Intelligence

Intelligence by Ajahn Brahm So this evening that again is a request for me to give a talk on a particular subject. Somebody asked me, uh, during the retreat period, can I give a talk on the Buddhist understanding of intelligence? So the talk this evening is intelligence. What is it? How do we recognize it and how do we develop it? Be more intelligent human beings. When I talk about intelligence, at least that's what I thought they meant. I don't know, maybe they meant to talk about intelligence in outer space, to see whether there are such beings as aliens. So to find out, are there any aliens here this evening? Please own up. But the comment, which I thought a long time ago summed it up, was, uh, in one of those great philosophical journals I called Calvin and Hobbes, where Calvin once said, the surest sign that there isn't such a thing as in intelligence, and the surest sign there is intelligence in outer space is they haven't come down to visit us at all. Because any intelligent alien. This would be the last place they would come for a visit on holiday. But of course, that's not really what I need to talk about this evening. I'm talking about the intelligence of inner space inside a human being. What actually is intelligence and how do we develop it? And it's an important question, because there was such a question which drove me away from academia into sort of more meditative lifestyle, because many of you know, my background was in Cambridge University in theoretical physics, and the college system of Oxford and Cambridge meant that you associated both socially and professionally with some of the greatest minds, you know, in Europe or maybe even the world. Every college professor and lecturer was assigned to a college where they dined, where they socialized, where they had a huge amount of contact with the ordinary students. The idea was that the students would benefit from the inspiration of these great minds, and the great minds would get inspiration, new ideas, new ways of looking at things from the students. And it worked very, very well. But having associated with some of these great minds and some of the word Nobel laureates and getting to know them, there was quite a shock for me personally to realize that they were so brilliant in their field. There are leaders in the world in their particular expertise, but they were very stupid in life. They could crack a formula, some mathematical formula, and get their names in the the great journals of the world. But when it came down to being happy, being peaceful, having a relationship, even dealing with such things as depression, they're incredibly stupid. It was actually seeing that that there was a mental capability in these people, but it was different than intelligence. That that really changed the way I looked upon academia. You can train the brain, but what's more important is to be kind to the mind. And fortunately, we make a great mistake there. Now we look upon intelligence. And what's the word we use here? IQ intelligence quotient, thinking that that's some measure of what we mean by intelligence. That can certainly mean they can predict if you can pass examinations, if you can solve problems. But that's not at all a measure of whether you're going to be well balanced, successful, at peace with your life. So brain power and intelligence are two completely different things. And to introduce this subject, I'm going to now give you my first joke for this evening, which came from a very funny Vietnamese Australian who told the story of a young Vietnamese boy who came back from school one day and he had heard about IQ, and he wanted to ask his father, what does IQ mean? And his father replied, well, IQ is a measure of how clever you are. If you got an IQ of about 120, you probably go to university. If you go to IQ of 140 150, you're a genius. The average person has an IQ of about 100. If you've got an IQ of 80, you're quite stupid. If you've got an IQ of only 60, actually, you're so dumb you probably can't even tie up your own shoelaces. Now that the boy had a light goal in his mind. IQ 60. You can't even tie up your own shoelaces. Is that why all the Australian boys in my class have to wear thongs? I'm not going to get into trouble from that. But the point is that that's really not a measure of a person's ability to succeed in life. And somehow we have to find another measure of intelligence. And I think that many of you may have read Daniel Goldman's great book about emotional intelligence. He made a fortune writing a book like that, which shows you that he was very intelligent. But more than that, actually. Daniel Goldman I'm not quite sure whether he is a Buddhist or not, but he certainly is very close to Buddhism because actually, next November 2000. Yeah, 2007, the next global conference on Buddhism, the fifth global conference, which is being going to be held in Malaysia, that he's going to be one of the speakers there. So we'll be seeing him over there in the fifth global conference in Buddhism in Malaysia next. No, not next month, but in 13 months time. But he wrote this great book about emotional intelligence showing that. If you really want to predict a person's success in life, that IQ has nothing to do with it. And it's not a clear predictor of a person's success. He said, what's more, uh, reliable as an indicator of a person's worldly success and even a society success is what he calls emotional intelligence. There's a great little term there because it showed that it's not so much the ability to think. It's almost the ability to feel as well. And what he noticed was, is the ability to form connections, especially with other people in this world. Basically, it was recognizing that you can never rely upon yourself by having friends and relying on others. We have this great network of information of help and support. And that, he said, was the key to people's successes. And he could actually find some sort of measure of emotional success or emotional intelligence. And that became a very accurate predictor of a person's success in life. So what do we mean by this? Emotional intelligence or something which is really going to be helpful for you in your life. Again, it's not just the ability to solve problems, because the biggest trouble is that when we go to school, we are trained always to think in one way. We're narrow minded literally, to the point that we cannot see innovative solutions to things. We're too heavily conditioned in the way we use our brain that we're not innovative, we're not resourceful, and that makes us unintelligent. We all have this term which has come out in the last few years of thinking outside the box, and it's a people to think outside the box are also the intelligent ones. Know what intelligence literally means. I remember looking this up years and years ago. It comes from the Latin word inter between and. Leggo means to read. It literally means to read between the lines, not just to see the words or the things, but how they connect together. This understanding of the relationship between things is what makes you intelligence intelligent, which means that even some people have got photographic memories who can absorb information, who are like walking. Encyclopedias can be so stupid. They know the words. They know the concepts, but they can't fit it all together into a meaningful pattern which gives them peace, happiness, success in their life. So the idea of like emotional intelligence or the real intelligence which works, is not just learning the facts, but actually feeling them, understanding the relationships, understanding the patterns in life. And sometimes one of the best ways of achieving such success is actually going in a different direction. Thinking in on common ways. One of the radio programs I used to go on in Singapore before it was axed, and radio there was called Uncommon Sense. It was a great title for a radio show on psychology. No, uh, meditation, the Deep wisdom, because the fellow who was, um, producing this or presenting this, I understood that we all really sense is uncommon these days. Too many people think in straight lines. We have great fun. Sometimes whenever I am asked to teach kids to take, giving them a few little trick questions to try and show them now what we actually mean by intelligence. And I've got a number of trick questions which I ask kids, and they know all the answers now, but they got their own back on me about two weeks ago when they asked me a trick question, and it showed how dumb I was because I didn't get it. I didn't see it. Now I'm going to ask you that trick question. I'm going to see how intelligent you are. So the series of questions is this. If you are in a race and you overtake the person who's second in the race. What position are you in? Answer is second. Yeah. Sometimes people say their first overtake the second after second must be the first. But you are taken a second. So your second. I got that one. But suppose you overtake the person who's last in the race. Then what position would you be in? Yes. What will you be in? Second. Last. You've missed it. Now you see that the first question made you think in a certain direction. And the second question you were conditioned to seeing in the same direction. You missed the obvious point that if you overtake the last person in the race, you're not even in the race. You can't overtake the last person in a race, can you? That day. Don't be too clever. Laughs. Laughs. But that was just an indication here of what intelligence is and what it isn't. But sometimes the way we think, we think. In straight lines we get conditioned by the previous thoughts. And we don't see the full picture, which is why we aren't truly intelligent. So a great way of developing intelligence is obviously the brainstorming. And one of the ways which I use with intelligence is no having stupid suggestions. The way of a stupid suggestion is a wonderful way for seeing things in a different, different manner. For example, in the meditation retreat center, which we're building, uh, one of the uh, parts of the meditation retreat center is halls, especially for walking meditation. Now, if you have a big room for walking meditation, you want people to, you know, be able to many people to walk in that room. So you want people to be guided like in rows. But I've noticed whenever you have a wall, whether you're supposed to walk in rows, there's always one person which walks from one corner to the other in a diagonal, so no one else can walk there. You always have these troublemakers. And so the problem was that in our retreat center, how can you actually make sure that people walk where you want to walk, like in the same line in rows, so you can fit many people into the walking meditation hall? And so somebody suggested, well, we can have actually on either side of the path broken glass. So they have to walk, you know, in the same path. That's obviously a stupid suggestion. We're Buddhist monks. We never do things like that. But it gave me the solution. So instead of actually broken glass, make it like hard concrete. And in between there, the walking meditation paths would be like rubber mats, which are both warm and soft and walk on. And actually, that's how we're building our meditation, uh, retreat center. Walking meditation halls. That means what the psychology is that a person will stay on the nice, comfortable, soft rubber path, and they won't go off onto the hard, cold concrete. So actually, there was an example recently of how a bit of a stupid suggestion of broken glass. We're not using broken glass. We're using cold hard concrete. And these are the ways we make solutions. So sometimes we have a stupid suggestion. Uh, even when we had our fourth global conference, when we're thinking, who should we invite? Especially who should we invite to open the ceremony? And somebody came up with Prince Charles. Stupid suggestion, but that got me thinking. I maybe not Prince Charles, but there's other royalty we may be able to get along. So we actually did invite a couple of royalty, but, uh, unfortunately we timed it wrong. Our fourth global conference last June actually coincided with the king of Thailand's, I think, 60th anniversary on the throne. And so all the royalty went to his function instead of mine. It's quite understandable, really. But never mind. We didn't get any royalty, except all the people here who were very royally received. But the point is, this is the way we can actually develop solutions. We have to try and somehow think outside of the normal way of doing things. And that's really what we call like intelligence, to be able to develop that in a Buddhist way. We have this beautiful path of meditation, which actually stops you thinking. It stops you thinking in the old ways. It is still. And when you actually you hope this one path or this one normal path which you normally think it does, give the mind an opportunity to think in different directions. I've seen this happen very, very often. A good example of that was one of our members who was, uh, had a senior position, uh, in the DSS Department of Social Security. And of course, like many people, they are managers. They have to deal with problems. And they actually came to our retreat with this huge number of problems, which were just really weighing on her important issues, which she had to fix. But being a smart lady, instead of thinking about them, she came on the retreat, you know, really quite tired and stressed out, wait for 3 or 4 days. And when she came into an interview, she said it was amazing. I was meditating this morning and all these solutions actually came up into my brain, and they were really good solutions. They probably will work. So yeah, that's intelligence. Well, most people do when they're looking for a solution. They think if you keep thinking, thinking, thinking, eventually you'll find an intelligent solution. But if you think, think, think, think, you don't find an intelligent solution at all. You just send your mind crazy and you really can't sort of understand what is truly going on. The thinking is just too narrow minded. You form ruts in your mind channels which you've been along so often. You tend to fall in to the same way of thinking again and again and again. And you can't be innovative. Which is why the people who meditate. Who can steal their mind are very creative. They can see new ways of doing things, new angles which other people can't see. And because of that, we call it intelligence. Seeing new solutions, new ways. Instead of always focusing too closely on the matter of hand, you drop it, leave it alone and look at it. Later. That lady found the solutions she was looking for because she stopped thinking. She meditated. Stop the mind so it can create these beautiful solutions. And that to me, whether it's in the my monastic life or in a spiritual life or even in your work, that to me is always a secret of intelligence, of wisdom, being able to stop thinking. So at last you can see. She thinks too much. You see? Too little you're not feeling. You're just repeating old ideas. Which is what thoughts are. That old saying that every thought you have is dead stuff. It's repetition of ideas which you've had before, but with the creative mind. It always comes from stillness. I remember just because, again, I was at Cambridge and did theoretical physics. I remember just shortly after I left there, there was one fellow called, uh, uh. I think Jonsson or Johansen. I think, uh, for those of you in computing, in supercomputers, I think it's called the Johansen Junction or something. Uh, no. Stephen Josephson junction. That's it. Josephson junction. And it was, uh, realizing that I think some I forget exactly what materials they were, but when they cooled down to such a very, very low temperature, they act like a superconductor. And also they act like a, um. What's it called? The diode or whatever. But anyway, they perform the same function as a computer, but because they're very, very cold, like a computer chip, they can actually work very fast and have supercomputers. I think the fellow later on got his Nobel Prize for that. But what really impressed me, that Josephson jacks, Josephson junction, the Josephson, the guy who invented this, got the idea after he was meditating. He made his mind very, very still. And this idea came up. For those of you who use MP3 players. Remember seeing the documentary of the guy who actually invented that? It was a problem which actually was part of a mathematical problem, which was part of chaos theory, and how information gets repeated and repeated and repeated in a certain pattern. And he had this problem of trying to solve in chaos theory. And he said that one night he went to sleep. He got completely confused. And so he went to a deep sleep, and he had a dream of all these wires, like in an old telephone exchange, being completely confused. I think it was. His father came along and told him how to straighten them all out. So they're all straight. And when he woke up, he had the solution to this problem. He wrote it down. And that was the mathematics which underpinned the compression system of MP3 and obviously made a fortune from that. So I'm really waiting for all the people I've taught meditation to all these years. Do you come up with something like that and make your fortune? Then you can help us with our new hall or meditation retreat center or nuns monastery. So get meditating please. But anyway, this is actually how he found out, you know, what was actually going on. And so really, intelligence, it means, like thinking out of the box, not thinking in the same old way, having a wider view. And that wider view is either coming from this lateral thinking, having a stupid thought actually to break the train of thought and see things a new way, or this still meditation. All of those are still meditation, I always think is the best way to become intelligent. And I certainly I use this at university when I was there because I learnt meditation. Other people have taught meditation. One of the people who sometimes comes here, she was mostly in the Armadale group. She taught meditation at Rolleston Primary School to her year six class, and I remember going to visit there once to give a talk on Buddhism and meditation to, I think, the whole school and first of all, meeting the principal, because that's usually what you do. First of all, the principal wants to find out who's coming into his school. Fair enough. When I met the principal, the principal was so welcoming and he was just praising this, uh, teacher to so highly. He said, I'm not a Buddhist. But I've seen the results of this teacher teaching meditation to this class of kids over the year. The next year, six is the next year. The next year, six is. He could see the children were becoming more intelligent. When asked what he meant by that, he said it wasn't just being able to absorb more information than what was taught to them in year six, and doing better than the examinations that happened. They actually could absorb much more and could actually understand it and repeat it when they were examined and tested. But it wasn't just that aspect of intelligence. The other thing he said, which really impressed me, was whenever there is any tension in the class, when any boy is fighting another boy or a girl or a girl or whatever, whenever there's any sort of tension there. One of the children in the class would always put their hand up and said, sir, miss, can we have quiet time now? Instead of calling it meditation, they called it quiet time, simply because there may be some people of other faiths would think meditation is too Buddhist, so they call it quiet time. Can we have quiet time now? And they would always have quiet time. And it was a quiet time. Diffused the problems in that class. It made him actually see more deeper than the problem, which was about to cause him to get into an argument or even to get angry and have an upset. So because of that, I'm just waiting for the time that I can teach quiet time in the white House. One day it might happen, but anyhow, once we have that quiet time, what actually happens is you see things in a different way. But more than that, the principal and the teachers told me that strange thing happened in that particular class when any child was emotionally disturbed. Maybe it had a problem in their home or they weren't feeling very healthy. They may be a bit sick. You notice in that class, above all others, the other children would come around and help and support each other. He said the people in that class, both the boys and the girls, became more sensitive to each other's needs. And that was also what I call intelligence. You can actually feel what another person's going through. You can sense where they're at and you can deal with them in an appropriate way. So with that degree of stillness, you're getting an intelligence which doesn't just have knowledge but also has feelings. And here we actually come in close to what we mean by the emotional intelligence. And that is just so important in our world because we're living more and more close together. The need for such emotional intelligence is so prissy, we just can't even afford emotional stupidity. Otherwise we'll just go hitting each other, having divorces, break ups, wars, and just have a life which is full of arguments. What intelligence is there? There? So a lot of times the problem comes because we don't know how to sit still. And just let go of thinking and see things in a different way. When we learn how to be silent, we become intelligent. It's one of the great Buddhist sayings. It is the small rivers which make all the noise. The great rivers flow silently. Small rivers make all the noise. The great rivers flow silently. The intelligent ones are the ones who don't speak too much. Who keep quiet. Which rules me out from being intelligent. But this is my job. I have to do this. But I think you know what I mean. Because sometimes the people who talk too much. So what are you talking for? Why are you saying so much? Okay, well, my other favorite sayings is if you can't improve upon the silence, then keep quiet. Beautiful. Saying is something you can remember yourself. If I can't improve upon the silence, it's best for me to be quiet. The intelligent people are quiet. They only speak if they need to, if they can help. It's a stupid people who talk too much. Have you ever seen people who have, uh, who are mentally imbalanced for one reason or another, whether they're drunk or they're having a problem on drugs or whatever else, they just talk crazy people. But sometimes you think, my goodness, I should look upon myself. Am I the same? Do I talk too much? And it is true. The intelligent people are the ones who know the right time to talk, and also know how to talk to each another person. The point is, when you're talking to another person, you're not just paying attention to what you need to say. So often with such a self-centered society, we're not really, uh, concerned about what the other person is hearing. What we're concerned about is what we need to tell them, which is why we get into a lot of trouble. And that's not intelligent at all to get into trouble. As I've mentioned here many times before. The whole purpose of, uh, talking to someone else is connecting with them. And that connecting doesn't really concern you, doesn't really concern them. It only concerns us. So talking the intelligence should be placed in the space between us. So it's not me talking to her. It's the relationship and us happening a connection happening there. If you understand what I mean there, you understand why intelligence. When we just think of me, think of them. We're missing the point. The side of intelligence is not that it makes you sound smart or sound wise. The sign of intelligence is it creates peace and freedom for you. It creates happiness. So you know what intelligence is obviously by its result. That's why when I gave that first toy when I was in university, that couldn't have been intelligence because those Nobel laureates, they were getting divorced from their partners. They had no friends. Sometimes they were literally crazy. They were completely eccentric. And sometimes you think, my goodness, is this intelligence? However, it wasn't. This is just learning a very strange form of training where people really didn't really know what life was all about. But really, intelligence, you can see, creates peace, harmony and freedom in life. So please understand what intelligence is and then you can actually recognize it, you know, in your daily life. And so an intelligent person is not somebody who always comes top in the class at school or at university and gets all these degrees. All you learn in university is how to pass your exams. But a real intelligent person is someone who knows how to be peaceful and happy no matter what happens, how to form those relationships. He understands another person and understands themselves. They can read between things into Legos, reading between the things. And too often we miss what's between things. Another reason why people aren't intelligent, and one of the reasons why meditation works so well, why meditation is the way to wisdom, is the way to intelligent intelligence is because meditation slows you down. One of the reasons why our present world is losing its intelligence, why it's losing the plot, is because we're in a rush and a classic story, which I have for that. Uh, I apologize if you just read it in the latest book, which I put out the. Journey up to my monastery two kilometres up the hill. Every time I'd gone up there for nine years was in a car looking through the window, and I never noticed that hillside. I thought I knew it, but one day when I walked up that hillside, it looked completely different. When I stopped, it changed again. You don't believe me? The house where you live. If you've always got up and down that street in a car, maybe tomorrow morning you could just walk to the end of the street and walk back again. Maybe stop. And you'll find. You'll see things you never knew. Were there. Things which you passed in the rush to get to where you were going? Colours, shapes, features which you simply didn't have enough time to notice. For me, it was very shocking because nine years I've been going up and down that hill to the monastery. And now for the first time, I saw the beauty in the hillside and how much detail was there. And I got the similarly, I don't know how many of you are married or have a partner. Do you really know them? Have you seen them yet? Or are you been always moving so fast? You just going through your relationship like me, looking through the window of a car at something outside, thinking you know that person, but really you haven't stopped and been still enough to see between the lines to understand who they really are. Have you always been going through life like in a speeding car, looking out the window, just seeing shapes blurs and never really understanding what it all means. Another part of that simile, which I like the most is when I stopped. That was when the hillside became the most beautiful. When you go slow, you see more detail and what you see is just more attractive, more more beautiful. For those of you living with a partner who thinks he or he is not so attractive anymore, starting to do with her or him, it's only because you're going too fast. If you slow down, you start to see some other qualities in them which you miss before they actually appear to be more beautiful and charming. The slower you go, that's how it works. The more you see of truth, the more beautiful it is. The point of that is to understand that intelligence actually sees beauty. The dumb, the stupid that are all that they ever see is grey, dark, negative and black. So the sign of intelligence is always seeing the beauty in things. What a wonderful thing that is to understand. If you really are intelligence and you build up your intelligence, you actually get a beautiful reward. You can see what lovely things in this world as you read between things. By that I mean, when you look at a person, you can actually see deeper than the labels in front of you. Start talking today to a group of Freemasons and say, no. What is the meaning of your life? What do you do as a Buddhist monk? Is it just for your own happiness? And it's for other people's happiness, and you can actually make a difference as a monk because your intelligence has actually grown not through your studies, but through your, uh, training of your mind. Because you can actually stop. You can actually see things which other people can't see. And I was just making the observation because someone was saying that they were getting lost coming to our monastery today. And I hope that they didn't actually go further up the road to the prison farm and actually end up in there, because if you get to that place, you usually end up there for a few years. But I used to go and visit that prison farm and actually that every Friday evening there's a monk is going there. One of our monks is there this evening talking to the prisoners that the kahnert, when I used to go there to teach a part of my job of looking at prisoners, actually to see something which other people don't see. Because if you just see a criminal, a prisoner, you're missing the point. See, between those things. And so what I saw, I used my stillness to actually to change my perceptions. And instead of actually thinking this prisoners in that jail, they all were green. They've all got their numbers on. These are prisoners, my students. And so these were people. They weren't criminals. They were people who'd done a crime. And if you if you got any bit of intelligence, you know the difference between those two categories. If you think they're criminals, that's all they are. That's what you expect of them. That's what they'll show you back. They'll become criminals. But if you look upon them as people first, people who've done a crime, then they're people first is something bigger than their crime. It's an example of intelligence. And my goodness, it worked. I was actually looking for something beautiful. When you see something beautiful in them, actually, they show you beauty back. When you recognise it in them, they recognise it in themselves. And that's where the beauty grows. Easy psychology. You know that if you recognise all the faults in you, you think of what you've done wrong this last week. What happens to you. You tend to repeat those mistakes. But if instead you look at all the wonderful things you've done, if you look for the beauty inside of you, you see that and you tend to repeat the beauty. You get inspired, uplifted, encouraged, and you're more likely to be a much better person. This is what I did with the prisoners in the jails, which I used to visit, seeing something beauty and beautiful in them, and they showed it back to me. There's a wonderful relationship. We had had some great times together in prison. I told her I always kept a record of how many hours I spent in time inside jail. Volunteering to use as credit in case ever I got put inside jail. I can tell the authorities I've already spent so many days voluntarily teaching in there, so it should be taken off my sentence. Sounds fair enough to me. But I had a wonderful time in there, I remember this. I told this to a person in Bangkok yesterday because we're doing a little meditation over there and they're saying, what about if you go and sleep when you meditate? And I said, look, it's common. You go to sleep when you're meditating, but don't worry about it unless if you're in jail. Because I was teaching a group in, um, I think it's now it's the old Canning Vale jail. I think it's called a case you're taking now. I forget they're given a new name. Same job, a new name. But anyway, I used to go there teaching, and because it was at that time one of the top security jails in Perth, that's a really sort of mean people in those jails and some criminals had murdered and raped and stuff like that. You always had to have a prison officer with you. So my class had a prison officer was listening to me, listening to me teach meditation. There's only about 6 or 7 crims in the class, or rather people who had done crimes. And as I was teaching the meditation, just like I taught you, now, you know, present moment, awareness and silence and watch your breath. I heard somebody snoring. So I opened my eyes and I opened my eyes just in time, because the prison officer who had fallen asleep and the prisoners were reaching out for his keys. They almost got them. That would have made a big trouble. But but the point is, they we all laughed about it afterwards. Made a bit of a joke about it, but they said it was very touch and go. It was only because they liked me. They didn't actually make a grab for them. But anyway, that little things of intelligence like that, if you see a prisoner, they're not a prisoner. They're a person who's done a crime. How about using that type of intelligence to your husband? They're not a criminal. They're not a crime. You know, or your wife. You know, you have you have all these ideas of what your wife is, what your husband is, and you even notice that that's actually how you judge them. And that's not intelligence, you know, it's not intelligence because that causes a terrible problem in your home. You have a terrible time when you get back in your family life simply because you don't know how to create intelligence. Now, when you look at the the place where you work and you're saying, my goodness, I got terrible people at work and they give me such a hard time and I have to work so hard. What do you expect if you enjoyed it at work? They wouldn't need to pay you, would they? Remember your wage. Your salary is just a bribe to make you do something you'd rather not do. So you can't expect work to be always fulfilling and good fun. So at least be intelligent, understand what you're doing, and understand that you have to do this to get the money to pay the bills. But in the same way, you can always make that work a little bit different by using sort of wise intelligence, trying to find these circuit breakers. Because sometimes the way we have relationships with people, we get into a rut, always doing things the same way, talking the same way. Relating reacting the same way. That is the opposite of intelligence. The real intelligence is where you let go of all of that past karmas, past understandings and ideas so you can see something new and try something new. And so the person is causing you trouble at work instead of reacting to them. Always the same way about doing something a little bit different. And if you actually do those circuit breakers, in other words, you stop the ruts of your life. Do something different. You find a huge amount of opportunities for solving problems actually come up. It's intuitive and predictable. And that's what we mean by intelligence in my book. Open the door of Your Heart. I gave a story about my teacher's great intelligence, and he was completely unpredictable, yet incredibly effective. And this particular story I call the supernatural. Because there was a time in Thailand where if ever there was a person in big trouble, they'd always dragged them to the max. So we were the the last resort for help. And this particular case, there was a lady who was possessed. They thought she'd be possessed by some demon or some devil. The headman of the village came really early in the morning to say. They've been with this lady all night, and they just could not control her and her dragging them to see the great master adventure, to try and solve the problem. And as the headman came in, as she could hear her screaming at the entrance to the monastery, about almost 600m away, and as they dragged her into the presence of my teacher, as she was screaming some of the worst obscenities in one of the holiest monasteries of Thailand, and indeed about 3 or 4 big, strong. Farmers to hold her down. When people are crazy like that. They have huge resources of power and energy. Only a small woman that has 4 or 5 big men to hold her. When my teacher saw her. What you think he did? He just barked at a couple of novices and said, dig a hole. He told another couple of novices, boil some water. Sitting there, you think, what the heck has he got? Is he doing? That's really thinking outside the box. What is digging a hole in boiling water? Got to solving a problem with someone possessed. But when Ajinkya says something, you just do it. So these two novices started digging a hole. Another two started boiling some water. And all the time, we didn't know what a Gentile was up to. Being used. Intelligent. He had some plan. That's why it's always really good fun being around really intelligent people, because they were completely unpredictable outside the box and it always worked. And so as I drag this lady into his presence. Agent Charles, uh, the lady was getting even more crazy shouting, more spitting, and trying to land her agent again. Yeah. Told me once I'd put a story about this, about people who were possessed because there was one back in the north of Thailand, had a big reputation for being able to exorcise the demons when people were possessed. And so when anybody went a bit crazy like that, they'd get this monk out and he would do his chanting and holy water and stuff like that. This is a true story. I hope I don't offend you here, but there's one lady who was really, really crazy, and this monk got out of his holy water, was doing his chanting. And again, these people are very, very quick. Before he could do anything. The lady had put her hand up his, uh, lower robe and grabbed his testicles really hard, and she just would not let go. No, no. You can do that with the monks who don't wear trousers. And that took him about 20 minutes or half an hour to actually to prise her clothes off. And that poor mark was very sick for a long time. And that was the last time he ever tried to exercise anybody. That's a true story. Poor old monk. Some of the things we sacrificed is to help people. But anyhow, I judge I was much smarter than that. Dig the hole deeper. Get some hot water going. And no one knew why. And this lady was trying to learn it for him. And people were holding him down, holding her down and spitting at him and cursing him. And then he told us what he was doing. He said, this demon is so bad and so evil. The only thing we can do to save her is to throw her in this hole. Pour lots and lots of boiling water all over her and then bury her. That's the only way we can get rid of this demon. That sounds a very, very cool thing for a monk to do. But with adventure, you never knew if he would do it. Perhaps he might do it. Certainly the woman thought he might do it. So at that point, she started to calm down. In fact, within five minutes she was sitting so peacefully, so calm, even though the water hadn't been boiled and the whole wasn't finished yet. She was sitting there completely relaxed again. So I gave her a little talk and sent her home. She went to sleep and that was the end of her daemon. Now that's what intelligence is. Because I understood there's something inside each one of us called self-preservation. And if you really think that someone's going to pour boiling water over you and also bury you alive, you have to get your act together pretty quick. And she did. But that was a demon. Or whether there was some craziness that was actually brilliant. And when you see things like that, that's what I recognize as intelligence. Not just doing the same old things. Now, in here, you'd call the pet team. Well, you know, give some medicine or whatever. The real intelligent people, what we call like the wise people. They're the ones who do things, sometimes a completely different way. And why do they do it? Because they've seen something which other people don't see. They read between the lines. And I don't. I read her self-preservation. And that's what he acted upon. Now, you do that when you're still and you're fully listening. So real intelligence, I always say, comes from such stillness. Only when you're still. Can you fully read the situation and understand exactly what needs to be done. Not how you are trained. Because sometimes the training stands in the way of intelligence. Instead, you think what you should be doing. What the manual says you should do, rather than having that intelligence to know what needs to be done. That which isn't in the book, in the manual. That is when you're reading between the lines of life and understanding that is intelligence. So for those of you who want to become intelligence intelligent, too much book learning actually stands in the way of intelligence. You know so much, but you understand so little. Too much talking stands in the way of reading in between. You just notice the words. You forget the feelings. And really in stillness, when the thinking, when the talking is gone. When you don't remember what you're supposed to be doing. Only then are you alert. Reading the situation, reading between the lines. And you tend to do what needs to be done. You're participating by relaxing and then you fight is called intelligence. And you know, it's intelligence because it works, solves the problems, creates innovative solutions, and leads to peace, to freedom and kindness. So don't just train the brain. Be kind to the mind. That's intelligence. Thank you for listening. Okay, so, has anyone got any questions this evening on intelligence? Yeah. Where did you come from? Uh. No. Tell me about. It seems to involve. Usually when you get out of the way, then intelligence has a chance to grow. But whenever you're involved, you try and make intelligence happen. You usually stuff up. And the reason is because when I'm in here, I'm not reading between the lines. I'm just reading me. That's why the sir, when ego is there, the self is there, me is there. It usually stunts intelligence. Oh yeah, there is some intelligence from your past. Karma, you know. I was actually going to mention this story. Just I always mention this story to get questions. Some of you have heard me say this before. It's always good fun at the end of a public talk to actually to mention this, because in the Commonwealth Bank, this is one of the direct teachings of the Buddha. 25 centuries ago, the Buddha actually taught about like karma and rebirth. And he said, what you need to do in this life to become wealthy in your next life. You want to be wealthy. So this is what what you have to do in this life to be wealthy in your next life, and why it is that some people are born poor. Or even you work really hard, but you never really make much money. But other people? Money that comes to them. Why is that? So there's some karmic cause there. The Buddha also taught what come you have to do in this life to be reborn. Beautiful. And why some people. What you did in your last life. To be reborn ugly in this life. You may notice when I say ugly. I'm not looking at anybody. Because once I said this in public, no, be more ugly. And I was looking at someone, a lady, and she said, well, why were you saying ugly when you were looking at me? And I got in big trouble for that. But more importantly, the Buddha said, what you have to do in this life to be reborn, intelligent in your next life. The answer to your question, sir. And why is it that some people are born stupid? They have a hard time at school and a hard time in life. And the Buddha said the karmic cause for stupidity in your next life. Is not asking questions in this one. Are there any more questions? I always get questions after saying that. But the understanding behind that saying is that when you're asking questions, you're actually inquiry. Now an inquiry again is looking within in acquiring seeing between. It's almost like the inquiry is a way to intelligence. If you think you know, you don't look anymore. People who think they know are not intelligent. That's why I call them know it alls. So if you think you know who your wife is, who your husband is, you're not intelligent. You don't look anymore. You're not reading between things. It is sticking to what you already know. Now, do you understand what intelligence is? The way we do it is putting aside what we think we know and seeing for a change. So, yeah, inquiry is one of the great ways to become intelligent. But let's answer your question, sir. Okay. You, sir, will be intelligent in your next slide. Anyone else want to be intelligent? Don't say you never had the chance. Yes. It's a great question. This. And it's when you get when somebody like a Buddha gives his answers. Yet you think deeply about them. Why they ask questions. I say you're enquiring. You're asking. You're putting aside what you think you know and going deeper into it. That's why you become intelligent that way with wealth, they say, by generosity, by sharing. But being generous and sharing in this life, you become wealthy in your next life. But why? I can understand that the purpose of wealth, the meaning of wealth, is not just for your own happiness. It's actually to do good things in society. And this is if if you had wealth in a previous life and you actually shared it with your community, your philanthropy should look after hospitals or monasteries or churches or orphanages. You also, you know, you share it with people. It's as if like life thinks, well, you know how to use wealth. So we'll give you some more next life to share. But if you got wealth and you are very stingy, just keep it for yourself. But big mansions and big cars and just don't share it with anybody. So if you don't know how to use wealth, it's a waste on you if you don't share it out with people. So if we're not going to give it to you next, next time. So you can understand that people who know how to use wealth will get it again next time. If you just waste your wealth on big yachts and big houses and you don't deserve it. So you won't get it again. I think that makes a lot of sense. There's a sense of justice. Two people are very, very kind and generous, and they share things. They should get more money so they can share it again next time. This is a wonderful thing. The sharing is one of the things I said to the Freemasons today. An old story about generosity. Dalai Lama when he was still in Tibet, he was traveling from village to village and there was an American reporter. This was before his famous American report was traveling with him doing a story on this Tibetan monk, Dalai Lama. He wasn't that famous at this time. And at every village the Dalai Lama would visit, people would line up to give him gifts. An American. Being an American started to get a bit. This isn't a real religious person, especially the Dalai Lama, and he lives in a palace. He can have whatever he wants. He doesn't need these things. And one village is very old. Poor lady who was only wearing rags anyway, presented the Dalai Lama with a skirt. And that was just too much for this American reporter. And he started shouting at the Dalai Lama. You call yourself a religious person, you call yourself a monk. You're taking a skirt from a lady who needs it much more than you do. You're a man, for heaven's sake. You don't need a skirt. What are you doing? This is a religion. I've seen too much of this. These religious people that take everything. They're really rich. They should be sharing and giving. What are you accepting this for? He actually went on much longer than that. But I'm trying to improve my acting abilities. And the Dalai Lama, like many people, and I mentioned this to the Freemasons and the the Grandmaster said, oh, this is really good. When anyone gets angry at you like this and they shout at you when they finish. Pause for about a minute. Don't speak straight away. Give them time to reflect on what they've just said. When they see just they've actually shouted and scolded, they'll actually see the stupidity of anger. So the person shouts at you when it's time for you to speak. Wait for a little while to give them the time to see what they've said. That's what the Dalai Lama did. And after he'd waited for a little while, then he said to this American reporter said, you're right. I don't need this skirt. But that woman needed to give it to me. What a wonderful piece of intelligence that was. He wasn't thinking about himself, whether he needed a skirt or not. What he was thinking on was that woman needed to give him something. So he accepted that skirt, and he never wore it. He'd give it to another poor woman in the next village. That's what generosity is. And people like that who know how to receive as well as share, will always be wealthy. If anyone ever gives you anything, please receive it and afterwards you can share it with somebody else. Now my sock story is a lady. I'm gonna let you know who it is because I don't seem to mind. Oh, Lakshmi. Remember Lakshmi, an old lady. I still see her every now and again. One day she gave me a pair of socks. Just now, before the Friday night talk. And those of you seen me, I never wear socks here on a Friday night. Here in the cold weather. I've got very good circulation. But she gave me this pair of socks, which I didn't need. So I said thank you. And I went into the toilet quickly because I'd only had five minutes before coming in here. I put the socks up, and usually if you look at the way I'm sitting, I had both both legs covered by my robe, both feet covered. But during the talk, deliberately, I moved my robe, put my foot out the. I remember this years ago, she was sitting over there and as I was talking the corner of my eye, I saw her turn around to her friend. He's wearing my socks. He's wearing my socks. That's a beautiful thing to do. I gave her a lot of happiness. And afterwards, I washed the socks and gave it to another man. That's actually intelligence, the way we actually share things. I read between the lines. That's what intelligence is. And that's actually how you'll be wealthy in your next life if you know the beauty of sharing. Okay. So thank you for listening today. Okay. So now I can pay respect to all of them. Are some some good or bad are good. I got one unhappy one day. So I come home I go to the mall on Amazon. So party planner I go I talk to a customer. Go. So part of my job.