The Buddhist Realization of Non-Self

The Buddhist Realization Of Non-Self by Ajahn Brahm All this evening's talk. No one has sent me any emails, so I am free to talk. However I want to talk about. So this evening I am going to, um, eliminate you all. Not eliminate you. Eliminate you all. Because this evening I am going to be talking about the Buddhist realization of non-self. I'm going to show that you don't exist. You're not really here. I know sometimes people say that to me. Actually, I'm probably not all there. I say, what do you mean, not all of them? You're absolutely right. Not there. So this is a teaching today on the Buddhist idea of non-self, but not making it to Scholastic, because, uh, I mentioned this at a talk I gave in Armadale on Tuesday night. It came from, uh, a comment somebody made recently that when they noticed that whenever a religion is run by scholars. Whenever the leaders of people who have studied the books and got degrees and always have trouble with bigotry and dogma, even violence. Whenever the leaders of a religion are the mystics, the practitioners, the meditators, then you always seem to get harmony rather than intolerance. And it's a very interesting reflection because in all the religions is always the mystic side. In Islam, we had the Sufis, in Christianity you had the Gnostics and obviously Buddhism. It's actually very hard to find the scholar. So we still have a few scholars around, but they're mostly the meditators and even Judaism. You had the the Jewish saints, and in every religion it seems to be that where you have the leaders are the practitioners, the ones who aren't. So, um, limited to the words in the books and the dogmas. When instead you have practitioners there. You have leaders who can speak from the heart rather than from the books. And then you seem to end all the trouble in the world. So the talk this evening is not going to be just from the books. It's also going to be from the heart and what it really means about the non self idea. I think first of all, you should all understand, I think just from your experience of life, that at least we shouldn't have big cells because in English we call the pixels the ego. And the people with big egos are terrible people to be around. That's why this evening I say, I'm going to eliminate you, or at least eliminate most of you. So you've got even small egos rather than big egos, because they're big ego, which creates a lot of pain and a lot of suffering for you. And obviously, the idea of coming here on a Friday night is to lessen your suffering, to go away from here more peaceful, more happy, more free than when you came in. Unfortunately, in our society that we do are we are taught to get an idea of who we are. We're even given a name. And from an early age we taught what gender we are. We're told which toilet cubicle to go in and don't go in the other one, and it means you're told what race you are. You're told whether you're clever or whether you're not so clever. And we build up from all of the society's input and idea of who we are, who what a self is. And some of us build up a very strong sense of who we are, and we protected at all costs. So that's called being an ego freak, or rather like a control freak, because one of the important things to know about the sense of self, the more you have a sense of ego of me, then the more you'll have what the Buddha called, what you possess, what you own. He made a very wonderful, um, observation. Wherever there's a self, there is what you possess, your possessions, what in Buddhism we call your attachments. And whatever you have attachments, what you possess. That's what we try and defend. That's where we try and exercise our control. And so it's a wonderful thing in the training of a Buddhist, actually, to lessen that sense of ego, not so much by, um, philosophizing about it, but by realizing that what an ego does, it controls, it owns. And the more you control, the more you think you own. The more you suffer. The more you own. The more that someone can steal it, the more it can get lost or damaged or whatever else. And much of our lives as Buddhist is realizing how little you really own in this world, even your house. You don't really own it. The bank does. We all know that. And your car, the mortgage or the the loan company owns that. There's so little you own. Now, the point is, when you realize that you know the car or your house or your bank balance, there may be some Nigerian scammer agents were emptying it right. As we speak your bank accounts, it's very easy to do, apparently. So you may go home from here and you say I'm from you. All right. I didn't know that after all. It's all gone. But when you realize just how little you really own, it actually gives you a great sense of freedom. I remember this, one of the fellows who was one of the first people you would come over to our monastery, and his only possession, which he had, was a Harley-Davidson motorbike. And apparently those ones cost no tens of thousand and 30, 40,000 and $50,000. He didn't have anything else. He would stay with friends. He didn't have much in the bank. But that was his pride and his joy, his one possession, which was very attached to. And he told me once he'd been meditating a long time, he'd been coming to listen to the talks. And once he went to the the supermarket or the shopping mall and he parked his bike, he went to buy something. And when he came back, it had gone. It was vanished. Someone had stolen it. Now, if that was your major possession, you can imagine how you would feel. But he was so proud of himself because he'd been practicing this Buddhism and meditation for so long that when he saw the the bay where his, uh, motorbike was completely empty, he didn't get angry. He said, oh, well, it wasn't mine anyway. It's just impermanence. It's just material things. You don't own anything anyway. You can't take it with you. You're not allowed to have motorbikes up in heaven. So what can you do with it? Makes too much noise. Disturbs other people. So he was very proud of himself. He actually could actually let it go. He realised he wasn't that attached after all. I remember he wrote to me afterwards. He said that as soon as I saw it was gone, I just could let it go. And there's only after he let it go, he realized that he was on the wrong level of the car park. And it's actually there's a motorbike was still there. The thing that happens to you now and again. But it was just so wonderful feeling that he had that experience. He really felt he'd lost it and it didn't matter so much. He could enjoy the bicycle or the bike, but the bike didn't possess him. There's a wonderful thing that when we can do that with our physical possessions, we realize that, you know, we can just say, oh, they're very nice to have. But if they disappear, we don't need to allow it to spoil our happiness. Our happiness is much more important. Isn't that the case? You have these possessions to create happiness and peace for you. And in the end, the like. These little monsters, they take over our life and more concerned about our possessions than anything else. So the point is that when we realize we don't own these things, we don't actually become these things. And it's a wonderful thing when you don't, you realize you don't own your house. And it's not an extension of your personality, which means you don't have to buy such big houses anymore. It's only big egos need big houses. And when you have a big ego, you buy a big house. That's a big lot of work to keep it clean. And unfortunately, these days, in the old days, maybe it's great to have a big house, get all your family in there. You had your sort of, you know, uncles in your art and your grandparents and your children and their wives and husbands and their kids. You know, in the old days in a in a small house that many, many people in these days have these big houses and only two people in them. I feel very, very sorry and sad for the poor housewives who have to clean it up all day. Oh, it must be a lot of work. Which is why, if anyone wants to see just how, uh, wealthy people live, people with lots of happiness and peace should come to our monasteries and see how the monks and nuns live. Just little. One little room. That's all you need. You can only be in one room at a time. So why do you need a rumpus room at games room, a family room, a bed room, and all sorts of other? I don't know how many rooms you have in your house, and you got to work so hard for the rest of your life paying it off. So I think actually I'm going to start a building company and with these little plans is one with little dwellings. So you can live happy with your family just in one room or this maybe two rooms, a toilet or whatever. But the point is, why do people have big houses? Why do we feel we need to own so much? It's just like in the sense of self, we think we've made it. Once we can have our big house and our big car and our fancy stuff. One of the wonderful things about Buddhism is we have other ideas to say when we have little, then we also are a more humble person. We have less a big sense of self, and our life becomes more easy. Just the practicalities of paying for this stuff and cleaning it. Looking after it. I still remember taking around, uh, these, uh, visiting women who came from our local community just up in Canada. There were an afternoon out, about a dozen of them, and I took them around. And when they saw one of the huts, one of them turned around and said to me, ah, if only my house could be so small as this. I get all my housework done in half an hour. I don't know. How long do you spend in your housework? Raw. The cleaning and mopping is such a burden. Thankfully, the less you have, actually the more freedom you have. And sometimes you wonder why. What is this thing which always wants us to possess and to have all these things? And actually, after a while, you you start to see it's this idea of a self for me, because it's actually this idea of self which wants to own, which wants to attach, which wants to control the world. And after a while you realize that, you know, that's something which doesn't create happiness and peace and freedom, but it creates the opposite. It's a strange thing, as a monk, that you move around all different levels of people, from the mega-rich to the mega poor, and sometimes it's a strange thing, but it's very, um, common for people to to notice that they're happier. People are usually the poorer people, not the richer people. This is one of the first experiences I had when I moved to Thailand. There were 32 years ago in a village which was dirt poor. I hardly had any money at all. Just like a barter economy and subsistence farmers. But it was a strange thing, having come from like a big University of Cambridge, where I did know a few laws, multi-millionaires, even when they were very, very young. But in these little villages in the northeast of Thailand, in the backwoods of a third world country, these little villages would laugh in a way I'd never seen rich people laugh, who could smile and enjoy the moments in a way other people in, say, London would never be able to do. It was actually quite striking for me why such people were so happy. And I think it was also, it was because they didn't have this sense of ownership. They would always be sharing with each other. It wasn't mind. It was always more like ours. And it's a wonderful thing to actually to stop the sense of self and actually to spread sort of our ideas of possession towards like ours. Isn't this strange thing that our families are no big houses? Everybody has to have their own room. This is my room. And sometimes even married couples, they have their room and have my room and somebody else has their. And when we have two separate rooms, it's never ours anymore. It's always just me and mine. And it creates a sense of itself. But with that sense of self, we always get a sense of loneliness, a lack of connection with other people. I think it's one of the problems with our society which values the self so much in the individual, so much that we lose the ability to form those relationships called ours or ours. The sense of community, the sense of actually being with others rather than being alone with what I own my possessions. So the self is actually what tends to possess things, and it possesses things with the hope and promise of happiness. But usually the more you possess. Though, the opposite happens. The more worries you have, the more burdens you have. And again, as a monk now with very few possessions, it's a wonderful lifestyle. Whenever I go travelling, which I do quite often. So I'm an expert on this. You see, sometimes people go into airports with all this very heavy luggage and I feel so sad for them, especially when it's overweight and they have to pay the extra baggage. Just coming back from New Zealand last week there was one lady who had 100 kilos. You only had our 20 and she was trying to argue like anything to try and sort of, you know, get it going for free. And there was me who comes up this little bowl and am I back? And, you know, actually, they insisted on weighing it. My bow was three kilos, had my robes in it, my bag was two kilos, and that's all I had. And even actually carrying bags, you allowed 795. And that load and then go all over the world with that sort of stuff. And it's great, actually. I think they know me at Perth Airport. Now when I come through the customs there. Where's your bag, sir? So my mark. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot it was you again. But I can imagine just what it's like having a few things. You can actually go through life so easily. I remember one of the greatest times. I always remember this was after five years as a monk, we were allowed to just leave your monastery and just go travelling by yourself. And you took all of your worldly possessions with you, everything you owned in the world, you carried on your back. And so obviously, before I started, I managed to limit much of that. But after a couple of days and a half of that, I'd dropped away. And after about a week, just walking from place to place with everything you own, just a bowl, a few spare ropes and a little bag, and that's all you had. It was the most wonderful times of my life. Absolute freedom. I could get to any crossroads. I could turn left. Right. Go straight ahead or go backwards. I was completely free. Why was that? Because I own nothing. Just the ropes and the ball on my back. It was a wonderful sense of freedom there, which I'm hoping I'm trying to impart to you. Just how the less we own, the more free we are now. These days, people say, well, you can't talk these days at someone. Look at your country estate at serpentine. Look at your your compound in town. One acre of all these buildings I've got here, which I can roam around in the night. You got a townhouse in a country estate? No, but the point is that you don't own these things. You can make use of them and enjoy them, but you don't own them. And that's the most important thing with your possessions to realize you can enjoy them. You can enjoy your house. You can enjoy your car. You can enjoy your money, your wealth, but never think that you own them, that they are you. And that's really what you are. You know how it is sometimes. Some people are very, very wealthy and it just they're just so proud. They've got such big egos. They're terrible people to be around. And because they're so terrible to be around, they think how great they are that they have got no friends because no one likes such people. I know there's other people who are very, very wealthy. You would never know it. They're just ordinary people. They're so friendly and kind, and you love to speak with them and be with them because they don't wear their wealth on their ego, on their self. They don't tend to own it. They can enjoy it. And when there's a good cause, they can just give it away. And that way they can really enjoy the wealth. They get a lot of happiness out of it. Now is wonderful. Again, the times when I did have money, every time which I had money and I gave it away, that was always the best money I'd ever spent. Now that time, I don't know if I told you this story before I was a monk, I had a motorbike. Can you imagine me on a motorbike? Full, full. But when I decided to become a monk, I realised that monks and motorbikes don't mix. Actually, I have been on a motorbike once as a monk. And that's the only time in Thailand I was in this forest and I was going to a diner and they came. I thought they'd come in a car, but the road was out. The only way you can get through was on a motorbike, so I had to sit on the back of a motorbike, and I realised why it's not really allowed for monks to be on the back of a motorbike. Because when you wear robes like these. A little bit of when the old balloons out idea is so hard to stay on you almost like float up into the air just like a big balloon. So never again going back. Anyway, this was before I was in my when I used to have, you know, trousers and stuff. And yeah, when you're, uh. Margaret, you don't need a motorbike. And now you realise you don't need money or something. So I had to get rid of my motorbike. And so I had a couple of friends and they said they were interested, but they never actually came around. But eventually it was a friend of my mother decided that they wanted a motorbike. And this is one of my wonderful memories of the time when I could renounce all my possessions because they came around and I was, uh, they had a look at the motorbike. There's a very nice bike. And they are so. Yeah, they know they like it. How much was I going to sell it for? I said, well, let's go upstairs so we can settle up upstairs. You know where my mother was because I wanted my mother to be there. Because if she wasn't there to be in big trouble. Because when we went upstairs, did you really like it? And the guy said, yes, I want it. How much? So if you want, you can have it for free for no money, no worries. Remember him turning around and looking at my mother and my mother saying straight away, don't worry, he's okay. He's going to be a monk. That. Because this fellow couldn't understand. He couldn't comprehend that some would give away an expensive motorbike for no money at all. It's wonderful because what you need money for something would you need a motorbike for? And so you could give it away. And I remember my mother writing to me later on saying that he always remembered me, because that was the first time in his long life someone had had given him something for nothing while expecting anything back in return, just giving away what a wonderful thing that was. I enjoyed that so much. So the point is that when you can actually get rid of possessions, let go of things, it makes you feel more happy, more free. But the point is, why is it that people don't want to give those things away? Why is this we own these things? Why is it we worry when the motorbike gets missing from the parking lot? It's all because we want to sort of control our possessions. But it's not just our physical possessions. You know, the next thing I'm going on to the sense of self. Very often we measure our sense of self by our family. And when we think our parents and our children are ours. And again, these attachments, which come from a sense of me know the self is the thing which owns other people. And you know what happens when you have a relationship and it becomes a controlling relationship where the other person thinks they own you, just how uncomfortable, how unpleasant that really is. And it's a wonderful thing to have a relationship where there's no ownership. We can enjoy each other's company for the time being of that relationship, giving each other that sense of freedom, but trust as well. And then we have a relationship which hasn't got this terrible control freak business. I know many times that some people come here and they there's sure their partners having an affair with somebody else, and then not at all. It's just but they controlling and they ring them up at work and they may be in the toilet at the time, because you do have to go to the toilet when you're at work. And so I rang you up. You weren't at the desk. Where were you? I was in the toilet. Yeah, I've heard that one before. It's very hard to prove where you were in the toilet or whatever else it was. And people get so suspicious. And why do they get suspicious? Why are they so control freaks? Why do they always try and own their partners? Is that ownership is actually what the sense of self does? Now, if we can actually learn not to own so much, but to enjoy our physical possessions, to enjoy our partners, our friends, our relationships, but also be able to let them go when it's time to let them go. Then we find we have so much more freedom in this world. You know how much you own things, but when those things are almost taken away from you, just like that friend who almost lost his motorbike realized that he wasn't attached to it when he thought it was being taken away. All fear. Where fear comes from is when things which you attach to which you think you own, is about to be taken away from you, or you think you're going to lose it. That's the origin of fear, where your attachments are being threatened. And it's a wonderful thing to be free of those attachments. So when you realize you don't own, know the people around you when you can enjoy their company, but you can let them go. It means when somebody gets very sick and dies, you don't get so upset. Why is it that when, sir, your son dies, you cry? When somebody else's son dies, you don't cry? What's the difference there? It's only the word. My. Just two letters. That makes a difference there. And this is you. You should actually start to understand now. Is it really your son or your parents? No, it's just a word we use. As is my father or my son or my daughter? My sister. Whatever. But what we mean really by that, for anyone who's ever had a child, you know, this being comes into your womb and comes out a few months later and you don't know where they've come from, and you know that it's just somebody completely different than you. It's not the son of the father and the mother. It's something completely different. The personality, their character are not the same. And we know as Buddhists they come from previous lives. We don't know where they come from. That's one of the dangers of giving birth. You don't know what you're giving birth to. If I can come from anywhere. And, you know, really, that's not yours. It's just like a little seed which is given to you to nurture for so 15, 16, 18 years, you do your very best, but it's not you or part of you. And after 16, seven, 18 years or whatever, they leave the nest and they go off wherever they need to go. Why is it that sometimes that we get so attached to our children, especially as mothers, you're worrying about them? Even another 40 or 50 is my mother still worries about me. My goodness mother, I mean, I'm grown up now. You don't need to leave. But why is it that people do that? And because they worry so much again, they have no peace and no freedom and no happiness. I tell parents, you should remember what birds do. That the birds they can sit on their egg for, you know, for days on end. You know, some of you can't even sit still for half an hour in meditation on a nice soft cushion. Imagine what it's like sitting on a hard egg. But they first managed to do this, and then they'd sort of nurture this bird, getting it all sorts of worms and other food all day, never thinking of itself. But as soon as that bird can fly, the small chick can fly this out of the nest. Mum and dad, they just go off and enjoy themselves. No, don't worry anymore. Just kick. This is what you should do. Once your child gets big enough to fly, kick them out. Okay, now look how they look after yourself to be like the bird. Or just like the kangaroos in nature. They have their joy and they really look after it. But the next year we'll have a new Jerry. The Joe from the year before they got to fight them off. They have to be independent now. But why is it that we sort of, you know, that we get so possessive of our children and so controlling and you all know probably what it's like to have a parent who has always been so controlling and now you do the same to your children. So what? Why is that? Because we think it's ours. An extension of our personalities. Sometimes people measure themselves by their children. And when we have like a sense of understanding of the Buddhist idea of non-self, it really comes to the point to realizing how little we possess, how little we own. We don't even own our own body. And so that we can allow our body to get old, to get sick and to die when we don't have any possessions, possessions, we don't have this possessiveness. We can let go more. The bigger the self, the more we control, the more we want to own. The more suffering we have, the less we own. We can enjoy this body because you don't own this body. You're only renting it for about 80 years, and then you have to give it up again. And actually by 80 years, it's time to give it up. Believe me, there are why people ought to keep on going on after 80 years. They always say that, you know, when you're sort of 50, you think, oh, maybe 70. That's long enough. Now, when you get to 69, no, maybe 80. When you get to 79, no, 80 is still too young to die. Maybe. Nice. It's always tomorrow. You want to deliver today. But the point is that when we understand what our body truly is, it doesn't really belong to us. We can let it go. We don't have to worry about it so much. It's like I've got all these responsibilities where I'm supposed to be. Spiritual director. Last week I said, spiritual dictate is not spiritual dictate to the Buddhist society. Spiritual director. You don't dictate. You're not the owner. And I have this monastery here tomorrow morning. I have to go overseas again to Indonesia. But when I go overseas, I don't take the Buddhist society with me. I don't own my monastery. It's a wonderful thing to have this idea of non ownership. It means I'm not the abbot. I'm not the spiritual director. When I come here on the spiritual director, when I go to my monastery at serving time, I'm near. But when I get on the plane, I'm just a traveler, that's all. What I mean by that is when you put on this, this self idea of being an Arab. But then you'll always have to be worried about your monastery because that's who you are. If you're a spiritual director of a Buddhist society of West Australia, or is that to be worried about, if you're the president of the Buddhist society, always have to be worried about it. But when you can actually do your job and then afterwards let it go, then you find you are free, you're not bettering yourself by any of these responsibilities and duties which you have when you don't carry around your job titles and job descriptions. It's amazing just how you can be free. The less self you have, the less you worry and the more free you are. You can let things go more and more and more. And when you do let things go more and more and more, you find again, a little bit of fear comes up. Is the fear of you losing the old identity which you once thought you had, that you were a CEO, or you were the owner of your business, or you were the head of your family, or you were the mother, or you were whatever else it was, which you define yourself. So when we do the investigation into non-self in Buddhism, instead of using it philosophically as, say, you know, what is this soul or self business? We know the self by what it does, by what it owns. Unless you own, the less you are an individual and the more you can merge with others. Just like indigenous peoples never had any idea of like ownership of personal property. They had the idea of communal ownership to share everything. It's only the later generations of so-called civilized people had this idea of personal ownership, with all the stress with that entails. There is no wonderful thing that we can make use of these things, but never thinking that they are ours or they make. This being called me up in that way. When we don't get attached to these things, we can enjoy, but also be able to let them go. For example, that sometimes the people come to this temple over here because they are grief stricken at the loss of one of their dear relations or friends. Why do people grieve when somebody dies? And so, because it's almost like part of them has died. This their ownership, the sense of building up a self with this person. And now when that person is gone, it's as if part of them has died. We're measuring ourselves by the people we love when measuring ourselves, by our children, by our friends. And that's why we suffer. If we could only realize that these people, they weren't really ours. They were our friends. They come and they live our lives. That's the nature. Whatever arises and comes into our lives as friends must one day leave. And through all nature of impermanence, we can only realize that from the very start that all of our relationships are temporary. We don't own that person. One day they will leave us. As the Buddha once said, all that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will one day become separated from us. At first that might make you afraid, but when you go deeper into that, it brings you a lot of peace and freedom. It's the same as the meditation mantra, which we've been teaching for many years now. When people on retreats use a mantra along with say your breath to try and focus your mind, but some of those mantras have inherent meaning. One of the mantras we use with great success is when you're breathing in, you recite to yourself, I will die. As you breathe out, that's for sure. I will die, that's for sure I will die. That's. And it's thought the Buddhist are weird. It's actually. It works. They could try that. Reciting that to yourself again and again and again. Because the reason why that works and creates a lot of peace. Because you know it's true. But number two, once you remember, they said, what am I worried about so much about all these things? I will die, that's for sure. If you can't pay your bills, I'm gonna die soon anyway. What the heck? Somebody else's problem. Or whatever else happens to you in life, I will die, that's for sure. Isn't that a wonderful sense of freedom? At last you could finish all your work. I lost all the dishes. You don't care whether they get washed or not anymore. You're dead. So it's a wonderful sense of freedom. Why does it give a sense of freedom? Is because it's a truth which tells you just how little you own in life. When the great teachings of the Buddha in this actually second sermon was actually on the the teaching of Anita, you're going to be very careful, actually, when you pronounce the, the Buddhist term for non-self. Anita, because I know that there was this Western monk who once in England he pronounced her Anita or Anita. And he was talking to this English lady and said, you know, you're a nutter. And the nutter is like, you know, someone who's crazy. So be careful. Don't, don't. It's not a nutter. It's an attack because someone, a nutter gets a big trouble. But in the anata, like I said, the Buddhist second sermon, it was amazing. Just the Buddha made it very, very clear. He said, look, you don't own anything, monks. You don't even own your body or your mind. So why he was actually telling why you try to control your mind in your meditation? Does it belong to you? It's a wonderful teaching because it takes this idea of ownership even deeper. All of you who are worried about the thoughts which happen in your mind. Good thoughts. Bad thoughts. Are they really your thoughts? If they are your thoughts, you'd worry about them a lot and you try and control them. How many people when you meditate, try and control your thoughts? Does it ever work? You'll find in meditation, the more you try and control things, just the more suffering you have. And the Buddha said, it's a waste of time because you can't control these things and instead you're disengaged. They're not my thoughts. None of my business. That's one of my other wonderful mantras. Not my business. So when you meditate, they're just not my business. Not my business. Nothing's my business. That's all it comes in. It's not my business. You get tired. My business is. Something happens in the past. Not my business. The future. Not my business. Not in my business at all. Isn't that wonderful? You've got nothing to think about, nothing to worry about. You just everything is nice and peaceful. You are free when you disengage that way. It's a wonderful thing that when you don't control all this, happiness and peace just comes by itself. Naturally. You realize the more you control, the more suffering you make in life, the more you learn to flow with things, not controlling them, but leaving them alone. The more peace and the more bliss you start to feel. And this is actually one of the reasons why we teach meditation, because after a while, the penny drops when I try and force my mind. No way will it be peaceful. But when I just say it's not my business, when you disengage, I will die. That's for sure. So what if I get peaceful and not peaceful? Who cares? Let it all alone. When you stop controlling, you get more and more still. And in that stillness, more and more happiness. I've been teaching this for so many years now, and when people really do it, it works. You just sit there and literally do nothing. You don't control. You let go. You make peace with things. You realize it's not mine. It doesn't belong to me. So it's not my business. And then the world starts to disappear and you get very peaceful and very happy. You understand? Those people have been coming here long enough. Now, the most important word in meditation is letting it be, letting it go. Which is the opposite word for controlling. This is one of the reasons why people meditate, because when they meditate, they do get very peaceful and it's very happy and enjoyable meditating. And you realize the more you let go, the more peace, the more happiness you have. If you let go of this week and a little bit of peace and happiness, you let go a lot. You get lots of peace and happiness. If you really let go, you get ecstatic and have a wonderful time. The old sticks better than, um, some of the bliss. Better than sex, uh, in deep meditation. And yet you do that the more that you can let go. And that teaches you an important lesson if you really want to be happy. And this is what all the controlling is trying to get happiness in your life, you're going in the wrong direction. How much of what is our Western society? We all just control freaks. We try and control nature now. We can try and control the traffic, control everything. The more we control, the worse it gets. That old story, I said in Jerusalem where they stopped. The doctors went on strike for two weeks a few years ago, told us an armada in Jerusalem. A few years ago. The doctors went on strike for two weeks and the death rate plummeted in the hospitals. But the. I know there's a few doctors here, but look it up that what actually happened. Sometimes we're so afraid of leaving things alone, we think it's all going to go wrong. But actually it never goes wrong. But what happens is it really challenges our sense of self and what we're here for because we really think we're here. If we want to be happy, we have to make it happen. We need the deep, meditative, mystic religions, not just Buddhism, you know, things like Sufism or Taoism, just to going with the flow in mystic Christianity. Surrender to the surrender the will, surrender the controller and face it. Buddhist meditation. Let go of the sense of self. You find that there you find the deep pieces and the truth of your life. The more you let go, the more happiness you feel and the more sense of freedom. And as you go deeper and deeper, this is where you find those eternal truths. It is a sense of self which created the controlling, which created all the suffering. If you really try and control very hard the world, you get very frustrated. There's one other thing which you can probably recognise yourself. The stronger your will, the more easily you get frustrated. And from frustration we get anger, guilt, depression all coming from our willfulness, wanting to be the one who controls the world. When you realise what the world is that you know this is the way the world is, you stop trying to control it so much. You understand this is the nature of the world. People die. What do you expect? Sometimes people get upset when people die young. But there was a story which I was told as a young monk, which actually shows you how to accept the death of young people. This was a story where a monk was staying in a in a hut in the jungles. And, uh, in those days, the huts were just made out of bamboo and thatch. There's a big storm one night. Trees started coming down, being uprooted. And the monk was so afraid. Because if one tree or even a big branch fell on his heart, there was no protection. There was just made out of bamboo and thatch. If a tree fell on him, he'd either sort of break bones, maybe even be killed. If he broke bones, there was no person to crawl to, so he would probably die an agonizing death. It was such a dangerous situation. He didn't sleep all night, and during the storm, he heard many trees come crashing down. Must have been very close to his heart. So in the morning, when the storm stopped, he went outside his heart to look around and see what the damage was. He'd survived, and sure enough, he saw some trees and big branches that just missed his heart. But then something else took his attention, which was more important than the big branches and trees which had been uprooted. He looked on the leaves on the forest floor, the ones which had been torn off the tree by the storm need notice. As you would expect, most of the leaves, which had been torn off the tree and lay dead on the ground where the old brown leaves. Leaves which had lived a full span of days on the tree. But amongst those brownies there were a few yellow leaves amongst the yellow leaves, some green leaves and some of those green leaves were so bright green, he realized they could have only sprouted the day before. They too, lay dead on the forest floor because of the storm. He got what we called him Buddhism, an insight and understanding about the truth which applies to all aspects of nature, including human nature. We looked up on the trees to see what leaves were left, and as you would expect, most of the leaves still on the trees were the green leaves, but amongst those green leaves were a few yellow leaves, and there were even a few curly old brown leaves still hanging on to the twigs of the tree. Even though young green leaves lay dead on the ground, he realized as simply of nature when the storms of diseases, accidents, suicides, or deaths go through our community. You'd expect them mostly to take the old curly brown leaves. But even though that's usually what they take, they always take a few young green leaves as well. And there's nothing wrong. It's not a fault of nature that the young green leaves just sprouted a day before. Get torn off the tree of life. It's just nature, that's all. And the same way that sometimes young children die. Whereas other curly brown leaves. And I see quite a few curly old brown leaves in front of me. They're. Still hanging on year after year after year. Well, young children, they say. Why is it it means something gone wrong? This is nature. When we understand the law of nature, we can let go according to the law of nature. We realize we don't control nature, even though the best we can possibly do with science and technology to control nature. You will never be able to succeed that way. And you really want to succeed. It's very expensive to stop the aging process, especially with Botox and other stuff. There's a lot of pain and suffering. Why do you want to do that? So it's much better to actually understand the law of nature and learn to let go into the laws of nature. To realize one can't control nature, one has to let nature be to accept the world rather than always fighting it all the time. And here, I mean sort of accepting old age and death, realizing this body is only ours for short, short time, realizing we can't control very little in this world. And when we start trying to control it, then we can let go much more. We let go much more. We can be more at peace. Sometimes it's challenging us because the more we let go, it's as if we're disappearing. Our individuality, the sense of self, of separateness starts to disappear. But you try that and it's not such a bad thing after all, the more we disappear. The more we can be with others, the more we disappear, the less we can be hurt by the other ways of the world. The more we flow with nature and become part of nature, rather than individuals always trying to control nature according to our will. The more free we will feel ourselves becoming. That's certainly what happens in meditation, and it happens in life. So many things in life you can do nothing about. And that's when we really learn the benefits of letting go, of realizing we're not in charge. In the end of your life, this will be very plain to you, but all of your controlling will never be able to stop the onset of death, and all of your possessions will not be able to help you. You have to let them all go. Will your family go? And at the end, it's just so plain to you that none of this belonged to me. It was only a friend. It was only two things which I had for a short time. And if you made use of your possessions, if you loved your friends, if you were kind and caring to your family, then you'd realize that you've made the best use of the time you had with these things. And at the end of your life, it's just so clear even your body doesn't belong to you. You've cared for it so much. Now's the time to let it go. And even your feelings in your mind don't belong to you. When you can let that go to. Then you'll never get reborn again. You can become enlightened. Enlightened means you realize just how little you own. When you own little. Then you can be with everybody. You can merge instead of rather being alone. When you can merge and just disappear, then it's a wonderful state of peace and freedom. So that's the idea of self is what actually stops us being free. It isn't actually create freedom. It creates more turmoil. And as I mentioned at the very beginning, it's the ones who have the big egos. They want to control and control the whole world, create all the problems for other people. And as sometimes religious leaders try and control others, when they try and control others and convert others and make this world all the know their sect or their religion. You can see the problem that has all come from this huge egos, control freaks. The ones who really understand what religion truly is, they don't try and control at all. That's why you can be free and be at ease with others. The more you get eliminated, say as a Buddhist, the more you can have friends who are Christians or Muslims or whatever. It's a wonderful thing actually, to see just the way that Buddhists can't go to churches or mosque other places and be friends with others. Why is that? Because we can let go more and more and more. The more you can let go of your individuality, the more you can merge with others and find friendship with others. If I was a Buddhist with a capital B, I could never feel at ease with a Christian with a capital C. But when you can let go of all of these ideas and descriptions now, why can't you be at ease with other people? The more you eliminate the sense of identity and self, the more you can be at ease with others. So the Buddhist teaching of non-self is not just a simple teaching, but it goes to the very depths of how to be free, how to be at ease, and how to get happiness, how you can enjoy life without possessing life, how you can have friends without attachments, and how you can enjoy your time on this earth according to nature. But understanding the rules of nature. It never belonged to me. Now's the time to give it all up. And you can let it all go and finally be free. So the teaching of self or non self is always realizing just how little you at every time you have pain and suffering. A death of a loved one. A disappointment in life. It just shows you just how out of control life is. So whenever you get an anger ill will that's just complaining about life. So you have to get real. Accept life for what it is. Just like the leaves on a tree. To be able to allow them to fall. And all of your controlling will make that life different. What if you're controlling and screaming just makes you suffer more? So where we can learn to be more peace with life because we don't try and control it so much. Then you can have more happiness and freedom in life. Please realize how little you own. And that's the story tonight about Nonso. Okay. Is anyone here? God, I hope you're all eliminated now. Does anyone have any questions about this evening's talk about how to eliminate all of your sense of self? Yes. Go on. What is meant by building up the self-concept of young people? I think I don't know whether that's really sort of a good idea, because I think it's much more important that young people learn the sense of togetherness, of friendships, of communities rather than individuality. I know you're a schoolteacher. I mentioned this before. I always thought of it as a school, teaching myself. School is so competitive and kids are individuals and they're competing against each other, you know, for the best marks and even to get to university and get the best places afterwards as a terrible thing to have for kids. And because there is so much competition, it means they are individuals. When they go out into society and they find it very difficult actually to live and form relationships with other genders. You know, many marriages sort of, uh, or relationships, they don't last. Why is that? Because we never really learned at school how to work with other people. So it's more important, I think, to have a sense of like community rather than a sense of individual, one sense of self, a sense of us rather than a sense of me. And you'd say, well, I was sort of, uh, in the school to be able to affect that is to have maybe 40% of the marks at the end of the year, averaged over the whole class. 6% of personal score and 40% in the whole average. So it's in every child's interest, especially the bright children, to go out and help the the weaker children because they get something out of it. So it actually fosters a sense of working together because, as you know, whether it's in even in the staffroom at a school sometimes is too much, uh, individuals fighting each other for the promotion or whatever. And in the staff room, in the monastery, in the office, we have to learn how to cooperate, not just to compete. Something would be great if there's some children. Learn more how to, uh, the relationships together. Not just me, but us. We're in this together. Good thing that indigenous societies that always have, you know, they wouldn't think of themselves as selves or individuals, but they would be the family, whether it be the the tribe or the village or whatever. And they would have a personal identity. I saw that certainly in Thailand, because the village was the identity. Now, they weren't so much an individual. They were a part of a whole. Does that make sense? Mm. Mm. Yeah. I'm not quite sure what the values have been. Makes them to be very competitive in the world. And it creates this sense of once they have a sense of self, they measure their self against others. As against others rather than being with others. The summation, I think, is terrible. A sense of turmoil for children. You know, I'm not clever. I'm not good at sort of footy like my friend is. You know, I'm not as pretty or as smart talking as somebody else. And that's why many, unfortunately, some children do commit suicide because they don't measure up. Yeah, I think so. It makes a lot of sense to me. Instead of having this, this big emphasis on herself, on me, more on us, so we can actually form relationships and measure ourselves by relationship rather than just being just very, very alone. I think many of you noticed that in your life, sometimes you feel so alone. Why is that? Because we have. We pulled up this idea of a self, and whatever self you build up is never good enough. It's amazing. Sometimes you talk with successful people and they think, no, no, I'm not good enough. Very easy for even as a mark sometimes, you know thing. I didn't give a good talk tonight. I said something like, uh, I go crazy if I had a sense of self and measured up. Because you'd always be judging yourself. And you know, I know what it's like when you judge yourself. You measure yourself. It's never good enough. How many people in this room are satisfied with themselves? You understand what I mean? Well, it's on us. We can actually don't get that same sense of inner turmoil. Her judgments. So I don't know if that answered your question, but actually got me on another issue. So thank you for that. Yeah. Okay. I distinguish between the two is like using the word ownership and just like renting. Because now when you rent an apartment. When you own an apartment. So there is a different ballgame. And I think that the idea of renting, but actually, you know, having responsibility for something temporarily is much closer to the truth of our lives when we have an ownership. You know, we forget that this is only a temporary position. We think it's ours. And it's that which causes the attachments that is, you know, that's a chain which binds us to no our possessions. I mean, if you realize you only have these things for a short time, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and you're old enough to know how fast time goes and the years are gone very, very fast. So now we have to give all these things up eventually. So I just enjoy them. But don't attach to them and don't be possessed by them. Now why do you have these things anyway to worry about? Or do you have these things you know to, to make use of for your enjoyment, the enjoyment of your family, enjoyment of others? There's the old story of, dunno, the last time you heard this story of just the way that the villagers used to catch monkeys many years ago, where they had a very simple trap, they just hollow out a coconut chain. The coconut tied the coconut to a tree, put a small hole in the coconut shell, just big enough for a monkey to put his hand in. They put a banana inside the coconut. And sooner or later, a monkey would see that banana and put its hand in to get the banana. But the hole was only big enough to put its hand in or fist in. When there's nothing in its fist, they couldn't actually take it out with a banana, and then they'd be trying for hours trying to get the banana out with its fist. You can put his hand in, but he can't get his hand out with something. When the hunter came and the monkey would not let the banana go and escaped with its life, it would still try even harder to pull that banana out, but couldn't do it. And the hunter would capture that monkey that way. And that's a very good assembly in life. Sometimes we just won't let things go, even though sometimes it means our death or our suffering or I sort of internal pain. Why does an immaculate the banana go? Because I found it. It's mine. But many other bananas in the in the forest can get. But he wants that one. And I can see the assembly there in our life and maybe sort of, you know, like a boy falls in love with a girl. That's my girl. And they just won't let it go. There's many other girls in in the world. Why are you worried about that one? But it's mind, you know, if it's the other possessions you have or somebody dies, you know, it's my son or my daughter has died. You get so possessive. So that makes sense. Sort of. Okay, so that's 9:05. So that's enough for this evening, uh, to just, uh, make an announcement on the air here because this talk goes out to many, many people that, uh, we just had a meeting this afternoon about our global conference on Buddhism, getting lots and lots of people coming to this important event. It's called, uh, Buddhism Confronting the Controversies. It's on June the 10th to 11th and an international audience of people already coming, and also an international audience of speakers from the United States, uh, from Sri Lanka, from Thailand, from UK, all coming to discuss important subjects like euthanasia. And, uh, many of you may have seen we've got Doctor Philip Nitschke coming here to see what he says about euthanasia. He's not a Buddhist, but if you want to hear about these things, he's an expert. He certainly knows more about it than I do. So we're going to see what he says and actually ask questions, because after 15 minutes speech by everybody, then people can actually in the audience have a whole hour to grill all the people. Also, about women in Buddhism or the future of Buddhism, Buddhist issues are on the table to really discuss and see if we can get deeper into solving some of the problems, such as Buddhism and fundamentalism. What's Buddhist answer to fundamentalism? I thought of making an invitation to a cartoonist from Denmark to come and talk about his experiences, but I might get into trouble there. So that is. Are you listening in overseas? This is June the 10th 11th. If you look on our website, SWA org to see if you can, uh, want to come. So that's an ad for the end of this evening. Thank you.