Letting Go of the Ones We Love

Letting Go Of The Ones We Love by Ajahn Brahm Transcription Usually I just paste the talk on a few things, which happened usually today, and had a number of people come up talking about all sorts of things. It's lovely to be able to relate the talk to daily life, and to use these great Buddhist principles to understand that this teachings of the Buddha, which are revealed in meditation, they do apply and they do work. I've been saying to people recently that when you look at the relics of the Buddha, there's all sorts of relic exhibitions around the world. But the real relic of the Buddha is a teaching is the Dharma. That's the relic of the Buddha. That's what the Buddha bequeathed to us. The teachings are what are those teachings of teachings which, when we put into practice, give us a bigger understanding of the nature of life. And we know it's the right understanding, because it brings us peace and freedom as a sign of truths that brings us peace and freedom. So the real relic of the Buddha is not some pieces of bone. It's the teachings which he bequeathed to us. And somebody recently asks me, now, what is the Buddhist holy book? Because the Christians have got the Bible. Muslims have got the Torah. He Muslims have got the Koran. What is the Buddhist holy book? No, the Buddhist holy book is meditation. In other words, it's a practice, not a sort of a book. And if it's real practice. And I was seeing inside oneself, seeing inside of one's life, using that and reading that well and understanding. So the story of your experience, this is where we get the teachings of the Buddha from. So the, the books, we always call them the menus. They're always supposed to be taught pointing to the food. If you dusty menus never eat food, you're going to get very hungry and you'd think, wow, menus don't work. What a terrible restaurant that is. All I do is eat paper all day. Some people go to churches, mosques, temples and that's all they do. They just eat paper and they go away. So this doesn't work. What a waste of time. And it's quite true because here we want to serve the food. And the food this evening is on the menu tonight. Uh, he is learning how to let go. But especially learning, focusing on letting go of people and not being attached to people and understanding what their attachment is and understanding what letting go is, and why we should let go and how we should let go is because I was seeing sort of this part of my life, as he always invited to people when they're dying, seeing them in hospital, seeing them really sick. Sometimes you don't see people for years until they get sick and they call you up. Can you come and see me? Actually, I'm off, but I don't mind. It's a nice time to see people, to wave them off as they go on a long journey. Not only that, he sees some of the relations as well, trying to cope with the experience of death. And sometimes I look at people the way they react to the Desmond thing. You can do better than that. When people you've been married for such a long time and your partner is dying and maybe just not an old person, a young person dies as well. How can we cope with this much better? Because the promise of understanding is actually lessening suffering, giving more peace, more wisdom, and seeing the meaning behind these events of our life. Someone was telling me earlier about a young child who died, committed suicide and said, for some times that's very hard for the parents and the family to bear, but it does not need to be hard, because I know that sometimes when somebody dies and they're not at their full lifespan yet. One of the first responses people have is always guilt. They're always saying, I could have done more. Maybe if I'd have done this, maybe if I'd have taken my partner to the hospital earlier, or maybe got a diagnosed, or changed their lifestyle, or being kinder to them. So much kills comes with the death, mostly because there are cultures these days are very much into finding fault and blaming. If we can't find someone else to blame, we blame ourselves. But one of the wonderful teachings, which should be obvious to people of all faiths and religions, any rational person who contemplates is that death is part of our life. And it should not be regarded as a negative part of our life. For those people who are left behind when youngsters die. And sometimes that's one of the hardest things for our society to accept. The death of a young child. I wrote the story in a book which I will abridge. It's a simile of the leaves falling from a tree when a storm blows to any forest. And I live in a forest down at serpentine in our monastery. If you want to sort of see this for yourself, you just come to a monastery after a storm. After a heavy wind, you won't just see trees come down. You see many leaves being blown off the tree. When the wind blows, it doesn't just take the old ground curly leaves. It takes many young leaves as well. When a young green shoots they to get torn off the tree of life and lay dead on the floor. Sometimes you look at them little young green shoots on the floor. You look up at the tree and you see that same old brown, curly old leaf which has been survived so many storms and still hangs on their stories in life that are how many old people I know 1885 1996. They're still clinging on. Not. Therefore don't feel guilty. Anyone here over 80. Don't need to get into a guilt trip by being 80. This is just life. And the point is that when we understand that nothing has gone wrong, it's not the wind's fault. The young green leaves lie on the ground. It's nature sometimes making comparisons to nature as he helps us to understand, know the reality of our human life. Because we're not apart from nature, we're embedded in nature. We're part of nature. And just like green leaves fall from a tree. So do young people. Nothing has gone wrong. This part of life, which we have to accept. Nature. I once gave a very powerful definition of suffering. Very quick and easy. Because as quick and easy ones, the sometimes the deepest suffering pain of the heart is expecting from life what it can never give you. Expecting what it can never provide you. And what we expect is that everyone will be provided with the full span of life, especially our family and children. And of course, you can never expect that. Sometimes it is your friend, your relation, your child, who dies when they're only 11 years of age. You have to embrace that. That is part of our life. It is not that someone has made a big mistake where we can accept and least get rid of the anger and blame. We have gone to the first stage of understanding this life. No one's at fault. This is the meaning of our life. This is the nature of life. This is its truth. And if we try and fight the truth of nature, we only make more pain and suffering for ourselves and others. When we accept and embrace the law of nature. It makes it much easier in any way, as Buddhists or many of you are Buddhist and if not non-Buddhist, many people believe in reincarnation, even non Buddhists. So why can't we believe that it's only a temporary parting? Young child dies, are going to come back again and have another chance. Death is not the end of the world. People think it is sometimes in our materialistic society. I don't know, we've got it all wrong. We think, ah, someone's dying. Yeah. We die. We sort of graduate from school, we graduate from university. We get married, we go to different countries, we move around it. Death is just moving from one plane of existence to another plane of existence. It's not a finality. So understanding reincarnation and understanding it deep inside and seeing the bigger picture. Young person dies and have another chance. Because that's really what we want. When something like that happens. Can we not give him another chance to make it fair? Because one of the problems we have, we think it's not just it's not fair that young people, when they haven't had a chance of life, they die. So we sometimes think it's not fair that some people, they work less hard than you do and they become this. Why is it so unfair that some people win the lottery and you don't? And you've been playing every week, and you've been such a good person and offering food to the monks and doing all this sort of stuff, and you still haven't won. It's really unfair. But you notice anyone who does win the lottery. They don't think I've won the lottery. That's unfair. It is unfair if you win the lottery. So unfair was other people didn't. And you did. Do you ever feel guilty about that? I don't think anyone who wins a lottery ever feels guilty. Because our idea of fairness and justice is skewed. It is fair that leaves fall from the tree. Sometimes that's your your leaf, sometimes that's your relation. So don't think that something's gone wrong or it's unjust. It's part of life. Understanding reincarnation. Really? So. Well, we'll have another chance next time. One of the most amazing things flow is, is just getting rid of the negative part. Which allows us to let go. Sometimes we stop from the negative part of letting go, the pain, the misery that stops us moving on. We actually really attached and own the misery. I still remember going to a grief and loss conference many years ago in Scarborough Beach Hotel, and seeing so many of actually the speakers. These were her people who were famous for their grief. Celebratory. Celebratory. Sweet celebrity. Grievous people like the parents of Kiara Glennon. Am I going into trouble for saying that? But sometimes people, they go on stage and by grieving they have an identity and they can't let that one go. They can't move on. It's as if that they are attached to the pain of the past. I remember I forget who it was. Someone complained to me that telling us we should let go. Yeah, sure. Why not? I don't want to. It's amazing just how many people like their sadness. But if we are wise, we can have an opportunity to move forward and move on to let that one go. So letting go of the negative part of it, we can see the positive part of it. People gets amazed sometimes. How can you see something positive, say, in the death of a young child or the death of your mother, your father? I tell tell somebody earlier that in the story of the Buddha, which many of you would have read, or if you're a traditional Buddhist, you'd had the temple many times. The Buddha was the prince before, and he saw four sites which were wake up call to him, the old man, the sick man, the dead man, and the holy man, especially the dead man. It really woke him up to the meaning of life, to something powerful and importantly, of actually seeing death and feeling it and knowing it and allowing that death to go right inside of him. Unfortunately, in our present day, sometimes we don't even talk about death. I was really amazed when I came to Australia 25 years ago. No one died here. I just passed to the other side. They just so love. They went to meet sort of aunty Fanny on the other side. They were reunited again when no one actually said they died. They can't tick. They snuffed it or whatever you call it. Why can't we actually just be honest about it? That people die. They don't pass to the other side. They don't know. They're just only sleeping. Then they look so peaceful. Yeah, because I'm a leader of a religion that sometimes you get invited by the funeral directors to see where that smile comes from. That's all the harm, the embalmers job. To make sure when a person dies that they are injected with chemicals, made sure they put a smile on the face and before they present it to their loved ones. Sometimes you see, like a fresh corpse, a dead person. They never look like what you see in the box. They look completely different. Very gray and pallid. No color in there, no body at all. However, we make up this illusion to make relations feel good. Sometimes I think that's counterproductive. It's much better to get closer to death with one of my wonderful experiences, and I say it's a wonderful experience. People might think I'm strange that when my father died, I was just woken up in the middle of the night. He died at home. My mother couldn't wake him, so I tried shaking him, tried to shake him out of his death and make him alive again. It's only a 16 year old boy. But I must remember that shaking my father, you can see his face recognizably. That was the father I loved, shaking him, fearing him. But his body was cold and stiff. His mouth wouldn't open. His eyes were tight. Nothing I could do was to bring back that person. I recognized he was dead. But that was an important experience for me because I could face up and come close and feel and touch and know deeply to death. You know, it wasn't that frightening. When we actually accept these things, we learn from them and grow from them. And of course, the meaning of death, where we get out of this, the teaching we get out of this. What? Why? The Buddha called it a messenger of truth. Was it because it made me more appreciative of this life? When you know that just as at your father and as someone you know you live with. You taught with. You argued with, you've gone, uh, spend your life with. Well, you know, they're they're going to die. It's very obvious that that's going to happen to you. And of course, we all know we're going to die, but we don't. We think we do. Which is why we leave some quite heedless lives sometimes. But when actually you have somebody say, 11 year old die, and I think you're all over 11 in this room here, it means that you too can die at any time, any moment, even before you go home. You can die. Understanding that makes life more precious. Makes this moment more precious. By understanding the nature of death, you actually have a greater understanding of the meaning of life. What is life? Why is life? When you've only got a certain amount of time left, what are you going to do? How are you going to use it? A person who knows they're going to die like many people when they have cancer. It's amazing just how they change their agendas. Cancer is a wonderful sickness in that it really gets as very close to the meaning of death. And we've got time. We've got time to understand it and to make the necessary changes to our life, to our attitude to accommodate our death, which is going to be very likely. Some people will get through their cancer, they don't die. But my goodness, they learn so much. And even if they do die, wow, they still learnt a lot, which they will take with them into death. And of course, what you learn by these things by seeing a young person die, a middle aged person die, an old person die. It means that you can die any time. There is no rule for the time you will die. Never think that you are 30. So got another 40 years left. Never say you're 50. So now 80. I'm going to die. You can die at any moment because of that. That means that every moment becomes much more vital. And it's not just making money, not just paying bills, paying the rent or getting the mortgage or getting on in life. What becomes more important, you know, is what we call basically spiritual values your kindness, your generosity, your virtue, your wisdom, your understanding. What you're coming here for is what you take with you when you die. What is the most meaningful thing of your life? Sometimes, you know, I work really hard. I just come back from ten days over in Singapore, just a couple of days over there, but mostly in Malaysia. Just working really hard. Teaching. Teaching meditation. Teaching retreats. Counselling people. Talking to people whose children have died or someone else's got cancer, or getting divorced, or trying to reconcile couples who are still together but want to get divorced. It's a lot of hard work, which I do as a monk, but sometimes you get so physically exhausted. The so mentally so inspired. Are you doing so much to help other beings? I know what the meaning of life is. The meaning of life is how most of it to serve, to give, to help, to solve problems with yourself and other people, to bring this beautiful peace and harmony and kindness into this world. To create those bridges between people, and even going to prison in Singapore for just one afternoon and getting these people. It has got such so low self-esteem in the Chinese community, especially in a place like Singapore being put in jail for 12, 13 years. Imagine what that feels like. So my job is in there is actually to love those prisons, not to criticize them. To show them value so they can value themselves, to show they're not criminals. That as people have done crimes, that's all the people. Their beings are humans and not afraid. Hardly any different from me. Since. The only difference was they got cause we didn't. How many of you have done things which if you were caught, you might end up in jail? So understanding that this is the meaning of life is giving people a bigger sense of wisdom so they can get peace freed and they really can have love and happiness. And just talking to people who've had the suffering of losing a loved one and a wonderful privilege to be able to take a person like that and lead him out of that hole into a sense of peace and freedom and moving on when they've learned how to deal with the death and they've gone forward. What a wonderful lesson that is. That's why when anyone dies, young or old, whatever the meaning of their death is teaching you the importance of life and what's really valuable in your life. So when somebody dies young, never think of it as a waste. Never think, why did this happen? It happened to teach you. To give you an idea of the importance of life and to change the attitudes which one has observed, counselled. Many mothers who've given still birth to a baby come so close to having a child in their life to love, be careful to nurture and cherish. So close. Well, at the birth, the baby is dead. Would you rather that this well-being had never come into your womb and never ask a question like that? And mother says, of course not. It's wonderful just how mothers, when they have that little being in the womb, they're visited by somebody. Even though they can't see them, they can't talk to them. They can touch them and feel them. Nine months. Thank you so much for that visit. What a wonderful time we have. We're grateful you've come so far. We have love you to come in further but thanked you for so much time just in my womb. You see, what we're doing there is we're valuing we valuing what we have. We're being grateful for the little things we have, rather than wanting more and expecting more and demanding more and getting angry and upset when we don't get more. Six months. Nine months. Thank you so much. Had a being there which loved you and you loved it longer than that. 11 years. Wow. Thank you for those 11 years. For anyone who had a child who died, would you rather that child had never, ever come into your life at all? Seeing even parents with autistic children or Down's syndrome children who take so much attention, almost constant care. I asked them to understand the meaning of why you've given birth to such a child. Some of them understand that child is teaching us what it means to laugh. Not to love someone because you can see them grow and go to school and be proud of them. But to be able to love someone who will never go to school, who may never even be able to speak back to you. They'll be able to even say the word mommy or daddy, but still can love you back. It's amazing to be able to see this in action and see people take these amazing lessons in life and understand them. You know, one of the places where I learned love. I don't mind saying this, but that was when I was a student at Cambridge. This was done out of pride. First of all, out of arrogance. I was a Buddhist, a universe, and I was proud of being a Buddhist. I was the only Buddhist in my college that I knew of. So all my friends are either Christians or they're mostly atheists. They believed in the great bottle of beer. That's a that's what he taught me. They used to go to church every evening and their church was the pub. That was their relation. But they were my friends and we enjoyed each other's company. But one of my best friends was quite a devout Christian, and he told me that he was going to do some social work by going to the local hospital, where they had a ward for Down's Syndrome children. And I thought to myself, I can't be outdone by the Christians. So I said, I want to go to as a Buddhist. So I got in with his three other quite devout Christians. When I met one of the other ones later on became a sort of an Anglican priest. So there we went, four of us, three Christians and one Buddhist, down to actually to do social service, to do something good, to be a goody goody Buddhist nurse. I suppose we do some good karma. I went to this, uh, this ward sister, do a little bit of occupational therapy for this kids who had Down's syndrome, and I thought I was going there to do some service. But of course, anyone has done any type of social work. Realize this. You are the one who receives the service. For two years. I went to that hospital every afternoon when I was up in college. I got to know those down syndrome kids so well. What they taught me was what these days were called emotion and sedatives. A sensitivity where you can't speak to somebody with words. But gee, you can really understand what they're thinking or where they're coming from. He's down syndrome kids. If I was in a bad mood, he can see them and they would come and hug you and said, never mind in their own way. And they could laugh and feel at ease when you were at ease. That emotional intelligence was much, much stronger. And all my so-called friends. I learned so much about love from those little kids. I wouldn't call them kids somewhere in their 20s, 30s. They wouldn't live very long. I'm not quite sure why they didn't have a big life expectancy, but your job was to learn how to be loved and to give that love back unconditionally. Never expected them to get better. I never expected them to sort of perform like I did. But I love them for who they are. Even though they were always going to be in that state. It's amazing just what a quality of life they would have if you were just around them. Accepting them in Grayson for who they are and allowing them to be. That's what love is. The giving. Enjoying each other's company with no strings attached. Allowing the other person to be. And that's what the meaning of a death is. You allow a person to die at 11. Her friends? The 15. Real love. And this is the meaning of knowing a death when someone young is learning how to embrace them, even their short life for who they are. Thank you so much for those 11 years, those 15 years, those 20s. Thank you so much. That meant so much to me. When we expect us demand more because we think it's not right that people die so young. It's not right that kids are born autistic. It's not right that people have Down's syndrome. There must be something wrong. The doctors didn't look after them. I know that the life is not. There's not such a word as something's gone wrong no more you can. You say that because the green leaves fall. That something's gone wrong. When you understand, like, deeply, you have to accept that you have to embrace it. And when you do accept and embrace it, the whole thing changes. It's Down's syndrome. Children. They're not like mistakes. They're valued. You truly do love them, and you enjoy their company. That's why for two years, after the first few weeks, I never thought I was doing any social service. I actually enjoyed as much as go to See Your girlfriend and they looked forward to it as crazy, but I really did because I enjoyed those kids company. I learned so much from them. The same way you can enjoy a person's death when you embrace it. You learn so much from that. Sometimes when a person dies young, you think, why? What's the purpose? What's the meaning? If it's meaningless. That really confuses people and makes them angry. Why did this happen? I can say why does a person do this? And sometimes people commit suicide. Why? That's not really loving understanding that someone commits suicide. I will never know why. Whatever it was, was in their mind, in their heart at the time. Who knows, they may have been playing around, making mistake, not truly understanding what they were doing or why they were doing it. My job will never be to judge because I know I'm incapable of judging a person. How do I know what they went through and why they did that and why they decided that? Who knows? What I can do is love and respect them if that's the way they end their life. I accept their decision value in everything. It's always because I come back again, have another go. I will not do that next time. There's another ways of dealing with problems, but still we can love and accept people. We can embrace and respect and free the other person in ourselves where we can actually do that. We have this bigger mind. I don't know how many times any one of you has got so depressed, or me not so much depressed, but confused. You're saying the nephew had a gun or a knife, or a piece of rope that you would have killed herself? The funniest story. I'm not sorry. This fellow won't mind me saying this. He was a former caretaker of this center when he went off to live in the bush. So it's higher than a nice little place. But being by himself, he got quite lonely. And we always have our bad days. And one day he was so depressed he decided this was it. No point to life going to kill himself. So he went into his shed and he tied the rope to the rafters, tired and loose. Put the chair there already the right height. Tested it all. The only thing left was to go and write the suicide note. He was writing the suicide note he had the radio on at the time, and as he was writing the suicide note, maybe 2 or 3 minutes from hanging himself, who came on the radio? But Adam Brown being interviewed and said, oh, no, I don't want them to commit suicide. So he tore up the night outside the light when he wrote a letter to me telling me about it. He was laughing his head off. You know, when he was telling me this, that I just happened to come on the radio and he happens to have that channel on. He forgot to turn the radio off, and there he was. So I stopped to commit suicide. Coincidence? But, you know, we all have those moments. I'm sure every one of you had a moment like that. Maybe not that close, but you can understand how if you've got just a little bit more, and if you didn't have the friends, you didn't have the radio on at the time or whatever, you could have also gone over there. Now, can you understand how other people do that? Love is understanding. Not criticizing. Not judging. Even though we may not be able to understand it fully, you can go halfway to understanding it. And that's enough to give this beautiful sense of forgiveness and letting go. Moving on. Embracing. Because as the title of that book, we should, I keep on quoting Open the Door of Your Heart now being translated into Hebrew. Watch out that the Dutch edition also is coming up many editions of that book. Story from my father. And he said, son, the door of my heart is open to you. The most important part of that, no matter what you ever do in your life. What he meant his son. I'll always love you. Even if you did commit suicide no matter what you did. Even though I didn't do that, I wouldn't do that. I became a monk instead. Nevertheless, I knew from that wonderful saying of my father, who was an unconditional love and unconditional, embracing forgiveness, acceptance, all that is really spiritual and religious. And that's what the death of 11 year old teaches how to love them, how to love them so much here at peace with their suicide. You let them go rather holding on because we're talking about attachment in Buddhism. And somebody was asking me earlier, what actually is attachment when you love somebody, isn't that it being attached to them? But we have this wonderful word, even in English, when we have a relationship with no strings attached. So you can love someone but with no strings attached. And I like the metaphor of a string between two people, or a string between a mother and their son, between sort of a husband and their wife, between, you know, a disciple and a monk or whatever. When is any strings there? That's called the attachment. And, you know, there's a string there. You can feel the portion of pull between a person when you don't do the thing I want. Now, when you do something which you know I don't approve of. Now that'll be light now. With strings attached as the attachment. Love. I will love for you. But please, please, please don't kill yourself. Because I want you to be here for her. For you are for me. So much of grief is not being sad for the person who's died, for being sad for yourself. You feel sad because some that you wanted is no longer there. What you thought you were, were you? What were you attached to has now been broken. Your expectations have been frustrated. You wanted that person to grow up, to see them grow up. You can't always have that. Or you can have just loving them right now for who they are when it's their time. Letting them go. Giving them freedom to go in peace. Some of the most beautiful scenes which I have had in life, and one of the things which I encourage people to do when you're close to the person before they die in the last few days. Please give them permission to die. First time I seen. I can't see her this evening. One of the regular members who comes here. I was counselling them when she was with her husband. Very young people. Maybe in her 30s, late 30s. He got cancer, now inoperable. He was dying. So I went around to see them for the last few days. I still remembered this. This is what they taught me. What this wonderful fellow taught me about love. And I saw him and her. There was a tension, a tightness. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was a tension in the room, in the bedroom, while he was about maybe a day or two from dying. But fortunately, as a monk, because you have mindfulness, because you have stones, you can very easily, you can make your mind so peaceful. You don't try and think out the problem. You can feel the problem. You can intuit the problem. And I could ensure it. Sir, I knew what was going on. So I remember turning to the wife. I don't want to mention their names because they're probably well known here. I told her, have you have you given permission for your husband to die yet? Have you given him permission to go? And I did shoot it, right? Because she didn't even answer me. She just jumped on the bed, hugged her husband who was so weak in the last stages of cancer, and said, darling, I love you. Love you so much. I give you permission to die. You can go with my life as one of the most beautiful memories I have. When a wife who loved her husband so much, still young, loved him enough to give him permission to go, he died the next day or two days later. But he died of peace. She gave him the permission to go in peace. What a wonderful gift of love that was. And I encourage you because you'll have that experience sooner or later. Your father and your mother, even brothers and sisters, your husband, your wife, or even your child. If a child gets to that point of no return. Please tell them you loved them so much that you free them. The door of my heart is open to your daughter. I give you permission to go. Go in peace. I let you go. That's the love which isn't attached. As a love which frees. That's a letting go. The sort of thing which the Buddha kept on talking about. The understanding. Know the difference between attachment. We have a string, and it keeps pulling at you, and you keep pulling at those. That's not freedom. And a beautiful, wonderful, inspiring, uplifting, freeing love. So if that ever happens to you and there's so many suicides these days. If you have a loved one who commits suicide. If you never given permission to go beforehand, give them permission afterwards. Sometimes we do that in Buddhism. Sometimes if somebody steals anything from the donation box, you say afterwards, oh, we give that to you. So don't create any bad karma. We give it to them afterwards. The wonderful idea. Somebody takes something, said, okay, never mind, it's yours. So that you lost it anyway. You might as well let it go. It's the same way when somebody has already died or some would say committed suicide. He couldn't permission after the event. So there's no claim. There's no criticism, there's no. Why did you do that for you allow them to do it afterwards. This is a wonderful freedom of saying I love you. The door of my heart is open to you no matter what you've done. When you can do things like that. You know that this is a beautiful, freeing, wonderful love which stops and helps the problems. We have to let each other go through it. You don't let a person go when they're young. You have to let them go afterwards. Sometimes you're the one who's dying. You have to let them go. I'm not going to see you again, darling. I'm going before you. You'll come later. You know, that happens when you get children, when they grow up and they sort of want to leave home. It's amazing just how many kids stay at home year after year after year. And sometimes I know some parents just will not let their kids go. Remember, this is one other lovely teaching. Those children aren't yours. Sometimes we think that's my daughter. That's my son. They come into your life. Where do they come from? The Buddhist, I know they come from previous existence, previous lives. Be careful when you get pregnant. You don't know what's coming into your womb. I don't know what sir was, Ahmad bin Laden's mother thought. I'm sure she thought it was a wonderful little baby. Or. Oh, Adolf Hitler's mum, Mrs. Hitler. So she's a very nice lady, but. So you never know what's coming in because you don't choose them. I know they got baby shops, I remember this. No, I haven't told a joke yet. This is the old joke. I'm not sure the last time I taught this one. I bet you know, when the Berlin Wall went down and east eastern Germany and western Germany were united, and then one of the people from eastern Germany, they could actually go to the west. They went into a supermarket and never been into a supermarket with all his amazing products, because in the Communist bloc east behind the Iron Curtain, they hardly had any luxury goods at all. And he went down the supermarket, saw like a mashed potato powder, you know, saying that you just add water and you get mashed potatoes. This is amazing. Mashed potato powder. You don't even have to mess the potatoes yourself. Just add water. And there you go. And he's got like I'm Kate powder. Okay. Just add water and you get cake. And then he saw baby powder. Wow. These people in the West were amazing. It's just that what you give a baby. But unfortunately, you know, you don't go to a supermarket to choose your baby. There you go. You get pregnant, and it's nothing to do with your DNA or your combined genetics. It'd be wonderful if you could actually, uh, know what sort of baby you got by your genetics, but it doesn't work. The best kids have monsters for children, and monstrous parents have these amazing sets for children. So is that child really yours? No, it comes from somewhere else. You give it a body, you care for it. You love it. You nurture it as best you possibly can. But when you know it's not yours, you know you have to let it go. One day is going to leave you. One day it's going to go and marry this guy or marry this girl, whether you like it or not, that's what they're going to do. They're going to go off maybe to another part of the world for their jobs. You have to let them go because your job is done. I always say parents should remember the birds. Birds. They sit on those hard eggs. For those of you who got sore bottom because we've been sitting for an hour and a half, that's nothing. Consider these birds. At least you want to sort of soft, because you imagine when an egg is like poking into your bum for hours on time. Wow. That's tough. They sit for days on that. And then when when they birds hatch, they go around all over the place getting worms, getting whatever they can. And those baby birds, they just like buckets. They're vacuum cleaners. They'll just suck everything that mother and Father Bird does, the mothers or the father gets things for them as well, and then have to teach them how to fly. And as living in the bush, sometimes, you see. So the mother birds teaching them to fly. When I did my six month retreat, you saw a couple of eagles. Living close by. I used to watch in the afternoon, them teaching their young one to fly. Wonderful thing to see. Nature like the sea. Like an eagle. Two eagles teaching their youngster to fly. And mother on one, one behind, one in front. That old one in between. But of course one see once they can fly. That's it. Mum and dad, go away. Julia, you look after yourself from here on him. No more free worms. You can find your own. I said, wouldn't it be wonderful if parents were like that? Now, once you. Your kids can drive the car. Okay? Off you go. By your own car. You can go find your own home. Maybe you can't do that. Quiet. But at least we can let them go. This is what we have to do. This is what love truly is. To love a person. To care for them. To give them a whole heart. But not to put them in a prison because of our love. And that's actually how we love each other in a relationship as well. Husband and wife. I don't know how many dysfunctional marriages there are. Because one partner wants to control the other out of fear. They love the person. They think they love them, but with no wisdom. They're afraid what their partner might do. So they're always sending the private investigator after them or whatever, isn't it? You're coming home late, darling. Why? I've got to work. I've got to go to the Buddhist society to do extra things for Adam Brown. Yeah. Now if he would do that. There are good people, but a lot of times that because we don't trust the other person. That's why the marriage breaks down. What we fear the most. We make happen because there are dysfunctional relationship. Trust has to be part of love. That's when my father said to me, the soul of your hearts always opened to me, no matter what you ever do. It wasn't just an expression of love. It's an expression of trust. So off you go into your life. I don't care. I do care what happens to you. I want you to be happy. But I give you that freedom to find out. See what happens. Even if you die. I will love you. What a wonderful, freeing feeling that was. And it wasn't the case that when you give a person that freedom, that trust my experience of life and not my own life, other people's lives, because people come and talk to me and tell me their problems. I told them, I've been in this city now for 25 years, over 25 years since I've known some of these kids grow up and seeing them be so successful. And I can see that these teachings of Dharma actually work. You give your kids some trust. They usually live up to it if you don't trust them. You keep too much of a guard on them. That's when they used to go wrong. They would bear. They fight, and they got no one to go back to afterwards, because their relationship with their parents has been busted. Always err on the side of extra trust. Obviously, if you've got a kid, a young kid put some boundaries on them. And the dangerous ones, the ones we feel really hurt them for a long time. Things like drugs or, you know, especially for a girl you know, came out of sex, at least teach your kids about contraception. I know that sometimes I mentioned that word here. I've got letters back saying, you should say that you are a monk. Look, I care about you, and I care about your kids. I know some young kids here. You've got to mention those words so everybody knows them. So you don't get into problems and difficulties later on in your life, or even in this part of your life. Gotta sort of be realistic and practical about these things. So if we do these sorts of things, we can actually protect our children by being some boundaries about them, educating them, caring them, caring for them. You're equipping them for life and also for making mistakes. This is where we all learn. Because somebody that in I was in sort of a perfect child when I grew up, you know, that one of these stupid things which I did, which I told someone about, was making a bomb. I go to jail. If I did that these days, I would not any jail probably get sent to Guantanamo Bay. I was only 11 years of age with one of my best friends, who was a chemistry whiz, and his elder brother had all his chemicals because he was a bit of a chemist in his house, so he knew how to make something go bang. So he mixed the chemicals I provided. The tin came. We went to the local park and it worked. He went bang and I thought was the most exciting thing until the park keeper caught us grown a big trouble. And the stupid thing. I could have killed myself. But for a young kid, especially a boy, sometimes that's what we do. And so sometimes you have to give people a little bit of freedom and trust, put boundaries on them so they don't kill themselves or blow themselves up, really, or get into drugs or get into some really bad stuff, but give a lot of freedom. And I usually work out okay. And you give them trust. I become wonderful kids, which is what we're doing. We're trusting a person to die. This is what we mean by letting go of people we trust our wife. We trust our husband to let them go out at night to stay late at the office. We trust her. And even if they they misuse our trust and they do have an affair outside of marriage. You haven't done anything wrong. They would've done that even if you'd have just tried to. They'd probably done it earlier if you'd have tried to control them. This is why the main reason why we let go is because the opposite is being too much of a control freak. If you can let go of people, allow people to die when it's their time, they're calm or whatever. And I should mention it all calm because people got some weird ideas about karma. In Buddhism. They say someone's committed suicide. That's terrible karma. They'll go to hell. Oh. Come on. So if now what if, like a young person made that decision, it's usually out of so much confusion. And for karma to be a very bad karma, it has to be done mindfully, deliberately, with full awareness that this is wrong. You know it's wrong. Just go and do it. That's bad karma. If in a very confused state, you're not really quite sure what's happened down, left and right. And because of that confusion, the karmic force is very, very small. And this is sometimes why I say that suicide is usually not great bad karma. Because the quality of the intention, the confusion, it's a stupid thing to do. It's not a good thing to do, it's the wrong thing to do. But then the quality of your mind, if you're in such a state is usually very, very confused. It's not clear because it's not clear. The karmic force is not very pronounced. But it's not just that. Why did people keep on focusing on one event? That's bad karma. You did that. I'd say when I went into Changi Jail last week. The in Singapore. Look, you are not criminals. Told us prisoners in the jail. You are people who've done crimes. There's more to you than that event for which you're in this prison right now. In the same way a person commits suicide. They're more than not a suicidal person. That's more than that. That's just one event which probably took 1 or 2 minutes of their life, of their time. What else did they do as far as the karmic force of a person's life? It's not just one event. You have to see the whole life. Be fair. What else did they do in their life? And probably there's so much kindness, so much goodness, so much wonderful things. Why do you judge a person on one fault? Two false, three false, ten false and completely ignore the thousands of millions of kind, loving, generous, beautiful actions which a person does when we see the big picture, the whole picture. And that's what truth is supposed to do. Open eyes to see that sometimes is so narrow minded. We just see one part of the story in job of a monk or the dam is to expand. So you see the big picture. They were a good person, kind, generous. 1 or 2 mistakes which caused their death doesn't mean that's bad karma, but all the other wonderful, good one tremendous loving things they've done in their life as some somehow don't count. Calm is a balance. It is a full sum up of what you've been doing in your whole life, not just one event. So if you know someone who has committed suicide, don't think, wow, bad karma, they've got to go to hell. Come off it! Number one, that event was a very confused event. It doesn't have much karmic force. And no, think of all the other good stuff they've done. That's why sometimes people commit suicide. They go to heaven. They say why? Now you know the answer. So karma is not so fatalistic. And don't use karma as an excuse for blame, or for negativity, or for hate, or even for hating yourself called grief or guilt. We don't need to do that in life. Now imagine if people had this sort of understanding. So when a person did die, we can let them go. We can go to their funeral. We can sing their praises, and we can learn and understand that their death had a meaning for us. Reminding ourselves of our impermanent time in this planet. So that we can live better, though we can work better, speak better, be kind, and be more Jen as he gives her the purpose of life. When we see that it's not going to last forever. Purpose is to do whatever kindness, goodness worthwhile thing we can in this planet while we're still here. Basically, to make good karma. We can be loving, to be forgiving, to be happy. And this is how we become happy by letting the past go. And that's the other thing. The wonderful thing about letting go of the past person does die. You have to cry at the funeral. Leave your tears in the chapel over here. Sometimes we do funeral services here. Leave it in this hall and go outside afterwards into the sunshine. Because that's always what the dead people would want. I'm not sure what you say to your loved ones, but I say to each one of you and to the monks when I die. These. If you're going to cry, cry during the funeral service afterwards, please don't cry. Otherwise, you are not keeping for my wishes. You know, just before I went to Malaysia. It's really, really weird where you got all these phone calls from Melbourne at our monastery just a day before I left. Because apparently there's a rumour going around Melbourne because I'm got lots of disciples over there, this one centre that I'm a spiritual advisor for. And they got a rumour that Agent Brown had got cancer and was in hospital dying. So they rang me up and said, is it true that someone's in hospital, got cancer and he's dying? Since I was first, I've heard of it and I imagine I should know. But I said the last part is true. I am dying, but maybe another 20, 30, 40 years, who knows? Yeah, I said, I agree to that. I'm dying. They're all dying, for goodness sake. But sometimes these rumours go about and they're really crazy. What are you worried about? So when we understand just what Dharma truly is, we can let people go. When we let people go, we let the pasture. We let the pain go. We let the grief go. We let the hurt go. Sometimes you wonder why do we allow night nature in life to cause us so much pain? Why do we cry when green leaves are taken off the tree? We sing. The song is gone wrong. We don't understand the truth of the matter. We truly understand. We would not let the death of a young person, even a suicide. Or the fact that our child wants to leave home. Or the fact that sometimes the marriages, the partnerships. Sometimes it does come a time when you just can't keep it together anymore. What a wonderful time we've had. What a wonderful life. And now is finished. Please don't carry hate into your future. Never allow the past to cause your unhappiness in the present. You don't need to do that. When we let go of the pain of the past. Doesn't matter who did what to who. If someone did do something wrong and very hurtful and cruel to you, that's their karma. Such stupidity. If you could understand why they did that, you maybe understand that. See, people have put in some for such difficult situations sometimes, and I don't know why people do that, but sometimes when I ask them, I can understand it more. I may not be able to accept it, but at least I can understand it and understand the causes and conditions, the reason why they acted in such terrible ways. But what I do understand. It doesn't make any sense if they've hurt me once to allow them to hurt me again. Every time I remember that painful time, I'm allowing them to hurt me one more time. Suicide is bad enough. A death of a loved one, a separation. Someone you love going some other part of the world. Why do we allow that pain to linger in our heart, to allow to cause us suffering? Day after day, every time we think of it. Which is why at a death, if it hurts us once, we should not allow it to hurt us tomorrow or the next day. We don't need to do that. You don't have to do that. You can let it go. Why not? The person who dies, they want you to be sad for the rest of your week, month, year life. No one wants that for their loved ones. So why can't we respect the person who has died out of respect for the person who's no longer here? I am going to be happy. Certainly my father, when he died, when I was only 16. That's what he wanted me to do. He didn't want me to cry when he died, so I didn't. Out of respect. Filial love. For someone I admired. Can you see there's another way? A Buddhist way. A dam away. A truthful way. A way of real peace. Of real love and of freedom. That's what the Dharma is. This comes from the heart. And hopefully you can taste and can touch. This is wisdom. This is liberation. This is freedom. This is real kindness, true compassion. Not just a theory which you apply to the coalface of life. What you face from time to time. Some of the tragedies with people have to deal with. And now you know how to deal with it. And its whole meaning is teaching you, training you to really know what love really is and to appreciate freedom, and also to know peace. They go in peace and you go forward in peace. As the meaning of life. So that's a little story today about letting go. That's the ones we love. So any one little joke in there because there was a serious one today. So hopefully you don't mind. Now some questions or comments about the tour tonight. Anyone got a question or comment about what's being said tonight about letting go? There's a question over back there. Can you. Help you? Oh, hi. Oh. Okay. You're saying the condition of domestic violence. Uh, what does it really mean to let go? Let me say let go as fast as you can by running as fast as you can sometimes. Because now that love of the other person is already dysfunctional relationship. When you get to that stage, uh, obviously there's a huge amount of frustration. I remember there is, say, almost like a sequence of like wanting controlling who eventually from when we try and control somebody or control ourselves or control life. Control inevitably leads to frustration. We just can't control another person. We can't control ourselves. We can't control our body. We can't control life. So control freaks eventually get frustrated. And frustration is to anger. For some people, anger leads to violence. But for all people, anger eventually is to depression or it just gives up. That's not the right way of life. You don't control another person. They want something out of their partner. But that's not the way to get is counterproductive and the partner will leave. Usually the sooner the better. It's dangerous physically for the victim and also for the perpetrator. So that's not letting go. Remember the door of my heart? A door is something which you enter, but it's also something you go out of. Always remember that. So sometimes you have to go out of the door of your house. And if it's an intolerable. So common sense tells us, the best way I can love that abusive partner is actually to get out quick. So seek professional help because it's not working. Sitting there doing nothing unless you're an amazing person. I gave one story in my book about an amazing lady who could do that, but she's an exception. Most people seek professional help. Call the police. See the social worker that's out of kindness for the person who's acting in such a crazy, harmful way, harming themselves and harming others. Makes sense. Okay, I know people sometimes misunderstand. Compassion is. Oh, you can do anything you want to me. That's not compassion. That's foolishness. Some. Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! I know, I know, I just, I know I.