Tolerance Explored

Tolerance Explored by Ajahn Brahm Transcription And somebody passed me a piece of paper earlier. I have a little story about on the radio. I think they said, uh, there was an, uh, an Aboriginal woman, uh, who said that she didn't want to be tolerated. And everybody thought that was a wonderful statement. And it opens up what should we mean by tolerance and does actually tolerating somebody else? Is that the right attitude which we should have? Is that being a bit patronizing to them and not really looking at the root problems, which why should you need to pat to tolerate somebody in the first place? Uh, is that an inherent putdown of that person or their behaviour or their status in society? It also starts to bring up other areas where we say we should tolerate, uh, maybe, uh, misdemeanours of people in your family or aches and pains in your body or difficulties in life. And sometimes the word tolerance can be an excuse just for not really doing your duties. So this evening I'm going to explore what we mean by tolerance. And I'm going to start in an easy area because, you know sometimes sitting meditation you have aches and pains in this body. You know, I'm getting older now. I just had my 56th birthday a few days ago. It was very fortunate that before I went to, uh, the day before the birthday, I had an invitation. It's really interesting being a monk, because I think the week before I said that, I went to a morning tea with the Archbishop of York, and he was the second in command of the worldwide Anglican Church. And just before my birthday, I went to an evening with sir Roger Penrose, who was one of the most famous physicists in the world. He's a fellow who discovered black holes. And while we were there, somebody was mentioning that this universe, which was sitting in right now is about 13,000 million years old. Imagine that number, 13,000 million. So the following day, when I was 56, I realized I wasn't that old. It made me feel quite young, but uh, anyhow, being like, uh, going into these different parts of society and sometimes, as you do get old, you do get more achy, more pains, more difficulties, more, uh, sicknesses. And this is the first part with like tolerance. When you do have a pain or sickness in the body, should you really be tolerating it? Obviously, if there's something you can do, you go and see a doctor, you take a Panadol or you do something to try and ease that ache and pain in the body. But where tolerance can sometimes be applied is where, ah, there's nothing you can take. There's nothing you can do physically to get rid of that ache or pain. But one of the teachings which had been drummed into me from my training as a monk, especially in the early years, if there is a sickness or a pain which for one reason or another cannot be cured or there's no medicine you can take, you don't just enjoy it and just grit your teeth and say, I'm just going to tolerate this. What I was always taught is to understand it. Investigate. Learn from it. So it wasn't just tolerance. Say, this is awful. This is terrible. I've got to bear with this. So it must be some karma from the past. I used to have very bad hay fever. It must have been because in my previous life, I punched an enlightened person on the nose. And that's why I have to suffer from hay fever in this life. That sort of attitude was certainly, you know, not wisdom. That was not, um, Buddhism. There was nothing to do with the right attitudes. What I was always told was actually investigate these things which are upset you, which irritate you, which give you, um, pain or discomfort. Don't just sit there and tolerate it and wait for it to go. But find out what it's there to teach you. I found that a much better attitude to deal with those aches and pains which I had in life, to actually get into it so you could understand it. No wonder I said so. A strange thing happens. Actually, when you don't just tolerate and just, like, resist and just sort of sit here and just bear with it, when actually you just go into that sickness or into that pain or ache because your aim now is to understand it and to understand something, you've got to empathize with it. You've got to get in there and find out what it really feels like. And so instead of tolerating thing which was like a negative, to stand back and wait for it to disappear, there was something more engaging and active in investigating the irritations of your body, the things you didn't like. Because what I found are what each one of you will find. If you have an ache or a pain and a body, or a sickness, or a bone break or whatever. So often, because we resist and we try and escape, we tense up around that area of the pain. That's what an inflammation is, sort of tensing up around that part of the signal. So you can't really get in there and find out what's going on. Whenever you actually go into a pain or into a discomfort, and even with your mind to investigate and feel it right in the middle, find even already that sort of sickness or that ache, that pain tends to ease a little bit, because a lot of times our mental reaction to pain is to er, touch you, to squash up. Whereas the, uh, result of actually investigation is, oh, this is interesting. You actually embrace it and the thing loosens up. Sometimes resistance, though, tends to squash things and make them more tense. Investigation going into something tends to expand it more and make it more loose. So just evenly. Intention of going in to find out what's going on. Sometimes even that gives you a payoff result straight away where the irritation gets much less. The reason is because the irritations are discomforts of physical pains. They always have a mental counterpart, and that mental counterpart to physical discomfort is, I don't want this. I don't like this. I want to escape. I want to go somewhere where that pain isn't. And that's always what we call the mental part of the pain. But when you investigate something, you're not trying to get rid of it mentally. You're not having the medical. Um, the so the, the negative mental part to the irritation or the pain, that part is being abandoned because you're investigating. You want to see this. You want this to be here, at least for these few moments so you can understand it. So the mental rejection has been abandoned, and in its place is an acceptance and wanting to find out what this what's going on, the mental part has been overcome. That makes things much less irritating and painful. Also, you can see when you go into a physical pain trying to understand it, often you can actually find solutions to actually what's there and what needs to be done, or whether it's just relaxing. I don't know how many times that people get physical aches and pains, and what it really is, is the body telling you you've been working too hard. Sit down, take a break, have a rest. Especially so you get headaches. And while you get a headache, because you've been looking at that computer screen far too long, you just need to take a bit of time out. And there are how many times I've mentioned this to especially to people in our modern age. Taking time out from your computer screen, from your job, from whatever you're doing is not slacking off. You're not wasting time. You are making your self more efficient. In the same way that when you went to school, you always used to have a break in the morning, lunchtime and the school I went to, yet a break in the afternoon. And even in another great British Empire. One of the reasons the British Empire was so successful was because you'd have a tea break in the morning and a tea break in the afternoon. In other words, they could relax a little bit. So after the tea break, they could actually go back to running their empire. I don't know, but certainly being able to sort of rest and relax when you were at school, men, after the playtime or after the lunch break. You were bright, you were fresh, were rested. The brain could now go back to work. But what happens these days in our workplace? You are working at an hour. How many hours straight? Without giving your brain a rest? No wonder you get headaches. No wonder you feel stressed and you cannot work to your full potential when your brain is that tired. So actually, when you do feel this stress, instead of trying to get rid of it, or trying to ignore it and just tolerating it. Instigates him. Does it feel like and why? And as you do investigate it, rather than trying to get rid of it, solutions come up. You feel, yeah, this is right. This need to take a break for 1 or 2 minutes. And if you can take that break for 1 or 2 minutes, you'd go back to work. Afterwards, you feel fresh, a little bit more relaxed and able. But you to do that work exactly the same way as a problem. You don't know how to solve it. How many times you keep thinking, how can I solve this? What should I do? Stop it, for goodness sake, go and take a break. And then solutions come up quite naturally when you're not thinking about it. The more you push it, the more difficult it is to see what you need to do. So this is investigating rather than just tolerating or waiting for disappear, you actually being more proactive, understanding how this body works. And sometimes when you do investigate the aches and pains, you can actually investigate where the course is come from. You know quite clearly why you're feeling this way, where that sickness came from, because you're not just trying to get rid of it, you're trying to understand it. So whenever there is a negative physical feeling, instead of just bearing with it and tolerating it, if you can't get rid of it with some medicine or something, understand it. And sometimes when we're understanding it, if it cannot disappear, then another level of understanding comes up. And that obviously understanding is, yes, that sometimes there's some aches and pains, sicknesses which will never be able to get rid of as part of being a human being, know to have aches, pains and sicknesses. But it is not just tolerating it like blindness. Understanding what these feelings are and how they relate. As a Buddhist monk, whenever we do have like aches and pains. One of the things which we do to understand them even deeper, not just tolerating them and bearing with them because we realize that these are just that, their aches, their pain. So physical feelings, but they're not belonging to me. They're not my feelings. In other words, I haven't done something wrong. I don't feel guilty for the aches and pains in my body. Unfortunately, in our modern life, if you are sick, sometimes you are made to feel guilty. You are sick. It means that you have not been eating enough brown rice. That you have not been exercising enough. You've been eating too many fatty foods. You've been working too hard. It's your fault. I don't know if you've ever felt sick and felt so guilty. I did once, I remember going to the doctor in Byford many years ago. I felt sick and I was sitting there waiting to be called in, and at that particular time I was teaching meditation in many of the prisons in Perth. And it so happened that one of the local prison officers also had an appointment in that morning, and he came into the doctor's surgery and looked at me and saw me and remembered me and recognised me. And he said, I didn't expect to see you in here. I felt so guilty. I'm supposed to be a Buddhist monk living a healthy lifestyle without any stress. And there I was in the doctor's surgery even once. Get sick. Come on. But other. Have you ever felt so guilty when you're sick as if you are doing something wrong? And again, so we understand there's nothing wrong with being sick. And if you are sick, enjoy it. Don't have to go to work. Or is people looking after you? And if it's terminal sickness. Wow. A few more days and I'm out of here. Can you do that? People often notice this. There are so many religions, Buddhism included. We believe in some afterlife. And as long as you keep coming to the Buddhist center every Friday, it means when you die, you go to heaven. As long as you keep up your subscriptions and you return all your library books on time. So we saw this. There's lots of really good people here. And if you're a good person, why on earth are you afraid of death? Get some heaven rub. It's going to be nice up there. What are you afraid of? Get it over and done with as soon as you can to get up there and enjoy yourself. If you were going on a holiday somewhere, imagine your dream holiday. Where would you like to go? You know, if you sort of won some lottery and they said you can go anywhere in the world, first class, five star accommodation, whatever you want to go in the world, wouldn't you be excited? You'd be counting the days to get there. Well, heaven is supposed to be even better than that. So you should be counting the days. Oh, great. One more day. Closer to my coffin. Wow. So you have to laugh at that, because there's a lot of truth in it, isn't it? So why are we so afraid? So we can investigate if we have, like, a very bad illness, a terminal. Why? Understand it? Investigate. Why are we so afraid of dying? Why are we so afraid of pain? So whenever we do have these physical difficulties. Don't just tolerate it. Learn and understand from it. It's a gift. It's an opportunity. Some moment where you can get under the skin of sickness to empathise with dying or getting old. To really get to know it. Because in that knowing of something, there's always freedom. I know I saw the Buddha said this, but many people say this as well. These days. The biggest problem, the biggest pain and suffering is fear. And fear is always because we don't understand and know these things. Fear is always the fear of the unknown. And if we could know things, understand them. Fear disappears. And of course, the biggest fear for many people here, because we always have a lot of people who are born in Asia. Some of the biggest fears as ghosts. And I don't know why that is. If you could only know a ghost and get to understand and get to empathize with them. Imagine put yourself, you know, in the the shoes of a ghost what it feels like. Ghosts in our modern society feels so rejected. No one loves them. They come and see you. Have a nice conversation. What do you do? Go! Ah! Get out of here! They're only trying to be friendly. But people keep running away. Imagine that with you. You go up to someone and the first thing they do is scream and run away. How would you feel? So please have a bit of compassion for the ghosts in this world. But the fun is when you understand these things, the fear disappears. This is what I mean about the sickness and the aging and the dying when you understand it, not just tolerating it. Problem mostly vanishes. This is same of other things in life. The things we don't understand. I mean, what that Aboriginal woman may have been saying, it's very hard for me to sort of second guess. This is only a short paragraph, which I read. Maybe she was saying that I don't want tolerance, I want understanding. I understand that how I feel. I know what I go to every day. That empathy. So if there is an irritation there or sort of, you know, an inability to sort of contact to embrace because it's some part of that person which makes it difficult for you who is. So why get in there and understand to investigate rather than just tolerate so you can really understand. Now let's go a little bit more to your common experience. How many of you are just tolerating your partner? You got married a long time ago, and it's just more easy just to stay with them than to go to the lawyer and get the separation. And is that actually what your relationship is like? Maybe it's not all the time. Maybe a lot of the time you'll have a wonderful time, but sometimes you just really get irritated and upset. Don't just sort of, sort of sit there and and just bear with it. Try and understand what's going on. Empathize with the other person. Get under their skin, find out what's going on rather than just tolerating it. And if you can understand, sometimes you're amazing. Just what you can really understand, what you actually find out. I said, what is saying that? Why do they feel like that? And even the very fact you are trying to understand, just like with pain, just very fat, you're not rejecting it, but you're going into it and finding some understanding. In a relationship. If your partner is doing that to you, they're trying to understand why you're upset. That's half the problem. Maybe 6,080% of the problem. To understand that a person's not just tolerating and rejecting you, they're trying to understand, but trying to get in there and to become wise rather than just bearing with it and being as stupid as ever. As with the understanding, investigation is a promise of growth and even may be a solution. So whenever there is that problem, even in married life, don't just bear with it. Don't just look at yourself either. Try to find out what the other person is feeling, why they're feeling that way. Investigate and understand. And again, sometimes this is the attitude we're trying to get to feel and understand what's going on. Sometimes that is enough, but often you get much more than that. You start to feel why? You grow. They grow. You both grow together. So with people in our society who have got any difficulties with Aboriginal people or refugees or people who are somehow different than us, there's many people here that maybe most people here have come into this country and have experienced rejection where even myself. Because when I came to Australia, I was a mutt. And you always used to go around, you know, all the time in these ropes isn't wonderful. So the sort of things which people used to say to me when I was, you know, first in this country 25 years ago. Now you're dressed like a girl. You're a sicko. Why don't you get a proper job? Come on, people. If there's a bunch of blood tissue marks there, it was. Because obviously there's a lot of rejection. Because Buddhism was completely unknown. No one actually knew what it was, where there was some weirdo religion. A lot of people would go to Thailand, and all they knew from Thailand was Buddha, Buddha grass. It was the name of a type of marijuana. So go up to you and say you've got any for me. So now we're no, we're monks. We don't get into that. I don't know where you got that idea from, but that's nothing to do with Buddhism. But that's what people used to do when they went to Thailand 25 years ago. However, it was wonderful, actually, to be understood and to understand other people, the why they would say those things. So they weren't just tolerating some of that situation, nor you trying to sort of aggressively sort of change that situation. You're trying to understand it. And it's the understanding. The wisdom gives you solutions and eventually gives you the freedom. And so should we tolerate sort of violence and fundamentalism in our communities is a huge thing now in our political world, whether it's Christian fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists, I don't know, maybe even Buddhist fundamentalists. Oh, should we tolerate that? If we just tolerate the thing, I'll just let them do whatever they want to do. It's a very, very dangerous political stance to make because these are real bombs which kill real people, which threaten maybe even you. So how can what's the right attitude? There obviously is not tolerance in the sense that I just leave it alone. Someone will fix it up. I always want to say to go to understanding. That's why the, you know, going to see somebody like the Archbishop of York. No hanging out with some rabbis or especially with the Catholic monks over at you. Nausea. Understanding people who are different than you is a great way of solving the problems of fundamentalism in this world. Get under another person's skin and feel what it's like. Because when there's an understanding there straight away. Just like with physical feelings. Because. Is that not that mental block, you are connecting with another person, understanding them, just that gesture. Sometimes is enough for friendship. Very fact that you are making an effort to understand them means that they very often reciprocate by making an effort to understand you. And isn't that what friendship is all about? Learning about each other. And from what we gather from each other, to become rich in ourselves, in the way that we live and understand grow in our life. But anyway, there's a joke about many religions. So this is today's joke, but I hope many people have been waiting for. I saw a few people with their heads down so getting a bit bored. There's an old joke has said many many years ago, but it's been several years since I mentioned the joke about. There was a Jewish rabbi, an Anglican priest, a Catholic priest, and a Buddhist monk. And they just had an interfaith session and they were just broke for lunch. And they were very friendly with each other. They got to know each other for a long time. And so just after lunch, I was sitting down there and the Jewish rabbi said, you know that, you know, we've been friends for such a long time. But, you know, sometimes it's very hard for me to say these things to my other sort of co-religionists because, you know, if this got out, my reputation would be ruined. I just need to say to somebody, and I've got a problem. And the other, you know, the the Anglican, the Buddhist and the Catholics say, what's your problem? You can tell us, because, no, we're not Jews. We don't tell anybody else. And he said, well, actually, my problem is I'm a gambler. He said, you know, when people aren't watching, I go on the internet and gamble. You know, sometimes, you know, go in disguise down to Burswood. I lost a lot of money. He said, I'm addicted to gambling, and I can't tell anybody else because I'm a rabbi and people will not really understand. I'll lose my reputation, even my job. The only other sort of how, you know, the religious people say, well, that's it's a wonderful thing. You you tell us this because, you know, when you actually open up to somebody else, you opening up to yourself, there's actually a possibility you might do something about it. So they really praised it. And the rabbi said, well, it was really hard to get me off, get this off my chest, but I feel so much better afterwards. Is there any one of you want to sort of admit your faults? Yeah. I couldn't stop for a few moments. He looked very serious. Okay, he said, I didn't really want to tell this to any, but if it gets back to my church, I'm done for. He said listener after the communion on Sunday. Any wine left over? Drink it all up. Not only that, but just back in my room. Any bottles of whiskey? Said I'm an alcoholic and I've hidden it for all these years. No one knows. Sort of. I'm a bad alcoholic. And they were quite surprised. He looked such a good guy. But they said it's good. At least you let us know. Another looks at the next one in line with the Catholic. What about you? He said it's much worse, much, much, much worse. What is it? He said. No. Can I not tell you? Please? And he said, no, no, please, you must tell us. And so he took a sigh and he says, it's adultery. But worse than that, sort of. I'm going with the husband of one of my parishioners. I'm a gay adulterer. Well, that was terrible, they said. Personal possession. Do things like that. But at least you let us know. And that's wonderful. You can get it off your chest. And then he wrote to the Buddhist monk. And the Buddhist monk looked at the clock and said, it's about time we went back. There, now that is plenty of time. Come on. What's your worst thought? Hello to these three friends. The rabbi, the Anglican priest, and the Catholic priesthood. I can't tell you. Please, I just I just can't tell you. They said you can tell as it can't be anything worse than gambling, alcoholism and gay adultery. What could be worse than that? He said, friends, it's much, much worse than that. Don't ask me. I'm sure you're all thinking what can be worse? What could be worse than all these three? And he said, please don't let me. Don't. Don't. Don't let me tell you. There's no way out. They forced him to tell. And he said, my problem, and I tried to stop it, I just can't. I'm a gossip. So that's a joke. This evening, those of you want to go now that you got the joke for this evening. It shows you all the things you should tolerate. What's the. What's the worst and the most dangerous? But anyway, where we understand the why do actually people do some of these things? And it's an interesting story just taking it seriously. Why is it we just hide? No. These so-called faults or idiosyncrasies or, you know, bad things, which we do occasionally because a lot of times we think we'll be criticized and punished, rejected rather than being understood because they're tolerating some of these bad actions is not the way to go. You can't tolerate somebody who hurts someone else but punishing them. Does that really help in questions of law and order? There's one of the things which I think is the dysfunctional aspect of our legal code is punishment. Even actually, today I just got a letter for. Fellow in the United States prison who's got two life sentences plus 30 years. The guy will never get out of jail. He will die there. And obviously, he did a terrible crime. He never mentioned what it was, but whatever it was. So you can see from his letter he's really trying to change and do something good in his life. Trying to be understood, forgiven and accepted. He's not looking for tolerance. He's looking for an opportunity to grow. What? In circles we call the rehabilitation rather than the punishment. Because what happens with punishment is the opposite of tolerance. And this understanding is this third way punishment. You've done something wrong. I'm going to beat you, put you in jail, execute you, or whatever. As a result of that, it just drives the problems further underground. It never really solves anything. A lot of times when these punishments just people just escape, they hide. They just don't get caught. Just like when his punishments for you. When I was punished as a kid. What I learned from that punishment was not to get caught. Next time to be cleverer. Whenever you understand why there's a problem there, I need you to understand it again. Not just tolerance. Just boys being boys, kids being kids, politicians being politicians and understanding. Why does a politician get in that situation where they have to lie? And just compromise the morality? Why are they in that situation? Why are people put in that situation? Why do we get ourselves in that situation in the first place? And more importantly, how can we get out of that and move on and away we become better human beings. So the understanding is there the punishment instead of the blind forgiveness or tolerance? The understanding is, I always think, the way forward, the Buddhist way forward. Finding out why did you want to do that in the first place? Why? What's the reason? What's the cause? It's a possibility of finding some way of making amends and maybe moving forward. And I think that for what I've read of inspiring cases, people who have done the worst crimes, who are given a second chance, become some of the most wonderful, helpful human beings on this earth because they know what it's like to be in the gang. They know what it's like to have killed when they go and see another kid who's about to do the same thing, it was in the same situation that they were in. They understand. They can connect, empathize, meet mind to mind with that other, if you like, delinquent or whatever. And they're the ones who can take them. Take their hand, take their mind and lead them on another path where no one else can. You see that even people have done the worst of crimes, can be a great resource, can actually help and stop these things reoccurring. Which is why it's not just tolerance. It's not punishment. It's not just, okay, just forgive the guys and girls whatever and just let them out. Can't we make use of this? Investigate, grow, and make a better world out of this rather than throwing people away? One thing which I always say that no human being needs to be thrown away. Even the worst of human beings. So-called worst of human beings. They've got some amazing qualities. If they could only be, uh, focused on allowed to grow and allow to bloom. It's amazing what people could provide for others and for themselves. It's not in the human beings even situations in life. No situation in life needs to be rejected. You can always learn, grow and benefit from it. That's why I call the terrible situations in life growing pains. It's not just like a saying, just growing pains. So it's not to tolerate them. It's where you learn from where you grow, from where you become better human beings. Similarly, I gave this evening is like sometimes in life. Life is like being like the bud of a flower. Imagine you are like a flower in bud. Its big tight ball. And inside these flower petals growing and growing and growing. And the pressure inside that bad sometimes is intolerable. In this metaphor, that means some of the problems and difficulties you face in life sometimes are almost unbearable. In a situation with a child who's got cancer in a relationship which is going really difficult, or with not good job or job prospects, which are just really hard. Whatever it is in your life, sometimes you do get these problems and difficulties in your life. Imagine that. That is like being a flower bud. The pressures are almost unbearable for. The nice part of this simile is that soon it bursts. When it bursts from that problem, from that pressure, from that tightness and difficulty. We can't see which way to go. A beautiful flower comes out, and the flowers and so delicate, fragrant and amazing that every flower has come from that tight pressure, painful bud. This is why that if you look at the difficulties and problems like that, that you're in this stage just before flowery, it gives you a positive slant on the difficulties of life. Investigate, understand. And that flower happens. So it's not just tolerating. It's investigating embracing so you can understand. And then the wisdom flows. And from the worse of those situations you get the most amazing beautiful results. So whatever it happens to be, which is painful, difficult and settling irritating in your life. When we were young in Thailand, for us it was mosquitoes because everything else was inspiring. The food wasn't so bad, wasn't so good. But you know, you just add that that was just only just half an hour of the day, quarter of an hour a day or one meal of the day. That's why we only ate one meal a day when it was in Thailand. It was so disgusting. You couldn't do that again during the day. But mosquitoes were there all the time. And even though mosquito nets later on, they found a way of getting in there. And they just drove you crazy because it was persistent. And they were sadistic mosquitoes that deals with an audio mosquito and a sadistic mosquito. The sadistic mosquito would come and pass around your ear. First of all, just to warn you, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming. And even though being a Buddhist, you are supposed to be compassionate. And I was compassionate sometimes just. Okay. Come on. Get it over and done with. Come on. And so these mosquitoes. And this happened many, many times. You just watch them there, and they put their nose in and they would actually some of those mosquitoes and they would actually sting. But, you know, you had sort of you were a tough monk. So you'd have to put their nose in and these bloomin mosquitoes. I wasn't going to swear there, but I restrain myself. Had they put their nose down and then they'd take it out again. Walk a few steps and do another bore somewhere else. They were so fussy. They were taking advantage of my compassion. You know, like people are sometimes, you know, they take advantage of you when you're kind to them. That's what these mosquitoes were doing in and out all over the place. So, gee, you know, you're really pushing your luck. Mosquito. And it's a waste of time. You couldn't squash them as a mac. You can swap them. But sometimes what you did, you try and flick them off. And of course, what they did when you flick them off, they just do a quick loop and land somewhere else. So that was a waste of time either. So after a while we we used to complain to our teacher. And so these mosquitoes are just so difficult. He said look Max, call them your teacher, our Jan mosquito. We used to call it. Now there's a wonderful teaching. And I was brilliant because I learned so much from those mosquitoes. For what irritated me. What caused me difficulty? That's what I learned the most from. The time I didn't like it. But now I think. Thank goodness for those mosquitoes who taught me so much. They taught me actually how to meditate. Mosquitoes. Because when I was first meditating, they would cover the body and they'd. They'd cause you so much irritation. I had to watch my breath. No way I could have a wandering mind. Because they'd wander to the body and you'd start feeling all these terrible itches. When you watch the mind and just watch the breath, you couldn't feel the body. Later on, I found out that because you were relaxing, you weren't irritated with his mosquitoes. Because you were relaxing. Your metabolism went down, you cooled off, and because you cooled off, you did not metabolize so much. Carbon dioxide was not secreted from your pores, and mosquitoes were attracted to the carbon dioxide. The more irritated you become, the more they would come to you. The more you relaxed, calm down and were invisible, you would become. That's how I learnt the first lessons in meditation. How to calm down even with an irritating object. I learnt so much from those as we learn a lot from the irritating things of our life. So whenever you do have a difficult thing to deal with in your life, whether it's a partner, a child, parent, sickness. Chopped or whatever, or it's an political issue. Can't we call it teacher? How can Osama bin laden? You somebody have to learn there as soon as we learn. You know why these things happen. Why it happened in the first place isn't that much better than either just tolerating or bearing with it because it never goes away that way, or trying to fight it with aggression, which again, just makes the matter worse. That's one of the things, the problems. People think that's the only alternative. You can't beat them, just tolerate them. Now, investigation is far more important than investigations where we have growth. And that's certainly what our tradition always used to say. Whenever you have a sickness, don't just grin and bear it or no grimace and bear it more likely, but actually investigate. Find out what it feels like to be sick, why it's a problem, why you can just allow it to be. If you can't get rid of it, there's a problem in the relationship. So just tolerate it. Investigate work. Find out. If there's a problem with life. Investigate. Don't just tolerate. If you can do things like that. I think there's a great opportunity for growth and for solutions to be found, even if solutions aren't found. We certainly become wiser and also more compassionate human beings who have more opportunities to react appropriately to the situations in life, instead of always just being reacting out of the old ways. Through investigation comes wisdom, through wisdom comes growth and also compassion. We understand more. We become better human beings. And sometimes if you want to know what the meaning of life is. It is just learning, growing, understanding what we learn from life and that learning is part of the meaning of life. And often if you're having a great time and things are going well and it's all happy, wonderful, you deserve that. But you're not learning very much. So when you are happy and having a great time, things are going well in your life. It's almost like a holiday. It's like a vacation from real life. When things go difficult for you, it's like going back to work again. It's important to have holidays and vacations, but it's important to know also that when things aren't going so well that it's important to that is where you do the work. That's where you make, if you like, your spiritual money. So the happiness appears. The bliss will come later on. The time of work is where you build a happiness of the future. So this is actually how we understand that tolerance is not just accepting the situation, not just trying to change. If an understanding investigating. What is it like being an Aboriginal? Being sort of a fundamentalist Christian being. A jihadist for a man. What's it like to be a woman? The woman? Was it light to be a man for layperson? Was it like being a monk for monk? Was it like being a layperson? When is there understanding? There is the opportunity to solve problems, when it's just acceptance, sort of tolerance or whatever. Bearing with and just not doing anything. I think that stagnation and I don't think we'll get anywhere that way. And I'm going to finish off because this is a last thought for quite a few months with a bonus, a second chunk. Because once there was a doctor who was just so irritated and upset with one of his patients is what you call like a hypochondriac. If you ever met a hypochondriac. Yeah. They're just they're always complaining about something wrong. There's nothing there at all. And this doctor had tolerated this hypochondriac for months and months, by the way, that this joke is, uh, from her doctor, John Tao. And he's not here this evening, but he comes usually on a Friday night. I always like to acknowledge my donors. Okay. With this joke. And this was a hypochondriac. This doctor had his hypochondriac. Every week he would come with a different ailment. And every week this doctor tolerated him, maybe gave him this placebo or that placebo, this test and that test. And after a couple of years, he had it up to here with this guy. So when his guy came in again, he was so irritated by this guy, he said, I'm not going to tolerate you any longer. You are not sick. Is nothing wrong with you? It's all in your head. And at that, this patient, he was so shocked. He had a heart attack and died. And I think, oh my goodness, I've killed this guy. I'm going to be sold for malpractice. I'm going to lose everything. And the doctor was in such shock. He sort of staggered out of the surgery across the road and got hit by a truck, and he got killed as well. So the doctor died. So the two of them were buried in the same cemetery next to each other. About the same time, a couple of days after he was buried, the doctor heard a knocking on his coffee. Knock knock knock knock. And the doctor said, well, leave me alone, I'm dead. But he was persistent and persistent, wouldn't give in. So the doctors said, okay, I don't know who it is, but he opened the coffin lid. And of course, it's the ghost of this hypochondriac said, oh no, I'm dead. I thought I got rid of you. What do you want now? And a hypochondriac said, doctor, doctor, have you got anything for worms? So it shows you just when you irritate with some people don't understand, it will keep persistently bothering you. Not just in this month, but in the next month as well. Thank you very much for persisting with me. So that's right. Has anyone got any questions about tolerance this evening? Yeah. How's it? Going? Okay. You are. You're asking a question. Where does acceptance come in to this talk on tolerance? Uh, I think the English word tolerance is usually meant to tolerate things which you find hard to accept. In other words, things which irritate you, upset you, make it difficult for you to be with that person or that thing. That's why we're not really enjoying it. We're not at peace with it. We're tolerating it. So I always use the word tolerance towards something which I'm not at ease with because, you know, if I'm with a friend, I'm not tolerating them. I'm enjoying their company, though. If I'm in my heart, sort of, you know, meditating. I'm not tolerating my seclusion. I'm enjoying it. I think the word tolerance is always with something we're not accepting here. Accepting it. I don't think it's tolerance anymore. So to get to that point of sort of acceptance and peace, I don't think you get to that just through tolerance. If your tolerance is still no acceptance, sir, I don't think you will get to acceptance through just bare tolerance. Just you're putting off solving the problem. I think that really I think the solution is there's something which is irritating you find hard to bear, you hard to accept. It may be some character trait in yourself which you don't like something about yourself. It may be some past action or some present idiosyncrasy. Something you don't like about yourself. Is to tolerate that. Just let's see the problem remain unsolved. If you understand it, investigate it. Not tolerance. Not trying to beat it down with violence, but trying to understand it. And then maybe you can come to acceptance if it's not really a problem or if it really is a problem. Some, you know, bad, um, say like pedophilia. I don't think you can't accept pedophilia. You can't tolerate a pedophilia. You have to understand, investigate and find out why that happens and find some solution. But I don't think you can find a solution without investigation understanding. So not tolerance, not acceptance, but investigation understanding. Punishment. This may be just a stopgap, but don't think it's a long lasting solution that sort of answer your question. Okay. Okay. So any other questions before you finish off? Okay. We'll grab one from Eddie in the back. Okay. Eddie. Okay. Patience. The highest virtues. Patience, tolerance and understanding. Sometimes that I was going to mention some of the parting words here, but some of these parting words, they've had very loose translations. I don't really think it means tolerance. It means now you're patiently enjoying a thing. In other words, even though it's painful, like, say, a mosquito bite or a sort of a sickness or, you know, a relationship, which is difficult, you're there with it. This is the patient endurance thing, but it's the understanding investigation becoming wise from it. It has to be part of the solution. So I think the important thing, though, is not just being patient and just waiting for something to happen. It's not just bearing with it and saying, how long is this going to last? The understanding I think, of all those three is the most important. The highest virtue. Yeah, but it's not like one or the other. They are together. It's not like you can be patient or you can be tolerant or you can be understanding. You got like a choice. One of the three. I think they have to go together to be a highest virtue. Yeah, but sometimes they say their highest. But then. Depends on which way you look. You know, sometimes there's always a higher mountain than the one you've been on now. Next peak looks a bit different. Different? That's actually in Buddhism they always say like this is the highest and that's the highest and this is the highest. And sometimes there's three things which are the highest of sometimes ten things, which is the highest. So this is just like the idiom of the ancient text. And what it means is it's really important. It's highest in this particular context. I think the the three have to go together. The understanding is investigation is the most important. What is what is this? And right now I investigation okay. It's. I that's right. Yeah. Good. Yeah. What is it. This is an example I've used to give him retreats as. What is this? That's why it triggered this explanation. Now very often retreats. I would hold up something and I'd ask the people in the room, what is this? So each one of you. What is this? Someone says like cup. Some say glass. Someone say I've got a bit of water in it. Someone says maybe. Was it four inches? It's, uh, a cut off cylinder. You keep on looking. Never. You notice that the longer you look, the more you see. Because if you just said glass, you think you know it's a glass and you wouldn't look anymore. What investigation is, is taking something, looking at it not just once and giving it a name. I think you know about it, looking at it and looking at it and looking at it until you run out of names. And that's actually when you start to see interesting new things. So what actually is a glass? Do you know what a glass is? If you know what it is, you've stopped investigating. So you keep on looking and looking and you see more and more new interesting things. And just what is a glass? It's a simple thing. Now, who are you? You spend your whole life looking at that. Wow, this is interesting. I never knew that was there before. But if you think straight away, you know, I imagine I'm Brian. I am a man. I was born in England. I'm 56 and a bit years old. That's not me. So who is this? It's a great experiment to understand, to investigate. But you don't stop when you get all these ideas. Who you are. Who are you anyway? I've seen you many, many times coming here. But if I think I know you, then my investigation has stopped and our relationship is dead. That's why in a marriage or any other relationship, you really think you know your partner? Her marriage is ended. The relationship is dead. If you keep looking, you'll always find amazing new things in that person. That's why the relationship never ends. You won't find new things about them. And also with them about yourself. Look at the glass. Wow. I never thought that was there before. That's what I mean by investigation. It's true that I don't know people who've been married 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and they told me that sometimes they keep seeing interesting new aspects in that person they live with. I don't know. I've lived with me 56 years and I still fighting now. Interesting new things about me, let alone other people. That's what we mean by investigating. Uh, a handsome assembly door by a white wood. And a golden dawn. To be what day? Me. So a cutter, a a a a a more the man am a son. Sir. Party partner, a torso, a son. Go, son! Kannamma!