Superstition

Superstition by Ajahn Brahm And this evening's talk is going to be on superstitious superstition. Somebody's going to say it's bad luck to go out from the hall at the beginning of a talk. Soon. Position. I'm only making a joke. It's not bad luck. Today's talk on superstition. Because even most people these days are still overly superstitious. We worry about things we shouldn't worry about. And we think of all sorts of stuff which gets into our heads. So we should do this. We shouldn't do that. If I don't do this, something rotten is going to happen to me. I know something bad is going to happen to me. And a lot of times people run on superstition too much and some face, some religions run on excessive superstition, and you find all superstition carries with it some fear. And sometimes people use superstition and the fear which it invokes. If you don't do this, something terrible is going to happen to control people and ruin people's happiness and freedom. And so superstition is a big issue. So what does Buddhism stand with? Superstition. Have we got superstition as part of our rites? Is it part of the Buddhist tradition? Unfortunately, in many places it is. But that's not real Buddhism. Certainly. That's one of the things which attracted me to sort of this type of teaching, because it did away with all superstition, anything which cannot be proved, which you cannot actually show an experience for yourself. You don't have to believe. Now, there was another religion which was based out of fear, but was based out of encouragement. There was never any indication. If you don't do this, if you don't do the right thing, if you don't talk to the monks in the correct way that you're going to go to hell, there's none of that. And that was actually very, very beautiful to see that you can question everything. And these days I keep on making the statement in brief that really that the type of teachings which you hear here sort of the we hope is make as representative, as accurate as we possibly can to the authentic Buddhist teachings is the religion without superstition. It's a religion which will always bend, bend its faith to fit the facts and never the other way around, never bending the facts to fit the faith. So superstition doesn't have a part of this, but nevertheless, you find as a religion like Buddhism gets into people's uh, uh, cultures. They always tend to add these superstitious things onto it. And I want to sort of deal with a few of those things to begin with. Even here, I see that some of you are wearing these Buddha medallions, and some people wear not just one, but two, three, four, five, ten, 20. And I think it can bring you good luck. But if you carry too many Buddha medallions around your neck, it doesn't give you good luck. It gives you neck ache, and it's quite obvious why all that weight around you are also, it also brings you sort of, uh, a lack of money, because some of those Buddha medallions cost a lot of money. And that was one of the things which was added on to Buddhism in a country like Thailand, where I grew up. And my goodness, sometimes you see these Thai Buddhists with hundreds of medallions around their neck. And what are you doing that for? And I read this story, which is a great story in the newspapers, a true story. Some of these Buddha medallions, you can actually buy them for lots of money. And this Thai general had one which was worth one half 1 million USD. This is no joke. They cost that much. He bought it for 500,000 USD. 500,000 USD. Because this medallion was going to stop bullets. So that's very important for a soldier. So he was in his mess, you know, in some sort of army camp somewhere outside of Bangkok. And he was just bragging about this medallion he just bought for $500,000 us. And how it would protect him from bullets is they don't believe me. He said to me to take my gun and shoot me. And the major took that as an order. So he took his gun and pulled the trigger. You know what happened? It's amazing. It killed him. And that's why I got into the newspapers. This general died because he believed in this half $1 million. So trinket. And of course, he was dead, so he couldn't ask for his money back anymore. But why do people do that? Now we have this superstition which people have, and that sometimes ruins the reputation of real religion. And sometimes we have all these chanting which people want to hear. And I've already sort of told how stupid Thailand is somewhere. For those who haven't heard this story. This is true Buddhism. My teacher, Ajahn Chah. Well, he would never give out medallions. You know, he was one of those monks. If you saw a little medal with Ajahn Charles photo on it, he would find out who printed it. And he would go there and confiscate them all. You have no permission. I don't agree with this. But what happened? One day, one of his disciples came to see him and said, look, I need a medallion from you. I've been drafted into the army. It's dangerous. Even though there were no wars on, there were very many skirmishes on the borders between the communist countries and even with Burma as well. He said, I'm afraid of getting shot. I need one of these medallions. I know you can do it. You're a holy monk. Give me a Buddha to put around my neck to protect me from bullets. And I can say, no, no, no, he can't do that. Please, please, please. No no, no. Ajahn Chah, you've been teaching us about gratitude. I've been feeding you, looking after you for such a long time. The least you can do is give me a Buddha to put around my neck to protect me from bullets. So in the end, I just gave in. Okay, it's true what you say. Gratitude is important. You have given so much food to the monks. Your donations to the temple. I think. Fair enough. You know that out of gratitude, I can give you a Buddha to put around your neck, which will actually protect you from bullets. Great. He said, where is it? He said it's a big Buddha statue. Like that one in the back. You put that around your neck, I guarantee you, with the bullet. And that's the only one which I can guarantee will protect you from bullets as well. Hide behind that, and you'll be safe. Now, that is what we mean about trying to overcome people's stupid superstitions. Because when they don't understand what truth is, and they have these superstitions, what happens to you that you have a medallion around your neck? That's the thing. That's all that really matters. And you get yourself into big trouble. Or you get some chanting done by the monks and you think, oh, now I've got the chanting done, I don't need to care about my health. The monks are chanting for me today. I can break the speed limit because the speed cameras won't work. Because I've got some chanting for my gram. Please don't think like that. Because this is not what Buddhism is all about. The origin story of Buddhism. This is a man sitting under a tree, becoming enlightened. Now what? That tree was called the Bodhi tree. The enlightenment tree. The wisdom tree. Sometimes in especially evangelical Christianity, that they have a similar origin story. Now Adam and Eve. Only this time they ate the fruit from that tree and they called it original sin. You can see the difference there. No one was. The knowledge tree was important. Eat it. Take it. Become wise. Understand it for yourself. So Buddhism, because it was heaven, had their origin story, which was very, very important to understand its meanings and its implications. We want people to understand. And a lot of superstition is just now blindness, not allowing people to investigate and find out for themselves and disbelieving without really testing it out. And if we have that blind belief, it can sort of cause a lot of psychological problems to human beings and even physical wars, simply because of our superstitions. So I was talking about even chanting, you know, one of the things which the Buddha said is a great teaching. And sometimes I get into trouble for teaching it, but it's straight from the word of the Buddha. When somebody once asked him, you know, when somebody dies, if we chant for them, does it really affect the person? And the Buddha said, imagine this you take a pot of oil. It was actually ghee, but it gives a type of oil. You take a clay pot of oil, you take it to some sort of lake or pond and you break it over that lake. Then what would happen? The clay heavy part would go to the bottom and the oil would float to the surface. Then said the Buddha, suppose that some monk went to the side of that lake and started praying or doing some chanting. Do you think because of that chanting, that the the shards of clay will float to the surface and the oil will go down to the bottom? Of course not. In just the same way that beings will go according to their karma when they die. And for so often, all the chanting in the world just won't affect that. Maybe if you're just in between, you know, it's got some good karma, some bad karma, and it's maybe a sort of a bit sort of maybe we can give a little nudge, but that's all that China can do. Just a nudge. A lot of the time it's already settled, so it's a bit too late. Is this the same way as that woman who came to see as many, many years ago? This was actually my predecessor, Ajahn Chakra, but I think I was involved in this as well, because she came here one day because she was doing her end of the year examinations in UWA, and she wanted some chanting so that she'd have success in her examinations. And that's very often, often that we know when many young people come to our monastery in serpentine, they go and see Sister Yama in Ghana. We know that must be just exam week. Why do you do that? Because this lady came there. She wanted some chance. So we did some chanting for her anyway. We're kind monks. But afterwards, we never saw her again. And we wonder what happened to her. So we saw one of her friends. Where's she going? Has she gone back overseas or something? He said no, no, she hasn't gone overseas. She's really bad mouthing this monastery in temple. She's saying you monks are terrible. You're hopeless. You don't know anything about Buddhism. Because our chanting didn't work. She failed. Now that's a sad story. Obviously, it's nothing to do with the chanting. It's because she never did her work, but because she believed superstitious that chanting is all you need. She was heedless. She never did her work. And that's the danger of superstitions. If we just believe that it doesn't really matter the way we die. The monks will do the chanting for us. Therefore, I don't need to sort of be a good person. Then, of course, you know you're in big trouble when the exam at the end of life comes. And you know what? Rebirth you can. So you have to be very, very careful if you really want to be protected from bullets and don't join the army. If you really want to be protected from bad luck, then do lots of good karma. And if you really want to be protected, you know from misfortune, then be a kind and generous person. And this is not superstition. You can see the justice in this, the cause and effect, and it makes a lot of sense, but unfortunately, that people just sometimes think, no, no, they just want some easy way and they're just too gullible. But sometimes we think all we need to do is just to go to some sort of church and do some praying. If I as long as I go to the temple every week, then when I die, then I'll be happy. It's not just coming to the temple, it's not just doing the ceremonies. It's much more than that. And it's actually who you are. You come to this temple now, to this Friday evening. Here. Why do you come here for? It's not just about the Buddha. And like some incense and go home again afterwards thinking you're pure. That doesn't make you pure. In the same way that in the time of the Buddha there was this big idea superstition. And it's still here today, that if you bathe in the river Ganges and all your sins are washed away. When I was in the time of the Buddha, and when the Buddha people asked the Buddha, they said, look, if that was the case, this is the Buddha's statement. He said, then all the fish who swim in the Ganges would now be enlightened and holy, because they paid 24 hours a day. So even the Buddha had a sense of humor. It's obvious, isn't it? But sometimes that we don't understand this, and we're superstitious. If we don't think it out for ourselves, we don't gather the evidence. And sometimes, even today, you see that many, many people go to the Ganges at a certain time of year and they want to bathe, to bathe away their sins or their bad karma. Does that really make sense to you? But does it also make sense? You just go to a priest or something and just give an offering? And please, may you forgive me. Are you are some Jesus Christ or something? Please forgive my sins. Superstition. What that does, it means you don't take responsibility for yourself and for your life, and for your goodness and for your virtue. That's the only thing we can do if we don't do that. And we pass the buck by some superstitious idea which we never really check out. It means that a lot of times that we create misery for ourselves and a lot of problems for other people. There's too much superstition in this world. I just reading the other day. I actually got the other day a couple of days ago. I've just been reading Richard Dawkins book about The God Delusion. One of the things there he was saying that the idea that if an Islamic martyr blows himself up, they'll go to heaven and they'll have 72 black eyed virgins. And he said, actually, that's a wrong translation. What he this guy who's a Islamic scholar or Arabic scholar or something was saying it means they'll get 72 clear white raisins. That's what it said anyway. So no raisins, sultanas. These little dried grapes makes things a lot different, isn't it? But I mean, those superstitions, they motivate people. And this is no joke, because that does motivate people to actually blow themselves up in front of other people and cause a huge amount of problem and trouble in this world. Superstitions are no laughing matter. So what we have to do is a rational people, investigative people. You have to sit under the Bodhi tree. Not literally, but metaphorically. The sit under wisdom to literally know not as much sit but stand, which is understand. Understand what's going on and why, and to use one's powers of reasoning and experience and questioning to find out what is truly going on. Well, one does that. A lot of the superstitions of life just disappear. Yeah. Chanting may be useful to give you some confidence, in the same way that if a football team is playing. So the chanting from the crowds. That's where I first learned my chanting at a football club in London, on the terraces, chants, chanting for my football team. It does encourage the football team and it does lift their spirits and chanting does that. It can lift the spirits, but even much better than chanting in the time of the Buddha. When the monks would go and visit somebody on their deathbed. They wouldn't do chanting. They'd just teach. I'd give an understanding what is the process of death, what's happening or why? A lot of the chanting, which we even do now, is actually just old teachings. It's as if now that the Buddha was at the side of the, uh. Born in Perth in 2007, and he gave a talk one evening here, and there was a nice talk and somebody remembered it. And after a while they started chanting it, and then the chant became sort of somehow powerful. It was like a meaning in the original, just like a talk here. But years and years later, they just do the chant. They say the the outside without understanding what the real meaning is. Like this afternoon we did a marriage ceremony which was a bit late. And at the marriage ceremony. Just joking. What chanting should we do? And one of the marks said, let's do the death chanting the funeral party. They won't know even though it's a wedding. We could have done a funeral chanting and no one would have known because they don't understand what we're chanting. It all sounds the same to them. And actually, that was the bride's brother. I won't say who it is, but many of you know who he is. But why do you listen to these chants? But sometimes. Superstition. I can use it in my favor. I remember this time one day when I was visiting my mother in London, and it was about the time for the morning meal. And you may know when monks only eat one meal a day. That morning meal is important. That's got precedence. So when the doorbell rang of her apartment, I went to answer it, said, mum, you carry on with the meal, I'll answer the door. I'll deal with this. So when I answered the door, there was a gypsy lady. Now, to give you some background, these gypsy ladies in London, they go around selling little trinkets. Now that's how they make their money. And so when they were coming, like little, even little pieces of heather or worthless stuff, you know, for, you know, for a considerable amount of money. And so when they knocked on the door, I said, do you want to drop by some gypsy Heather for good luck? I said, no, thank you. I was very polite. But then she said, if you don't buy my gypsy Heather, I'll put a curse on you. That's what this. And that's what they do, actually, to get the money. Most people are so superstitious, you know. They don't know. Maybe it can happen. Maybe it can't happen. So they give them a couple of pounds, and that's where they make this money. I wasn't going to stand for that superstitious nonsense. So I stood up in my robes. I had my robes. I said, don't you know who I am? I am a Buddhist monk of many, many years. My curses are far stronger than yours. And I shouldn't have said that. But that lady Red, she was so afraid. I'm a bit cheeky sometimes and naughty, but I did enjoy that, I must admit. And it's a complete superstition. Monks, if we did have curses, we wouldn't curse anybody. That's not in our spirit. That's not loving kindness. But certainly she believed I could. And she was so superstitious. She had so some advantages of being a monk in his brown robes, especially in the old days when people thought that, you know, you were kung fu experts. That really saved me a few times when I was in London, walking past these gang of, you know, kids, because sometimes they can be very mean, these gangs. And sometimes they looked at me and I didn't really know whether I knew all these tricks, so they let me go past. But there's too much superstition in this world because there's a lot of trouble. And of course, one of the biggest things, the superstition, is what's going to happen to you after you die. And because there is a lack of understanding and knowledge there, because most of you haven't got a clue what's going to happen to you after you die. Some people who've done good meditation can know from personal experience. Some people may have had out of the body. Experiences can know because you know you've died temporarily, but most of you, you don't know what's going to happen to you after you die. And many, many religions, many, many people, they exploit that lack of knowledge. And in its place they put superstition and as they are. To try and force that superstition on you, there's all sorts of fears involved. And it's because that lack of knowledge and sometimes trying to control people through fear that we get these terrible superstitions. What happens to you after you die? Sometimes people say you can go up to heaven or you can go down to hell. When you start to find that out, people get a bit concerned. I'm going to go to heaven. I'm going to go to hell. You start thinking to yourself, which one do I deserve to go to? And because of the guilt trips of many people in the West, you already think that there's a good probability I might go down to hell. Are you? Are you really pure enough to go up to heaven? Anyone here? What's going to happen to you then? And people say, ah, one of the problems is superstitious. People normally die very terrible deaths. When I was been talking to many, many doctors and nurses over the years. And I'm not saying this just to make people Buddhists, but I think this is anecdotal evidence that Buddhists die more peacefully than many other people. I think Buddhists may be atheist secularists. They don't quite die quite peacefully. The ones who die in terror are those who believe superstitious in an eternal heaven or an eternal hell. A lot of the time, because there's always a few bad things I've done and a few bad things we say. Focus on things that I don't deserve to go to heaven. So there's only one place I'm going to go to. There's enough doubt there. For those of you who've done examinations or gone to interviews for new jobs. Do you feel nervous? This is the mother of all interviews. When you die. It's the biggest exam you'll ever take. If you follow that superstitious idea, this is not just for a job. Just for a few weeks or for a few years. According to some religions, this is for eternity. Eternal happiness or eternal hellfire. Now that's pretty scary. And that will scare the pants or the skirts or whatever. Or the siblings. That's what we were of anybody, if you really believe that. And that's why. The people actually are afraid of death. Mostly, what would happen if we could somehow break that superstition down? If we can break that superstition down. These will have some confidence of what's going to happen. First of all, does that really make sense to you that because of what you've done, you've only got two choices now eternal pleasure and happiness or eternal sort of pain and torment? Even when I first read that as a kid, I thought, that is unjust, unfair. It can't be that way. There is no one who deserves sort of eternal hell. And how many people deserve eternal happiness as well? You're not good enough for eternal happiness. And anyway, when you think about eternal happiness, don't be superstitious. How can that happen? What one does is one uses one's faculties of understanding, wisdom, wisdom in this life to understand what is happiness anyway? What is unhappiness? There is this old story, and this is great Buddhist wisdom because it brings things down from superstition, down into ordinary daily life. Many of you heard the story before, but it's a great story about the old samurai warrior who too, wanted to know what a really Buddhist thing about heaven and hell. Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? No, really. And he'd gone around to many, many people and no one could give him a good answer. There may be the same with you. He may have gone to many sort of temples, many talks, ask many people and they're sort of satisfied. But you can't really get a straight answer which really satisfies you and answers the question once and for all. So this samurai eventually found this old monk and said, old monk, look, this is my question. You know, I've gone around asking so many people this I'm always fed up to ask it again. But is there a heaven? Is there a hell? Now, if you know this and really know it, say so. But if you don't know it, don't waste my time. Just say I don't know. Okay. And the monk looked up on it, up at the samurai warrior and said, you're stupid. You're too stupid to understand. The samurai, I said, would you just call me stupid? I'm not stupid. I'm a samurai warrior. These samurai warriors have to go through an enormous amount of training. And it's not just some martial arts. It's a lot of, um, virtuous training and training and meditation. And I'm not stupid. I'm a samurai warrior. And the monk looked up at him. You a samurai? Don't give me that, you fool! You're just a country bumpkin, that's all. And the samurai said. That's twice you've insulted me. And he took hold of his sword. If you insult me one more time. Monk, I don't care who you are. I'll cut off your head just with one swipe of my sword. With that stupid old rusty piece of iron. You couldn't even slice a slice of bread with that. And that was enough. The samurai insulted three times with incense and he got out his sword. I was about to smite the monks head off when the monk looked right into his eyes and said, samurai, that's hell. I keep on saying I was pushing his luck, but it worked. Maybe if it didn't work he wouldn't be able to tell the story. But the samurai understood their anger was what hell is like. At last he got an answer which wasn't entered through his superstition. The monk wasn't saying it says in my scriptures, because that really offended me a lot. When people say it says in the books, that's not what I asked you. What's in the books I asked you? Now you're supposed to be a Christian. You're supposed to be a Buddhist. You're supposed to be a teacher. I'm not saying I can read the books myself. You. Is there a heaven? Is there a hell explained. I'm not asking the books. I'm asking the person. And at last, he actually got a proper answer. He could understand what hell was, and he was so impressed. He put aside his sword and he bowed to that monk. That's what you do in Asia. Out of respect. It's not asking for favors. It's an act of like. Thank you so much. I'm going to meet again and saw his eyes were watering out of respect and gratitude. And the monk said to him very softly, and samurai. Now this is heaven. That gratitude and respect, that's what heaven is like. Now that's a beautiful saying, a beautiful story, because that almost encapsulates what this Buddhism is all about, bringing these sort of very difficult to understand but important teachings back to earth into your own personal experience, because that's what heaven and hell are like. And you can imagine that if, as consciousness did persist after life, that if you actually thwart anger and that's what your character was, then you'd make an angry world. That's what happens to hell. You make the hell. And it's something which you can see in this life how people make hells in their life. You create it. That's why I couldn't understand why, when I was a young kid, I used to go out to the pub with your mates. We always went out to nice car, quiet pubs, but some people would always go to these pubs where every Friday night there was a fight. Why do people do that for? Because they like it. They want to have that. They create that. Why is it that people sometimes have relationships which don't work? Do you create that? You ask any psychologists and say, yep, you asked for it. You wanted it. You didn't want to be happy. It's the guilt which gives the clue to what hell is. This doesn't need to be a superstition anymore. You can actually see in your life that when you've done something wrong, and we've all done things wrong in our life, sometimes the way we look at that error, we amplify it out of all proportions. We get into guilt trips. We think we're awful. We think we don't deserve to be happy. This is what we mean by creating our hell. And if that happens to you when you die with that guilt, without lack of forgiveness, with a lack of saying I'm a human being, let it go. And of course, if that's what's occupying your mind when you die, you don't deserve to be happy. So of course you won't allow yourself to be happy. You will create a hell for yourself. That's why one of the greatest insights which I got from Buddhism was this beautiful forgiveness. And this is not a superstition. You don't have to ask anyone else to forgive. In fact, if you ask someone else to forgive you, it doesn't work. Even if you ask Jesus to forgive you or a Buddha to forgive you, what? Why does that person got to forgive you? All they can do? Or even a monk can do, is actually to encourage you to forgive yourself. That's the only person who can let go of the past yourself. It's a beautiful thing to be able to see this in action. When somebody has done something in the past and we've all done silly, stupid things in the past. I think I gave this, uh, similarly over in Singapore about me selling encyclopedias. Was that here or was that in Singapore? I didn't remember that one here. Recent weeks I give so many talks. I don't know where I've given the last talk. Tomorrow I'm going to Malaysia early in the morning to give a talk in Malaysia. So I give so many talks. I don't know which story I've told where. So this was the story of when I was a young student in order to try and pay my way, you know, through the university system, you know, just actually to pay my bills. The, uh, the university fees were all paid for. I got all these stupid jobs, and one of them was selling encyclopedias door to door. The worst possible job you can ever have. But I was desperate. And the worst thing about that job, it was like children's encyclopedias. The worst possible thing about that job was that I sold one. And as soon as I sold one, I felt so guilty. Because it was all lies. You know, you're learning how to make these parents feel just as if they were next to pedophiles. If they didn't actually get this, this book for their their children. They were abusing their children's future. They didn't love them if they didn't get this incredible asset to their future education. And of course, you know, after a while you got good at sort of that type of lying stuff. And eventually that I sold this, uh, children's computer to this young family. And, you know, they're just obviously just starting out in life. And they had their first child, and they were just really, really soft and caring. And they said, oh, yeah, perhaps we should get this for our little child. And so I got my first commission. I had sleepless nights over that. I thought I sold this stupid, this stupid encyclopedia to these poor people. Who knows? They probably won't be able to afford it. They may not be able to have their lunch or pay their mortgage. Oh, what have I done? I felt terrible about that. I felt guilty. And you know how I actually let go of that guilt when I was a monk? But you know how I fully let go of that guilt was when I told a story here about 15 years ago, and after telling this story afterwards, you know, when people come up to talk to me. So someone came up to me and said, that was amazing story to said as too much of a coincidence, but who knows. But when I was growing up in England, this young student came to our house and I sold my parents his children's encyclopedia. And I loved that encyclopedia. Oh, those are my favorite books that created so much happiness for me. When I realized that it was probably unlikely it was the same person, but who knows that I thought I'd done some terrible, terrible, terrible deed. And she told me that it could may have been a wonderful thing which happened. So sometimes whenever we've done something, we don't know the full consequences, how it worked out in the future. What would have happened if we'd taken the other choice? We can't know that sometimes. What you did probably was the best. So why do we feel guilty about that? Superstition. That's why we feel guilty. We've been taught that guilt is a proper response these days. And here I teach a lot. We got a car sticker for it. AFL code. If you don't know what the AFL code is. Go and get the sticker from the library. Acknowledge. Forgive. Learn. So acknowledge what you've done. I'm not saying sort of say it's a bad thing or a good thing. Acknowledge it. This is the act which I've done. That forgive. It means you know you're a human being. We all do things. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we do wonderful things. So you're just like anybody else in this world. So you forgive it. And then you learn from it. Make sure you don't get into that situation again. And that's all you need to do. And if you do things like that, any psychologist knows. You know, in your own experience it's called growth in spirituality. It actually works. It means you can let go of the pain of the past and you're not stopping yourself being happy. You are free to enjoy your life and to be a better a person in this world. People who carry around the past out of superstition think you have to carry around their guilt. They create a lot of pain for themselves and even worse, a lot of trouble for others. They can't form relationships. Sometimes they have great psychological problems. They get into drink and drugs simply because they're trying to escape. From who? Escaping from themselves. So that's one of the worst superstitions in our world. The guilt, which is all coming from punishment as well. Thinking if you've done something wrong, you have to be punished. And with that, I wouldn't say punishment hasn't got a part in it. Why are you punishing somebody for making a mistake? That does not help. As a kid, if ever I made a mistake and got punished, the only thing I learned from that is not to get caught. Next time, if you get a job done by the speed camera and you get a fine, what you learn from that not to speed. Know to find out what the speed cameras are. So you know they're not over here. I can speed over you. I don't speed over there too much of our time. Punishment just teaches us the wrong thing. And this is the problem with our superstitious idea of punishment. And it was wonderful to actually to read Buddhism and actually to be in traditional Buddhist countries and especially places where, like in northeast Thailand, where it was actually lived, you never saw Ajahn Chah punishing anybody. Some of those monks will do stupid things. I remember him once talking about the naughtiest novice. He's always like talking about these novice monks. He said the naughtiest novice. Remember him? He was just laughing all over. So this is what he's done. This is an aside. This naughtiest novice. There was this old monk who was always really, really sleepy. So sleepy in the afternoons when he slept. He slept so deeply and nothing would wake him up. So the novice got one of these jackfruit seeds. Now jackfruit seeds about this big. And if I'm going to tell you this because adults are telling me this. He lifted up the back of his bong and tried to put it in his anus. You know, so because they did, this was a naughty novice. And he tried to get it in, but it was just couldn't get it in. So he tried a couple of times. So you can imagine sort of, you know, what stuff which was smeared on it. So the novice started chewing it to make it soft enough to actually to push it in. And he managed it. Finally managed it. So the poor old monk, when he woke up. Oh, I can't go to the toilet. I can't get the toilet. That's like a naughty novice. So what would you do to a naughty novice like that? In punishment is not the way because it doesn't teach you anything. How many times have you been punished? Didn't really. What didn't teach you? Sometimes it taught you to silence. Sometimes it just taught you to try and escape next time. Sometimes it just confused you. That person punishing was supposed to be someone you loved. They're supposed to love you. What's going on? Acknowledge. Forgive. Learn is by far the better way. Where we actually reward the positive in another person. So the superstition which sometimes is rammed into us. You've done a bad thing is evil. You're going to get punished by some sort of god or even by karma in the future. What karma does. You have a chance. You're always making karma. It's the great thing about karma. It's not punishment, because karma is always what you do in every moment. It means you can always bend it this way. You can bend it that way. You can always do something about it yourself. One of the things you can do is to forgive. It's a wonderful thing to actually to know I can forgive myself and asking someone else to forgive you. Sometimes it's nice if you've hurt someone else and ask forgiveness, but they give you forgiveness, but it still doesn't solve the problem. You have to forgive yourself. And that's fundamental. And this is not superstition anymore because you can feel this yourself. You can try it yourself. And my goodness, it works. And people love it so much when not they come here and I don't forgive you or the other monks forgive you or sister, why am I forgive you? Or some big God in the sky forgives you when you do it yourself? You know you can do it yourself. It's allowable. It can be done. And it's a wonderful thing to do that gives you freedom and peace. Then you're less likely to repeat the mistakes you've learned from them, and you just leave it behind. You go forward rather than always being caught. Dragged. I'm not allowed to go forward because you're always carrying this huge weight of the past with you. The superstitions which we have about guilt and punishment again, all come with this idea of what's going to happen to us later in the future. It's important to understand what happens to you after you die. Now, the superstitions about life after death are sometimes real crazy. And so we have to find out is there life after death? Is not life after death? Is there reincarnation? What's going to happen? Sometimes it's just passing about to say, well, I'll wait and see what happens after I die, because sometimes that's a bit too late. And unfortunately, you don't have to do that. Now, there is ways and means of finding out for yourself, and one of those ways and means is actually finding out through meditation if there is something which goes on after death, what actually is it? When you understand what this thing we call the mind is, you know, the heart of things. Now, what's really driving you? In my book, mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond, I gave the simile of the Emperor with the five pieces of clothing on. It's a powerful simile, which I only usually teach during retreats. Imagine there's an emperor. And this emperor is a very, very, very powerful being. And you know it affects you. What this emperor does. This emperor is clothed. He's got boots or it's got boots. You don't know if it's a he or she. He's got boots which cover his feet and go right up to his thighs. He's got trousers which cover the top of his boots and go half way up his waist. He's got a jacket which covers the top of his trousers. Go to the elbows and right up to the neck. And he's got these gloves which cover all the hands that go halfway up the arm. And last he's got a helmet. And this helmet just covers the whole of the face. And halfway down the note overlaps the tunic. So the five pieces of clothing completely cover this emperor. So much so you don't know who this emperor is, whether it's male or female, whether it's old or young, whether it's African, Caucasian, Chinese or what. And this is like the mind. This mind is ample within you, is covered with the five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. And that's why sometimes we don't know what this mind actually is. In a Buddhist way, we want to try and unclothed the Emperor take off these five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. To get to this sixth sense, the mind, always the sixth sense, was called the mind in Buddhism from the very earliest of times, as always, six senses. And I was mentioned in other talks. Even in ancient Greek philosophy, there was always six senses as well. If you read Aristotle, always the six senses, the mind was there as well. And Aristotle called the mind the common sense, because it was common to all the other senses. What you see, what you hear, smell, taste, touch. The mind also knows. That's why it was Aristotle. He was the one who who coined the term common sense. And somehow, in 2000 years of history in the West, we've not only lost our common sense, we've also lost our mind. We've only got five senses left now. And that's a big reason for some of the problems we have. We want to find out what this mind actually is because, you know, if something is going to last after death, it's not the five senses or the body. We all know the body's not going to last. So what is this mind? We have to take off the five senses. And that's what the job of meditation is. You sit still, close your eyes so you don't see yourself. So still you don't hear. You don't smell, taste. Even your body disappears. People who get into those deep meditation. So they just know what their mind is. Well, you know what it is. Then you have an understanding of what happens to you after you die. And this is no longer superstition. This is direct personal experience. When the first things which happens when you get into this deep meditation, you see this beautiful light which we call Namita. If you want to find out more about that, it's a whole book I wrote about this mindfulness, bliss and beyond and available in the library. $25 special offer this weekend 24.99. But. This is actually, you see, this beautiful light. For those of you who've had other body experiences or heard other people having out of the body experiences or seeing on the TV, what do people do when they die? They go towards the light. That's exactly the same light which you see in meditation when you get to that stage. The stage, we call it an emitter. It's this beautiful light. I've said in many retreats that when you experience this stage, you are practicing dying. You're learning what it's like because that light usually only comes up and is strong when the saying is disappeared. When you can't hear anything, you can't feel your body. The five senses of disappear. You've unclothed the emperor, the mind. You see what it is. For the first time, it appears as a light. So often to people it's not a light. But that's just how we interpret it. It's a pure mind object. You're seeing the mind understanding it. The great thing with this is that, you know, from that time, from that moment on, you should know it's pretty clear that you got the evidence. That when your body dies, I mean real death. You know, when you cock it, when you know, you call the funeral directors when the body dies. This is exactly what happens. Five senses are stopped. Body is not working anymore. Going towards that light. With the mind. That mind is what survives the death. Later on, when you investigate that mind. For those of you who have read the books, that mind is not a solid thing. It just keeps on changing. Just like this body keeps on changing. So it's not an entity, but a process. We understand that. You understand just what happens after death. And it's also it's very interesting because when you first see that that beautiful light in your meditation, sometimes it's not nice. It's a little bit dirty. It's not bright and powerful. When people see this, they ask me, what's going on. I say, because you are not pure. You're a bit dirty. What you've been thinking in the last few hours. I mean, not sort of being critical here. This is just. You're seeing your mind as it actually is. Now as you want it to be. Denial and wishful thinking. I've got no place here. You actually, you seeing what you've been doing? And this is why, in my experience as a teacher, when people I've known for a long time they are truly good people, they really are virtuous people. They volunteered for the Buddhist Society of Western Australia committee. They've been generous. They've been keeping their five precepts. They've now been faithful to their partners. You know, they sort of being kind. They haven't been backbiting. They haven't seen all this jealousy and gossip, which people do. Gossips. All right. As long as you tell them nice things about other people. They're really good people. And because I've been around a long time, I know a lot of you. I know who the really nice people, good people are. And all the time, these people, when they get to that stage of meditation, they're light in their mind. It's just so brilliant and beautiful. Obviously, because they're bright and beautiful people. Now, that's a very important understanding to have because that's what you'll experience when you die. You'll experience the beauty or the lack of beauty of your own mind. And that's what will take you into a heavenly realm or into a lesser. You can see the process happening. You don't have to have great psychic powers. You can actually see it for yourself. If you don't believe that when you get into these deep meditations, you can even ask yourself, and this is I've been trying this for a long time with my disciples, and once I get into deep meditation, I ask them to make the resolution. What's my earliest memory? What's my earliest memory? This only works when you're at that type of stage. Sort of nim at a stage or after a jhana. Because when you ask that question, these images arise in your mind straight away. These are early life memories. Did you read my book here? Because only thing one, which I can tell you because I'm not allowed to sort of say too much about psychic powers and stuff. The only ones which I can tell you is when I first did this and got this smell in my nose. And this is not imagination anymore. You're smelling it as if it's right here in front of you. So real smell. My eyes closed. I recognized it straight away. It was the smell of my baby's pram. Immediately I was back in my pram. A real experience even though I was sitting. Meditation. I think this first happened over in when I left town and coming to Perth. You're back in your baby's pram and with that experience you could this as your eyes were closed, you could see everything clearly, as if you were had your eyes open there I could see my baby's pram and all the old toys which I used to have in her. And I could play around in. There was a vision from the past. As I say in the book, when you have these experiences. One of the hallmarks is this absolute certainty that was you. In the same way, there's absolute certainty. It's you right here looking at me or hearing this talk. The same degree of certainty. Weird but true. And you can ask yourself earlier please. Or earlier please. And people then actually get the life in the mother's womb very often. Or they get an earlier time, another place, another time, another body. You actually remember yourself in a previous life. So these are things which take away all your superstitions because this is real positive experience. But this is my experience. I can't actually you can't believe me. Please don't believe me because that's more superstition. Take it on. Granted. For somebody from somebody else. You have to fight. Even though the Buddha kept on saying about that. Even though there's books by people like Professor Ian Stevenson who researched all of this and, and did a lot of good work trying to present the evidence for reincarnation or rebirth. Once you see it for yourself, you don't need those books anymore because you know, for yourself. And that's something you can do in this life. You don't have to wait until you die when it's a bit late if you're wrong. And that's one of the wonderful things where we can cut through all this superstition. And imagine if you had that knowledge for yourself, that own personal knowledge that you've lived before. You understand why rebirth happens and how the karma works. Wouldn't that really sort of cut away all this superstition and all this doubt and all understanding of what I should do in this life, and how I should act and what should happen? Wouldn't it cut away your fear of death and understanding what happens to other people when they die, and worrying about short lives or long lives, or what the meaning of life truly is? When you understand this, you keep going round and round, learning each time. Hopefully. Sometimes we regress as well. There's a wonderful thing to be able to know for yourself you can do this. It's there for you if you really want to. It's a wonderful thing to know, and it cuts away the stupid superstitions who say my religion is right? If you don't believe me, I'll cut your head off. Well, my religion is right. So please be converted. Otherwise, you know you're going to sort of upset me. Some of these superstitions really sort of create an enormous amount of pain in people's lives. People were actually telling me in places like Singapore and Malaysia, where I go very often. Sometimes some of the Buddhists there, you know, on their deathbed, they may have one child who's been converted by one of these born again Christian groups, and they bring their partner and all their friends around to try and convert their grandfather on their deathbed, because this is the last chance to get their grandfather to heaven. Otherwise he's going to burn in hell forever and ever and ever. Sure, they're sincere. Just like Hitler was sincere. He thought he was doing the right thing. To sincerity is no guarantee of morality. So be careful of sincerity. You can go either way. And so a lot of times people are asking me, what should we do if that ever happens to us? Because they may have some distant relative, a second cousin twice removed, who's an evangelical, coming, both of them at their deathbed. So it's an easy thing to do when they come around and they try and convert. You just convert to being a Christian. Sees it. Then they go away. And after they've gone away, convert back to being a Buddhist. Convert where they can convert the other way. What's the problem? It's a very practical solution. That's the only way to get rid of them. But you can see the harm which superstition gives in this world when we. If you really believe that. That if you only go to my church and believe my religion and my way, that's the only way you can have everlasting life. And other than that, you're going to go to hell. Are you going to burn? You're going to be tortured. What type of psychological pressure does that give on a person? What sort of pain does that give to loved ones? If anything is evil, that's evil in this world because it creates so much suffering and you can't argue and sort of present evidence, even though the evidence is so strong. The only way is to find it out for yourself. So you have this inner understanding of what truth is. So you don't have to be superstitious anymore. You don't have to look in the horoscopes to see whether this is going to be a good day or a bad day. Any day you go to a temple, any day, your kind, any day you're generous, any day you've got compassion in your heart. That's a good day. So please don't be superstitious. Don't waste all your money on medallions or strings or chanting or holy water. No, I don't think I told that story. When this general asked for holy water, I said I would very rarely give holy water. And one day I said I was a joker. But sometimes I thought, you really go too far. Because this day this general came up to him and I was there at his heart. So, you know, you hang around because it's great entertainment. Sometimes you see what I was going to do next. And this major general, you know that now again, that the generals are in power in Thailand. This was a time when they were always in power. They had, I think, uh, uh, lay government. But the generals were the power behind the scenes. And so this big major general came up to see Arjan Shah in Ubon to ask for some holy water, and Serengeti holy water said, oh, please let him pour some holy water so bad. Okay. Bow down. And that ends up he spent all this saliva in his generals head and rubbed it in. And I felt like, goodness, you've gone too far this time. You really have. And this general brought it, he said, all sad and sad. Sad. I've got real hearty water now from the. How stupid could you be? That's what he did. So you may laugh at that superstition, but what superstitious have you got? Was Friday the 13th, do you think? Oh, I better not travel on that day. I love Friday the 30th because that's the day I try and get flights on Friday the 13th, because I know I'll have more legroom in economy class. Thank goodness for other people's stupid superstitions. So please don't be superstitious. Sit under the tree of wisdom. Find out for yourselves there's anything there which you have. Any superstitions about Buddhism, whether it's this chanting. Yeah, I was actually going to sort of slam the Sri Lankan tradition as well. I slammed the Buddhist tradition, the title decent enough sometimes I have this all night period chanting in Sri Lanka. Where they have three suitors. Three old teachings of the Buddha, which sometimes we chart. It takes us about ten minutes to chant, but they chant it for all night. I couldn't believe the first time I heard it. Now, usually, for example, like the the Metta Suta Kelaniya metta. That's the. That's the first compound. When the Sri Lankan monks chanted one of his all night ceremonies. This is what they do. Listen good. I won't go any further. It takes about two minutes for the first syllable. Now you're laughing there. But many Sri Lankans say you've seen that and you probably try to organise that yourself. No. It's great that sort of. When Buddhism comes to a Western country. Sometimes, you know, I've got enough clout now to be able to criticize like that. And without getting into too much trouble, I still get into trouble. But who cares? Because what it's done, it's a superstition. And so the modern people are not going to handle that at all. They're going to reject Buddhism as another superstition, superstitious religion, when it's got something much more powerful than that, much more true and beautiful than that. So somehow we have to take away some of those silly superstitions and those rituals. They're not harmless. They are harming Buddhism. They're harming this beautiful teachings by covering them up with so many layers that people can't see the heart of it. Even when I was. I'm going to slam Thailand again. Now, this is even my own monastery and Charles Monastery. When I wanted to actually to find out what the Buddha actually taught. Are there any copies of the sutras original Buddhist teachings? Yes, there were in the monastery they were locked up in a cabinet. They were worship, were never read. And even recently, maybe someone listening in Thailand could actually do something about this. There was a recent, uh, not translation, but in addition, in Roman script, uh, done by the Thais that the, uh, things are called the Fifth Council. This is not done by the Burmese, the Thais that are much better version. And it was printed in Thailand. We try to get a copy because as many of our monks here in serpentine know Pali and we do a lot of work, you know, just in translations, if you read the copy of the middle length sayings by Bhikkhu Bodhi or the Saint Eugenia, you find my name in the front, and they're helping out with some of the translations and many other monks as well. We actually do something with these books, but we couldn't get a copy. They were sent to universities and other monasteries where to this day they're putting cabinets. They're never taken out. It is worshipped rather than read. Is that what we should be doing with Dhamma? So as good monks, we can't even get copies of those things. Are you going to sort of, you know, the temple of the tooth? You can't even see that tooth relic if it's there at all. Sometimes that the superstitions which we have in our religions, they stop the truth really happening. And it's not just harmless. It just harms us really finding out the wonderful, beautiful things. Like, as I said today, forgiveness. You make your own heaven and hell. You take responsibility for your actions. If you want to pass the examinations, forget about, you know, taking some incense and lighting candles and putting donations in the box. That's bribery. Well, you know, asking sort of, God, can you imagine if you ever tried giving a call to, you know, let us say it's like to Telstra and go through to Telstra. We've got some problem with your phone. What happens? I'm sorry. All our operators are busy. Your code is valuable to us. Imagine trying to pray to God. I'm sorry. All our operators are busy. There's only one of me here. But your call is valuable to me. I'll try and get back to you later on. So please don't be superstitious. Be rational. Be skeptical. Find out from your own experience. Otherwise that we'll just become these stupid human beings and we just kill our own suits. We'll kill our own civilization. We can't sort of pray to somebody else. Please, Buddha, please stop global warming. Now that this is in God's plan or Buddha's plan or something, you're going to do something about this. Otherwise it's all going to go wrong. So don't be superstitious. And that's the talk this evening. Oh, that's my. Boy, I forgot about the copy, but they. Are told by God. What are the more than the mind of my son? They find out what is the cause and go down on the mountain.