Dealing with Grief, Depression and Despair - Ajahn Brahmali - 20200224

the reason that you are so far away from me is because i am i'm the most dangerous person here yeah i've just been traveling around to kl and everywhere so i'm really dangerous i'm like radioactive so stay away from me here it is not just a joke it's not true to that so so anyway so welcome everyone there and uh the uh tonight's topic is a continuation of a topic that we had last time i was here that was in a month when was like christmas new year something like that yeah new year's okay random new year's yeah yeah yeah actually before it doesn't matter and that at that time we talked about the idea of dying yeah and kind of how to deal with death especially our own mortality yeah and then it was said that we should also talk about how to deal with other people's death your family members friends and all these kind of things because that is slightly different your own death is one thing yeah someone else close to you dying is actually something else and how we deal with these things is also i mean is obviously very closely related to each other but there is also a distinction between those things and it's useful to think about these things in slightly different ways so for that reason i think it's a good idea to carry on yeah and uh corby it's been corbett 19 season is a good time to talk about this kind of issues anyway so it's good i'm glad to see people in singapore are pretty relaxed about these things because i i went out today with your president hong kong who went out and people were still having good time enjoying coffees and things together yes it wasn't not taking it too seriously which is which is great otherwise you're destroying your life by worrying about these things so what i want to start is to start by one of those very fundamental teachings of the buddha is actually specifically about this and one of the things that buddha says there are certain themes that as human beings or anyone really we should reflect upon on a regular basis yeah and often it is five different themes and one of these themes is very very simple idea that i would be separated and basically separated from everything that is dear and pleased to me in this in this life and this is one of the fundamental themes of reflection on the buddhist path i must be separated and departed from everything dear and agreeable to me in this life and this is exactly what this is about yeah when someone dear to you is passing away someone is sick someone dies and then you grieve and you feel depressed about it and all of these kind of things this is exactly the purpose of this kind of reflection to get you uh you know to understand this issue what it is all about it's a fundamental part of the buddhist path and uh so because of that and it's not just that but one of the other interesting things about this if you look at the noble eightfold path yeah the four noble true is the noble eightfold path has eight factors and the first factor is right view right yes yeah so the first one is right view now if you look at the definition how right view is taught throughout the pseudesa as the first factor of the noble eightfold path it is always it starts off by saying birth is suffering then it says old age is suffering here then you have illness is suffering corporate 19 is suffering yeah it doesn't specifically say that but i mean you know it's kind of implied yeah and then it says it would have been pretty impressive if the buddha said that but and then it says death death is suffering this is the beginning of right viewer and it's kind of astonishing when you read that because i think it's bleeding obvious that these things are suffering why does the buddha need to say these things and of course the reason why he needs to say these things because it is on the one hand is it is obvious but on the other hand it is not yeah and this is the foundation of the entire spiritual path and he talks about more things it talks about separation from the liked association with the dislike not getting what you want and all of these kind of things as well but they're all in the same ballpark yeah about separation and from the things that you love and you like in this world it's all roughly about the same thing here things that are obvious in one way but that we haven't really taken on board fully in another way this is why it is so interesting and of course once you have that right view yeah the next thing that happens you start to get right intention and right intention really just means that you are having new goals in your life new purposes new aims your life is starting to change change direction a little bit yeah and sometimes a lot it changes the direction a lot because you realize that there are some fundamental issues with life that need to be resolved and the only way you're going to resolve those is by changing your aim and purpose in existence in life so it's a very powerful thing this thing we call you know right viewer and that right view often comes about precisely when there is difficulties when there are troubles in your life yeah the potential there whenever there is a difficulty there is some suffering in your existence the potential of that suffering is that they can give rise to right view right understanding yeah that is the power and as soon as you realize that that you can kind of give rise to all this right view and all this correct way of thinking about life from the difficulties that you have once you realize that it takes away some of the suffering straight away here because you understand the potential that this difficult situation actually has for you to change how you think about everything and to move you in a better direction as a consequence and once you think like that it's not so bad anymore yeah already it kind of lightens some of the burden because you understand there is a possibility here which is very profound and very deep in fact it is so profound and deep and i made this point here before i think maybe a couple of years ago or something here it is so profound and deep that if you look at the life of the buddha before he became the buddha the reason why the buddha the buddha to be became the buddha was precisely because he reflected on death and dying and these issues in a very deep way huh yeah if you i don't know if you some of you will know this but if you go back to the buddha's life story where he talks about the things that he did as he started out he always starts out by saying i recognize that i was subject to illness i am subject to all danger i'm subject to death and yet i go out into the world and search for all of these other things that are subject to exactly the same thing yeah and that was kind of his breakthrough moment when he decided to become a monk he decided to go forth and that is what led to buddhism that's why we are here today yeah so that is the power of this reflection is extremely powerful so when you are have a problem in your life that is the potential outcome of those problems if you use them wisely yeah if you reflect properly about these problems you will gradually move in this direction and of course the ultimate result of that is the highest happiness in the world that is the ultimate outcome of those things uh so very very interesting so uh already yeah if you tell people this people think oh yeah that's actually pretty pretty cool yes maybe i should be happy that i get sick yeah maybe you should you know maybe this is kind of you turn things the other way around maybe you should be happy sometimes because sometimes you meet with these disastrous things and it turned out to be massive blessings in disguising but uh let's come back to earth again if now we've already taken off to the bang highest level already so let's kind of bring things back to a little bit to reality we need to people eye on so many different stages in the spiritual practice some have been buddhists and been practicing for a long time and they are able to deal with kind of really profound concepts and things that other people are much more basic in the understanding yeah so how do we start from the very basics if someone is getting into very serious trouble and having all kind of problems in their life how do we actually deal with that in a very simple way here and this is where ajam brahms stories come in very handy yeah they are very very very useful and one of the things about these stories by ajam brahm is that they have so many different levels to them you know they are on the one hand they're very entertaining especially when asham brahm tells them not this entertaining when i tell them but without drum tells them they're really really entertaining and so they have an entertainment value but they also have an immediate spiritual value but then they have an intermediate spiritual value and then they have a very profound spiritual value so these are the stories you can use yeah for yourself and also for others to kind of get started with this dealing with these difficult issues grief depression despair and these kind of things in your life and of course one of the really basic ones is the idea of these two will pass yeah it's such a simple teaching yeah yeah it's such a and and yet it is necessary to tell people this again and again and again because we forget that these two will pass when you are really grieving if you are really depressed it tends to feel permanent yeah it tends to feel that you are stuck in this you can't see any way out and because you can't see any way out that is exactly why it feels permanent and this comes from the sense of self we tend to project that sense of self into these negative feelings and then they uh feel like permanent as a as a consequence so just a reminder that these two will pass yeah and if you have some idea of the nature of things some idea that this obviously must be true then it will carry that will be enough to carry you through her it will be enough to kind of come out of the other side and see the light at the other end of the tunnel and then you will cat you won't actually do anything very stupid on the way such as you know committing suicide or doing some other stupid act as a consequence very simple teaching here but also actually very profound at the same time one of the other stories about stories like goodbye who knows i'm sure you have all heard the story goodbye who knows many times before does anyone here does not know the story goodbye who knows everyone knows the story goodbye now it's probably too many times already so i'll just tell it in very short form the story goodbye who knows and the story is the story about this king who gets his finger cut off yeah and the doctor cuts off the finger and the doctors kind of seems like a bit of a kind of countless guy he always says goodbye who knows to the king yeah i don't know goodbye to knows cut off the finger okay off to jail you go he chucks his doctor into jail and then later on the king goes into the on a hunting trip and on this hunting trip he get gets caught by this savage cannibals yeah this kind of classic comic book savage cannibals and it gets tied to a kind of a a post or something and they're going to kill him because they're going to make a sacrifice of this king so they can kind of make their gods happy and then at the last moment one of the cannibals says but he's missing a finger we can't sacrifice an imperfect human being to our gods our gods will be not be happy if we sacrifice an imperfect being all the fingers have to be there okay king you can go and then of course the king goes back to his doctors doctor thank you you are my favorite doctor you are the most wonderful come out of prison we will give you a big bonus or whatever yeah and then you know the doctor says as usual good bad who knows that but uh the point of that story is that uh it's it's a nice story but of course the point is that outcomes are so uncertain yeah it looks like things like are really really bad you lose a finger actually it's not such a big deal to lose a finger anyway we have one of the disciples in perth he has half a finger there quarter finger missing there another finger and it's perfectly seems to be perfectly okay so it can't be that bad but the point is that you know the short-term outcome of things or the medium-term outcome sometimes things turn out very differently here and in the deeper sense if you use these lessons in a really wise way they turn out radically differently here and this is why buddhism could even arise in the world from someone using these lessons in a very very profound way and of course that was the buddha himself so that this is a story that has so many levels yeah and if you go to someone who is grieving who is in despair who is having a really hard time and you tell them goodbye who knows they will probably get the idea to some extent yeah because it is kind of obvious and then you tell them a funny story and you have a joke and then kind of you're on the right track already here another one of ajam brahma's very famous stories is the truckload of danger yeah i'm sure you all know the truckload of tongue story truckload is someone has a house and they have a garden on the outside and in the middle of the night a big truck comes yeah you are not even at home you are away somewhere you have no idea the truck is coming and the truck truck dumps a large load of dung in your garden there yeah you what do you do do you get upset if that happens do you kind of kind of do what you do so that's most people get upset yeah most people get angry they get even depressed yeah i don't want to have a big truck a lot of drunk in your garden but of course the answer to that and this is kind of the beautiful thing to take that dung dig it into your garden to help your plants to grow and then eventually you get a very beautiful garden here this is exactly the same thing again the truckload of dung is in our life are the things that lead to depression and sadness and all that those kind of things if we use them wisely if you use them unwisely it's going to be problematic but if you use them wisely they're going to be a massive boost for growth in your life and they're going to make an enormous difference in how you deal with things and eventually they may come you know come around to something very powerful and very beautiful so this is the starting point yeah this is the very beginning of how to deal with these problems and don't underestimate these simple stories uh they're actually very profound i always think it's a shame you know people tell these stories and people laugh and they have a good time and they forget often the profound meaning of these things they're very very profound and they go a long long way if you use them wisely here so reflect on them in the proper way then it's really going to make a difference in your life still we want to take it a bit deeper yeah it's not really enough especially if you are serious about buddhist practice and the spiritual path you want to take it a bit deeper than this and very often in life it is like sometimes we need to be hit by these things before we wake up yeah when you're hit by something very powerful and difficult to bang then actually things happen ideally we don't want to be hit by these things ideally we want to understand this from the outset so we don't have to go through all the suffering before we learn but in reality often we have to be hit by these things before we really learn the problem and learn the lesson and then change our mind and move in a different direction yeah and then gradually we kind of head head there so if you are the kind of person who is having problems or you're not having problems yeah the idea is if you understand that these things are problematic then the very first thing we should always do is to start to understand the power of the buddhist teachings to give us a sense of a way out of these things yeah so come back to this teachings don't allow life to become so important to you that enjoyment of life and all that stuff is so kind of you get so caught up in the enjoyment that you forget the reality of life because if you forget the reality of life then it's going to hit you far far far far worse than it otherwise would so use the times when you are happy when things are going well to learn dhamma to understand what is about to do some meditation and practice to let go a little bit of the world outside of you to build up a good heart and all of these things this is the time to do it yeah and then you build up something there which becomes very useful for the future so come back to these teachings again and again understanding that there is a problem here there's an issue that actually will hit you down the track that is the ideal way of doing this yeah because you have that understanding there here because these teachings are there basically the purpose of the buddha's teaching is to overcome suffering and this is obviously a very important part of the suffering and as you keep on developing these things it is weird you kind of gradually emerge from the swamp of suffering and problems and problems in your life merely by listening to the teachings by allowing them gradually to penetrate insider and to make a big difference so this is how it kind of gradually emerged from this is the ideal way of dealing with this you build up the things outside before the problems arise yeah and then you will be on the right track but what i want to talk about now is some more specific ways of dealing with grief yeah dealing with problems someone dies someone is very sick some more kind of direct immediate practical advice and this is very practical already but maybe some kind of immediate ideas how to think about this and one of the uh surprisingly simple ways of thinking about especially death yeah also when someone gets very sick because that reminds you of death one of the kind of obvious ways of thinking about this is to remember the buddhist idea of rebirth yeah so what rebirth means is that if someone else dies from you or they are about to die from you very often the reality is that we will often meet again in future lives yeah it is not as if the reason why death often seems so terrible because it seems like such an absolute end this is the end it's like a wall shutting you away from somebody else but actually it isn't really like that there's a tendency for humans to meet in one life and then meet in the next one again and you may have heard many of these kind of stories i mean we hear these stories all the time yeah people get reborn to have an out-of-body experience or a near-death experience and then you meet kind of relatives yeah in some kind of higher realm somewhere it's a very common thing that people have when they have this kind of experiences and they're not really religious experience atheists have exactly the same experience and the reason why this happens is because we have certain attachments and when you have certain attachments and you have similar kind of kama yeah come on what drives you then on from one life to the next one that attachment will tend to draw us together in the future so sometimes we grieve without really understanding that actually maybe it won't be that long before we meet up again yeah okay bye bye mum bye bye dad bye-bye daughter or son or whoever it is but uh see me perhaps we'll see you again soon and that takes away so much of the problem yeah it's more like taking a holiday apart then it is a final barrier between two people and this is the buddhist idea of rebirth if you take the idea of rebirth seriously well you can assume that this actually is going to be some truth to that and the nice thing about that idea is that it also works for other religions as well so if you have friends who are christians or muslims or whatever because they often have an idea of a heavenly realm you can even help them yeah and we can maybe even help people why free thinkers free thinkers who believe in rebirth are there any of those free thinking rebirth that's i think that's pretty that's okay lots of atheists in the world who believe in rebirth apparently so it's okay you can be a a atheist and believe in rebirth very quite common these days and then you can use this idea to think okay holiday apart what does holiday apart mean well according to the old english saying absence makes the heart grow fonder yeah so you get a kind of a few a few a little bit of time apart and then when you meet again yay you know now we can meet again even better than before that's kind of the idea it's a very simple thing it's not very profound yeah it's very kind of it's a starting block kind of thing but it's enough to give you a little bit of a kind of immediate um immediate letting go of the heartache a little bit straight away that is kind of the idea behind these kind of things yeah simple and basic but still very useful so try that with people and sometimes people who haven't had much contact with buddhism or spiritual life they will be able to relate to these kind of things but then we need to take it a little bit deeper here and the next level is really to remember that what really matters in life is not how long we live but the quality of life that we have yeah what kind of person we have been these are the things that really matter in life so very often it is about remembering the good qualities in other people yeah and then to rejoice if someone has had a good life and one of the great things about being part of the buddhist fellowship is that there are a lot of good people in a place like this so when someone here is in trouble someone here gets sick it's not difficult to rejoice in the goodness of what they have been doing and there's something very transformative that happens when you rejoice in someone's goodness in their good qualities yeah and you think wow you have lived really well well done yeah you can pass on you don't have to be too much too concerned about it because it's good anyway it has this transformative feeling instead of focusing on the sadness which is the loss instead you focus on the good things in that person's life and it becomes an exercise in gratitude yeah gratitude for a person well-lived has been there in your life and what a wonderful thing that is when you can transform it in that way here and this was what happened to me to a large extent because i as i mentioned here last time when i was here my father passed away is almost a year ago now not quite 11 months ago or something here and i knew he was going to die yeah he was kind of his cancer was getting worse and worse and it was only a matter of time but you never know exactly when someone is going to die but you have a feeling it's going to happen sooner and so i decided this is what i have been trained to do as a monkey this is what i tell everyone else to do so i should probably do it myself as well so what i did and it was only a few weeks before he died i wrote decide to write him a long letter and in this lecture i kind of summarized all the qualities of my father that really inspired me here yeah he in many ways he was a very good man he wasn't perfect of course but in many ways a very very good manner and i spent most of my life finding faults with my parents like many many people do her but then when i sat down and tried to write out all the good qualities i couldn't stop yeah eventually i had to stop because i couldn't read that far it was too much to read it so okay i better stop now it was only it wasn't that long but you know what i mean it and i carried on and carried on and then you write it up very nicely and then i read it out i thought wow this is a far more precise description of my father that all the fault finding i've been doing over all these years and then i typed it into the computer and fired it off as a long email and it was very powerful because it actually when a father or a parent gets to hear something like that from their child they're not used to that yeah a child parent relationship can often be quite difficult and hard they can often be clashes there will be arguments and all kinds of things but when your son tells you certainly about all the good qualities all that you have valued and you tell it in a way which is heartfelt in a way which is properly structured all coming together it really touches a parent's heart and i could feel that i spoke to my father on the phone i knew that somehow he had been touched by this he wasn't obvious it was going to be the case but it was obvious when i spoke to him afterwards and that is good for the person who is dying but it's also really good for the person who was behind yeah for myself because then i felt i had kind of resolved all the issues everything that was there which wasn't kind of done with now i had said those things i really wanted to say to my father i had said at that time through that letter to him and very so it was a very very very useful thing and then when my father died only a few weeks later it was actually more or less by accident it was so close together a few weeks later it wasn't for me it was actually quite easy here it was easy to let go i felt i had done everything i could to make that thing be easy and nice so take the opportunity take the opportunity to show that you care yeah with people around you and very often we don't need to wait till someone is sick or dying we can do it all the time and because we're all subject to sickness and dying at any time really so now is the chance to show that you really care for someone else so that was that reminded me that my sister she only died a few months later him and of course i repeated the exercise yeah and i mean i have been trying to do these things for many years already but now i got really really serious about it and that was really the difference and in both cases was extremely successful and now what am i left with i'm left with a very fond memory of my father and sister as good people who lived well who didn't waste their life with just nonsense and stupidity here but it actually did things in the right way here and what a wonderful thing it is to have that memory here so this is how you then can change things around yeah and lessen some of those burdens people feel guilt sometimes if you do that kind of thing you will never feel any guilt or shame or anything bad about it whatsoever why because you have done your duty here you've done what you need to do to kind of get these things sorted out and it is yeah it really it really does work so that is a part of that yeah so you shift your attitude around and you start to then feel a sense of gratitude to people instead of thinking about yourself one of the problems with grief and sadness when someone dies is that it is a little bit you know it is really a bit selfish yeah this is a problem with it and once you understand that it is a bit selfish because who are you really concerned with well not so much with a dying person you're concerned with your own grief you're concerned with the fact that your life is going to be more empty without them you may think that you are concerned about them but actually you're not but that's not really true if you think you might be very careful it is your problem that you are concerned with and once you get that once you see that actually you're being a bit selfish then it takes away some of the nobility of the sorrow the sorrow isn't very noble anymore yeah and if you take away some of the nobility you have more uh motivation to get away from that and move in a different direction when you understand that really it is really about you and when it is too much about you actually it is not so interesting anymore so uh these little things can be can be useful there's another story another way of thinking about these things that this is a story that uh i tell at funeral services and arjun brahm tells us i actually got it from brahma originally but i kind of changed a little bit so you know you learn from your teacher and you adapt and you move on and you make it worse or better who knows but so this is a you know when someone has passed away actually how do we make that shift from uh being sad to being having gratitude instead and ajahn brahm gives a simile or you go to a concert yeah when you go to a concert a beautiful concert and you it doesn't have to be a concert it can be maybe you go on a holiday overseas yeah or you go to some kind of maybe theaters you see something with a special it can be a meditation experience as well which really anything which lifts you out of your ordinary life and you see something special and you feel afterwards wow that was really really powerful yeah my ordinary life is so boring compared to these kind of special um situations that you get into and then afterwards so after this wonderful experience you have you come back to your ordinary life here in singapore yeah a little bit stressful your same old job the same old apartment or whatever it is anything yeah and then you can choose yeah the choice is well i had this beautiful experience in my life either i can now be depressed and sad because i lost that beautiful experience i came to john grove had this marvelous meditation experience when will i get it again and as soon as you think that you'll never get it back again anyway so or when i went to this beautiful holiday overseas i heard this beautiful symphony orchestra whatever it is and now i have to live this ordinary life and you can feel depressed because you lost something that gave you a very special kind of uplift in your life but that is when you look at the loss but there's another way of thinking about that and that is the thought this is my ordinary life if i didn't have those special uplifting moments if this is everything i had this ordinary gray kind of grayish life yeah kind of the same old routine all the time my life would be so much more poorer i would have this incredibly poor life if i never had any of these special things and when you think like that you start to have gratitude towards the experience yeah thank me thank my friends thank everyone who made it possible for me to have this special experience and you feel a sense of gratitude and you feel a sense of uplift that you had the opportunity here and you can see where i'm going here it's the same thing with people yeah either we feel sad because they're gone because we feel the loss or whatever or we feel a sense of gratitude for having had someone in our life who made a difference who added something to us who gave us something to think about yes who gave us some wisdom or whatever it is that they gave us and if you look at you thank you for being part of my life thank you for adding something to this existence which would have been so much poorer without your taking part in my life and then you move away from grief and you move to a sense of gratitude yeah and then this is a very beautiful way of transcending some of the sorrows and the problems in life it's not going to be instantaneous yeah it takes a bit of practice and training here but gradually you move in that direction and then things become far less bad as a consequence so these are a few ways of dealing with grief now the next one is one i've already touched on slightly before her and that is the idea that to be able to deal with any difficulties in life depends on your resilience how resilient are you as a person and that resilience depends on your kind of mental uh your mental world yeah how strong you are mentally your ability to deal with these kind of things so how do we build up that ability and the way we build that ability is to create qualities inside of yourself that are independent of the troubles of the world yeah the troubles of the world are always going to be there you're always going to lose things they're always going to be there but your ability to deal with it depends on the qualities you have built up inside of yourself so if you have strong qualities if you have inner contentment if you have a sense of access to an inner joy sometimes that you can find it if you have an inner peace that you have gained through your meditational practice if you have a wisdom about the world if you have compassion for the people around you if you have built up all of these things yeah to some extent and this is very much part and parcel of what the spiritual path is about then when the problems come you will have the resilience to deal with them you're still going to be sad you're still going to be difficult to deal with but far less difficult to deal with it if you didn't have those qualities there to support you at that time so this is why it is so important to start early yeah don't wait know that this is in store for every one of us start from the moment you are born yeah come out kind of straight away do an act of kind generosity straight away okay give them a little bit of time but you know and because you want to get going straight away you can't mess around with this and then so this is why it is so nice and nice to see young people who have some idea of the spiritual path because it's quite hard often when you're young because you're young you're strong you kind of go and enjoy yourself in the world it's quite hard to realize the importance of these things but there are some people who are young who are very mature who are ready yeah and they will actually get it from a very early age that this is important the buddha of course being one of those so build up that resilience that is what you're doing now come back to these teachings yeah and you're not only building up resilience you're building up everything of course you're building up your whole life and then when these things happen you will be ready for it so that is a another way of thinking about this another way of thinking about grief and sadness and to kind of help you to deal with these issues is just to remember at all times how fragile life actually is and this is this precisely the idea of this kind of contemplation yeah the idea that everything that is dear and pleasing to me must be separated from me it is remembering the fragility of existence yeah it is so uncertain this body that you have how reliable is it it's pretty unreliable yeah there's probably illnesses in here right now is things going on how long is it going to last i don't mean to make you depressed that is meant to make you kind of realistic about this this body is so complex well i mean if you look at some of the doctors around here what happened to the doctors that yeah body is so complex there's kind of all these blood vessels tiny ones going everywhere there's all this nerves going through the body yeah there's all these organs stacked together there's a lymph system it's just amazing even functions at all i'm always surprised that even works at all this body being so incredibly complex as it is it's a miracle so i feel like i could die any second pretty much because of the complexity of this body it's not true kim the body is super duper complex yeah all this and every cell is working yeah every cell is like a little engine kind of you know producing new burning nutrients and oxygen and what have you it's just so remarkable i it's just hard to imagine and when you kind of get into this idea of the vulnerability of life how incredibly vulnerable we all are how fragile everything is yeah you start to care more you start to care for the people around you because you know they are fragile and this beautiful simile that was always spoken by ajahn shah apparently i mean i i wasn't there i wouldn't know but ajahn brahm always tells this story the beautiful assembly when adam shah takes a glass yeah a cup and he holds it up you've already heard this many times before but it's a nice story here he holds it up this glass perfect glass and it says to the audience a large audience of monks and lay people says do you see the crack in that glass women crack in that glass are you nuts at a child it's a perfect glass and ajar said there is a crack in that glass and the reason there is a crack in that glass is because it glasses fragile because a glass is fragile one day it's going to fall down on the ground yeah on a not maybe not this this ground is too soft maybe but concrete on the concrete ground and the moment it falls on a concrete ground it's gonna shatter into a thousand pieces that's what glasses do when they fall on concrete on a concrete floor so the crack is already there it's already waiting to fall apart at any time and the point is of the similarly is that because you know the crack is already there you care for the glass you put it down gently that's why you have this beautiful little soft thing here yeah so the cup doesn't crack when i put it down actually i forgot about drinking my tea that's a good point that's dukka oh that's much better already so you care for the glass you care for the cup you put it down on a soft surface and you look after it properly in the same way when we understand the fragility of human life we care more for each other here we know that we could die at any time we know how easily we can get sick we know how quickly this body can you know succumb to all kind of problems and cancers and heart disease and whatnot and because of that we look after each other more and this is kind of the radical outcome of understanding the impermanence of things of understanding illness and death we become better human beings you get kinder hearts because that is what actually is the outcome of this if you know a person could die tomorrow how are you going to treat them if you know you're never going to see someone again how will they treat them there you will treat them in a different way with more care within with a different kind of attitude and this is really one of the beautiful outcomes of thinking about death and thinking about illness in the right way it makes you a better person and one of my favorite similes in buddhism that brings this out beautiful it's a simile i use all the time because i i like it so much that is the simile of the borrowed goods borrowed goods borrowed things according to the buddha almost everything we have in our life actually everything we have in our life is borrowed we don't really own it yeah we it feels like we own stuff but actually it's an illusion everything we have is borrowed we only have it for a time then we're gonna have to give it up and this is true also for our family members our friends all the people around you all the bf members ajam brahm the buddha everything yeah it's like that all these borrowed goods so if things are borrowed goods how do you what is your attitude your attitude starts to change yeah if you think about yourself if you have a car that you own compared to a car that you have rented what is the difference in your attitude to the car you own compared to the car you have rented it's quite different isn't it if someone kind of rams into and dents your car if it's your car you get probably get really upset somebody dented my car wow that's terrible it's my car they have no right to dent my car but if you then a rental car you might not like it but you're going to shrug your shoulders mostly it's not such a big deal it's a very different attitude so the idea is that we remember everything in life is rented everything life is temporary here so you look after the rental car you don't treat it badly because you are a good person with uh sensible morals and all of that so you treat it well but you know how to deal with it in such a way as not to get attacked too attached to it not to hold on too strongly because you're only renting it for a short while so the idea is to move your perception gradually over to the idea that everything in your life is borrowed yeah everything is temporary here it means you attach a little bit less but not only do you attach less through that lessening of attachment you also care more and that is the magic more caring less attachment in one go that is really what is so powerful here and this then goes for your family members yeah it goes for your work colleagues it goes for your bf colleagues it goes for me you're going to be kind to me as well there actually you are there's no problem there it goes for everyone yeah everyone coming together in this way here and that this is the magic in my thinking about these things the right way it makes you better wiser more uh more suited person to live this life and a good one here and as you do that you change your attitude towards what really matters i'm not going to talk all that much more and i'm going to tell you one story which is one of my favorite stories and i have known about this for a long period of time but it's taken me a long time to really understand what this is about yeah and this is this is going to be my final kind of what i'll say tonight before i we can do some q a or whatever um but um this is about uh the thing that happened that bodhinyana monastery in 1991 that was before i got there about three and a half years before i arrived at bodhinata monastery here and this was when we had a big fire coming through the monastery have you heard about the big fire we had upon monastery it was a massive fire it was one of the hottest the hottest day at that time in in perth never been so hot before 46 point something degrees yeah 46 is really really hot especially no humidity is the blaring sun yeah really super duper hot and it was uh on the 13th of january it was already well into the summer yeah this is the summer in the southern southern hemisphere so it's all in january february when you have the summer time so it was way into the summer everything was really dry yeah ready to burn really fast and then there was strong wind strong wind fans the flames that makes it worse this was just about the worst possible conditions you could have and right then during those worst possible conditions a fire comes up i'm not sure if it was lit or what happened it's uncertain how these fires start sometimes but the fire started just downwind from the monastery yeah and maybe an hour or so away and then moving towards the monastery here and this was a time 1991 was a time when azam brahm had spent the previous eight years like he came there in the start of the monastery in 83 november so it would have been maybe seven and a half years or something and so he had spent his whole time building up the monastery yeah and he worked really really hard ajahn brahm is this amazing person he i don't know he seems to be able to do everything yeah he can build houses he can meditate he can do physics i don't know how he does it they can read paulie it's just he's kind of an extraordinary person but so he built this monastery he was basically the builder yeah and sometimes you have this you have to sign a paper who is the builder some of these papers had signed ajahn brahm on the bottom he literally was the builder of the monastery so uh and uh some of the things he did were absolutely crazy there's a there's a you know that one of the things that did you many of you have been to perth yeah you know what it's like down there we have the main hall and the main hall you have the apex you have the roof going up yeah and the very apex where the roof meets at the top is maybe eight nine meters above ground yeah it's pretty high it's really really high up there and so the the whole thing was finished all that whole wall was finished there was no roof or anything like that the whole wall was just really shaky like this and it was all finished except for the very top bricks yeah there was maybe six or seven bricks at the top that hadn't been laid and then aj abram this was when he was still a little bit slimmer than he is now yeah a little bit more fit than his these days so he so he took seven bricks in one hand a bucket of mortar yeah in the other hand together with a little trowel to kind of smear the mortar or whatever and he walks up this incline and there's nothing on either side there's a straight down on the other side but because his bricks is like a nice ladder you have to go walk up he walks up to the top he lays those rigs on the top yeah basically he's risking his life that's the reality lays the bricks and then comes down again and that's what he did that was kind of the his commitment to the monastery it was 100 and how many percent way over 100 i think that's that's going way too far in what normally what you should do any if any kind of uh health inspector or whatever work safety inspector had seen him they would have kind of fired him straight away i was completely complete madness what he was doing here and i would have probably fainted because i don't really like heights very much that probably would have been really really bad news for me but that's what his commitment yeah and he had worked often ten hours a day seven days a week year in year out to build up that monastery basically it was his work and his job and now comes this fire yeah and when this fire gets very close there comes a point because the fire brigade is there because they know that this is really really dangerous there comes a point when the fire break gate says there's no hope anymore huh yeah there's no chance nothing we can do about this we're going to have to evacuate and so they evacuate they get into the cars the drive out of the monastery here and at that moment ajam ram told me at that moment i knew the monastery was going to burn down well he thought the monastery was going to burn down yeah he because everyone was saying the fire was so bad the fire brigade was so unambiguous about it yeah that monastery is going to burn down there and so what was his reaction when the monastery was going to burn up this is the interesting part yeah this is what is really interesting because this is like having attachment to things you spent so many years building everything up and he said what happened at that moment i knew it was going to burn down he said at that moment i just let go and i was ready to start from scratch the following day yeah isn't that kind of astonishing i when i heard that i was really astonished because you usually when we think about the superpowers of you know of in the suit as it like flying through the air or whatever but this to me is even more of a superpower how can you put your whole life into something let it go like that and then could start from scratch again the following day how is that possible and so i asked aj brahm how was that possible how could you do that almost everyone else in the whole world would be devastated your life's work is in ruins yeah your baby everything you have lived for for those years certainly it's all gone how are you able to let go so fast and starting in the following day this to me was just like it was almost like a miracle when i heard that and then he told me why he said because i was never focused on the result i didn't do this to get the monastery i didn't do this to kind of build up something very special i did it because it was a good thing to do i did it as an act of charity an act of generosity the process was what mattered yeah how i did it to help to be of assistant to do something good in the world that's why i did it the result was not the point and because the process was what was important the following day he could restart the same process again yeah and this is such a beautiful way of thinking about life and this is what i have been talking about here myself before many times as well we shouldn't focus so much on the results because the results are always uncertain how long is someone going to deliver how long is the monastery going to last how long am i going to have my job will i succeed in my project or not all of these things are uncertain instead we focus on the process what kindness can i put into this what hard qualities can i put into my immediate relationship with the people around me here what these are the things that matter and when that is what matters when that is the purpose of your life then the result is actually starts to become less important yeah and you can deal with it if it doesn't work out you can deal with it because if it doesn't work out you have something far more valuable in your heart that we carry with you into the future that is what you're going to remember in the long term when you're on your on your deathbed you're not going to think so much about whether you succeeded in academia or you succeeded in your job or not what you're going to recall are the qualities of your heart that you carry with you into the future here so that is the uh one of my favorite stories with ajahn brahm because it to me it shows an incredible power and ability to let go and do something which actually almost nobody in this world is capable of doing here so it was extraordinary i was really taken aback when i heard a story i thought it was really kind of drives home the point of remembering everything dear and agreeable to you must become separated from you must become otherwise yeah when you remember that all the time then this becomes your attitude and then you can deal with all the difficulties of life as a consequence okay i'm gonna stop and stop there so uh there you are here thank you aja can we say three sadhus please the bodhian away excellent well done so do we have the questions ready the question box or perhaps you can start out from the audience anybody has any questions i actually maybe um i can start off yeah please um so in this time whether we have a climate of fear because of covet 19 do you have any uh encouraging words for us or how we should go on with our lives we're having a balance between fear and uh uh trying to get on with our lives okay yeah yeah well you know i i mean one of the things about this one i think one of the most important things is to be well informed about these things because there's often a lot of the fear comes from social media and the kind of fake news and all these kind of things and you can trust so little what you actually see and but when you i think look at the reality on the ground that the corvette 19 doesn't seem so incredibly dangerous no it has been you know when you get the flu even just an ordinary fluid there's always a chance of dying from a flu there's always a certain percentage chance and covet 19 might be a little bit more dangerous than ordinary fluid but not that much more dangerous it's a tiny even if you get it the chance of actually it being very serious is actually very very small so let's be be well informed about it i think this is one of them one of the first things so uh so once you have that idea that the chance of dying a lot of the fear i think disappears straight away here and uh so that is uh i think one of the most one of the most important things but apart from that i think you know everything else i have been saying tonight has kind of been kind of on that topic anyway so uh one of the problems is i just came from malaysia i've just been kind of doing this very intensive teachings over there so i don't have all that much my energy is a bit kind of depleted tonight so i feel a bit sort of if i'm trying to make my brain work but so uh but anyway so yeah so don't i mean the thing about fear is it has many other things about as well when you are fearful you often make bad decisions yeah this is one of the problems of fear so you have this general idea and buddhism if you want to make a decision about anything you should never make it when your mind is out of balance you know by any defilements or fear or whatever it is you should so staying if you want to make good decisions in life stay cool yeah and kind of be here be wise about things just that memory that idea that you need to stay cool to make wise decisions already kind of cools you down a little bit okay let me just kind of be be smart about this and then you can kind of make good decisions but uh for me it is you know the it would take a lot for me to cancel a visit to kl or singapore just because of some illness because i for me the idea of monastic life is to do good things and if i can't do the good things then i kind of destroys the purpose of when i say no if i die in the process of doing good things it's not a big deal yeah you're gonna if you're gonna die you're gonna die in the best possible way that would be the best possible way to die that's what i how i think about these things so thank you ajahn i'll save you from the viruses by handling the papers thank you ajahn for sharing some people say that time heals or wounds but from personal experience time does not heal how can we cope with loss if we are haunted by it even years afterwards okay so um if it doesn't heal then there would be normally a reason why it doesn't heal yeah there will be something there from the past that is kind of lingering somehow maybe some kind of guilt feeling or something which doesn't feel good so what you have to do then is you have to learn to contemplate that issue in such a way that you can release those feelings and this is really the critical thing here i would think in this case it might it might be some kind of guilt feeling it's just a guess i from the way you put it so what you have to do is you have to remember and again this comes back to this very basic buddhist ideas that very often we are not really yet when we do things we're not really in charge of ourselves we do things because of cause and conditions and all of these kind of things and so you have to learn about yourself learn about your own limitations learn about what you really can do as a human being and remember that it is not even if you feel guilty it wasn't really in many ways it wasn't your fault what those things that happened you may have made a mistake but making mistakes is human we all make mistakes and you have to accept yourself for those mistakes and then let go of it and then carry on and have compassion for yourself if you understand how conditioned you really are as a human being you will always have compassion for yourself because you know that you are driven towards the problem you are run towards it through all of these uh past maybe even past life so whatever it is that drive you in that way in your ability to steer your own life is only so very very limited and because of that you can let go of the guilt feeling here yeah and the beautiful thing about that is if you're able to think about your own life in this way and understand that your own limitations with these things is it giving some bad noise if you if you hear if you uh get this about yourself and you understand the problem with yourself you also understand other people are in exactly the same boat and you start to forgive yourself and you forgive others and you actually create a far better life for you as a consequence so the critical thing there is to be able to forgive the past to understand the conditioning of human beings to understand how we are trapped by our past trapped by our personality trapped by our habits it's a strange thing to say trapped by your personality but that's really what it is our personality limits us in a certain way yeah you can't nobody can step out of your personality i'm going to be something else you have to be who you are it's the only way you can do things so it is like a trap so because of that you start to gradually learn to forgive and learn learn to let go of the past if it is something that happened with someone else and they made a mistake and you're haunted by that similar kind of thing to go through yeah understanding the conditioning process and then as you do that forgiving all sides of the of the equation and giving forgiving all sides of the equation and enabling enabling you eventually to forgive and let go of the whole thing here so it's a gradual thing here but here i think some of the best teachings that we have are actually the buddhist teachings one of the great things about the buddhist teachings that you have no idea of a self or a soul which is independent of external phenomena if you are if you have a self or a soul that is independent you would expect that self or soul to take charge and do the right thing here yeah the self yeah i know what is i should do the right thing but if that doesn't exist if all you are is this conditioned blob in sansara this boat you know drifting around the oceans of the world the condition this way condition that way here and how much responsibility do you have it liberates you from so much that responsibility here and it reminds you how important it is to be conditioned in the right way and you start to understand what you need to do to really carry on in the right direction so this i think maybe the answer to your question i'm not sure exactly obviously why you are haunted by the pastor but this is just an assumption on my part so hopefully that will be be useful there thank you arjan how do you prepare another when she is near death for a good rebirth okay i okay excellent wonderful how do you prepare someone who is for a good rebirth who is near death um but the best thing is to go to her hospital go to her bedside and be kind and remind her of all the wonderful qualities in her life yeah and say wow i really appreciate these things because it is so rare that we take time to really appreciate each other and make it very detailed make it very personal make it come from your heart yeah that this is what you really feel about this person and they will appreciate enormously if you tell them all you know about the things that you like about them the things that what they have given you through your life and it will give them another insight into their own character which they may not even be aware of themselves often we don't know how we touch other people yeah often we touch people in the most strangest kind of ways without being really aware that we do that and when someone tells us about these things we start to realize the effect of our lives in a positive way here and so it's a very powerful thing we can do and when someone dies with these thoughts in their mind that they have actually been of help to the world they have done something positive it will lift their mind up and that uplifted mind is the kind of mind which goes to a good destination in the future don't go to the bedside and cry too much yeah because that's not really that it's not very helpful go to the bedside instead and tell them these positive things and then ask them if there's anything you can do for them yeah maybe you can do some meditation with them or listen to some chanting together or you can just share a few jokes or whatever it is and ask them if there's anything like that you can do and uh keep those christians out of the the room who want to convert them on the deathbed yeah that's that's kind of the really bad ideas in the world that makes it very confusing and very hard to to really know what to do so that's i don't think that's very useful at all there so that is the best thing yeah and then you encourage them in the right way and also one of the things you can do which i i've been doing recently i've been doing a guide guided death meditation when i do retweets and i did that also in kl when i was there and a guided death meditation is a very great way of getting rid of fear of death because the death process for a person who has lived a reasonably good life is usually a very happy one towards the end of your life you are kind of your body is falling apart and things are shutting down it's very often very painful and very problematic and you can't really look after yourself yeah and other people have to do everything for you it's very it's very awkward and very kind of difficult in so many different ways and then when people kind of get into the idea that dying actually could be a liberating process where you feel liberated from so much stuff and you take them through a meditation that shows them how that liberation happens actually it releases so much of the kind of uncertainty anxiety around death of course there is always going to be some degree of anxiety there because it's kind of it's too unknown that's why it is so difficult but you can take away a lot of that so you can kind of go if you if you know the stages of dying yourself you can help them by speaking to them about the stages of dying and saying how it is a release from problems or whatever or you can do even a guided death meditation with them yeah to kind of show them how this how this works it was interesting there was a one of the participants in kl just now i'm not sure whoever it was and he or she after the meditation and said that well i was always so afraid yeah of dying my whole life i've been afraid of dying but in this meditation i wasn't afraid at all did i do something wrong here [Music] was i supposed to be afraid yeah that was kind of the question and of course that's the whole point you're not supposed to be afraid yeah it's supposed to release you from that fear to understand that death can be actually a very liberating beautiful peaceful experience especially for someone who is a you know has lived a relatively good life and done all the right things so these are the sort of things that i would [Music] recommend you to do and then you can actually you can actually be very supportive of people if you if you do this get these things right at the towards the very end okay how can you start being grateful is not easy when you are in negative thought how can you be grateful when you are in negative thoughts well you have to you have to start gently yeah and very kind of carefully with yourself and all thoughts are conditioned it's just a matter of applying yourself and if you apply yourself in the right way you will eventually overcome it you get people in this world who are very angry and by practicing the buddhist path gradually they overcome that anger and they often end up becoming very kind and gentle people as a consequence but it's a gradual thing it takes time yeah and this is the thing we have to learn so that gradualness that is important because these are deep seated habits so you have to just start very gently with yourself yeah and very knowing your negative minds and then moving towards this kind of ideas i had before about remembering the good qualities remembering how they have affected you remembering how they have given you something in your life yeah when i think about my own father i think that you know a lot of his qualities and so many things that i have learned from him he wasn't a buddhist or anything like that but sometimes people have natural spiritual qualities that they don't have to be a buddhist to have spiritual qualities and he had a lot of kind of this he was a very very generous man for example always willing to give there was never a matter of money or anything like that was always this incredibly outpouring of generosity towards everyone and there's such a beautiful quality yeah this kind of slightly uh this kind of broad mind yeah which kind of takes in everyone everyone is kind of included all the time and these are such wonderful things and then when i eventually become a monk yeah he wasn't very happy with that but eventually he'd allow me to become a monk as well that was kind of the biggest gift of all when it allows you to become a monkey so all of these things together when i look back i learned enormously amounts of my father and i'm so glad i had them and those qualities i carry them with me now yeah they have come in they have been kind of integrated into my personality and hopefully i'll bring them out and further on into the world and i think that is what he wanted he wanted his qualities to be carried on yeah through someone else through his children ideally and then he would feel really proud of his own life he wouldn't have lived in vain and his uh the goodness in his life wouldn't carry on into the into the future that is what matters and so this is the way of thinking yeah how can you bring some of those qualities that you are if you are negative mind state someone is dying how can you kind of be make that person proud of what they did yeah thank you so much mum thank you so much dad for helping me in these ways showing me the world in such a nice way now i will carry on that legacy onto future generations again uh after this and then you kind of thinking differently you're looking at the world in a different light and you feel more that gratitude gradually gradually gradually here so you just have to start somewhere yeah and never kind of never give up and if you find that there are barriers ask yourself what those barriers are yeah why are you why are they there and if you start just gradually working on this problem it will eventually unravel all by itself and you will find the solutions the best thing is for you to find the solutions yeah listen to dharma talks take the parts and aspects that work for you you find the solutions the solutions that work for you are the ones that you are going to find not the ones that you just parrot after someone else because that is that never has quite the same power in your life okay thank you aja what advice or guidance would you have for someone who's deep in depression the type where one literally cannot get out of bed or function normally okay so i think in the if it is if it comes to the point we can't get out of bed then you may want to take some medication yeah some antidepressants maybe to get you back on track and at least you can function in daily life there's nothing wrong about taking medication to support you everyone sometimes has mental health problems yeah this is part of life and there's nothing to feel defeated or shameful about this kind of thing there's still a little bit of stigma in the world for you know mental illness and these things and that is unfortunate but i think we need to try to overcome that we can deal with these kind of issues but really the problem with depression is usually just a thought pattern which is the biggest problem you get into a negative way of thinking about yourself or thinking about the world and you get trapped in this kind of endless cycle of negative thoughts you can't get out of it and because you can't get out of it you you kind of you kind of repeat the thing again and again and again so it is a very often uh once you are on medication you start to understand how your mind works you can start to undermine that thinking yeah that negative thinking to some extent to start to see why it arises and you will what you will see is that you are perceiving the world in a certain way which is dark yeah and you need to reprogram your mind to see the world in the better way what is that better way and that better way is to remember that if you are well this is one way of thinking about it if you are a good person yeah if you are practicing the spiritual life reasonably well living you know according to kindness and precepts or whatever you're on the right track yeah you're heading towards light you're heading towards something positive even if things feel really terrible right now your future is bright yeah so once you kind of get your mind around the idea that anyone who lives well with kindness in this thing they all have a bright future then you can start to undermine some of the darkness inside of yourself you may think this is too good to be true but actually it it actually works yeah and because that darkness is always a negativity usually either about the world or about yourself but nothing works out you can't get it right but overcoming that understanding that this is the conditioning from the past now i'm moving in a different direction because i'm coming to the buddhist center i'm listening to buddhist talks i'm practicing in the right way you know that you're heading in the right direction the conditioning from the past is what has brought this depression and negativity now i'm moving towards light instead and by thinking like this you're gradually kind of you draw yourself out of these things it is a i think they sometimes call it cognitive therapy in psychology but really it's just common sense yeah that you kind of learn to see things in a positive way and you it helps a lot to have a buddhist practice because then you know that you're actually living living well at the same time and that kind of enhances your ability to come out of these things thank you what advice to give someone with terminal brain cancer who has only a few months to live thank you okay someone has terminal brain cancer okay specifically when cancer if it's other cancer doesn't work is that is that right or is it yeah brain cancer yeah it just says brain cancer okay okay okay so if it's a it's a different advice if it is liver cancer is the same advice so someone else okay let's let's let's just say that they have a few months left to live yeah that's but i i get your point i'm just messing around a little bit so after all when you are ashamed disciple you are obliged to mess around and mess around a little bit so again yeah if you have a few months left to live that is the time to very similar to the advice i gave before it's a time to kind of you know take stock of your life and to you know to remember the good things that you have done and all of these kind of things of course if you have a few months left you also has a little bit of time to do more good as well yeah and to kind of even to if you can to uh you know one of the great things about having a few months left to live is that you know there isn't much future yeah and if there isn't much future it is often so much easier to make your mind peaceful so it's a good time to learn meditation practice as many of you will know one of the greatest problems with meditation practice is the thinking mind and that thinking mind is very often about the future you plan you're thinking about the problems you're going to resolve but if you have no future yeah you've got to see the positive in these things yeah i have no future okay so i can i can just be peaceful there and it's true isn't it this is why this is one of the reasons why death contemplation actually works because death contemplation is precisely the contemplation that you have no future here so you know remind this person okay there isn't you know you have to be very gentle here because if you go too hard they're gonna you know they're gonna freak out but you have to be very gentle but say you know actually you know this is a good opportunity to learn meditation practice because your involvement with this world is coming to an end yeah you don't have so much involvement anymore because you have less involvement with the world it means you can be more peaceful person so try to use this illness you have to your advantage where you can kind of stand back a little bit you can let go a little bit and you can release yourself from all these involvements always create more thinking and more problems and endless proliferation in the mind so this is you know this is the little advantages of actually being really ill ideally you do this before you get really ill you get this while you still kind of are you know you have many years ahead of you but this is what you can do at this particular point and apart from that you can also do all the other things i i suggested before about just you know how to look after someone who is dying a similar kind of thing here but it's fascinating because my in my family one of the things that was very interesting when i became a buddhist monk it was that my family originally they were very much against it i thought i was crazy to become a buddhist monk and all these kind of things and you can see why because it's such a different thing from what you're supposed to be doing yeah i don't know what my father had in mind for me but you know what fathers have in mind for you sometimes they kind of have some weird ideas but so i but over time they became very proud of the fact that they had a son who was a buddhist monk yeah it just took time for them to understand what this life really was about so my parents were on board my brother was very strongly on board but he was he said oh i've got too many attachments to be a monk myself but you can be a monk yeah or whatever and but the only person in my family who was the holdout was my sister yeah she was not really interested at all she was no way she was going to kind of think about buddhism or because she's a kind of worldly person yeah very active and energetic and doing things and all these kind of things until she got cancer her and then when she got cancer suddenly i started getting emails from her oh could you please please send me some some meditation instruction and things yeah that was very interesting because it shows you the power of illness to make you understand the nature of life when you are face to face with in your own body it is as if you have no choice anymore to actually know what is going on and this is the opportunity for this fellow or lady or whatever it is who has a brain cancer is precisely that opportunity to understand the nature of existence now is the chance to actually take a different direction with my life because you understand the limits of existence then you can start to become peaceful then you can start to build up that good heart inside of yourself have more compassion for you for the world yeah when you understand the deep suffering of having illness in your own life you understand every being in the world has to go through the same thing or is already going through the same thing how can you not have compassion yeah so you have more compassion you have more care you have all of these good qualities you have more peace in your heart you learn to let go and bang you turn the death process into something very beautiful as a consequence that's the theory in practice it is more difficult of course but that's kind of the idea yeah leaning in that direction thank you ajahn this one has two questions the first one is how is buddhist's way of defining let go and second one is years on when we think of the disease we teared does it mean we still have not detached okay so the first one was is what is the attachment what is letting go letting go is precisely the idea of not having attachments yeah letting go means that if you things that don't go your way in the world you shrug your shoulders and you carry on that's letting go yeah you don't allow things to get to you when things go the wrong way when you don't when someone shouts at you or someone kind of does something bad towards you it's not a big deal for you you can deal with it that is letting go yeah letting go is not is a yeah so if you can flow flow through the world flow through the ups and downs with an even mind without being kind of emotionally trapped by all of these things and have all these emotional ups and downs that most people have if you can do that then you are letting go basically going through life in an even way that is very worthwhile to be able to go through life in an even way because it's so easy yeah it's very kind of comfortable and very very nice thing to be able to do here so that is the idea of non-attachment and you can also think about the idea of non-attachment according to the simile i gave before about the idea of borrowed goods yeah you don't attach to borrowed goods what you attach to other things you think you own or the way you think things should be yeah that is also a kind of detachment from the world another way of thinking about it so these are different ways of reflecting on that particular idea so if someone has passed away a long time and ago and you're still kind of tearing up sometimes don't worry too much about that yeah it is remember this is not either about letting go a hundred percent or being attached to 100 it's a matter of path it's about the movement so if you are finding that you are detaching slowly then you are on the right track don't expect it to be perfect if you expect it to be perfect you're asking for too much it is okay to get emotional sometimes yeah everyone gets emotional sometimes and that's it's perfectly all right but to get the feeling that you're heading in the right direction that it is over time gradually you are releasing it yeah and it's kind of uh going over time then you are on the right track yeah there's no kind of magic bullet back it's gone it is always a gradual practice gradual training here and that is actually the best way of doing things so uh i don't know if you feel that you still have too many attachments and it's too difficult to let go then again you just have to ask yourself why yeah do some forgiveness ceremony with a person who's passed away that is often very powerful if you can ask and give forgiveness i do this at all the funeral services i do and i say to people close your eyes and now ask for forgiveness because very often the person if they are still there yeah they will hear that forgiveness that you ask from them so you can do that also if the person is passed away ask forgiveness give them forgiveness yeah do an act of merit on their behalf remember their good qualities send them some meta stay away life is uncertain yeah i told you life very uncertain so be careful so uh yeah so this is this is the way of them gradually overcoming this yeah and move trying to move away so all of these are little techniques and and see what that does for you and uh yeah okay thank you again how to as you how do you assist sibling that doesn't care of mom having detect dementia i guess it means how do you talk to a sibling that doesn't care about your mother who has dementia and then it goes on as mum miss all of these siblings but they doesn't see is important so i suppose it means the mom misses all of these siblings but they don't see her as important the mums or the mum says sees the siblings as important not the other way around is that what you're saying it's the the i think it's the siblings that don't see the mom as important and this is the time she needs them now because she's got dementia okay okay i see yeah okay yes and this is very common problem you know that there is some people who care more other people who care less very very common thing and the main thing about other people is that they are very hot very hard to control yeah and if you try to change someone else very often you end up being very distressed because people don't change and then you get upset and then it gets worse and they get frustrated and it doesn't really work out so you have to remember that if you want to what you really should want to do is to help your siblings rather than to fault find with them yeah this is a big difference so if your sibling has a problem but you feel upset about it that they don't do that they're part of the thing that is actually maybe in some sense that is your problem yeah because it is not really the right way to think about it if the sibling doesn't do the job actually they are the ones who have the problem because they are the ones who don't understand that this is the time your mother reads help yeah and they actually in a sense are far worse than you in a far worse position than you are because you understand the importance of looking after your old mother so in a sense you are streets ahead anyway so don't fall fine with your siblings in the first place that's going to make it worse but what you can do the right way is really to have some compassion for your siblings because if they don't understand the importance of looking after their own mother then there's something missing inside of them yeah something missing in their heart that shouldn't really be the case we should all look after our parents when they get older in every society this is true i know that in some east asian societies kind of considered you know filial python all that but it's actually true in all societies it doesn't make that much difference so something is missing and so what you have to remind them is that this is your opportunity to kind of pay back some of your debt or gratitude to your parents remind them of all the things that parents have done for you yeah as it says in the suitors the buddha talks about this and then get a sense of gratitude or at least compassion for your mother to rise in your siblings and then maybe they will change their mind maybe they will come out remind them that your mom is not going to be around forever if she already has dementia how long is it going to last before she's dead yeah now is your last chance to look after her and to support her take the opportunity when she's gone you're gonna regret it badly afterwards if you don't take the opportunity as it is now so little things like that but you have to come from don't give them a guilt feeling yeah don't blame them if you blame them there's no chance they're going to listen to you they will only listen to you if they feel that you are saying it in for their own out of compassion and out of the best interest of your your siblings then they might listen to you but if they feel like you're just coming from anger and you're kind of you have your uh you you know you are just out there to to get them or whatever there's no way they're going to listen to you so you have to be wise about this otherwise not going to work out and probably you are also a bit upset because a lot of the workload then falls on you yeah this is kind of typical as well and it's natural enough to get a bit upset but remember that if your siblings are not doing their job in a sense it is an opportunity for you as well to uh to kind of help out your helping out becomes far more important if your siblings aren't doing their job yeah suddenly your health becomes like a massively important so remember that and it's fascinating even though someone may have alzheimer's or dementia in a very bad way sometimes there's something underneath there that will know that you are supporting them don't think it is all in vain don't think you are supporting without getting any kind of gratitude back yeah remember when the person eventually dies when your mom eventually dies her mind will be released from that body and the moment she gets released from that body she will know that you have been looking after her all this time yeah because then her mind becomes clear again and she will have tremendous gratitude for you so do it with a good heart remember that this often has impact on the subconscious level beyond that demented mind or brain rather demented brain which is sick and cannot function anymore behind that there's something which very likely appreciates what you're doing here yeah and then you can build up the sense of compassion you can get more feelings what that you're doing something really useful it's not something which isn't appreciated actually it probably is appreciated in a very deep way there's a very interesting book which i read many years ago called the uh oh my mind is blurry but what is it called again irreducible mind is a book about a kind of phenomena of the mind which shows that the mind is something apart from the physical body and one of these phenomena i don't know if dr kim would know anything about this but in some of the geriatric institutions around the world where doctors work with a old patients all the time apparently it is quite common for someone with alzheimer's disease a certain percentage i don't know two or three percent or whatever of these alzheimer patients at the very end just before they are about to die they become clear they may have had alzheimer's for 10 years 20 years whatever the last 10 minutes before they die they kind of whoa oh hi hello son hello daughter yeah how are you oh we haven't spoken for about 20 years okay so yeah and that is astonishing and that is that shows you that this idea that you get released from the body at the very end actually makes sense this is not really explainable this kind of phenomenon is not explainable according to modern medical science yeah because it doesn't make any sense because the mind is supposed to be a byproduct of the brain and all these kind of things but from buddhist point of view it makes imminent sense at this particular point your mind is starting to release from the body and as it releases from the alzheimer's mind it gets independent together and is able to function without beyond that brain yeah and this is what is happening there and in the same way when you when your mother eventually dies something similar is going to happen there and then you will know that you have done something very useful because she can then have that gratitude of having had a daughter or son who has really looked after their mother and whereas maybe the siblings didn't do their job to to the same standard okay absolutely i think it's called a near-death lucidity or something it's well documented yes okay good yeah yeah great last one how do you try to move on from a romantic attachment especially when it hurts to see someone you can't have every day how do you overcome the pain ajahn is not married by the way that would be that would be really disappointing it wasn't if i actually was married that would really be interesting no so uh yeah so how do you move away from a romantic relationship especially if especially when it hurts to see someone you can't have every day okay how do you overcome the pain if you can't have them but they are kind of there they're there how do you overcome it why do you think we're not married i you know this is kind of this is the obvious answer this is life yeah this is exactly what it is this is this is the problem this is this is you know it cannot you will always be separated from what is deering pleasing to you this is it this is how this is how it goes and uh life is full of that i've been there i know what it feels like yeah a long time ago now but i you can still kind of remember what it's like sort of so this is the problem and of course every time you get into a relationship you are asking for the same kind of trouble again yeah yeah you are this is this is the thing so there is the high but with the high comes the low and this is the this is sansaric existence it's this is why it is so harsh yeah this is why it is so incredibly harsh this sansaric existence every time you have a high in sansara every time you bond with something every time you're attached to something whenever you're attached you're saying please suffering come and come at any time and torture me that's what you're saying here yeah this is the reality of things and the better that relationship is the more difficult it is when it's going to come to an end some relationships are terrible not really worth having in the first place there's no point but the good ones they're going to end in you know end in tears usually at the very latest when someone dies so it is very hard and this happens to almost everybody yeah everybody has these kind of problems so you have to what you have to do in the long run you have to build up that inner resilience again that inner resilience will enable you to deal with the impermanence and the problems of the world you build up that inner independence quality is inside of your happiness and peace and and all of these things what makes it at least easier for you to deal with those breakups when they eventually happen it will still be painful but it will be less painful you will be stronger you will be able to kind of you know to to uh to to deal with it in a better way here and that is really the uh the critical thing there so you have to take a long-term strategy become a more independent person in this world that is one of the things i really love about the spiritual path is that it makes you independent yeah it makes you free from all of these external things outside and those people i see who i admire the most for having walked a long way on the buddhist path people like aj brahma well people like the buddha you're number one of course who i've talked about before here maybe lumpur liam the alberta what pong some of these monks who are really exceptional yeah and there are nuns like that also uh you know what practice really well like the abbott of the masala monastery venerable hasapani how comes it is actually a very capable nun i'm really impressed with her and she's very plucky and very courageous no no and so you when you see them you realize they are extremely independent people they don't care what anything else anyone else says if the whole world says go to the right if they know us right to go to the left they will go to the left instead they don't care what anyone else thinks and this is what happens on the spiritual path you gain that independence as long as you haven't got that independence you're always going to be subject to these kind of problems yeah and there is you can do cosmetic things you can avoid that person not to have to see them and to see what you might have had if possible or maybe you can't avoid them because maybe they work in the same place as you i don't know maybe it's really hard maybe you have to change your job because it's too painful to work there i don't know you can do cosmetic things like that but the problem is cosmetic things it's just a temporary solution you think you find a solution but actually you haven't found a solution at all that's really the problem every time we have a temporary resolution we think that we have now solved it but actually we haven't then it comes back again you have to haunt us again in the future and uh until eventually you start to understand i need to do something more profound and that more profound thing is to focus more on the process less on the result remember ajahn brahm in that fire let go of everything bang like that tomorrow i will start from scratch no regrets nothing at all yeah the relationship is over with this person you are in love with it gone yeah tomorrow morning another person [Laughter] okay that sounds a bit sounds a bit harsh but you you get you get the idea yeah so anyway so good luck that's all i can say because it's these are these are precisely you know i one of the things that i have kind of wriggled my way out of those problems you see this is kind of the advantage thank you ajahn that's all for the written questions anybody has got any uh last minute burning questions uh last minute written pieces of papers okay so uh if we don't uh can we say three sadhus again to ajan okay very good nice to see you all i just want to say today tonight i didn't have much energy i'll try and try my very best but sometimes the energy is a bit down so i don't know how this came out but hopefully it was useful shall we end up by saying yes let's do that at the very end

Channel: Buddhist Fellowship

Views: 6,858

Rating: 4.8481011 out of 5

Keywords: buddhist followship, dhamma

Id: RcDO0NQ459s

Length: 94min 59sec (5699 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020