Stop Trying to Meditate | Ajahn Brahm

Stop Trying To Meditate by Ajahn Brahm Okay for this evening's talk, I didn't have a subject in mind, so I thought just as I was meditating. It's been a while. Uh, the Buddhist society here since I have actually talked about the practice of meditation. I talk about meditation a lot during retreats, and they've got books about it. But there's many people who come on a Friday night who don't go to the retreats. I thought it'd be nice to spend a little talk about the way of meditation, simply because it's so central to everything about Buddhism is so central to the Buddha's own enlightenment, but it's also central to the lives of the monks and the nuns who come on a Friday night to give talks. And it's certainly the center of one's lifestyle, is surprised from where our wisdom and compassion come from. And in fact, if there was a meditation, there wouldn't be really Buddhism? Certainly there wouldn't be the monks and nuns, and I wouldn't be able to sit up here and give talks and do so much. It's always, I've noticed that all the wisdom and also the kindness come from a calm mind, from a peaceful mind. I know in the world that people say to understand things, you have to think about them a lot. But I understand many people come to places like this because they've already thought too much already, and they realize it never gets them very far except a headache. And it also gets them angry and upset when they think a lot, and it gets them into terrible states of confusion. And often people come to places like this to try and find a way out of their confusion. And sometimes you hear a nice pieces of advice which sound very good. But those are my pieces of advice, the words of the months in advance here. An important thing is to make those words your own. By making them your own. I mean, like seeing what those words really mean, understanding the point of all of this until it becomes part of one's own character, one's own life. What becomes a peaceful, kind person? I, of course, are. Many people have been coming to this center for me for several years, and it has changed their life. But how has it changed their life? It made them more calm, more peaceful. And that is what meditation is all about. Because we live in a very active world, a very busy world, and always seems to get more busy rather than less busy. For most certainly it does for me, being an ABBA, being a man coming and going perhaps is too kind to accept too many invitations. But nevertheless, it's very hard not to. But certainly it's the ability to let go, to rest, to make my mind peaceful, which keeps me going and is for something which we can teach other people. Of all the different religions in the world, it's Buddhism which is centers on the not what you believe, not on dogma, not even on arguing, but it centers on like finding out for oneself. Through the power of meditation. And it is very, very powerful when one learns how to make the mind peaceful and calm. Now, in the statue outside, we have the Buddhism in brief, Buddhism in a nutshell, which says to what is it to do? What is good? Stop doing what is bad, and to purify the mind, the teaching of all the Buddhists. And when we talk about meditation, we're saying about purifying the mind, stilling it, making it calm and peaceful. Too often people think that the only way they can make the mind peaceful is to go to sleep. But of course, you've seen the monks meditating here. And I don't think any time you see the monks snore when they're meditating. And sometimes you see them sitting absolutely straight. And that's a sign that their minds are very, very clear. And certainly my mind becomes very clear in meditation, and I use it to help me. So often when you get into difficulties, such as your sick or your tired, and you need to perform because sometimes the company people have come here this evening, they just wanted to hear a nice talk. And how can you actually give a talk like that? If you've been so busy all day. For example, I recall this one time several years ago when I was in Canberra, just being taken around by people. I was supposed to give a series of talks, but they thought they'd show me around and they took me out one morning, and that morning had a terrible cold. You know what Canberra is like as a very chilly place. And I had a terrible cold. My eyes were watering, my nose was always, uh, dripping, and I felt terrible just the first day of a cold. But they insisted on taking me to this monastery. A couple of hours out of camp for the monks in the monastery weren't very kind, and they kept me there to most of the day. I kept on asking, I want to go back, have a rest before my talk. But they wouldn't let me go by the time I left and got back to Canberra. It was ten minutes before my talk where I had time for a shower or a cup of tea, and you just had to go there and give a talk. And many people were coming. It would have been advertised. And I was in big trouble. So what did I do? I tried to give a talk, but every few moments you had to stop and sneeze. And when you weren't sneezing, you are coughing and you are wiping the water dripping down from your eyes. I felt terrible. And the talk was just as bad. It was terrible to. And after 15 or 20 minutes of this, I realized I was getting nowhere. He was suffering for me and suffering for all my audience. And Buddhism doesn't believe in suffering. We're compassionate. So I said, okay, let's stop and let's just respond to the meditation afterwards. But let's do the meditation now. We did half an hour. Meditation is a wonderful experience because in that half an hour just sitting absolutely still. I realized there were some occasions sometimes I'm lazy like most people, and sometimes we don't really have to. You don't. But when you really have to. You really do it properly. And I was one of the times I really meditated properly. Let go of the past. Let go the future. Important thing. Let go of controlling this. Allow all those liquids in the body to ooze out if they wanted to. Don't try and stop the. Don't try and force the mind. Just relax. Allow it to be sent to the right in the present moment. And after a very short time, my mind became peaceful and I became peaceful. I forgot all about the cold and just was enjoying. This is the quietness within. When you read it, you can turn to the quietness, the peace within. When things start to slow down and stop. The mind isn't thinking so much. You become stable still. And I was just enjoying the peace. And after the meditation finished only half an hour, so had my cough, so had my dripping nose. My eyes were clear and had energy, and I gave this really brilliant talk. And the people who are watching afterwards say, that's amazing because they saw me just before I meditated and they saw me afterwards. It's like one of those advertising's, you know, you see, before, you know, you use this, um, this uh, toothpaste. And afterwards when you use the right toothpaste. And it was just like that, that it saw just what meditation can do just in half an hour, and not only just for curing colds and making you sort of bright, but if you got sickness or whatever, you can really just calm the mind down and make it very peaceful and even amazing what you can do with this body. And you get clarity, you get compassion. It's amazing what you can perform. So how do you actually do this? The main thing with Buddhist meditation is that you stop all this controlling business, because there's people in this world. We're just such great controllers. We're always managing our body, managing our life, managing other people's lives, always controlling this and controlling that. And when we sit down to meditate, what do we do? We control it again. It's just a terrible thing which we do. We say, okay, just now let go, be in the present moment and say, you better be in the present moment, or else. And you grab hold of that present moment and you throttle that, and you just don't give yourself an inch. You're just like a US marine, like a sumo wrestler. You wrestle with that mind of yours and you sort of kill it. No wonder it rebels because you're not treating it properly. I always like to encourage people to remember just a symbol of a Buddha, like a compassionate, kind being. And if that's really what a Buddha is, you know, even, you know, non Buddhists, they would actually they've got a feeling for what a Buddha is a compassionate, kind, gentle being who never went to war, never criticized anybody, never thought of was harmful or violent to anybody, know it was compassionate, gentle. And that's the sort of mind which we have to generate to meditate the compassionate, kind, gentle mind. So you just look at yourself in this moment instead of controlling, say, this is good enough, this moment will do. I will allow it to be. I will embrace this moment as it is. The door of my heart is open to this moment. No matter what it is, I'll allow you to be. Look at the law of come. All this karma has made this moment happen. Now you can't stop it. It's here. It's arrived. So you make the most of it. You allow it to be. You embrace. You have gratitude for for being here. You don't have this for finding mind, which is the opposite of Buddhism. You know that many people. It's so easy to find fault. You look at your partner who full of faults. Look at the government. Oh, it is so many faults. Look at life are terrible. I mean, I could look at all the monks in my monastery. Who who would have them? If you're an abbot. But you can look at it that way. But you can look at it the other way. Just so grateful to be around such good monks. So grateful to be around your partner. So grateful to have this moment, this mind, in this moment. Now, you see, this is what we mean by letting go, accepting, letting be embracing. This is good enough. Love, compassion, peace, all the same thing, but just talked about with different words. This is like I remember when I was a student at school because my parents were very poor. I got a steady job in the shoe shop, and it was this big company who sold his shoes. And because I was actually, after a while, got to know what was going on, I couldn't believe it. This big shoe company in Britain, they were selling the same shoes in different shops, but the different shop, because the shops had a different sort of, um, clientele. They just put the price up in the more expensive shops, which had maybe better décor is exactly the same shoes. And in the shop, what I was saying was was the low class shoe shop. Exactly the same shoes, but a lower price. The same thing, but it's marketed differently. And that's all that really was. Just saying what you experience in your mind, it is how it's sold, how is marketed. That's the most important thing. So whatever you're experiencing, it's not the experience itself, it's how you regard it, how you look at it. And there's a tricky meditation. You learn how to take any experience. I experience of a cold now feeling really rotten, but I made peace with it and soon my mind got into very deep meditation, which shows you how easy it is to meditate when you know how. Letting it be, letting go and allowing it just to exist and not fighting, not controlling, making peace. That was every now and again. I just have these themes of meditation a few months ago as my basic theme with meditation. Make peace with the moment. Make peace, not war. I was born in the 1950s, growing up in 60s. Remember, some of these have this CND banner bomb going in marches that was part of growing up in London in the 60s and 70s. We always used to start saying make peace, not war, make peace and not war. That was just like a slogan of the left wing, but I didn't realize it came from the Buddha. Make peace, not war with your mind. Now, what happens then is when you start making peace with your mind. The mind makes peace with you and you have this incredible process starts to happen which you can watch. And it's called the process of meditation. When you start fighting the mind, when you let go, when you embrace this moment, when you start trying to control it, we don't find fault with it when you make peace with it. Things start to slow down. The mind doesn't move so much. There's not so much busyness. The mind starts to feel this wonderful sense of inner peace. You're making peace. Of course. What you make is what you end up with. So when you make peace with every moment, after a while, you have peace. Now, the biggest problem which people have when they start to talk about meditation. I can't stop the mind thinking. Of course you can't stop the mind of thinking. Look at what you just said. I can't stop the mind thinking. And you should stop trying to stop the mind thinking. And then you stop thinking. This is a problem because we always get involved. If we meditate, if we want to do the meditation, you're missing the point. Meditation is not something you do. It's not some sort of craft or hobby or some other business you do. You work so hard out there in the world, working to make a living, looking after your family, even just getting here, doing your social and family responsibilities. So much hard work. Why do you just use the same method when you come and meditate? This is relaxing time. Letting go time. Compassion. Time. Time of peace. So when do you actually learn about meditation? Just sitting there and doing nothing. That's why very often I used to tell people, look, if you're a lazy person, if you really are lazy, then meditation is made for you. And that's the words. Now this is really knowing how to be lazy really later, but But people don't know anything about laziness. By laziness. They think they're just doing something else when they're supposed to be doing what they're supposed to be doing. That's what laziness is usually mean. But what laziness really is, is just allowing this moment to be embracing it and not doing anything. This will do inside this controller, this thing which causes all the problems in your life and other people's lives as well. You make peace with that. And after a while it just disappears. It calms down. It's settled. They have that to their word. In Buddhism, it called it summer to literally means settling is settling the business of life, finishing all your business. Have you done yet with your business or you still got loose ends? Unfinished business? Look at your life. Whenever will your business be finished? Even if you have a heart attack now, you still have so much unfinished business. Even if you say that. Okay, seven days, you're going to die. Can you finish all your business in seven days? Of course you won't be able to. Seven years. 70 years. You'll be dead. You still won't have all your business finished. That's what life is like for most people. If you ask what the meaning of life is, it's like unfinished business. For most people, you quote, their life is unfinished business. So how on earth can you find any peace in this life? You find peace by finishing that business. You know that lovely story of my book? Many of you know this, but it's a great little adage about the monk in south Thailand who was building his hall. But he came to the west. So the rains retreat, he said in the builders home it was meditation time. Wanted to rest, want some peace in his monastery. Don't want builders around with his meditation time. And a few days later this man came to visit and saw this half completed hole and asked the world, when's your hole going to be finished? And this great man said, my hole is finished. What do you mean it's finished? There's no windows in the openings. Is no roof on this? Pieces of wood, cement bags, bricks all over the place. Are you going to leave it like that? What do you mean it's finished? Now, what he said was so important. He said. What's done is finished. Now that is very powerful. Can you remember that in your life? Every now and again, what's done is finished. So that way there is an end of things. There's a way of finishing. There's a way of getting some peace in life. There is a way of letting go. You actually make life complete. What that really means is you let go of the past. You let go of the future. You complete things. Understanding it will never be perfect if you're a controller. But if you let go of controlling, then it suddenly does become perfect. So what happens in this meditation? Again, this incredibly little process. When you stop doing things, you find your mind starts to calm down. You start to become a peace with things. The thoughts start to slow down because you're not making them. The more business you do, the more thoughts you construct. And if you do lots and lots of business, those thoughts get faster and faster and faster. Many years ago, I was a young monk. I watched a person go crazy. I've appeared in 3 or 4 days. He was. I couldn't stop it. I was a young man. Did he know what I was doing? But I noticed this man was talking to me. His words were getting more and more fast. The power of the current of his thinking was getting more and more out of control, and you could actually see exactly what is happening. The thinking mind just got stronger and stronger until basically it burst. He burst through reality and you became crazy thinking too much out of control. Have you ever sometimes worried so much you can't go to sleep at night? It's all too much thinking. You haven't had the ability just to calm the mind and make it still. You ever got so worried because you've had bad news? Maybe a cancer, or maybe a death in the family, or just gone bankrupt or whatever. And you just you can't calm the mind. You just worry so much here how much pain that is. There's more pain from a thinking mind than from a sick body. It's the mind which is the most cause of suffering inside people. But it could also be the greatest cause of peace and happiness. If we can just allow the mind to stop all this sinking business and to be able to stop the sinking, because all we need to do is to let it go. Leave it alone, and the mind will just calm down all by itself in good time. The story I was telling just about six months ago. I'm not sure when the last time I told this here, but it was a fascinating story because it showed how stupid I was, and I learned actually how to make my mind peaceful. It was my sixth range retreat story when I was buying myself in a perfect monastery. You couldn't get a better monastery than that. It was in the north of Thailand. It was cool. He was even in a tree plantation. And being an Englishman to write his tales all around me. I had a great time. But after a couple of weeks, no more than a couple weeks, after a month, my meditation started to fall apart. I couldn't stop my mind from thinking. And when it started thinking, he didn't just think about Buddhism or about Dharma, he started to think about very hard, monkish things. And it started thinking about such things. I really said, no, that's inappropriate for a monk to think about such things. Stop it. But the more I tried to stop it, the worse it got. And after another week or two, I was going crazy. And it wasn't just like romance. It was weird stuff as well. And I'll come on, get out of this. And I couldn't stop it. So it got so bad I thought I was going crazy and it was worse. I didn't have any other man to talk to. You know, no other sort of person to get some advice. So I went out to this Buddha statue. Every monastery have these Buddha statues. I just use it as a means of reflection. And I went up to that Buddha statue about three times and actually said, help! Now, can you give me some inspiration to stop my mind going crazy? And inspiration which came up, I thought I'd do a deal. The deal was this for most of the day. Please let me just do my meditation to watch the breaths. But mind if you want to think about, you know, girls, romance, whatever. We'll do it between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.. If you do, I'll give you one hour. That's my deal. So I did that. I said okay, for one hour a day, you can take whatever you want. Anything goes for the rest of the day. You behave yourself and be a monk. It's like one of my disciples here. Some time ago. He said, I'd like to become a monk. He asked. He can eat. Ordained as a monk by one condition. So what's that condition I can have every Saturday evening off? Said, no, you can't do this. It's not a part time job being a monk. So anyway, I decided to try and do it part time, 23 hours a day and behave myself. One hour a day, 3 to 4. Anything goes. But it didn't work as I expected because it was still just as hard. You sit down there and you try and watch the breath or be in the present moment. Straight away the mind starts thinking about the weirdest things come back and they go off again. Come back, go off again. And there was a struggle, but it got to 3 p.m. so I went up to my room. I leaned against the back, against the wall, put my feet out and said, okay, whatever you want to think about, go for it. Anything goes. The most unwanted. Weird, strange. Romantic, sexual. Whatever it is, you can now think that. And that was the quietest hour of the whole day. I mean, I just went so peaceful. I just watched the breath all by itself. That was weird and strange, but it really taught me a lesson. I realized why my mind was going crazy because I was trying to control it. That's what it was. The more I tried to force it and control it, the more it rebelled. When I let go. So you can do whatever you want. Then it became peaceful. You know, I told that story to many people. I once told it to this young girl who was visiting our monastery from Singapore. And to give her an example that I told a story of this little girl in Perth. I think she was only about 6 or 7 years of age and she decided to leave home. She was fed up with her mummy for telling her to tidy up her will, wash their hands before she she ate, and to do this and do that, she's all right. I can't stand it. I'm leaving home. The 6 or 7 year old. Now, this was a very smart mother. She said okay. And she helped her child. Pack your bags. And she went down to the kitchen, made us some sandwiches. And so I left the door. Bye bye. Have a nice life. My dad was a very smart woman. I really admire her because. What is a 6 or 7 year old? Do they got a little suitcase? Have they got the sandwiches? They go down to the end of the street. And then by the time they get just around the corner, they're homesick. So they come straight back again. And the mother is still standing at the door because she knew exactly what would happen. So she came back again. Because that's what happens. And I told this, a Singaporean girl and her mother did the same when she was seven years of age. She got so fed up with her mother for disciplining her. She said, right, I'm going to leave. But in Singapore, they never gave her some sandwiches. I just gave her $20 to buy your own lunch. So hopefully this little girl with $20 and a suitcases. And of course she never got to the bottom of the apartment block, went down the lift and came straight back up again. That's what happens. And that's what I do with my mind for that. 3:00 to 4:00. My mind wants to do well. So I helped it, packed his bags, gave it $20, metaphorically speaking. Off you go. And of course, it came right back to me. Now, that's an important part of meditation. The psychology of meditation is allowing things to be being kind. If you're kind to your mind, your mind would be kind to you. If you don't, if you make war with it, you'll just get collateral damage. If you make peace, you'll find peace. Allowing things to be, letting it go and allowing this moment to exist. Kindness. Compassion. Peace. Freedom. That story about freedom years ago. I'll just say in brief, you know, just the difference between a prison and my monastery is not the comfort, because my monastery is far more uncomfortable than any prison. But people in my monastery want to be there. That's what I don't feel is a person in jail. You don't want to be there. That's why it's a prison. And from that, I got this wonderful understanding of the difference between freedom and prison. A prison is any place you don't want to be. Freedom is any place where you can tend to be So if you've got a crazy mind and you don't want to be there, it becomes jail. It becomes huge suffering and it makes it worse. If you've got a crazy mind and you're happy to have that crazy mind, your content, you find freedom happens and the mind starts to become calm and still you're giving it freedom. Try that out in your life. When have you felt free and when have you felt in prison? Every time. You don't want to be here, you put yourself in a jail. Now, if you want to understand about the Buddhist way of meditation. It's all about being content, giving yourself freedom, content to be here in this moment, no matter what's happening. That's how I dealt with the problem of the cold. How this can tend to be heavy. Cold. I stopped fighting it when I was trying to give a talk. I was fighting it so hard, trying to stop it. It made it worse. When I started meditating, I can have a code. That's fine with me. I freed the cord. I allowed it to be. And then it disappeared. My mind became still and peaceful. What's actually happening? The mind is like a lake with waves on it. It is an archetypal symbol for the mind, a body of water. It's been used for centuries. Not just in Buddhism, but in other traditions. Imagine a body of water when there's waves on the surface. That's like your thoughts. Some people's minds have got tsunamis every day. If it destroys so much of your happiness and your friendships and your your contentment, there's huge waves going in there. So the whole idea of meditation is calming those waves down. So it's not a storm at sea, no sudden armies until it's hardly a ripple on their mind. How do you calm the waves of your mind down? Too many people think the only way to calm down the waves of your mind is to put your hands on the crescent, pat them down, try and smooth the surface. And that's what many people do to meditate. They try and smooth their mind. They actually make more waves that way. So with a body of water, all you need to do is to take your hands out, stop disturbing it, and it becomes still all by itself. It's all about patience. Just be patient in this moment and after a while, the moment is so still and so peaceful. The first time I meditated, it was only for five minutes. I didn't know what I was doing, and that was good. When you know too much of what you're doing, you do too much. Because I didn't know what I was doing. What am I supposed to do? So I didn't do anything. At the bottom, I became reasonably quiet. So now hope me straight away. The first five minutes put me in meditation because that was peaceful. It was the first time I felt any type of peace in my life at all. But it wasn't just peaceful, just starting out. It was peaceful in my mind, started to become clear. Like peace goes along with clarity. This is one of the reasons why people, please excuse me are so stupid in life. They think too much. When they think too much, they see too little. The less you think, the more you see, the clearer everything becomes. Which is why, after a really good meditation, it's quite easy to solve problems. So, for example, in the last meditation retreat, somebody which I taught, somebody started came off. They just came from where they had lots of problems at work. And so they said, what am I supposed to do? Because there's so much unfinished business and really big problems in my company. So don't don't worry. Just meditate after a while and just leave it all alone. See what happens. And she did. She just meditated 2 or 3 days. Four days. And then in a meditation, she got all the answers to the problems in her company. It's a really good one. Things you can never think about. Usually in the calm, in the peace you get solutions because you can see clearly. So if you want to solve any problems in life or in business or in family or in your monastery or whatever else you do, stop thinking about it. Make the mind still and peaceful and you get clarity. The mind becomes powerful. So as you let go, as those waves get less and less and that might become still, you can start to feel power building up. This is the inner power of the mind, to purify the mind from all these distracting thoughts so that it becomes still. And it's like that old simile of the sun in a magnifying glass. Being focused is the stillness. Sometimes people call meditation concentration in a sense, but it's not you concentrating the mind, it's just the result of stillness. That's why I prefer stillness and concentration. So the mind becomes so still it stops moving in the past, in the future it stops thinking. And what's left is awareness. Motionless still. And this is actually where wonderful things happen in your meditation. This is the two avenues for energy in the mind. Your energy, the energy of your life can go one of two ways. You can go into controlling and doing things, or you can go into just knowing, being aware. The two parts of the mind, the active and the passive. So much of our energy is used up in just doing things, controlling things, thinking about things, worrying about things. This is all the active part of the mind, which means we have got hardly any energy left just for being aware and just knowing. And because of that, we get very, very tired, even depressed. Why do we get depressed? Because we do too much. We've got no energy left. Just to see, to know, to feel, to understand. I came across that idea because when I used to go visit my family in England. I always just go in November, December, January, February this time of the year. And that's a very stupid time to go to Northern Europe because it is so depressing. This is so great all over. I'm not going to do the old grey joke today, but it's so gray all over the place. You can read about that in my book. This is so great. Depressing. I wonder what over there that my brother was driving me around and having come from Perth, which is bright and sunny and people wear colourful clothes, I noticed myself. The sky is grey to the buildings are all grey. No one paints the buildings bright colours in England and people well is grey. Close they got overcoats on and just. You can't see any colour at all. And because it's the northern hemisphere is quite far above the equator, very close to the, the North Pole is it felt like that. And the sun when it comes out maybe about 9:00 and it goes down in this in the morning and maybe 2 or 3:00, it starts to get dark again. There's hardly any light there. And because of that, people used to get depressed simply because there was nothing to actually to stimulate their senses. And a few clever psychologists, psychiatrists had got the very simple remedy of putting these people who were depressed at this particular time in England, putting them in a bright room. With wearing Hawaiian shirts, you know, with walls of different colors, just to stimulate them, to brighten them up. And it worked. It had a lot more energy because the energy was actually going into the knowing more rather than into doing, because it was just so dull. And I've never any of you thought the life is so gray and dull. You feel so depressed and there's nothing which stimulates you anymore. Just even the food just all tastes the same. And just people, it is all look the same. And this is nothing. Even flowers. It is flowers all the same. Smell of flowers, sunsets. He knows before he got another sunset butterfly with the trees sitting on the ground. It's depressing. Now the point was that if you can get in that mood, the most beautiful things in the world can look so depressing. Why? It's nothing to do with those things is to do with you, because there's not enough energy in your life. Now, if you actually say in London this time of the year and you were in love, oh, it's so beautiful. Just as amazing buildings and those wonderful people and just the beautiful sunsets and those pigeons are. That is so lovely. But when you're actually in love, everything looks beautiful. So what's actually happening there? Because knowing you, just enjoying life so much, the energy is pouring into knowing you don't have to do very much because life is okay. You've got no problems when you're in love. The point being here is I'm making the difference between the doer and the know, and when the energy goes into doing things well, you haven't got any much energy left and the knowing life becomes dull. This is like going around with a flashlight for a mind which has got low and it's got low batteries. Everything else is dull and miserable, and you get upset and you get angry. But what happens when you start meditating? Because you're not allowing energy to go into doing things? You're not being, like, active and controlling. You're not thinking and managing you, accepting, allowing things to be, making peace. You're not making war and doing things. The energy of your being starts to go into despair. Awareness. What we call in Buddhism, mindfulness. Knowing you become more alert, more awake, more alive. You find, you get less depressed. One of the things which I recommend if anyone has depression, you practice this meditation. Your depression is going to disappear. You're going to become a happier, more bright, more positive person. It's not that you are deciding to change yourself. It is happens naturally whether you like it or not. You see more, you feel more, you hear more, you know more. You know deeper. The colors of life start to become brighter. You become energized. You become happy. That's why this way of meditation, which the Buddha started to teach, became very, very popular. Because without having to go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist, without having to have any theories, without having to have any beliefs or read this or do this. It was happening naturally, a very fundamental way of overcoming negativity, depression, and even grumpiness. So you became a happier person, an easier person to live with. My goodness, so many times people have actually come to my meditation classes. The classic story. Years ago this lady came to my course. This was when we had the South River class over in castles. Now we have had in Armadale for a long time now. And he came there. He said, I didn't feel like coming today. I just came out from work. I was so busy and so tired. But my children sent me. My children, my kids said, mummy, please go to meditation now. I don't feel like it. Mummy, go to meditation. Know why mummy, you are much nicer than mummy when you come back from meditation, because the kids realise that what meditation did to their mother was actually to make her less grumpy. More kind, more peaceful, a better person to live with. And so this you can understand why this is happening here. When you calm the mind down, when you give it energy into knowing you lessen your negative qualities of the mind, you become more positive. This nature that this happens, energy going more into knowing, less into controlling. And you find the very reason you want to control your life to give you a better happiness. You realize you've just been doing exactly what you shouldn't have been doing. You want to control. You want to manage. You want to think, to solve your problems. We make more problems. You stop this thinking you can undermine down. You let go much more and then there's no problems to be solved anyway. You don't need to manage life. Life starts to flow more smoothly. You become more successful. You become an easier person to live with. You have better relationships. All those things which were problems before and now no longer problems. Which is why meditation is incredibly popular and it works so well. If you do it properly, you become a happier, more peaceful person, less grumpy, and also less sick. You understand all those negative emotions which run through people. That's what makes them sick. That's what gives them a stop. Some living a long life. It is. It's amazing. Just, uh, my my monastery, the the all the people who keep coming to my monastery. It's been such a long time now since anybody has died. This is my monastery. I told us that my monastery is quite remarkable because if any of the disciples. I have to go to their funerals. I know when people die, when they don't die, I think it's a long way. I was the last few and we went to them a long time. Now you see, it has actually works. See you meditate, you come to this, this, this joint and you live a long life. Which is why the some of the monks. We've got monastery in California. And I told you many years ago, I check this out. I asked him, is this actually true? He said, yes, it is true that if someone is a meditator and one of those monks signs the form. Yes. We, uh, say they are a good meditator or they meditate, they come to a retreats. You do get a reduction in your health premium when you have your sort of your health insurance. You write down your meditator, you get a reduction. Soweto is even economically worthwhile as well. And the reason is because everybody knows that if you let go of that negativity, you become a healthier person. But of course, the meditation goes much deeper than that, because as you go more on that path, the energy goes more and more into the knowing until you become incredibly bright and happy and you become centered within. Notice when you're happy. You don't want to move onward. When it's about discontent, you move the body because your hand is unpleasant. You move your house because you don't like to be the one to be somewhere else. When you really happy, you become very still. The more still you are, the more happy you become. What happens is the mind starts to really become still and goes inside itself. This is the part of meditation. The more focused it becomes, the more powerful it becomes. When it starts to become powerful, you can start to do things which most normal people can't do. And this is actually where we start to get the insights of Buddhism. Not only can you think much more clearly and much more deeply than ordinary people. You can actually see the solutions of things. Your memory also increases enormously. One lady, who was on a retreat recently, who told me that when she was studying in Melbourne at the university, I think one thing was Monash. She would never go to tutorials. She told me didn't need to. She got the top marks every year as to how, because I knew what she was going to say when she was. She was a Sri Lankan when she was very young. There was this meditation teacher close by to where she lived, and he was a great teacher and she learnt meditation from him. So whenever she went to any classes, she knew how to make her mind so still. She could listen and remember everything through when it came time for the examinations, or even writing an assignment. The first thing which came out of her mind, she wrote down and it was always correct. She said she had a great time at university. Hardly any work, but always the top marks. Now that's called efficiency, simply because she learned how to train her mind. I heard the same from some of our monks in England, about a doctor at Exeter University when he was doing his med school, he too would hardly ever go to any tutorials. He wouldn't even go to the lectures. But he always came top every year. I want to find out why. In his Guinness meditation, he trained his mind to be still. When you're still, you're like a sponge which is got no water in it. But you can soak up things very easily. But how can you actually learn when your sponge is just so full of other stuff? Try to to empty the mind to make it so solid and peaceful, then it can actually absorb anything. It's a great efficiency to be able to read and understand, to retain information. But more than that, just before I came in here, people were talking about, you know, what happens to the tsunami victims after they die. And I said, most of them get reborn sooner or later, and that's part of Buddhism. But is they why, you know, all this Buddhist business about rebirth? Can you really accept that? And again, it's through the power of meditation. You can actually know that's true. And this is where the power of meditation really starts to to bite when you actually start to see some truths for yourself. And how do you see that? There's two ways where meditation can prove for yourself that rebirth actually happens. The most obvious way is actually when you start recording your own previous lives, and that's not so hard to do. If you learn how to make your mind very still and start to give it that power, when all the energy goes into knowing, your memory is enhanced. Really enhanced, and all you need to do is to ask yourself, what is my earliest memory and memories of the past start to come up in front of you? Memories of when you were a child. When you were a baby. Memories when you're in your mother's womb. And sometimes memories of a past. And this is your memories. And the strange thing about that type of experience, the memory which is empowered by very still and peaceful meditation, is that it always comes with a strange sense of absolute certainty. Memories of many different types. But this type is once every time it happens to someone is always no doubt at all. That was you in a past. So this is fascinating. You can actually do this. The other way of proving for yourself to reverse its effect is actually knowing just the nature of the mind. Because when you go deep in meditation, that's what you're going to. When the mind becomes still, he becomes powerful and your body fades away. All these five senses of seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. All disappear. He just left with a mind to some. I did nothing else. You can't hear. You can't smell. You can't taste. You can't touch. You can't feel anything. Heat nicely inside. Very powerful. Not asleep, but incredibly awake. He knows. Also states you go to what we call a pure mind state. That's all that's left. That is pure mind. Very blissful, very still, very powerful. Now you know that actually when you actually go through those states just before, as I've written in my little books there, before you actually go into the state of deep meditation, you go through what we call these limiters, these lights which appear in the mind when all the five senses disappear. You're getting so still you can't see, you can't hear, you can't smell or taste or touch. You just can't do that. They're all gone. A beautiful light appears in the mind. You go into that light. And on the other side is the Janice. Have you ever read about people having out of the body experiences or near-death experiences floating up out of their body? What happens next to them? They go towards the lights. I know now that that light which you experience at death is exactly the same as you experience in this meditation. But what is death anyway? But the five senses in a body disappearing. What is meditation of five senses in the body disappear? What you're left with is a body stacking the same experience. So actually, when you're meditating, you're actually practicing how to die, how to let go of the body in its five senses. And you know that when that body in the five senses disappears. It's not that everything just stops. You know that this mind continues on the stream of consciousness. Why? Because you've done that before. And it's fascinating that if you can remember even past lives and what happens in getting a new birth, it's all these ideas and theories, however you hear about in Buddhism. He starts to make so much sense because it becomes part of your experience. You can remember what happens when you die. Someone just asked me just before I came in here. They're a bit concerned because they had a few deaths in the family. And also the sad Nami victims. What happens to them? Is it just. They just gone? Just disappear? It seems so sad if their kids haven't had a chance to live and they'd just been swept away. You seem so cool. But it's not so cruel. Is still, you know, unfortunately, it's still sad. But it's not so bad if they are given another chance. This particular lady was just asking about her. One of her relations just had a child with a child was stillborn. They reminded me of one of the disciples here. They too had a child who was stillborn and had an ultrasound just a couple of days before the the birth. But in those few days, the baby, the fetus, had turned in the womb and strangled itself on the cord and came out stillborn. And I know all about that because I did the funeral service for this family. It was a very moving experience because they dressed the baby up. They gave it a name. And actually at the funeral service, they actually tipped the coffin vertical. And I was next with the families either side and had a family photograph, so they called it. Charlie managed to actually get in the family photograph just as a stillborn child. I thought it was really quite, quite nice. But one of the things this family did, which is quite common in many cultures, in fact, the professor Ian Stevenson, who wrote a whole book about this, But with a ballpoint pen, they marked the foot, the heel of their deceased child because they thought is part is part of the tradition. Then maybe that child didn't quite have enough good karma to actually to make it into this life. But maybe you'll try again. And sure enough, after a few months, the woman became pregnant again when she gave birth to a child, one of the first things they did was to look. And it was there. The birthmark exactly the same as a mark they'd made with a ballpoint pen on the heel of their baby's foot, so they were quite sure that that was a baby be born again. Of course, it makes them feel much better. And it's true, because I know this. This is what happens when people try and take birth as a human being. Sometimes they don't quite have enough good karma. Almost enough, but not quite. I gave the metaphor. It's like you go to the airport, you haven't got enough money to buy a proper ticket, so you get a standby. And it's just like this baby just had a standby ticket. Unfortunately, she didn't quite have enough buses. What happens if you're on standby? Sometimes enough people get on the plane, you can't get on, but they'll always actually put you on a plane coming later. So that's what happened to this baby. Didn't have enough good karma to actually to make that birth. But the next one you managed to get a seat, get ripped off. And that's what usually happens. So beings when they're sort of trying to get reborn, they'll actually come and they'll keep on trying until they get in their. Just the same as you will keep trying to get on the plane until you get a seat. So this is actually what happens when you actually can understand this, because people can have those memories and they can remember trying and not making it and trying again. This is part of their clear memories, which come as a result of empowering the mind in meditation. So you get some of these understandings, these so-called theories, these parts of Buddhism, which you don't have to believe, but you can know, you can find out for yourself. So that's one of the other wonderful things about meditation. All the wisdom and knowledge, all these words, they don't just come from reading books, they come from your own experience. When you have that experience, it's very clear about the big picture of life and many, many lives. And also you can actually get all the other answers about whether there's a God or not. What is a God? What is the self? Who are you? Why are you? But it's a waste of time to be talking about that. Because when you start talking about such things, people argue with you and it's not. We don't sort of teach in order to for people to argue. The most important thing is people to be able to find out for themselves. Don't you want to know who you are, what life is? What's doing all of this? And this is how you find out. So traditionally, it's always been the case in Buddhism. We've meditated. We purified our minds for the sake of letting go of the negativity in our life. For having that inner happiness, that peace. So don't go crazy with too much thinking. We don't go crazy with anger and ill will towards other people, which has terrible consequences. People go and kill each other and blow each other up and rape each other and beat each other. Or because they don't train their minds, their Their minds are out of control. The monsters. You take a monster and teach a meditation. How they became so, so wonderful, so peace and so nice. You can actually calm yourself down. You can actually purify, you can change. You can become more successful, more alert, more wise. But also you can really understand what's going on in life, especially things like rebirth and karma, and eventually understand the nature of existence. Who you are. Trial is meditation, which makes you enlightened. So sometimes people start meditating just to solve their inner problems, to get healthy, even great, it works. Why not? But it goes much deeper than that. You carry on this meditation business and you become just so peaceful, so happy, so powerful. And that mindfulness, that power, mindfulness would eventually answer all your questions. Much more than I could ever do. Much more than ebooks ever do. The books give you some hints, but you make that mind peaceful and calm and you can find out for yourself. You will find it. Yeah. I don't know what rebirth is. You know what heaven and hell are? I talked about that last week. You know what happens to people when they have? They die in tsunamis. So you can actually become more peace with what happens in life. And you can become more effective, more compassionate, instead of just making too much problems and and making a mess of this world. You can live more simply because you got eight and a half. We didn't need all these these crutches for happiness, like big crystal sets, TVs and alcohol and movies and all this sort of stuff. You don't need all of that to be happy. If you've got your own inner happiness and you were at peace with yourself and the world, and you start seeing deeply into why. So that's why the meditation has always been the great path. The way that your questions are answered. So the more you make the mind still, the more you learn how to let go. Stop controlling. Relax. Make the mind peaceful. Make it still. Develop more kindness, more compassionate toward my hearts. Open to this moment, no matter whatever it is. The more you let go in a piece, the more powerful you become. The wiser you become, the free you become, the more liberated you can become. So that's what Buddhism is all about. Purify the mind. Okay, so that's the talk today about meditation and purifying the mind. So are there any questions, comments or complaints about tonight's talk? And any questions and any comments. Yes. Okay. Um, you're a teacher. Uh, how can you make your students more calm and peaceful before a lecture? I'm not quite sure what level you're teaching at, but, uh, what of, uh, uh, friends? Disciples you might call her was teaching in a school in the south of the river. And I think it was the 60s. And because she was a regular at meditation group down in Armidale. Armadale, she started teaching her class Quiet Time. She didn't call it meditation because meditation meant Buddhism, and some people were a bit afraid of anything other than their own religions. So she called it quiet time. That was one of the first reasons for her success. As a package, it could be the same message, but package it in a sort of a non-confrontational way. And she started the kids off with about five minutes, not even less than maybe 2 or 3 minutes at the beginning of the school year. Built it up until about by the end of the school year, they were doing about 15 minutes every morning. And the headmaster of the school, who I met a couple of times, was so supportive because he saw the results. He said, these kids, the ability to learn, to concentrate, to focus is so increased, but there's also some unintended side effects. And they told me what they were, that sometimes there was some conflict in the classroom. I know a couple of kids were having an argument and always someone would put their hand up. Miss, can we have quiet time? So everyone have quiet time for five minutes diffused all the other problems. I noticed actually the children were more caring and for each other. And this is actually what they told me. Just basic, uh, effects. So just doing some quiet times. So they had the principal, he said, look, I don't care anyone who comes into this school and criticizes her. It's not Buddhism. It's just good learning skills. And she was praising this teacher to the hilt. She, I think, became the vice principal of the school eventually before she retired. It worked immensely. So it's great if it was actually introduced in schools. I think there are some wonder if he's here today and is one of the people who comes quite regularly. Was teaching in a school to the south of Perth and having a great time. Kids love it and it also does enhance the ability to learn and if the schools will go up. I just was reading the paper today and I have the t the school tables. So I think if we get a few schools doing meditation, I'm sure the results would actually go up and the league table simply because it's just learning how to learn and being able to train the mind to actually to accept the information, to be able to process it in a wise way. So yeah, but don't call it meditation. Call it quiet time or relaxation or, you know, empowering the mind or whatever. Give it a spin, which most people will accept. Does that make sense? Yeah. In the back. Well take meditation. Oh, yeah. I used to be famous teaching meditation in prisons, and I mentioned it in the in my little book. And one of the wonderful things which happened to me, I don't mind praising myself for this because it was a very encouraging, very beautiful. Once I became the abbot, I had to give the teaching in prisons to one or the other monks adjourned to tomorrow's was teaching yesterday down at kind of prison farm. They say I got 2020 prisoners yesterday come to the meditation class, which was amazing. 20. but anyhow, that when I started there taught for many, many years in the prisons. And then when I became that, yeah, but the monastery got so many other duties, I had to give it to another monk. And one day I received a telephone call from other prison officers who said, Brahm, could you come back? I said, why so I'm so busy. And I said, oh, please. So because he'd been in the Prison Service a long time and the prison officers, I know each other, he said. All of the people who went to your class never be offended and came back to jail. And he said, I know that. So whatever you're doing, come back and do it again. And I treasure that, because that was actually a praise for the people who really know what's going on. So it worked. And I made some of the prisoners less grumpy, less negative. Why do people do those crimes? Sometimes it is because. Because of guilt. Now, when I was just talking to someone just before I came in here, there's some times that we have this terrible thing of self punishment. We don't allow ourselves to be happy. And sometimes once we get into this guilt cycle, I've done something wrong and I deserve to be happy. And sometimes you keep on reoffending to get punished again. You don't want to be free. You don't feel you should be free. Sometimes people get into that cycle of redoing the things which cause him pain in the past to get more pay. So I was feeling from that by feeling good about themselves, accepting their pasts, acknowledging, forgiving, learning. When it didn't look about punishing themselves, they could be free of to which they were. Which is wonderful to know. One of my meditators, uh, it was great was that the Perth Airport one day and somebody touched me on the shoulder. Turn around. It was one of my meditators, Nic in a really nice suit. He was obviously doing very well. And before I could say anything, I recognised him. And he said, Bob, I'm still meditating. And he smiled at me. It's really nice. So yeah, we do it in the business as well. It's a great thing to do. It is. Many of the people here teach in prisons as well. I can see 2 or 3 of them who go to prisons regularly to teach meditation, and it works. So yeah, it's a great thing to do. So anyway, I think that's probably enough for now. So that's it. So another question. No. Uh, on this, on my son Gordo. Go on, go on, go on. Happy watching. So, I can't go back to what I don't know. But I'm not mad. Call me. Stupid. We've got nobody talking, so I go. Thank you all. I need my money.