How To Overcome Mental Suffering | Ajahn Brahm

Mental Suffering – by Ajahn Brahm Summary You can't control your body, feelings, or thoughts. Let go and be happy. The great monk advised against wasting time on things which have no solution, because it creates mental suffering. Mental suffering is the biggest killer, caused by our attitudes and conditioned responses to the world. Buddhism teaches us ways to overcome it. Accept the world as it is and stop trying to control it. This will stop the mental suffering. Sometimes we try and control things which are beyond our control, and that just creates more pain. Mental suffering is when you try to control your life When you let go of control, you stop suffering. The more you can let go, the more you can start loving life. Transcription (Robot generated transcript – expect errors!) I've got another request today for the talk. So the talk coming up is on mental suffering, or rather, how to overcome mental suffering. So I'm not just going to make you mentally suffer, if you could show you what it is and how to overcome it. So this evening's, talk on mental suffering. We just got an email a few minutes ago asking for this talk. This talk go out on the internet, so this request comes from England. There must be mentally suffering over there. So we're going to give them a bit of good Buddhist wisdom, how to be happy. Mental suffering is the Buddhist speciality, because the Buddha said there was two types of suffering to be found in the world, the physical suffering and the mental suffering. He called them like two, like thorns or darts or spears, which keep pricking the person. And he said that the physical suffering you can't do too much about, because this is what's having a body is all about. You're going to get old, you get sick, you get coughs. No matter what you do, you always seem to get these things, even if you eat brown rice and exercise every day. Sometimes people exercise a lot. You've seen them as I saw this guy cycling up the hill the other day. To me, it looked like that was very dangerous for your health to probably get a heart attack. But whatever, even if you do the right things, you always get sickness from time to time in the body. So the Buddha said the physical dart of pain, suffering you can't really do much about, that comes with having a body. That's par for the course. That's what you buy into when you become born as a human being. However, the mental suffering, he said that's what you can do something about. And the path of Buddhism becoming enlightened is taking out the dart, the thorn of mental suffering, until it's no longer there. There. I really love that distinction between the two types of suffering, physical suffering and mental suffering, because it became quite clear to me that the worst of the two is the mental suffering. The physical suffering is nothing compared to the mental suffering. And I've seen that many, many times, that you can see physical suffering, people in pain and agony in hospitals and accidents, there s and mental suffering which is the killer. Even when I was a school teacher, or trained to be a school teacher, we got a doctor in to actually give us some advice. What happens if in the science lab, some kid spills the concentrated acid over his hand, or they put their fingers in the electric sockets, boys being boys, or one day it probably happened. What do you do? And so we got a GP in to give us a little demonstration on first aid. And I always remember the thing which he said, first of all, he's an old GP, an old doctor. He said the worst thing is, was it called shock fear. And he gave us some advice. If you see someone in an accident, no matter how gruesome and gory it looks, always tell them that they're okay, they're going to make it. Even if you have to bend the truth a bit, because it's the fear and. The mental suffering, which is the killer. In accidents, a person going to shock when they think they're going to die, and they do die as a result. It's the mental suffering. It's the greatest. And I've also seen that in Western countries, you see that pretty healthy kids, even young people, middle aged people, they're in good physical health, they've got no real pains, they've got a healthy body, and then they go and commit suicide. They kill themselves because of mental suffering. More people kill themselves for mental suffering than go to people like Dr. Nietzsche for physical suffering to kill themselves. I think you all know that the mental suffering is the hardest to bear. Unfortunately, the mental suffering is invisible. You can see people and they looked as quite normal, healthy. They can even smile. But their smile masks the pain inside their hearts. The fear, the loneliness, the despair sometimes. Because in our society, we're not supposed to show our mental suffering. You ask how are you today? I m feeling fine. Liar. You're just making it up. You feel terrible. But you're not supposed to say that. You're supposed to be happy, you're supposed to be joyful. And it seems to be like you re embarrassment, you're failure if you re not so. Mental suffering is very often hidden in our society. That s why we can t see it. And so that s why it's surprising when people do commit suicide or they go crazy. Why are you going crazy for? You got everything to live for. You're young, you're beautiful, you're doing well at school or you got a good job and compared to your money. But still people kill themselves. The point is that the mental suffering is the biggest one. And unfortunately, in our health system we put lots of money, lots of resources in healing people's physical sicknesses. Whether it's on breast, cans, prostate cancer, heart disease there's huge amounts of money and programs trying to heal the external suffering. But the internal suffering of human beings is very rarely dealt with, mostly because it's invisible. But Buddhism, especially, places like this, this is actually what deals with mental suffering. This is actually helps heal the mental pain, that pain deep inside which other people can't see. They go to places like this. We don't get any grants from the government, but we do a heck of a lot of work healing that pain inside, which is the worst of the suffering. That's why we've got Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist places, hospitals of the mind. That mental suffering. What actually is it? That mental suffering is when we fight with the world, where we try and change what is impossible to change. It is his attitude, his conditioned ways of responding to the physical world, which we've learned since we were a child, which we've encouraged to keep on continuing the same old way. And it just gets us into knots sometimes, knots of despair. And Buddhism shows the way out of that despair, out of the way of that mental suffering with many, many techniques and teachings. One of the powerful teachings, one of the powerful stories which affected me and helps me in my life as an abbot and all these responsibilities I take on that particular story was of the British in statesman and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He was a prime minister when I was a young man. And at this particular time, I think it was 1967, was that about 36 years ago when there was a big war going on? Guess where? In the Middle East, between Israel against Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt. It was called the 6th Day War. And during that war, when the tanks were fighting each other and people were shooting each other and many people getting killed and injured, a newspaper reporter asked this British Prime Minister, what do you think about the. Problem in the Middle East? And straight away this Prime Minister said there is no problem in the Middle East. What a great answer. But so enigmatic. Because the reporter said what do you mean there's no problem in the Middle East? There's a war going on as we speak. People are being killed and wounded as we talk. How can you say that there's no problem in the Middle East? And this was the answer, the important part. The Prime Minister said A problem, sir, is something with a solution. There is no solution in the Middle East, therefore it's not a problem. Do you understand? There's a powerful sort of wise saying which you can apply to many other things. He was a Prime Minister of a country, he had many other things to do, many other decisions to make. Why do we waste time on things which have no solution? He was wise enough to know that that problem was just beyond him. So for him it was no longer a problem, no longer worth worrying, spending time over, creating more mental suffering over. And he was right. There's still no solution. Or they're trying to find a solution. But 36 years it's a long time. It so in our life do we have problems? How many of us actually worry over things which aren't really problems because there's no solution to it? We may have some of a difficulty in our life. Maybe we got sacked from work. We'd be made redundant with one thing ever have to worry about as a monk. Never make me redundant. Don't even get a pension. When I sort of retire, I keep on going, going, going and keep working me in this joint until I'm dead. The older you get, the more wise you're supposed to be, so the harder you have to work. Anyway, if it's something I'm not going to complain about that because I can't change that as part of being a monk. So I complain about things which aren't problems, which haven't got a solution there's other things in life which happen a death in the family, is that a problem? When there's a death in the family, there's no solution, is there? You can't bring them back, therefore the fact they parted is not a problem the fact that you get sick, you may have a cancer, is that a problem? If it's a solution, you can get some treatment, great, then it's a problem you can do about it but if there's no solution, it's not a problem anymore so what you can do is free yourself from the mental suffering which goes along with making a problem of things which you cannot change and. This is actually part of letting go. When we realize much of life we can do nothing about. Much of life is just nature doing its thing. Just like it's cold, we want it to be warm, it's warm, we want it to be cool. It's dry, we want it to be wet, it's wet and we want it to be dry. All of that controlling which we do in life, does it really get us anywhere? Sometimes it does. When there is a problem some of you can do, then do it. Give everything you've got. But the problem is, as human beings, we know how to do things. We know how to put forth energy and effort in our lives. We work very hard. We've been taught that at school, at university, at our jobs. But the one thing we haven't been taught is how to leave things which we cannot change alone. That is why we have mental suffering. So when there's something to do, we give it everything we've got. One of Adjun Charles teachings, an Australian man went to see him many years ago. Came all the way from, I think, Sydney. He heard about this great monk living in the forests of northeast Thailand. Wanted to ask him some questions about life, about Buddhism, about truths. When he got there, all that way to the very northeast of Thailand, found a genchar in his heart in this monastery surrounded by a couple of hundred people. He waited at the edge for his chance to ask his question. Waited and waited and. Soon realized after two or 3 hours, there's no way that the great teacher at Genchar could notice this Westerner at the edge of the crowd. He realized he'd made that trip all the way from Australia in vain. He wouldn't be able to see the great teacher, so he walked away. When he was walking away, he realized the taxi was not going to come for another hour or two to take him back to town. He saw the monks were doing some work in the monastery. They were sweeping the paths, tidying up the grounds. He thought he'd come all this way, he might as well do something good. Do some good karma. He picked up a broom and started sweeping, helping the monks. Sweeping. Sweeping for many minutes. When he told me this story many years ago you don't find this in Ajan Char's books because no one, not many people know this story. He was sweeping when he felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned round. It was Ajan char, the great monk and. Even though Jenchao was very busy, he was incredibly compassionate and very aware. He'd noticed a Westerner he'd never seen before on the corner or the edge of the crowd. He couldn't attend to him because he had so many other people. Now he was actually leaving the monastery to go to another appointment. He saw this Westerner doing some good act of karma, helping the monastery. He decided did to give him a teaching through an interpreter. He told this Westerner very quickly, if you're going to sweep, give it everything you've got, and then turned around and left. That was the teaching this young Australian got. If you're going to sweep, give it everything you've got. Now, that might seem a simple teaching to you, but he told me in monastery several years ago that changed his life and made him such a successful and happy person, because he realized when great monks like that say these words, they're not just taken on face value, they have much deeper meanings. They're simple teachings which go to the core. What it really meant was not just when you're sleeping, when you're working, or whatever job, you give it everything you ve got. Put 100% into your work. When you're resting, give it everything you ve got. Rest fully. When it's time to sleep, give it everything you ve got. It's not the time for worrying about the work, or thinking about tomorrow, or complaining about what happened to you today. It's sleep time to give sleep everything you've got. When it's playtime and you're going out enjoying yourself, then give your partying everything you've got. It was living life to the full. When it's meditating time, you give meditation everything you've got. And eventually, at the end of your life, when it's time to die, you give dying everything you've got. That is the way to live a life. When there's something to do, you do it fully. When there's nothing to do, you do nothing fully. Give it everything you've got. And that's why he said he was went back to Sydney, was successful in his business, successful in his relationships, successful in his health. Because he gave everything full effort. Even letting go, he gave a full effort to. When it's something to do, you give it everything you've got. That's how I've lived my life. When I'm working at the monastery, just fixing up the roofs the last week, I give it everything I've got. When I m talking, giving a talk on a Friday night, I give it everything I ve got. When I m meditating, I completely let go of don't even think of you. I give meditation everything I ve got. When it's time to sleep, go to bed at night, I give sleeping everything I've got. It's time to have lunch. I give that everything I've got. I eat too much, that's a trouble. I'm fat. I give eating everything I've got. It that's a way to live a good life, a happy life and a fulfilling life. How many of you do things half hearted? You're not really there when you're doing things, it's time to rest, you're working. When it's time to work, you want to rest. You're never really doing some things half heartedly. When you're driving in your car, you're already at work. When you're at work, you're thinking about driving home. And you're never giving things everything you've got. So this is actually just one of the reasons why we have mental suffering. We know how to work. Sometimes we're not ready. We don't know how to relax and let go. Letting go means not trying to change the world, leaving it alone. What you can't fix, you leave alone. Why not? This is how we ease the mental suffering. Because too much of our mental capacity is taking up with doing things which we can t really change. It's the control freak which we want to control everybody and everything, and that just creates more suffering, more pain. Have you ever noticed when the traffic lights go out because of a storm? In most cases, that's when the traffic flows freely, when there's no control. I was told in Israel there was a strike of doctors some years ago. For about two weeks, the doctors went on strike, and in the hospitals in Israel, they found during that period when there was no doctors on duty, the death rate went down. Not as many people died. Your kids, if you try and control them, what happens? There's a story about controlling children. You've heard it before, but it's very powerful. Comes from a monastery in northeast Thailand when a local farmer, he was taking his water buffalo out to graze one morning. The water buffalo got scared and started running away. The farmer tried to stop the water buffalo. Water buffaloes are huge. They're very, very strong. They all ploughs. Stupid trying to stop a water buffalo. But he tried, and the string or the rope curled around his finger and tore the top of his finger off. It was right next to our monastery. So he came into a monastery with half a finger in quite a lot of pain, with blood streaming down his arm. So we took him to the hospital to get him bandaged up and the monastery paid for it. We'll use that story a lot afterwards. US. It's stupid trying to stop a water buffalo. They just pull your fingers off. It's like stupid trying to stop your husband. If you've got a husband like a water buffalo or a wife like a water buffalo, they're both genders or children like water buffalo. There's young water buffalo as well. You try and stop them. And you're asking for mental suffering. They just pull your happiness off, and you sort of you come to the monks just, you know, with with blood streaming out of your brain in your mind, oh, he's done this, he's done that. It's not what I wanted him to do, and it's not what she should do. Kids aren't supposed to be like this, blah, blah, blah. Just mental suffering again. But what you should do for water buffaloes is just let them go. What happens when a water buffalo those who know sort of water buffaloes in Thailand and any parts of Asia where they use water buffaloes, the water buffalo runs away. They don't run too far, maybe half a kilometer, a kilometer at the most, up the road, because the water buffalo knows who's going to feed them and look after them and care for them. They run off, and then they realize what they should be doing, and they just wait there just a man just walks after them and then just gets on the rope and pulls them away again. They don't go that far of. So that's what we mean by letting go if you try and stop water buffalo stopping things which you can t really stop you're just asking for half a finger missing. This is what we mean by mental suffering. We try and control things which are beyond our control, thinking that if we don't control these things, we don't do something, it get tail be toe wrong. It doesn't get terribly wrong. You let go a little bit, and then when there's something you can do when the water buffalo stops, then you can bring it in again. You've got to wait to when you are possible to act so this is actually why we have lots of mental suffering in the world what is actually the biggest parts of mental suffering? What we got grief. I talked about grief last week. It's a city of mental suffering because you can't can't stop do anything about it. The person's died and gone. You can't actually run after them before them back again. Not like water buffalo. It's gone. You can't do anything about it. And it's just our conditioning which makes us have grief. I did a funeral last yesterday. Yesterday morning, thursday morning I did a joint Christian Buddhist funeral. I love doing these joint funerals. I do my few words and then the priest comes along and does a bit but it was hard for me because I was trying to cheer everyone up. The priest was just making one miserable again, basically. So, so hard. And it's just our conditioning, some sort of some ways of presenting religion. We actually encourage people to grieve. We encourage people to have mental sufferings if you're supposed to suffer when somebody dies and because people get that in their brains when they're very young, they do suffer when somebody dies. The point is, you don't have to. There's another way around it. And if we can only condition people, especially the young people who so I've still got an open mind to such things as death, we can actually condition them. You don't have to have mental suffering when somebody dies. Celebrate their life. What a wonderful concert that was. How wonderful it was to have known you. Isn't that wonderful? When we see somebody off after a beautiful visit are. They visited our lives for those many years. Now we're seeing them off at the airport. It's great, wonderful visit, thank you for coming. And then you let them go and then somebody else comes to visit afterwards. This is our life. And when we actually realize it's not a problem because we can't change it, there's nothing, it's not got a solution, accept solution inside of us to let go and accept and free the person. This last words I said at the funeral, which I say very often, there's two types of love. There's a love which frees the other person and there's a love which attaches, which clings onto them and controls them. Know what controlling love is? Because sometimes you have that in your relationships. Husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, controlling. But these you should control your mobile phones anyway, so let them go, throw them out. And you know, being on the receiving end of a controller and controlling relationship. And it can't last very long. The best type of relationships, the best types of love, and you may have had those relationships when it's a freeing love, that love, you know the words, the door of my heart surpass you no matter what you ever do. That's a freeing love. And that's where growth happens. And people love that sort of freeing love. And that's the of same freeing love, of no controlling, which is the antidote to mental suffering, to be able to say to life, life the door of my heart's open to you no matter what you ever do. It's loving life rather than hating life. It's just a change of attitude, that's all, which stops the mental suffering. So it's accepting like life as is like being part for the course. When I was a school teacher, I was a young school teacher, only 23 when I or 22, when I started teaching at school, it was so hard for me to discipline the kids because I used to do the same thing they did only a couple of years earlier. I knew all the tricks and I could see them, see what they were doing. And I couldn't bring myself to discipline the kids because I felt just a big hypocrite. All you parents can't even remember what you were like as kids. Why try and discipline your kids when you did the same or probably worse? And in fact, if you really want the kids to grow sometimes, give them understanding. Give them the benefit of the other experience, but allow them to experience it themselves. It's the only way we learn. Instead of trying to control, love should free the other person. And also, instead of controlling the world, love should free the world. Free the world. Which means that this is the way the world is. We have the storms and we have the beautiful days. Now we have the happy moments in our life. We have the unhappy moments in our life. In fact, we wouldn't appreciate at the happy moments. We didn't have the unhappy moments. In Christian theology they used to say that in heaven, once a year you go to visit hell. Otherwise you would not appreciate what heaven was like. If you just had happiness, happiness, happiness every day, after a hundred years you'd take it for granted. You wouldn't realize it and appreciate it anymore. That's why it's good to have at least one day a year of suffering so you can really appreciate what heaven is really about. How many of you take your happiness for granted? Sometimes suffering is what gives has an understanding of the importance of happiness and what happiness truly is. This is why suffering has a part of life. I'm talking about physical suffering. When we accept this, we accept the world doesn't always go the way we want it to go. When we stop trying to control, then we find a heap of mental suffering just disappears. We don't try and control our body. Sometimes it gets painful. We want it to get healthy again. If you more you try and control, the more mental pain you have. I think brings to mind that story which was again one of the crucial stories of my monastic life when I had a terrible toothache at night. This toothache was driving me insane. It was so strong I couldn't stand the pain. I was in a monastery in northeast Thailand where there was no doctors. There was no dentists for miles around in those days. And those dentists which were in the town nearby, they were very dangerous to go to and not recommended. They're more like vets and dentists where they pull things out all the time. But anyhow, there was no dentists around. There's no painkillers around and there's nobody to cry to and say I'm hurting. There's no email, no telephone, no nothing. There remote part of Northeast Thailand 30 Years Ago so I had a terrible toothache and I tried to meditate on my breath. Couldn't do it. I was so restless. I couldn't get away from the pain. There's no way you could sleep because the pain was just throbbing. The whole jaw was on fire. It was the worst toothache I've ever had. So I decided I couldn't sit meditation. I decided to try and do walking meditation. The walking meditation we do. I had to stop that because I was doing running meditation. I was in agony. And that s all you can do. You can't do things slowly when you re in agony. So I went up to my hut in the middle of the jungle late at night. It always gets worse late at night. The only thing I could think of doing is doing chanting. Remember, I was a theoretical physicist before I became a Buddhist because I liked the meditation, some of all the other sort of magical stuff I didn't believe in at all. I was a cynic. Now I believe. Now I've seen it in some of it works, but in those days I didn't believe in it at all. That was just the old traditions. And I was supposed to be a modern Buddhist. So I tried doing the chanting. I was desperate and I had to stop doing the chanting, trying to magic away my pain. The reason was because I was shouting at the top of my voice, the chanting. I was that much in pain. I was desperate again. But the point was that after doing all those little bits and pieces, trying to get rid of the pain, I came to the amazing brick wall, which sometimes mental suffering takes you to. The place where you can't stand it any longer. Have you been to those places? The pain is just too great. You can't stand it any longer and I've exhausted all the possibilities, which I knew. Nothing worked there's. What Adjan Charles said it's a beautiful time of your life when, the way he put it, you can't go forward, you can't go backwards and you can't stand still. Fortunately, though, I was a monk and I'd heard teachings of Buddhism. They were only on the surface. They hadn't really gone deeply yet. Like many of you, you can come listen to these talks week in, week out. You can read it in the books, you can listen to it on the CDs, on the Internet is only superficial until one day you remember a little part of the teaching. It sinks in and it does its work. That's what it did that evening in Thailand many years ago. The words I remember were just let go. Two words which you've heard many times yourself, and that was probably the first time I did let go. I let go of controlling and trying to get rid of the pain. An amazing thing happened which I'll always remember for the rest of my life. As soon as I let go, and I meant really let go, the pain vanished immediately. Lee it was replaced with bliss. One moment you were just out of your mind in agony, the next moment, just waves of bliss and ecstasy just running through your body and mind. Oh, so good. And the only thing I could think of doing was just crossing my legs and meditating and meditated just so peacefully. No effort at all. Just the mind was just so still and so joyful. And then maybe about 02:00, I think it was, I laid down because you're supposed to get up at 03:00 to do the chanting in these monasteries in Thailand. Laid down, just have a bit of a sleep. About half an hour, 45 minutes. Just so peaceful. I woke up before the bell. A quarter to three brightest the button just went to meditate. It's amazing just how all that physical pain and suffering just disappeared. I realized that there was two parts to that suffering of a toothache of mine the physical part and the mental part. There was the mental suffering which I dealt with the I don't want this. This is horrible. I've got to escape from this. I've got to find some way of overcome this pain. It was all control, trying to get rid of things. When I've taught that to people, they still haven't understood, they go with their pain, with their aches, and say, let go. Let go. Why haven't you gone yet? They're letting go to try and get rid of something that's not letting go, that's doing business. Letting go means pain. The door of my heart's open to you. Whether you will stay here for my whole life, whether you get worse, I'm at peace with. That's what letting go means. Not trying to get rid of it, not trying to escape from it, not trying to go somewhere where that pain isn't, but fully accepting it and being with it, realizing that it hasn't got a solution, therefore, it's not a problem. I'd accept it. I'll be with it. I'll bring it into my life and make friends with it. That's where the mental suffering ends. What do we mean by letting go? It's a hard thing to do, to press that letting go button, which is why we teach Budhist meditation to trade in letting go. You're sitting here and do you have mental suffering? When you meditate, you think you're sitting there. I can't meditate. I tried the breath. It that work. I tried watching the present moment. It doesn't work. I tried doing loving kindness. It doesn't work. Maybe I should go somewhere else. Look, the reason why it doesn't work, if it hasn't worked yet, is because you are trying. You're controlling. You're trying to make things different. Last Tuesday at our Armadale group, I was so tired. I've been working all day really hard. I should be working for the last month, maybe 30 years, really hard. I work seven days a week. On the weekend, you work here. On the weekdays, you work down the monastery. I do two jobs. Actually, more than two jobs. When I go to Singapore, I work down there like a dog when I go up to Thailand and just work really hard over there. So sometimes you get really, really tired. I was really, really tired that night, and I had to go give a talk to the group at Armadale. Just after giving a little bit of an introduction, I sat down there and did my meditation. I did nothing for half an hour. I was so blissful, just doing nothing, just going to wonderful, deep meditation. Just so happy, and came out and gave a nice talk afterwards. The reason was because for half an hour, I'd done nothing, and. Really let go. Not controlling. The reason why I teach this way of meditation about these stages present moment awareness, silence, watching the breath, getting to bliss states because that's the nature of what happens when you let go. However, if you try and make those stages happening happen, that's when you get into trouble because you're not really letting go. You're more controlling thing. I've got to be in the present moment. I've got to be in the present moment. Have you noticed that? That's planning the future. I've got to be in the present moment. Be quiet. There you've spoke the silence. You've done it again. That old joke about those four monks. Four monks making a vow of silence. One monk sneezed and the first monk said, Bless you. The second monk says, You've broken your vow of silence. The third monk said, So have you? The fourth monk said, I'm glad I'm the only one here who can keep my vows. They all bloke their vows. It's so hard to keep silent because we keep telling ourselves to be silent. You can't be silent by telling yourself to be silent because that's not being silent. You can't say shut up because then you're not shutting up. You're talking again. Now you understand what goes on in your mind here. Control, control, control. That's not letting go. That s why it's a hard thing to learn meditation because it goes against the stream of the world which is controlling and doing, which causes mental suffering. Sometimes you think you're going crazy. When somebody comes up to me and says, I think they're going crazy and mad, the usual answer is say, what's wrong with being crazy? What's wrong with being mad? Join the club. As soon as you say that, they stop trying to control their mind and they don't get crazy anymore. They relax and let go and have a peace with themselves. People are in grief. What's wrong with being in grief? They don't add to the grief. You see? Sick. What's wrong with being sick? You've heard me say this before. Sickness is normal. Sickness is usual. If there was somebody in here who was never sick, that would be really weird. But. What do you call them? You call them mutants. I've been reading newspaper about X Men. Everyone gets sick. So it's usual to be sick. It's normal to be sick. So how can you say there's something wrong with you when you're sick? As a Buddhist, as a wise person, if you go to the doctor with an album, you should say, doctor, there's something right with me again, I'm sick. Do you get the point? Because we say there's something wrong with sickness, because we say there's something wrong with grief. We can say there's something wrong with this and wrong with that. We try and control the world and that's where we get suffering, mental suffering. Trying to change something which we can't change, making a problem as something which is beyond us, which really hasn't got a solution, which is not really a problem at all. This is where we call letting go. When it's something to do, we get everything we've got. When there's nothing we can do, we just let go and. I've given up trying to control my monastery, the serpentine. It's beyond my control. I controlled it a little bit, but not very much. They asked the monks, they called me a soft abbot. And the reason is because I enjoy my own sort of letting go, rather than trying to control things. If you're a control freak, you just create more suffering. If you're a letting go freak, create trust. The trust is understanding. You don't need to control your kids, your wife, your husband, you don't even need to control yourself. You can trust. So we give that trust, that confidence and faith into others instead of controlling them. And you find they do much better, they work much hard, other, they fulfill themselves much more, because they're not acting out of this trying to fulfill somebody else's desires and ideals. They're not trying to work under this terrible way of being controlled. This is like the flower, the tree which has got this forced fertilizer. They never grow as well as beautiful as when they're growing naturally, freely. Kids will grow much better if you don't try and force feed them with this no fertilizer of your will. Instead you give them love, the freedom, the kindness, us as you grow much more if you give yourself that freedom, that kindness, that forgiveness, basically to be yourselves and respect each other for being yourselves. Someone was talking today about the weeds in the garden. Why do we so negative and call these things weeds? I call flowers flowers. I call weeds natives. Both are welcome. So why are they always so so judgmental about the weeds in ourselves? Sometimes we say they're weeds. They're little quirks of character. All the city jokes, which I say I worked out actually why I say silly jokes. I gave a talk at this at my monastery many years ago and somebody recorded it and they gave it the title why ajam. Brahm says it tells terrible jokes. And the reason is because my my father told terrible jokes and he gave me those genes. It's in my genes that tell silly jokes. I can't really can't really help it. Genetically programmed. So you're genetically programmed to get sick. Your children are genetically programmed to get sort of really hard to cope with in their teens. You can't really stop that, can you? You can guide it a little bit, but most of the time you can't do anything about it. So why not let go of those things which you can't control? You? When the Buddha enlightened his first five disciples, this is the deep stuff. Now, he gave the talk called the Anata lakhanasuta, the second sermon of the Buddha. And that was where his first five disciples changed from being stream winners, the first stage of enlightenment, to being fully enlightened the first five Arahuts in the world. Next. The Buddha. He's talked about that which makes up the human being, the five candidates of the physical body, feeling, perception, mental formation, such as thought and will and consciousness itself. He says, these things are not yours. They're beyond your control. And. Your body is beyond your control. If it was yours, you'd be able to control it and say, be healthy, be fit, be beautiful, be strong. You can't do that. No matter how hard you try, it's impossible. Therefore, it's not yours. It belongs to nature. So don't try and control it. Let go. It your feelings. The happiness, the pain, the beauty, the ugliness nice feelings in the body, unpleasant feelings in the body. All those feelings the Buddha said, are not yours. If they were yours, you'd be able to control it. Only happiness. Please, no suffering. Can you do that? Can anyone do that? You can't. That's why there's this beautiful saying of the enlightened person happiness at last or Sorry. Joy at last. Joy at last. To know there's no happiness in the world. Do you understand? Joy at last to know there's no happiness in the world? So I don't have to try anymore to be happy? Are you trying to be happy? Struggling for happiness? Trying to run away from pain? Joy at last to know I can't do that anymore. And that's happiness? Understanding that this feelings the body beyond your control. You let go now you're happy. Now you're sad. Now I'm happy again. Now I'm sad. Now it's night, now it's day. Now it's winter. Now it's summer. Now. Monks giving a talk. Now. Sister's giving a talk. Now. Someone else is giving a talk. Now no one's giving a talk. That's life. So we let go of what we can't control perception. So where we look at things beyond our control it's thought and will. It's not ours. Beyond our control. Why even try and control? I gave a simile of the driverless Buz many years ago. It's one of my best similes. It's as if. Mental suffering is like this. You're being driven in a bus. Sometimes you go through this very unpleasant territory. You go through toxic waste, dumps so hard to see and through fields of dung and manure just so offensive on the nose. And you just want to get out of there as soon as possible. So you tell the coach driver, the bus driver, speed up. Get out of here as soon as possible. This is unpleasant. Sometimes a bus driver speeds up. Often it doesn't take any notice and sometimes even goes slower. So you have to endure the pain even longer than you should. Other times the bus goes through this beautiful scenery, beautiful rolling hills and waterfalls and beautiful foliage. Oh, this is beautiful. Lovely. Please slow down. Even stop. You tell the bus driver, what does the bus driver do? Speed up. Well, sometimes he slows down a lot of times and take any notice of you. And because this bus drive is out of control, he. Because it doesn't do what you tell him to do. You really want to find out who this buz driver is? You know, in this simulator, the buz driver is called Will Choice. The source of controlling your life is like the journey in the bus. Why is it we get suffering and it lasts too long? It shouldn't last this long. Why is when I get some happiness, it goes too quickly? Buz driver, slow down. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm having a good time. This is fun. Why is it that you try and extend your moments of happiness and very often they are much shorter than they should be? Why is it you try and get out of suffering in life and it just lasts longer than it should? You want to soar out this person inside of you called the bus driver, the one in control of you, the soul, the self, the one in charge. And so the spiritual life is finding where that one in charge lives, finding the bus driver's seat and. Of you. And eventually, through lots of meditation, through lots of reflection, lots of practice, you finally find the buz driver's seat. The center of you, the source of all doing. The controller, the one in charge. When you've come to that bus driver's seat, there you get the shock of your existence. Not of one life, but of many lives, because you find that bus driver's seat is empty. There's no one sitting in there. When you find that out, you go back to your seat and you shut up and stop complaining. How can you complain to anybody when there's no one in there? Nice terror tree, unpleasant territory. Who cares? There's no one to complain to anymore. That's where controlling stops. You realize you can't it's a waste of time. Complete illusion. And with that all mental suffering stops. Nice territory par for the course. Unpleasant territory, par for the course. What do you expect from this life? To expect it to be perfect temperature all the time? Do you expect it to be getting married to things? Honeymoon for 30 40 years? What do you expect? Come on, get real. What do you expect having kids? Do you expect your kids are going to be angels? You decide to have kids. It's your fault, your karma. We park you result of your karma. So don't complain. You decided to get married, didn't you? So don't come to the mics and say oh, my wife is like this. My wife is like that. It's not my fault. I didn't tell you to get married. Actually, I tell you not to get married. Come become a monkey and that's what I tell you. And you can't complain to me about your marriage problems. That's unfair. Now you're all fine. So this is part of the course. So when we stop complaining. That's when we stop suffering, we stop controlling. We let go. The more you can let go, the more you can stop complaining, the more you can start loving life rather than hating it all of life. The more peace you can get with this world, the less mental suffering you have. This is the way to overcome mental suffering until it overcomes completely realizing even this consciousness of ours is not mine. Not mine to control. It's not my business anymore. I'm not going to control my wife, my husband, my children. I'm not going to control my monks. I'm not even going to control myself. I'm going to let go. Abandoning. Letting go. Renouncing. When you're not controlled anymore, you're free. What is a prison like? Have you been to prison or visited prison? There's so many rules, so many controllers called the Warders. It's controlling, controlling, controlling, control. That's what makes a prison. When you let go, it makes freedom. So which one do you want freedom from? Mental suffering or controlling? There. It s up to you. So this is actually what mental suffering is all about. It was great seeing people who were free from mental suffering. Those great monks I lived with when I was young in Thailand, it they never controlled you. It was great being with them. They were supposed to be these powerful monks, but they would hardly ever tell you what to do. When you did something wrong, they wouldn't punish you, they just laugh. They thought it was so funny. When you did something stupid, you weren't controlled, you were encouraged. And giving freedom to grow nurtured encouraged praise when you did something well, just they thought it was so funny when you made mistakes, but you weren't punished at all. That was a way of love. You wanted to live up to such great teachers, not because they were trying to control you, because you wanted to be in the same realm of happiness that they were in. It's called letting go. It's called freedom. It's called non control. And it's the end of mental suffering. Every time you'd be happy inside, have you been controlling or have you been letting go? The moments in your life when you felt spiritually free. What's been happening? Has the world around you been perfect? Or is it just? You've stopped trying to make it perfect. You've accepted it as it is. You've let it go. That's where you find the freedom, the peace, the end of mental suffering. So we meditate to train our minds to understand the end of mental suffering. The peace, the freedom, the bliss in the mind. Because when mental suffering ends, it's replaced by mental bliss. The more you let go Earth, the more bliss you experienced. Not only in your meditation, but in your life. Because Buddhist monks and nuns in particular, understand how to overcome mental suffering. That s why we have a lot of mental happiness. As I said two weeks ago, that has been proven now in the University of Wisconsin showed that Buddhist monks are the happiest people in the whole world. That went right off the scale of the happiness meter. It was actually reported in New Scientists, wasn't it? New Scientists. So is there proven? So you know mental suffering when you know the ending of it and that's how you end it? So there you go. That's mental suffering and its end. So hope you all understand that. Let go of mental suffering and have a good time. So there's any questions, comments or complaints about mental suffering at its end? Mental bliss. Yeah. And what about people that can't meditate? For example, someone with disability, people who say can't meditate with a neurological disability? Sometimes I must admit that I've got not too much experience as a monk the with such people, although as a student, I used to go and visit people with mental disability once a week. And I must admit that sometimes it's a bit difficult to say they can't meditate. Maybe they can meditate in different ways. Maybe just you have to use different techniques, different methods, because people have been able to teach children how to meditate. And in a sense, especially with the philosopher Peter Singer, that children, in a sense, have got mental was it disability? The mental powers haven't really developed yet when they're very, very young. And that's why sometimes people with mental disabilities, we say that they've got the mental age of a three year old or four year old, but we can actually teach children how to meditate. And we should maybe try those same methods for teaching people with mental disabilities how to meditate. Simple methods. I'm encouraging people to let go, kids to let go. Sometimes a lot of children actually meditate in invitation of their parents. Many people have told me this. They've been meditating in their home and their kids come and sit next to them. They just sit there. You don't teach a kid how to meditate. They learn how to meditate just by following almost intuitively what their parents are doing and the parents are letting go. The child will let go. Maybe we can teach them just by example. I always like to push boundaries. Say these people can't do it. They can't do it. But why not? Maybe they can. Maybe their mental disabilities not being able to think too much might be a great advantage for them. But so let's turn our disabilities into our advantage. I know it's worthwhile trying to find out whether it's possible or not. I don't like to prejudge and say you can't do it. Give it a go. Does that make sense? Yes. In the back? Yeah. Becoming true. If you got lots of mental suffering, the body usually follows afterwards and gets into suffering. That's why a lot of physical problems come from mental suffering, from what we call mental stress, just the struggle to control everything in life. The body sort of wears out after a while and just the lack of happiness in the mind. Everyone knows that if you got lack of happiness in the mind, just so you haven't got enough endorphins and nature's painkillers, which always comes when you're happy in the body. There's so many stress chemicals get released into your body when you're angry and upset, which actually basically kill you slowly. So when you got a good mental state, the physical state usually is very healthy. As people are so concerned about their health, but what they do is actually they forget that to look after their mental health much more important than what you eat, is what you think and how you think and how you look at the world. So, yes, certainly mental suffering is a forerunner of physical suffering. And the opposite of that, the mental health, is the therefore run the physical health. That's why many people come to these places actually to become physically healthy. We get referrals from people who've got high blood pressure, people who got cancer. Yet you cure their cancer through meditation. Really what they're doing is they're just changing their mental state to a very positive mental state of happiness and well being. And the point is, it doesn't really matter what's on the outside, it's actually what's on the inside. And which is most important, how we can let go and allow things to be and not make problems out of things which we can't change. It may have been abused as a kid, sexually abused. Can you change that? You can change your mental attitude towards it. Allow it to be. And don't feel so guilty and get into all this bad conditioning about it. Learn from it and turn it to your advantage. This is why disadvantaged children, they can always use those disadvantages for their advantage. Turn it around. And so the point is, we get conditioned into thinking this terrible thing happened to me, therefore I must suffer. Therefore I must have this problem, that problem. We buy into it. We don't have to. We can forgive, we can let go. The mental happiness which comes the mental freedom will make the physical freedom happen. It's not your own physical freedom. You finding out relationships with other people with ease because you're a happy person. And when you can love yourself with freedom, say to yourself, the door of my heart's open to me. No matter who I am, no matter what happened to me. That's the end of mental suffering. It means your body will be free and you'll be able to give that same freedom to other people. So I can love you no boyfriend, no matter who you are, no matter what you do. And that way you have great relationships. A love which frees, it creates physical happiness. When you have mental happiness. So the opposite, it works as well. So much physical suffering comes from mental suffering. Even when I was a student, I remember this I was studying one day, I had a terrible, terrible cold. I was in bed. I couldn't go to class that day. And I was staying in bed in this old house which a group of students had feeling really horrible. My eyes were just streaming. My nose was always I couldn't even go to sleep because always blowing your nose every 10 seconds. I felt really terrible. There was a knock on the door and I just wish they'd go away. And they kept on knocking. So I dragged myself out of the bed and answered the door. There's a delivery man. He was delivering my hi fi system. And I was really interested. I was glad I went to the door even though I felt terrible. I took delivery, I took it out to my room and I put it all together. And this was true story. By the time I put my first album on, I noticed my cold had gone. It wasn t just mental because I was actually physically eyestreaming, nose, blowing, it had gone, it disappeared. It and just the happiness, the excitement of getting my hi fi system, having some good music just got rid of all of the cold. It was an extreme example, extreme example how happiness and good mental attitude would actually overcame the physical suffering completely. And it abolished it. You can't do that on purpose. If you say, I'm going to be happy to get rid of my cold again, it's controlling again. So we can't change, please. Let go. Yeah. How do we go about. Yeah. Www dot BSWA, was it? Sorry, the important word is BSWA. Buddhist society. West Australia. That's the important one. Www.bswa.org.org. O-R-G it. And it's all free because it's not free, it's priceless is what you should say, which is very, very good. So if you can't come here, you can always listen to it on the Internet, especially if it's a cold, miserable day. You can always stay at home and log in at home. So it's on the on the audio streaming. So there we go. Thank you for coming. And hopefully you have no mental suffering. And if you really don't have mental suffering, you wouldn't need to come here again. You wouldn't even need to turn on the internet. You'd be free. So may you all be free and happy and.