Has Religion Got A Future?

Has Religion Got A Future by Ajahn Brahm Lastly, I was attending a youth conference in Sydney and before that a monk and non conference. And before that we had our global conference. This year I've been conferenced out. But one of the outcomes of the conference, which we had a couple of weeks ago here, and the other conference was people looking at sort of the future of Buddhism, especially this type of Buddhism in our world, and how it how it's going to pan out, how it's working now, what sort of strategies have we got and why we have those strategies? And I'm going to talk about that at least at the beginning, and see where this talk ends up. It's a more like why Buddhism type of talk or why spirituality if you like. But it's also, um, it's inspired by a comment which, uh, was asked at the end of the Youth Conference in Sydney. But first of all that I must say that the conference, which was held in Sydney, was supposed to be a youth conference. But perhaps I learned something, perhaps the one thing which I got from that conference when I looked at all the old people attending, was that the word youth has got a very, very plastic and rubber meaning in today's world wasn't used at all. And all old guys, many of them older than me, are. But anyhow, the question was that to the whole conference there where you had had Tibetan monks and nuns and her Mahayana Chinese monks and nuns and Theravada monks and nuns and Z monks, Zen monks and nuns and lay teachers, and goodness knows who else was that? Everyone was saying, my tradition says this, or my teacher says that. The question was, well, we all know what your tradition says, but what do you say is a very great comment? Because sometimes when people ask you a question about truth, about meditation, or about ethics, too often we just hide behind our tradition and say, our tradition says this, or the Buddha said that, or my teacher, this is what he said. But the point is, yes, but what do you say and why? Because it's very hard to argue against the tradition. It's very even hard to question the book because the book doesn't speak back. Or you can do is throw it in a dustbin if you don't agree with it. But when you've got a person there, you can actually probe much deeper. And this is, I think, one of the great advantages of like, you know, the Buddhist group in our modern world, the one thing which gives me great hope that this is going to be very useful for society, not just now, but in the future, is that we are completely disorganized. The old joke. If any of you don't like organized religion, you've come to the right place. And what I mean by that, I don't mean that, you know, we haven't got clean toilets and we haven't got a place to sit and a place to have a cup of tea. We organize that way, but we haven't got a hierarchy. We haven't got a pope or an archbishop or somebody above us telling us what to say and what to do. I can say whatever I like here, and I'm not going to get death threats from the big shots in some, um, Buddhist palace somewhere. And it's great that we have that freedom to say what we want and to be argued against, to be questioned. And we have this wonderful, um, dialogue which goes on all the time where we're questioning, arguing, investigating, always to come to a deeper understanding of truth. And this is a great thing of our modern spiritual life that we are questioning each other, meeting each other, mixing up and finding out a deeper understanding of the meaning of life. A good example of that was yesterday. I spent the whole day at Christchurch Grammar School and Anglican School. But you know, I mixed with all these other religions and really, really well. But, uh, and the, uh, the chaplain there, I think, is a chaplain. He calls himself, uh, canon Frank Sheehan. He's a good mate of mine. And he says something which is very, very fascinating. And one of the reasons I'm giving this talk also is what he said. There's a fellow in the Anglican church called Bishop John Spong. Some of you may know about him, but he's as radical as you get in the Anglican church. I think they understand who's the most radical by having the league of who gets the most death threats. And I think it's way up there at the top, number one. And I remember somebody telling me that when he went to some big bishops conference in Lambeth Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head honcho of the Anglican church, that him and a few of his mates sort of went, because Lambeth Palace is on the River Thames. They went to the river and with a few of them, maybe half a dozen of them, and they threw their, their bishops hats, their big miters, into the River Thames as a protest, saying that, you know, we're supposed to be followers of Jesus. He never wore these big hats and his fancy robes. So why should we seem to be just ordinary people, just like, you know, all the people who come to our churches. And so they threw their hats into the River Thames. And I thought, that's really a nice thing to do. Now, forget about pollution. It was just like a gesture. But nevertheless, that Sir Kenneth Franklin was telling me that he went to one of these conferences and all these bishops there, they always say, yeah, he's such a great guy. We believe in everything he says, but we hope he never comes to our parish. Because they understood and they agreed with his position, but they were too afraid to actually to get him into their town to give a talk and express what they understood inside themselves. But they, because of the hierarchy, weren't allowed to say that was something which you think, my goodness, there's a lack of freedom and a lack of ability to move forward when you can't express what your heart tells you is the truth of your religion. Fortunately, we don't have that problem in Buddhism because we don't have the big shots above us to tell tell us what to do. And because of that, there's a dynamic of our modern spirituality where we do have the freedom to actually to look deeply within touch you, to look at the texts, to understand what they were saying, and not to use those as a prison where we can't go beyond, but we use them as guidelines to go deeper into the meaning of our religion. Because maybe Buddhism always started as a meditative tradition. It's not a real tradition from outside. The Buddha never became enlightened because he heard some voice of some, um, channeler or some god from outside who was going inside to find the truth. And because that was always the way the books were, only the guide books, the maps, not the territory. They were the signposts. And we always remember that, that it doesn't matter so much what it says in the books, because those books are there not as truths in themselves, but as a way to find a truth. They're pointing to something. And I think that when we realize that the truth is to be found within the heart of every human being, when they train themselves in this clarity, this stillness, to be able to perceive so deeply, they see what's really there. I think then we understand the purpose of the books. The purpose of the books is not to divide us, not like some wall to separate us. Which book do you believe in? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in the Koran? Do you believe in the Dharma pada or do you believe in Harry Potter? Which is your book? I don't know. But sometimes the people. They take these books and they say, that's as Harry Potter says. Or Obi Kenobi says this. Now, that's not the point. It's all pointing to something. And once we actually stop the books and make use of them as they truly are, then even the books don't become authorities. And one of the great things with the different types of Buddhism. Now, what are the different types of Buddhism? We have Zen Buddhism, we have Mahayana Buddhism, we have Tibetan Buddhism. We have all the schools of Tibet and Buddhism. We have Theravada Buddhism, we have Sri Lankan Thai Buddhism. We have all these different types of Buddhism. But why do we say this so different? Theravada is just a group of books which we say this is Theravada Buddhism, the Tripitaka, this is Mahayana Buddhism. The argument, this is Tibetan Buddhism, the kanji. But these are just a set of books. When sometimes people ask me all these different traditions, those of you at the conference saw monks in all sorts of different types of robes. I thought we should really just have a fashion parade of the different types of monks walking down a catwalk. And we can we can have a vote on which to think should be the fashion of this year. But I, I use those different colored robes many years ago to actually describe when people ask what is the different types of Buddhism, what are their differences? And I just said, like the cakes, cakes with different types of icing. What you see here is brown robes. This is the milk chocolate icing on the cake. A couple of weeks ago we had Sister Adrienne Lama here. She's the dark chocolate icing. If you go and see a Tibetan monk like the Dalai Lama. He's a strawberry, I see. And you may have seen. You may have seen some Zen marks in their gray robes. That's the vanilla with a bit of blackberry, I see. But the different icings, if you go underneath that, you find the same type of cake. Some of the icings are very thick. They stick with their traditions. If you go underneath their traditions, you always find the same type of cake. You know why? Because with Tibetan monks, whether you're a Christian monk, whether you're a muslim, whether they know who you are. You've all got the same type of mind and body, the same experiences of life, just about. So if the truth is about life and is expressed in one's experiences, surely whether you're from Mongolia or whether you are from from Texas. The truths of life have to be the same. And the great thing is that when we express these truths in our different traditions, if those truths which are expressed don't really meet with the approval of people who hear them, if they don't rhyme no with their experiences of life, and they don't inspire and lead them deeper into a state of peace, happiness, harmony with their lives. Of course it won't last. Sometimes the different types of religion or spirituality or Buddhism are just like the different plants in a forest, those which are meant to be there, in other words, those which adapt to the situation around them. They will always thrive. And so we don't need a hierarchy above us, sort of in Buddhism. We don't have like the, uh, departments of agriculture or forestry called calm, who tell everyone what trees to plant. So we don't have somebody who's organizing anything is completely sort of natural. Natural selection, if you like, sort of a monastery or a temple or a church or a teacher starts here, and then another one starts over there. And the ones which are really giving what people want, who are supplying the goods, who are teaching and inspiring and making people more peaceful, more happy, they are the ones which are going to survive. It's a natural survival. And this, I think, is a great thing of our modern world. It's not sort of, uh, some tradition which chooses what's going to be prosperous. What's going to work in our future is actually just the dynamics. The interior reaction between teachings teaches people the situations. That is what's going to determine the success of the future. So certainly as a monk, as a teacher here. I love stirring things up every now and again for my own benefit and also for other peoples. Not always following the tradition, but sometimes just going a little bit further to see what works and what doesn't work. I know I sometimes get into trouble for that, but it's great when you're a senior monk. I've got enough seniority now that I can get away with many, many things which I never get away with when I was a young monk. But when we actually say, get away with things. One of the strengths, I think, of a tradition which is going to work in our modern world, is it very strong on its ethics? Because in our tradition, we do have a very, very strong adherence to what we call the veneer, which is the ethical code for monks and nuns. We keep those rules very strictly, such as not accepting any money. Now some people are loose on that rule, but they're very strict on actually presenting Buddhism as it says in the books. In our tradition, we are very strict on the ethics, but sometimes we're very loose and interpret what's it in the books. You see the difference there? Here are the strict and the ethics and loose on the interpretations, or you loose on the ethics and strict in the interpretations. Now, I think from my understanding that if you are strict in the ethics, is people respect you because they want their monks and nuns to actually be someone that they admire, that they are living simply, that they are monks. Maybe people can't do it themselves. They can't just live on one meal a day or sleep on the floor, go without TV or go without sex. Maybe they can't do that, but sometimes respect someone who does that and who shows that they do that. For those people ever. Any doubts about the monks and nuns you see sitting here giving talks? Please come to such celebrations as now. On Sunday we have a big celebration to start arrange retreat at Serpentine Monastery. Because one of the things which I do there is we have these tours around the monastery, and all the hearts are open, and you can go into those huts and see how we live. I know that sometimes people can't go to the places they want to go, but my hut is open all day. You can go in there. I don't tidy it up. Especially you can go into all of the cupboards. You can go under. There's a bench. There's not a bed. I sleep on the floor. So you can't go under my bed because there's only earth under there. We can go and actually see now what these monks are and how they live. I think that's such an important thing in this modern day of cynicism and sometimes, you know, skepticism. Ah, yeah, they say all of that. But do they really act like that? Do they really practice that? Do they say one thing and do another? Certainly for me, like hypocrisy was one of the things I found most detestable in my early life. Now, one of the reasons this is an old anecdote, one of the reasons why I got disappointed in the Anglican church was I went to go and see, like the local Anglican priest, when I was a kid, I used to sing in the church choir. Believe it or not, my chanting has really deteriorated since then. As a singular church choir. So you got to know the local priests who was like there for years and years and years. And when my brother decided to get married, you know, I was a student at the time, not really working very hard. And so he asked me, can you go to see the vicar? Actually, he had to get these. They call them band. Some permission actually to marry. And so I went to see him and he remembered me, invited me in, and he asked me what I was doing. I said I was, you know, at university, I got to Cambridge, and the next year I thought I'd become a school teacher. And what he said, no, I don't become a school teacher, write a book on education, make more money out of books. And for the whole time I was, I was talking about money, money, money. And that really sort of pissed me off, basically. I thought, you know, he's a religious man. He shouldn't be interested in money, things he should be asking me, are you getting fulfillment in that career? Is that really making you content? Is that really what you want to do in life? And to me, sort of like the money, the worldly things and religion were two separate entities. I wanted to sort of something I could really respect. The ethics, I think, is important. If you're going to have a successful strain of religion, you have to have your leaders living a very, very high standard of ethics. Otherwise, as people really get upset, they say, why should we believe what these people do when they can't do it themselves? What they say, rather when they can't really do it? I remember one of my friends, a monk in Malaysia. He was starting a monastery and he wanted actually to train monks. And it really, really doesn't depend upon what tradition this is. It was no Theravada tradition. But now in Malaysia, people go to all monasteries and, you know, very eclectic. And he did a survey. He asked people, what type of monks do you want us to produce? He got it from me that monasteries are monk factories. You know, we're taking the raw material. We turn them around for five years, and at the end bouts, these teachers say it was a nuns nuns factory in Michigan. Sister Yama takes all these, you know, young ladies or middle aged and some old ladies as well. Turns them around for a few years. And then at the end, the final product comes out for the world to teach. But what type of product would you like from a monk called Nun Factories. And it's a fascinating question. Do you want someone who gives inspiring talks, or do you want someone who's this little meditator who sits in a cave up in Dharma monastery for months on end, getting into these deep states of meditation? Do you want someone with psychic powers who can read minds and float through the air? You know, when I was at Christchurch, some of the yesterday, some of the classes I taught were only like grade 4 or 5 in their prep school. And they asked me, can we do some meditation together? So you want to learn meditation? You want to learn meditation? Okay, so I said, we'll just meditate for five minutes. So I led them in a meditation. And I know when I teach meditation here, I close my eyes and I didn't realize these scallywags, they weren't sort of closing their eyes. The only reason why they wanted me to teach meditation, because they wanted to see me meditate. And afterwards they complained, said we were watching all that five minutes and you never lifted off the ground once. You didn't even say that was the reason I would try to watch me meditating. But do you want someone to do things like that, or do you want someone who writes books? Or one is a great manager who teaches your kids to be good, and a lot of people, they want to, you know, get the monks or nuns, some surrogate parents or teachers because you can't teach them yourself at school. They don't teach the kids, you know how to be good kids. And so please find somebody. And monks and nuns, our last resort. Can you please sort our kids out so we can have a nice time? But the point is that of all those things, I asked the people of Malaysia, and I think it'll be the same of the people here in Australia. So what they wanted most out of their monks and nuns. Was they lived an ethical life. They were honest. If they said they were going to be celibate, they were celibate. There were people they could trust. There was a fascinating result of that survey, some which I didn't really see coming. I think that if Buddhism is going to survive or religion is going to survive in our modern world, the religious leaders have to clean up their act and really be people we can respect who are honest. And if they're celibate, then they keep that celibacy. If they're married, they just stay with that one person. They are kind. They are good. Honest, truthful and truthful. I mean, one of the problems with religion in the last 20 years is the scandals, which have been around priests abusing kids, beating kids. Those are the things which have hurt religion more than anything else. So I think it doesn't matter whether it's Tibetan sin or whatever. One of the most important things is we do have a strong ethics because this is a practical part of our religion, not so much of what said, but what we do. Because I think in our modern world, people get so disappointed, disappointed with the behavior of those people. We used to look up to schoolteachers, police. Remember as a kid in London, the British police, which is so admired, and you were told if he ever got lost, ask a policeman there will help you. Would any of you give that advice to your kids today? No. If you got asked a policeman, they may sort of put you in jail or beat you up, or who knows what policemen might do. Isn't it a shame that policemen have lost that trust? We don't have people we look up to in this world. And so the religious leaders is, for many people, the last hope of respect. And I think if we do have religious leaders who are ethical, who you can trust, who say, check me out. And I think that gives us an inspiration. It gives us hope that there is such a thing as goodness in this world, because only when we see other people living good, honest, really good lives can we maybe become better people ourselves. Even just being honest and being truthful. That in itself inspires us to maybe be more honest with the people we live with. A person who is more simple living, who can give and doesn't think about themselves as less selfish. That may encourage us to be a bit more giving and less selfish. Having people who are kind. Really kind would encourage other people to be that bit more compassionate. One of the great things which we need is examples. So I think that's one of the reasons why the Buddhist Theravada tradition, the forest tradition, has always emphasized the ethics. You say to be a good person. There was an email apparently was supposed to be sent to me today. We didn't slow download it because I probably know what it was. Somebody said in an email about an article about monks in Thailand watching the World Cup. Because it was in the middle of the night. It means in the morning they couldn't go round on their arms. Round, which is their duty. Now, he said, people think it's only the World Cup thing I was monks doing watching the World Cup. It's a stupid thing to do. But actually one of the monks who just came to our monastery came from Germany. He was saying he's a German monk, and he just arrived, I think, yesterday or something. And on his way he had to transit, I think, in Bahrain or somewhere. And as he transited, it was just the time, I think, when the German soccer team were playing. Was it a semifinal or quarterfinal or something? So because he was in the airport, they had it all on the screens. So he watched it and they said, that's bad karma watching the TV. Because though what happened your team lost. So much suffering for German disease teams. That sometimes you wonder, what's a monk doing watching sort of soccer. And it's only asking for trouble. But it's just simple wisdom should tell anybody. The 32 teams I think I got that number right now with the 64 still don't know 6432 teams went into the World Cup. Anyone know? I'll tell you to 32 teams went to the World Cup. 31 teams go home with a lot of suffering. And only one team has any happiness. And that's only for about a week. And then everyone forgets about it. So you've got a 32 to 1 chance of having a lot of suffering. And don't think that if you get to the final, then just losing in the final, you don't have any suffering. The further you get, the more suffering you have. Apparently Australia got knocked out was in the quarterfinals. If they'd had got knocked out in the first round, they wouldn't have had so much suffering. But they think, oh, what if we came so close, just another goal or another decision. We might have beaten Germany and beaten Brazil or whatever. You see that suffering? That's stupid. People thinking like that. Monks should know better than that. But the point is that we want examples, but not just examples. I think that any religion which is going to survive is not just having an example, but giving other people the means to find their religion for themselves. I think our modern world, we have this idea of democracy. I know that democracy, you know, it doesn't live up to its name in most countries, even Australia. But the idea of democracy is the empowering of other people. So actually, you know, you have a stake in the decisions which affect your life. And I think it's the same. I think with religion we have a democratization of religion where we won't stand for a monarch telling us what to do, like a pope or like an archbishop or whatever. And we always want to have a part in the decisions which which affect the innermost part of our life, which is why we have something like abortion or euthanasia or like, you know, marriage, whether you're gays or whether you're straight or whatever. But people just won't accept. People say it's wrong for gays to marriage. They say, why? And even if you think like that, why should that mean that I can't make my own choice? And I think that the whole world is moving to a democratization of religion where you will choose. And when somebody comes up on hi, whether it's me sitting up here or a pope or an archbishop telling you what to do. Sometimes you say, I don't agree with that. I will do what I want to do. And the whole idea of religion for the future has to be not just leaving everybody to their own devices, nor telling them what to do, but having this middle way of religious leaders being like doctors, empowering you, helping you make your own decisions. The days when a doctor would actually say you are sick, this is what you have to do. And just prescribing your treatments without any questioning. Is this what you want to do? Is this, you know, your preferred way of treatment? Do you want to die, or do you want to sort of go for some chemotherapy? These days, those are the questions which our doctors will ask us. They are partners in our therapy. They are not the dictators as they used to be. It's the same thing with religions that no one. Oh, you won't take it that you will be told by other people this is what you have to do. No one, even Catholics, would say that contraceptives are wrong. Don't do it. People just won't listen. They will make their own decision. The whole point of religion these days is a religion which is going to survive into the future, is those which empower and help other people make sensible decisions. Religions which help rather than religions which control. And I think that that is something which, with my understanding of Buddhism, is right from the original part of Buddhism, Buddha's only show the way. They don't tell you what to do. You have to walk the path yourself. But for me, that the Buddhism which I grew up with, I don't know whether to really call it Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism or Adriano Buddhism. Sometimes what I say when people from other traditions hear it. Sometimes they say no. Are you a Theravada monk? One of my great friends from Singapore says, I'm a Theravada monk with a Mahayana heart. And I really like that. And then, you know, what is it anyway? Because you go back to what the Buddha said, and that's not Theravada, Mahayana or any jhana. No, no, the jhana, which I follow here. What's the honor I praise here? It's called Haryana. That's right. Yeah, that's the Yana, which I like. Haryana is a religion or Buddha or whatever you wish to call it. But we have the freedom actually to always question. And when people from in Tibetan Buddhism or in Zen Buddhism or in Mahayana Buddhism, when they question as well, we tend to come to the same place. And one of the places we come to is saying, this is a religion which empowers people, also teaches people how to experience something really deep and spiritual. Notice no being ethical, but I think one of the reasons why this Buddhism is really taking off and going to take off even more is because we've always, from the very beginning, now and forever, always centering on this power of meditation. Finding the truth within. You've got these huge amounts of skillful means, resources, experience. And what happens when you really steal the mind? I know that the West has began to tap that resource, but meditation, how it helps with diseases, with stress, even with education, makes you a more successful person, whether it's on the footy field or in the office. At the school yesterday at Christchurch is a very, very strong, uh, centre for Eagles support. So to get the kids onside, I told them that many years ago when I was on a radio programme on saying, I don't know if you get 6 p.m. or 96 FM, it's the same studio with Ben Cousins and Ben Cousins, who used to be the captain of the the West Coast Eagles. All the kids know this guy is a very famous footy player, and I told them that after the show I was teaching him some just meditation techniques. So that he could levitate that a couple of inches higher to mark the ball. So that's you don't know the but that's the secret of the success over the last few years. But meditation is not just to learn how to levitate. It's something which actually gets people in touch with an inner truth, with an inner peace. It's something which you can experience because too much of religion is being told. I know you have to believe. You have to take it on trust. This is your view. This is your belief. But one of the things with meditation, it's no longer a belief anymore. It's no longer something you read. It's something you experience. And one of the most powerful, profound, deep, life changing experiences you can ever have. When I was in Sydney, there's a few other people from here and they moved over to the east. And, you know, they interesting. They always sort of feel very, very homesick for the Friday night talk here in November because they have nothing like this over the Far East. No, it's a really nice talk. Lots of people and good atmosphere. But one of the people over there, they were telling me that, you know, they were always interested in Buddhism and they liked these five precepts. But there's a fifth precept. Was they having the hardest time with. They didn't like going down to the pub and getting drunk. They just like wine with their meals. They're not that much wine that they would get tipsy, you know, a couple of glasses of wine. That was really nice. But this lady said that what happened to her? She went to a meditation retreat, and she got into deep enough meditation that she was. No. Her awareness was heightened. She was really, really alert. And when she went home, she had a glass of wine, just one glass of wine with her dinner, and she saw what it did to her brain. It was the first time that she could actually see the effects of alcohol, even just one glass of wine. And she told me that's the last glass of wine she ever had. She's completely given up now. Now, this is not giving something up because someone says it's evil and you go to hell. If you go drinking, there's a bad thing to do and you all drink your whiskey and wine. You're bad Buddhists, you naughty people. Now, that's not Buddhism, but this is a great example of how to use meditation to enhance what we call mindfulness. This awareness, this alertness which sees things as they truly are. And she saw something which for her was really important. And as she saw the effects of what these things do, okay, we have a huge problem with drugs in school. How are we going to help our kids get off drugs or not take them in the first place? Tell them that drugs is bad. Never work. Works. Tell him not to smoke. Doesn't work. All the adverts on TV or on the billboards saying, you know, a lung which has been damaged by smoke. But it doesn't really work. But if a person learns a bit of mindfulness, you empower a person to make their own decisions to see what these things do that works. So this empowering of awareness through meditation is such a great tool which Buddhism can give to our modern world. So people, they're not told what to do. They find out why they shouldn't do it, not because of some reasons written in a book, because some experiences they find inside their own mind, their own heart. It's that internalizing of truth. So everybody sees it for themselves is the greatest strength of this path. And as we teach that more and more and as actually people feel the truth starting to grow in their own being when their awareness and mindfulness starts to really blossom, basically it's awakening. Now the word Buddha actually means the awakened one. So Buddhism, if you say, what does it really mean? It means awakening. Awakening to truth, to happiness, to peace. To know what life is all about. It's really quite strange when you put it that way, because if you have to awaken, it means that most of us are asleep. Strange thing to say, but that's so true. But many people are dull. You think you know the only seeing a fraction of the picture. One of my similes, which I often use in meditation retreats, probably used it here last week. No, it couldn't have been last week because someone else was here last week. Because I keep repeating myself. But this is a simile of the monastery where I live up the hill, 2.16km on top of a hill just above serpentine. And this is a story where for nine years that monastery has been there for 22, 20, 22 years now, for the first nine years, I'd always gone up and down that hill in a vehicle. But one day, after nine years, I decided to walk up that hill. I had time, I needed the exercise. I told the car, leave me the bottom. I'll see you at the top in 45 minutes time. When I started to walk up that hill, I could not recognize my surroundings. I'd been up and down that hill 3 or 4 times a week in a car. Now I was walking. It was like walking up the hill for the first time. That was weird. How come I can't recognize that hillside? I stopped. It was weird, but it's changed again. He looked very, very different once I stopped. As a monk. As a meditator. I wanted to investigate. Ask why? What's going on? Because I was a scientist before it became very clear. When you're looking through the window of a car which is speeding. Your eye does not have enough time to form a proper image on the retina before more light comes, dislodges the the the old and you have to attend to a new image. The images simply go too fast to fully form, which is why when I was looking through the window of a car, I couldn't really see what was beyond the window on that hillside. When I walked, I was going slow. More slow. The image in the back of my eye became more fully formed. It had more detail and interestingly, the colors were deeper, were richer. And when I stopped. Only then did my eyes have all the time in the world to form the full picture. The true image of what lay outside. Not only could I see all the details, every blade of grass, every leaf, every rock, the moss and the lichen on the rock. All the colors were deep and rich. The greens were just more deep than you could imagine. I realized that is what life is like for many of you. You go so fast. You live your life as if in a speeding car, looking through the window. You miss too much detail. Moreover, what you do see is washed out. It's not rich in depth, in flavor, in color and feeling. Do you ever feel dull? The food doesn't really taste very good. No. Your touch just doesn't mean anything to me anymore. Sights. So what? Life becomes like a group of pastel experiences with no richness, with no depth, with no oomph to it. It's nothing to do with life. He says we're going too fast when we slow down. When we stop. Life becomes rich again. It becomes full. The texture, the depth. It all comes back again. That was the simile of the hillside. You may try that yourself tomorrow morning. You may have gone up and down the road where you live. In your vehicle? No. Twice a day. Three times a day for the year or two years you've lived there. Tomorrow morning. Try walking up and down that road. Every now and again. Stop. You'll be amazed how much you see. Which you never expected was there. I had to get the meaning from stillness. You get understanding and happiness. This great path of meditation opens up the world. He start to see what was there, which you've missed. Now, this is the great part of not being told what's there, but being shown how to find out for yourself. And it's great what you see. Wisdom starts to blossom. You understand what peace is. Because you're there. You see it. And the most amazing part of this path of meditation is stillness is just a happiness of beauty, which you see that all hillside, the old, spindly, dry Australian bush suddenly has all its colour. And it's absolutely gorgeous. Breathtakingly beautiful. Is your life breathtakingly beautiful when you go to work on a Monday morning, get stuck in a traffic. Is that breathtakingly beautiful? It can be if you see what's really happening there. So what is actually occurring is you're also understanding where happiness lies, the joy of life. One of the questions I was asked yesterday, again and again by class after class at Christchurch was, do monks have sex? And if not, why not? I really admire kids who have the guts to ask what they're really thinking. You know, some young boys their age, sometimes they know they do it just to stir you up. But you know, when they get sort of, you know, respect for their question is that's a great question. And this is the answer. There's no why are monks monks? Why are nuns and nuns, why they see people coming up here in these funny robes? What do you do this for? And this is actually when I told them. I know you've heard this before. I said, in your meditation, you get a bliss which is better than orgasm and last much longer. And that really blew the kids away. And you don't make this up. That's true. Now, that is something which will send Buddhism for years and years and years into the future and get people really interested. Because what in our modern world, sex and pleasure. Apparently it's on the TV every few minutes. And the movies I know that are on that picture, which, uh, was printed in the Sunday Times and in our last newsletter with me putting my hands up like this. You know that picture, what actually happened there that I think I was talking to someone who was doing, um, visual arts or something, and they were like, doing documentaries. And I gave them this idea, which was something I'd really want someone to do somewhere in the world was that when I was a young Mark, the first year in Thailand, I saw in one of the Thai newspapers a cartoon series and a cartoon series was called Super Monk. And Super Monk would be this monk who could have all his psychic powers. You know, when the train was about to sort of, you know, um, run over this poor lady tied to the tracks. Super monk will get there just in time with his psychic powers. Stop the train! Release the lady. Find the, you know, the terrible people who did this. But he wouldn't have any revenge. He'd get these people who did this terrible crime. Teach them some Buddhism. Teach them how to meditate or whatever. And they become good people after that. So no violence, you know, not like sort of, you know, these martial arts people who sort of kill people every few seconds in the movies. Absolutely. Nonviolence. And I thought, what a great movie that would be. Apparently I've seen in the newspapers that Superman is it 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or something? Superman returns. Thank you. The kids always know what's going on. Why can't we have Super Monk returns? Oh, that's the first episode. Of course. Episode two will be Super Nun. And that's actually what I was saying. No. Super monk. And that's actually they got the picture of me. Then I'll just put my hands up. But then I was talking about this, I think yesterday, and I said, no, no, that would no movie theater and no movie company would ever do that because there's no sex, no violence. It's true, isn't it? Because most things have to have sex and violence. Because that's what people want. But if we have something better than sex and that makes it interesting. Yeah, maybe we go for that. So shouldn't religion give you a happiness, a really deep sense of peace, which is so valuable that people will want to come? They want to learn more, and it becomes important to them. Spirituality will only grow if people think it's valuable in their lives, not just to give them harmony so they can live with their partners and find some meaning in their career, but also to give them something which is very deep. You'll be with your partner for many, many years. Eventually you'll part with them. Either she will die first or you will die first while something else happens. Know your job. You're only in there for so long. You have to leave your job. So fulfillment in your relationship, in your life, with your work is only so much. What people will always ask is a fulfillment which will be there forever. Now, when their children leave home and say bye bye mommy, bye bye daddy. I've got my own family now. Well, you know, when you get very old and you can't go to work anymore, you want a deeper fulfillment. I think that deep meditation, the understanding of the peace in the heart, which is beyond the age of the body or the gender of the body or the health of the body, that's something which, when people get hold of, they think that is valuable. That's what I was looking for. The meditation takes you to that place. I think it's that reason, above all, which will make what we're teaching in places like this valuable, just so important. And we get stronger and stronger. It's the happiness, the peace in the heart. So that's the thing which Buddhism or this particular practice where they call it Buddhism, Christianity, spirituality or whatever. I don't care who does this, but if you bring more people to a state of inner peace and happiness and this huge understanding which comes from that, I think that is why this type of path, spirituality is bound to sort of grow and get bigger and bigger and bigger, have huge amounts to offer to this world. Don't really call it Theravada, don't even call it Buddhism, don't, don't. Who cares? Call it truth. But the truth which is to be found in everybody's heart through the stilling of the mind, through the deep inner peace. That's what I think the original Buddha did under the birdie tree. Stilling the mind so much to see huge insights and truths. What's most important was not saying so much what he found afterwards, but telling people how to get to that same place of stillness, that same awakening of the mind. To see fully, to see happily, to see truthfully. When you get to that truth, how can there be two truths or three truths or ten truths? There can be ten expressions of a truth, a million different descriptions, thousands of different pictures of the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is one and the same, just different perspectives, different angles. So to find out your angle. Don't just look at other people's photos. Go to Paris yourself. Go and stand there. Go to the top of that tower and see the beautiful view. Don't just believe the books. And don't say I'm a follower of Zen Buddhism. I am a follower of Tibetan Buddhism. I'm a follower of Theravada. I'm a follower of Brahm. Don't do that. Be a follower of Jesus, the follower of the inner path. To seeing things for yourself. That is a part of spirituality which I think will grow in the future and see stuff without all the externals, all of these ceremonies, the rituals, they're okay as long as they have a meaning. But it's well, as rituals are coming from which are most important. The chanting you can do in whatever language you like, but most important is why you're doing it so often, when sometimes we have a bit of fun and games in our monastery. Sometimes we always think the next marriage ceremony we do, we're going to chant the funeral, chant. The people we're doing the service won't know could be chant in a language when no one understands except the monks. So next time we're doing some chanting for you, you know, check out what chanting we're really doing. Now, we're usually very honest about this. But why do people want all this chanting? It's not so much what you're chanting, but where you're coming from. It's most important and same as the precepts. Too many people in traditional Buddhist countries, they do all this chanting their dori ceremonies. But what does it really mean? If they don't understand what it is? You know, in Thailand, I just finished here some years ago. We saw all these people taking the five precepts. Five precepts, not deliberately kill, steal, commit adultery, lie or take alcohol or drugs. And you see, the Buddhists usually put their hands up like this. And this time in Thailand, we saw people putting one finger down. I'd never seen that before when I was a young monk. It was a modern innovation. So he asked, what do you mean by putting your fingers up that way? And the man said, venerable legend, from today I'm only keeping four precepts. Now you've got four fingers up. They still charted all five. They put one finger down. I once I saw that, I started looking around and sure enough, I saw some people with. Two fingers down and I even saw one person. They still did all the chanting. Now, that's not doing the rituals properly. What's the point of eventually if you you chant it but you don't mean it? Or if you bow, you know, and you don't really mean to show respect. You know, or if you put, you know, something in the air. And I've seen people doing this. They have, you know, the envelopes for donations. They write on their thousand dollars, put it in the box. There's nothing in it. The crazy thing to do. I put monopoly money, and I don't know what. We've had it here in the past, but if you don't mean to do it, then don't. Don't do it. So it has to come from the heart. So all the rituals, somehow that in our tradition, we try and have as least rituals as possible, unless they're really meaningful. Those of you who've gone to our funeral services, we just try and give a lot of talking to make it meaningful. Marriage is the same whatever ritual we have. We try and make sure we have an explanation so you know what's going on. And then the rituals become meaningful. So whatever temple church you go to, please understand what the rituals are. Many of them, they started off because they were very important and they worked. Sometimes we forgot the meaning. You find out the meaning, then you're really sweet. Okay, I'm going over time now. It's 9:02. So today's was a little talk. I like the future of Buddhism, but giving the meaning of what we do here and why we do it. And hopefully it's our understanding and what we're about. What you're doing here and how you can actually go to a deeper sense of peace, happiness, wisdom and understanding, which is what this place is all about. Thank you. Okay. Any questions anybody has comments or criticisms? I really like criticisms to make me think deeper. Any questions or comments? Criticisms. Complaints? Yes. Great. Thank you. Wow. It's a great question. Do you think the world will self-destruct? Or do you think that more people get involved in spirituality? Things like Buddhism? I don't know. I think the inclination is that this human race is very resourceful. It gets to the brink, but never tends to fall over. It tends to the last moment sort of do something which is sensible for for a change. And yeah, I really do think that these teachings have a huge amount to offer to the world. For example, that one of the questions which came out of Christchurch yesterday is what's the Buddhist attitude to the person who murdered that young girl, Sophia, in her Canning Vale? And said, you know, should we have capital punishment for justice? Buddhism is really great on this. What do you mean by justice? Isn't it that you mean revenge? Is that your understanding of justice? And as soon as I separated justice from revenge, here, we had clarity about the issue. Because now the kids, because of, you know, talking to each other or reading the newspapers or listening to the TV, they had confused justice with revenge, as a terrible thing had happened to this little girl, and they wanted to punish somebody else. It was just pure revenge, that's all. I said, no, what justice is it? Justice got nothing to do with revenge. What justice is supposed to do is actually helping the parents of friends or whatever, of Sofia, and the person who did that sort of come to some sort of healing. So they never do that again. So the people who that who the parents of that little girl, the friends, the little girl can come to a sense of understanding, of peace, of moving on. So the pain is relieved from their lives. That's to me what justice is. The crime is like a cancer or like some other terrible disease. And somehow we've got to make sure that no one else catches that disease. The situation where that disease started never happens again, and everyone gets healed so they can actually move on in life. I think Wooderson was very strong on, you know, not an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Well, that's what Christianity's supposed to say that as well. If they hit you on the right cheek, let them slap you on the left cheek. They steal your shirt. Give them your jacket or something. Give them your trousers. Maybe not your trousers. That's not maybe a good idea, but something like that. You know what it is. So I think those type of teachings are very powerful and they actually solve a lot of wars. You know, every time I open a newspaper, there's always something going on in in Palestine and Israel. It's revenge against revenge against revenge. And sometimes think, can't somebody see there that's never gonna have any possibility of peace or quality of life for anybody? Or whether it's, you know, Iraq or Afghanistan or Africa. My goodness, when are we going to stop all this revenge stuff? Until we do, then there'll be any peace. Buddhism has been so consistently strong on that ever since it started. Hatred never ceases by hatred. It only ceases through forgiveness. That's just an obvious law. Does that happen to you? Someone has hurt you. They've mistreated you, though. They've cheated. If you have revenge, you hate them back. Does that really help? Does that really solve the problem ever? My experience of life and nothing 99% of other peoples. It doesn't help. Maybe give you a quick fix solution until the other person gets strong enough to beat you up later on to cheat you back. It's an old story. Just quickly say it. The two soldiers. There were Australians in the Second World War. Both of them had been captured in the Malayan Peninsula and put in his prisoner of war camps by the Japanese, beaten, tortured, made to work so hard and hardly fed at all. When they met at a reunion, one said to the other. Have you forgiven those Japanese for what they did to us and our mates during the Second World War? His friend said never. How can you ever forgive what they did, how they treated us, and how they killed and tortured our friends? I can never forgive them. What about you? He said I forgave them years ago. You, my friend, are still in the POW camp, being tortured to understand the meaning of that until you forgive and move on. Your being tortured. Has always been the Buddhist way. Why torture yourself by wanting revenge and wanting to hurt back? Why create more violence in this world? Isn't there enough violence already? So obviously I said whoever did that obviously needs to be secured from society. Can't release. You can't just say, oh, let's forgive. You must go and do whatever you did before there's a problem there which needs to be solved, whether it's through therapy or whatever. Try and get that person who killed that little girl never to do that again. Understand? Why? Solve the problem. Number two, just finding a way of healing the pain of those parents and friends. Whatever. Strategies should always be forward looking, not backward. That's not what I said, anyway. And I think those strategies is incredibly powerful. To stop wars, to heal the past and to move forward. I don't know what you think, but that's what I say. Anyway. Did that answer your question, or is it another sermon I gave? Thanks anyway for asking it. Okay, I think we should maybe, uh, pack up now. So you've got any announcements, Mr. Pizzi? Yes, sir. And thank you very much for that talk. I just hope you do realise that now that you've questioned the fallible fallibility of Obi-Wan Kenobi, you'll be getting death threats from Jedi fundamentalists. And if you do get any, um, death threats written in crayon, you realise the danger of, uh, criticising the holy book Harry Potter. But it was a very good talk. Okay. Announcements. Um. Which is what I'm supposed to be doing.