Panic Attacks! | Ajahn Brahm

Panic Attacks by Ajahn Brahm Many of you know, I just come back from teaching overseas, mostly teaching in Ipoh. Halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Penang, New Malaysia, teaching a nice retreat which is so nice, being a monk, having the opportunity just to go there and just meditate and do a little bit of teaching. I really enjoy this life, even I enjoy coming here of an evening just to give a dharma talk. Whereas many people would get terrified of not only facing 300, maybe 50 people, but facing the camera as well. This talk occurs all over the world. Now many people feel it is public speaking. Just in front of a few people will be bad enough they imagine, without any notes, without any preparation, not knowing what you're going to say. Talking to so many people and to the world. But the point is, somehow or another in the training I've had this amongst all these years. You just take this with your in your stride. You take it with ease. It seems to be no fear or anxiety in what you do in life. And so as somebody asked me this evening, can you please give a talk on anxiety? I thought, hmm, I don't know anything about that. But nevertheless, I think I can sort of imagine and go back to my past on times when there was a desire to be. And I said to understand where it comes from and how it start with, and especially that there's a type of anxiety which I've heard is getting more and more prevalent in our modern world the huge anxiety, the panic attacks which come at times when you hardly expect them, and times when you feel just so at ease. But then suddenly this panic attack comes and leaves you completely disabled, not knowing what to do and completely confused. So why are these panic attacks extreme anxieties, getting more and more common in our modern world? And moreover, what can we do about them and understand what we can do about them? Where they come from also starts to unlock some of the great teachings of Buddhism. The ways to create this wonderful peace and happiness in the mind, which is not just for the sake of enjoyment when you are meditating, which is far more powerful than that which starts to. Right, heal and solve these great problems which people face in our modern life and all these little problems. So what I call this is like symptoms of suffering. And these can all be helped. They can be eased until they finally disappear. And you're a peace and you are happy no matter what you're doing. So this is what Buddhism promises. And one of the things which I've been trying to do over the last, um, not many years now when I've been teaching, is to actually to try and get these great teachings of the Buddha and apply them to these problems of modern life and to night anxiety. So look how anxiety you're going to get habit today after this Dharma talk anxiety or actually the beginning anxiety should itself should be very anxious. And what I'm going to say your days are numbered anxiety. So of course there we got the ordinary little fears which come up in our life and many of us have those. But one of the ways to counter the fears which we have in life is understanding. First of all, use a bit of wisdom. Because Buddhism is a very, very strong just on wisdom and then after wisdom. If that doesn't work, we come to why that wisdom doesn't work, just the nature of our mind, which doesn't really perform its jobs properly. It hasn't been trained properly, like a computer which crashes like a car which doesn't work properly. You get the the mechanic into fix it. And now you've come to the great mechanics of the mind, the Buddhist monks. This is better than the RAC. This is a back. The Buddhist. Uh, hey, what's the Buddhist? Uh, think of something which begins with a. Big the anxiety control or whatever is here. So this is actually how we overcome these problems. But first of all, like I always sometimes get a bit confused. Uh, not confused, but a surprise. Why do people have anxiety these days? What have you got to be anxious about these days? I mean, what could possibly go wrong in your life? The worst can happen to you is you die. So what? You've done that before. One of the great things about Buddhism, when you believe in reincarnation, if you're about to die, it's not just, ah, I'm dying. All it is is here we go again. Now, I mention that because one of the reasons people have anxiety sometimes because we haven't got the proper view, the wide view. And my goodness, there is proof of reincarnation. The evidence is out there. And anybody who comes and say, show me the proofs, show me the proofs, I'll show you the proofs if you really want to see it. But most people don't want to see it. They're stuck in their old ideas because of the old, old ideas. Too often it means that we have to take the consequences for that literally narrow mindedness which sees this life as the only life. And it can be anxious and it can be full of fear. My goodness, we don't get it right. You've only got one shot at it. If you know, if you mess up and stuff up, this life, that's it. It's all gone. You've only had one chance. But isn't it wonderful? You can always have another go next time. All of you. If you don't get the right husband in this life. Maybe next life. If. You make a better choice. Than the husband at all. Maybe next life you can get a better one. But don't be anxious about it, because a lot of anxiety or fear is like a limited options. We've only got limited options. You've only got a few things which might happen. It has to happen this way. When we limit our options, we limit the possibilities. Of course, that increases our anxiety. One of the things about mindfulness and wisdom, it means you've got more options, more things can happen. Okay, so if you miss your plane, how many people get anxious about missing their plane? How can you miss your plane? It's great. You know you can give. Now, this is what people told me in Singapore. If you miss your plane back to Perth, that's great. And give another talk in Singapore. This was a very good idea. That's why I told him no, because I will go back. Because all the time when they do. This is what happens in Singapore and all the people in Singapore. Listen to this on the on the video. You can't give me all these breakfasts because the plane, which goes from Singapore to Perth, leaves in the morning. Give me all this. They keep feeding and feeding and feeding me. Hoping I'm not looking at the time. If I do look at the time, then I say, I've got to go to the departure gate. Look, the plane's leaving in half an hour. Oh, okay. So they go there and on the way they ask me, can I ask you this question about meditation? And can we ask you this question? And when you get to the gate and it's only about 20 minutes, then you go so I can take last photographs, please. Another photograph I photograph if it came to the place once, I was the last one on the plane. Once they almost got away with their secret plan to keep me there for another day. But the point was, you don't get anxious. Okay? So you missed the plane. I did miss the plane once. I remember I was visiting Thailand and I hadn't been there for a long time. And so, you know, this was a modest where I grew up, and I spent nine years there. And so just when I was about to go to get the plane back to come to Perth, now all the monks and many of the ballet people they came to, to the monastery to see me off. And I had a special little, almost like a monk parties. It's very hard to imagine what a monk party was, but whatever was allowable in the afternoon, that's what we ate. And then everybody had a nice I mean, it's really nice to see you again. Atom bomb. It's been so lovely the last week or two with you and have a nice time in Australia. Give my best wishes to this one. I give my best wishes to that one. And I saw me to the car and they waved me off. And when I got to the airport, I missed my plane. So I had to come around again and come back. Not really funny because I said I came back in the morning and said, hey, we sent you off a few minutes ago and said, yeah, well, I'm back again. Another party tomorrow place. But soon we want to get rid of you and please go away to set up a jet afterwards. But never mind. So what? You can always get another play the next day or you can stay there. Who cares? The point is that when we limit our options about what might happen next, that increases our anxiety, that increases our fear. Because we think if we didn't work out this way, then it's going to be terrible. We're not going to survive. Things are going to go desperately wrong. So when you have wisdom, you find out this huge number of options which might happen to you. And some of the best things in life are always what happens when things go wrong. I just this evening there was no one of my friends. He was a very good friend because he's a dean of the cathedral and Saint George's and the dean, John Shepherd. It's nice that we're seeing him every now and again asking what's going on? The last time I saw him was very happy because he supports the the, uh, the bombers and the bombers are just Fremantle, so he was very happy. I think it should be thrown out of Perth if he doesn't support Perth. But never mind. I'm tolerant. But anyhow, he just invited me to give a talk somewhere. I remember many years ago when I gave, we were doing this interfaith service at Saint George's Cathedral, and if ever you've been to interfaith services, most of them are just so boring. This is so dull that, you know, if you don't, for us, the only reason why we have to keep doing these ceremonies of having this loud choral music is to keep people awake. And this was one of these boring services. Everyone was just doing this little chant and standing up and sitting down and going on and on. And then I saw this policeman came in from the side gate and talked to the the dean. And then it interrupted the service. He got on the microphone and said, there's been a bomb threat. Some fundamentalist idiot had got on the phone and said that you shouldn't have people from other religions in Saint George's Cathedral. That's a sacred Christian church. And they put a bomb there as a bomb threat and said, we've been told by the police, we have to clear out the cathedral immediately in cases that are going to be an explosion. And that was the time when everybody woke up. It was the first thing I really listened to over the microphone. And so we all had to go outside while the police searched with the Z bombs in there. And of course, it was only just a threat, one of these idle threats. But it was the most wonderful interface service I've ever been to, simply because when we all got outside, we actually started talking to each other and cracking jokes and having fun together. There was actually fellowship there. It was the most wonderful time because it wasn't planned. It went wrong, and because it went wrong, it became human. And so I had a wonderful time. And afterwards, actually, I made the suggestion he sort of put it up on when he gave his little speech at the end. We should do this every year. Simply because when things are choreographed, choreographed when they don't go right, there's a lack of like, real humanity there. And because of that, there's no real love. There's no real joy. There's no real fun. There's no real adventure. So when things go wrong, I think this is the most wonderful time. I don't know if he knows she's not here this evening. He's not here at this funeral, which went wrong. I love funerals when they go wrong. There's a couple of great funerals. You don't have to be anxious about a funeral to make sure it all goes right. Because if it goes right, it's a terrible funeral. You forget that. Very easy. But when something goes wrong, you always remember that. I remember this one funeral where we actually. We were loving the. It was a Chinese funeral, and they put too many knobs on the side of the casket. Because I want to make it look nice and expensive. It was for their mother or father and they want to do the very best. It had so many knobs on the side of the casket. When they lowered it into the coffin, into the hole, it got stuck. They got jammed halfway down. Ha ha ha ha. She's just saying she should have seen the looks of those funeral directors. I said, that's the way anyone laugh. They usually look pretty serious. But this was real serious. It's. Not that they were allowed to get down, because I used to do a Buddhist chant as they lowered down the casket and had to keep doing it, because when I was finished, I was still struggling trying to get it up and down. So I waited 2 or 3 times. I kept going round and round around the same chart to give them a chance to put it out again. They managed in the end. Thank goodness for it was a wonderful funeral, was another funeral which I went to the you know, sometimes you go to a burial and afterwards, you know, you throw a little bit of earth into the hole there. That's a common thing to do. This one lady, she threw sort of a bit of earth, but she was carrying a hamburger and a handbag. Went in the hole as well. Clunk the cockpit. That's. And of course, everybody laughed. I'm sure the guy in the coffin also loved, and it meant the seriousness of it went away. Everybody had a good laugh, and they started some of these relations who hadn't talked to each other for years were not talking to each other. So when things go wrong, I don't think it's really wonderful. It makes it human. So you don't have to be anxious about anything because when it goes wrong, he actually goes better. As far as I'm concerned, it makes it a memorable okay, what about marriages? How often? Just like the bride or the groom the night before get anxious? Actually, that's why they have to go and get drunk the night before. It was a stupid thing to do. If you're a Buddhist, you wouldn't need to get drunk, will have any anxiety, make it nice and peaceful and enjoy it. And if it goes wrong again, that's wonderful when it goes wrong. If you've ever been to a ceremony where things go wrong, you know when somebody says the wrong thing or does the wrong thing. But you know, they forget what the name of the loved one was. I think the last marriage ceremony I did, they forgot his name. So. And somebody reminded them and everyone started laughing. And again, it was human again. It was just because. Because of a bit of nervousness. And as soon as people start laughing, where's the anxiety? It's all gone. You can't be anxious and laugh at the same time. And of course, life is what goes wrong now. I've somehow I've known this for a long time because I'd like to try and make people laugh when they're in sort of critical situations, you know, to actually crack a joke every now and again, simply because it takes a while. The nervousness. And I even did this when I was a school teacher because as a school teacher was already a school teacher for a year. We came the time when it was the time for the examinations, the end of the examinations. And I actually had to set one of the exams in maths. So, you know, the headmaster said no, you know, you've been teaching a couple of classes in this year. Oh yeah. You set the the test paper. So I set the test paper. Maybe because I was a bit rebellious. Even then, I put a joke in the exam paper and I thought they had Russell had really sort of, you know, sort of said, meet in the corner and give me lines or something for putting a joke. But he actually encouraged me. He said, great, do this. And so I put a joke in the examination paper simply because I know it was like being a kid, going to school and facing examinations at the end of the year as if it was a matter of life and death, and people were so nervous. And sometimes people get panic attacks when they have examinations. But the great thing was I would see the individual later, you know, I had to sit on the stage to watch that, make sure that no one was teaching cheating, but I wasn't actually watching for them to where there are cheating. I was watching and waiting for them to come to that question where the joke was and see what would happened. That was really good fun. And I was looking and looking. And so they got to that question and the people would move their head away. What says did they read this right as a joke in the examination paper? And then I knew who wrote it. So I looked to me and I had this big smile and they giggled. And then they went back to examination paper. And it's a wonderful thing to do, to give a bit of relaxation to the kids when they were starting examination, because when I said a joke there, it wasn't so blooming serious anymore. What is the big point about examinations and tests and things like that? And as I mentioned, and I get a lot of flack back from parents about this, but in life you have to keep on doing examinations and tests until you finally fail one, and then you can stop. If you're failing early, you can stop earlier. So that's how I look at the different options in life. So what happens? What happens? You know, it doesn't matter. What happens is always a way around it. There's always something interesting and useful which comes out of things. So the first thing about like anxiety and fear is actually give yourself more options. So there's not that it has to happen this way. It must happen this way. And if it does, if it doesn't go this way, if it doesn't go as I plan it, then it's going to be terrible. It's going to be a disaster. If you give yourself more options, you find what once you thought was going to be a disaster and that very thought the idea was the cause of your anxiety. You realize it's not a disaster either, after all. In fact, it's always like this for the moon. It's dog poo for the mango tree. It's always something which gives a texture to life. What goes wrong in life? It's what you always remember. And it gives. You know? You laugh at it afterwards and it gives a sense of humanity. A real life is what goes wrong. And it gives life this beautiful, tense sense of, uh, an expectancy, um, adventure, interest and even joy. But the people who survive in life, the people who are successful in life, are the ones who can adapt. It can accept, learn, move on, and make use of all the things which go wrong in life. But the trouble is, I might stay there, but still, sometimes it just doesn't work. You say? Yeah, I know that intellectually, but I still get afraid. I know it's only just a little examination. I know it's only like a driving test. I know it's only just an interview and there's many interviews I can do afterwards. But why do I always get so anxious and so afraid? And why not get his panic attacks? And I think one of the reasons is, is because our modern life, the way we've used our mind, we've actually celebrated fear. We watch movies which make us scared. We go to theme parks with these death drops which make us scared. We'd actually like to know, to listen to ghost stories which make us really scared. So we turn down the lights now and tell a ghost story. No, we've done that before. The point is that we make ourselves so scared and our media cells fear. And because of that, that we've actually cultivated this anxiety as if this anxiety is the only way we can feel alive, so we can actually feel it doing something that we are something as if like anxiety feeds a sense of being. And that's exactly what the Buddha actually said. I know that sometimes when we're afraid, when we have anxiety, it gives us like a cause and meaning to life. Which is why that some people, they like to climb Mount Everest, why they want to do that for them, so scared themselves, why they want to sort of drive this fast cars or fast motorbikes. We want to do that for what do you get out of it? Just, you know, this feeling of being alive, being alert. Why does some people like to join armies? Why do they people like to go into to where the action is. And sometimes people like fear, and those are extreme cases of people to seek out fear in the very dangerous parts of our world and those dangerous experiences of the world. And because people you can see that in those extreme people and see that in yourself, that sometimes you look out for fear, you seek fear. Why is there a lot of times it is because we're afraid of peace. We're afraid of sometimes security think we're dying in that security, yet is part of us which would die well, not a part of us, which is really growing the peaceful part of us, the kind part of us. We like to have fear because we want to run away from something. We like to have anxiety. And because people cultivate that so much in the world, sometimes they cultivate it and it becomes their stress. Sometimes people say, why do people have stress? Because they want stress. They're afraid of just relaxing and being peaceful. They think they're not doing anything if they're not living life on the edge. And what's the point? Again, it's because they don't know what the point of life truly is. And a part of life you should know is like that beautiful peace, that stillness, a place where compassion, real kindness can truly grow and can spread out to others. But you don't get that peace and that compassion through anxiety and fear. You understand that actually fear anxiety usually creates a lot of aggression, even violence. Aggressive aggression with your mouth and also violence with people's fists and guns all coming from fear. And why do we have that fear? Because we like that fear. We feed on that. And because we feed on that, that for some people, they will feed in their mind with fear and anxiety for so long that sometimes it goes over the top. When people told me of what panic attacks truly are. This can happen to the supermarket, which can happen at home, which can happen when you're just sitting here in a Buddhist society, when there's nothing to be afraid of at all. Of all places in the world, this is the most safe, calm, peaceful place you can possibly get. But still, people get these panic attacks. Why? All it is, is some conditioning from the past. They've been building up this fear. They've been building up the momentum. And it's just waiting to burst forth like an avalanche. I call this snow of fear deposited on the side of the mountain. And just a small trigger is all it takes. An insignificant event. And the great panic attack falls like an avalanche, completely out of control. Once you see where the cause lies, it's now the cause of just before that panic attack came. Is what you've been doing the heart of your life? The days in the months beforehand. The stressful life. The worry. People like to worry. You know that as a monk you don't watch TV. But every now and again, when I went to go and visit my mother, I'd just sit with her and watch some of these TV programs, which people watched. I remember having been a monk for nine years in Thailand, go to see my mother and seeing the first TV program since nine years, and I couldn't believe just what happened. I forget what movie it was or what series it was. It was some sort of special detectives in London, only a half an hour, you know, weekly series. But in that half an hour, I counted how many people have been killed is about 12. That's about one death every 2.5 minutes. And I said, what's going on here? Because I was a monk and I came from like a very calm and peaceful back when I saw that and I noticed just how much violence and how many people died in this, like, no TV series in just half an hour. But for people who watch those sorts of things every week, it was normal. It was natural. They became inured to that fear because all those movies were trying to get that fear out, trying to get, you know, uh, cleaning to the side of the armchairs, trying to move those emotions of fear. And people were enjoying that. And the worry which people have. Why is it that people watch all these soap operas like neighbours or what's the other ones, Emmerdale farm, Home and Away, I don't know. Both the bold and the beautiful. We should start a soap opera like the Monk and the the life support or something, I don't know. This is interesting. I know that in the, uh, the plane coming back from Singapore, I saw there was an article about Batman. We got a new Batman movie coming out, and I just noticed that they've done Batman so many times. Superman's been done to. Spider-Man is already there. The one they haven't done, the one superhero, which I read when I was a young monk in Thailand. It was a comic strip in Thai Super Monk. Mhm. But anybody who does anybody in Hollywood, you get this franchise for the supermarket series because it's amazing to see this super monk. He would have all these psychic powers and that's where he got the power from for meditation and to go flying through the air. He does this to stop a train so people don't get run over. Could a read a terrorist smile straight away and tell him the bombs over there? Because he could read people's minds? I could do all these incredible things. But also at the end we got this wonderful Dharma message. Like the like anger doesn't know, not, uh, you don't overcome anger with anger. You don't ever come violence with violence, terrorists. You do it with peace and forgiveness. And in the end, everybody's happy and peaceful and meditating together. Wouldn't that be a wonderful TV series or, you know, a new franchise for Hollywood? Forget Batman, forget Spider-Man. Superbug. So how did I get onto that for fear? Oh that's right. Yeah, just about sort of, uh, anxiety. People actually want to get upset, and I want to get afraid now. Okay, that's all right in sort of moderation, but I think it's because that we see so much frightening things, whether it's on the TV or in the newspapers or whatever else, because we feed on such fear. For many people, their fear tolerance gets so overwhelmed that sooner or later, just that the way of looking at the world becomes fearful. It just becomes a bad habit of the mind. And we see fear where they shouldn't really be any fear whatsoever. And because of that, that sometimes people just go over the limit and they get into panic attacks. So how do we stop that? If you're someone who has panic attacks, instead of watching those violent movies or those, uh, ones which make you really afraid, the terror movies you just watch, you know, stuff. Uh, Friday night at Dermalogica live, watch a video of Jim Brown or Sister Ryan or something like that because it calms you down, makes you peaceful and still. So when you actually train yourself to see beautiful things, you know, like go to the beach, you know, you know, search out for peaceful things, for calming things, not for exciting things, not for things which, you know, get your adrenaline running, you know, don't go to sort of, um, these speedways or, you know, Formula One or something. There's always a car turning over in flames and. Settle down, calm, beautiful things. And if you start doing calmer, beautiful things, or just listen to calming, beautiful music, virtually reprogramming your mind against that excitement, that fear which will calm you down. And if you really want to go deeper, then do the Buddhist meditation, which actually gives this beautiful perspective. Most people, I've found, have calmed their panic attacks by simply sitting down and just making the mind rest rested, leaving the mind alone. Calm down. Give yourself a few moments of peace so the mind isn't always just looking for fear and feeding on fear as a way of life. Now, how many people actually feed on that excitement of fear and fast cars and fast monks? But let's be. Honest, when we understand it's actually where that comes from, so you can start doing something about it to have a more tranquil, more peaceful life, to look for that tranquility, look for that peacefulness, to reprogram your mind. But if you're stuck for the time being and you have panic attacks, you're anxious. There's another way. And I just mentioned it. This reprogramming the mind business. I've had great fun teaching this over the last six months or so. It's almost like the, uh, the flavor of the month at the moment is how to reprogram your mind. If your son, someone who always does get his anxiety attacks and find out, you know roughly what the triggers are. You know, when you're going through an interview or you're meeting a new person, or you got a new client, or you have to sort of go on an aircraft for the first time or whatever it is, which is you think is going to make you anxious. If it's become your habit, you can't do anything at the time. You can't say to yourself, if this is your habit of mind just before you get on the plane, that's being stupid. No, planes don't drop out of the sky these days, you know? Why am I getting anxious? You find that make you more anxious. You try and control that force which has become a habit in you at the moment when anxiety comes up. It's a heavy. You can't do much about it. What you can do is before the emotion comes up, that's when you can do something. It's what I call my programming, your mindfulness. And I've been using this so often and so many different ways of, you know, people's problems in their life. The important thing about programming mindfulness is you choose a time when it's not a problem, not when you're facing anxiety, but when you're a long way away from it. Because this was the meaning of this old Chinese proverb, which I heard a long time ago. They said, love the tiger, but at a distance I love the tiger, but at a distance, what I thought was that was, you know, make sure that your physical distance a long way from the tiger when you love them. If you go close and try and pat them on the head, you might lose your hand and the other parts of your body as well. So loving the tiger. The distance. But first of all, I thought it meant a geographic distance space. But I thought, no, no, what that means is time to love the tiger. The problems of your life, but not why you're facing them. Because when you're facing them, become a creature of habit. You react in the old ways. A long time before that problem was going to arrive, they did start loving it. You act when you're arrested, when you're relaxed, when the emotions aren't strong and aren't overpowering you. I call this program in mindfulness. So if it's a case of anxiety, when you relax, when you're rested, when there's no problem on the horizon at all, you simply say to yourself three times, when I'm in that situation, I will not be afraid. When I'm in that situation, I will not be anxious. Whatever the words are. Which means something to you, telling yourself, I will not be anxious when that happens and you leave it when you listen, when you're relaxed, when there's no sort of agitation of the mind. That program goes in and it's incredibly powerful. And this is why I've been telling it to so many people. Do it. Do yourself, do it yourself. Therapy, I call it. Because what it means is you put that information in and you'll be surprised what happens. You're in that situation. It starts to happen and unfold where usually you'd go into this old habit of fear and anxiety and control, and instead, because of this program, you put it into the mind earlier on that comes up, it becomes an automatic response. You take the new path, I will not get anxious and then you just relax. The point is, at the time you can't do anything. You have to put in that program hours beforehand. It's called atom bombs. Anti-anxiety virus. The antivirus for anxiety. You can go into your computer of your mind, your emotional world, and stop these terrible worms of anxiety which eat away at your happiness. And very often, not often, but almost always. It works so well. You're just reprogramming your habits because it's a habitual responses, which sometimes we make. They're not really worthwhile. They're not appropriate to the stage of the situation, and we can actually do something about it. But more than that, not just reprogramming your mindfulness. When you make your mind softer with meditation, when your mind is very, very soft, it's like a sponge. You can sort of drop it in the ground. It doesn't shatter. Another thing with anxiety attacks is like this dropping a glass on the ground. Of course it will break and shatter because it's just so hard and people's minds become just so hard. They're brittle, which means little things that can create these panic and anxiety attacks, as if your mind is shattering at this particular time when you have a panic attack or an anxiety attack. And why is that? Because your glass is too hard. Your mind has been too stiff. Soften it for goodness sake. Which is why we meditate. Just made the mind so soft and nice and be kind. And be so peaceful and gentle. This poor little mind. You give us such a hard side. Ah, you poor little thing. You've made you work so much. And you're so asking and demanding of this brand. Are you poor? So I think you could do something that to your mind. You give it so much gentleness and peacefulness, it starts to relax. A little bit of kindness, gentleness, loving kindness, compassion, care. Well, we see gentleness that does an enormous amount to soften your mind. How many times are we just so hard and so absolutely cruel to ourselves, pushing ourselves so hard? No wonder we get so stiff inside. Are you just so demanding and critical of yourself? Never thinking you make a good job of whatever you do. Sometimes, which is so critical of ourselves. We push ourselves so hard. We demand so much of ourselves. Our mind get so stiff and hard. It's so brittle that one more little thing which goes wrong, that we explode the symptoms of a hard, brittle mind. That anger. When you get angry at other people, when you lose your patience, it means your mind isn't soft enough. It's got too hard, so you need to soften it a bit if you suffer the mind a bit. So it's nice, like sloppy clay, so it just goes all over the place, you know, people can punch. It never leaves an impression on you. It'll be something like that. Nice and soft and gentle and peaceful. And you can do this. And that's why sometimes people get upset at Max and we just forget about it. Sometimes they come up and ask for forgiveness. Afterwards. They ask forgiveness for what? Then you realise what I said about, you know, I never heard it. So sometimes it's fun to abuse a mug because it might just sits there. Yeah, it's very kind of you to actually have the, the time to talk to me and call me Camel face and everybody. Does you ever notice me? That's a detail of abuse. I've been using these things. Sometimes when I went to to, uh, to to Malaysia, people said, I've put on weight, I've got fatter. I said, yes, because Buddhism is growing in Australia, so I've, I. So that way you don't take offense, you know, just. So whatever happens, well, whatever happens, you know, you just soft and lovable. And people try to, you know, to wide you up, you just refuse to get wound up. And so because of that, you know, you got this beautiful soft mind and it's just impossible to get angry. So everyone knows it's a waste of time getting angry and upset or getting anxious and being feared. All these negative emotions are a sign that your poor mind hasn't been looked after. You need too hard and you're just too existing of life and you just can't take much more afterwards. That's why a little bit of peace in your life, a little bit of gentleness, a little bit of quietness. It makes you more tolerant, more tolerant to life going not the way you planned it to go. When you're at peace, it still doesn't matter what happens, it's good enough. You can always do something with it. But where do you have no peace in your heart? You find you're much more demanding of the future. Your options are much narrower. It has to be this way because you got no softness and tolerance. So you find when people just do lots of peaceful, gentle, quiet meditation, just so relaxed, so stiff. You can't get anxious, you can't get angry, you can't get upset about anything anymore. That's why that my Bible said, my monastery. They know this. I should have told them. But they always find when they want to ask for something, they want to ask to go here or to buy this or do that. They always like to look at me and find out when I'm nice and peaceful and soft and kind. And that's when they ask me these things. That's what you should do with the product of his life. If you want to buy a nice dress and your husband hasn't got enough money, ask him. After he's had a nice meditation, you go, oh yeah, they all say to be just be happy. I was certainly there. And that's the point. If you know, if your husband, you want to go watch the West Coast Eagles or whatever it is, and it's very busy. Just after your wife has been to the morning, Diane had done a bit of meditation. So if I go, oh yeah, sure. It's true. When you have peace and happiness in your heart, you don't get angry, you don't get upset. You're more tolerant. You're more at ease when you're more at ease with life. Not only do you don't get these negative emotions coming up, but you don't get the anxiety and the fear afterwards. The anxiety and fear is that is obviously coming from the stress which people have in their life. They just don't know how to relax, to be at peace and enjoy themselves. We should have more fun in life. People are far too serious. I've already mentioned weddings should be far more fun. Not too serious. Do it the other way around, you know. Don't always do it the same thing. Put the rings or the on the toes or something instead of on the wedding finger. Whatever. But why do we have to have a wedding ring? So I don't know what particular thing is. I never got married. I wouldn't know anyway. But put it on a towel or something, make it a little bit different and make it fun. And funerals as well. Make that fun and everything else you do in life. If it's in an examination, make it an interview, make it fun. Look, if you go into an interview for a new job and you make your interviewer laugh, they're probably going to want to sort of hire you simply because you're fun to work with. They also know you know how to overcome stress. You're lighthearted. You know, in this modern working world, there's there is so much stress, so much demanded of you. And now the interview is almost like a test of how much you can deal with stress. And if you can be really relaxed at the interview, then maybe that might be giving the message to your prospective employer that this guy, this girl, is so relaxed for an interview, maybe they know how to cope with the stress in their working environment. Maybe they can work hard. Because they're relaxed. So when one can learn how to relax in that way by training your mind in meditation. And please never think that meditation is hard work. It's completely opposite of hard work. In the retreats which I've been giving over in April. I keep on saying this. Always look at that temple. But when Adrienne Brahm is at a teaching retreat, it's always called Club Med Club Med Ipro Club Meditation Ipoh simply because it gives it gives people the idea that this is fun, this is relaxation, this is like a holiday. And if you understand, the meditation is not hard work. Completely opposite. Stopping, not doing anything, not trying, not trying to get somewhere, not try to control things. That's what you do in work and that creates the stress, which creates the anxiety. How many of you have been working just hard all day, trying to do something, trying to sort of meet some sort of goals. And, you know, people's expectations are so hard. And if you carry on like that in meditation or in, you know, any religious spiritual path, you know you are going to get more stressed out, you're going to get more anxious. But if you could actually just relax in meditation, even if you fall asleep, don't get anxious about falling asleep. You're allowed to fall asleep when you meditate. That's why I tell people on retreats if you get tired and go and have a rest, lay down. We call that in Buddhism, meditating flat out. Well, you tell your boss, you know, if you want to take a rest, I'll just be working flat out, boss. But the point is, you're learning how to just relax. And that's so important. Because if our world doesn't learn how to relax, you'll never have a sense of humor. You'll never be able to laugh. You'll be so serious. You get anxiety attacks. You do the wrong thing at the wrong time. You get so stiff when you're driving a car, you get so anxious that because of your anxiety, you make accidents happen and everything goes wrong. Remember, I was a kid. The first time I got a bicycle. I was so anxious about fall off. I gripped the handlebars so hard. I was so stiff I kept on falling off. The anxiety caused me to fall off. Because you all know if you're going to ride a bicycle or a motorbike or even drive a car, you have to relax. If you're so stiff, you just body just cannot respond to the needs of the moment. And that's just a metaphor for life. Anxious people become so stiff they can't respond to the needs which come up unexpectedly every moment. That's actually why I never play by talks. I don't want my toes to be rigid. I want it to respond to just the moment, whatever comes into your mind and when it responds to the moment. Just like you'd never fall off on a motorbike or a bicycle because you're always balanced, because you're relaxed or like the little kid who falls off the third story. They bounce. They never hurt themselves because the body completely relaxes by relaxing. So many wonderful things happen. So even when you go to the dentist, you just relax. And I do relax when I go to the dentist, simply because the dentist chair is the most comfortable chair that a monkey's ever allowed to sit on. Because. Right. That it's just so nice. And number two, the other reason why I like to go to a dentist, because they've got so many things in my mouth for whilst I cannot talk. You can ask me all the questions in the world I will not be able to answer. So it is a small price to, you know, that drill in your mouth or whatever is a small price to pay for that beautiful, lovely chair set up. The point is, you don't get anxious about anything. And that's not just saying that it's actually true. It was that case about was it 1214 years ago now we had a big bushfire over in serpentine with a bushfire. Came to our monastery huge. It was a hottest day of the year ever recorded in Western Australia at the time. Big bushfire came through. Massive trees were exploding by bombs going off. And it was really dangerous. I mean, this was really dangerous stuff. People die in bushfires, but we fought the fire. We were told to evacuate and after being evacuated, I was interviewed by the news on the evening news. I say, what are you scared of now? It's only a bushfire. So what if you did die anyways, it's a great way to die because you don't have any cremation costs. It all comes with a package. And like many Buddhists say. What? The ashes to be spread over our bodies to spread over there. At the same time. That's real efficiency. We always wanted to build a crematorium and a monastery. Now we had one. With that sort of attitude, you're not afraid of anything. It's always a positive spin to whatever happens. But the interesting thing was that that person who interviewed me, they called up a couple of weeks later. And it was like, uh, one of these women who fronts the news. You see them on the news in the evening interviewing people. She said, look, I can't get you out of my head, she said, simply, because I've interviewed so many people. This is my profession, and you're the first person I see wasn't afraid of what had just happened. You weren't anxious. And for me it was just normal. But that was the time when all my trading and meditation and Buddhism, someone saw that and saw what had happened. When you're in a tough situation and a life threatening situation, you just weren't anxious at all. And she noticed that and thought it was really weird and strange. So this is actually what happens. I remember just a few weeks later, Curtin University Department of Psychology came along. They gave us interviews. Each person who had been in the fire to see what our stress was, the traumatic results of of what happened. I think they threw away those reports afterwards because they just didn't compute. Because most marks, you don't get trauma from these things. Just let them go. You don't have anxiety attacks. You don't wake up at night thinking of fires. I just have a nice night's sleep. I'm not going to spoil my night's sleep just for thinking about a bloomin fire. No way. So the point is, you. This actually does work. You do overcome anxiety. You do overcome fear. And again, to sum up the reason why it does this. Because the wisdom gives you more options. You're not narrow with a couple of other options which you think this is going to happen. It's going to be terrible. I've got these two options. It's going to go my way. It's going to go another way. It's going to be terrible. It gives you more options. Whatever happens, it's going to be okay. The worst thing was having you die. Just going to be born again. Have another try next time. So what big deal. And number two is you learn just to maybe program your mindfulness as a stop measure before true wisdom and peace comes up. And number three. Just relax a bit more. Just give yourself a few moments of peace and quiet in your life to make your mind nice and soft and gentle and like a sponge. People are just too hard and too stiff these days in their minds. There's a cause of stress. Makes huge problems with your health. Creates arguments and anger. You can't laugh as much. And next you know you get anxiety attacks and you get afraid when you really shouldn't be afraid. But it's nothing to be afraid of. So when you do a little bit of meditation, make your mind soft and peaceful and kind, and don't make the meditation hard, soft and kind. Peaceful meditation, the gentle meditation, you find that those panic attacks, they just don't come up, they disappear, you're free of them, and you find what usually would make you afraid. This is no need to be afraid. You're soft, and that soft means your tolerance. Life can poke you and it leaves no dents. Life could hit you and you don't shatter. Whatever happens in life, you go through life like this. Soft, bubbly, nice little ball of fluff. Rather this very expensive, hard crystal ball which is always breaking and shattering at every event which happens in life. So that's a little advice on how to deal with anxiety in your life. Thank you. Okay, now any questions about anxiety. And don't be anxious to ask questions. Anyone got any questions or comments about anxiety and panic attacks? Yeah. Yeah, about a few months ago. So. Okay. The tsunami and the effects on many of this for lack of people. I was only there for a couple of days. So I tried to go from personal experience. But I do know from general experience that many people who live in the third world countries can cope with such trauma much, much better than we in our Western countries. And I know from the governor of Kennedy who I met and talked to, he said, please, please tell people not to send any more therapists and counselors. And that's what he told me, because it's obviously the phase that was he said they campaigned for, especially the poor people living on those coastal communities. They had their own ways of dealing with the problems because it is so close to life and death. And they knew tragedy was part of life, whereas people in the West get so insulated from such things that when it happens, if it comes more shocking to us, they're more accepting of these things and they learn to cope. So you said, you know, there's obviously a few people who didn't cope, but the vast majority of them were doing fine. Thank you very much. I did need counselors. They need food. They need clothing, needed housing. That's all needed to get their life back together. But physically, emotionally, they were fine. And I think I've seen that in many other sort of countries, the simple people, because maybe they aren't exposed to home and away and. The anxiety levels are very low. But I don't know. I'm going to get into trouble with the TV corporations today. Just yet. So they're sending people along to the banks for trauma counseling. But they still be allowed. I'm not going to get an anxiety attack. I'm never going to get any sleep tonight. And that's actually true because, you know, always one of the reasons why, you know, we do have, you know, religious like Buddhism, especially the old traditional types of Buddhism, because they worked is like almost like a natural evolution. If any of these teachings, you know, weren't really sort of helpful, they just disappeared. Especially like Buddhism, when it wasn't imposed upon anybody. It was just like a natural vegetation which wasn't planted, just grew by itself. And I will look this up. Who is it? Somebody came to my monastery. Uh, no. It was this story about this guy who was six years ago in Thailand, and he. I was in a monastery in northeast Thailand. Uh, he visited cave. He was a Thai man. And he came to see me. He asked if he could stay in the monastery for a few days, and I was at the abbot, but I was the first one he saw. So I said, I can't see anything wrong with that, you know, you can stay over here. So he stayed there. He kept himself to himself. He came to all the meetings but never really talked to anybody. And so after three days he wanted to go home. So because I was the one he first met, he came to me to ask permission to go home. So I said, sure, but when I why did he come here? I asked him, because, you know, you're not you're not really interested in talking like Buddhism with the monks. You haven't been doing much meditation. Why do you come here? And what he said, he said, look. Before I came here, this terrible argument with my wife. So I carried the monastery for three days. Now I feel better. I'm going home to see her. That's what I call Buddhist trauma counselling. Sometimes you don't need to answer people's problems. You just need to give them a space of peace and safety so they can ask the problems themselves. That's what he did. Instead of going to a bar or going out with his friends or going to somebody else. This kind of monastery just had space for 3 or 4 days to calm down in a supportive, compassionate, peaceful environment. And then you could see what needs to be done. Give yourself some softness and peace. His mind became like a light, soft and fluffy and all those things which he got arguing with his wife about was a big deal anyway. This is my wife. There's only small things, you know. The chicken and duck story. We argue about the stupid little things. And so we saw that with some I became soft. So give yourself a little bit of peace and all your anger just disappears. Be kind and the anxiety in the world just disappears. So this is actually, you know, what you're saying is true. They go to see the monks, but the monks don't really do anything. All they do is just give them peace and encourage them just to slow down, to be soft. And when that softness, they can take the traumas much more easily. They're not so hard and brittle. Any other questions before we finish off for tonight? Yes. How do I overcome about disappointing people who depend upon you by realizing that the more anxious you get, the more likely you are to disappoint people. To realize the anxiety is actually contrary to its its origin. You. Because you don't want to disappoint people. You get anxious because you're anxious. You don't perform to your limits and therefore you start supporting people. So a little bit of wisdom comes up. Say the angst. The anxiety is her self-defeating in that way. You're trying hard to do your best because you're trying too hard and getting anxious. You're not, uh, you're not meeting your potential. It's just like, um. I saw the paper today. Leighton Hewitt is playing in the tennis. If he gets really anxious, he will lose. Every sports person knows you have to relax to be able to play your top game. But the more anxious we get, the more fearful we get. The more tense we get, the more likely it is we lose. So in order not to disappoint your supporters, you know the people behind you, backing you, in order not to support, to to disappoint the people depending upon you. For that reason, I would not get anxious. So the more responsibility you have, the less freedom you have to be anxious, basically. So how to deal with that anxiety and realize that relaxing is the best way to succeed, and to to do your very best. Does that make sense to you? Is that a question you're asking? Okay. Because that's the answer you're getting. And I don't care about disappointing you. So there we go. So thank you very much for all those questions. And thank you also for the guts to ask questions. All of you who ask questions. If I do make it a fun place, it's not at you. It's just to liven things up here. And all the people do ask questions. Marvelous. Well done. You are the cream of the people who come here. Thank you very much.