Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing by Ajahn Brahm I think many of you who have been coming here a while or have read books on Buddhism or seen Buddhism on the internet, and there's often a discussion exactly what Buddhism is. Is it really a religion? Is it a way of life? Is it a philosophy? Is it a practice, actually? What actually is it? I often answer people that Buddhism is a religion for tax purposes. And it is a way of life. You know, if you're a monk and many people are committed, Buddhism is a way of life for them. For many people, it's a way of life. When you come into the Buddhist temple and you have another way of life when you go home. And it sometimes is the philosophy which people use to argue with each other. And that's perhaps the part of Buddhism which I don't really like the most personally, but I think it's something we should just use as an intellectual exercise, but it's something more valuable than that. And to me, I always thought that Buddhism really is like a practice. It's something which you do. So development of the body and the mind of your life, of society, which creates more repeat, more peace, harmony and well-being, which gives meaning to life. So it's like a practice. It's something you do which should give you results as you go along. So it's not something which is based on faith. You just have to believe until you die and then you know whether you're back the right horse or not. But it's more something which you do right now, and you can see results as you go along. So as a practice which brings our benefits, as it says in the one of the main charts, we do things practice here and now, in this very life, in this moment, to be seen each wise person for themselves now and understanding it. So like a practice, something which one does. There is a problem that very often what we actually do is letting go. We relax, we make peace. We open the door of our heart to this moment. We don't react. We become very passive. And sometimes people think, well, is that really what Buddhism is all about? Just being like doormats for everybody else? And, uh, this evening I want to address that problem by saying, what does a Buddhist do now? What is sort of the object of their striving in their religious or spiritual life? But what actually is basically in the Buddhist Eightfold Path, what actually is right effort? And I must admit that the effort to give this talk to tonight is not that great, because I gave a similar talk to the monks last Wednesday. So I'm being an environmentally sensitive monk by recycling my talks. But you weren't there at my monastery on Wednesday, so you didn't hear this. And sometimes people think, well, it may be that Buddhists are basically lazy. You don't have to do anything or anything goes, and you should not be attached to anything. And I still remember that and leader in his field. I won't say what the field was. That bag was for you at least. The very least you can say you did have style, but it's not quite the right style one would approve of. But one of his famous quotes, and it really made me laugh at the time and makes me laugh every time I remember it, because it's sort of Buddhist. But when you think of it, it's not Buddhist at all, he said. He was so detached. He was so detached. He wasn't even attached to detachment. Which was a great excuse to own as many Rolls-Royces as people would give you and live a very heedless lifestyle. But again, people in religious life, they do get confused, especially in Buddhism. What am I supposed to do? And I gave a talk to the monks that it's important to live life with efforts to set your goals, to really, actually, instead of just allowing just the lowest common denominator just to dominate your life. It's actually to set goals and work hard for them and strive for them. But the thing is, they should be the correct goals and basically the goals which you should really be striving for in your spiritual life are not talking about your your worldly life, what you have to do in the world. Because we each have our little jobs, you know, you have to feed your family. I have to feed my monks and you may have to build your house. I have to build my retreat center. You have to organize your office. I have to help organize the Buddhist society. So we each have our little sort of managerial and other responsibilities where we all work very hard. And of course, most of you know me that I do work very hard, but in the spiritual part of your life now, what actually should we be doing? And so I said the goals, which we should really be putting a lot of effort. Towards is to cultivate kindness, cultivate patience, cultivate peace, and cultivate. Stopping. Those are the four calls you can add a few more to. These is the not exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of what we really mean by what a Buddhist should be doing, what they should be striving for. Because as you all know, compassion does not come easy. It's everyone says, yes, I should be compassionate, I should be loving, and I'll kill anybody who says, I'm not compassionate. I'm a Buddhist. I'm compassionate. But the point is that very often that no, what we think our view of ourselves and actually the actuality is very different. If you don't believe me about your view of yourself and what you really are like, just ask your wife. Ask your husband what you really feel, what you really like. But the point is, we build up our ideas of ourselves and sometimes that we aren't compassionate or kind enough. And so that part of Buddhism is putting forth a lot of striving, a lot of effort to be kind, to be compassionate and finding strategies and ways to be kind and compassionate. It's not an easy thing to do. It doesn't come naturally because naturally, you know, we're born alone, as Ajahn Chah used to say, and that in our life we built up a sense of self-identity, and we do become very protective. Very often we do get hurt, and so that sometimes it's hard to understand what compassion really is. And it's hard to train ourselves to be compassionate. And we have to actually know what that compassion truly is. And obviously, one of the problems with developing kindness and compassion in this world is not balanced. So often, even today, you know that I was having a ceremony in somebody's house and I was telling them, look, if, you know, husband and wife are arguing. So there is not just the husband is upset. The wife is upset. If the rice is upset, the husband is upset. It's nobody wins. No. If somebody argues and they sort of think that they get the better of the other person, then both have lost. But if somebody forgives both of one because a partnership is together and I told a story, I'll introduce this straight away. For those people who have to leave early. And this is a story which I haven't told here before, because I got this over in Kuala Lumpur at one of the conferences. So every time I go away from here and I'm not here on a Friday night, I don't think that, oh, I'm having an easy night. I'm just gaining more material from over from my talks. And this was an argument. Not in a fair enough family, sort of, but on a family of people, a family of fingers, because the fingers were wondering which finger of the five is the most important. And the thumb spoke up first of all and said, I am the most important. I am the one which can oppose and make sure you can actually grip things. And I am the strongest and the fattest, I might be sure. But just like John Howard or Kevin Rudd, I got power. I've noticed they're all short people, the people in power these days. So the farmer said that I am the most powerful. Therefore I am the chief. And the next finger said, no, no, no, I am the one. When you say one watch figured you put, put, put up. This is the chief. And also I'm very useful because I can point to things. That's why I am the chief finger says the the index finger and the middle finger said, look, I'm the middle. I sort of keep all you together. I join you all. I'm also the tallest. You put your fingers up. Which one is highest? Me, says the middle finger. So I am the most important. And then the next finger said, no. When you get married, which finger does the ring go on? It's me. So I am the symbol of love and compassion and trust and commitment. So I am the spiritual finger in chief, so I am the most important. And lastly, the little finger says, well, what most people use me for. Is the dirty word. But even though I do the dirty work, he says, whenever you pray to a Buddha, I'm the one closest to the Buddha. She said, therefore, I am the most important, the closest to the Buddha. And the meaning of the story is those of you who do the dirty work, like take out the garbage or wash the dishes. You must be the most important part of the family because you're closest to the Buddha. And that's a good excuse. Many wives think that's a great excuse to get my husband to take out the garbage. See? Catch up. Process your closest to the Buddha by doing this, by doing the dirty work. But whatever it is here, that one can see that sometimes the compassion, the care. But we don't have the techniques to be kind, compassionate. It doesn't just happen. You have to make it happen. You have to train to make it happen. And you can put a lot of effort in your life becoming fit in your body, doing exercises. You can do a lot of efforts, you know, in your life, you know, becoming wealthy or getting your family together. But one of the most important things in life is being kind and understanding what compassion truly is. And it's amazing just how many people just haven't got a clue what kindness is. So much so that they usually sacrifice themselves for others. If you don't understand this, that there's. I'm sorry to repeat this story, but it's a very important story. It's the story of the seven monks in a cave, which comes from the book Opening the Door of Your heart. And I told this even just a few days ago about a group of people. And even last Sunday or so, in the talk I gave him, Rosamund Pike. And it's amazing just how many people here in Australia and also in Asia, just get the answer wrong all the time. I'll go through it very quickly, because some of you have heard the story before. Several monks in the cave practicing lovingkindness meditation. Really great monks. The monks were as follows. The head monk, his brother. Best friend. The enemy number four. The enemy never got on with the head monk, even though the monks together, you know, sometimes, you know, we have personality clashes with the best one in the world. Some people just don't get on with. And the next monk was a very old monk. He was so old, advanced in years that he could die any day. And the next mark was a very ill mark. A very sick mark. And again, he was so sickly that no one knew who would die first. The old man called the sick Mark. Both of them could die. That night they were sort of so close to death. And the last mark was the useless mark. Every monastery has one. I won't tell you who they are. Just like in a family or in a business, you only have to use this man, the son of Mark. You could never do any chanting. Whenever you meditate, you would fall asleep and start snoring. Who could ever remember anything from what the Buddha said and you know, was still there, though, anyway, because they were kind to him. So that was the last one on the seventh mark. And in that mark, that cave had me a great time meditating. But one day this band of thieves, these robbers found in that cave, and they want to take it over as their headquarters and their hideout. But of course, they wanted to kill all the monks so that no monk would tell the authorities where that cave was located. But the head monk. It's amazing. The head monk so usually got the gift of the gab. They were great talkers. They could talk the hind leg of a donkey, as they say, and they managed to talk the head of the robbers into letting all the monks go, except one who would have to be sacrificed so the rest could go free. So this is a question. It was up to the head man to decide who would be sacrificed. And when I asked people, I asked them, well, I'd go through the list again. I want you to say, what were you what what would you do if you were that head monk? Who would you sacrifice? And who remembers the head monk himself? There was his brother. There was his best friend. Who was the enemy, who he didn't like. But then again, was he the old monk? And the old man was going to die any day now and saved the sick man. You know, he was at the end of his life. And lastly was the useless monk and the useless monk. Never in his whole life had he done anything useful for anybody. So which did the head man choose? Should be sacrificed. Oh, now he said himself over there. Someone said, no one. Because you've read my book. I bet it's something like that to happen. But most people, and maybe you as well, if you haven't heard the story before, said he sacrificed himself. And that is the wrong answer. But that is the answer which most people say because they don't love themselves or that much because the answer actually was the head monk loved his brother no more, no less. Exactly the same as he loved his best friend. He loved even the enemy. No more, no less. He loved the old monk, the sick monk, even the useless monk. Exactly the same. His love was unconditional and just like often mentioned, because many people come from the Christian tradition, they grew up in it anyway. Even in the Bible it says to love your enemy or to love your neighbor. Sorry to love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn't say more than yourself. It doesn't say listen yourself. It says as yourself, no more, no less. It means to love yourself as your neighbor. Now, this is an important point here, but very often we love ourselves less than others, which is why we sacrifice ourselves. Why we say, yes, he gave up his own life. Which actually show that you don't love yourself as much as you love others. Now that's an important. That's the reason I keep telling that story. If you don't realize that compassion has to go both ways. And too often in life with sacrifices of ourselves, which is a bit of ill will. Non respect to yourself. I don't say you love yourself more than anybody else, because that gets into being egocentric and then you become really a pain in the backside. But if you love yourself as other people, love other people as yourself, then you understand what compassion truly is. It's unconditional, just like the sun shines on everybody without distinction. Labour party. Liberal party. Greens. George Bush by Salman bin laden and the Dalai Lama. The sun doesn't choose who they're going to shine on in the same way. According to Buddhism, the loving kindness or compassion goes without conditions. Now that's a powerful idea of what loving kindness truly is. And the reason why that this is something we aspire to, we train towards, we try and understand, is because when we are kind to ourselves in the same way we're kind to other people, it means just that we can forgive other people. We can also forgive ourselves just so we can tell other people, come on, relax. Take a break. We can tell ourselves, yeah, relax and take a break. Just like you can tell sort of. You know, a friend. I don't think too bad too much about, you know, that little mistake is only a small thing. You can do that to yourself as well. So you don't carry around so much pain of the past, so much burdens, so much lack of self-respect. Sometimes the psychologists tell me the lack of self-esteem is one of the biggest causes of depression and other sort of addictions in this world, whether it's drug addictions, whether it's alcohol addictions or other dysfunctional behavior, because we simply don't love ourselves enough. You can imagine what happens when you learn what compassion is and use it directly, evenly, not just to other people, to yourself, and even sometimes to your enemies. You know how to do that. The trick for loving the enemies is never to love them when they're right in front of you. It's called don't love the tiger. It's always to have the tiger at a distance. If you try and kiss a tiger when you're right in front of you, they'll. They'll chop your head off so you'll love them at a distance. What that means is that when your enemy is not in front of you, when it's not the problem, when you are away, safe, relaxed, at ease, then you think of them. When you think of them at a distance, you've got more opportunity of seeing a bigger picture. You're not sort of caught in that confrontation when they're right in front of you. With all of that bad speech and that bad memories, you can stand back, get a bigger picture. Maybe you can actually forgive them, because understanding the pressures or the difficulties they've been under, you can get a bigger picture when you're at a distance. But where do you get the bigger picture? At a distance especially, they're not sort of confronting you or giving you a hard time in this very moment, but you're at the distance there. It's much easier to have compassion as those of you who want to buy one of or not buy this. So we have some calendars for 2008. You've got some quotes, you know, which I put on those calendars just for donations to the, I think, the retreat centre. And one of the quotations on there is that, you know, if you get someone who's very angry at you and really gives you a hard time, remember you only have to live with them for a few minutes every day, but they have to be with themselves 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the rest of their lives. You only have to put up with them for a small time, and things like that give you an understanding of why you can be compassionate to people who hurt you. And not only that, we can also particularly develop. We develop thoughts. This is striving deliberate practice in the same way we practice at the gym that we practice in reading books to get some exam or we learn some other trade, whether it's tai chi or whether it's some Thai kickboxing or whatever, in order to sort of to achieve something. Now we are training to be kind, to be compassionate. And that's an important part of being a Buddhist should be important part of being any religion. And it's not just loving your group. It's just unconditional kindness. And it also goes to yourself and it also goes to life as well. And it also goes to your body. Now, to be kind to this body, as I taught at the beginning of this meditation, you learn what kindness is by being aware of something, soothing it, and seeing the amazing benefit that compassion has on just relaxing the body. Again, when you're harming your body, when you're hurting your body, we call that tension stress. You've got an ache in a body and you're actually scrunching up against it. It's actually a bit of ill will towards that physical feeling rather than just being with it, expanding it, loving it, being kind to it. And so when you learn what compassion is, it's amazing what you can do with your body. Sometimes that people think like monks are holy, especially the nuns, compassionate nuns, they can come and do the chanting on you and they can come and make you feel good. Why do you feel good in such situations? Because of the kindness and compassion power of such beings. Why do you feel really good when you have a nice little dog or a cat who comes and cuddles you? The reason is because they're showing you compassion. Compassion is a great healing force. So in religion, we make use of that. We particularly develop it. We get it very, very strong. We can snap any part of our body with that compassion and kindness. We can zap other people and we become even much better than a nice cuddly dog who we come home from work at a really hard day and everything's gone wrong, and this little dog comes and just so happy to see you wags his tail and just wants to nuzzle you. Doesn't that make you feel better? So have compassion is great. And then you can start doing the power of compassion even in your meditation. Because what compassion actually is, what this kindness would I say? Open the door of your heart is actually a non doing and non reacting and accepting and embracing her being with. That's why it is an effort, a striving which leads to peaceful calm, still states. That's why it's quintessential to the path of meditation, which brings this beautiful stillness. You cannot get to stillness with this aggressive, angry, violent striving. No more than any government can make peace by waging war. And you all know that if you read your newspapers. But how many people waged war in their lives thinking that's the way they're going to find some peace? They wage war in their family, thinking that they can actually get peace in their home or wage war against themselves. I'm going to beat this cancer. I'm going to sort of get my own way in the office. I'm gonna make it in this world. You'll never get success through such aggression. This is why that compassion part of things we know that that is an embrace. And that brings peace, that brings a settling of things. And if you can't do that at work, if you can't do that in your home, at least you can do that in yourself. And once you do it in yourself, then maybe you can start doing it in your home. And when you do it in your home, maybe you can start doing that in your office. When you do it in your office, maybe then you might start the Buddhist political party and bring some peace to the country or whatever, I don't know. But anyway, you have to start inside and that compassion brings up peace. That's why it's a trade, and that's why it's an effort which is required to develop the compassion in the same way. One of the other things which I was saying that we should practice hard to attain is to be patient, because those of you who know your Buddhism know one of the most important sayings of the Buddha was Kanti paramount or Politika, which means like patience is the highest of the spiritual practices. That's in the wider party of Moka. It's in the Dhammapada. It's actually part of the same verses which we have inscribed underneath the Buddha statue outside, you know, not doing anything bad, doing what is good, purifying the mind is the teachings of the Buddha. Here's the next verse, I think, either before or afterwards. So now the the patience is such an important quality. This is something we deliberately strive to attain and to grow and to make part of ourselves. Because sometimes we can be such impatient beings. Always what is done right now. Which is why that one of the other. I hope it's in that calendar. I can't remember now. One of my other favorite sayings is never do today what you can put off until tomorrow, because you might die tonight. Be patient, for goodness sake. Or as I said in Rosemont part to the delight of all the ladies in that little group, where do you go? Home. And you see how many dirty dishes there are in the sink before you start washing them and cleaning them? Check how many clean dishes there are stacked up in the shelves, and if there are more clean dishes than dirty dishes, quit while you're ahead. Because. Is that what life is really all about? Just cleaning dishes. Uh, just getting things out of the way. And that's why we call it impatience. Getting things out of the way. And of course, we get one thing out of the way. Two more things come in for you to do. And if you try and do that at work, they think you're more efficient. Your boss will give you more things to do. So the only real practice, which really makes a lot of sense is learning how to be patient, learning how to stop sometimes. And if patience means that you are there and it may not be perfect, the dishes may not all be done, but you can rest in imperfection. Never think that everything has to be just so before you can give yourself a few moments of peace. If you want to get everything perfect, first of all, you'll never find any peace whatsoever. I want to make sure my monastery is finished. First of all, before I can meditate, how would I ever be able to meditate? Sometimes people used to ask that question when's the monastery going to be built and finished? 23, 24, 25 years now we've been going. We still do a bit of building here and there, so it's never finished. No more than your house is finished as soon as it's built. You have to do repairs, maintenance, cleaning so things don't get finished unless we learn how to be patient and leave them alone. Wait till later. Because that's what patience is, learning how to wait. And sometimes you see, in our modern world we are so impatient. You see people at the traffic lights, either in the road or the traffic lights of life, and they just can't stop and relax. I was asking someone who comes for or has been to India many times, and this is something which I heard, but I went to Delhi at several times and I still haven't seen it. But if I haven't seen it, I'd really think that some Indian government, if not an Indian government, a local government, should actually put this into practice that the red traffic lights of India. So I was told when the lights turned to read the words on the lights, do not read. Stop, stop that. Don't have those letters. Instead they have the letters. Relax. Relax. Now, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing in Perth, Western Australia, if our government changed all the red traffic lights and when it went to red, very clearly on the red traffic light, you can see the words relax there. Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to stop the. I've read in the newspapers, some of our hospitals are just overloaded. And emergency departments that got queues of ambulances outside. And the reason is because we live such stressful lifestyles. So our Western Australian government can actually save a lot of money by building less hospitals, by just having relaxed lights at every traffic light, which means people will not get so stressful. They remember how relax and therefore they won't get so many heart attacks, so many other problems in their life. So it's not just in red traffic lights. There's so many other parts of our life. If we don't know how to be patient and relax and enjoy the moment and wait. Sometimes you only find peace when you know how to wait. To wait in a moment. Because the lack of waiting or the ability to wait is why we always run off into the future. For those of you who've been on meditation retreats, you know that part of the meditation is the eating food practice and the eating food practice goes like this. And those who have made meditation, you know this. But those of you, when you go home tonight, you have your dinner or you have lunch tomorrow, just be mindful of actually how you're eating because you will notice you'll have a morsel of food in your mouth which you're chewing. You'll have another on your fork or spoon which is waiting in line. There'll be another one heaped up on your plate while you're looking for what's going to come in next. You're normally about 3 or 4 spoonfuls ahead of yourself. And because you're not tasting the morsel in your mouth because you're looking at what you're going to have next, it means you're not fully enjoying your food because you can't enjoy it when you're not noticing what you're actually chewing, and because you don't enjoy it. The bile, saliva, all this other stuff which comes out from your system is not secreted in sufficient quantities to digest the food, which means you have bad digestion. You can see that because I'm a mindful monk, I have very good digestion. That's why I keep on putting weight, because it's digested so much that what actually comes out is hardly anything. I always come up with a different excuse every week for being overweight, but whatever. Well, you know that people do worry a lot and they're very thin. That's one of my other problems. I don't worry enough. Too much meditation, that's my problem. But no going back to sort of like being in the moment, being patient. And that's such an important thing in life to wait for things to happen rather than making them happen. Because when we know how to wait, it's almost like we're letting go of our control and allowing nature to do things. And too often is because we want things to happen. We are the controller. We are the control freak because we're impatient. We make things happen and we spoil everything. It's wonderful when you can just wait. When you wait, you can enjoy this moment. You can enjoy the sun so you can enjoy the the feeling of the wind across your face because you know how to wait for things. How to be in a moment. How to wait in the present. Because that's what happens when you're wait. You're here right now. And that's so important. When we do our little meditation, we put effort into knowing how to be patient, knowing how to wait, knowing how to not to do things, which is what waiting is all about. And enjoying these great moments in life was you're waiting in queue at the supermarket, with your waiting at the traffic lights. Whether you're waiting at home for the dinner to be ready, whatever it is, waiting is a beautiful moment, a moment of peace, a moment of rest, an opportunity to relax. So it's a strange thing that human beings, we've lost the ability to be patient. And because of that, we don't know how or even what peace truly is. We don't know how to enjoy the people around us because we're always busy going somewhere else. Most of life for many people is always going on to the next thing. Never waiting where we are long enough to enjoy the fruits of our life so far. To look at the scenery around us. To appreciate how far we've come. We don't know how to wait so that patience is a beautiful thing you should try and aspire for. Put forth effort, strive to learn patience and take opportunities until you know what patience is. You can be patient, you can understand what it is, and then you know how to be a patient person. When I go traveling, I have to wait so long in airports. It's a great opportunity to learn patience. And again, I love it there because there's some times that when you're there, you can't be giving a talk. I say this sometimes I have to keep walking and hiding from people if they know me. But in some airports, not Singapore Airport because everyone knows me there now, but in other airports of the world, you can just go there and you're a nobody. At last, no one comes up to you to ask you to sign a book or to say, please, can I ask you a question on meditation? So it's wonderful waiting, and I enjoy those moments when I've got nothing to do and go for a walk and exercise up and down instead of going. It's great also because we haven't got any money or credit cards, so I can't go shopping. It's great. Good advantage being a monk so you can just wait and enjoy the moment. The other thing which one can put forth effort in doing is learning how to stop, which is comes close to what patience is all about. Too often in life, we can't stop. We're always going to something else. And look at your life. When you go home, what are you going to do next? Can you just pause for a few moments in life instead of always doing things and going somewhere? So in a spiritual life, in any religion, this is another thing we strive for. We put forth effort to know how to stop. And when you learn the art of stopping, it's such a great ability of the mind. Now you're thinking of something, and sometimes your thoughts get so obsessive because you don't know how to stop them. It's amazing being a monk. There's something happens. You can just cut it and stop and just get peaceful. Something goes wrong. You can stop if you know how to. Let go of the past. You've trained yourself and not allow the past to infect the present moment. You don't have to have the past. Keep on coming into the present moment. It's just a bad habit, that's all. Because you don't know how to stop things. Think of all those problems you have, haven't you, so far today? All those difficulties which are there for you tomorrow. All those problems. Why can't we stop thinking about these things? Well, look at the basic stupidity of human beings. He called me a dog. And what do most people do? They say he called me a dog. He should not call me a dog. He called me a dog. You can't stop thinking about it. And you know, as I said to him many times, every time you remember that he called you a dog, you've now allowed him to call you a dog one more time. If they call you a dog and you stop when you let it go. They can only call you a dog once and it's gone. Why is it that people, they carry around the hurt of the day and they don't know how to drop it? If someone is hurt, you said something mean to you, abused you. Why do you allow them to continue hurt? Hurting you? Why can't you just stop and let it go? Bad habit, that's all. So we have the training things which you can do. You can strive to be smart enough to train your mind through meditation and other sort of therapies. And listening to dharma talks really helps. Listening to the talks, reading the books, just associating with other people of like mind. You can actually learn how to drop things to stop such a wonderful ability in our modern age. And you can see other people, they don't stop at all. They're always on the go. They're always doing something. Nuts. You. You never learn how to stop. Sit down and do nothing. Stopping is also a relaxing of doing. Nothing is an undoing, if you like, of the movement of our life. The practice par excellence for learning how to stop this meditation. You stop in the moment. You stop all this thinking by silence. You stop just the mind going to many, many things. That's what meditation is. It's pressing the stop button or the pause button. You just stop it. It's so much fun to stop. You find more joy where you are than you ever find anywhere else, no matter where you happen to be. It's one of the great secrets of spiritual life. All happiness comes when you stop searching for it, when you stop looking anywhere else, when you just stop in this moment and this moment builds up and you start to really feel a lot of joy, happiness and truth comes. So that's one of the things we have to strive to be able to do, to stop for. Perhaps the most important thing to strive towards is for peace. And so we start our day and say, today I am going to be peaceful. I'm going to make that the most important thing in my day. And what does that really mean? It doesn't mean just you can do whatever you want. What it means is you make peace with whatever you have to do. Because if you try and do whatever you want, you'll be fighting a world and you are making war. It's not making peace at all. The wonderful thing about peace making is you can do it wherever you are, with whatever you have. Even people who are sick and dying, you can make peace with that whole process by making peace with that whole process means you could accept it, be done with it, allow it to evolve. Rather than fighting a war. And this comes to a very important part of Buddhism, which again, is not emphasized enough. What I've been saying here is the effort called the right effort of the Noble Eightfold Path. And the second part of that noble Noble Eightfold Path, the right intention or the right thought, sort of joins together with right efforts, because the right intention, as I've mentioned to so many people who are do meditation, the right intention is intentions, aspirations of letting go, kindness and gentleness. The three right intentions which the Buddha taught 2500 years ago. And this is actually central to the Buddhist path of the Eightfold Path that's, you know, basic the heart of it. And so often people forget that we're using our mind with aggression, with ill will, with trying to get things. And that's actually not the Buddhist path. The Buddhist path is learning how to let go, learning how to deal with less. Learning how to need less. Because unless you need, the more free you feel. It's a world known you don't own your possessions, the possessions own you. You're not the proprietor of your house. You're the prisoner of your house. The less you have, the more free you feel. It's great being a monk with few possessions, but even I have possessions, and it's wonderful to actually to let them go sometimes. And I still, one of the most happiest memories of a monk was the time when I left the monastery after five years as a monk is called Where We Go Wandering. And it was part of the practice as a young monk in Thailand many years ago, after five years of basic training, you were asked to leave the monastery. Everyone was, and you had to walk, carrying all your possessions with you. You could not leave anything in storage. Everything you own was on your back. And sometimes here in Perth. Is he in his backpackers? And I feel so sorry for them. There's a huge backpack you've got there. There's so much, not even that. You see these kids going to school. Huge amount of stuff they have. But when you have to walk 20 to 30km a day, you know, in the hot parts of Thailand, you soon that much stuff go. And after 2 or 3 days I was carrying such a light load I felt the freest I've ever felt. Just everything. Just a bowl, a little bag and mosquito net umbrella. And it was probably less, maybe half the weight you, you, you hold when you go shopping. And that's my total possessions I had in the world and had no responsibilities could go anywhere. I wanted any monastery. You could have a bed for the night or some go arms around in any village and get some food for the day. Not the best, but enough to keep you going. Imagine that degree of freedom. He really was like a bird. Like a wild animal. Going wherever you want it. Completely free. And that won't understand what peace is. So you may not be able to achieve that in this life. At least you can move closer towards that if you can. Not only is that good for your peace of mind, you can't take it with you, as I keep on saying. So prepare for that moment by listening rather than getting more. I know it's bad for the economy, but it's actually good for your health. And it also means you can retire much earlier. You can only allow her to learn simply live simply. You don't need that much to survive. And when you don't need that much to survive, you're environmentally a very wonderful person when you're not consuming so much of the world's resources. You're more peaceful. Your house doesn't take that long to clean up. You can park your car anywhere, and no one will stay there because it's a simple car. There's so many you can actually don't have to have a burglar alarm. You can actually leave your door open, and a thief will take one look in there and go next door. Nothing for them. So simplicity has many advantages to it. I'm very glad. Pleased to see many people who've been Buddhist for a long time. They do live simple lives and good on you, but it's also brings more peace to your life. But it's not just like living simply brings peace to your life. We actually strive because sometimes there's some things in our life we just cannot control. There may be sicknesses. There may be changes of government. You don't like this one? You get that one or you like that one. You didn't like the previous one or whatever happens, you know, you sort of get the sack or you get a promotion, somebody else gets a promotion, you fall in love, you get divorced. There's so much of life you just cannot control. And the sooner you learn that, the better. And it's not your fault. Too often we take sort of, uh, when things go out of control too personally. As if it's your mistake. You did something. So be wrong. Save your children. You know, you bring up children in this world. You do your very, very, very best. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't work out. We shouldn't really blame ourselves. As long as you've done your best. What more can you do? Sometimes you have relationships. You try your very best. You're human. You got faults. The other partner's got faults. Doesn't work out. But don't lose your self-esteem. There's a moment you learn how to make peace with anything. Whatever happens. Painful, beautiful. So wonderful happens. Something really tough happens. You can learn how to make peace with it. You don't get agitated with it. You embrace it, you accept it. And it's wonderful. When you make peace with things, you may also peace with your responsibilities, what you have to do in life. Just saying a few days ago that we as a monk I have to do baby blessings and I, you know, I became a monk really to get rid of babies and kids. But baby, baby blessings what they do, especially if it's a male baby, they actually offer it to you, just like you and I offer like a set of robes to a monk or you ever food to a monk. They offer the baby to you. And I've still not yet done it. Many times I was still not used to. When you have to put a baby in your lap as a monk, I just like, you know, doing a lot of loving kindness, a lot of praying, losing all the power of my meditation to make sure it doesn't poo while it's on my lap. And usually I can't get rid of it quick enough. That's a little bit of blessing. And sometimes you have to sprinkle holy water on it. And most babies hate water. And so I assume you are asking me, it's like, okay, I've done the blessing. Off you go. Because the idea is that when you offer it to like the monk, it's like when you offer it to the monk, it's like it's, you know, the monk is almost like a godparent to it. And then I give it back and say, okay, it's, you know, now you've offered it belongs to the, the the monastery. Now I'm giving it back to you now, parents to look after for me. That's the idea. But usually I can give it. But even though I don't like doing that, you make peace with that. You just. Instead of arguing with you, you can't change it. So you allow it to happen and you make peace with it. Then you can enjoy it. Even things you don't like doing, you don't want to do. You find a, you know it's out of your comfort zone. You can still make peace with it. And so how many jobs are you to. Which, you know, you do your grit, your teeth. You have to do it anyway, but you grit your teeth. I don't want to do this. And you get yourself all stressed up and angry and upset. So what I can't change. I make peace with that. Learning how to make peace with things. This is a wonderful trick of the mind. It's why no, Buddhism was a peaceful religion because it knew how to make peace with things which other people already know how to make war with. Who knows how to make peace with things which other people would fight with aggression? And I think we underestimate the power of just making peace with things. A lot of times that solves a problem is much, much, much more quickly and much more effectively than all this aggressive, violent stuff. Sometimes we don't need to shout back at a person, so we don't need to sort of shout back at that dog. You know what a waste of time it is? Shouting shut up dog! I'm giving a talk that a dog doesn't understand what the heck you're talking about. But people do a lot of shouting, a lot of aggression where a bit of peace makes much more sense. So to sum up the talk, yeah, we do have effort in Buddhism, in meditation, but the effort is to arouse qualities of this mind, great spiritual qualities like compassion, like patience, like stopping, like peace, because these are the things which we're short of. This is what we do in our spiritual world. And when we know how to make those things happen, we understand why Buddhism is a practice. It's something which you do, but at the same time it is an undoing. You're learning how to stop learning how to be patient, learning how to be kind not so critical, learning how to be peaceful. So I understand maybe what sometimes people think is so contradictory. In Buddhism they are. You're always talking about not being attached, but you're building a $4 million retreat center, for goodness sake. Now you're always teaching people so not to do anything. Be peaceful, but you're jetting all over the world talking. No, damn it, all sorts of people. But the thing, what you're really doing. You're learning. You're putting forth effort into making these beautiful qualities in your mind, which will make you a very successful person, a healthy person, and which will even lead you to enlightenment itself. The highest peace, the full stopping, the most kindest thing you can possibly do. Being peaceful, being still, learning how to stop, and being infinitely patient. You learn those techniques and those skills. Not only you'll be a successful person in your life, you'll be a very, very happy person inside a person who knows the goal of right effort. And that's the talk for this evening. Okay, so has anyone got any comments or questions about what I've just been saying this evening? Okay. You were asking what's happening here with the monks in Burma? I must admit, I haven't seen any news reports for the last week or two of what's happening over there, but I do. I was told that the monks in Burma were originally sort of having a peaceful demonstration, and it was mostly actually because there was no rice, no food in the area where they were staying. And there was actually the people were really hungry. And when they were doing their, um, march, they were chanting the Metta Sutta, which was the words of kindness and compassion for all beings, including the junta, who doesn't matter who was responsible for this. There were lots of blaming. They just was making a point that there was not enough food to feed people there. And but I think afterwards, if I remember correctly, the reading the reports, after 6 or 7 days of peaceful demonstrations, a couple of the student groups joined the monks and once that started became political rather than just a peaceful demonstration. That's when the military sort of came in. We are not quite sure what's happened at the moment, but sometimes that, you know, if you have to do a duty for somebody. If I saw, say, somebody being hurt or being abused or being raped or something, I would just stand and say, let go, let go, let go, let go. You know, I'd be make peaceful peacefully do my duty. We know we'd probably stand in front or call a policeman if they're bigger than me. I'm not quite sure what I'd do. But you certainly. You'd have your compassion and your peace peacefully doing the duties, even if they're distasteful for you. Do you understand what we mean by peace? And it doesn't mean not doing nothing. I mean, why? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes. So you're saying that, uh, the Buddhist country of Burma, maybe they've been too passive. They have stood up to the junta. May have got rid of it earlier. Sometimes this is such a thing as, like a Buddhist country or a Christian country. There's people who are Buddhist, not sort of a country, a person rather than a society. And, you know, sometimes the countries, they may say they're Buddhist, but, you know, they they can't be Buddhist where they do things like that. There's no compassion peaceful there. It's just a name they use, you know, to maybe to get the exploit, to get in power. Whatever. I'm not sure. But you don't really know what happens. You know, whether people standing up, whether it makes it better or makes it worse. But I think there's certainly just peacefulness, kindness, compassion. I think that would work in the long run because, you know, I was quoted on the radio as saying I was quoting a poem by William Blake, and one of the monks pointed out, because they did an English degree at UW, that I got the years where he was like 18th and 19th century William Blake, 1750 to 1870 or whatever. And he was the one who made this wonderful quote, vengeance to the tyrant fled and caught the tyrant in his bed, and slew the wicked tyrants head, and became a tyrant in his stead. This is what happens when one acts violently, aggressively know that if one acts violently, one becomes violent. If one acts aggressively, one is aggressive. And one is actually the next problem needing to be solved. You don't start wars with what's yours. Don't stop violence with violence. You don't stop anger with anger. One of the Buddha's favorite quotes. His anger never stops with anger. It only starts with forgiveness. With that sort of compassion I was just talking about. It may take a longer time, but at least I think it's more effective. But maybe I'm not very good on politics. So I know about meditation. That's why we never will start a Buddhist political party. I told people yesterday because of the election, we did actually start. A Buddhist political party will ban all pubs and liquor outlets, so I think we wouldn't last very long. Thank you for your question. Is there any other comments or questions before you finish up? Are the central bank similar here? I am glad that someone picked up that question. So they were listening because isn't anyone going to ask what happened to those monks? And actually that is based upon a story in the Teradata. Of Tallapoosa. Tallapoosa. Oh, I think it's actually I wrote about oh, yeah, it's in a story of one of the, you know, one of the, um, uh, the monks in the time of the Buddha. It's not exactly the same story as you find in the text, but it's similar. And when that actually happened in the text, the when the head robber heard the monk's response and inquired why he couldn't choose and was told the answer, the head robber was so impressed, and so was the rest of the gang, that not only did they let all the monks go free, but half of those robbers ordained as monks themselves, and the other half went back to the village and got no legitimate jobs. And that's actually what is said in the story in my book. I exaggerated a bit that sometimes he sort of exaggerated, but I said that all the all the robbers all became monks themselves. Actually, that wasn't a bit of an exaggeration because, according to the text, half became monks, the other one half became sort of laypeople not loving anymore. I think that that actually makes sense to me because sometimes, like inspiring pieces of of real life, they changed people that sometimes that people have done things and said some things. I was I think there was this monk in India sometimes he was he met this robber and this bandit leader and he just said, good morning. The bandit leaders started crying cause he never heard the word good in his whole life. It is a simple thing like that. So when actually sometimes you understand where people come from, that they do, you know, act so violently and aggressively. You understand a beautiful, inspiring thing like that will change their whole lives. So that's actually the answer to the question. That's what happened. They took the incredibly high, inspiring moral light. Not only did they all live, but they changed the lives of the robbers, which is a wonderful time. Wonderful spot to finish this evening's talk on. Right effort. Uh, some are some Buddha ago are good. Are bigger ones are happy. What a me. So I got a a a what are all the Magnum? Asami. Sir. Party. Piano bar. Oh, what a song! A single song, Karna. Mommy!