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Many of you will know that this evening
will be the last talk which I will be giving for
a couple of months as I concentrate more on
my monastery at Serpentine.
This year is 33
people there.
32 as well as myself need to be taught, instructed, help with the
meditation. That's what I will be doing for the next couple of months
So the last talk which I will be giving here for the couple of months
will get nicer
how not to come here ever again
I keep telling
people that the job of a teacher is to get rid of disciples
I must be doing a very, very bad job
because people keep coming every week
You see I'm trying to get of rid of disciples
in others words, I'm trying to give them independence, so
they know themselves, well,or rather as all teachers understand
these days that the job of a teacher
is to instruct the students how to access knowledge
so they can become independent
people who can find out the answers for themselves
they don't need to come
to school. So, that's the job of a teacher
How to find out truth in your life?
Because people are always sending emails asking questions,
ringing up asking questions, coming before the talk,
after the talk, asking questions
I'm not doing my job, 'cos really I should be
teaching, instructing, how you can find out those question
the answers to those questions, all by yourself
how to gain truth, how to gain insight, how to gain knowledge.
So this evening's talk will be on that subject, on the path to truth.
We call it truth because it is something which is
undeniably correct. Some of the problems with truth is that
so much is presented in the world as the truth
how can we select between what's really correct
and what's wrong?
And this is why the world is confusing.
With many different philosophies and religions but more than that
many different ideas and what's right and
what's wrong. We've got to cut through all of
those, in other words, put them all aside, Buddhism
included and your own ideas included,
to be able to find what we call truth.
Because truth is not something which you heard
from somebody else. It is not what you read
somewhere else. Truth is everyone should know is it can
be found in your heart and your mind and your experience.
But more than that, the truth is always found in silence,
never in thoughts. But when we think, we think
around the subjects. The mind is moving
too much to really know what is going on.
There's one of the great things in Buddhism that we
have this path of meditation, which is learning how to stop the
mind moving in thoughts, so it can actually see
in stillness. It's in that knowing where one
comes closest to the truth. If you observe
the process of thought which deceives many
people. The process of thought is never pure and
I say it's never pure is we think all thoughts
is conditioned from our past. We think in ruts
in old ways. We think according to paradigms
Ideas which we've already fixed in our thoughts
are supposed to fulfill all those views and ideas.
To give that example a Christian thinks the way
a Christian would think, conditioned by their beliefs.
So for a Buddhist as well, to think in terms of Buddhist
ideas, an Atheist thinks in Atheist ways.
We're all conditioned just to think in
ways we fulfill what we expect.
In psychology we all know this is see what we
want to see.
Being in denial is what we don't mind
I was just reading an article somebody lent me just last week
they did a survey of people asking whether
they were above average intelligence or not.
98% of people believe they are above
average intelligence. (laughter)
They said 50% of those people were in denial of
their stupidity.
So you here, do you think you are above
average intelligence or not. I am sure
everyone here will say "Yes, I am above
average intelligence."
Actually you are correct. So is 50% who are watching the football
match they are the ones who are intelligent.
I got caught in a traffic jam passing here today.
What I'm actually saying is that we all think
in ways which are obviously not truthful
not right. They are not correct. We believe
those thoughts. This is our problem.
We are saying there's an example of our
thoughts are untrustworthy. "I hate you",
is a thought which we cannot trust
But because we trust that thought we can go
to war with our axe or countries can go to war with some
of their enemies. We can see
just how this thinking when we trust it so much
can create so much problems for us in our life.
Imagine if you did trust the thoughts which
run through your head, you saw somebody do
something, maybe your husband, your wife, and thought about that
and you say, "I'm not going to trust this thought
of anger. I'm not going to trust this thought of
the world, I'm not even going to trust this
thought oh I love you, you are the best
person in the world". Each of those thoughts
you see is manufactured from conditions
You think what you want to think. You don't
think what you don't like to think. These
thoughts are conditioned. There's many
experiments that are being done about the way
that we use thinking and the way that thinking
is again, what we expect to see but not what
is really true. Some years ago, those of
you who've heard this before, you can
actually, please keep a little bit quiet,
because some years ago, in this hall here,
I made a confession. I made a confession
because at that particular time there were
many monks, Buddhist monks, esp. Thailand
were involved in scandals, these ***
scandals. And I decided to make a confession
in front of everybody. I told people in all
humility that once when I was young, I spent
some of the most happiest hours of my life
in the arms of another man's wife. I did
that. In the arms of another man's wife, was some
happiest moments of my life. When I first
said that, people were shocked. I almost saw
a few people going out of the door. Oh no,
not Ajahn Brahm as well, until I explained
what I really meant that, that woman, another man's wife
in whose arms I spent the happiest moments of
my life, was my mother, when I was a baby.
They didnt think of it, when I was young, I
spent some of the happiest hours of my life
in the arms of another man's wife, so did
all of you as well.
She's my mum. The point is, I'm not quite sure
how many of you remember that story. Those of
you who remember that story, "oh, my god,
that's adultery. You're supposed to be a monk.
You're supposed to be setting examples, you
should be teaching us. What's he done?"
You can see how thought can be deceptive, which
is why I told that story. How we can jump to
conclusions which seem reasonable and
rational. Yeah, he spent some loving moments in
the arms of another man's wife. But we don't
realise there can be another way of looking
at it.
This is the problem with truth, so much
that we can jump to conclusions, not just
about what I just said. We can jump to
conclusions about our partner. We can even jump
to conclusions about ourselves, our life, truth
everything which is why it is so difficult
to see truth in our lives. To be able to
actually see that truth is as if we have to
put aside all the old ways we usually look
at life, the old conditionings, the old ways
we've been taught. It's amazing just how much
we've been brain washing to thinking certain
things. Now I remember as a young man at first
how much of alcohol, I was about 14 years of age
sneaking into a pub, pretending I was 18,
and drinking a beer with my friend. It's
very exciting but very wrong. But the person,
the thing which I always remember, just as soon as I took
this British beer, I couldnt believe how
disgusting it actually tasted. It was terrible stuff.
I couldnt understand why people make such a
fuss and bother about going to the pub and having
a glass of beer, why people spend so much
time there. While there was more pubs in
London than there were churches. In fact
every time I go back to visit my old place
where I grew up in West London, I see
many of the churches have disappeared but
never see the pubs disappear. They never
get sort of sold off. They get busier and
busier with more of it all the time. What's the
big deal, I was thinking about beer being tasty.
It tasted awful, that was the truth of it.
But what I noticed over the next 3 months, 6 months,
a year or whatever, 2 years, 3 years, the
beer started to be tasty. I started to like it.
and I started getting caught up like everyone
else, going out to parties and going out to the pub and
drinking the stuff. What was happening that I
was reconditioning myself to like something because
I was told to like it. The whole society,
the whole condition was saying, this is fun
and I was buying into it. I'd actually bent
the truth to fit in. It's called conditioning.
I was bending the truth afterwards to think that
when you go and have a party, when you go and get drunk
"oh, what I great night we had. Ah what great *** up
that was last night. I got *** drunk,
aha, yeah, eh great". It took a while
actually because I started getting interested
in meditation and Buddhism, you're told to be
truthful and what that truthfulness for those meant
was being reflective, using mindfulness
and asking the toughest of questions and
challenging, no sacred cows at all. Nothing
should be taken on face value, just because
the Buddha said it, just because your
parents said it, just because your teacher
said it, just because you believed it, that
didnt make it true.
You have to put that aside and
actually see whether it was true or not
To go according to our experience and
it had to be mindful clear experience.
This became my path in life. I started
looking clearly at what you are doing in life.
You weren't following what other people were
telling you. You are getting all that information,
all that wisdom from your own experience.
It became so clear to me that drinking
alcohol was a complete waste of time.
It was expensive, it didnt really make you
happy. You could actually have more
happiness without the stuff. I still used to go to those parties
and having even more fun and also I remembered all that
fun afterwards. I knew exactly what I was doing
when I woke up in the morning I was fresh.
Oh what a wonderful way it was. An example
of how to live your life.
I went against the stream, I went against
what was expected of me. I went against
what was expected of a student.
Even drugs as well, why do you want to do that for?
You can get high and get happy without that stuff.
In fact, you can get more happy and this was not
because I was being some sort of purity Buddhist
It wasn't because I was trying to prove anything
except proving truth itself, experimenting,
testing out see if it is right or not.
These were my experiences and this
was actually the path that actually finding
out truth, so much of what people do
in following fashions, following what's
expected of you, living up some expectation
of your partner, your parents, your teachers,
your friends, your religion or living up
to the expectations of your Atheism, your
rebelliousness. We always attempt to just
not be ourselves but to accept roles, to play
up to those roles, be actors. Never really
be free, human beings. After a while, we
realise just how acting a role living up to other
people's expectations are our own expectations.
Puts us in this terrible prison we call life. What's expected
of you? What do you have to do? What do you
have to do to please the person you live with?
What do you have to do to please the people
you work with? What do you have to do to
please your friends? What do you have to
do to live up to your own expectations?
I think you all know where that leads to.
Your expectations and others expectations
cannot be lived up to.
You end up getting frustrated. You end up
feeling inadequate. You end up getting
depressed. If I wanted to be the best monk,
live up to everyone's expectations. To be
the great abbot, to be the great teacher, I'd
go crazy. So instead just, whatever you do, I
just do it, people like it, great. They don't
like it, great. I just was filling up a form
for our main monastery in Thailand, I was
just, say when I first became, sort of, the abbot of this joint, that was
about nine years ago, 1990 eight and a half years ago, 1985, 1995, sorry. I
remember that time because the previous
abbot's sort of disrobed. He left me literally
holding the baby. The big baby, it's grown
a lot since that time. But I looked at
myself, do I want to do this? Do I want to
take on this responsibility? At that time
I remember just thinking about it clearly
it came to a conclusion, give it a go. If I
end up being a decent teacher, it's great
I can help other people. If I end being a
complete hopeless teacher and no one
actually comes to listen to the talks, that's
even better, cos the people will leave me alone.
I could be a hermit. I like being a hermit
being by myself. So that way when there was no pressure on me
you can just go out and enjoy yourself, don't care if nobody comes. I wasnt
teaching to try and please anybody. That's why it
became very easy just to get up and give a talk
You were relaxed because you weren't having this
pressure on you to try and live up to some expectation.
It's the freedom which comes from knowing
your own truth, rather than always expecting other
people's truth to control you. When you look
upon that, it's an expression of what we keep
on saying in this place here, of letting go
contentment, loving kindness, compassion. You are
being compassionate to yourself. Allowing
yourself to be. Say to yourself with all of
your force, "The door of my heart's open to
me despite all my silly jokes, despite my
so called failures and successes, despite who
I am, I'm ok." It's being at peace with
oneself. What is actually being? It's
actually being true to yourself. You can
understand just how letting it be, contentment,
compassion and truth become the same word.
You being true to how you feel. You being
true to who you are this moment. Rather than try
to be true to somebody else's ideas and
expectations. Too often, we take our cues
from others which is why I always encourage
people to be rebellious. I dont mean being
rebellious against society, I mean being
rebellious in order to find out truth. I've
always noticed that the great leaders of religions,
the people who started all of this, are all
rebels. The Buddha was a rebel. He went
against the Brahmanical system in India at
that time. He spent his whole lifetime
teaching against caste systems. He said people
no matter what gender, no matter what, there's
only race which he knew at that time, no
matter what *** orientation, no matter where
they came from, how wealthy they were, no
matter what caste they were, they should not
be judged just because of who their parents were.
They should be judged by how they behaved.
So no caste, he spent his whole lifetime
fighting that, he failed. As we all know now, because it's a big
caste system in India. Sometimes even caste
systems in Sri Lanka as well, I think we should be
ashamed of. People should be judged not by
who their parents were but by their behaviour, by who
they are. It's the same way that we can
actually see that we have to rebel against
these ways of looking and measuring which are
imposed upon us by somebody else and not true.
Jesus Christ was a rebel. All the great leaders were rebels.
Even my teacher, Ajahn Chah was a rebel.
He was a great rebel. In that time in Thailand,
most of the monks were not really practising very
well at all. They were accepting money, being lazy,
not doing much meditation and he said,"I
dont think that's the right way to go." He
rebelled against that, went to live in the
forest and started, and actually joined the
great tradition of monks who are rebels.
I rebelled against society when I was 23.
My mother wanted me to go and get married and have
kids. I rebelled. Society wanted me, I had
a good degree to go and get rich and enjoy money, I
rebelled. I said, no, I dont want sex, I don't
want money, I want something else. The reason why
I rebelled is because I had some experiences
in meditation which showed me there was
something much more to life than money, power
and sex, family and all that sort of stuff.
That experience meant more to me than what other
people wanted. People thought you were crazy
at that time, 30 years old, want to become
a monk. Most of my family thought, just let him go
through that stage, he'll grow up later on.
I'm still in that stage and very happy.
What you mean you are a rebel? You actually
going against what your friends wanted. When I
told them I was a Buddhist, they actually
said that, when I was going to be a monk, they
said "Hang on, you are going too far."
Being a monk, being a buddhist, being a
vegetarian, not taking alcohol but being a monk
that was really challenging. You know why it's
challenging? It's challenging other people's
ideas, at what life is all about. It's not just me
rebelling, the very fact that I am sitting here,
enjoying myself with no sex, with no TV, with
no money, with no family and having a great
time. Challenges the way you think about
life and what's important in life.
The fact that I have no money and am happy having no
money means maybe money is not so important in life.
Look at money, what is that anyway?
It's just the value which people put on it, that's all.
That's why one of Ajahn Chah's great stories.
He made a prediction once, he said, in the future
there will come a time when society will run
out of paper to print points. It's almost
happening now, Australia is printing on plastic now
There'll be a time there will be no metal
left for coins, so the governments of the world
will have to find something else to use as
currency. He predicted that in the future
instead of using paper, metal, the governments
will use chicken *** and you get paid
every Friday with these big bags of little pellets of dung,
and you will be looking to see who's got the
biggest bag of dung and you'll be going to the bank
and putting all this chicken dung
chicken *** into the bank and be worrying whether you've got
enough to pay your bills. It's all just chicken
*** that's all and people will be fighting
over chicken ***. They'll be robbing your
house just to try and get more chicken ***.
And the IMF will become the International
Manure Fund. What's the difference between
paper and coins and chicken ***? Nothing, it's
just the value you give on it, isnt it?
So why are you so concerned about working
your butts off to try and get more chicken *** every week.
That's a big cause but I like being a rebel to challenge it.
What we need is challenging some of these
assumptions we make about life what's really
important. After all, we don't take any
chicken *** with you when you die. So those
assumptions really cut what is actually truth,
what we're really here for. So instead of
just following our society, which is a very
silly thing to just follow what other people do.
Look at the houses which you live in. Look
at the house which I live in, whose is more
sensible? I'll ask you, how many rooms can you
stay at one time? How much time do you spend
cleaning and how much money does it take to
actually build those houses? It's bigger and
bigger and bigger every year. Look at the
old houses in Perth, look at those house 20 years ago, 10
years ago, 5 years ago, you'd see them getting
bigger and bigger and bigger. But at the same
time the people who live in there get smaller
and smaller and smaller, doesn't that tell
you something? You are going in the wrong
direction. Huge houses but no family and
friends. You cant live with each other. So
build these big prisons for us to stay.
It costs all this money to keep these prisons
we call our homes, going. They are prisons because
they take so much time to clean and so much money
to pay off. The mortages, how many years do you
have to spend paying off your mortgage? If you had
a house half the size, you can retire by the
time you are 40 or even 30. But we always have
to have bigger houses, why? Because everyone
else is doing it, that's why, because we are
always measuring ourselves against somebody
else. We want to make it in the world. To
make it in the world, we have to have a big
house. We have to have a car, a big car, one
of these sports car. We have to have these holidays
overseas. We have to have, do you really
need all that? What do you really need?
Truth, just ask this question, what you do
you really need in life?
Not what you want but what you need.
Where everybody says, what we need is peace,
contentment, you need happiness, that's what we need.
It's so often we solved this old bond of our life
by used car salesmen or politicians or teachers
even parents sometimes, who know no better.
We should question and ask ourselves. So the
whole point of truth is actually questioning
yourself, not following others,
not following me, do not believe what I say.
Maybe you are believing already. I did that
once to someone, whatever I say don't believe it.
Yes, yes, yes, you're believing it.
Thinking just gets you in knots but knowing is
much more clear. Knowing when we practise
mindfulness, alertness, awareness, when we feel what's
going on. We understand what's going on.
We are getting much closer to truth.
Just simple examples of the psychological well
being of a human being when we think what's
expected of us we trust ourselves or not. When we think,
just think around things, we get so restless we don't
understand anything. When we stop and look
is there anything we need to know, we're being
aware, alert. When we get upset, how do you feel?
When you get angry at somebody, how do you feel?
What's going on inside, be alert, be awake,
be aware, so you just don't think that people
start practising mindfulness that they're in a
state they realise just how much they
torture themselves with desire with ill will.
You wonder why on earth do I allow other people
to control my happiness? It is what you do when
you have craving or ill will. Someone
triggers a button in you, they call you a
fool, they call you an idiot, you know all
of the time they do it on purpose to try and
get you upset, and you let them do it. Why do
you allow other people to control your happiness?
So people can call me anything. You can call
me a dog, you can call me idiot, you can call
me much worse and I am not going to allow that to control
my happiness. You know why? Because I don't
believe it. If someone calls you an idiot,
if your partner calls you a fool, the only
reason why it upsets you is because you believe it
might be right. (laughter) Cos if you had that understanding of
of awareness, actually I am a fool.
You say, "Thank you very much, you are right."
You know it's alright to be a fool, to make
a mistake. That's another part of wisdom.
Life says we are not allowed to make mistakes?
Society says you know you are a failure if
you make mistakes. Wouldn't it be a wonderful
world if you said, "It's alright, it's allowable, it's permissible
to make mistakes in life."
Hands up anyone here who's never made a mistake?
Anyone who puts their hand up, I'll say, "That's
another mistake." We've all made mistakes in
life, so can't we accept those mistakes and
be at peace with them, understand that's life?
When we accept those mistakes it's like
loving those mistakes. "The door of my heart's open to you,
mistakes, come in, I can be with this."
What we are doing, we are being real. We are
allowing ourselves to be with our mistakes.
You know for a great partnership, you are lucky if you
have a partner who is wise. They will love you together with
your mistakes and it's a beautiful sense, another
person understands I am not perfect, I make
mistakes, sometimes I get upset, sometimes I drop my load
I know you'd understand that, there's nothing to do with
you, it's just me. I'm a human being, I make
mistakes sometimes, so do you. You don't feel
just this great pressure on us, always to be
perfect. But how do you try to be perfect in
with all the mistakes you make? When you allow
mistakes to happen, it makes of you to allow
yourself to be relaxed, being yourself.
You understand other people love you
for who you are. You don't have to be perfect.
When you are actually mindful of that, it's such a state of
freedom,a state of peace. You realise, why am
I always allowing just other people's ideas of me
and criticisms of me to control my happiness?
When other people think you are the greatest
person in the world to get so high, next moment
they think you are the biggest idiot of the
world, you feel just so terrible. Why do you
allow other people to control that happiness
inside of you? Isnt it better just to be yourself,
to be at peace? What other people say, I can
enjoy the joke and have great fun. Being a
monk, not so much these days, because people
are used to you but in the good old days, when
you were really weird and strange,this has
some great fun being a monk walking around
in robes. I think I told the story last time week about the
proposition by a homosexual, "Oh you do look
beautiful in those robes." Yeah, it was
good fun. I remember the other day that I was
visiting some family who had come to visit
me in October in Stoke-on-Trent, in the
midlands of England. So that morning, we went
for a walk so that I can to do a little bit of exercise.
So we went for a walk and there was a circus
in town and they thought I was one of the acts. (laughter)
They think I was one of the clowns. So I enjoyed,
had good fun. One of my best stories,
those. There's a stash of these but once
going down Beach Highway, in a car, one hot
afternoon, we had the windows opened, going
down Beach Highway, three lane highway on
both sides, we were going down on some sort
of business or other. A car of 'hoons' saw me. They saw this
bald headed brown robe weirdo, so they
decided to sort of draw one side, so there
was our car, our van and this car loaded, like young hoons
20 year old, 21 year old having a good time and they
shouted at me, my window was down, along Beach Road,
right next to our car, very dangerous and they
called over to me, all of them. I had a look
and they put up a magazine and started pointing
at it, "Hey, look at this", it's playboy (laughter)
So they're going around, Beach Highway, trying
to get me to look at these pictures of nude women because
they knew I was a monk. (laughter)
I didnt look, I didnt look (laughter)
but I laughed, cos if that was me, I was in my 20s
I'd probably have done the same if I had seen a
monk. So I never allowed it to upset me. I
laughed with them. There was once, taught as a
school teacher,"If you make a mistake in
class and the kids start laughing, you laugh
as well, that way, no one ever laughs at you.
They always laugh with you." You know what people say, so if
you make a mistake, you fall over and you sort of make an
idiot of yourself, you laugh as well. Be able
to laugh at yourself, it's accepting yourself.
It's understanding, yeah, I made mistakes, it's
alright to make mistakes. I can laugh at
my mistakes so I can laugh with other people.
No one ever laughs at you. A lot of difference here.
You never allow other people to control your
happiness. If they sort of say silly things
about you, you can just understand that sometimes when
people say those things at you, you understand
the truth, no matter what it is, it has
nothing to do with you. If they call you an
idiot or a dog or whatever, it has nothing
to do with you. Usually because they are
really feeling upset, they are in pain and they
want you to be in pain as well. So usually what happens,
you can see yourself doing that as well.
You've had a hard day, something's gone
wrong, the last thing you want is for these other
people to be happy. It's a strange thing about
human nature. When I am suffering, I want the
whole world to suffer. When I'm suffering grief
cos I lost a loved one, I want everyone else
to cry as well. I cant understand how I'm
feeling so miserable why anyone else should
be happy, that's the nature of human being,
sometimes. So when people get angry and try
and upset you, you don't take it personally.
It means that they are suffering. So when somebody really
says, "You're an idiot", they get really
upset, you just go and give them a big hug.
"You must be really hurting", that really
upsets them. I'm trying to get you upset and
all you do is love me, uuh. That's what they really need,
they need a little bit of understanding, that's all.
So this is actually truth. Now there's one
person who always gives you a hard time, that's
you. How often you're always calling yourself
a dog, stupid and idiot? I'm hopeless, urgh.
Remember you are only doing that to
yourself because you are hurting. You
want yourself to hurt even more. Give
yourself a hug. You make a mistake inside laugh at
your mistakes laugh at your stupidity, laugh
with the world and the world's never laughed at
you. Don't try to live up to some stupid
ideas, where did they come from, anyway? I
don't know. You must ask just being yourself, this is
like knowledge to the truth, being mindful,
being alert. When you are being mindful and alert,
you just see the way you work and the answers are just
pretty obvious, just same answers, people have been
saying for years and years and years, just be kind,
be gentle, be forgiving and you
become happy. Simple teachings which all
religions actually teach, all wise people
teach, actually you teach yourself,
if you can listen to it. All the time I feel
a bit of a force sitting up here just telling you
what you already know. People still keep on
coming anyway, so it keeps me in business.
(laughter) But you can actually take that knowledge
deeper because when you really want to find
out the big truth, the truth which the
philosophers argue about, which is one of the
reasons they come to places like this, you
all know how to keep yourself happy. But
what is the real truth, who are you, what's really
going on? You find this awareness, this mindfulness has
different levels. The ordinary awareness
which people have, is actually pretty dull. When you
think you know life, you're experiencing what's
going on, you're just experiencing a fraction
of what's going on. Really what one needs to do
is to become silent, quiet, to be able to
build up this inner awareness, build it up
and build it up and build it up until it gets
really strong. You're already meditating, cos
when you meditate, you are building up
alertness, awareness, knowing, the power of
knowing. That power of knowing is something which is
very profound, it's not ordinary knowing. In fact the more
you think, the less you know. The reason is
because all your energy goes into thinking and
not much energy is left for knowing. These
are two parts of the mind. These 2 parts of the
mind are almost in competition for the
energy of your life. If you do a lot, you
know so little. This is what happens in our
meditation, I just taught this just actually
in my monastery a couple of Wednesdays ago.
Putting energy into the knowing, taking away
from the doing. By that I mean, just be, be
alert, dont manage, don't control, don't change,
don't try and get rid of this, don't try and
get rid of that. It's all doing but just
know, know and know, don't move, don't do anything, don't
change anything, don't try and control, just
know, strange thing happens when you do this,
it's called meditation. When you put all your
energy into knowing, non-reactive knowing,
passive awareness, silent knowing, you find
that knowing starts to get brighter and
brighter and brighter. The knowing starts
to get energy. People experience this
very often after deep meditation, by just knowing
the beauty of things. You go outside and
see like a plant and the leaf looks it's been
polished, the green look so deeply green, it's
brilliant green, it's beautifully green. You look
up the stars at night, the heavens, my goodness
they are just twinkling as if they too have been
polished. Even ordinary things which you see
the old wooden meditation stool, is not just
an ordinary piece of pine, it's a work of
art. Wow,look at all those carvings there, the
shapes. Strange thing happens when you put all the
energy into the knowing and knowing becomes
powerful, incredibly sensitive. You see
much more, you see more deeply, you see more
richly. You know, one of the old similes which
I've given about this, those of you who come to meditation retreats or
come on Saturday afternoons, you know this
very well, this brilliant simile. My monastery
in Serpentine is 2.2km from the top of a hill
and 10 years, I think, roughly about that
time, I always go up and down that hill in a
vehicle. One day I decided, it was
a lovely, lovely day, to walk up that hill. To tell the truth,
it's quite a steep hill but it's only 2 and a half km.
What struck me, was walking up that hill the
first time, that hill started to look completely
different in anything I've ever seen before
through the window of a car. I couldn't
understand, hang on, I've been going up and
down this road, for 10 years, why does that look
so different? Why is it different? I'm seeing
things I've never noticed before. The whole
thing looked much more beautiful than I'd
expected. After a while, I stopped. I just
stood and looked at that hillside. When I
stood and still, it changed once more. It'd
become even more beautiful, more rich and
more detailed. Such a strange experience, I
reflected upon it afterwards. What was going
on? I soon figured it out. When you're going
to a fast car, your senses haven't got time
to really pick up what's really going on and
seeing life in shades, almost like shadows,
it's not rich, it's not deep, you haven't got
time to pick up the detail. When you slow down,
all the senses have got more opportunity to
see more and what it sees has a different impression
on you. You've got time. When you stop, we
have all the time in the world for that hillside
to show completely what's there, all its
detail, all its richness, my goodness, it was
beautiful when we stopped, this is what we mean
by knowing. Too often, we don't know truth
because we are just moving too fast. Life is like
being in a fast car, from one thing to the next.
Even from one thought to the next, our thoughts go so
quickly,responding to the speed of our life.
All of the things which we have to do and fit
into one day, it's huge, we have to run so fast.
That's why, what we see of life, it's a just a shade of what's
really there. They never look so beautiful at
all. But then comes a time when you learn
a bit of meditation, slowing down, stopping,
being, not wandering around, not thinking,
not giving things names, not doing, just
knowing. When you slow down, you become
aware of things you never thought were there
before, become aware of yourself, how you were.
As you slow down even more, you'll see yourself
in greater detail, in more richness. The things
which were going on there, you never noticed before,
now you see them. One of the wonderful things
is, the reassuring things, when we slow down
that hillside looks more beautiful, not more
ugly, looks more inviting, not more fearful.
The same happens with you when you slow down,
you look much more beautiful, much more
inviting, you find you are nowhere near as bad
as you thought you were. When you slow down
even more and come to a state of stillness,
then you can see that hillside fully, perfectly.
My goodness, you're so beautiful. Everyone has
these spiritual experiences when they stop.
Always come back to thinking the world is
perfect and so am I. Strange, how can you say
that? People say, "There are so much problems
and troubles in the world." It's just what
happens, that hillside, when you stop, looks
the most beautiful thing in the world. It's
the nature of knowing. What's happening, is
your knowing is increasing and it's intensity
and it's ability to see. I was telling you that
this whole talk is about how to know truth.
Strange thing people think truth might be
something you don't really want to know. You
might think truth is all theories and ideas.
Truth is none of them. Truth is clearly seeing the moment, with
power. Sometimes, I call power mindfulness,
power awareness, so you see so deeply
these things when you stop. The more you stop
the more you see. Advanced meditators can
stop so much they see so deeply into things,
they'd see through time, through the world
into their mind, through the mind into nothing,
the ultimate. So you've to really stop to
be able to see that. The interesting thing is
the deeper you see, the more beautiful it
becomes, which is why these states of stopping
in Buddhism. We also call states of bliss, an
ecstasy. Like I keep on saying here, just
the happiness you get in meditation, exceed
anything in the world. It just keeps getting better
and better and better. It's not something
which is against the seeing of truth but
is part of the truth. The truth is
beautiful, you'd find. When you stop, you
might get overwhelmed by the beauty, but
what you are seeing is the most real thing
in the world, more real than thoughts
and ideas which is just conditioned from
outside, which is just taught to you, which is
actually seeing something that's real and true to
yourself. Sometimes all these ideas of what the
world is, gods, religions and rebirth or one
life, start to see that for what it really is.
It's the mind moving, how the mind to be
still? That's where you find truth. The most
important truth which a person needs is the
truth of contentment, of happiness, of
freedom, of peace. Sometimes we don't know
how powerful freedom and peace is. The
truth of love, now all these great religious
words are spiritual words but people don't
understand what they actually mean. In those deep
blissful experiences, somebody was telling me the
other day they managed to get one of these somewhere else
another time when they were very young, afterwards
they love the whole world for a month or
something. Said, yeah, that's what happens
because love is peace. Love is letting go,
it's contentment, it's freedom, it's all
the same word, pointing to the same thing.
What is love? The door of my heart is always
open to you no matter what you do. It's not
judgmental. It is allowing things to be,
allowing yourself to be, allowing the whole
world to be, that's peace. Making your peace
with the world. Be honest with things
you hate, learn to live with things, not fighting
them, not trying to get rid of the faults in
life but embracing the faults with yourself
and others, being at peace with yourself,
being content rather than always wanting more.
Love, peace, contentment, freedom, these great
words which you can't think, you can't make.
They all come when you stop thinking, when you stop
making, when you stop doing. They are all there in the middle
of your heart. It's an old simile which I am
going to finish off with. This is I think he
die Ajahn Brahm simile which I always tell in
meditation retreats towards the end. 'Cos when
people do retreats,so when in working life,
they're always searching and looking for
happiness, we're chasing for enlightenment,
we're chasing for, just what Ajahn Chah used to
say was that, the tortoise with the moustache.
Chasing for things which don't exist, but
one thing we are all chasing for is happiness,
fulfillment, peace, truth. It's like the
simile of the donkey chasing the carrot because
in Southern Europe, anyone who's ever been to Southern
Europe, they still, even these days, or
perhaps for the tourists, what they used as
their transport, donkey carts and donkeys
are some of the most stubborn fellows. They
would not move unless you really have to force
them or use psychology. So what they usually
do is to put a piece of wood tied to their
back and on the front of the piece of wood, on
the end of the string, they'd dangle a carrot, maybe
a foot or two feet in front of the donkey.
When the donkey sees that delicious carrot and moves
towards it. And because it's tied to their
back, tied on the end of the stick which is tied
to their back, when they move forward, the
carrot moves forward and so as they try and
catch the carrot, they're always moving forward,
the carrot moves forward. They never quite
catch the carrot but they pull the cart as they are
going along, that's how they get to cart people.
I can understand that is the simile of life,
where you're always trying to catch the carrot.
And the perfect relationship, the best marks
in school, the happiness, the fulfillment,
the truth, the enlightenment, whatever it is,
you're always trying to catch the carrot.
It's right in front of you sometimes, you
can see it there. It's so close, you move
towards it, it moves away from you. You run
towards it, it runs away from you. No matter
how fast you walk, it always runs away from
you because it's attached to the end of the string on the
end of the stick which is tied to you.
Now it seems that donkey will never catch
that carrot. However there are a few Buddhist
donkeys in the world who are smart and this
is the way those donkeys catch the carrot.
This is the story in your life and your
enlightenment. That donkey sometimes get so
frustrated he runs as fast as he can after
that carrot, this is how to catch the carrot.
And then like your life, how hard are you trying to
run, trying to get the carrot, fulfillment,
love, whatever you want in your life, which
is you are running very fast but the donkey
comes to the Buddhist centre one Friday nite
and he hears the magic word, Stop. For this
donkey running so fast, stops, he needs
courage and faith. As soon as that donkey stops,
that carrot, because of its momentum goes
even further away from the donkey. In fact it
goes further than it's ever been before but
the donkey's got wisdom. He waits and that
carrot goes as far as it's ever been in its whole
existence. The donkey's still just waiting there,
not doing anything, not chasing the carrot
and then carrot starts moving, very slowly at
first, and comes closer and closer to the
donkey. When it is at its usual distance,
now it's actually coming towards the donkey,
very fast and all the donkey needs to do, as
it swings to the other end of the pendulum,
is open his mouth and the carrot comes
to the donkey. That's how the carrot is won by the
donkey. You run as fast as you can and you stop,
you have faith and courage as it goes away,
you wait and the carrot comes to you. When you stop,
carrots come to you, when you race, the
carrot goes further away. Understand about
life? The more you strive, run after things,
crave, want, desire, the carrot just goes
away. If you stop, the carrot starts coming to you, not easy
thing to stop. To stop you have to
be in the present moment, stop thinking,
stop doing, stop wanting anything, be
absolutely still like standing on the road
on a hillside. Enlightenment, peace, joy,
love, it'll all come to you, that's the way
to find truth. Stop and truth, happiness,
comes to you. I'm going to stop now. You got
to stop coming here for two months. So happiness
is going to come to you. Thanks very much.
Ok, any questions about this evening's talk
including the donkey's simile? No questions, going
going, going, ok just some announcements from
Oh got a question back here. Aha, this is
one of the most difficult things in the world,
to learn how to stop. Imagine that you're in
a car, you're going down the highway and you take
your hands off the steering wheel, feet off
the pedals, stop. It's scary, yeah because
you don't have the control. A lot of times, we are
all control freaks, we can't even stop
thinking, we can't stop listening, we can't
stop doing things. We always get involved
rather than standing back and being absolutely still.
Meditation is the art of stopping. It's a
difficult thing to do. You think it should be
so easy, so we tell ourselves, stop, stop, that's not stopping,
that's more doing things. Like the old simile
I was giving, stop is letting go. Just
say, "Let go. Come on, let go. I'm telling you
let go." That's not letting go, that's
controlling. "Love, come on, love. Love yourself,
come on you stupid thing. Love yourself."
It's the complete opposite of that. You love
things to be, you let go, you relax, you don't
control things, you don't manage it, you don't measure it, you
don't say good, you don't say bad, cos
controlling comes from there. Stop all this
measuring and comparing who's the best, who's
the worse. I'm better than him but worse than her.
Stop all of that. You can't compare yourself,
you can't compare this moment to the next
moment. Be still. If you do that, your mind
stops moving, stays at home, comes inside,
mindfulness starts getting very bright, you
get blissed out. But you just blissed out,
but wisdom doubts you, that's what they always say,
the truth is inside. Inside the moments,
present moments, not the next moments, not
the last moments, it's now, it's in silence,
in the middle of this, in the middle
of the moment, in the middle of the mind. So
hard to find that middle,always moving
somewhere else, we always do. It's the mental
training in meditation and silent times.
To have a nice home when you
can just do nothing at all, really relaxed,
absolute no doing, just breathe, moments of peace.
Many times people have those moments when you're sitting
by the beach, nothing to do, all their problems
in the world, all the things that need to be done,
they don't open up now. The moments of
silence, the moments of peace, moments of
acceptance, moments where they love the world for
what it is and not trying to fix it, not trying
to fix themselves or fix their
partner or fix their house or fix the world.
Don't fix anything, then you are not in a fix
anymore. Ok, thanks for that question.
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