OK, you're the boss. Just please tell me what to do.
So, yeah, it's nice not to be the boss, just to be the slave,
just to follow along. It's really nice, actually.
Yeah. No need to think.
You don't need to do anything like that.
That's really. That's wonderful.
Anyway, it's nice to see so many people here on New Year's Eve.
Yeah, New Year's Eve. People usually do stupid things,
but but not here. He would do smart things on New
Year's Eve, which is very nice. And I know that Adam Rahm, he
left back for Perth just last night, this morning, actually
this morning, and he got straight back to the D'ameloca
Centre in Perth. He went straight into D'ameloca
Centre and they're starting their New Year's Eve party right
now in Perth. Yeah.
So it's happening, if it's happening here.
So it's really nice actually that this is going on there.
It's so important that we take these opportunities to do
something good rather than doing things that are stupid, stupid
and foolish, like getting drunk or whatever else it is that
people do on the day like today. So I'm very, very happy and very
pleased to see so many of you here.
And the title for tonight's talk is how to make progress on the
path, how to overcome obstacles and that sort of thing, which is
a nice, very nice and very good title, I think because it's one
of those things that we want to really try to achieve as
Buddhists, to always move forward, move forward to
something positive, move forward to greater sense of happiness,
greater sense of ease in our life, less suffering and less
problems. This is really what the Buddhist
path is about, and this is what the Buddha promises us.
Yeah. He says that if we do the
practice in the right way, you will make progress, You would
leave the suffering behind, and you will gradually increase in
happiness. It's not a great message.
It's just So what else is there to life and that this is what
life is all about, isn't it? Finding more happiness in life,
reducing suffering. And this is the promise if we
live this life in the right way here now, of course, there are
sometimes people are quite satisfied we're just having an
even life. They're not really looking for
necessarily an increase in happiness.
And you can use the Buddhist teachings in that way just to
have a more even and smooth experience in life.
That is okay. But also it is also good
ultimately to try to actually achieve a great state of
well-being. When we mean, when we talk about
happiness in Buddhism, we don't just mean kind of, you know,
euphoria or anything like that. We mean anything which is good,
anything which is positive. Yeah, anything which is kind of
you feel whatever it is that's good in life, more contentment,
more compassion, more kindness, more peace.
All of these things are what we're actually talking about.
And these are the things that are so close to us.
And ultimately these are the things that give life real
meaning and real purpose. Everything else is kind of
secondary here. So how do we measure, first of
all, how do we measure progress in Buddhism?
How do we know that what, what does actually progress mean?
This is kind of the first issue we have to deal with.
And the Buddha is very explicit about this in the suit as he
talks about this, because the Buddha of course realises that
as long as we are making progress, as long as we are
moving forward, eventually we will get to those goals.
Yeah, we will get to John as we get to Niban and all these kind
of things. So as long as you are making
progress, yeah, then you're moving in the right direction.
You know, one day, maybe not this life, but eventually you'll
get to these kind of goals that we're looking at because that's
what happens if you keep making progress.
So what does it mean? And the way the Buddha defines
this, and he defines it of course, as increase in
mindfulness, Yes, your mindfulness gets better over
time. He talks about your Samad, your
ability to sustain your attention on your meditation
object increases. But in general it is about
increasing in wholesome states, the good states, and declining
in the bad ones. This is basically what it is
about. And what are these good stats?
Well, there's obviously mindfulness is one of the most
important one, but really everything, your degree of
kindness, your degree of compassion in the world, your
understanding of other people, the decrease in ill will,
decrease in powerful desires, decrease in confusion and all of
these kind of things. And if you see this happening
here and you have to measure over quite long periods of time,
it can't just measure from one day to the next, right?
Because one day happy, next day kind of.
It kind of goes like go, yo sometimes.
But you measure over a certain period of time.
Six months. Yeah.
A year, perhaps. So you go on a retreat.
Yeah. I don't know.
John Mcgrove, perhaps. Have many of you been to John
Mcgrove? Yeah.
Only one.
OK. No.
OK. That's that's more like it.
OK. Good.
I was. I was getting word every second.
We've been really bad marketing, John Mcgrove.
I'm only one person. OK.
Maybe I should do some more marketing tonight.
So you go on the retreat. It doesn't have to be done.
I go. It can be anywhere where it is
nice and peaceful and conducive to meditation practice.
And then from one year to the next one, you measure, you feel.
Are you feeling any better than you did last year here?
And if you are, then you know you're heading in the right
direction. If you're not.
Yeah. If it's the same.
Yeah, it usually doesn't go down.
It's very rare for things to go down.
Sometimes maybe a little bit for a while, but usually doesn't go
down. But if it still stays the same,
that is when you have to. You have to ask yourself, what
is the obstacle? Is there, is there a problem
here? Is there a reason why I'm not
making any progress? Because if there is no progress,
it is almost as if you'd lose the purpose of the spiritual
path. And if you'd lose the purpose,
eventually you're going to be fed up with being a Buddhist.
Yeah. And you're going to end up as a
Christian maybe. Or maybe something else.
Is anyone here who's thinking about giving up on Buddhism?
You have become a Christian instead.
No. OK, so maybe it doesn't matter,
but the point is that to really sustain this, to really keep
your faith and confidence in the Buddhist teaching going here,
you're going to have to feel a sense of success and
accomplishment, that you're moving towards a greater
purpose, a greater aim. Yeah, then it's going to work
out for you. So this is how the Buddha says
we measure success. And So what do we do then to
actually enable us to move forward all the time?
And I have just been finishing a little retreat in Moar Moar up
in Malaysia, you know, next next door to in Jahor, but close to
Malacca, right next door to Malacca, pretty much.
And one of the things we did there, we had a look at the life
of the Buddha. We spoke about the life of the
Buddha for a couple of days. And the life of the Buddha is
always a very good starting point for deciding how to do our
practice, because the way the Buddha talks about his own life
and talks about his own practice is as an example for all of us
and how we should live as well here.
Yeah, the Buddha says this is what I did here.
And of course, what the Buddha did is precisely practising
those things that lead to greater happiness, in fact, all
the way to awakening itself. So when we read the suitors,
when you read the word of the Buddha, it is good to remind
yourself that the word of the Buddha is supposed to be, when
he talks about his own practice, it's supposed to be an
inspiration for each one of us to practice in the same way here
and to be able to do that. One of the critical things is
actually to look at the Buddha in the right way here.
One of the problems very often with a traditional Buddhist
country here, I know it's Singapore, is that a traditional
Buddhist country here? It's kind of, it's a little bit
traditional, a little bit non traditional.
Yeah. It's kind of a mixed, mixed bag
of things. But very often what you find in
a traditional Buddhist culture is that they kind of place the
Buddha on the pedestal, which is so high that the Buddha becomes
like different from what it is to be an, an ordinary human
being. The Buddha almost becomes like a
God. Yeah.
And then you pray to the Buddha. I got to please help me, Buddha.
It's like, you know, it's really exactly like a God.
There's no difference from the Christian God and the Buddha
basically all comes down to the same thing here.
But this misses the point. Yeah, the point of the Buddha is
that he was a human being. He was like the rest of us.
And the practice that he did because he was a human being is
exactly the same practice as we should be doing as well.
So for the Buddha, the Buddha's life, to be meaningful for us,
what we have to do is we have to first of all understand that the
Buddha was a human being just like the rest of us.
But this difference between the Buddha and us is that the Buddha
took the human potential to its highest possibility.
That is really the difference. But in essence, we are the same.
And once we get that, then when you read the suit, then when you
start to see how what, how the Buddha talks about his own life,
it becomes an inspiration for each one of us.
You think, wow, this is what the Buddha did.
He was human, he could do it. I can do it too.
This is what the Buddha's trying to say.
This is how we should read his message.
Then you understand the Buddha in the right way.
And then you can actually take some of that message out of the
suitors and then use that in your own practice.
So what is that message? And one of the one of that those
messages has got lots of messages.
But one of those messages is that to make progress on the
Buddhist path, one of the essential thing is, is that you
use wisdom in how you look at your practice.
Yeah. Use your ability to reflect, use
your ability to look at things with higher wisdom rather than
using willpower or force, all of these kind of things.
Wisdom power is far more, far better and far more useful, far
easier, far less stressful than always using willpower here.
So use wisdom power. Don't use use wisdom power in
your practice. Then you'll be on the right
track. Yeah.
So what does that mean? How does that come out in the
story of the Buddha and one of the places it comes out, and
this is before the Buddha becomes the Buddha, he's still
the Buddha to be. He's practising or he hasn't
actually started practising yet. And This is why he's still
living at home. And one of the things that he
thinks while he's living the home life, he thinks that there
is a problem in life. There is death, there is old
age, there is suffering, there is there is a basic problem.
And the basic problem is that we're all going to die
eventually. That is essentially what it
comes down to. So the Buddha then uses the idea
that I'm going to die. Not only am I going to die, but
all the things that I hold onto in the world, all the people,
all the things I have are also going to die.
They're going to have to be taken away from me here.
And he uses that idea and it takes it so deeply understanding
to such a high degree that actually that becomes the thing
that makes him go forth and become a monastic.
That is basically the thing. Yeah.
Very often we think that the Buddha is all about compassion
for all beings. It's about kind of this big
cosmic view about what reality is about.
It's going to help everyone in the whole world.
But no, the Buddha's own story about why he went forth, it's
basically because he understands that suffering is a problem in
the world. How can I overcome suffering for
myself? And the main thing there is
actually the idea of death. Yeah, because death is one of
the most difficult things to face in life.
I just went to hospital today and saw someone who was very
sick with cancer. And you can see how hard it is
when it comes to that stage in your life, It's actually very
difficult. And one of the reasons why it is
difficult is because we have built up so many attachments, so
many things in the meantime that when it comes time to let go,
you don't actually able to do it.
So the difference between US and the Buddha is that the Buddha
took a simple thing like that. It's so simple.
It's so obvious. We all know we're going to have
to die here. Yeah.
Is there anyone here who's not going to die here?
No. This Right?
Everyone's going to die. We know that.
We know it, but we don't know it.
We know it superficially. We don't know it in a deep way
here. And that is the difference.
But the Buddha, he knew it so deeply here that he actually
decided to go forth. And on the basis of that, he
found awakening itself, that he started the Buddhist teachings.
And now 2 1/2 thousand years later, we're still here, still
reading the suit as of the Buddha.
And the reason we're doing that, the reason why we still have
this teaching 2 1/2 thousand years later on, is for one
simple reason, that one person thought about death in such a
profound way that this is what actually was the outcome of
that. That's amazing, isn't it?
And it shows you the difference between using wisdom in a really
profound way and using it in a more superficial way.
The more deeper, the more powerful the wisdom is, the more
ability it has to drive us and do something for the path.
So this is the first example in the life of the Buddha where the
Buddha uses wisdom in this way. The second example is after he
goes forth and after he goes forth, he has, just like all
other human beings, he has problem with definements in his
mind. Yeah.
So if you ever have definements in your mind, you are in very
good company. So anyone here who doesn't have
any definements ever in their mind, it's kind of it's, it's
just the common human experience.
Almost everyone has definements. So the Buddha has these
definements, and then what he says, he says that the way he
decides, the way he overcomes these definements is actually
very interesting here. Very often when you have a
problem in your mind, you might kind of push it aside and get
rid of it and kind of think, yeah, I don't want that, you
know, this is bad. You have kind of, you have ill
will and then use more ill will to kind of get rid of the ill
will. And we can see how that doesn't
really work. Yeah.
That kind of. It's because this makes the
problem worse in many ways. So what Buddha does, what?
He sees a problem in his mind. Yeah.
Instead of using willpower, he uses wisdom to deal with this
problem. He asks himself, what is the
result? What is the consequence of
having these definements in the mind?
What happens if I have ill will? Where does it lead?
And what he says is that when you have ill will in your mind,
it leads to suffering. It leads to suffering for
myself. It leads to suffering for other
people. It leads to suffering for both.
Yeah. Suffering is unavoidable when
you have a mind of ill will. And we know that's true, right?
If you have ill will, usually just the ill will itself is
much. It feels much nicer to have a
sense of friendliness or matter. But also the outcome of ill will
is often that we end up doing things that we're unhappy with
later on. So it's a double whammy there.
And it's bad for other people, it's bad for us.
It's bad for both. And when you see that, and
Buddha says as soon as he saw that he was able, that entire
defilement just disappeared from his mind just like that.
Yeah. And this is just using wisdom
power. There's no willpower at all.
It's just a reminder that this is problematic.
And if I don't deal with this, it's going to lead to problems
down the road, suffering for myself, for my family, and for
other people, whoever it is. So wisdom power has this ability
to eliminate a problem. Bang, just like that.
Why is that? Why is it that when most of us
think that ill will is bad or suffering, it doesn't go like
that? And the reason again, is because
we haven't really reflected on it enough to see the full
ramifications of ill will, to see the full ramifications of
other definements. And because the reflection isn't
deep enough, that is why it doesn't really disappear just
like that. If you see that something truly
is suffering, truly is problematic, what happens?
Yeah. The the symbol that I always
like to use, which is very clear how this works, is a similar.
If you have a hot plate in your house.
Yeah, You have a hot plate in your house, somebody has turned
it on. You're not aware of that.
So you go, you put your hand on the hot plate.
If you put your hand on the hot plate, what happens if by
accident? Yeah.
What happens is that, bang, you just withdraw.
Yeah. You don't have to think.
Should I remove it or not? Yeah.
If you think it's too late already, you already burnt
yourself really badly. It just happens automatically
here. And it's exactly the same.
If you have a defilement in your mind and you fully understand
that this is problematic, what happens?
The mind withdraws from that by itself, just in the same way as
the mind withdraws the hand from the hot plate.
Why? Because it's suffering.
It's problematic. So the reason why we don't
withdraw our mind from these things is because we think there
is some degree of happiness there, something to be had from
ill will. Yeah.
And that is why we don't withdraw from that.
So again, it's about using that wisdom power, reflecting on
these things, and then eventually you, as a consequence
of that, you actually withdraw from these things and it's no
longer a problem in the same way here.
So this shows you the potential for using wisdom on the Buddhist
path. And if we use it in the right
way, we're going to have far more success in how we deal with
things. So what does this mean in
practice? What does it mean for each one
of us in terms of how to live our lives, in terms for
improving our own abilities and doing in in speeding up the path
or whatever? And one, the first example is,
this may sound like a fairly trivial example, but sometimes
the trivial examples are sometimes the best ones because
often the things we deal have to do with are quite trivial.
Yeah. This is kind of life.
Life is like this. And one of the the problem is in
life is things that we get addicted to.
And these days, the thing that people get addicted to, one of
the main things is like smartphones.
Yeah. Have you seen people getting
addicted to smartphones? And I have.
I think it's I've seen people being addicted to this thing.
I've seen they have, they have come to me in Borinana
Monastery, sitting in front of me asking me questions of while
they're asking questions, they're holding the smartphone
in one fan. And I think, you know, there's
no focus there. And then you talk to them and
they are really restless. They are fully, they are
agitated. You can see that there is no
peace there. And all they're doing is looking
at the smartphone and looking up and looking around and there's
kind of nothing going on. And you realise there is a
problem with your smartphones. And of course you then you also,
you read them out in the newspapers as well.
You realize this is actually a quite a serious problem in the
modern world. This is something that we kind
of have to be careful with. So if you find yourself being
slightly addicted to your smartphone or addicted to
anything else, the question is how can we deal with these
addictions in such a way that we can let them go more easily?
And a thing like a smartphone? Yeah, because it because it
really is quite addictive. What you have to do is not to
rely on your willpower to get rid of it because getting using
the willpower is never really going to work because willpower
is very weak. Yeah.
I don't know if there was an experiment that was done quite a
while ago. And this was an experiment to
show how weak willpower is. And this was a bunch of people
who were supposed to be on. They're supposed to be on a diet
or something. Yeah.
And then they had them walk past this pastry shop.
Yeah. They were on the diets.
They're probably quite hungry. And when you're on a diet, they
walk past the pastry shop. And in this pastry shop, they
had all this beautiful pastries, and they were all for free.
Yeah. All they had to do is walk into
the pastry shop and they would give you a pastry for free and
you can eat as much as you like. Yeah.
And what happened, and this is, was the interesting thing, yeah,
what happened is that they were not supposed to eat those
pastries because they weren't on a diet, but they had.
So these people had different strategies in how to avoid
eating the pastries. And there were some people, what
they did, they said to themselves as they were walking
past. Oh, I'm just going to have a
quick look. Yeah.
And then I'll walk past afterwards.
And those people, they would usually succumb to the
temptation. They would walk inside and then
they would have that pastry. It was just too delicious.
But those people who were successful in avoiding the
pastry and keeping the diet going were the ones who realised
the weakness of their willpower. And because they realised that
they didn't even look at the pastry shop.
They pretended it didn't exist. And because they pretended it
didn't exist, they were actually able to walk past.
They knew the fallibility of their own mind.
They knew the weakness. The temptation that was going to
arise as a consequence of going there.
So they avoided even looking at it.
And this is a very good lesson in how to deal with temptations
in life. Yeah.
If you're going to be able to give up your smartphone or
whatever, you have to make it inaccessible.
If it's sitting there next to you and you're trying to
meditate and it's kind of there you are, it's going to be
really, really hard. It's going to be impossible.
So what you have to do is after a certain time at night, you
have to actually put it somewhere where it isn't
accessible. And when it isn't accessible,
then it tends to also disappear from your mind.
So get your partner. Yeah, your husband or wife or
your mum or dad or whoever it is in your family.
And you know that this smartphone is not bad for you.
You say take my smartphone, put it somewhere I don't know about.
Yeah. Give it back to me tomorrow
morning. Yeah.
And that is kind of the way that you can actually deal with these
things. You have to make it really hard
for yourself. Then there is a child.
You will be able to deal with these things.
So this is just an example, but you can expand this example to
so, so many things in life. And you have to be careful to
use wisdom. Yeah.
Don't just try to use willpower. You're not going to succeed.
And by using wisdom, you will actually succeed in getting rid
of some of these addictions that we all succumb to every now and
again here. So this is just a a fairly small
example here. A more powerful example of how
to kind of grow in qualities is to often use the adversities
that we have in life. Adversities are often, sometimes
when you have adversities in life, we kind of wallow in the
suffering. We think, oh, it's so terrible,
It's so hard, it's so difficult. But instead of wallowing in the
suffering, which is kind of useless, we use the experience
of suffering as a potential for growth.
Yeah. And this is so powerful because
what actually what that does, it gives the suffering a kind of
meaning. It gives us something on the
spiritual path that can help us move forward.
And when suffering has meaning, it transforms the suffering for
something unbearable to something that actually becomes
even useful on the spiritual path.
I'll give you an example. This is give you a couple of
examples of how this works. And one example is sometimes
when people look at the modern world, they look at the politics
of the world. They look at some of the
politicians that are around. I shall not mention any names,
of course, but you can have some ideas.
Some of the politicians we see around the world and some of the
kind of sometimes terrible policies that are put in place
that are so inhuman and unfriendly and uncompassionate,
all these kind of things. Or you have a look at the
environment in the world. Yeah.
You see kind of whales washing up on beaches and they're full
of plastic inside because they've eaten so much plastic,
because there's all this rubbish everywhere.
The oceans are full of rubbish. Yeah.
One of the biggest rubbish dumps in the world are the oceans.
What a terrible thing it is. And you look at all the all the
refugees everywhere who are kind of from war-torn countries
desperately trying to get away from terrible suffering, but of
course very often very difficult because nobody really wants too
many refugees because it overwhelms your own society.
So some so much suffering, so many problems and sometimes so
few solutions. Yeah.
Where are the solutions to these things?
And because it is so hard to find the solutions to many of
these things, what often happens as a consequence is that people
sometimes become depressed. Yeah.
If you watch too many news on TV, it's easy to get depressed
by the state of the world. And many people do that.
And still they go back and watch the news.
Yeah, I'm getting depressed. Oh, but I got to see the news
again. And we kind of carry on watching
the news. Sometimes I would really
recommend you just forget about the blooming news.
Yeah. Turn it off.
Don't go back. It's not all that useful.
You know, it's going to be the same thing again every day
anyway. Yeah.
A few different actors are basically the same plot every
day here. More, more suffering, more
killings, more murders, more bad things.
It's like a Digest kind of all the worst thing that happened in
the world put together in 20 minutes, and that's going to be
pretty, pretty bad. All the good things that
happened in the world, we never hear about it.
You never hear about people coming here to the BF on New
Year's Eve. Yeah, That's really good news.
Yeah. So it's it's it's actually a
very distorted outlook on humanity, what you see on the
news. So for that reason, I sometimes
much better just to turn it off, not worry about it.
So how can, but how can we use this?
How can we use all this suffering and all these things
that are happening around us in a positive way to enhance the
spiritual path? And you can this is kind of the
point. And the way to do that is to
understand that the world is really outside of our control.
We do our little part. We help out a little bit.
We clean up a little bit around our area.
We give a donation every now and again to a good cause or
whatever it is. We do our part.
But in the end, you cannot decide.
It's not up to you who is in the White House.
Yeah, it's not going to, you know, and all of these things.
And whether the pollution the all the oceans get polluted or
not, it's really outside of your control.
And once you start to understand that the world is essentially
out of control, the world is basically going to have to go
its own way. The deeper you understand that,
the more you let go and the less interest you actually have in
kind of many of these large pictures.
Yeah. And you can let go of the world.
And one of the powerful consequences of letting go of
the world, having a sense of, oh, is this too much, is that
you turn away from that. And then when you close your
eyes and you go into meditation, actually your meditation works
so much better. Why?
Because the world is no longer of as much interest as it was
before. The reason why meditation
doesn't become peaceful is very often because we think about the
things of the world. Yeah, we think about the future,
what we're going to do, etcetera, about our hopes or
whatever it is. But when you understand that the
world is out of control, the more you get that, the less
interest you have in worldly phenomena, the more you turn
inwards, the more you can let go, and the better is your
meditation experience as a consequence.
So how we look at it is actually by far the most important thing
in how to deal with life. So when you look at the news,
yeah, don't get depressed. See it as an opportunity is an
opportunity in letting go, an opportunity in allowing things
to be. And actually you have no control
over here. This is really the ideal way of
dealing with this. So that is the the world.
And actually there is in the suit, as I always like to quote
the suit as the other word of the Buddha.
I said OK, I cannot quit the suit as yeah, OK, thank you.
So the word the Buddha actually has a word for this.
This actually exists right there in the suit and in the panel is
called the Sabaloka Anabirati Sanya, which means the
perception of non delight in the entire world.
Yeah. And that perception of non
delight in the entire world is one of the perceptions that
helps you in your meditation practice, seeing that the world
is out of control, understanding you have no idea where it's
going to go next. Yeah.
And once you see that, you stop taking refuge in the world.
What does it mean to take refuge in the world?
It means that you expect the world to go in a certain way.
You expect the political situation to be stable.
You expect the environment to be sorted out.
And when that doesn't happen, you suffer because you're taking
refuge in the world. Instead of taking refuge in the
world, which is out of control. You take refuge in the Triple
Gem like we did before. You take refuge in your
spiritual practice. You take refuge in the happiness
and contentment that comes from living well, rather than in
something which by it's very nature, is out of control.
Saba Loka and Abiratisani, I'm going to test you on that word
next time I come here. It's a long one.
Yeah, but it's, it's one of these nice words that kind of
give you an idea of what the Dhamma is about when it becomes
very profound and also very useful here.
So this is about letting go a little bit of the world.
Don't worry too much. Don't worry too much about it
withdrawing a little bit, closing your eyes.
When you close your eyes, actually, it's so happy to just
go inside of yourself and let all that suffering of the world
leave that outside and let that kind of go its own way or
whatever here. So this is the first thing to
do. Yeah.
That makes sense, everyone. Yeah.
Makes sense.
OK, Good. Yeah.
So try it out. And with so many of these
things, you have to develop it over time.
Yeah. It only really worries when you
develop it over time. So you have to do it again and
again and again. And after a while, it starts to
sink in, and then it becomes something powerful in your
practice. And as you do that, as you let
go of the worldly things, of course, it's going to kind of
enhance, going to get rid of the definements, and things are
going to happen, whatever it is that you're doing.
Yeah. The second thing I want to talk
about briefly is how to deal with other people.
Yeah. One of the biggest sufferings in
life is other people. Is that true?
It's true, isn't it? Because people can often be one
of the greatest sources of joy in life, but they're also one of
the greatest sources of suffering here.
So it's important to know how to deal with it.
And of course, sometimes our people we find very difficult in
our life and need to be able to deal with those.
But sometimes the most important people to be able to deal with
in a good way is the people who are closest to us.
Yeah, people like our family members, our work colleagues,
people that are very close to our hearts are often very
important because if we get those relationships right, then
the rest of the relationships we have tend to be fairly easy to
sort out. And one of the things that
always struck me when I was reading the suit, as again, as I
always kind of refer back to the suit as the word the Buddha, is
that where the Buddha talks about how to create harmony in
the Sangha, in the monastic Sangha, how do you create
harmony between the monks? And perhaps you think that the
monastic sangha is like a heaven realm where nobody, everyone is
just kind of always friendly. Yeah, there's no problems.
Of course, it isn't like that. There's no such thing.
As long as you are in the human realm, there's always going to
be disagreements, sometimes arguments and sometimes
problems. That's just the nature of human
beings because we look at things differently and all of these
kind of things. So what I would say is if you
want to have harmony in the Sangha, the very first thing we
should do is to obviously have meta for each other.
Meta means loving kindness, friendliness.
So how are we going to have this loving kindness and friendliness
to each other? And sometimes people sit down in
the meditation and say, oh, may all beings be happy and well and
the snore and then kind of whatever, wait a minute.
Yeah, may they all be happy and well.
And it doesn't really bite. Yeah.
It doesn't really actually work all that well here.
The Buddha says the place to start with having meta is not
just sitting down and kind of trying something which doesn't
really have all that much effect.
Do it in your actions. Yeah, have meta in your actions.
And so this is a very practical way of thinking about meta and
not only having meta in your actions, then meta in your
speech comes afterwards, but the people who we should have meta
towards, the Buddha says specifically to the monastics,
the people you should have meta towards, the first ones are your
federal monastics. Yeah, these are the most
important ones. And this is very interesting.
And it's interesting precisely because that the people who are
closest to us are often the people who are most difficult to
have meta towards. It's like when you live in a
family, because the habits are so strong, because we know each
other's weaknesses and bad qualities and good qualities,
whatever it is. So, well, it's very difficult to
have consistent meta and love and friendliness for the closest
family members. It's easy to have meta towards
some idealized person in your mind.
Yeah, is such a St. or may you be well and happy, Ajam Bram.
Yeah, so easy. You don't even know Ajam Bram,
for goodness sake. You know you should.
But the point is that that idealized person is far easier.
And that's why often when you do metal meditation, you don't
actually do it towards individuals.
You do it maybe towards a direction or something like
that. We don't actually have to deal
with individuals because individuals are too hard to deal
with. So this is what you do.
So have meta towards the people who are closest to you, towards
your family members, your mum, your dad, your kids, your
husband, your wife. And if you're able to be kind to
them, then I guarantee you it is very likely you will be able to
be kind to almost anyone in this world there because that is
really the basic ground of practice, the people who are
close to you. If we have a harmonious
monastery at Bodinana Monastery down in Perth and usually it's
very harmonious. Yeah, we don't do.
We don't rarely that you see the monks arguing about anything.
Yeah. I can barely remember last time
it was actually. It's very, very rare.
And that happens precisely because you learn to focus on
the good qualities in the monastics around you.
And it's very easy. Yeah.
Because the monastics, they're at least, at the very least,
they're trying to have a very high standard, a very high
ideal. It's very beautiful.
And the same thing with the members here of BF.
Is that right, Eileen here. Yeah.
Yeah, have a very high standard. Yeah.
People come here. Why do they come here?
Because they want to be good. They want to have a good heart.
At least they want to try. The intention is in the right
place. And that is worthy of so much
respect. And if you remember that, you
remember this all the time, keep that uppermost in your mind,
then you can have have that kindness and compassion to the
people around you. Yeah, same in your family.
It's exactly the same thing. Look for the good qualities, the
guarantee. There are lots of good
qualities. And the people closest in your
family, look for those, focus on those.
Remember those all the time. Let go of those silly habits
that you have from the past. And then you will be able to be
kind and generous and all those things, even to the people who
are closest to you. It's hard work, yeah, but it's
really, really worthwhile. So this is where we start out.
And once you start out like that, you are generous, you are
kind and body and speech to your family members.
Yeah, if you can, sometimes it is very, very hard.
If it is, if you are in a family where it is very difficult, then
it is not. You don't.
You don't become a bad person just because you can't.
It's important to recognise that some people have very difficult
family relationships. So you just do your best, and if
you're at least you're doing your best, that is all you can
do. And then once that is in place,
then you also start to have meta in your thoughts.
Yeah. Towards these people.
You think about them in kind ways, one step at the time,
bodily action, verbal, how you speak, and then how you think
about people. Yeah.
And then eventually, when you think about people in the right
way, then you can do the meta meditation because then your
heart is kind of open to the people around you.
Then it's possible to actually wish people well in a very
meaningful and profound way. It's getting things right.
So coming back to the problematic people in the world,
how do we deal with the really problematic people in the world?
Yeah. People that work, for example,
who are just absolutely impossible and really kind of so
much got to be around. What do we do when someone has
no good qualities? Yeah, sometimes we come across
people I can't see any good qualities in them.
What do I do? Please give me some advice.
And there's actually some very simple advice to use when you
have people who are absolutely impossible here.
And that was to always remember that people who are so
difficult, they have also have a lot of suffering in their life.
People who are very hard to work with, people who have lots of
bad qualities will usually feel really bad about themselves.
And not only do they feel bad about themselves now, but they
carry with them all this backlog of bad qualities that they will
take with them into the future. And they will carry on that
suffering for a long, long, long time in the future here.
So when there is someone that you cannot see any good
qualities in there, all we can say is bad qualities have
compassion. Yeah.
Here is a person who wants to be happy here.
Here is someone who thinks they're doing what will lead to
happiness in the future, but actually they are doing things
that will lead to suffering in the future here.
Yeah, they haven't. They don't understand.
They are deluded about reality. They don't understand the
connection between our actions and our happiness.
Because they don't understand that connection, they're acting
in a way which actually leads to their own suffering.
The Buddha says in a very nice suitor, Well, actually the
Buddha is actually King Pasena who says this to the Buddha.
He says that those people who are acting towards others with
unfriendliness, they're acting is as if they are their own
enemy. Yeah.
Why is that? Because if you act with others
in an unfriendly and unkind way, you're causing suffering for
yourself in the future. And that is what your enemies
want for you. Yeah.
So you're acting as if you are your own enemy by not being kind
and friendly to other people. So be your own friend.
Yeah. Be your own friend by acting
with kindness towards others. It's a beautiful way of thinking
about this, this idea that being kind to others is actually being
kind to yourself, being your own friend.
So this is the way. If you look at this, you have
people who really where you cannot see any good qualities,
it doesn't mean they haven't got any good qualities, that means
that you can't see them. Sometimes we are blind to other
people's good qualities. People haven't got any good
qualities. Remember they are worthy of
compassion. And when you do that, something
marvellous happens. And that marvellous thing that
happens is that instead of being so self centred, instead of
always thinking about ourselves, oh so much suffering, I had to
be around this person. It's so problematic that self
centeredness is a kind of small mind and narrow.
We feel kind of in our own little world.
Yeah. Everyone else is dangerous
outsider. And we kind of, that's what ill
will and greed feels like. It feels like you are confined
into your own little space. Yeah, you're kind of a tiny
little world. But once you turn things around,
instead of thinking about yourself, instead of having that
selfishness there, instead you have compassion for the other
people, suddenly things expand out and suddenly the world kind
of becomes large. You include everyone else in
your world. And when you do that, the mental
state that you have is so beautiful compared to the state
of ill will or the state of greed or whatever it is, which
is narrow and confined. It's a wonderful thing.
Yeah. It's a little trick of
perception. Turn your perception around.
And that little trick of perception is enough to change
the feeling from being small, narrow, confined to being large
and expansive and including of all other beings around you.
It's a wonderful thing when you see these little things
happening here because these are the things that make life really
meaningful. And you feel that you are really
progressing on the path when that when that happens.
So this is a nice way of looking at other people.
Remember when other people do bad things, very often they are
trapped by their bad habits. They're trapped by their
personality. They're trapped by things that
they ideas and things that were laid down maybe in the past,
life long, long time ago. Often they don't have any
choice. They have to be like that.
Yeah. No point in getting angry if
someone is acting for their own suffering, whatever, because of
a program inside of them, because they're acting like
robots. Your only thing you can have
which makes any sense is compassion for them.
Everything else doesn't make any sense at all.
And then you are on the right track.
Then things start to change in your practice.
So all of these things are general principles that you use.
And as you apply these general principles in life, you actually
start to see things happening, things changing.
Yeah. So that is that is about other
people. What about our own problems?
Yeah. What about our own kind of
things that aren't perfect? Is anyone here who is absolutely
perfect? Yeah.
OK. It would be really funny if
somebody raised their arm. That would be actually, I'm
perfect. So.
And this is the thing. Yeah, people generally speaking
aren't perfect. And one of the things that in
this and for that reason, it is not painful to admit sometimes
that we have flaws. Yeah, it's OK to admit that.
And one of the beautiful little passages that you find in the
Dharma Pada is where the Buddha says that when somebody points
out a flaw in your character, you should see as someone
pointing out a treasure. I think I've probably mentioned
this here before because it's such a nice little, little thing
found in the Dharma Pada. And the idea is that sometimes
it is very hard to see our own flaws.
Yeah. Because we're so close to them
and we don't really want to see them.
We don't really want to know that we have all these flaws.
So because that we kind of shut it out.
And sometimes it takes somebody else to point it out.
Yeah. So if somebody comes to you and
says to you actually, you know, you have a problem.
Yeah. Listen, no, they shouldn't.
If they say it like that, of course, then it's kind of, it's
already wrong already. But if somebody comes out of
compassion and kindness, like a spiritual teacher or a close
friend or someone you trust, yeah.
And they say out of compassion, listen, yeah, there is a maybe
there is something that we can do here.
Maybe there's a problem that we can resolve and somebody says it
in a nice way. It is always worthwhile
listening. It is always worthwhile seeing
what they have to say because sometimes they point out things
that are so deeply ingrained of us, so much the habit of how we
do things that is impossible for us to see without somebody else
pointing it out. So it's useful to be open to
these things. Yeah.
So next time someone comes to you and complaints about you and
say, oh, thank you for pointing out the treasure, Yeah.
That's kind of the nice attitude to have, especially if they're
coming from the right place. They're coming from kindness,
and that is kind of a good attitude.
And it's difficult. Sometimes we have to be brutally
honest with ourselves. Then sometimes it is possible to
make progress on this path. We have to actually really see
what is there. If we try to hide from reality,
if we try to stick our head in the sand like an ostrich, yeah,
pretending reality goes away by sticking your head in the sand,
then you're not going to succeed by by being honest, by seeing
things as they actually are, not stupid, not kind of blaming
ourself, which aren't really true, But when there is a
problem, to accept that there is a problem and then deal with it
as a consequence, then you're going to go a long, long way in
this practice. So these are some of the ways
that you can deal with problems. I mentioned maybe a couple of
more things because we have a little bit more time.
I don't know how. Yeah, it's a couple of more ish
things that I find very inspiring that I use in my own
practice. And sorry, I think yeah, I take
a drink. OK, thank you.
Yeah, you can see that compassion and action is very,
very kind of you. OK, so one of the things that I
like to use and I often talk about is the idea of death.
Yeah, that we're all going to die one day.
And it's one thing that I would really recommend you to bring
into your life because it's a very, very useful thing to give
rise to a sense of priorities, what actually is important in
life, what really matters. And we can use this in many
ways. But the one the way that I like
to use it is I often think to myself that because I could die
at any time, I don't know when it's going to be.
One day I am going to die. And the one day that I'm I'm
going to die, that day, I have no future anymore.
The future is going to be gone. When you die, you don't know
where you're going next. But certainly the future of this
life has disappeared. Yeah.
So because I don't know when it's going to be, the only time
for me to be ready is now. So really, the way to be ready
now is to think of myself now. I have no future.
Yeah, I have. And when I think of myself that
I have no future because I want to be ready now, what happens?
And something very beautiful happens when you have no future,
there's nothing much more to think about.
Yeah. If you look at your mind, you
look at the things that kind of are important to you, that you
think about, it's very often things that have to do with your
family. It has to do with your work,
perhaps it has to do with duties that you have to do.
It's always, very often something about the future where
you're going to go. Nothing much to think about.
Yeah. Your mind goes blank, empty
here. So the idea of of death,
contemplation, of reminding yourself that all of these
things have to come to an end one day, you're going to have to
give all these things up anyway. It's all going to have to go.
Yeah. How much should we think about
these things? How much should we invest in all
the things of the world when it's going to have to go one day
anyway? Don't make this into something
heavy and negative. Use it only if it works for you
and it gives you a sense of peace and quiet.
This is very, it's a very powerful reflection.
It is a reflection that the Buddha asked us to use again and
again. Again in the suiters.
It occurs so many different times.
Yeah. And because it occurs so often
in the suiters, it is something that is very important in our
lives. And I remember a man many years
ago that I met in Australia. He was from Sri Lanka
originally. He was a psychologist, and he
told me that the way he did the death contemplation was to
remind himself in the morning when he left his wife and
children in the morning, he would always make sure that he'd
left in a good way. Why?
Because today I could die. I don't want to leave my
children and my wife in a bad way.
If I can die, if I could die, why?
Because how do you feel when you're dying?
If you have kind of had an argument with somebody or
whatever, you feel bad about it, you're not ready.
And because of that, we can really, never really afford to
have an argument with anyone. Yeah.
Because what happens if you die afterwards?
You feel bad. You don't want to die feeling
bad. What a terrible thing that is.
So by keeping in mind the fact that you could die means that
you can never afford to have an argument with anyone.
You can never afford to do a bad action.
You can never even afford to have a bad thought.
Yeah, that's pretty hard. Yeah, that's that's difficult.
You can't really afford it. But it's still, it's going to
happen sometimes because it's just too hard to avoid that.
But theoretically you can't even afford to have a bad thought.
And you can see you're moving in that way, moving in that
direction whereby you understand, you get your
priorities sorted out. You know what is important in
life. You don't allow yourself to be
carried away by the stream of life.
You have the craving which carries us forward and such a in
such a fast way that sometimes you forget what is up and what
is, what is black and what is white, what is good and what is
bad. So keeping these things in mind
is so important on the spiritual path.
The last thing I would like to say just very briefly, which is
a very useful and general practical advice, is always to
remember what really matters in life, what is important.
It is so often that we forget the things that are really
crucial, but remember that even our ordinary life, your family
life, what is it that makes family life useful?
What is it that makes it good? It's not just the fact that you
have parents or children or a wife or a husband or whatever it
is, but that fact in itself is neutral.
It what makes family life useful is the quality of those
relationships. If those relationships are based
on love, compassion, understanding, kindness,
generosity, wisdom, all of these good qualities, then they become
useful, then they become good relationships, yes.
So it is the spiritual and all of these qualities, if you think
about them, they are spiritual qualities.
So it is the spiritual qualities in our life that make family
life actually worthwhile, that make it important, make it work
out. It is the same thing with all
the relationships in our life, Yeah.
Whether it is going to work or whatever it is.
Even at work, if you just work for money and promotion, after a
while it becomes really hopeless.
It becomes a joyless task of going to work every day.
If it's just for material things, it is how you work,
Yeah. How you deal with your
customers, how you deal with your family, workers and all
these things. That is what makes worth life,
work life also happy. Yeah.
My work life is like that too. Yeah.
When I work, I try to do it with a kind of gentleness and
kindness and all these kind of things.
Of course, it's easy when you're a monk.
That's what you are. You're a monk.
Yeah. It doesn't really count.
It's it's too easy. But it's the same idea that
you're when you're a monk or you are an ordinary, ordinary job.
Same ideas that you have to bring to it.
Then it makes it meaningful, and when you start to look at life
like that, you start to realise what actually matches, what
makes life worth worthwhile, what makes it work out.
Spiritual qualities, what is about that should always be the
priority. That should be #1 if you live
your life with spiritual qualities, you're always going
to feel more happy and content about things, because that is
what spiritual qualities do. When you come to the end of your
life, when you die here, you feel that you have lived your
life in a good way here. Now you come to the end of your
life. You have to give up everything
else. Everything else has to go in the
world. Your family, your relationships,
all the people you know, all the things you own in the world have
to go. Your identity in this world has
to go. Even your body has to go.
There's only one thing that you carry with you into the future.
That's your spiritual qualities. That is what matters again.
So these are the things that ultimately give life meaning
both in the short run and the long run.
So make sure you prioritise those things that give life
meaning. Don't prioritise those things
that actually are temporary, that are going to be there for a
while, they're going to disappear again afterwards.
Then you are on the right track. Then you know what what is, what
is valuable and what actually works in this world.
And what happens is one of the marvellous things that happens
when you do that, if you live the spiritual life, everything
else that you do in the world, whether it's the family or work
or whatever, that becomes part of a spiritual life, You do
those in such a way that it supports kindness, compassion,
it supports your meditation practice.
Everything is subsumed under the spiritual life.
The spiritual life is priority number one.
Everything else is secondary here.
What happens when you live like that is that when you sit down
to meditate, you know, instead of thinking about all those
other things in in the world, all those things that are you
think are important because they are secondary, you don't think
about them anymore. Instead, you stay with a
meditation object because you know it is now you're doing your
spiritual practice. This is what matters.
Everything else is secondary. You don't think about it so
much, but in so much of the world these days, the idea of
meditation practice or mindfulness or whatever, people
do this to improve their ordinary life.
So your ordinary life is #1 the spiritual life or the
mindfulness or whatever is secondary.
And because it is secondary, because it is there to improve
your ordinary life, it means that as soon as you close your
eyes, because everything else is more important, you're going to
think about it. Yeah, but turn it around.
Make the spiritual life more important.
When that is primary, then there is a possibility of finding
peace, Peace of Mind. And then you can become calm
even in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, at least
sometimes, not always, but occasionally you can become calm
even when things are really busy around you.
So this is my suggestion for you.
If you want to have a kind of a New Year's resolution, do you do
that in Singapore, in New York? Resolutions sometimes, sometimes
if you want to have a new resolution, make the resolution
of putting your spiritual life 1st and everything else, all the
other things that you want to do, make them secondary because
that is really the right attitude to having a good life
now and also for the future here.
OK, whoa, OK, that's pretty much an hour talking already.
So good, Yeah. So if you would like to ask some
questions or some comments, please, please do so now
wait, this is a last chance to ask questions for 2018 Yeah,
this is the end of this 18. So please now take the
opportunity. Yes, I have AI, have a few.
Christian friends, yeah. So one of them asked me about
Buddha. Is he a God?
As you know, he's a human, just like our ancient Confucius.
So then he said, oh, why don't you trust in our Christianity?
Our God is almighty. I suddenly don't.
I don't know how to reply. Because my friend I don't want
to affect our relationship. As you know religion when we
talk further can affect our friendship.
So I'm not sure in future if I encounter this, how am I
supposed to OK? Yes, it is very touchy.
You know, they're saying that in English culture you're not
supposed to argue about anything.
So you never talk about religion and politics.
Yeah, because that always ends up in an argument.
So it is. It's a good point.
So it depends on what kind of friendship it is.
If the friendship is something you value just because it kind
of feels good and it's nice and it's your good friends and it's
good for emotional support or whatever, then don't think about
religion. But if it is a friendship that
is also has kind of an intellectual side, a side where
you want to talk about serious topics, Yeah, and some
friendships are like that, then it's OK to be honest about
things and you have to talk about it.
Otherwise the friendship itself can stagnate.
It doesn't really have any purpose anymore after a while.
So I think it is good to talk about these things.
And if someone says that our God is almighty, you know, the, the
problem with that kind of argument is that, you know,
where does this idea come from in the 1st place?
And these are often just ideas. And the fact that someone is
ordinary human being, well, everyone can accept that because
it's just obvious everyone is ordinary human beings.
But that something is almighty is actually much more difficult
proposition to accept, much more difficult to, to kind of deal
with intellectually. And there are.
There's not many problems with that idea.
Yeah. When you think about it, if God
is almighty, why did he create all these problems in the world?
Yeah, it's an obvious 1, isn't it?
If you're almighty, you'd create something better.
Why did he create me? I'm pretty.
I'm full of flaws. Are you full of flaws?
Why did he create someone so full of flaws?
Ask your friend. Well, you have you have all
these flaws. Why did God create you like
that? See what?
See what so and and this is actually a very serious
philosophical problem. Yeah.
This fact that actually God is supposed to be almighty and all
loving and still he created this big mess.
It's that's really problematic. Yeah.
So it's OK to have sometimes have a discussion, but I one of
the things that I for me, Christianity never made any
sense at all. I found it very, very strange
personally. And to me, Buddhism was at least
something that you the very idea that is all based on faith is
problematic already one of the beautiful thing about the
Buddhist saying that you tried out a little bit, you check it
out. OK, so you Buddha says be kind.
OK, kind of makes sense anyway to be kind.
So you try that, you do a bit of meditation.
You see what happens when you might become peaceful.
You see what it leads to the results the Buddha is talking
about. And lo and behold, it does.
Yeah, wow. It actually works.
So you have something you can actually feel directly and
immediately is powerful. Whereas when Christianity is far
more based on just faith, faith is often the end all and the be
all, be all of Christianity. And to me that is problematic.
If it is true, it's great, but if it isn't true, it's seriously
problematic. Yeah.
Anyway, it's just some some ideas, but yeah.
When you talk about letting the. World, I mean, the world is a
mess, so you just, you cannot do anything about it and you just
have to let it go. Yeah, it disturbs me a bit,
actually. You know, it's like our local
lingo, you know, you're both up. You know that means you don't
care, OK, right. How do you balance between this
kind of feeling? You don't care and yeah, yeah,
yeah. I I I don't really mean that.
You should. Let go completely.
What I mean is that you do your part.
Yeah. In society, for the world, in in
general. I don't mean that you, but I the
point is more like you. You know what you can do, and
you know what you can't do? You know the distinction between
the two. And this is one of the things,
one of the signs of wisdom is that you work as much as you
can. And when you have done your
part, then at that point you let go and you allow things to be
here. This is really the critical
thing here. But when you, you know, very
often what happens when people watch too much news on TV, they
despair and they despair over things that actually they can do
nothing about at all. Yeah.
They think, oh, Donald Trump is in the White House.
How come? How come he ended up in the
White House? Yeah, You can't do anything
about that. He's going to be there until he
is kind of until his term is over.
But you can't sit there kind of being angry and upset about.
It's not going to not going to make any difference.
And so many things that we are disturbed about in the world,
make us angry, are things we cannot do anything about.
So do the good. Do those things that you can do
something about. Be friendly to the people around
you. Be kind and generous to your
family members. Support the Buddhist fellowship.
Yeah, no, this is this is I expect some kind of Commission
on that one. So and also little things in
your kind of in your immediate area around you and then you are
doing what you can without being despairing over the big things
in the world then OK, anyone else?
How does one know when one has attained so on?
How do you know when it attends? So on.
OK, because that the meaning of that question is how do you know
when you have become a stream entry?
So one is the similar word for stream entry and the stream
entry is one of the high attainments on the Buddhist
path. Yeah, when you kind of see the
Dumber for the first time and one of the ways you, you know
that, well, first of all, you have to attend to samadhi first
of all, because samadhi is the root, is a cause for stream
mentor to happen. Yeah.
And so first of all, you know, if you haven't attended samadhi,
there's no way that you are a stream mentor.
So first of all, you have to become incredibly peaceful,
incredibly bright, with a very powerful mind, lots of happiness
and joy in the meditation. And then there is a possibility
that you can make that kind of breakthrough, that kind of
insight. And how you know is, well, one
of the ways that you know is that something explodes inside
of you. The whole world gets turned
upside down and suddenly you're looking at the world in a very
different way here. One of the one of those ways, of
course, that you you understand the idea of non self, that there
is no inherent essence in here. And one of the beautiful
teachings in the suitors is this teaching that whatever ordinary
people think is happiness. You know, as a stream mentor is
suffering here. Yeah.
Whatever ordinary people think is suffering here.
Yeah. You know, is actually happiness.
So the things have really turned around.
Almost absolutely here. You see the world in an entirely
new way here. Sometimes the idea of stream
mentor is very devalued in in in modern society, all kind of
people claim to be stream mentors.
Yeah. And I have had so many examples
of people coming to me. And then I said, oh, I went on
this retreat. I was told I was a stream
mentor, but I didn't believe it. Yeah.
And that's problematic. If you don't believe it, then
the chances that you're a stream mentor is just about 0.
It's absolutely, you know, it's just no way at all.
You're a stream mentor. You know, something has
happened. If you are a stream mentor, it's
a massive experience. And it is said in the suit
specifically that the place where you became a stream mentor
is a place that you should remember for the rest of your
life. So you know where that was
because, you know, that's when the revolution happened.
Yeah. The inner revolution happened at
that particular place. So, you know, So if you have
any, if something really happens in a meditation and you are
completely blissed out for the next week, you don't know what
to do, then go to Ajam Brahm and ask him, oh, Ajam, this
happened. What does it mean?
And see what he says, OK? OK, sorry, I think my question
is. Similar to the previous one.
OK, sorry. Actually, I, I, I know that you
have to meditate. That's the only way to get to
where we want to go. But I've been sitting and
nothing is happening. I I'm.
Just you. Know like I just feel that it's
it's useless, you know I mean, I'm sorry to say that, but yeah,
I know that's the only way yeah, but I don't seem to see any way
OK thanks. So the.
The answer is that if you're not going anywhere, it's because you
haven't really looked carefully enough at the causes that
actually support meditation practice.
And one of the things, there's two things that support
meditation of practice according to the suitors.
One of them, the most important one, is cela.
Cela means morality. It means much more than
morality, means your entire character development, all of
these things. And So what you have to do is
you have to look at your overall sealer.
Yeah. Remember, sealer does not just
mean keeping the five precepts. It means everything to do with
how you relate to other people, the degree of kindness you have,
how you think about them. All of these things are part of
the idea of sealer. So ask yourself if you can do
something more in the sealer area.
This is #1 yeah, the second one is many of the things I was
talking about tonight are things that have to do with your
attitude to the world, how you look at the world.
And that attitude is really part of right view.
Yeah, it's called udukaditi in Parle.
It means straight view. And it is one of the supports
specifically said to be a support for meditation practice
for Satya Patana, according to the suitors.
So ask yourself about your view of the world.
Ask yourself if you can straighten it out a bit more.
Ask yourself of the consequences, what does rebirth
actually mean? What does it mean in terms of
how I look at the world, how I relate to things?
And one of the things that it means is that you start to value
your spiritual life more and you start to value less the other
ordinary things in life. It's one of the consequences of,
of, of having the idea of rebirth.
So go to those things. Read the suit as a bit more the
suit as it's just one big mass of right view.
Yeah, there's 10,000 pages of right view.
Let's start with Page 1 and just read through it.
So very handy. Yeah, it's all there.
And just read the suit as that you enjoy.
Read the word of the Buddha. If you don't enjoy a suit, I
just kind of let it alone go to the next suit and not like that
one, next one, next one, next one, next one.
OK, this one is good. Yeah.
And then you read that one. And this is the right attitude
to have to the suit, to the word of the Buddha.
So you have to be inquisitive. You have to really ask yourself
these questions in a deep way. What can I do better?
How can I be more kind hearted? A very kind hearted person is
also a person who have success in the meditation practice.
OK, so we have until midnight, is that right?
2 1/2 hours of questions. Let's see what happens.
I'm sorry, I don't know what there.
Lately, I've been struggling between.
So there are like 2 questions here.
The very first one, how like we are now living in a worldly
situation where we'd go to work, we perform our best, like
everything is measurable, that we have to come, you know, like
be the best and everything. Yeah.
So how do I manage to perform very well and at the very same
time I will have to take care of the spiritual path.
So how do I combine between spiritual path and worldly path?
And at the same time, if I were to put like something like more
to a spiritual, then I kind of like fail on the worldly path.
OK. Like so yeah, it has been, you
know, a confusion there. Yeah.
Thank you, Adrian. OK, OK, so how to how to
succeed? Both in the world and the
spiritual path. Yeah, that's the one.
Yeah. OK, so the one of the, I don't
know about you, but one of the things that I have found is that
the people who are most successful in life are the
people who actually are very kind and caring people.
I, I don't know if that's true. Sometimes you're kind of the
scallywags in the world that's successful, but the people who
really are successful in a very kind of honest way where people
trust them and people cannot carry them forward because they
are good people. They are precisely those people
with good qualities. So in the long run, if you are
kind to the people around you, if you're kind to your
coworkers, to your customers or whatever, they won't be afraid
of you. You know, people are often
afraid of those people who are very competitive.
Yeah, I'm competitive because I'm going to kind of get the
better of everyone else or whatever.
And people get afraid of you and they don't want to promote you.
But if you are a person who doesn't really care so much
about promotion, you don't care so much about the worldly
values, but you just have a kind heart, you just are a good
person. Often automatically you would,
like, float to the top. Yeah, almost automatically.
Because people won't be afraid of you.
They will say, oh, yeah, this person, they can kind of be be
promoted or whatever. So kindness and care, in my
experience is actually a very powerful tool for success in the
worldly life. So you have to find the balance
somewhere. You never, you should never
throw the kindness out of the window.
If you feel that you have to throw the kindness out of the
window, you are you are prioritising your short term
happiness network over your long term happiness.
It is not worth it. It is a crazy thing to do.
Do you want to have short term happiness but long term
suffering? It's mad.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. So you have to always be able to
be be kind. And if the work is so demanding
you can't be kind, you're probably better off finding
another job, to be honest, because otherwise your
priorities are all wrong here. So that's what I recommend.
But it this doesn't mean you should be lazy at work.
I always recommend people to, you know, to do what they have
to do because you always feel better about yourself if you
work well but don't work so hard that you actually destroy your,
your, your other things. Yeah, find that middle way
somewhere and then you have a happy life long term and short
term and medium term and super long term or whatever else.
Yeah, Good. Yeah.
Hi, Jen. So I have a.
Question regarding spiritual practice.
So what do you have to say about laying man?
People who comment to listen to, to know more about Buddhism, but
to develop psychic abilities. OK.
Yeah, yeah. That's what's happening.
That's what's happening, so. Someone is coming to Buddhism
because. They want to learn psychic
abilities. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Develop yeah. Psychic abilities.
OK. What?
What do they want? Third eye or like third?
Eye. OK, OK.
Teleport or something? OK.
Do they? Do they want to do black?
Magic as well. Is that what they want to do?
Yeah, that is really bad, Really bad camera.
You know, if you develop kind of meditation to kind of do black
magic, it's actually terrible because you want to hurt other
people. That's really, really bad news
and usually it doesn't work out because if you have bad
intentions, actually some other doesn't usually work if you have
bad intentions, so usually it doesn't work.
So I would say that if that is your motivation for learning
meditation practice, chances you will succeed are actually very
small because you have to, you have to actually go into all of
this with a very high and noble intention.
The more noble your intention is, you have to have the
kindness there. You have to have the love, the
compassion of all people. The more noble your intention
is, the more chances you have in a meditation practice if your
intention is just to have the third eye.
Yeah, it's kind of, it's not very noble.
It's kind of very worldly. It's a bit like I want to have a
higher salary. It's a similar kind of thing
here. It doesn't really actually get
you anywhere. So I think it's, I think it's a
waste of time. You know, you can't really stop
people from doing it. You kind of, you know, whatever,
shrug your shoulders. But they are, they're not
actually going to. I think it's very unlikely they
will succeed. So try to kind of sometimes what
you need to do is that people who have an interest in
meditation, you kind of OK, come in.
Yeah. If that's what you want to do,
fine. And then sometimes they actually
learn something later on. They learn something about
Buddhism. They learn something about these
teachings that is profound. And they start to change the
attitude. Yeah.
They come around, They the reason why they want to have the
third eye because they think it's going to be cool.
Yeah, it's going to be nice. It's going to be happiness for
me. I can go to my mates and I can
tell them. Yeah, I got the third eye.
Yeah, I can see your mind, I can read your mind or whatever.
And I think that's great, but actually it doesn't lead to much
happiness. Imagine if you have the third
eye and you can read everyone's else.
Rubbish. Rubbish.
Thoughts. Yeah, it's terrible.
There was a story about this Indian sadhu, the word sadhu.
By the way, Sadhu is like holy man.
Yeah, or holy person here. And if you read the suttas, the
word of the Buddha, this was already used in India 2 1/2
thousand years ago. It was already called sadhu.
So you can see these words continuing across.
But there was a story of this Indian sadhu and he said that
for some reason the third eye, or wasn't the third eye, but
then mind reading anyway, mind reading opened up and he wasn't
sure exactly how it happened. Certainly he can read everyone's
thoughts. And he said it was.
He said it was kind of cool for a while, but then it became so
oppressive because those thoughts were just so terrible
usually. But then he wasn't able to turn
it off anymore. He couldn't turn it off.
Yeah. So he had to read all this
terrible thoughts all the time, and he had no choice about it.
And this is kind of. And but what that shows you is
that reading other people's thoughts, actually it is not
really worthwhile. Actually, it's not pretty,
pretty useless thing to do because most of the things that
we think about may not be terrible, but the kind of, you
know, pretty boring stuff. Yeah, mundane, ordinary things
we think about kind of little small things, tiny things.
I don't know what you think about, but when I look at my own
mind and I wonder why am I thinking about this, this is
completely crazy. There was a meditator down in
our centre in Perth and he said that after a while his mind
started to kind of, you know, after a while he ran out of
things to think about because he had thought about everything
pretty much. And once he had run out of
things to think about, his mind started creating new stuff.
So he had just washed a shirt or something and he had hung that
shirt on the line outside and now he was sitting in
meditation. He was thinking about what was
the best way to hang that shirt on the line.
He had run out of everything else.
And I kind of getting back to the really stupid stuff.
And this is what our minds are like.
Sometimes we think about things that are so pointless and so
useless. So hopefully your friend, you
were able to kind of convert him.
Yeah, to real Buddhism after a while.
So allow them to come along. It's OK Learn a bit of
meditation. And hopefully they will kind of
see common sense after a while and kind of come to something
more useful here. OK.
Thank you, John. I really enjoy your talk
tonight. I'd like to come back to one of
the point you talk about having compassion for someone.
Who's already pre programmed to be disagreeable?
Yeah. So I'm just wondering, in your
opinion, how much can we reprogram, so to speak, to
rewire our brain? OK.
Oh, we can, we can rewire it. That's kind of the that's that's
that's the good news. Yeah.
It can be rewired. It can be reprogrammed.
So the program doesn't mean we are stuck.
And we kind of, we have to be like this forever because that
would be like determinism. There would be no way out.
There would be no way of spiritual developing.
But the point rather is that at this particular moment, yeah,
you can only be the person you are right now because all the
calls and conditions that come to you now, you can't really do
anything about that. But if you over the long term,
the person you are tomorrow or the person you are the day after
tomorrow or next year or whatever will will depend on how
you react to what is happening to you in the present moment.
So who you are now is given, but how you react to who you are
that is not given. And you can change that reaction
if you have good influence on your like the Buddhist teachings
or whatever else it is. So there's enormous potential
for spiritual developing and changing yourself.
It just depends on your ability to persevere and commit to the
practice. The more you persevere and
commit, the more ability you will have.
But start with yourself. And one of the the kind of
interesting thing is when you start with yourself and try to
change yourself is that you learn how difficult it is
because that programming is often very strong.
Yeah. If you say to yourself that I'm
from now on, I'm not going to get angry in this particular
situations, it's actually very hard to do that.
Yeah. Because there's a certain habit
that is so strong. You know, whenever your wife
says, hey, you always get a bit upset.
Yeah. Because she's done that 1000
times before. And now you're kind of stuck.
You're stuck with that perception in a sense.
Have you got a wife, by the way? Yeah.
OK.
Sorry.
Sorry about that. OK.
It's not the reason why we're sitting apart.
It's just life. I know what life is like, even
though I'm one kid. So you and but so you know, you,
you understand that there is development.
There's also hard to change our habits.
And one of the things that comes over that is that you start to
have much more compassion for other people.
Very often we demand other people to change, especially
husband and wife often demand change from each other.
But actually, when we understand how difficult it is to do it,
even with our own mind, we start to become less demanding of the
people around us. And this is one of the great
benefits. We're having some insight into,
you know, the how conditioned we actually are.
And also it becomes kind of scary.
You see how conditioned you are. You see how strong your habits
are. And then you know that if you
don't do anything with that, you will carry it on into the
future. So you may carry those same
habits into a future life. In the future life, there may be
no BF. Yeah.
You may not, may not be reborn in Singapore.
You may be reborn, who knows where you get reborn on Mars or
something. Yeah.
There's no guarantee there's Buddhism on Mars, even if they
have colonies there. So because of that, you, you
because the uncertainty in the future, if you carry these
habits with you, you don't know how they're going to develop
what, under what circumstances that make it even worse.
And it might kind of sprout out and maybe become, you know, you
maybe get reborn in a mafia family or something like that.
And then your definements really have a chance to play out badly.
So you understand two things. You understand not to place too
much demand on other people because, you know it's
difficult, that is, to change your own habits.
But you also understand the danger in these habits to gain
more of a incentive to actually do something about them and
change yourself so in the future, you don't fall under
their sway so easily. Yeah.
Does that answer your question or?
Yeah. OK.
OK, Very good. Thanks Rajan for the talk just
now. My question is related to
today's topic, how to move forward in our practice.
So clearly we need to practice that's that's number one.
And also how to move forward rather than in circles.
So it goes. OK.
Yeah. So.
In my experience. Everyone learns a bit
differently and that probably our paths will be a bit
different, even though it's based on the formidable truths
and the A4 path. And also I would think that the
gradual training is kind of a general structure.
Or would you say that it is recommended for all?
Or do you have other recommendations for for better
learning? OK.
I would say the gradual training, you know a lot about
the suitors already. That's pretty.
That's pretty good. Yeah, that's very nice.
The gradual training is applicable for everyone.
Yeah. So you can use that in your own
practice to kind of sort of figure out where you are.
You can see the gradual training.
You can sort of see where you're at roughly in that training.
Yeah. And what you have to do, what
you have to focus on. You will see your weaknesses
there. You will see your strengths or
whatever in that gradual training.
So you can always use that. And you know, one of the things
that I think is important is to, again, the idea of commitment is
kind of the really important one.
And once you gain a sense of faith and understanding in the
Buddhist Seutas, and obviously you have quite a bit of
understanding already, and stick to that which you understand,
stick to that where you have your faith and confidence.
Don't move too much around with all kind of different teachings
and all kind of things. Yeah.
Once you feel confident with a certain thing, stick with that
to a certain degree. And once you stick with
something and you investigate that fully and you use that in a
very deep sense in your practice, then eventually the
results will come. Yeah.
So it's a matter of really committing to one particular
thing in a deep way, and then things will start to start to
happen as a consequence. But it is, it is not always
easy. And particularly even in
monastic life, sometimes it can be hard, but certainly in lay
life, much more difficult because there's so many more
distractions, so many things more going on.
Yeah. So you have to commit even more
and you have to be even more careful.
So make one of the things that is the most important thing is,
and this is what comes out of the idea of Kaliana mita in the
Suta, is to make sure you get a regular doses of Dhamma.
Yeah. A regular Suta, a regular talk
about the Suta, whatever it is. And as you do that, you will
gradually it will kind of keep you.
It will lift you up. Yeah.
We'll keep you aloft and keep you kind of heading in the right
direction. So, but yes, it does take a lot
of contemplation and reflection and all of these kind of things
to sort of to keep you moving in the right direction.
But as you as you do that, it will eventually bear fruit.
I think so. Yeah.
OK, very good. Thank you, Ajan.
I'm asking this question on. Behalf of my friend So when is
the next Maitreya Buddha coming? OK.
That's the wrong question. Yeah, You got the wrong
questions. If you had the wrong question,
there's no good, there's no answer.
So the Buddha says when you have the wrong question, he just
remains silent. So I've already said too much.
This is the, this is the problem.
So this is one of the, the things about the one of the
biggest problems in Buddhism is often looking to a future which
is kind of uncertain and unreliable and no idea when it's
going to come and what it is about.
And there's so much of Buddhism around the world is about
worshipping Maitreya Buddha, this mythological person who may
come one day and who may not come one day.
Who knows? Yeah, all we know, and this is
quite certain, we know that the idea of a Buddha arising in the
world, that happens at regular intervals because that is like a
natural phenomenon. Every now and again the Buddha
arise in the world and that sort of happens.
So we know. But whether it's going to be
Maitreya Buddha or Karuna Buddha, Karuna is Compassion
Buddha, Maitreya is Meta Buddha. Yeah.
So whether it's going to be 1 or the Mudita Buddha or Peka Buddha
or some other Buddha, we don't know.
Yeah, but the point is it will happen at some stage.
But actually it is something that we cannot say anything
about. The point is, and the problem is
that this whole idea of worshipping some Buddha in the
future, really what it does, it takes away the value of the
Buddha we have now. You have a Buddha now.
The teachings are here with that Buddha reserves respect for
having worked so hard to make these teachings available for
us. And then we go worshipping a pie
in the sky that we have no idea about.
And that is very, very wrong. Yeah.
It's actually, it's been
disrespectful, I think to the Buddha we have already.
So the whole question about Maitreya Buddha is really, I
think is, is is a flawed question to to start with.
And the idea of Maitreya Buddha in the parli Canon only occurs
once in the parli Canon. And that particular one
occurrence seems to be a late addition to the Canon.
Yeah, It's not something that was actually there from the
beginning. This has been studied by people
who do comparative study of the suitors.
So really there is no, it's a, it's a later myth that came
after the Buddha. The Buddha never predicted
Maitreya Buddha. Someone else did that, probably
someone who was a scholar or something who had no insight.
Yeah, yeah. OK, We know there's a Buddha,
let's call him Maitreya. So we had that in there.
So we have Maitreya Buddha. That's probably what something
like that, probably what happened there.
So it is going down the wrong path.
And I think it's so important that we stop these kind of wrong
trends in our society because it is so, such a common thing.
You know, you can see this enormous temples being built in
my Treya Buddha around enormous statues.
And people are becoming, becoming like a God.
You worship my Treya Buddha? Yeah.
He doesn't have any teachings, Nothing to you.
Can't really practice what he says.
Yeah. So nothing to practice.
But you kind of worship my Treya Buddha or some kind of God or
something like that. And it whole thing becomes very,
very problematic as a consequence.
So tell your friend to come up with a better question and then
we might might answer it next time around, OK?
Two last questions. Thank you Adrian for for the
wonderful talk. My question relates to one of
the earlier ones where as we we go deeper into our practice,
we're supposed to feel more joyful and, and feel more
compassionate. And so does that mean that for
someone who is practicing but doesn't necessarily feel more
joyful or or more happy, it's regressing in in the practice in
the sense that, for example, when one tries to follow the
five precepts, it cannot kill, for example.
And then you see a cockroach or a lizard in the house, for
example. And then that urge comes and
then you're supposed to go and, you know, try to follow the
precepts. It's a bit of Duca there.
Yeah. OK, So this is just a very.
Trivial example, but it's. Also in a sense, like how you
deal with other people, especially like parents, if you,
if one finds that certain behavior of the parents, it's
exactly what Buddhist should not do.
And you see that in the parent and, and you, you, you know,
it's wrong and you're very worried that you, you don't want
to be influenced into becoming, you know, influenced by people
around you. So, so then there becomes this,
this pain as well, because you see in others what someone who's
very close to you, but it goes against the teaching of the
Dharma. And so how, how does 1 I mean,
how does one, how should one think about such things being
true, wanting to be true to to the Dharma and the teachings,
and yet, you know, not not wanting to feel that that pain
and dukkha as well. So, yeah, I need some advice.
Aja, thank. You OK?
Yeah. You know, one of the the things
is that sometimes there is going to be pain.
There is pain that comes from, you know, the spiritual
practice. And it is sometimes that is
unavoidable. But so really what it is about
is using that pain in a skilful way to then again to advance
your understanding of things. And it's always difficult.
You know, you see the all the pain in the world, you see the
you. You can look on TV, you see all
the refugees and it kind of feels terrible.
The world is is there is a lot of pain in the world.
That's the reality. But there's also a lot of joy in
the world at the same time. There are happy people out
there. There are people who practice
the spiritual, practice the path.
So you've tried to find that balance.
And when you find a balance, then you can carry on because,
you know, there is hope on the one hand, even though there's
also a lot of suffering in the world there.
So that suffering is, you know, you you do your best to
influence the people around you to kind of give them a chance to
see something better, whether it's your parents or whoever it
is that kind of are doing doing the kind of the wrong thing.
But the, the, the ultimate lesson in so many of these
things is sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and
say, I can't do anything more. I've done my very best and you
have to let go at a certain point.
Yeah, you can support your parents now.
One day they're going to die. So what are you going to do when
they die? You definitely have to let go.
You can't do anything more than, yeah, they could have died
already, in which case you already kind of they would have
moved on and you wouldn't worry so much about it.
So just remember this. You do so much as you can while
they're here, but also you understand the limits of what
you can do. And at that comes a point where
you have to learn to let go. You have no choice.
And because you understand you have no choice when you
understand that it actually helps you to do that.
Yeah. With the cockroach.
The idea with a cockroach is that you have to try to see the
world from the cockroach's point of view.
Yeah. It's very hard.
Yeah. But it can be done.
What is the cockroach's point of view?
He wants to live. Yeah.
I want to live. I just want to run around.
I want to eat a little bit here, eat a little bit there.
Yeah, even cockroaches have feelings.
Yeah, this is kind of the important point.
So if you're able to see the world a little bit from the
cockroaches point of view, just knowing that they want to live,
knowing that what they want to do straight away, you have more
compassion towards them. Yeah.
Same thing with the mosquito. Mosquito comes and wants to bite
you. It's one of the kind of really
hard things when you have the if you want to sleep at night, then
there's a mosquito in your room buzzing around.
It's very hard to sleep sometimes.
But remember mosquito also, they just kind of want to do their
own thing. They want to liver, they want to
just want to have a meal. Yeah.
They want to have some blood or whatever.
Yeah. And actually, so you have to put
yourself in other other beings position.
And when you do that, you actually are able to have much
more compassion for the minute you try to catch that cockroach
in a humane way, in a humane cockroachy way, whatever it is.
So that is the kind of, this is one of the things that makes
these things possible. I remember when some of the, you
know, even in the Christian tradition, some of the great
Saints like Saint Francis of Assisi, he was a very famous St.
in the Catholic tradition in the 13th century or whatever.
And he was famous for having, he had lice in his hair.
Yeah, people would have at those times and he would kind of leave
them there because he realised, actually, I don't want to kill
those lies. They're too much compassion for
the lice. This is in Christianity where
they don't really have this idea of looking after animals in the
same way that we have in Buddhism.
But he just naturally had compassion.
He understood the lies. They want to live.
Yeah. They want to kind of have a good
life as well. So you allow them to, you allow
them to live as well. So you find a balance in your
life. Yeah.
And this is kind of the the thing you find this.
Sometimes it is on, on on occasion, it may be OK to kill
if you have some kind of intestinal worm.
For example, if I had an intestinal worm, I probably
would go to the doctor and ask for something to get rid of it
because it's just that's that's too much, it's going too far.
So occasionally you may break your precepts, but you try to
the best of your ability to keep them in those difficult
situations. And very often it's just a
matter of your attitude. Yeah, your frame of mind is
often going to make the whole difference of whether you're
able to keep them or not. So these things are difficult
things. But you, you know, if you are
wise and you keep on thinking about, you know, how to deal
with this, I can guarantee you, you will find solutions to it
that are suitable and appropriate in accordance with
the Dharma teachings. Yeah, We have time for one last
question. Then we take a break and see if
John Bromley is not to come back at 10:45.
Yeah. See what?
See what happens, Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you, John Bramley, for the talk today.
Yeah, regarding the topic today about practice, one of the
Eightfold path is about right effort, right.
I mean, you want to maintain wholesome actions and get rid of
the wholesome actions. Yeah.
As you mentioned earlier on, we are all, we all have flaws, but
imperfect. So sometimes we do things that
we are, we know what we're supposed to do.
Yeah. So my question to you is like
this, is there any practical tips or advice that you have for
people that sometimes you may maybe impulse or of without
being too mindful that you start to do some things that are not
so wholesome? What can we do to stop those
thoughts or actions before, you know, it comes to becomes, you
know, OK, well, the the obvious answer is to be mindful.
Yeah. So that's that's the obvious
answer here. So the question is how to be
mindful. That's the question.
Yeah. How can we actually improve the
mindfulness? Yeah.
Sorry. Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly.
So the so the answer, the answer is mindfulness, but the question
is how to be mindful. You know, how can we actually be
mindful when things go, when things get difficult or things
get very busy or whatever. That's kind of the the trick
here. And the, the the first thing to
remember is that you have all you really need is enough
clarity to know that now I'm not mindful.
And sometimes you know that. Sometimes you know that you kind
of go on the wrong track already.
You know something isn't quite right.
So very often when that happens, you know that now I should act
and speak as little as possible because whatever is going to
come out of my mouth is not going to be very good.
Yeah. So this is the first thing to
actually have enough awareness simply to know that now I'm
something isn't quite right and therefore I have to be careful.
This is the first thing here. But the other thing, which is,
is, you know, fundamental to mindfulness is one of the things
I was saying before, is that mindfulness arises from two
things, and that is your sealer in general.
But the other thing is your view.
Yeah. And the the view, Udra Kadity
the right viewer, the more you have a view that is in
accordance with the reality, the more you understand how
important the spiritual practice is, how fundamental that is for
all happiness in life, for everything to work out.
The more you get that, the more scared you will be of doing the
wrong thing. And because you are scared,
there will be something at the back of your mind that will
remind you, yeah, at all times like in now I'm about to go
wrong. Now I'm about to head in the
wrong direction. So often what you have to do is
just to reflect more on what really matters in life, what is
important. These things that we call right
view, putting the spiritual life 1st and putting everything else.
Make everything else secondary here.
And as you do that, the mindfulness will actually arise
at the time when you need it. Why?
Because those things that are very important to you, those
things that you really value in life, yeah, they will be there
at the back of your mind and they will kick in when you need
it in this kind of situations. So reflect on it again and
again. What actually really matters in
the world, What really at the end of the day, what is it
that's really important to me? What is it I'm going to be feel
good about when I eventually have to die?
And we all know what that is. So make that strong, make it
powerful, and then you will tend not to make this kind of
mistakes in the future. This is a long term thing.
Yeah. You have to do it again and
again and again. But as you do that, eventually
it will start to kick in and something will start to to
happen. So.
Yeah, OK. Thank you.
Arjun Bromadi, let's. Say 3 SA dus SA du SA du SA du.
So we'll let let's pay respect and let Arjun go in and rest
first while I make some announcements.
Let's pay respects to the Buddha.
Together.