Who's the boss?

Who’s The Boss? By Ajahn Brahm Today is all the time to talk. It's going to be a subject. I have many blows before and it's going to be on authority and obedience. But please don't run for the door. It's not going to be as you expect, because the reason I'm giving this talk, as a result of a session which occurred yesterday afternoon, that many of you may know that for the last 6 or 7 years, we've been developing a relationship with the only other monks here in Western Australia, which is the Benedictine monks at the monastery in Tunisia. And they come and visit our monastery once a year. We go up to their monastery once a year. And we've formed a very close relationship, a very friendly relationship between monastics of a completely different tradition. And the reason why that I value that friendship is because as especially as a Buddhist monk, that sometimes you only meet other Buddhists and you can get very easy to get narrow minded. And it's wonderful to actually have an input from another way of looking at things, which is like a seed to fertilize, more insights and more understandings about truth. And so some of the things which were said yesterday afternoon, I helped see things in a different light, and especially with something called obedience. And I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised at what Catholic monks in the very old order think about the meaning of that word. But we start from the Buddhist perspective, because sometimes many of you, you know, know the old joke that if you like, if you don't like organized religion, then this is the place for you, because we're always disorganized, so we don't have that organization which other traditions have. And the reason is that from the very beginning, the idea of an authority to which you should be obedient was very absence in the very earliest part of Buddhism. And the classic story was the fact that when just before the Buddha passed away, his close disciples asked him, you know, after you pass away, who's going to be our leader? And instead of doing what other traditions have purportedly done, and having a lineage of people to carry the leadership through succeeding generations, the Buddha actually replied in a very meaningful, deep way that after I pass away, let the truth and the training be your teacher. No person, just the truth and the training that will be your teacher from here on in. And because of that, we've never had any authority figures or how much an authority structure in the religion, the world religion, which is now known as Buddhism. There's never been like a pope or an archbishop. You we do have like a Dalai Lama, but he's only the nominal leader of one of the four sects of one of the parts of Buddhism called Tibetan Buddhism. But his authority is not recognized universally, because it cannot be. No one can have that authority, because it's very clear that from the Buddha's own words, that he didn't want any human being or person to carry that responsibility. He said, let the truth and let the training be your authority from here on, in which made Buddhism from the very beginning a very individualistic path. Where we can have guides, but that's all they can be. People who can advise, who can actually lead by example but can never tell you what to do. So without that authority, what's the point of obedience? Is there such a thing as obedience? Because many of you have visited our monasteries and seen some of the monasteries in the Forest tradition, of which we are a part, have a very, very strict set of precepts. There's many, many things which we don't do. And how can we have such a very strong virtue? And for some people, a very austere, ascetic virtue. I remember there was a group of academics who were visiting from Queensland, and they decided just to see, to compare our two monasteries, the monastery at Nu Nausea, run by the Benedictines, and our monastery down at serpentine. And their comment was, if I was a monk, I'd rather be up there in Unesco, because at least you get a bed to sleep on and you can watch the TV and also, you know, have wine with the meals. And our monastery is far more austere than that. But the austerity there that how come that people actually submit themselves to such an austere regime? Where's the authority? There. And you know the eyes of the abbot. Am I in charge? And do people do what I tell them? And after mentioning the word obedience, one of the monks at my monastery. I won't tell you who he is. But he was actually saying no because of my upbringing. So no way would I obey anybody. And you know what that's like. That's many of you feel that is like that as well, because, you know, you want your independence and your personal freedoms. So I told him this morning, I said, okay, I order you not to obey me. And he thought about it. How do I get out of that one? Because if he obeyed my order. They'd have to disobey me. If he disobeyed my order, he'd have to obey me. So I call her a device. But that's only a little joke. But the point is that the idea of obedience and this actually, and I'll mention the Marx name, was actually Father Bernard of the monastery in North Korea. He said in his monastery. And I'm going to expand upon what he said here. I thought it was a very brilliant insight. He said in his monastery, actually, even in the Rule of Saint Benedict, that you're not supposed to just obey your superior, you're supposed to obey each other. And he explained what obedience truly is. He said, like a mother who gets up in the middle of the night to comfort her child, his obeying her child. A parent who works hard and goes to work, saves the money to educate and bring up their children, is obeying their child. A person who cares about their partner is obeying their partner. This is another idea of obedience. And he actually called it. It's like the language of love, the language of care. And to me that it just brought up what I began with in this talk this evening. The idea that the Buddha said, don't obey a person, obey the truth and the training. Let that be your teacher. Let that be your authority. And that opens up a very important part of what Buddhism truly is. It's the Dhamma, the truth. The truth of the moment should always be our teacher, and we should be open to that in every moment. Mindfully understanding the truth of this moment and being obedient to the needs of this moment, whether that's obedient to the fact that your body tells you you need a rest. You've been working too hard is the week end and you're tired. And the recent retreat which I gave at North Perth, as they all are retreats, which I teach. I try and make it. The authority is you. And first of all, for the first few days, to listen to the truth of the body, what it needs, and is always the case that when a people come from the busy world, which in which you live and come and do a nine day so-called intensive retreat, the first thing they want to do is sleep. And they they listen to their body and they're obedient to their body. Then that's what they do. And it's a wonderful thing to have a retreat where you're not obedient to some teacher or some dogma for your obedience to the truth of this moment. So many of those meditators would actually listen to their body and say, look, I've been working so hard. I've been struggling with my family. I've been rushing around because this is the nature of our life these days. And they listen to their body, and their body tells them I need sleep. But many people are disobedient to their body. They think that they can somehow master it and control. And they say, no, I'm going to push through. This is my meditation. I'm going to get enlightened. I've only got nine days. I can't waste any time at all with that sort of controlling attitude. It's actually a rebellious disobedience against the truth of your body. And so people actually they don't rest and they get very tight and tense. And then I have to keep counseling them all the time about why their meditation isn't working. And the people who do list. They're not just being obedient to their body, they're being obedient to what we call dharma. The truth, the reality of this moment. What they're doing is they're asking in their body, what do you need? And the body is saying, I need to sleep, and you're being obedient to those commands in the same way that I mentioned the mothers obedient to the child. When the child needs her and she goes and attends to that child, or when the little dog comes up and wants to spend time with you. You're obedient to the dog because the dog needs you, so you spend a few moments with it. In this case, the dog. The child is your body. And so often that because we are disobedient to that body, we think that we are the authority. We are the Pope. We are the person in charge. And the result of that is a lot of sickness and even premature death. So often. If we could only listen to what our body keeps telling us to rest. Sometimes to play. Sometimes just to relax. Sometimes just lay down or do nothing. If we'd only be obedient to the demands of our body from time to time, I think that we would be far more healthy. I'm a great believer in the mindfulness. The awareness, the alertness which you put on your body would actually reveal many of the causes of the sicknesses which are driving our society into a lot of wasted resources, a lot of wasted time, and a lot of suffering and pain. And I often think that the body keeps telling you that you're doing something wrong. But because we're so busy, we don't have time to listen to it. And if we do listen to it, we say, no, I've got no time now to rest and no, I need to do something else. It is a disobedience to the truth of your body. And sometimes your body's just getting old. And sometimes people, even though they're getting old, don't allow their age to actually to happen. And I always say in denial, the disobedient to the aging of their body. Even monks do that. One of our monks recently. And many of you know who this is. They're I think about 50. And they decided they were doing some work in their monastery, and they decided to jump off a wall. They could do that when they were 20 or 30. But you can't do that when you're 50. And he broke some bones in his foot. I was hobbling around for a year afterwards. Now that's actually being sensible. So you know what your body is needing. It's actually rebelling against your body and rather being obedient to it. And when you understand disobedience, you understand it is like a love, a concern, a caring for this body which is trying so hard to let you know what it needs, trying so hard to get you to listen. And because of disobedience, you get punished. And that punishment obviously is the illnesses and sicknesses. I still recall this in a recent trip to Singapore visiting somebody in the cancer ward of Singapore General Hospital. And it wasn't a ward. It was a whole floor of ward after ward after ward after ward after ward. I walked a long distance and every of those wards were people with cancer, and it really made a strong impression upon me that how so many people were suffering from that disease. And sometimes you ask, why? Why is it so prevalent? And I think a lot of times it's because we are disobedient to our body. Our body often tells us we're working too hard because that's what it told you this week. What have we done? Have we really been obedient and cared? If you do, you find that life becomes so much easier. People who just go on a meditation retreat and relax and just sleep for the first few days, they feel so much better. The tension in their mind, which is often caused by the tensions in their body, can be relieved. You feel free of the burden of the tightness in your physical body. It's one problem you've solved just by listening. Obviously, to be able to be obedient, you have to listen. And when I actually looked up this word in the dictionary, that's actually what the word actually comes from because I love like etymology. What is that? The original meaning of this word, the original meaning of obedience, comes from a Latin root means to listen, to hear. So really, we should be listening and hearing to our body. And next to go deeper, we can be obedient to our relationships because we have a big thing these days of like, who wears the pants in the old days that men would wear pants, women would wear skirts, and now in both wear pants. It's very difficult to see who's in charge of the relationship, who's the authority, and is too many relationships become that way. One is the authoritarian, the other one is dependent. And that's a very, very, as I've mentioned here before, dysfunctional relationship, but that sometimes the relationship you find yourself in one is authority. Figure tells you what to do and the other one is obedient. But the idea of obedience here takes on a different manner, and the authority is not the person, but the truth of that relationship. So it's not a person anymore. It's taken that away. And you're being obedient to the needs which exist between the two of you. In other words, you're hearing what is going on between you. As I have mentioned here several times, the trick in a relationship the way it works is never to think of the other person. I have mentioned that in many marriage celebrations which I perform when I tell the happy couple, and I've done a couple here, and I can remember just telling these two people to come all the way from Singapore to get married and have my name on their marriage license. They went to great efforts to do that, so I decided I'd better teach them something really useful. Otherwise I come back and complain and ask for their money back. So I told them, you know these two words people like when they're in love, about to get married, always soft and daft. And I told the two of them, I said, now, from now on, you should never think of yourself. And I said, oh, yes, we should never think of ourselves. They agreed on that one. I said, from now on, you should never think of the other person. What? I thought that's what marriage was all about. I give my heart to you, my dear. Forever and ever and ever. You know your wish is my command. And I said no. Don't think of the other person either. You should always think of the space between the two of you, because that's where the relationship lies. If you think of yourself, you get selfish. If you think of the other person, you get burnt out. You're not part of things anymore. If you think of the space between the two of you, the relationship was happening between you. That's actually where the action is in a relationship. And now, taking that a bit further, you should be obedient to that. Not obedient to what he says or she says, but obedient to the truth which lies between you. In other words, you listen to that and act accordingly. Is in that space between you. You can find out whether that relationship is actually growing or whether it's actually declining, where there is actually control or fear there, or whether there is actually true acceptance and the friendship of lack of fear. As you know what happens when you meet another person? Sometimes there's so many complications there that people get very afraid. And between the two of you, you have fear. If you can listen to that fear which you have between, you know, two people in a relationship and you can see it, then you can address it. You can obedience to that fear. Find out what's going on. Then why are you tense and why can't you open up to the other person? Where's that lack of trust? Where's that lack of openness and freedom there? Because without that trust and without that freedom, the contact there is hindered. The space between the two of you is not pure and open and not loving. I mentioned to you many times the definition of love in Buddhism. The door of my heart is open to you no matter what you are, no matter what you do. In that context, the love is like a free channel with no blocking between the two of you. No fear, no control, just an openness between two human beings where there can be a free flow of energy between both of you. To be obedient to that truth. To recognize it and to take that as your teacher. You'll find you have a huge potential for growth. I have to mention this because there's too many people are getting divorced. People can't live with each other anymore, and when they can't, who do they come and complain to me. And I've had enough of it. I want an easy life. I became a man to get away from that. Sadness on a Friday evening. I like talking about relationships simply to give me an easy life. But when we actually understand these things, we understand what the truth is. The truth is in that relationship, which you have to somebody else, and you're obedient to that relationship. You're listening to it and you're reacting accordingly. In the same way that Father Bernard said that a mother or father hears a child in trouble, and they'll stop what they're doing because they're obedient to their child. It's not the child is obedient to their parent anymore. Sometimes it is when the child can listen, but at first the children they can't listen because they haven't developed those abilities yet. So when you're growing up, children aren't all that obedient to their parents. Not in this sense, because they don't know really what they're doing and they don't know how to listen. They don't know how to develop that sensitivity. It's always a parent's obedient to their child children. It gives another meaning for filial piety. But here, though we are all old enough this we should be. We should be mature enough to be able to have such obedience. Not again, not just to our partners or to our family, not even to our body, even actually to the animals which now live with us, to the sickness and death which happen in life. We have to be obedient to nature. One of the problems with our modern world, whether it's environmental degradation, degradation, global warming, cutting down a forest, pollution of the waters or whatever, again, that's a disobedience. To nature as if we're controlling it and we're not listening and learning. We're not hearing what's happening in the world we don't hear. Then we can't actually see what's going on. We can't be obedient to the needs of the world around us. And just as any relationship which we have between two human beings, we also have the human relationship to the area in which we live, to the land around us. And when we are think we are controlling that we are the authority, that we are the truth, that we are the people who should be in command, though we misunderstand authority. When the Buddha said that after I die, the truth and the training will be your authority, will be your teacher. You understand? It's not you. That truth, that training, is how you relate to things. So if we could only listen to the way we relate to the world around us, the way we relate to the water, the grasses, the trees and the air. Then perhaps we become more sensitive and that obedience to truth will give us prosperity, safety, and happiness instead of the dysfunctional properties. Where the earth is about to get divorced from human beings. They've had enough and they want to leave. Leave us alone because we are being like that partner in a relationship which is too difficult to live with the abusive partner in a marriage of humanity to this earth. Understanding what that obedience is means it's not just a listening which is a skill. Its root meaning, not a sense, just a sensitivity, but that listening and that sensitivity is the beginning of the caring, the reacting appropriately to the situation around us. And that is, as I mentioned in passing, but I didn't develop this also obedience to nature as well. Because we do get sick, we do get we do die. That's part of our life. And too often we try and resist that at all costs. In our Western world, I was really surprised to see the most important thing, the a situation in which you can suspend all types of ordinary laws and rules of behavior was when it's a matter of life and death. It's a matter of life and death. You can almost do anything. I think. Come on. Big deal. Life and death in Buddhism. I believe in reincarnation. I know you've lived before that. So what? You died. You've done it before. Are you going to live again? It's not whether you die or how or when you die. It's how you die, or rather, how you live, which is most important. The death moment is just a moment. It's all those moments beforehand, your life which is important. It's how you live and how you approach that moment, which is really, really important. As far as I'm concerned, not if you die and sometimes that we sacrifice this moment because anything, anything to keep living, whatever it takes to put off death, and that seems to me, is very, very dysfunctional as being disobedient to the nature of your existence and nature of your life. And when I've seen people just being disobedient to nature, you can see them struggle and fight against something which they can never conquer, but which, in the attempt to conquer it and control it, causes so much suffering, so much pain, and so much. Missed opportunities to enjoy the death process. I see many people dying beautifully. People dying. As I said, I think last week with class and by staying with class, that was first said by a Christian doctor who was attending upon a Buddhist, one of the old supporters of this monastery who died of lung cancer. And he couldn't believe just how well she died. And he was so inspired the first time he saw a real Buddhist pass away without any problem at all. I do remember myself that a woman, because when I first went to see her in. The I think it was in Charles Gardner Hospital. But as soon as I went to see her, when the diagnosis came that she was cancer and it was terminal and nothing much she could do. I went to see her and straight away she was telling me everything she wanted to do and all the arrangements for her funeral. She was very, very clear and obedience to what was happening to her. She was accepting. She wasn't fighting it and rebelling against it. And she was so at ease. Remember what she said? She told me. She said because she was a Thai person. She said, please, please, please don't tell all the Thai people I'm dying because I know they'll come and worry me and bother me. Please tell them that they can come and say goodbye when I'm in my coffin. And then she laughed. For her, that was a very funny thing to say. And as soon as I left, I remember that the the ward sister was waiting for me outside and asked me to come into her room. I wondered what was going on. And she said, I'm so glad you've come. I said, why? Because that woman you've just seen, she's in denial. I said, what do you mean, in denial? She has been arranging her funeral with me, and this nurse was so surprised she could see that. Her complete misunderstanding. Not misunderstanding. Her actually shock at seeing something she'd never seen before in that hospital and said obviously she was maybe in her 50s, her ward sister. So she'd been in the business a long time. And for her, it was the first time she'd seen someone who had been diagnosed with cancer. Terminal. No treatment really possible. Who'd accepted it straight away without any tears or without any struggle. And for her, it was a revelation that such a thing could happen, that a person could be so at peace and at one with their imminent death. It was a case that that woman understood what obedience was. She could hear the diagnosis of the doctor and she never rebelled against it. She understood there was nothing to be done. So nothing to be done. Do nothing. Be at peace with it. Embrace it and enjoy the whole process. And not only enjoying the process for herself, but creating a wonderful example for other people. Giving a teaching which I will never be able to give in such depth and such meaning. She touched so many people in that death. What she was saying in those last months, that death isn't this terrible thing which people actually say it can be a very peaceful, very wonderful, very joyful celebration of a person's life, the last hurrah, the end of a great symphony which when I used to listen to music, those great symphonies, you'd always be waiting for the end. Because that's where the whole theme of the orchestra, they'd all come together in this finale, which sometimes would move me to tears. The finale was the best in the same way the finale of a person's life. And that ladies life was the best part of her life. She died so well, inspiring so many people. What a great way to go. And she did that because she embraced the truth of her condition, embracing the truth of this moment, of the condition you find yourself into. That's what I mean by obedience. It doesn't mean that if you are, someone says you've got a cold and you say, okay, I'm dying, I shouldn't take any medicine. Here we go. It's also being obedient to your responsibilities in life, accepting that if there's a way out, you take that way out. You give everything you've got to actually to do something in this world, to be kind to other people, to be responsible. Yeah, that's what you should do. That's being obedient to your role in life. To serve. Prolong your life as long as you can, but prolong it well, and being obedient to the nature of things. Is understanding one of the most fundamental truths of your life, that this body does not belong to you? If it belongs to anything, it belongs to nature. And as soon as one realizes that, the more one can harmonize with nature, and by harmonizing with the nature of your body, by being obedient to that nature, by working with it instead of controlling it and being a an authoritarian over your own body, you'll find you'll live much more peacefully, much more happier. You'll be much more fit. So understanding that the obedience actually to the truth of your body should also next go to the obedience of the truth of your mind and the truth of the world of other people's minds, that sometimes you get angry and upset, and sometimes people say, I'm not angry. I'm not upset. I know many, many people who say, listen, I'm not angry. I'm not angry, and I'll kill anyone who says I'm angry. So many people get into denial. And that's a psychological problem which many people know of. The reason why one is getting into denial, one is not hearing the truth of things, because what one is hearing is not what's real, but what one wants to see, what one wants to hear, what one wants to feel, and where is that coming from? It coming from the authoritarian in chief. The ego me can understand how obedience is a letting go of the ego. I don't mean obedience to another ego. I don't be in obedience to the big ego in the sky. God, I'm talking of obedience to truth, to reality. The obedience to what life actually is, obedience to what happens in this world. Because sometimes that life does not go the way you expect. Sometimes people say stupid things and they do silly things, and that person is often you. Sometimes it's me, sometimes the other person. But we all take our turns in playing the fool. Somebody actually said another wonderful, um, technique. If ever you're at the receiving end of stupidity, of a scolding of idiocy. I said, if anyone ever really sort of slams into you and gives you a hard time, it's always remember this, that you only have to live with them for about 15 minutes when they tell you off, but they have to live with themselves for the whole day. So have compassion on them now. After they finish scolding you, you can leave, but they have to stay with that mind all day, maybe for many days. So it's not so bad for you. You can walk away. But being obedient to life is understanding that that happens. That's what life is. And sometimes we say it shouldn't be that way. People shouldn't scold us. They shouldn't do the wrong thing. But understanding life is understanding that we should allow. People to make mistakes should allow people to scold sometimes. We should even embrace that, to love them even though they scold us sometimes. It's actually being obedient to the truth of the matter that sometimes we get so upset, sometimes that people get so tense because of what happens on the way home from work or what happened in the office. But that's just a natural result of inattention, which is one of those observations. Why it is that people who love each other the most are the ones who scold each other the most, sometimes because they really feel that this is the person who I've lived with for such a long time who loves me, and I love them. Surely they understand. Hopefully they understand that I'm not scolding them because they've done something wrong. I'm scolding. I'm saying these things because I feel so tense inside. It's a relief mechanism. It's letting off steam. That's all it is. Because that's usually what happens. Sometimes just those bad words. It's nothing to do with, you know, your you know you. It's just that they are too tense to upset. And it's almost like a cry for some compassion. Which is why one of the best ways of dealing with somebody who gets angry at you, especially if that's your partner. Is actually to give them a good hug. So you must be hurting so bad to have said something like that to me. Never thinking of yourself, but thinking of the other person and the classic story of that. I'm not quite sure the last time I said this, but it's one of my favorite stories. Again from the Christian tradition. It's a story of one of the monks who was living with Saint Francis of Assisi in those days, who was such a kind monk that when he went on arms round, because we have similarities in the Franciscan tradition and the Buddhist tradition, we actually go on arms round around town to get our food. And even tomorrow morning, many of the monks from our monastery will be going to Armadale or Serpentine, just walking with their bowls for food. And I'll be walking somewhere around this area. And around all of this are all tradition. And the Franciscans used to do that as well. And one day this Franciscan monk was walking and he saw a beggar, and a beggar was said, now can I have something, please? I'm more poor than you have. You are. And the Franciscans never had money in those early days. And so, look, I've got nothing. I've got nothing to give you. If I did have something, I give it to you. And the beggar actually looked at his robe and said, why don't you give me your robe? You got that? And the monk said, okay. So the monk took off his robe and gave it to the beggar, even though that meant he was naked. That's an amazing generosity. You'd actually give the only cloth you had to protect you. The trouble was that when he got back to his monastery, they wouldn't let him in. And they said, no, we don't allow crazy people in this monastery. Only mine says I'm a monk. No you're not. You're not wearing any clothes. Monks can't come naked. And to me, if I gave my robe away, you probably wouldn't let me in here on a Friday night. But after a while, they recognized him, you know, by his voice. And I said, oh, what happened to you? You must have got robbed or mugged or something. And they let him in. They gave him a robe, and he explained it to them that he saw a person who was even more poor than he was. And surely that isn't charity? Isn't generosity something we teach? And if we teach it, shouldn't we actually practice it? You know, if monks encourage people to be generous, shouldn't monks be generous too? And all the other monks said, wow. That's actually so true. You've been actually so kind. And so they actually praised him that he gave the only robe he had. And so they found another robe in the storeroom and gave it to him. But what happened next? The word got around that that might was a soft touch. So the next day he went on arms round. Another beggar said, oh, I'm so poor, I need something. And he said, I've got nothing to give. You got your robe? So a second time he gave his robe away, and the second time he came back naked. But this time they recognized him, brought him in, and gave him another. When that happened the third time, the abbot called him into his office and said, that's three times you've come back naked. Now people are taking advantage of you. You know, the word has gone around amongst the beggars that, you know, just ask this man. Can I give him his robe? But if you've only got so many robes in the storeroom, and we can't keep giving them away like this, you shouldn't do this. And he scolded this monk for over an hour. Now when you're being scolded. Isn't it the case that most of us think that's not justified? You shouldn't scold me. And especially that was the case that might have done something very beautiful, had been so kind and generous three times. Does that really deserve a scolding? Most people would stand up for themselves and say, no, you got no right to scold me and argue their case. But this monk, didn't. He just put his head down and just took the scolding? When the abbot thought he taught his young man a lesson. He let him go. But they just came back half an hour later. Not on the Abbot store, and said. I have some soup for you. Some hot soup. I said, well, you got me some hot soup for. And the young monk said, because you shouted at me so much, you must have a sore throat. And the advocate scolded because the monk was actually genuine. He wasn't being sarcastic all the time. He was being scolding. He was actually obedient to the moment. Is being kind. He realized not what he was feeling. He realized that that man who was scolding him must be in such a bad mood. And he has got such a sore throat. You never think of yourself. You just think of the sore throat. So the next time your wife gives you a scolding. Just go and make some soup for her. She must have a sore throat and a cup of tea from your husband when he goes shouting at you. No reason I love that story is because actually shows just what religion should be all about, or what truths should be all about. And it's this. This kindness of the relationship when someone does something. So how can you ever touch a person again? This card and the other actually afterwards said, okay, whatever we want to give away, just give it away. I can't sort of scull someone as pure and beautiful as you know. That's actually how we can have a beautiful life when we have obedience to the moment. When we listen to the moment, we don't just listen to ourselves. He's scolding me. I don't deserve that. That's not right. We're listening to a much deeper level of what's going on. It's obedience to the truth of the moment and that truth of the moment. You can only you can't get that from a teacher, or from a book or from a dogma. That is something which is right in front of you every moment. If when you could actually listen to that and see that. And that's what the Buddha was meant. Meaning when the authority should be this moment, this truth, and the training of what you should do with this moment, which is basically to be kind to it, to be make peace with it, to love this moment when we understand that we understand the idea of obedience, the idea of taking the truth as the authority makes many things clear in Buddhism that why we don't have a dogma, why we don't have a creed, why we don't have a head honcho, male or female, which runs the show. Why, when you come here and ask, now, what should I do? It's very much basically up to you. We can give you advice and different strategies, but the choice is yours. And we don't allow monks or nuns actually to tell you what to do. Even if you come and ask very important questions like, should I get married to this person? Should I get divorced? Should I have an abortion or whatever? There's no way the monk would actually, or the nun or any teacher would actually tell you from on high, this is evil, this is good. This is what you should do. All we do is give you advice so you can listen to that truth yourself. And follow that truth. Be obedient to the truth in your heart in this moment. On occasions when you know you have a moral problem. You have a dog who's got cancer. You have a baby in your womb and you wonder what to do with it. These are moral dilemmas which many people in today's world face. What should you do? There is no dogma there, no authority imposed, which tells you that's evil. You should not do that or this is a good thing to do. Those of you who've been here long enough know the answers to those questions. You have to investigate this moment for yourself. Buddhism will actually give you some advice on how to find the answer. Such as with the dog who is got cancer. It's very simple. Answer. Ask the dog what it wants. And be obedient to the truth of that moment when you ask. That being has been in your family for such a long time. Ask it what it wants or when it might be your mother or your father in a hospital on life support and the doctor asks you, should we turn off the artificial life support? What do you do? You ask your mother. Never think that they're unconscious, that they don't exist anymore. That there's no way of talking to them. I'm not talking about getting them to speak when I'm unable to speak. I'm talking about contacting them. Mind to mind. Human to human. This is someone who's been close to you for such a long time. This is not telepathy. This is just the empathy. The feeling of someone who loved for such a long time, someone who's loved you. It's not a supernatural power to connect with somebody who's been part of your life for such a long time. All you need to do is ask a question and listen. Be obedient listening and follow their insight, their intuition. You may call it that if you wish for that direct connection with the other being even a dog, not. Dogs aren't supposed to talk, but they will tell you what they want, and only if you listen. And obedient to that truth. That answer to me, that's the highest morality. That's what the Buddha was saying, not an authority. This is right. This is wrong. But the higher authority of a truth in this moment which anybody can attune to, as long as you have the courage, the fearlessness. And the mindfulness, the openness to really listen deeply to what's going on. And that is such a powerful way of living life, obedient to the needs of this moment, asking the question, hearing it, and doing appropriately at the time with kindness. No fear. What this means is you have a means of living life, a structure which is not, you know, some guy in a funny hat going around telling you with infallibility what's right and what's wrong. Not some, uh, father figure or mother figure, matriarchy or whatever telling you what to do, but giving the responsibility to the only place it can really lie now, in your heart, in your mind, and encouraging people to be obedient to that. And if we could only do that and only listen, I think the world will be a far more wise, saner and also kind of place. I truly understand no believe he might say just the experience that human beings are just nearly all basically good. In fact, I've never seen or met anyone who is evil. And even though I've been in sort of prisons talking, teaching people who've been multiple murderers, rapists or whatever. But it's a strange thing that when you go into those institutions which are supposed to be housing the meanest, most evil people in our societies, you see in their human beings, were no different than anybody in this room. Now. I don't mean there is rapists and murderers at loose in the Buddhist society of wa. I mean, in every human being there is this beauty, this kindness, goodness there. And because of that, they can only allow that goodness, that kindness, that sense to grow in a human being. If only people could listen to that and believe in that and take that as their authority. I think that there would be less crime, less meanness, less violence. Most of those things that come from misunderstanding or being misunderstood, grossly from misplaced authority figures screwing up people's lives when they're young. The authority has to be devolved. And people are encouraged to listen and have their obedience to the truth of this moment. I trust in that as being the most, purest, wisest, most moral of forces in this world. Which is why that when people have these arguments about what is right and what is wrong, whenever we believe in the books and when we believe in the authorities, we usually screw up and get it wrong. People know in their hearts what's right and what's wrong, you know? But sometimes we don't believe in that because some authority figure tells us otherwise. But if you believe in what's in the heart, then you're obedient to that. I think that's a far better way of living life than it has the stamp of approval of someone like the Buddha. He said, after I die, I am not the teacher. I'm not the authority figure. The authority figure is truth and the training to find that truth. And that's what we take as that authority. Which means that you can question, but you don't just question the person, you question, not yourself. You question the moment, the truth of now without questioning the moment. Your questions are going in the wrong place. Questioning yourself. Questioning the person who's teaching. That's not really where the answers are found. The answers are found with this mindful awareness, this openness to the truth of now how you feel it, what's happening between you and your body, what's happening between you and your mind? What's happening between you and your partner? Find that place. Ask the question of what's going on there. Put peace, put love. Put kindness there. And you're always find whatever happens in life, you'll be going in the right direction. This is a radical teaching because it goes against the grain of what we want in this world. Too often people don't obey authorities, but they do. They think you are the authority or the monk is the authority instead of understanding, or the Buddha is the authority, or God is the authority. And too often our cultures, our worlds have put that authority in somewhere else, and we haven't really felt what's happening in the moment. And it means there's been too much violence and intimidation wars. How can you ever fight a war if you're true to this moment? You see someone rushing at you with a gun. You see in them just a mirror image of yourself. You see their face, your face on their body. You can't pull the trigger. The truth of the moment would always give you peace, empathy, compassion, and freedom. That's why if you want to believe in anything in this world, that's what one should really believe in. So this is what the authority of Buddhism is. When the Buddha passed away again, he said, I'm not going to set up a leader. I'm not going to set up a lineage of leaders of masters and give that authority from one teacher to another teacher. No more power trips, and I'm going to give that authority to you. The authority is with truth, with the training. Open your mind to that. With the practice of mindfulness. Settling in the moment. Being stirred enough in your meditation to know what I mean by this moment. Being sensitive to now. And listen to that in front. All the answers you need. That is obedience. Okay, so that's the talk this evening. And thank you to Father Bernard for opening up another window on Dharma. So if you've got any questions or comments you have about the talk this evening on authority and obedience. Hopefully I've opened up a few windows to you so you can see more deeply into what's happening in life, in yourself, relationships, and where we sometimes stuff up and go wrong and how we can actually get on a beautiful path. So a question. Oh, yes. Yeah. Hi. The lights are on me and I cannot see you. But that's lights. Yeah. Well. I think you're saying there for the sake of the, uh, the audiotape. But sometimes you have some conflict with the Buddhist and metaphysical ideas and the, uh, your own ideas and other ideas. And how can you reconcile the two? And again, a lot of times we should really put aside those, uh, Buddhist ideas and then put aside your own ideas. And instead of having ideas actually, that you feel and know, because sometimes this has two different maps, that's all of reality. And if we just believe the maps or just stay looking at the maps, we don't actually walk the territory and carry. I understand just how to bring those two together. One of the great things of a spiritual journey is one starts with a map, but then one actually goes on the walk, goes on a journey. Room. The closer one gets to the goal or to the place where those maps describe. You can understand how from different perspectives that you can see it in different ways. The two different maps actually can come together. There's the old story of the elephant and the seven blind men. No one felt that the one blind man felt that the tribe, another one felt the task. Another one felt the ears and the one felt the head. Another one felt the body. Another one felt the legs. The other one felt the tail. Every blind man felt a different part of the elephant. And then when they asked what an elephant was, they'd been blind since birth, so they couldn't see an elephant. This was the first time they experienced one. By feeling it, they all described different things. You know the story. The one who felt the the task said it was a plow. The one who felt the legs said it was a tree trunk and one felt the backside. Tail said the fly was the one who felt the trunk, said it was a snake. And sometimes you can argue and you can go to wars or what elephant is. And this is the problem with not just different religions. Even within Buddhism, we got this sect and that sect, we got Mahayana, we got Theravada, we got wider, yada, we got said, we got doctrine, we got heaps of sects. Why is that? A lot of the time it's very easy actually, to move between the different traditions of Buddhism. We're all great friends because actually, when you actually feel the elephant for yourself now, you realize that you're just feeling a part of the elephant. What we really should have done from the very beginning was actually, instead of arguing combined compare notes. So your Buddhist ideas and your ideas, they're not actually contradictory. You can put them together to get the fuller picture. So the seven blind men, they eventually sat down and they said, an elephant is like a big rock. The body on four tree trunks with a fly whisk on the back. They got a smaller rock on the front, a little bit high on either side of that front. Rock is like two ploughs with a snake in the middle and two fans as ears on the side. And I say that's a pretty good description of an elephant to someone who wouldn't see it. And it's not in conflict anymore. It's actually combining different people's experiences of truth. Isn't that beautiful a way forward? So even not just the different parts of Buddhism, but the different religions and agnosticism, atheism, anything. Why do we always argue? Can we actually sit down and combine? That's authority. That's when people misplace what authority is, right? No. So I'm the authoritative person and you believe in me. Otherwise I'll excommunicate you, Laurence, and you will go to hell where you'll burn. And people use that fear. They believe that sort of stuff. But remember, authority to actually exercise authority is usually done through fear. You know that whole system. But there's no fear here because there's no authority other than the truth. And that truth doesn't send you to hell. How can truth be so mean and cruel? You know, truth is peaceful, liberating. Truth is freedom. But that truth does not. Is not personified as a person. So authority figures. The Buddha said no. No more the Dharma. The truth is your authority. Great teaching. Very radical, but very beautiful, I love it. Okay, so thank you for listening to this this evening. I hope I freeze you in some areas. Now prayer is first of all there. Are some like some Buddha I go. For go under a b. What? So ah ah ah ah ah ah ah. Damn the Masonic. Super teapot. I got. A song called Sunken Nama.