Loneliness | Ajahn Brahm

Loneliness by Ajahn Brahm Okay, there we go. It is quite a few people outside, but can I ask, when you come in here actually to move closer to the front, because that gives more opportunity for those in the back. Try to find a nice place because lots of room in the front. And monks we do have showers so we don't smell, you can come much closer. In fact, the closer you get, the more energy you can feel. I learned from our young president that the section in the front is called the Mosh pit. Is that right? So these are the people at the front. Moshies. Okay. It's been a couple of weeks since I've been giving a talk here because last week was Sister Vayama's opportunity the week before, Ajahn Nyana was here. Uh, but I still always get these requests over the, uh, fax machine letters or emails to give talks on certain subjects. And, uh, the, uh, requests, which I've got this evening, is to give a talk on loneliness. And, uh, again, I love being able to give, uh, talks on such subjects and be able to weave the ideas of Buddhism and of meditation around these themes to really allow people to understand not only just what Buddhism is and what meditation teaches, but also how it applies to some problems which we face from time to time in the world. Because loneliness is a problem for many people, some for. So for some people it's a chronic problem, a problem of loneliness, which creates an enormous amount of suffering, angst, even suicide in their lives. And I think for everybody, there will be come a time when you're by yourself and you may feel, uh, fall prey to that sickness we call loneliness. So I'm going to talk about loneliness tonight. What actually is, why it's a problem, and obviously how we can actually surmount that problem, to transcend it and even be able to celebrate and enjoy loneliness. I suppose as a monk, I am quite qualified to talk about loneliness, because being a monk, you spend a lot of time in solitude and spending time in solitude. You are alone, but it's very different. And the feelings of loneliness nevertheless. I can recall as sir, as a young monk or even earlier, as a young person and understanding actually what loneliness was. And I understand why there was such a loneliness and how to actually overcome it. So to start off with, I always like to start off with a story and I can't help but telling a joke to begin with. So this is this evening's joke about loneliness. I was trying to find what's an appropriate joke in my repertoire of used and well-worn jokes, but so which is topical as well? There's these three men who were victims of this tsunami. They were washed away, but fortunately, they managed to survive by being washed up on a desert island. There was the American, the English man and the Australian man. Now, I know I was born in England, but I've been in Australia for a long time now. So. But anyway, it was 3 or 4 months and people stopped searching for tsunami survivors, so they were in big trouble. On this desert island, there's plenty to eat and lots to drink. But they're getting terribly lonely. And one day, a bottle washed up on the beach said, of course, if you're in such a situation and you've read other people's jokes, you know you should rub that bottle because there might be a genie in it. There was a genie, otherwise it would be no joke. And the genie came out. And according to tradition, which is well known in all religions, that they can only give you three, um, three wishes. And so the genie said, is three of you. So that's one wish each. What would it be? And of course, the Americans said, I wish I was back in New York in a diner, having a proper meal for a change. And straight away, as soon as he made that wish it was granted, he disappeared from the island and he was in a diner in New York having a nice big hamburger. Oh, he was just so happy. And I asked the Englishman said, what was your wish? And he said, oh, I wish I was in a pub, a nice English pub in front of a pint of beer. And as soon as he made that wish it was granted, though, he was in a nice smile. His old country pub in England, in front of a nice warm pint of beer. Oh, he was in heaven. And they asked the Australia what do you want? And he said, well, I know maybe I should be at the footy match or no, maybe I shall be at the Buddhist Society on a Friday night. And he said, I can't make up my mind. I wish my two friends were back here to help me decide What's the party? How it happened, certainly for. Now we're getting serious about loneliness. Because it happens to us from time to time. The people are lonely. But. Sometimes there's the first aspect of loneliness. It is that sometimes we this, like all states of mind or states of life, they always have the positive and the negative to it. And part of our problem when facing the difficulties in life is again, always look at the negative part of it and not actually seeing the benefits of loneliness or aloneness. Rather because wonderful being alone, you know, you don't have to sort of, uh, you can decide what TV program you want to watch without, like with somebody else, you decide what to eat, you can decide what you want to do and when you want to do it. There's an incredible amount of freedom being by yourself, but there's also there's some, uh, dangers or some, uh, non benefits. Uh, some what's it called suffering about being by yourself not having someone to talk to, to share moments with. There's also some, um, bad side of being by oneself. And this particular aspect of the good side and the bad side of all situations was really brought to mind in one of the classic stories, which I bring up every now and again. I'm not sure in the last time it was, I brought this up, but it was a classic case when some years ago, two Thai ladies, they came to see me. And they were sisters. And now they came after our meal to actually ask their questions. And they had problems. They wanted to see a man to try and find some solution for their problems. There were different problems because the first one who the problem was her husband, she was married to be married for a long time and they had some marital problems. In fact, she couldn't stand her husband and say, why didn't I? Should I get divorce? I should also get some advice and try and work through these problems. But you know, she was turning towards divorce. So now he's telling her, look, you know, to see the nice part of your husband, he's not all bad. Now, when you get married, you see the beautiful side of your husband, and you need to get into not about his faults. And when you want to get divorced, you get denial about his good parts and things. Why you married him, he says. The husband in that song. So I told him about trying to sort of get him to see the nice side of her husband. Actually, there's a story. I'm just going off on a tangent now. This is a wonderful story, which I was told in Singapore some years ago about a very, very skillful marriage counsellor. Because he had a similar problem. A client came to her and said, I've been married for many, many years now, but my husband doesn't show any interest in me anymore. In fact, he comes home late from the office. I don't know for sure, but, you know, I think he might be having an affair with another woman. And I said, I want I want to get divorced from him. And the marriage counselor was very smart. He said, look, now, he probably wants you to get divorced from him. So if you get divorced from him, you're doing exactly what he wants to be very happy. He said yeah and said, no, this is what you should do. You really want to get his own back? Don't get divorced yet. What you should do is that he try and, uh, find a nice do a bit of a facelift, get a nice hairstyle, get some really nice clothes. Because after a while, see if you can actually get him to fall in love with you again. It may take a while, but you know it can be done Be really nice to him. Really tender, really kind. Do all the nice things which, you know, you think he likes. And the plan is that when he starts to like you again, and especially when he starts to get in love with you again, then divorce him. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. So that was the plan. Because you're divorced, somebody wants you to get divorced and, you know, to do what he wants. So she got a really nice outfit, did herself up. Was really kind to him and very, very pleasant. And every week or two, the marriage counselor would actually have a visit. So what's going on? How's it going? So let's see. It's working because he's coming home earlier. So great. Keep it up. And every two weeks he started coming home earlier being a more kind to her, a bit more tender, bit more, um, more loving. It was working. And then it came to a point where she didn't turn up for her counseling sessions for about a month. And so the counselor called her at home and said, what's going on? We haven't, you know, you haven't called, you know, is he sort of becoming kinder to you? He said, oh, yeah, he's becoming more sort of tender, more loving. Oh, yeah. And so does he fall in love with you? He said, yes. He has fallen in love of me And the counselor said, great, now is the time to divorce him. Oh, no, he's so nice. And as I've been clad in the long run, actually, to get to get that man sort of back in line by being kind to them. But anyhow, if that doesn't work for your for your marriage, this lady had had another solution for her marriage because she was telling about the problems with her husband. And so, you know, when I sort of figured there was no sort of solution there, I started talking to, um, her sister. So what's your problem? And her problem? That she was single. She couldn't find a partner. And when I suggested the obvious solution, they weren't interested. It's obvious. Then you've got a husband you don't want. She wants the husband swap. It's logical. But the. The deepest part of that story was that I told them afterwards. I talked to the the wife. I said, you've got what we call like wife suffering, relationship, suffering. And you think if you can get rid of that husband that you'll have no suffering anymore. But if you get rid of your husband, you will have the stuff in which your sister has, which we call single person suffering. It's a completely different type of suffering. But you've got rid of the relationship, suffering. Now you've got single person suffering and you have a single. If you go and find a nice partner, you won't have your single person suffering anymore. You will have married persons, probably. So all you're doing is just changing one type of suffering for another. And this is actually with loneliness or aloneness. Sometimes we look at aloneness being by ourselves. Sure, there's a lot of suffering which is there being by alone, being by yourself. But if you get another partner or a friend or someone else to be with you, it's not that the problem disappears, it just changes its shape and changes its form. Instead of having lonely suffering, you have being with others, suffering instead. So know that and know that with all situations in our life, there's never any. Perfection in the sense is always happiness, always wonderful. You just change in one particular type of problem for another problem. The problem with loneliness is chained to being a problem, being in society, being with others as socializing. And I think that we should all remember that, because then instead of thinking that this is a problem, everything will be okay. Once I find a friend, a partner, once I could join a club. That's not true. Other problems come in this in their stead. So because of that, that people say, well, what's the point? Okay, I'm now I'm by myself now with other people. Now I'm by myself again. This is some sort of way out of all this. And of course it is a way out of this and have always changing our situations and thinking that once I change my situation, once I change my job, once I change my partner now, once I'm by myself or once I'm with others. Once my kids grow up, once I become a man, once I stop being a man, once I do go here, once I stop doing that, I think that that's going to make us happiness. No, the point of life, the wisdom which comes from us is actually if we're by ourselves. Instead of saying the problem with being by ourselves, see its beauty, see its benefits, see the appreciation of being by oneself, and if one is without us, stop looking at the problems of being with others to see its beauty, its wonder if being able to share once ty with another person. So it's changing from the negative attitude, thinking, oh, this is terrible, this is wrong, and change it to a positive. It's what I call out the relationships we have with the moments of our life. It's not the moments themselves which is the problem. It's not our situation, our circumstances, which is the problem. It is how we relate to it. It's not just being alone, which is a problem is how we relate to being alone. That is the problem. It's not being married, which is a problem is how we relate to being married, which is a problem. It's not just sitting up here and talking to what, 300, 400 people here and maybe over a thousand on the internet. That's not the problem is how we relate to that. That's a problem. So it is a relationship problem, but a relationship in the deepest sense of the term, actually, how we relate to what we were experiencing and in our practice of Buddhism, and that person meditation and our practice of things, the thing in itself is never the problem is how we look at it. That is a problem someone was asking me to actually to also include in this talk the fact that there is a new pope, a Catholic pope now, and talking about sin. I mean, what actually is said, how how can we relate to a sort of a new pope, or how can we relate to another religion? It's never the religion, which is the problem is the relationship. That is the problem. So how we relate to these things, how we relate to that person, how we relate to the things of our life. And I mention that because we had a wonderful afternoon yesterday, having the nine of the monks from the Benedictine monastery in Tunisia who came to our monastery down the serpentine, as they do once a year, and for an afternoon of discussion about spirituality. And this was a special occasion, because SB's were there as well, and they were doing a documentary on this very wonderful exchange, which we have. And of course, just after 1 or 2 minutes we forgot the camera was there. And we're having this wonderful exchange from the Benedictine monastic perspective and a Buddhist monastic perspective. And we went on for about 2 or 3 hours, really sort of some deep discussion about the nature of God or the transcendence, and is how we relate to those things. And it was always, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, I would press it. I agree with you. And the people are actually doing the documentary, the the reporter and also the cameraman were amazed, astounded. And afterwards they said it was only supposed to get a few minutes for part of a documentary, but there's a whole documentary in what they filmed yesterday. So excited to see just how two different religions can relate together so well. And even though there are two different truths, how we can relate them together and build up something which we have in common is not the fact if you're a Christian or you are Buddhist, or you're a girl, or you're a boy, or you're Sri Lankan or you're Australian or whatever. It's how we relate to that. That is where we put sort of the effort in our life. It's not that Christianity is the truth, and this is one of the problems with that Pope, if he goes that path, is going to create a lot of problems. It's not the Buddhism is the truth. The truth lies in the relationship between Buddhists and the Christians. That's where the truth lies. And if that relationship is anger war, I don't want controlling domination or even just trying to destroy when we know that relationship is not truth. But if it's a one of listening, respecting, uh, discussing, uh, love, peace and that relationship, that's what, you know, is truth. Which is why I always say that when the Muslim Taliban destroyed those big Buddha statues in Bamiyan, they can't destroy Buddhism that way. How they could have destroyed Buddhism is if the Buddhist got angry and wanted revenge. You destroyed our Buddhas. We're going to destroy your mosques. Then they would have destroyed Buddhism, which is the relationship which we have with the events which happen in our life. So someone hurts us. They destroy our possessions. How do we relate to that? Are we really creating this peace, this understanding, this positive way of saying, what can we do with this? So we don't create more destruction, but we create more peace, more harmony. We go forward rather than backwards in life. So when it comes to something like loneliness, they are alone and it's not going to destroy your happiness. It's the relationship you have to being alone that can destroy your happiness if you allow it. So we look at being alone. Why is it a problem? Can't we just enjoy being by ourselves? I love being by myself, but I also love being with you guys. And sometimes I live a very, very strange life. I live a life of extremes because many of you know, it's 2 or 3 years ago, but I spent six months in absolute solitude where I never even saw another human being for six months. I don't talk to them. I saw a few kangaroos and snakes and all these other animals, but not human beings. That's for six months. And it was only a few weeks ago when I was in Colombo. Now. That's why I was giving a talk in the middle of this crowd of 10,000. Now that's extremes. One moment. So 10,000 people are looking at you. And a few years before, no one even knew I was there. Completely disappeared. Now it is both situations. It wasn't six months of solitude, which was a problem or difficulty at all, is how I related to that. That was slow, which was between me and that experience. It's the same when you're talking to 10,000 people. It's what's between you and those people. That's what you focused on. When you actually look what's between us? Here we actually we let go of the sense of self and them, me and you. Or when you're by yourself is me and nobody. This is that was in between is where the problems lie. So it didn't really matter what I was experiencing. It always became a matter of how I'm experiencing that. What am I doing about it? How am I relating to this? And when you understand that's the reason why we can get into suffering, or that's the reason why we can get free of suffering. So many opportunities come into place of how to deal with those many occasions in your life. But if no one else is going to be around, when I say what places where no one else can be around, sometimes, you know, you may be sitting here in this hall of 300 400 people but still feel very alone, still be inside of yourself and relating to this experience as being alone. Sometimes, as you know, loneliness is in a whole crowd of people. Sometimes you feel that, sometimes loneliness, it can be just in your own room or in your own home when no one else is around. That can be there as well. So sometimes you can't detect loneliness. People can be with others, but still be very, very lonely. Which is why it does happen. And it's such a tragedy when you do find people committing suicide and they are so lonely and you wonder why we've got a family. It's all together. We meet together, we go out together. But they are lonely. It's how they're relating to those times in their life when no one else is around. And they are the majority of your your time in this world. This was one of the sayings I think of the Buddha, but certainly I remember my teacher Raja and I used to say this a lot. He said, you're born alone. You die alone. And much of the time you spend in between is alone. I remember that saying, because one of my friends who's the abbot of the monastery in New Zealand, he told me he went back to his mother in Canada. And when he was talking about Buddhism, he said, well, your boy, I was born alone. I would die alone. And I said, no, you were. And I was there with his mother. And that was the end of trying to convert his mother to being a Buddhist. But. There's one thing where I found out that a lot of the other monks. Monks that you cannot teach your mother anything She's taught us since she was small. This is a life. I gave up on my mother a long time ago. Other marks can teach my mother that I can't. No way. But anyhow, back to being, like, alone. It is. And it's a lot of truth there. Because when you wake up in the morning, you know you're alone. There you are again. And you have your thoughts, feeling your body. Even it may be your wife, your husband next to you. You still wake up a lot. And so this is where we can actually learn how we relating to that, that feeling there, that being there and being by oneself. And I've been trading myself for many, many years and I just do it automatically now when I wake up in the morning. You know, my first thought usually is good morning me. Nice to see you again. And it's great to be able to have that friendliness to this first moment when you wake up. And the last thing I do before I go to sleep at night. Good night. Have a nice sleep. Me? Now estimating that's a joke, but I do that and it makes a lot of difference to your life. It's a simple thing, and sometimes the simple things we think don't really count very much. They're not valuable. You want some other sort of great technique to be able to sort of get, in a sense, of in touch with ourselves and friendliness to ourselves to overcome this loneliness. But no, that really works, because it starts the day off with this beautiful feeling of fanciness towards yourself. You're relating in a positive way just by the feeling of good morning. Sometimes I have great fun as a mug, especially in the early years or whenever I go to places where I don't really know monks very much. It's not so much fun now in Perth, because people have got to know who you are and they recognise you as monks. But when you first came here, or for example, when I went to see my mother in England for the first time and you're walking down the streets of London, you know what English people are like. It's not just the stiff upper lip. The whole of them is stiff. My. And so I was going down these streets. Every person I met, and no matter who they were, I say, good morning. Good morning. And I know English psychology. If someone says good morning to you have to say good morning back, even if you don't feel like doing in it. Some weirdo in a brown row was saying it to you. It was psychological pressure. And I put all this psychological pressure on all these people with a big smile. Good morning. And said, oh, good morning. Good. It was great fun making people do this. That's great fun being a monk, because as soon as I see someone weird, I want to go along the other side of the road. I don't know if you're going to convert them. Are you going to attack them or something? One of the best times I was when I was in the Midlands of England, and my mother used to come from Stoke on Trent and so some relations in the Midlands, and I went to go and see them, because when you go there you're going to see this relation, and that relation takes a long time. But anyway in the morning, yeah, I want to walk, have a bit of exercise. So I was walking around the streets of Stoke on Trent and all these people were pointing at me and laughing. As early afterwards, I found out there was a circus in town, and they thought I was one of the crowds. I thought, what a wonderful thing. I don't mind making people laugh, so I never got upset. I thought, what a wonderful opportunity. What a great privilege to create some laughter in Stoke on Trent, on a sort of a November sort of cold morning. So when you don't worry what people think of you, you never get upset when people laugh. Remember that one great saying, which I've said here before, it's actually in my little book. If anybody laughs because of your appearance or what you said, always make sure you laugh as well, because then the world or any person can never laugh at you. They can only laugh with you. It's a beautiful saying. So when you do something absolutely stupid and ridiculous, you make an idiot of yourself. You laugh, you laugh as well. Then the whole world lasts with you. Never laugh at you. And so this old ego and this loneliness is selfishness starts to disappear. And this is actually where I wanted to leave this talking to the one of the reasons why people get afraid of loneliness. It is because of this. This self business which we have because we have this thing called an identity and it's pay off a loan. This is an identity crisis. When we buy ourselves, we don't know who we are and what we're supposed to do and how we relate to to life in itself. Too often we have these stereotypes that you're supposed to have friends you're supposed to be married to, supposed to have kids, or you're supposed to have somebody there. And being alone. We have the identity crisis not only feeling like a failure, we're no good. We're hopeless, we useless. But also we have the the not knowing how we fit into things in the world. This having an identity, fitting in, being sort of someone who is somebody in this world is such a strong, uh, demand of an ego of a self. And it becomes, you know, always playing roles. We're always trying to fit in, doing things. I remember too, sometimes as a young man, when I used to go and watch watch soccer in London. Just how you felt you were somebody when you actually joined in that crowd of maniacs shouting for a soccer team? Well, how are the people if they go over to one of these western derbies in Fremantle versus the Eagles? Why people enjoy that? Because now they've got an identity. They're an equal supporter of the Dockers supporter. And when we make these identities, these social selves which we have, they are like not two selves, but take off the beard. It's like so we put ourselves in these little prisons. Sometimes we feel good in there for a while, but we don't really have any freedom because eventually we'll have to stop that. Being in a soccer soccer crowd, or being in the footy crowd, or being in a marriage or being with other people, or being in the crowd. Being in our group, we can't stay in that forever. And when we are out of that uh, little what is it called? Um, identification matrix, then we feel lost. We don't know who we are, what we mean. It is an identity crisis. So often when we actually think of actually who is who we think we are. So often we define ourselves by our family, by our marriage, by our job, by our physical relationships in the world, which I think is one of the reasons why when people go through divorce, it's not just like losing a loved one, it's losing an identity, which causes a great deal of of angst and suffering. When you by yourself is not just, you know, not knowing what to do. This is not knowing who you are is one of the problems. And this is actually where Buddhism, of probably all religions and paths can really come to the rescue, because the rescue comes from this incredibly powerful and deep teaching of the Buddha called non-self. In our world, we always encourage to make identities. I am the monk, but when I was in Stoke on Trent, I wasn't a monk. I was the clown And I just had the invitation today from Singapore just a few minutes ago that they wanted to do a because apparently in Singapore there is a controversy. The government of Singapore wants to open up a casino and the different religions are actually some are fighting it, some are, you know, questioning it, some are supporting it. And you know what's happening over there. But they said they wanted actually to get me to go over there during the rains retreat. I had to refuse. And they wanted actually to me not to give a talk, but take part in a play, in a skit, in the comedy routine. And that was actually quite attractive to me. To this. University. I would have said, yeah, because that way I wouldn't be a monk. I'd be like the comedian and the actor. And I don't know, it's among these days sometimes you'd like to slightly changing your roles and being something different. Was it that time? That was a very funny, a funny occasion when many years ago, when I was not the abbot and not so fat, I used to be like, very, uh, active on the building sites of our monastery. I was a main builder of my monastery. But, you know, I've learnt how to delegate. And now all the other monks do it. It's really great. But I remember on this one occasion I'd been working. And when you actually working, you know, you wear you out. So you're under robes, and if you actually build it, you get very dirty. You just can't help it when you're mixing concrete or you're laying bricks or you're shoveling dirt, you're going to get dirt over you. So we just finished the morning work. We've been laying some concrete or making some cement or something, so it's all covered with another gray splotches of cement all over myself. And I was actually walking back to the, uh, dining hall now for the lunch. And it was actually a sweet Lankan lady that was had come to visit. And like many people who come to our monastery there, they're very well dressed, you know, it's a monastery. It's a place of religion. You've got like, not your Sunday best, but I think it was her Tuesday best she was wearing. And so she came out to me and is the first time they said no, I will come to bring some food for the monks. Now where should we go? And I said, well, look, if you go up into that dining room over there, you wait up there. The abbot will be round in a few minutes. I told her I was the abbot. And I asked her. My heart had a very quick shower. It's amazing how quick you can have a show on your mind for five minutes. Dry myself up, put on some clean robes. I'm going to go and see. You had a nice little chat with her before she offered the food, but afterwards, you know, she said, oh, it's really inspiring. Really good monastery here. But if you don't mind me saying something, you should tell some of your monks to dress properly, because I just came across that monkey like. And he was a mess. He was sloppy. That's not life. But I said, I'll tell him. I'll tell him that. But it wasn't me. And I don't mind to speak to see the really the sloppy dirty labourer. Or sometimes, you know, the abbot, sometimes the wise teacher, just sometimes a person doing a comedy routine. The other thing, which I always remember again, a certain conman in Melbourne after one of my talks, is one of my prized moments. I'd always remember, you know, there's some occasion has happened to you in your life which, you know, just imprints itself on their mind, some of the happy moments. You know that if I wrote my biography, this will be one of them. When he came up after my talk and he said, I really come to compliment you. Not so much on the drama, but your your comedy and your time. Where do you get your material from? He said. And then he announced himself he was actually a comedian on the television in the Melbourne Comedy Club as will Lankan Boy. Maybe you may know him. I don't know these people, but anyway, he offered me a job I. Have a recent job at the Melbourne Comedy Club. I thought for a while, shall I shut up? I said, no, I don't think the theatre West Australia would let me go to Melbourne. But anyway. Sort of. Now, what role are you? Are you the serious monk or are you the comedian? Are you the worker? Are you the meditator? Just on his own. Hours after hours. Are you the person who can sit up and give a talk to thousands of people, or go in front of the television, either a Buddhist or are you the Catholic who talks hangs out with the Catholic priests? Who are you? Now, this is a wonderful thing with Buddhism. And Buddha said, look, you don't have to be any of those things. You can let go of this identification with being a woman, with being a man who being American, we're being oh, we're being sick. And Buddha actually said as wonderful, saying that even though your body is sick, your mind does not need to be sick. It's beautiful, say, because you can talk for hours just on that one. Say even though your body is sick, your mind doesn't need to be sick. You don't need to identify with that sickness. Yeah. My body's sick, my body's dying. My body's got cancer, but not my mind. I don't have to identify. I am not that sick body as a powerful thing to do. If you can do that, it's amazing to sickness and pain can be there, but you can be laughing and telling jokes at the same time. It can be done. It has been done to show my ecumenical spirit. One of my favorite people has said Lawrence, the reason why he's one of my favorite people. Because when he was being burnt on the stake, I think it was actually burnt on sort of this, this iron grid or something is like being barbecued, literally. No. Because, you know, I'm very fortunate these days because I say some sort of controversial things, but we don't have such punishments anymore. Otherwise I'm sure they will. Absolutely. But he was actually being he'd done said something really radical at the time, which nobody got or something. And. He was being given the final punishment. But the great thing about this fellow as a Catholic among Saint Lawrence was his final words. Now you've all probably experienced like the pain of being burnt, just your fingers you may have. So burn your fingers. I was told, actually, the pain of burning is actually one of the worst possible pains a human being experiences. Now, birthdays are terribly painful. And here is a man being burnt alive, charred, burning war. And his last words were, turn me over this side to that. He cracked a joke. And I thought, wow, I wish I could do that and see that he was really in great pain, but he could actually transcend that and say, no, that's the world I don't need to relate to in that way. I can't do anything about it And there was like the compassion, because he probably saw all those people watching and being burnt alive. It's not a pleasant thing. They're probably all miserable. He decided to cheer them up. Not thinking of himself or even of his body, but transcending it. That can be done. It has been done. You can do it as well. So if he can actually do that, surely we can actually transcend loneliness. How we do it is say, it's not me who's lonely since there's no one there. That's all. But I'm never lonely. This. And this is always somebody there. Who's that? You were always here. How could you be lonely when you are your best friend? Or is it because you are your worst enemy? Now, this is again where we get into some very deep ideas of what loneliness is all about. Sometimes people hide from themselves in their relationships with others. Sometimes people hide from themselves by going and running around and doing things and making themselves busy. Why are they doing all this for sometimes I really wonder. People work so hard. Why do you work so hard to get a bigger house? That's why many people, they got a nice house. I think why you can retire now. Put a bit of money aside. You can retire. Said no, no, no, I've got to get a bigger house investment. They say we'll get another house, a second house, another one to worry about investment. They say, how big a house do you need? I know the answer to that question. A house which is made of wood, six foot long, two foot wide, maybe one foot high. That's. How are you going to end up in. Oh, your children will get the rest. Oh, Mr. Costello. Yeah. So why are you working so hard for Mr. Costello? For. This. So I think. Is that the reason why people work so hard? A lot of time is because they're running away. I don't know how to be stud. And I had to be peaceful. What are they running away from? The running away from themselves a lot of the time. Sometimes people say, you monks, you just, you know, into escape. You're escaping from the real world. I said, no, no, no, we're actually facing the real world. We're facing ourselves. Merely people are gonna retreats or covers, stay in a place like our monastery just for a few days. Wow. There's nothing to do. So can we do some charging in the morning? No. Can I do some work, too? Sleeping now? Can I do something? No. Stay in your room and do nothing. And it drives him crazy. Why? Because we have to actually stop and face themselves and find out who they are and why they stop and face them. So it's after a while they find you not as bad as you thought you were. And after you find them as bad as you thought you are, you can actually get to like yourself and be at peace with yourself and even your crazy mind. That's okay. It's not the crazy mind, it's how you relate to it. Tell all those meditators your mind is going all over the place. Welcome. It's nature. Let it be peace. Friends with yourself. Then it becomes still. But if you start to be a control freak, you get into all the suffering of life. The controlling is the wrong relationship with what you're experiencing. So if you're by yourself. Start running away from being by yourself. Face it. It's like the old story of when you run away from ghosts. The ghosts have power over you. But if you stop, turn around, face the ghost, and you got power over the ghosts. It's the ghost. Then starts running away. And the told that story before. But in the early life, as a monk, when I used to go and scare the ghosts in a monastery did in Thailand, I told that story that I was telling again. When just because our monastery in town is full of ghosts. Absolutely chockablock. Could have been burning bodies there for years and years and years and years and they hang out there. So when I went around to go and see them and those were nowhere to go and say hello, literally. And they are, you can see I said, yeah, sure. Ah, I started running away. They served as a ghost. Now you know if. If they think you know they got power, that you you can't see them. And of course, they got little power over. You can mess around, but if you can see them when they get afraid, you got more power than they have. So when you actually faced the ghost, this is almost like a metaphor as well. If you face your fear of of of fear or loneliness, you face it instead of running away from it. How? What is this? And actually you find it's not such a big deal. Then loneliness will be afraid of you. When loneliness is afraid of you, it's not loneliness anymore. It's this beauty of being by oneself. It's like a oneness. Lonely. You take the Y off the end. You take the the l the hell out of it. Two hells. One at the beginning, one at the end. And you got this beautiful oneness in the middle. So that only becomes like oneness. And it's now the goal of so many religious paths to come to oneness, the unity and non-duality of existence. And there you can have it. And the beautiful silence and oneness of this moment. But it's not two people anymore. It's not ten. It's not hundreds. Not a thousand. Just this beautiful oneness. Yeah. You get a unity. Isn't that spiritually uplifting? Which is why we have the whole tradition of hermits in spiritual life. But we've also had the tradition of communities as well. And I was talking with a Benedictine monks. I was saying, basically our monastery is a community of hermits. We come together for a short time now to have our dinner now where we eat together. But afterwards, you know, everyone splits as soon as they can. You can see even monks, they just get the food in the bowl and they're off to spend the rest of the time by themselves. Even like I said, you know, he's been on a retreat for a couple of weeks. Haven't seen. I still see him just in brief when he came to one of the talks. Hence, then what is up to? He's disappeared for all this time. It's great. This is what monks do. They just vanish. So disappear into the great void of our monastery. I say, what did I do that for? Because in that disappearance, you go even further. Than just being at one. Remember? Lonely. You take the wire off the end. No questions. Take the hell out of it on both ends and you get one. And the next stage is to add the N in France. None. This is actually the path of actually the path of religion. Sometimes you notice that they say in ancient times it was like polytheism, like many, many gods. And then we moved to the one single God, the oneness of things. And in Buddhism went further and went to the the oneness of things, which I thought is a great you can't go further, nothing. That's the infinite, that's the end. And this is what happens when you sort of by yourself, first of all, is you there? But to overcome that loneliness deeply, you disappear. And when you can disappear in that oneness, it's not lonely anymore. It's nothing left. And how does that oneness disappear? It's because we have this ego as me. The one, the one in charge. And this is the relationship problem. Because when we control things, we manipulate things. We grab things. We want things that strengthens this one of us. And that's a danger because we're the stronger that one is. It's not just the relationship which we have. We have to have more relationships the more we think we're here. But it also means a further we are away from this disappearing from melting, from going into the great void where there is no oneness, no more pettiness. So it doesn't make any difference when you're in front of a crowd of a thousand, or you're just by yourself when you know there's no one there anyway. How many people are I giving this talk to today? No one. There's no one here. Hands up if you're here. See? No for the hand up. So when one understands about how to let go of this idea of a self, when I let go of the idea of a self and just disappear, you also let go of all this controlling and all this manipulating, this fighting. And of course, that's where the loneliness disappears. You are letting go. You are merging into the moment. You are allowing this moment to be. When there's no fighting it. When there's no conflict. There is an emerging into oneness. And from that oneness into nothingness. And that is the end of loneliness. And it's also the end of togetherness is when there's no space between you and what you're experiencing. There's no other. There's no air left anymore. So this is why somebody asks in this question they wrote to me, does meditation help? Of course it helps, because when we're meditating, we're learning how to let go, to start controlling, to appreciating things as they are. In the beginning of this evening, I told you how to meditate. It doesn't matter if the dogs are whining because the there's a policeman has his silence. It doesn't matter if some kids are whispering. It doesn't matter if people are coming in in the back. It doesn't matter if someone's farting or whatever they're doing. It's how you're relating to it that's a problem. And if you're if you're relating to it in a peaceful way. Accepting the door of my nose is open to that smell. It's open anyway. You can't close it. So whatever it is, if you open your heart to it, you see, it's a peace in. There's no problem. And I've even noticed this is actually something people notice in meditation. The more they let go, the more peaceful they get, the more they feel they're dying. People have said that that sometimes they're meditating. So I can't go any further like I'm dying. It's like, great, this is what we're doing. We're here to the south. The me I was. It causes the loneliness which causes the heavy to have somebody around, which causes a controlling that's disappearing. You are dying, but in its place, you're getting to this beautiful oneness. And then nothingness was dying deserves to die. That which separates you from the world, that which blocks you off from being part of things. It's wonderful. Just not wonderful. This terrible self business. Me? I'm a student. I'm a doctor. I'm a monk. I'm a man, I'm a woman. I'm old. I've got cancer. I'm a kid. No, you're not. When you can let all of that go. No matter what freedom you have. Yeah, the body's got cancer, but not me. Yeah, my body might be ugly, but not me. My body might be old, but not me. And that way, maybe nobody around. There's bodies, but not me. That way all the loneliness starts to evaporate and disappear. Not only loneliness, but togetherness. Too often people think they have to have relationships in this world. And so they go around all these lonely hearts clubs. But it's nice that people even come here to this temple looking for for partners in life. They do. So. But this is not the be all and end all of life. It's not the relationship with another person. It's not being alone. It's not. The popular is how we relate to these things. And if we relate to them in a wise way, in this beautiful, meditative way, we let go. We learn. We can relate to anything in meditation. That's why people can have a great pain in their body. They just relate to in a beautiful way. And it just it's just there. It's just so peaceful. They have this great noise. But a year ago. It's been a long time since I did this that we had this, um, uh, it was like a demonstration, some sort of something about the political situation in Burma many years ago. I think it was just when Aung San Suu Kyi first got arrested and some of the Burmese Buddhist community, we had this, this little demonstration outside the, uh, the Uniting Church opposite Hayes Street Mall. I think it must have been barracks trees about street, but it's just opposite anyway. And so when they got there, the demonstrator was just meditating. So we're meditating there for two hours on the pavement and all the noise of the high street. Now with this video, snow. So GameStop or sun were there those times was a time zone or something. Obviously with all this noise blaring out. Now, if you think those dogs were a problem, imagine meditating opposite time zone. And it's why the wonderful meditation, he said, this is going to test me out, sort of. Can you meditate in such a noisy place? And of course, how do you do that? You stop fighting. You don't stop thinking, oh, I wish they'd shut down this this noise. Now, can't we complain to the council about this noise? Or cancel and get me some earmuffs or some earplugs or something? That's not the way you get peace in High Street. Now, the only way is to leave it alone. Let it be is how you relate to the noise. That's a problem. Or as Atlanta famously said, and again, you could have another 2 or 3 talks on this, this say when we complained about the noisy villagers, because every now and again they would have a party. And when they had a party, he was a big one, really noisy. They got the most modern amplifiers and turn them up to max. So even when you're supposedly in a forest monastery, in these little huts, you could hear the noise as if it was right inside your your room with a ghetto blaster. And so of course, there's no way those villagers will listen to us. But with our teacher Arjun Shah, surely they'd listen to him. So I went to complain too much and said, look, they won't listen to us. And I've been doing this not just now. Once every couple of months has become popular. Once every couple of weeks now. Can you please tell these villagers to turn it down? The noise is disturbing us. And the great Master adventure. Just one sentence just makes us the whole difference in your whole of your life. He said it's not the noise disturbing you. You are disturbing the noise. Understand? If it's not the loneliness disturbing you, you are disturbing the loneliness. That is the problem. It's not the cancer disturbing you You are disturbing the cancer. Well. When you understand that, you understand how you can be free. You can't control the villages. You can't control this body with its illnesses. You can't control your life. Thinking I can have some people around all the time. And sometimes I can get rid of them. I've given up trying to control people a long time ago. I can't even control my monks. They know that. So when you start controlling things, you're not disturbing life. Therefore, life doesn't disturb you. There you find freedom. So the problem of loneliness is solved right there. The same way we solve the problems in meditation. We're sitting there. We don't disturb this moment. When we don't disturb this moment in meditation, we leave it alone. It's incredible just how still. How peaceful, how blissful you get. Incredibly blissful. More power, more bliss you could ever imagine. Spiritual power. It becomes a lesson for you. An object lesson into how to find freedom to peace and harmony. When you know how to do that in meditation, you apply that to all these other things in life. You're by yourself. I'm not going to disturb it. And then being by yourself is just so beautiful, so powerful, so meaningful when you're with other people. You don't disturb it and be with others. Become so powerful, so meaningful, so incredibly beautiful. Now you know how to escape from loneliness, from being with others. It's the relationship you have with it that is the problem and that is the solution. So there you go. Her talk tonight on loneliness and all other problems of life. In fact, I've taught you the secrets of Buddhism in everything. So you don't need to come back next week at all. Well, I guess you will.