Episode Transcript
Right View by Ajahn Brahm
Now for this evening's drama talk. I'm responding to one of the emails which I get from time to time, or I don't get it sent to our society here, because if if I had an email address, the even less chance to to meditate, even less chance to sleep. But the email which was sent to our society and asked me to talk some more about what we call input isn't right for you. It is part of the Eightfold Path. But more than that, and it is part of the, uh, foundation of Buddhist practice, what will actually Buddhist belief, or rather what is so view? How do they go about things? What is the the framework for their lives? And uh, this is the subject of right view, but it needs to be emphasized. First of all, that, uh, right. For you, you can call it a set of beliefs or dogmas, but it's not so much a belief, but a framework for finding out. And as many people ask, how do we know that it's right for you rather than wrong for you? Because everyone believes it, right? It's an observation which even came from a Socrates who was apparently said that everyone always believes so. Right? And it's interesting little thing to contemplate, but it is psychologically impossible to think you are wrong about anything. You may think you were wrong, but at the time, even when you think you're wrong, you think you're right about that. So if you really look at it, whatever idea concepts we have, we always believe that it's right in that moment. And this is one of the problems with the diversity of human opinions and views and dogmas and beliefs that everyone believes they're right, even though there's a diversity of completely contradictory ideas. So what is actually the right in the world right for you? And one of the teachings, which really meant a lot to me when I was a young Buddhist, which really gave me an inspiration and also a means to separate out those types of ideas which were not going to be helpful. And I from those which were helpful, was a saying of the Buddha that whatever is right for you or whatever is truth, whatever is the teachings of the Buddha, you can know them by the results. They should turn you away from some of the bad things like attachments, and you should actually make you more dispassionate, more free, more peaceful, more still more liberated. And it's because of those are the qualities by which we can know that it is a right for you or not, simply by its results in our own internal life, in our family, in our community and our world. And it's a wonderful little test to see what is right for you and what is wrong for you. Because even in Buddhism, people can have these ideas and views and they can go and argue with each other and they can get quite upset with each other. Unfortunately, in Buddhism we don't have wars. But still people can have quite vigorous arguments, especially if they've drank too much coffee. Which actually shows where the arguments really come from. Nothing to do with Buddhism, just too much caffeine for the point of the, uh. The point I've tried to make here is that it's where these ideas and views lead to, shows you whether it's a right view or a wrong view. And of course, that brings me up to something very topical about the cartoons, which was just coming back from New Zealand talking a lot about the cartoons, the Mohammed cartoons, which was causing a huge amount of problem in the world. And that's a very good example there of how that cannot be right view to go on such violent, aggressive, uh, demonstrations about a cartoon and to be offended so easily. And it's one of the problems which I see with religions in the world. We do get offended so easily. And one of the reasons why religions get offended so easy because they forgot the heart of their religion. The right view should be if it's a real religion, a real truth, a proper view, it must always be something which creates not more turmoil in the world world, but which actually solves and settles disputes, which brings more peace now, not just in your own life, but peace between peoples, between genders, between sexual orientations, between, you know, religions. And that's actually what we know is like, right. For you, there is fuse which do create peace, which create harmony, which lessen tensions and create more friendship and love and harmony in this world. And whatever those views are, that is called white view. An example of that with the cartoons. I mentioned this earlier, a few months ago when they had a problem with the Koran down the toilet. Remember what I said? If anybody ever flushed a copy of a Buddhist holy book down the toilet, she'd always call the plumber. That's the Buddhist response. But certainly you should never get upset and start a war or start violence because, you know, the whole scripture, the whole teachings of all religions are supposed to be encouraging us to be peaceful. So we forgetting what the book is actually encapsulating. It's the same with our religions. The word which I usually use these days as we confuse the container with the contents of the container, might be the book. The container just might be a statue of a Buddha. And you can destroy Buddha statues, but you never allow Buddhism to be destroyed because Buddhism is not the metal. Buddhism is the the peace, the forgiveness, the compassion, sort of the non-violence which the statue signifies. The content may be sort of the statue, but it's what it signifies is more important. So as somebody first, uh, when I went to the first global conference on Buddhism, we're having our fourth global conference in, uh, in June. If you haven't booked up yet, please book up, because that's you learn a lot of things from these conferences. And what I learned from the first conference was when I think people were starting Buddha bars, or they were having advertisements with Buddhas on women's lingerie and all sorts of other stuff. The people were, you know, upset. Were you offending Buddhist or not? And, uh, one fellow, I think, for United States came up and said, no, it's impossible to offend Buddhism. And he made a very good point. This is what I learned from these conferences. I learned that, yeah, just the message, the right view of Buddhism is how can you get offended? Because being offended by itself is wrong with you. It's missing the point. It's missing the point that, you know, whatever people say or do that is their karma. Our karma is to be peaceful, to be forgiven, forgive, forgiving no matter what someone says. And we always just let it go. And you've heard this many times. It's in books like my book Open the Door of the heart. It's just in basically self-help manuals. If everyone ever calls you a dog, you don't get offended. You look at your bottom to see if you've got a tail. If you haven't got a tail, you're not a dog and a story. It makes life very easy. And Buddhists are great with these strategies, so we just refuse to get offended. And when you refuse to get offended, you always come up trumps. There's a story in that book which is, uh, told us in Adelaide, not in Adelaide, sorry. In Wellington, New Zealand, where I just came from, the story of that soldier in the Vietnam War. Uh, close to my monastery in northeast Thailand, uh, a US Air Force, uh, man coming from the base into town on a cycle rickshaw. Halfway on the journey, he passed a bar where many of his friends were getting drunk as his passenger was this big black Afro-American soldier. And because his friends were getting drunk, they shouted out, where are you taking that filthy dog to? Pointing at the US soldier. And that would have been a fight if the soldier had understood Thai. But the soldier was just looking around, enjoying the scenery with the smile on his face. The driver thought the guy doesn't understand Thai, so decided to have some more fun. And pointing to his passenger in the back, he said, I'm taking this filthy, dirty mongrel. Throwing him in the river in town for a good wash. And everybody laughed except the soldier. Who just was peacefully enjoying the ride. And when they got to town, the soldier got out of the rickshaw and started walking away without paying. And when the rickshaw driver shouted out after him, now where's my money and my fare? The soldier turned around and said, in perfect, Thai dogs don't have money. Well, that's how we deal with a fence. You can see now that's an exam for the right view, because that actually doesn't create any arguments, any fights. And it also saves you a lot of money. So like my view is something which solves the problems of the world, which doesn't create new problems. So you can always know right view and also the right speech and right actions by its results. If it does create more turmoil, more anxiety, just more separation between people, you've obviously not seen it, right? There's always other ways to deal with the problems of life. And one of the troubles is that sometimes when we have stories like this, people try and imitate them and it never works. It's not the story which you should imitate, and it is the it is the, uh, the meaning behind it all that the story also is like a container. It's a contents. What's really important, what's contained in these stories. And this is actually what we mean by right for you. You can talk about words and theories like reincarnation or, uh, karma, but it's actually what this holds inside of it. That's the essence of meaning. And if you understand the difference between the container and the contents or the other, similar we use in Buddhism, the signpost and where the destination, the map and the territory, you know, those differences, then you never get confused between the dogma and the right view, the dogma, whether it's the Buddhist scriptures, whether it's a story which you hear from monks like myself or Sister Yama, or which you read about in China, or the books, or the Buddha statue, or all the rituals and the stuff which we do in this temple. These are never to be confused with the contents. Once you understand that, it's easy. Why? We can't be offended. How can you be offended? You know what people say about you as a monk. What people say about you as a person, as a wife, as a husband. Because it's only when we forget there's a piece of harmony was the most important thing. And then we decide, no. If peace and harmony is the most important thing, that's what I'm going to keep in my heart. That's what I'm going to make most important. Even as a kid, you used to say, sticks and stones break my bones. Words will never hurt me. But these days people just forget about things like that. So it's great to have a teaching which separates out what real life view is from dogma. And we know it's right for you because it creates peace and harmony and freedom in our world. And we know the signposts. We know where it's pointing to. So actually, what is this sort of type of right for you, which actually leads to peace and harmony? Again, it's the priorities of what's really important in life, but it's also understanding that each one of us, when we go to the idea of karma and rebirth, the idea of come is each one of you is responsible for your own actions. You are in charge. Which means you don't have to be always manipulated by, like, the bad words of other people by their actions. When you understand the law of karma means you are responsible. You make your own karmas. It says in the the Buddha that you are the owner of your karma. What it means is that no one can actually upset you unless you let them upset you. No one can make you angry. You only allow them to make you angry. No one can make you depressed. You allow life to make you depressed. The law of karma is actually showing that you, in this sense, are in complete control of your destiny of life, not other people and certainly not other any other supreme being. If you believe that you know you are a victim of your husband or your wife, your ex, that is. All of your job, of your sickness, your cancer, your old age or whatever else happens to you. If you think it's a victim, it means you got no freedom to make something out of whatever happens to you in life. You think that you have to be sad. You have to be upset. You have to be traumatized. And one of the wonderful things about this, uh, right view of the law of karma is it shows that you are completely free to make something out of whatever happens to you in life. I go back to the story of my own father. He was a victim of child abuse, as many, many people were. And he always used to talk to me about his father. My paternal grandfather. He always used a word. Please excuse me. Bastard. To my grandfather. And the reason was that my great paternal grandfather, born in Liverpool, rather, my father born in Liverpool. My paternal grandfather, I think, was also born in Liverpool. Very poor plumber before the Second World War. His lifestyle was just so grim. Hopeless that almost every evening after work he would go to the pub, get drunk, come home and just take off his belt and beat any kid who came in his path for no reason whatsoever, and then start on his wife. My paternal grandmother. My father's mother. It was domestic abuse, which was not uncommon. But the point was that you'd expect a person who had such abuse visited on him every day, who saw his mother being, you know, basically whipped every day, would have it be a victim and have great psychological problems and would be a terrible father to myself and my brother. But the opposite happened. Even though he was in a terrible childhood of poverty, of violence, which they're not much love at all. But he I remember him telling me once said when he was on the end of the belt, he made a resolution. If ever he had children, he would never, ever do that. When he realized how bad it was. He actually learned from that and became one of the most kind and loving fathers you could imagine. Now, what the point of that story is, is that you are never a victim of your circumstances. The right view of karma is telling you that, yeah, it's a tough one to deal with when you're a subject of domestic violence or childhood abuse, but it is possible people do it. You don't need to allow that to stop your growth as a human being, to to prevent your freedom and to inhibit your ability to love, to grow, to be wise, to be compassionate. And a lot of karma, it says, gives you that freedom. What it means is that you can never really be a victim unless you really want to be a victim, unless you allow yourself to be a victim, unless you believe you're going to be a victim. The law of karma empowers you, and this was one of the great teachings which I respected so much. Instead of complaining about your situation, instead of complaining, I've got cancer. I've just lost my child. I've just now lost my job. Whatever it is, there's always something one can do about the situations which life throws up about at you, which actually shows why it is a right for you. Because that attitude will lead to peace, to freedom, to harmony. If you're always a victim and think you're a victim, then the problem lies with somebody else, or with the situation, or with God or with somebody else. And you're always stop your own response system from growing. You just give up and hope someone else will fix up the problem for you, or you'll fix them up as revenge. It's their fault. It's somebody else's fault. Now this is actually the wrong view. The right view is something which leads to peace, harmony, grove, freedom, and of course, the law of karma when it means that you take responsibility for your actions. It's no one else's fault. If someone does a cartoon about Ajahn Brahm or whatever it is that I can choose not to be offended. And it's a wonderful thing when you actually take that responsibility and that freedom not to be offended, because when you take that power, then you do become stronger. People can say things about you. They can do things about you. You refuse to be offended, which means a lot of time people don't act like that anymore. They don't push your buttons. When people stop. You don't get angry. When they sort of get upset about you. They stop getting angry at you. It is true that we've been here 22 years in this this city since I first came here. When I first came here, people would always try and abuse you as a Buddhist monk. They'd always try and stir you up with statements such as your dress like a girl. Why didn't you get a proper job? Or you're old enough to know better? Which is now a common idea for Buddhist monks because people didn't know who you were, and when anybody would shout offence and make a point never to react, never to get upset. Why would I allow other people to control my happiness by these words which people shout out? And of course, that if you allow people to control your happiness, remember that time when I gave the sermon at Saint George's Cathedral and they had these two guys outside, and there's a guy and a girl or something who is saying that the the monks were filth, they were evil. They were leading people down the wrong path into hell. There are the born again Christians who were basically shouting themselves hoarse, but they're being completely ignored. And what a wonderful response that is. Instead of going off and arguing, also to say that you're more evil than I am. No, no, you're the evil. No no no, you're the right. That having a fright when you don't allow people to control your happiness, they can actually shout as much as they like. And the whole thing finishes is a wonderful thing about the passivity of Buddhism, which comes from my view, is that we just keep going on and on, growing and growing, growing without needing to make a big fuss and bother, without needing to say we want to protect our rights. We don't need to do that by empowering every individual just to be who they are, to value peace rather than any dogma. We're actually creating this wonderful causes for growth in the world, right view is what leads to such growth, to peace, to harmony. So it's the same when you're like in a relationship. If it is really right for you, it should lead to more peace and harmony. So when people come here and they say, ever since I became a Buddhist, my relationship has gone on the rocks. And I think, what type of Buddhism are you practicing? Because if you really understand these teachings, you should be a much softer, gentler, more beautiful husband. You'll be much more tender, caring, sensitive. Worth. Isn't it what I say, right? View is what leads to peace and harmony. But my goodness, you know you got to live with your wife. You're going to live with your husband. So surely can't you make a better job of it? And so right for you is our son, for example, learning how to speak in appropriate ways. Or ways which lead to peace and harmony in the world. So he can actually use our speech in ways which are conducive to our own benefit and the benefit of all other beings. So it's amazing just how harsh people's speech is. And I sort of kill all the Westerners or whatever those fanatics were saying, or blow up something. And what does that do to you when you hear that sort of, uh, uh, speech? What does does it do to you when you hear critical speech in your home? What does it do to your kids when they hear that type of speech? I sort of stops the speech. Is it conducive to peace and harming this world? It's actually to show how we can live with each other. For us, actually, parents should be very careful the way you speak and what you speak. Is it going to be conducive to peace and harmony, to freedom, to growth? And it's a love. And so some of the speech we should use, we should be very, very careful when we use speech carefully. We can create a lot of that peace and harmony in the world. And you make that speech no one else. So you're in control of this. You're creating your world. You're creating your family. It's not your wife's voice, not your husband's fault. It's not your parents fault. It's not your history is fault. It's your fault. So you take hold of your life, take responsibility for it. Empower yourself and say that you can do anything. With what? With what you have. And this is heaps and heaps of stories of people in the most difficult of situations, people who have never been raped, people who have had their children sexually abused, people who have had these cancers, who've lost their children through accidents, whatever it is which happened, that they have stopped complaining. They've taken control of their lives. They've empowered themselves, they've understood the law of karma is that you make suffering. No one else makes it for you. And we can actually change and use our thoughts, our speech, our actions to create a better world for ourselves and then a better world for others. And of course, one of those right views is that little forgiveness. Everyone is an owner of their own karma. So why do we take on the stupidity of others and worry about it ourselves? Does it matter what your husband said? If it was really stupid, that's his karma. You don't have to make bad karma for yourself with it by arguing back. If your wife has really been lazy, that's her karma. You don't need to make bad karma with it. So as I, as a monk, as a teacher in a monastery, if my monks misbehave, that's there. I'm not going to lose sleep over that. I don't get enough beauty sleep as it is. So the point is, you don't carry around the thoughts of other people in your own heart. You'd be able to let them go. Why is it that people are just so attached to the thoughts and actions of others? One of the first teachings I got from again, Charles was in the monastery monastic life. Anyway, you should look at yourself 95% of the time and only look at other people 5% of the time at most. And that's actually a wonderful right view. So don't look at what the other person is doing or saying so much or thinking, look at what you're doing and seeing if you can create a more peaceful, harmonious world with understanding what is our responsibility, our come. The person who wrote the email was actually asking, well is actually right. If you understanding cause and effect precisely when you understand cause and effect. We understand that the rules of the game, the rules of life. Now why do these things happen to me? People keep asking. And when you actually use a bit of mindfulness, a bit of reflection, a bit of clarity, you see why they happen to you, this result of your karma. And if we can only see that, we can understand. Right? This is what's happening. The karma of the past creates the present reality of now. The karma which I'm making now. The way I react to these situations is how I'm going to be creating the peace or the turmoil of my future. So that's what we always doing now becomes the most important thing. This is the result of some cause and effect process. But how I react and that is what's going to happen in the future. That's how I'm going to create my future. The story, which is the most powerful one, which illustrates this, is the story of that soldier in Thailand, a disciple of adventure who came to see a giant child one day because he'd been shot and wounded in a skirmish on the borders. So he wanted to find out. Why have I got such bad luck? I got this terrible injury. What calm have I done in the past that I've been shot like this? And an adventurer with his great wisdom looked into his past and saw the karmic cause of that injury. He said it was because you joined the army. That's what happens when you join the army. You shoot bullets. Other people and other people shoot bullets at you. Sometimes you miss, sometimes you hear, sometimes they miss, sometimes they hear. Now you've been here. That's the comic cause. Because you joined up. And that's a beautiful understanding of cause and effect. Because sometimes say, wow, if I got all these arguments in my marriage because you got married, this par for the course. If you're a marriage counselor or a monk, which is the same thing sometimes, you know, so every marriage is like that. So you think sometimes the next one will be different? Very funny. But the point is that when you're going to have two people living close together, they'll always be friction. When you join an army, there'll always be some bullets, and some of us will be here. And whenever you're a human being or you have like a your religious person, people are going to sometimes criticize you and welcome to real life. So we never think that something is wrong, that these things are happening. I expect there to be cartoons about Buddhism which are, you know, quite mean and misunderstanding or whatever, but that's life. And look at me. Just how many things which I say, it's not just talks here. Just go to New Zealand, give talks, go to Indonesia, give talks. Singapore. Wherever I go, I give talks, I open my mouth. So often it's only the law of probability. Sometimes I'm going to say something which offends somebody. I just can't help it. But the point is, if ever you're offended by anything which I say, don't allow yourself to be offended. Because why is it that people just they give up the beautiful teachings because I say a stupid joke or whatever? That's my big weakness, my jokes. And they're just like cartoons, you know, make a cartoon. Somebody will be offended. Fortunately, I'm in a religion where people don't try and blow me up afterwards. So I'd hate to be sort of, you know, a teacher of another religion. I'd be dead by now. There's jokes which I said. But the point is, don't be offended. And if some people do get upset at you, you don't need to feel bad about that, because that's par for the course is not one human being in this world which doesn't get criticized for making a mistake when the wonderful things about Buddhism, one of the wonderful right views, is it's all right to make a mistake. We're human beings. That's what we're here for, to learn. Perhaps it was because I was a school teacher that I understood, like how education works. And I look very often at this life in a paradigm as an education experience. We're here in this, this human existence to learn, to grow. And a school has to allow children to make mistakes. And if they never made mistakes on the test, the test would be too easy and the teacher wouldn't have actually pitched the test to questions on the right level. And the idea is actually to test people, make mistakes, to learn to grow. And then if you've never made any mistakes in life, then you're missing out on growth. It's from mistakes where we learn, where we grow and become better human beings. So I expect people to make mistakes. And what a wonderful thing it is to allow yourself to make mistakes and don't feel so bad about it. Number one, it means you don't hide the mistakes. You're not in denial. Remember some time ago I asked people, is there anyone in this room who is perfect? It's amazing how many people put their hand up. It's just a complete denial. There you go. Autistic. Arrogant. Good for nothings. There is no one in this world is perfect. Not even a Buddha was. Sometimes even a Buddha made mistakes. Sometimes. And this is a wonderful thing to see that you can make mistakes, worldly mistakes, and you can forgive. What a beautiful thing forgiveness is. And if we can have the right view of forgiveness, what it means is we acknowledge everybody is learning and we can acknowledge that sure, mistakes are made, but there's something else which is happening. At the same time, we never allow the mistakes to hide the wonderful things which are happening. We keep everything in perspective, as in that symbol of the brick wall. Never destroy a wall because of two bad bricks. Is 998 good bricks there as well? Now you know that story because I've said that many times and that is right. View a very good example of right view. Why is it right for you? Because it really focuses on our own, the reality of our lives. We understand the reason why. The karmic reason why we make two bad pricks is because if you lay a thousand bricks, is 1 or 2 bricks have to be wrong. That's par for the course. And number two, we can forgive the two bad weeks because we can see the beautiful bricks as well. We see real life and we're in control. We can do that. We can embrace and accept and live there. Leads to peace, leads to forgiveness, to compassion as wonderful embracing of life as it is. So that's why it's right for you. It leads to peace and harmony in this world. So this is the law of karma. We also understand one of the other reason the other, uh, teachings of rebirth, of, uh, right view is rebirth. That's a fundamental teaching, reincarnation and means you always got another chance. If you stuff up this life, don't worry, you can have another go next time around. Here, we had a terrible thing. I think if you only had one go at life. Because many of you, if especially over 40 or 50, you think, oh my goodness, is this it? You're already over the hill. You're on the way out. Oh my goodness, where's it all gone? Is there wonderful. You can have another try. You get sort of another ticket to go out again. But also means understands that the process of learning have actually becoming a full human being who understands the nature of life, and it can create peace and freedom in their own heart. It's not something which you can just do in one lifetime. It's just too much to learn, just too much to understand. And it's a beautiful, freeing view which gives you a bigger picture. More chance, more time, more freedom to grow. So even just that idea of rebirth, you can always start again. The wonderful thing of life from forgiveness is the ability to start again. Do it again. Maybe this time better. That's what we call growth. And that's why I love that teaching of rebirth. It means that you can always have another try. Doesn't matter how many times you fail. You can always get up and try again. Fail. Try again. Keep on going. Because I know from my own experience in life, doesn't matter how many times you fail, as long as you never give up. You must always succeed. And so as people who give up, the ones who don't attain this, the whole story of building out the Buddhist Society of Western Australia or monasteries, there's always huge obstacles to these things. And I remember people telling me that when we first started, I thought we'd never survive. You know, our first little house in North Perth. I remember looking at the accounts just when I came, and it was worth, I think, $50,000. And that was our whole assets. And the mortgage was $49,000 we owned. Our equity was $1,000 and we had this beginning. So it was just completely hopeless. And many people thought we were crazy building a monastery in this remote city called Perth. You never do it. But of course, every time you had an obstacle, you never gave up. You kept on going. You kept on rebirthing. If you like. Every time you pick yourself up and try again. We had the problem with our clay trucks that are how many court cases we lost, but we kept on going. That's how we won in the end. So the idea of reincarnation is you always got more chances, an infinity of chances, which means you can never give up. You just keep on going. Now, that is what we lead, leads to peace and freedom. Not only you realise you've got as many chances as you want, you can also give as many chances to other people as well. Doesn't matter how many times a person has cheated you, you can still trust them again. It's like reincarnation giving them another chance. Giving yourself another chance, giving your children another chance. It's a wonderful thing about Buddhist forgiveness. There's nothing which you cannot forgive. And is not a limited number of times that you should forgive. There's something idealistic uplifting about that. And don't tell me it's not practical because it is practical. It works much better than keeping resentment. Anger. Was that little story about those two prisoners of war? Uh, ex prisoners of war. These two Aussies who were in the Second World War and both were in turn by the Japanese. And when they met at a reunion, one said to the other, have you forgiven? What does the Japanese for? What they did to us and our friends? One of these old diggers said, no, I can never forgive them what I saw, what they did. Never. What about you and the other old Australian soldiers said I forgave them years ago. You, my friend, has stood on a prisoner of war camp because you have yet to forgive the power for little dialogue. Until you forgive. You're still back there, being tortured by what ever happened to you. Wonderful thing about Buddhism. We can forgive simply because we understood each one of us owns our karma. I don't own my torturous karma. I only own my karma. And if I forgive, I own that forgiveness and the freedom which comes from it. I own that piece. You own what you make. You don't own what other people make. Your salary, which goes into the bank, is what you own. You don't own what I earn, fortunately, because I don't get paid. So this is what we mean by some of right view understanding the cause and effect. One of the great reasons why you come to places like this is because coming to places like this where you listen to dharma, you understand more about the cause and effect nature. Now what you have to do, the attitudes which you develop, the way you think, does the whole framework of life. You understand the causes which give this wonderful effects of peace, freedom and happiness. And you understand that the causes. You don't have to be the, uh, the person with all the degrees. You don't have to be the person with so much money. You don't have to be the beautiful or the ugly or in-between. You don't have to be any of these things to be happy. The cause of happiness is independent of those things which many people in the world think are necessary for peace and happiness. You find that the causes for these wonderful things, which you really want in life, and nothing to do with what you have outside. The causes for happiness. For peace. A right view which creates that peace and happiness in your life is seeing how things happen inside of you. That's why Buddhism has always focused on the meditation, to have that inner clarity, to be able to reflect upon how your mind works so you actually see the causes and its effects. How have you really do get negative that causes the stress that causes the sickness, that causes the early death in your life, simply because of the negativity which you carry in your mind. Because you can't let go, you can't forgive. You can see where frustration comes from just because the exercise of will, of being a control freak, you can very clear them all. The control freak you are, then what you're trying. And, uh, direct your life and the people around you. Eventually you get to frustration because people won't do the things they're supposed to do. And the world won't go in the way it should go. The planes will not leave on time. That's what I found anyway. You know, I read all these itineraries and you're paying the price to leave at a certain time. It never does. It's always late. Pretty much so. So things never happen the way they should. This Buddhist society. Now that society doesn't run the way it should. We should have an air conditioner in here and probably should finish on the right time. We should actually tell the right date of our AGM. The computer should never crash. We put a lot of money in those computers, all these sorts of things. Why do you get frustrated? It's because of unrealistic expectations. Basically willpower. You think that you are in charge of your life and its destiny. The more of a control freak you are, the quicker you get frustrated when the world doesn't go according to your schedules. And the more you get frustrated, the more angry you get, and the more angry you get, just the sooner you die. It all comes from just being a control freak. So one of the wonderful things about the right view of Buddhism is understanding where does suffering come from? Suffering comes from craving for noble truths, one of the basic forms of right view. It's a great little thing to actually to contemplate every time that you have suffering in your life. Why is it? Don't just take suffering on board with our investigating its cause. The great why question as always. Because I want things to be different. I always want to give the best talks. I always want to be the best monk. I always want to be the best listener, the successful one. Whatever. So craving stuff and you realize you can't be the best monk, you can't be the best meditator. And it's wonderful to think at last, I don't need to be the best monk anymore. I don't need to be the best meditator. I don't need to be the most beautiful girl. I don't need to be just the person who never offends anybody. I don't need to be the one who always tells jokes. And people always laugh. So you never laughed then? And it's a great to have that freedom. It's a freedom caused by having not so many expectations, not so many desires not to be such a control freak. It's always understanding the right view, sort of, you know, of craving causes, suffering, and the wonderful right view of. And to annotate means there's no owner in here, that you don't own your body. You don't own your wife, your husband, you don't own your children. You don't even own your car, your house. You don't own your health. It's a wonderful freeing right for you. Because what you don't own, you don't need to worry about so much. When I was staying in a Wellington in New Zealand, I don't own that much. It's not my monastery. I'm not the abbot there way. I don't need to worry about anything. Same here. Got an AGM to, uh, tomorrow. But I don't own this Buddhist society. Hey, whatever happened to be okay? My monastery down at serpentine. I don't know that. Hey, whatever people do, I can be free. Whenever you think your own something. You have this false idea of responsibility that you are in control. And if things go wrong, you are responsible. That's cause suffering. A wonderful right for you is what releases you from that suffering from that burden. And the great teaching of vanity is that you don't own anything. Everything which you think is yours will one day become separated from you. That's one of the great teachings, almost verbatim from the Buddha. All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will one day become separated from me. So was it really mine in the first place? Was this really my body or just a vehicle which I had to live in for so many years? So when this gets cancer or gets heart attack, oh, I worried it's got cancer. Now it is cancer, that's all. What's a big deal? It's not mine. Not my problem. Is it right here, getting old and about to die? Is that really your problem? If your children sort of snow, they marry the wrong person. Is that your problem? It's their problem. They. They chose that guy. Well, if you get. Now, the point is here that when we own things, then we make our problems and the ownership. You should know by now that you don't own these things. The right view is just to understand how little you really own and control in this world. You certainly you don't own your reputation. You don't own the comments and opinions of others. They say whatever they like, whether it's true or false, you can't stop them. Really understand this beautiful non ownership. That's one of the greatest of right views. It means that you have these things. You look after them but you don't demand much of them at all. You're just like a person passing through. You make use of this body as you make use of a house. You are renting a room where you're staying in temporarily on some great journey through this planet. But you know it's not mine. When it's not mine, you don't get attached to it. You enjoy and then let it go. When you have a partner in life, you enjoy their company as long as they are there for when the partying happens, which it must. You can allow it to disappear. It's not mine. I can't control it. I have to let it go. And letting it go is the third part of right view understanding. It is impermanent. Things don't last. So nature of life to be that way. Things come and things go. And your job when you understand the great impermanence, the instability of our lives is when it's time to let it go. You can let it go, and you can flow with the impermanence arising for the change of our lives. You don't try to be always young. You can enjoy middle age and old age and extreme old age. And is it a wonderful freedom not to be afraid of being old? Not to be afraid of being sick. A lot of sickness comes from being afraid of being sick. The fear creates a tension. The tension causes many illnesses. So if we can stop controlling more and understand that we have to flow with the the rise and fall, which is impermanence, we're not in control anyway, and that the suffering all comes from controlling things which we aren't really ours. And when we let go and detach more and more and get this beautiful freedom. That freedom we can experience in our meditation, we can experience in our lives the freedom which doesn't hold, the freedom which can hear the opinions of others and then drop them immediately, which is never offended because it's words which come up often say, if someone calls you an idiot, the only reason you get offended is because you start thinking they may be right. If you realize from the outset they are wrong, you can never be offended. So if you. When we don't own the words, we allow them to just flow through in one ear and out the other as they say, if they're good words, we can keep them. If they're bad words, we can let them all through. Instead of just keeping the bad words and forgetting the good words, we can actually learn how to let go of life, learn how to flow with its impermanence, with this change, not to demand what life can give us. We understand the cause and effect process and understand that we can give another chance every day. We can understand the birth, karma, cause and effect, the impermanent suffering and non-self, and thereby that should be a path to peace, to freedom, and to harmony. And if it is, it really is right for you. If it leads to a sense of being irresponsible, lazy, then you're taking letting go too far. And I was saying this when Buddhists in New Zealand sometimes are trying to keep the five precepts and they went to parties and say, no, I'm not taking any alcohol. I'm a Buddhist. And their friends told him, yeah, we know about Buddhism. It's all about not being attached. Let go, come on, let go. Take some alcohol. Obviously that's not understanding what letting go is, because it's not leading to peace and to freedom and to sort of happiness. To understand what my view is. They have the traditional areas of right view, karma, causal effects, not sort of holding other people's karma in your own heart. You're just responsible for your actions. So it means you care. You can forgive, you can let go other people to your responsibility is what you do. Your will come and rebirth. Or you can always give another person another chance. Give yourself another chance. Understanding the cause and effect and understanding about. The more we control, the more we suffer, and the more we understand impermanence, the more that we can flow with things and the more that we can understand we don't own things, the more detached and more free we can be. And that must be right for you, because that does lead to peace, to harmony and to freedom. So may all be peaceful, harmonious and free forever and ever and ever. I've done my job now. Now it's up to you.
