Investigate Your Way To Freedom

Investigate Your Way To Freedom by Ajahn Brahm And while we're waiting, I'll take the opportunity to introduce the visiting monks who are here on my right. External Dharma Jiwa. Uh, he's from the monastery. They're teaching us non-residential retreat the next couple of days here. And on my left is, uh, uh, from Brisbane. He's a fellow Aussie. For many years. And he's also got a temple just outside of Colombo. He's been a charter, one of my babies, cos I ordained him. So he's a big baby now. So he's a teacher in his own right. Uh, 13 years now. So 13. Right? Yes. And of course, we have, uh, over there, a real live, uh, fully ordained bhikkhuni. And we have, uh, sister around over there from Damansara monastery. So it's a special occasion this evening. We've got so much power facing you. So you should have got a very good meditation this evening. Ah, but the talk this evening. Now everyone is settled down. Uh, I wanted to give a talk about one of the things about Buddhism, which I was very inspired with when I was very young. And that is just the question. Anything in this religion. And it was a way of investigation. You can ask questions, you can dig deep and find out what's really happening. And because of that openness, it meant that, uh, you could follow inquiry. It wasn't just because that was a nice thing to be able to do that was like essential to the Buddhist teachings. And, uh, when you started reading those Buddhist teachings, first of all, you could read them and you could take those teachings which you read and go to your favorite monk or nun and argue with them. It's the wonderful thing to be able to do, to argue with people. And so even without this great mud, you could go there and argue for half an hour, an hour, and you never get upset. I remember this one lady from England who came to argue with Ajahn Chah a couple of hours to say, come on, leave him alone. He's old. And he said, no, no. He said, you just help me sharpen my knife. And that's actually how he would regard when you ask difficult questions. Always it was accepted and not just accepted for his own personal benefit, but accepted because this was almost sacred to Buddhism. If anything is sacred, the way of investigation, questioning, digging deep, finding out what's going on. And I think it's because of that, because this is almost a dogma that there is no dogma, that it's almost essential that you are allowed to question that. Buddhism has thrived so much and has always been able to adapt by keeping the core teachings as way of investigation, as way of looking very deep and developing the abilities of the mind. Like mindfulness, like peace, like calm, like, um, looking inside of things deeply for many, many hours because it developed these things. We came up with lots of nice ideas. And those ideas do develop over the centuries. Buddhism does evolve. And it's evolving here over in, um, Australia. And that's why that we're going to have Santa Claus. Is evolving. And why not, as we can very easily adapt to the cultures which we are in without sacrificing anything of the heart of the Buddha's teachings. We investigate these things and ask why? And that part of part of investigation, uh, means it gives me a hard time, I must admit. Because people are always asking me questions. Have to defend yourself. Which is great, though, because that should be open to ask those questions. But it also gives people a lot more confidence that this, uh, teachings which we have here is not brainwashing. It's not a cult. The last thing which a cult will allow you to do is ask the difficult question. Nothing is sacrosanct here except your freedom to ask those questions. And when we can't investigate like this, we come up with some really, really interesting ideas. But with investigation, sometimes it's not just enough to keep asking those questions, because sometimes we do need to have experience and data. As far as sometimes people question you about being a man. Why are you a man? It's stupid being a man. You're just afraid of relationships. Aren't you ashamed, bro? Now, of course, it's easy to say that we should investigate. And a lot of times, the only way you'll know what it feels like to be a monk or be a nun is going ordain to get some experience. First of all, because it's only when you. And sometimes we do have this opportunities, maybe not over here in Perth, because we never got enough infrastructure. But in some places you can have temporary ordination, become a monk for a short time or a nun for a short time. And sometimes they call it like novice ordinations. Now, one of the reasons why we don't allow novice ordinations over in the monastery in serpentine is because at this time of the year, many of you would love to dump your children abiding on a monastery for three weeks and a novice. Well, you could have a nice time. Have you got holiday school holidays? But in some countries you can go to these temporary ordinations and get a feel what it's like to be a man, what it's like to be a novice now, be a nun or whatever else it is. And that actually gives you some experience, like the inner experience, what it's like to be like a monk, to be a nun. Now, to sort of not have all these things, but you can have whenever you like. And so the investigation is not just asking the questions. It's getting experience as well of what it's like. Okay, it might not be able to become a monk or a nun, but at least you can actually join a meditation retreat for a few days or go and stay at some of the monasteries and really actually stay in a monastery or stay on a meditation retreat, especially if it's a residential one. No, basically, you're living like a monk or a nun for that time. You know, you're not eating in the afternoon having the same things which we eat. And because of that, you get some inner experience of what it's like. A lot of times people keep saying, wow, it must be really hard to be a monk. But no, it's not. I think it must be really hard to be a layperson. How to worry about all those bills, to go to work on a Monday morning, or to have to worry about a husband to look after, a wife to look after your kids. Oh my goodness. You've done it once in this life. Next life. Don't do it again. I told that story last week about I think I did about the piece. Tell me a story about the man who went to, um, to the Holy Land with his wife. I think I must have told. I think I told that in the armored group last Tuesday. But it just shows. You just know how to experience and know what real suffering really is about. This guy who went to his wife, was a Christian and always wanted to go to Noah, Israel, to see the holy sites and like Buddhas, go on pilgrimages to India. Now Christians and Jews, they go on a pilgrimage to Israel. So his wife was pestering him again and again and again. She was a very difficult woman to live with. And so he pestered him again, again. So eventually he took her over to Israel for the, um, uh, for a holiday. And when she was over there, she died. And so after she died, the chaplain of the hospital, which was fitting her, said, well, look, we can do the funeral here it is around $5,500, but to send her back to Australia, it'll be about $5,000, and we'll have to pay for the funeral expenses also. What do you want? And he said no, I think we'd better send her back to Australia. The chaplain was quite surprised. Why are you wasting all that money? He said. Because I heard a few years ago in this country, somebody died and he resurrected after three days. I can't take that chance with my life. So why are you. Why are you laughing there? Because it must be true. So I decided things like that. So you can understand by experience what suffering is. So we investigate and we actually investigate. You get a very deep understanding of life. You don't think about it because sometimes when we think, think, think, we think that's investigation. But a lot of times I think it's limited to our experience of life. And so how can we really know what our cancer is like until we've had it? How can we really know what peace is like until we've experienced? So a lot of times the investigation of Buddhism is not just a philosophy to say can sit around a coffee table and think and get good ideas. It's much better than that. Is giving these opportunities to have these amazing experiences in life. Where else in Perth can you go to like a retreat centre which is coming up soon? They stay there for free for, you know, 8 or 9 days and do nothing at all all day. Really rare to get that opportunity to find out what it's like to do nothing. Now that is a really lovely experience to have because all your life you've been doing something, and when you have tried to get a bit of a break, you've either been told off for being lazy or you're just telling yourself off. It's called being guilty. Now a good example of this. Now, Karen, this is the holiday season in a country like Australia. And it's Christmas time. Even though Christmas is not till next week. Already the builders of the retreat centre are all finished for another couple of weeks already. If you are going to work, people aren't taking the work seriously anymore. Except if you're a monk. We have to work 365 days a year all our life. In fact, I often complain the older I get, the harder I have to work. But it's true. The more venerable you are, the more people want to invite you to give talks. So I know what my future is going to be when I get to my 60s. And I'll just be starting 70. Then you reach no getting up there, but you don't reach your peak until you're 80 as a monk, and that's when you really have to start work. So I really wanted to ask you to try and have a meeting with Kevin Reynolds and start a proper union for monks. Because her pay is terrible. However, my retirement plan is out of this world. But to understand what it's like to be a man, you can get some idea of it when you go on a retreat. When you meditate, you can actually investigate why. And it's that ability to investigate and get the experience of these things is what you have the opportunity to do here. You know, if you haven't got sick, then you wouldn't know what pain is like. Come on a meditation retreat and sit down still for one whole hour and see what it's like in your knees and your whatever. But that's obviously not what we're really trying to do. But there are many, many things in life which investigation gives us the answer, which is why often, if you do have a pain or a sickness, sometimes as Buddhists, sometimes, oh yeah, we're a bit compassionate. We're trying to help you. But the real teaching is what is it like when you're actually really sick? Or you say you've just been told, like, happens all the time, you know, at least the people would come and talk to me. They just gone to see their doctor. They've got cancer or it's now terminal. The doctor said, no more treatment. Oh, no, somebody just died of a heart attack or whatever. How does that feel? So instead of just saying, oh, isn't that terrible? I'm so sorry that you've got cancer. I never say that these days. Have you in me up and say, look, I had a problem. I've only got a couple of days to live. I say, oh, that's really cool. What a great opportunity to investigate. So, you know, if you know, you don't get much sympathy from a monk. Instead, you get an opportunity to become wise to investigate. What does it feel like when that happens to you? What does it do to your mind? Now straight away, when you investigate, you can cut all this. You know, there's no use a modern word bullshit about. Oh, it's so sorry. It's so terrible. Why? What's wrong with dying? What's wrong with being sick? Investigation challenges everything. And that's one of those little, um, little stories. Uh, little, uh, object lessons, which I've often done here. I won't go through it. Totally. Sometimes I ask people, anyone here has never been sick, and there's not one person in this room, I guarantee, who's never had sickness and say if there was someone in this room who'd never been sick in their life, you'd be weird. Doctors will want to sort of investigate you because you be an anomaly. You be very, very odd. In fact, there'd be something unhuman about you who never been sick. So eventually it's normal to be sick. And it's actually wrong to be totally healthy. So why is it? Whenever we are sick, we say, doctor, there's something wrong with me. I'm sick and you investigate. And if you're wise, you'll say, no, there's something right with me. I'm sick again. There's nothing wrong with being sick. Now, a few people are told that story quite a few times. And the doctors in Perth know this now, because people have told me they've gone to see their doctor. They've got a cancer or they got flu, or they've got something really wrong with them, or no right or wrong with some illness. And they tell the doctor, there's something right with me, doctor, you know, I've got flu again. And say, oh, you go to. But when you still take off this idea, even this labor you investigate, you don't say it wrong. Because when it's wrong with wrong, you feel you're guilty. You've done something bad. It's bad karma. You're sick. You deserve it. You're evil. And you have this whole emotional guilt trip whenever you're sick. If you say sickness is wrong. Not only that, but the healing professions take. There's something wrong with being sick. And so they try their hardest to try and change you into their idea of being a healthy person. And if you go to a doctor and they really sort of dislike rejecting you for who you are, something wrong with you? You're sick. I've often said to the healing professions, often as a doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, often you can't heal people. And in fact, even wanting to heal people, sometimes there's something which is very negative about that. Rejecting them, especially when they can't be healed as if they are terminal. Cancer people are failures. I'm not getting better. I'm hopeless. Instead of that, I've told many healers never actually to make healing your priority. Make care your priority. You may not always be able to heal someone, but you can always care for them as especially a mental illness. Sometimes it's just too difficult to take a person who is mentally ill and to get rid of that. Voices in their head. Or that depression or that oh, DD or whatever else is there. But you can always care for people and you see the difference. Said caring is actually accepting. The person is creating a positive relationship to them, but they don't think there's something wrong with them, something they've done bad. So if you can care for a person, then sometimes healing happens as a bonus, but it's not a necessity. We take all this idea of sickness being wrong or death being bad. That's why sometimes people say, you know, when you go and tell people that, you know, mother died. I'm terribly sorry. What do you mean, you're terribly sorry? I never even knew her. We have these ideas of death being sad. Instead, as a Buddhist, we investigate everything and challenge it. What's so sad about death? So do we make it sad? A lot of people have had enough time on this planet, and they're very happy to go there. For some people should be a great celebration. Maybe when Mr. Bush goes, I shouldn't say things like this. But why is it that most of these times when we have these funeral services, people always cry so much? What are you sad for? I guess we all know we never cry for the person who's died. We always cry for ourselves. So attachment. So as a Buddhist, we investigate this. We go deep. We just don't follow what other people do. It's not just some sort of ritual which people follow blindly. That's the last thing which the Buddha wanted. And that's almost like heresy for Buddhism. Just following things blindly. We want to find out why. What's going on? When we investigate deeply over there, we find the only reason why people crisis attachments. They were stupid to begin with. To think that that person is going to be there a long time. Even to think that that's their husband or their wife or their child or their parent, their mum and dad. You see where they say, it's my mum, my means ownership is an attachment. Which is why is a Buddhist. We should know that. Is that really your mother? Do a DNA test? I don't know, but that's not what I really meant. The ownership there. That's a person who's reissue. And there may have been your mother in this life or whoever they were in the past. But their child, where did they come from? They've got a whole history. That's more than your child. And I've asked, though I haven't had a baby myself in this life except the people I've ordained. But mothers actually told me that I didn't ask. I investigate when you give birth, that being which comes out of your womb. Is that like a fresh person? Something new? I say no, no, this, this whole being. There is something with a history. I remember this one lady. This is have some really weird stories which I collect after the baby was born. She was breastfeeding it. She was laying on her back and the baby was breast enough. The baby had enough. The baby just took his mouth away from the breast and sat on her mother's tummy in full lotus hands like this, and meditated, spilt the hell out of her. You know, it's this perfect meditation posture after eating. Where did it learn that? Obviously these babies though had a history before. So is it really your child or is it some being who has come into your life and you nurture for so many years, and then you have to, once you finish nurturing them, then you have to let them go. Now we investigate what is this attachment of being my son, my daughter, my husband, my wife. We know we only with each other for certain length of time. We invest together. We know that. And when we accept that, we can find all these partings which happen in life, whether it's death, divorces, kids going overseas, daughters becoming nuns or whatever it is, we can actually understand, accept, embrace and be at peace with it rather than always being so afraid of losing people and things. When we investigate these attachments, family attachments, you go deep into it. Question. Ask the question, is this really my son? My daughter? What do I mean by mine? Why am I so attached to this? We question, question, question. We loosen these bonds which cause all the suffering in the in the world. And then instead of just laughing, just one person or just one family, the whole world can be your family. You can have, like, compassion for everybody. That's why it's so nice being a monk. Now you are all my brothers and sisters. We call that brothers and sisters in the Dharma. It's much nicer having a million brothers and sisters. Or how many? 2 billion, rather than just 1 or 2. And treating everybody with equal kindness. The door of my heart is open to all beings unconditionally, rather than just 1 or 2, or just some with preferences. Why can't you love someone else as much as you love your child or your parents? Why can't we have a more even sense of kindness? There's an interesting question. When we do go to investigate, we get some interesting answers. When we do those interesting answers, you know, it actually expands sort of our spirituality, our understanding about the nature of life. So when we investigate these things, it's not just with the things of life. Go deeper into the philosophies of what happens to you after you die. We can always question. And of course we've got things like reincarnation. And a lot of times people question that. There was a couple of weeks ago, I was in New Zealand at one of these conferences and one of the presenters. I love going to Buddhist conferences where the presenters, not a Buddhist, and I listened to Buddhist all the time. So as a Buddhist monk, it's nice to get it to listen to another angle. And this person, I really respected him. He was a professor and theologian, and the reason why I really respected him, because he was sitting in a Presbyterian church in New Zealand and twice was accused of heresy, went to the Presbyterian Church court and got off twice. So anyone's accused of heresy is a good friend of mine. And the reason is because they are courageous enough to question. But an interesting thing. I know that a couple of the monks said, you're pushing it a bit far out, Jim Brown, but I said no, because I was saying that the path of investigation can unearth a very interesting facts. Like one of the questions which have come up in the conference was, can a Buddha a real Buddha? No, one of not not an enlightened being, but a Buddha? Can a Buddha be a woman? Now you ask some of the monks and they'll quote in the scriptures it says. They said, we know what it says. What does it mean? That's actually what it says there. Is that really just bound just by that particular social context because of his one suit, only one little place where it says the Buddha is a man. Okay. But to investigate, go deeper. We don't just believe we're not fundamentalists. You know, not like sort of some other religions where it's because it's written in a book. That has to be true. Even if it was said by the Buddha, what did the Buddha mean by that? What was actually the explanation of context and meaning? Or by investigation? It doesn't really care. It doesn't matter whether a Buddha is a man or a woman. But if a bean was about to be reborn as a Buddha, what gender would it choose? It would obviously just a practical consideration. It will choose that gender which it could fulfill its role, its purpose of spreading the teachings of the Dharma in the best possible way, if it was a patriarchal society. Sure, you get reborn as a man because you'd be able to get more credibility. But if you had a patriarchal society. We have had matriarchal societies in our history. It was a matriarchal society. Then a Buddha would be reborn as a woman, obviously. That's my idea. I've investigated. That's what I say. I get in trouble. But you can take me to heretical court. But Buddhism will actually accept your ability to to differ. And you won't be excommunicated because of that. It's a wonderful thing. And even some of the monks said at some point you were really controversial in that conference. Wonderful. Because what you come to a conference for, not just to hear what you already know, but here's something new. And why do I say that? Because the whole purpose, if I had a society who gays were the dominant people in the society, the Buddha might get reborn as a gay. Why not? That could be even more controversial. But the whole point is, whatever vehicle would be the most useful would be the vehicle which was chosen. So when we use a part of the investigation, we can actually take these teachings and go much deeper. So we're not superficial, just relying on what was said. Even the Buddha again against the don't just rely on what said investigate. Take it deeper. Find out. But I know this fellow. He was quite a radical Presbyterian when it came to reincarnation. There's no way he could accept that idea, like many people can't. Why? So when I first came to the West, the. For me, it was quite obvious that reincarnation happens. You know, they got an understanding of that. But what was really fascinating to me. Oh block that people have. Why can't they have an open mind on the subject? And so you investigate your question. You go deep. What is the the barrier to accept in reincarnation? And I think one of the big barriers is fear. Fear of having to come back again. You'd rather not believe in reincarnation simply because no one life is enough suffering for you. Don't want another one. And that's almost like a denial of something you don't want to see. So you check that one out. The point is, if you're going to ask that question, you investigate. You can't get the answer to such questions just by thinking you do need experience. That's one of the reasons why Buddhism is scientific. And by scientific, I mean it goes on the data of experience, a data of this world. So one of the great experiences I had when I did science was just getting my my brain expanded by such things like relativity theory or like quantum theory, because that was something which was totally illogical or rather counter-intuitive. Little things like getting your head around the fact you can't travel faster than the speed of light. They may have some star, maybe about five light years from here, and you can't travel past the speed of light. You can get to that star in ten minutes. Counterintuitive. You mean that's illogical? It's only because you can't see the bigger picture. Yeah, you can get to that star in ten minutes and come back again. But 20 years or ten years have gone on Earth. A time changes when you start speeding up a bit. That's why a whole 2008 has gone so quickly. Because I've been travelling close to the speed of light. That's actually this academy intuitive. We've got like things like quantum theory, the great Schrodinger's cat equation experiment, where the cat is neither alive nor dead. It's a third possibility. Then you can read about that on the on Google. On internet. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory where you got and it's real. This is what happens. This is reality. You've got a cat. He's not alive. Who's not dead? Who's neither. Interesting. I don't know what the cat feels about that, but what that really did is showed me just the limits of my rational mind. I just did not have enough evidence, enough raw experience and data. So what Buddhism also wants you to do is to think, but to think courageously, to be willing to abandon even your most cherished notion. But also find out the interesting places of experience and data. Of enlightenment. Now when you can get experiences, really beautiful experiences, and this together with your rational thinking and get you some really nice understandings about the nature of life, such as like reincarnation. Okay, you might reject it just because your experience hasn't gone that far, but who knows, maybe you can extend your experience to got these beautiful little, um, trainings, these experiments which you can do to meditate and see if you can remember your past like who you were before. And I've described how that's done. Not that difficult a thing to do, but go on a nice meditation retreat. Get your mind very still is something about that still mind. You know what your mind is. You tell it to do something. It just doesn't do it. Still mine would have called it malleable, workable. You can tell it's time to do something. It does it straight away. I still mind is like a well-trained dog. It's not really like a dog, but that's the best simile I've got. You tell the dog, don't pick up the newspaper. The dog runs around, picks up the newspaper, waxes tails, and pigs are back to you. Bid my snippet. The dog goes and gets your slippers for you. That's what a well-trained dog, despite when your mind is silly, becomes like this incredibly well trained thing. But you just tell your mind. Don't get my past life. It goes off there. Get your past life comes back and wags. How about this one? Nah, I don't like that one because I'm getting another pass, right? Now, that's not such a joke, because that's basically what happened in deep meditation. I said, what's my earliest memory? And these things come back at you. So you get personal experience of these things. This is what we mean by investigation, not just belief as it says. So because your guru says so. This is not a guru tradition. Please don't believe what Ajahn Brahm says. Don't even believe what I've just told you not to believe me. I'll give it a try and see what happened. And when people do that, yeah, they do get these experiences back and they can even check them out to see whether they are true or not, because we got records these days and might get some of this past life experience. And I may have been sort of saying sort of New Zealand or somewhere as a sheep farmer, you go there and check the records, see whether there was any sheep farmer by that name. That's amazing when you can actually check it out. And it's true. There's many, many books which you can get, you know, these are books written by, you know, really good people, uh, authentic people, people you can trust and believe. They're not just some weirdos. You can check it out. And yeah, it's actually true. And it does actually make things very, very interesting that it explains a lot about, say, your character and who you are. One of the stories which comes to mind, you know, all of those people have spontaneous memories of past lives. And because I grew up in England, many some of you may remember this. If you also were my age and grow up in that country. Some years ago there was an entertainer, a comedian called Roy Hudd. That if that name rings the bell for any of you. Roy had. He was a TV star, not a great star. But, you know, he's pretty well known, uh, in my years. And he wrote this article that he got lost in the one way system of London one evening after, you know, doing some sort of show somewhere. He got lost, went down a street he'd never gone down before, and the hairs on the back of his head started going up, as all these memories of when he lived in that street in his previous life came up. Does the sight of that street and because remember, like a city like London, the buildings don't change that much? No. 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, they're pretty much the same. So the memories were jogged and he saw this was a street he lived in his previous life. Now, you may also know those of you who visited places like London. They have this tradition. If there's any well known person has lived in a building. They put these blue circular signs on the house like Sir Alexander Fleming lived here. Winston Churchill grew up here. Or, you know, the Duke of Wellington sort of, you know, went to this pub. Or whatever it was, but they put these blue signs everywhere. There's a blue sign on that house. Because he was a reasonably well known person in his previous life, his name and his previous life was Dan Leno, who was one of the most famous music hall entertainers of in the Edwardian era of London. Maybe about a hundred years ago, 90 years ago now. And the interesting thing was he remembered his street. He remembered exactly who he was. The memories came flooding back. He knocked on the door of the house where he lived before. And because he was reasonably well known, the people who answered the door recognized him. What had. What are you doing here? And then he said, I used to live here. And he took them around what was once his house. Now, what was fascinating for me that he was a comedian in this life, and he was a comedian his previous life, as if the characteristics had actually gone from one life to another life. Now look at me. I must have been a stand up comedian in my previous life. So I don't know. But well, it does explain a lot about people's characters and their sort of inclinations, because that's not what karma is all about. The characters, the inclinations, the way you move from one life to another, and you do carry some of those things across. It does explain a lot of things. So we want to investigate, to find out whether it's true or not, because it's important to find out instead of just believing and just taking a chance. Yeah. No, it's there's no such thing exists or yes, it does exist. As a Buddhist, we want to find out, investigate. But the investigation doesn't just go with things like reincarnation. It goes with even just the idea of religion or spirituality that come to a place like this and question to listen. If you don't like, go out and that's fine. I always say there's no entrance fee in these talks. How often? Thought to raise money. No entrance fee, but an exit to go out. There's no entrance fee or exit fees. It's all like, come and see. And that type of come and see if you like it might ask a question, investigate, find out if it really makes sense or not. And of course, one of the most important things which we try and investigate the meaning of life. The big question instead of just going philosophizing about the meaning of I want to investigate. What do you mean by the meaning and meaning? Is that the goal of life? Purpose of life? And that's probably one of the biggest things we should investigate. What are we here for? Why is this life? And this is actually one to get a bit more data. First of all, you may have heard me say a little quote during the meditation that just wanting something stops you enjoying what you already have. That's why we have this beautiful holiday called Christmas and New Year, a time when we start working. Hopefully you stop travelling. Unless you actually I'm brown was always traveling. But. So you stay where you are with what you've got. That's why we call it a holiday. You enjoy what you have rather than seeking something more. And you find the reason why we call this a holiday. Why is truly holy. Because when you stop seeking things, you stop working in the most profound meaning of that time. When you stop craving for something more than you really can enjoy, appreciate and be grateful for what you have, you develop this wonderful quality we call content. Being happy to be here with what you have. That's what you have to do. On Christmas, the shops are closed. You can't buy anything anyway, so you're stuck with what you have. What a beautiful thing that is. Just to stop this great journey of life, and to pause and appreciate how far you've come, where you are and how much you already have. You have enough. Enough to be peaceful. Enough to be content. The wonderful thing to know that. To know that your wife, she may only be not the most beautiful, but she is good enough. Your husband, he may not be the richest, the smartest, but he is good enough. Your house may not be the biggest mansion, but it is good enough. And you like it because it's yours. It's cozy where you live. Look at me. My cave. Because I travel around a lot. I just love coming back to my cave. This is the smallest house in the whole of Perth. About three meters circular and about three meters high where I live. I'm sure that it should be in the Guinness Book of Records, especially West Australia, the smallest house anybody has got in this whole state. But it's cozy. I love it in there. I'm so content with my cake. I don't want to put on an extension. I don't want. That sense of contentment. You find that at last I found the meaning of life. It was here all the time. I kept on looking for something else. Sometimes you might think you just would like to go and swap your wife something more beautiful. I'll get rid of this husband, and I've had enough of him. And get someone more excited. But all of those types of ideas, you find that even the very wante stops you being happy. It gives you more business to do in life. And aren't you busy enough? How much more do people want? In the end, we have little experience in times of contentment. Moments of peace in our life. And they're the one most valuable spiritual experiences. The times you have really felt content when you're at home with your husband, with your kids, with your dog or whatever, with your modesty in your cave. And you realize in this moment, I don't want to be anywhere else in the whole world. I have enough. You have this great moments of contentment where there's no craving, no striving, no wanting. Look around you. At least for a minute. Five minutes all day. Who knows? You're completely happy. What a wonderful moment they are. And they are not that rare. You do have them every now and again. But when you do have them, linger there as long as you can and value them. When you realize from your own investigation of just the beauty of that state, the freedom of that state. Your investigate understands some great meaning of life. We do go on a journey. You know you've already reached the destination and you've forgotten about it. So you just go looking for somewhere else to go. You're already here. Why? Don't stop and enjoy where you are. And you'll find you have all the riches in the world. So what we should really be investigating is present moment silence. The contempt just being here and there. You find this inner peace. You don't have to go travelling all over the world to find it. The investigation gets you to the deepest of the darkness. Beautiful peace of mind. So this is Christmas time. May all beings be at peace. So how about you being at peace? Yeah, you can have Christmas time. The things which don't go as expected. But why do we expect things anyway? You investigate all this expecting and worrying about things which stop you being peaceful. I just got so many responsibilities these days. I just know the list. Some of the things which I have to do, you know, just people just ringing me out from Victoria, ringing me up about their families, ringing about I'm the free counsellor. And especially this time, one of the reasons I like to go to Malaysia, because people have holidays and they bring me up all the time with their family problems at Christmas time especially. So I could just go and nick off to Malaysia and have a nice quiet time there. But notice that I've got so many responsibilities and so many duties to be done just now, building a 4.5 million retreat center, or worrying about what I'm going to talk about tonight. Just tomorrow I go to Singapore, get off the aircraft a couple of hours at Singapore. I've got to give a talk in Singapore, then go back on the aircraft and go to Malaysia and give a talk in the evening. So what am I going to talk about? I haven't got a clue and I don't care at all. I don't worry. I've investigated worries every time I've worried about something. It doesn't really work anyway. Whatever I thought was going to go wrong never goes wrong if something else goes wrong. Not the way I planned. I know sometimes you've had a plan A, plan B and C, but you know everything goes wrong and goes through the whole alphabet and you run out of plans. But isn't it wonderful? Actually just the learning, investigating. Why do you worry? What is worry anyway? What worry is. You're just so afraid of making a mistake and things going wrong. You think you assume that if you think hard enough, you'll be able to protect the security of your future? When you investigate that, it doesn't matter what goes wrong. Life is what goes wrong. This is the nature of life. It's going to go on anyway, so don't worry about it. Just enjoy it when it happens. Because actually things going wrong anyway. Again, I mentioned earlier that the idea of wrong it's not things going wrong. It's this unexpected that life is is impossible to predict. Even though we like all these fortune tellers and you have this horoscopes, this a new year, soon you're probably going to look at your horoscope. What is 2009 going to be? Is the stock market going to go up? The stock market going to go down. All this horoscopes complete waste of time. I remember this one guy who comes every Monday to our monastery in serpentine. It was my birthday one day about ten years ago now, and he read out my horoscope that day because in the newspapers of his birth, they'd have a special horoscope just for that day. And the horoscope? He read it out and he said, anyone born on August 7th, his birth. That's my birthday about ten years ago. That this year will be a good year for romance. That's what it said is wrong. I said I'm not. So much for horoscopes. Is a prediction. One thing you just. You cannot predict anything. You don't know what's going to happen next. So why worry about it? Because the world is just so unexpected. And all the worries about what's going to happen next. What might happen? Just the world. Actually, the future is that which you did not predict, but you did not see coming. So why worry about something which you can't see? You don't know what's going to happen. In fact, all the worry just takes you away from enjoying this moment. This is going back to one of the great stories in my book. Open the door of your heart. But it is so soon because I'm going over to Santa Claus is Coming. One of the great stories from my book is about the drinking tea when there's no way out. It was called about this, um, fellow school teacher who taught me when I was a school teacher. He taught me about just why we should not worry. Now this is the last experience, not from Buddhist text. He was a British soldier in the Second World War in Burma, with a few other soldiers on a patrol in the jungle. This is real war. Real bullets. Japanese enemy. If they didn't shoot you, they put you in a very difficult concentration camp. So it's very, very scared. You found this one afternoon. Ordinary patrol. They stumbled into a huge number of Japanese soldiers. Soon they were vastly outnumbered, completely surrounded. This is one of the big problems of life. They're in a big mess. So what do you do when you're in a big mess? He thought he was a man. He was a soldier. Let's do the tough thing. He thought he'd try and shoot his way out. Let's go and fight. Who knows? One of us might make it if we don't make it, at least. At least he thought we can take some of the enemy with us into death. He wanted to try and fight his way out. But the captain, the one in charge, says, no, we will not try and fight our way out. Instead, we were all sit down and have a cup of tea. It was the British Army, after all. And the captain is crazy. He's been out in the sun too long. How not? Honestly, how can you think of having a cup of tea when you're surrounded by enemy soldiers, heavily outnumbered at war? Second world war. But orders were orders. They had to have that cup of tea. He thought it was the craziest. The maddest thing he'd ever done in his whole life. But while they were having that tea, Scout came back, whispered into the captain's hear. The captain got all the soldiers together. The enemies moved, said the captain. We can crawl out. Put your things away quickly. Move silently. And of course, they all escaped. That was brilliant of that, captain. He saved that man's life. But my fellow schoolteacher said he had cancer some time later. Untreatable cancer. He was, like, surrounded by the enemy for a second time with no way out. What did he do? Tried to fight his way through. No. Just have a cup of tea. Relax. Enjoy himself. Make peace. Why worry when there's no way out? So he learned. When life is like that. There's enemy all around you. You're about to die. Or something worse. Sit down and have a cup of tea, coffee, noodles, whatever you like. And wait. Why worry? Because the future is just totally unexpected. You don't know what's going to happen next week. Next year? Impossible. So instead, we enjoy the moment when there is something to do. Then we worry about doing it. We do it right then. Worrying about the future. We reinvestigate it. We waste so much time. We also waste so much happiness by worrying about things which we can't really do much about. So when we investigate live, this is just another example. You see that instead of just saying, yeah, worry is normal. Why? Why worry? Investigate it. Find some other ways of dealing with life. We investigate like that. We find a far better meaning of life because questioning, investigating, challenging. Is actually destroying all these sacred cows is actually the way to wisdom, to understanding, to freedom. This is why Buddhism has always taught freedom with the power of investigation. Using your experiences, challenging everything with wisdom, with courage based on experience of life and seeing things in a deeper, more meaningful way. You know, it's wise because it leads to the sense of freedom. Problems of night, the Spanish. When investigate and find the truth of things. Sickness isn't wrong. No need to worry. You have enough. Isn't it wonderful to realize you're already rich beyond your wildest imagination? Which is why you can't believe it. That's the talk this evening about investigating. Okay. Any questions before we finish off this evening? Yes. Uh, well. Uh. I agree with you. Just the differences are hardly worth worrying about. Except when you have to go to the toilet and you have to know which one to go into. And, but. The reason is that the mind we actually go into meditation, we understand the mind is just the mind of a male, the mind of a female. I'm talking about the real mind is exactly the same, exactly the same as in an animal. Even though this thing we call the shit of the mind. When you get into deep meditation, come face to face that hasn't got any gender whatsoever. That's beyond gender. And that's what becomes enlightened. That's what a Buddha is. So really, the Buddha, the enlightened mind. That's not Mao. That's not female. That's why Buddha can be in any gender. That's why, you know that in Thailand has three genders. Wonderful, actually, to know that when I became a man in Thailand, I learned Thai male female monks. Nuns. We are the third gender in front of you over here. That's why we have our own toilet. Okay, I think that's thank you for that question. And hopefully you enjoyed the talk and hopefully you can question it. And don't just accept it because I said it and gives you some more information, some more encouragement to actually to question everything in life. But based on experience.