my life. We'll sit down talking to people, eating lots of fish and chips, greasy food and very healthy. And some of these other backs in my monastery. They exercise and they eat salads, and they're the sick ones. You know, we just had this flu virus going around. I never got it. And I was rushing around all over the place, hardly sleeping, sometimes missing my sleep because the flights were delayed. I'm perfectly healthy. Why? Why is that? When you learn how to make peace with things, it's embracing things. When you let go of craving, then you have freedom. Peace. The amazing thing about the mind. You sit down and meditate, and you want to get these deep meditations called dhyana or enlightenment or whatever. You will never get anywhere. You're missing the whole point of what meditation is. Meditation is sitting there and doing absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. If you want to get into emptiness, brilliant, beautiful emptiness, how can you do something in emptiness? How can you actually make the mind do what you want? You make peace instead. Peace is called letting go. Leaving things alone and embracing. When you sit down. Happiness at last. Not to have to do things, change things, but instead embrace this moment. That's why meditation, when you know how to do it properly, making peace, embracing loving things for what they are not only lead you into incredibly powerful, deep states of mind, which gives you more blessing than you can handle. It also teaches you how to relate to other people, how to relate to your body, and how to relate to life. Because as you go deeper and deeper into the state of letting go bliss, so the mind just builds up incredibly. I've said this before, the reason I became a monk and stay as a monk is because the bliss of meditation is better than sex. That's why I often say sexual orgasm. I had girlfriends before I became a monk. Know what it was like the first time I got into deep meditation? It blew my mind. How can that happiness be? Lasting longer and more delicious and sexual orgasm just by letting go. By being so still and so at peace. That gave me a clue about what Buddhism was really all about. And of course, that was years ago. He developed this. How to sit in your monastery in a cave with no other input and just bliss out of your tiny skull, has so much energy and happiness, you just don't know how to deal with it sometimes. And how does that happen? By being at peace with things. Joy at last to know there's no happiness in this world. So you stop seeking it and you get more joy. It's his nature. Counterintuitive, but it works. You'll find if you try and change your partner, you'll never find the happiness. If you learn how to love them as they are, your happiness will grow. If you learn how to accept your body, then your health would improve. You learn how to be at peace with life. You enjoy it much more. That's what we mean. Happiness at last. To stop seeking happiness. But to appreciate. You already got it right here. And you've been looking somewhere else all your life. Looking. The next thing you're going to do. Looking at the good old days in the past. Looking at the next partner, the next job, the next holiday, the next whatever. We never look for what we already have. So appreciate what you have there. You find happiness in enlightenment. You don't need to be rich. You don't need to be poor. You don't need to be a monk. You don't need to be a layperson. You don't need to be anything. Just be yourself. And you find you have more than you ever wanted. You have peace. The end of suffering, which was the Buddha's third noble truth. And meditation was a way, the fourth noble truth, to end this terrible suffering by being at peace with it. Counterintuitive. Maybe when I explain it this way. Maybe some of you get the point. That, in brief, was a teaching which the Buddha gave 25. No, two, five, four, three plus 45, 2590 years ago, roughly according to the 2000, 2588 years ago. According to, uh, the uh, old traditional dating at the time of the Buddha. So it's not the happiness industry. It's the letting go of happiness industry, which is what Buddhism is. Any questions of this evening's talk? Any comments or questions about letting go of happiness. And letting go of suffering as well. Letting me go the whole lot. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Very good. I'm glad you noticed that one. Can you reconcile the statement that there's no. But I said at the beginning there is no solution to suffering. And that has given you the solution to suffering. Remember, I also said the solution is the no solution. So when you stop trying to get rid of suffering, that is the solution to suffering. No, I'm not trying to be mystical here because I hate mysticism. Because most people are mystical. They haven't got a clue what they're saying. It just sounds good. But what was the point is, we actually see a meditation. When you try to get happy. You try and get still. You try and stop the mind. It gets even worse. Let it go. Let it be. Just relax and allow. This seems to be. Just watch and do nothing. Everything gets stuck when you try and make a solution. There is no solution. When you seek the solution, you're looking in the wrong place. So there's no solution. Then that becomes the solution. Yeah. Is sort of the the side of happiness and joy. Again, this is this is about the happiness which is found by achieving something. Changing something. Making something happen. This the happiness in that sense, is what you seek. For example, the titration chart said looking for that type of happiness is. One of his favorite sayings is like looking for the turtle with the mustache. Can you find a turtle with a mustache? Just because you haven't found one yet doesn't mean one doesn't exist. Maybe you haven't looked hard enough yet. And that's what happens with people. The perfect partner is like the turtle with the mustache. I haven't found it yet, but it doesn't mean he doesn't exist. I know he's in there somewhere. He's just waiting for me. My soulmate. Where is he? A lot of people think like that. And they keep looking, looking, looking. The romantic idiots. And. All who have the perfect health or the perfect meditation or whatever it is. You know this. When you seek for things like that, you are looking for the turtle with the mustache and you keep looking for your whole life. And unfortunately, that's the story of many people's lives. I was looking for the turtle with a moustache. Satisfaction. Happiness. Perfection. Love. Whatever it is you want. Which is fine health. But that thing doesn't exist where you're looking for. So instead, we stop searching. We're still. And then we found we've already got the mustache. It's like, you know, I've done this a couple of times, you know, wearing glasses. Now. Now it's okay. But when I started wearing this permanently, sometimes, you know, you'd be looking for them in the morning. And this happened to me. Uh, Amanda, the driver said, hey, look in the mirror. You got them on your nose, you stupid mug. Oh, yeah. I didn't realize that. I thought this happened to you. It happened to me a couple of times. So if I lose my glasses now, the first place I look is on my nose. That's the first simile for happiness. This the looking for it stops your getting happiness. That's why I say the happiness. What you look for. The joy is giving up looking. Ah, peace at last, partner you have there good enough. Take my word for it. Not good enough. Your body? Yeah. Might not be the beautiful. Am I getting old and ugly now? But that's good enough. Remember this important point. You're never. You're not as young as you used to be, but you're not as old as you're going to be either. So enjoy it. Okay, I think that's enough for tonight. So thank you for coming this evening for the double talk. I don't know what it turned out as, but that's what you're getting. So I'm at peace with the Dharma talk tonight. Joy at last. I know the Dharma talk is over. On some awesome Buddha Bhagawan Wood and Bhagawan are happy what they need. So what kind of a. Oh, what a dumb. Oh, um, I am sorry. Sir, he had no idea what I was. I go stand kind of mommy.