Getting Along with Difficult Family Members | Ajahn Brahm | 18 June 2021

so for today's summer talk as usual i don't plan what i'm going to speak about but a few minutes before i came in here someone asked me a really good question and it's a question i hear quite often there was somebody in their family they find it very difficult to get on with and they're very close you know family members and they find it very difficult the other person is always really being cruel and harsh to them so what can we do when there's someone in your family you can't get away from but they're just hell to live with so what can you do so that's happened so often in this world i don't know why you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family and so sometimes you're stuck with on the first door which comes up a really nice one i just i didn't have time to mention this earlier just before i came in here was that there was this vietnamese girl who married an australian caucasian and they loved each other really two good people but the problem was her mother-in-law i don't know why mothers in law have these reputations but someone did tell me that if you rearrange the letters which smell which spell mother-in-law you rearrange those letters and actually spells hitler woman you could you can try that when you go home but not all women are like that obviously not more mothers-in-law some others are already sweet and nice but anyway this was one of those mother-in-law which you know she must have been some quite racist i would suppose because why did you marry yourself an asian girl and they're nice i'll see girls to marry or whatever they just if she they fell in love they're both really good people but the vietnamese girl she really of course this is my husband's fat mother of course i've got to love her and go to try and reconcile so she realized i've got really good qualities and so she tried everything apparently everything to try and find out how to get her mother-in-law to love her she tried no getting special food for her but you know her mother didn't like noodles and and tried even then she went to the temple and asked the monk to do some chanting please make my mother-in-law love me didn't work she tried doing loving kindness meditation you know that's another type of meditation you sit there oh my my love mother-in-law be happy and well maybe she free of suffering may she be just so blissful that didn't work and she had tried everything apparently to get her mother-in-law to love her nothing worked except the very last strategy which she used now you may know in the vietnamese traditions mostly mahayana they have this image of like kuan yin the goddess of mercy now you know sometimes there's a teravata buddhist we don't have that in tiravana buddhism been out talk to many many people over the years and many many people especially like vietnamese boat people in those days when they sort of fled vietnam and they just trusted their life you know to these rickety old boats setting a huge distance to get to australia such a long long long journey and most of them didn't make it some did i remember a lot of them they told me that they were just you know they were robbed by pirates they had no money they didn't know what they were going to do they're going to make anywhere and many of them i remember them these are people i've talked to personally eventually ended up in perth they said that they had uh just almost losing it and they saw this image of the this they called it goddess of mercy kuan yin coming over the the waves to them and they swore to me they actually saw it and then right behind this goddess of mercy kuan yin they saw a a british frigate you know when hong kong was under the brits sailing towards them to save them kuan yin came first leading the brits to rescue rescue these poor refugees and of course then they got taken to hong kong and eventually settled over here in australia there's so many stories like that and it's something which you know in religion in spirituality and what actually did they see but anyway that's another question but you know you can't deny that they said they definitely saw that but anyway this woman said well what can i do she went to the temple and of course in these stories her meditation wasn't that good instead she fell asleep and when she was asleep in the temple and what she actually saw was like a vision of this goddess of mercy come to help her and she was really surprised but there was a difference it wasn't the normal goddess of mercy you see in buddhist temples mahayana temples the one which she saw looked like the ordinary goddess of mercy but it had a different face the face was exactly the same as her mother-in-law and that was always necessary why she saw her mother-in-law look like the goddess of mercy next time she saw her mother-in-law her attitude totally changed somehow other just seeing something beautiful good lovable and really inspiring in a person who you didn't like or didn't like you was all that was necessary to change her attitude and apparently since that time that the the the goddess of mercy otherwise known as mother-in-law changed her attitude and now they have this beautiful relationship and that was actually told by one of the vietnamese nuns who live in perth many years ago a very beautiful story she told that here one evening a long time ago but i love the implications of that story because what you see in somebody will change the nature of what you see even though that took a bit of imagination but nevertheless it was true and sometimes just how do you deal with people who can sometimes be quite violent to you as for me that very often the people who try to be violent to me i've been going around dressed like this for the last uh 38 years here in perth and i do remember many many times even this one time here in perth when i was in bunbury i used to spend the afternoon sort of just meditating on the beach in bunbury because there was no one there and as i was meditating on the beach in the evening i was teaching in the prisons in in uh in bunbury but actually the beach was far more dangerous because i remember just very clearly if the monks know this story i was sitting there very peacefully and suddenly i had come right past my head i just started watching my breath again something else came past me and i opened my eyes and these were stones from the beach being thrown at me and i could hear because i know turned around to have a rock there's about six or seven teenage kids and they were shouting for those of you who remember this time this was a time when i think uh at a time he was called rajneesh and he didn't people really didn't like him and i was dressed in orange i didn't know what a buddhist monk was and so they started shouting me get off our beach raj nishi that's what they said they shouted and another stone came past so what would you do if you have fear you run away if you have anger you call the police or shout or something but i've been trained as a buddhist for many years so what did i do i stood up turned around and walked towards them and then honestly i tell her sometimes i think i must be crazy doing stuff like that but anyway because i walked towards them they all threw down their stones and they started to run away and i shout out stop please one of them stopped and i just went up to tell them look i'm not a rajneesh i'm a buddhist monk you know we don't try and hurt or oppress anybody you shouldn't try and hurt and oppress us i said it was such kindness that he said sorry and all his friends came and then i i had the opportunity to teach them something about buddhism they all came to me because they were quite inspired that i didn't run away you know when they were trying to hit me with stones now bunbury beach you know i used to meditate down there a lot but eventually it became a bit too dangerous for me but it wasn't as dangerous from those kids throwing stones the biggest danger came you know what's coming next on you and this is absolutely true you know i was good meditators i'd meditate for a couple of hours and go really deep inside and it was meditating in the afternoon maybe about two o'clock or something there's no one there so i just was meditating really nice and peacefully and a couple of hours went past and and when i came out of my meditation that's when there was a few people were on that beach young people there's somebody sitting right next to me on my left and i looked around and there was a 17 year old blonde in a bikini sitting right next to me [Music] i said you can't make these stories up they actually happened and i turned around to my right and it was this redhead or something also in the bikini 17 year old sitting next to me on the other side that is two really beautiful young ladies sitting next to a monk on bunbury beach in the afternoon [Music] i often say if somebody had taken a photograph how could you explain that and the point was i knew they were 17 it could have been 18 but 17 probably because the reason they were there they explained afterwards it was in october maybe november i don't know but it was that morning or that afternoon was the last examination for the end of school exams and the school was just on the other opposite side of the road to the beach and what do people in australia do they finish the last exam of their school year they get into their bathers and go and have a bathe in the ocean and they saw this they explained this to me they saw this this buddhist monk on there sitting perfectly still and i thought wow this is interesting i wonder who the heck he is and i was just sitting there patient just waiting for me to come out of my meditation and when i did they said oh you've been waiting for now maybe 10 or 15 minutes for you to come out what were you doing and why were you doing this who are you they were really interested but i must admit i managed to end the conversation very quickly in case somebody saw me anyway because you know if it marks with celebration it's really important with cerebral and it makes it seem to be celibate and imagine that just two beautiful ladies on either side of you anyway but thank you for laughing but anyway just you get into situations and use your kindness to overcome those situations one of my favorite monks years ago when he was passed away now is one of the famous forest monks and his story what really impressed me with him was that you know he was we call it like going wandering walking from place to place and he came to a village somewhere in i think the south of thailand and you always report to the head man of the village first of all so they know that you're there and then they will sort of prepare some food for you the following morning when you go on arms around and the quite a few people there were really you know devout buddhists in thailand and so they said i will come this evening to listen to a talk from you and so he said yeah yeah sure and so that sometimes people think we get food for nothing but you know we have to give a good talk first of all otherwise we won't get nothing but anyway sort of you know he said okay i'm going to come in a couple of hours so i've got nothing to do for a couple of hours and what does a monk do and they've got nothing to do they said meditation so he found a nice tree and sat down and started meditating and then he realized he hadn't been really mindful enough to to to really see where he was meditating because he's a big ant mound right next to him and after just a minute or two he could feel the red ants start cr start crawling up his legs and as they called up they started biting him and they're very painful but he said i'm a monk i can enjoy this but after about 20 or 30 bites then there's thousands of them then he's amazing he said he just he didn't know just jumping up and running but he was running he lost his mindfulness and he was running away at that point he said no i am a monk i'm a forest monk so he turned around and went straight back to where he'd been sitting and sat down in the middle of these thousands of ants again could you do that so what happened next the reason i tell the story he changed his meditation object to loving kindness may all and be happy and well look you know i've got plenty of blood there or flesh you can take somewhere if you want but please give me some or something like that but just real kindness you know you've had that sort of feelings of kindness and love towards people and sometimes they're so strong even if someone is hurting you just give kindness and joy and good will towards them that's what he did and then the next thing he told us in his biography the next thing he felt that the the ad stopped biting him the next thing you could actually feel them just walking down his body rather than up his body it says amazing thing to see when you give kindness like that and the last and just left him they went into a very blissful meditation for the hour or so hour and a half he had when he came out of the meditation you know that's when what disturbed him was the sound of the the villagers coming you know they had their dinner and they were coming to listen to a dumber talk from him and what he didn't really understand in that part of thailand when they come into the presence of like a monk or a nun to listen to a talk they dance they thought this is really weird i hadn't seen this before people dancing when they come into the presence of a monk he opened his eyes more fully and he realized they weren't dancing as a cultural welcome they were dancing because they've been bitten alive by these millions of ants and what he said and it's i totally accept this this is what happened around him there was a circle about maybe a meter in diameter there was no ants at all and then there was millions of ants all around him like protecting him they wouldn't hurt him but anyone would disturb his meditation they would hurt it's amazing just to see how animals they can respond to kindness and feeling you're not harming them you're safe it is how they respond so how can mothers-in-law respond fathers-in-law bosses at work of course they respond if you do it with sincerity and with a little bit of power to give kindness to other beings they just can't harm you it's weird but that is absolutely true there's so many snake stories in thailand and of course that famous snake story is one of the monks who came to stay here many years ago that was ashan ganha i love telling this story because it's totally true again but weird he was you know he was a a teacher a really good teacher in thailand he's still alive he's very well worthwhile visiting if you go to china when covert stops and go to visit him he was he was in the jungle with about six or seven other monks and then they heard the big um king cobra come to them king coppers this is also true in the northeast of thailand they had a special nickname for the king cobra and his nickname was called the one step snake when i asked why do you call it the one step snake he said because if it bites you that's all you've got left to live one step and you fall down dead very venomous and big too and apparently according to this story because once this king cobra came close all the monks opened their eyes and thought a maybe of running away but those of you who lived in asia if you've seen big snakes you know they can run much faster than you can nobody scared me the first time i saw a snake run or not go very fast no way could i could i outrun it but anyway so that snake came right up to this monk agent with a cobra king cobra so a big black snake and it came right up and lifted its head and eyeballed adjourned you know it spread his hood right in front of his nose what would you do it's a waste of time running i said those cobras kind of go around much faster than you and you can't sort of you're a monk you can't sort of harm it or hurt it so what choice do you have so i said gun hydra just lifted up his hand and patted it on the head there thank you for coming to visit me now you know how rare that must be for a cobra to have his head patted and that cobra loved every minute of it it's such a rare opportunity it was perfectly still so he didn't sort of make the monk afraid so he could have his head patted even longer that is true story but eventually the cobras have had enough to be having this pat his head patted so it closed its hood went down and went to see the next monk you know the story the next one i said no no no no way not me if you want your head paddy go back to the chief monk again now how can that happen and of course that happens because you're so kind that no one can harm you and that same like i said he came to stay a body now in a monastery when it was just being built about 36 years ago 35 years ago and what happened with him you know that we were we had our plans in the council for our main now the double hall which you know many of you have been in and so it's all in the council and then the the mayor the head of the council i don't mind saying his name because you know he was a really good friend in the end clem kentish his name was and he came to check us out who are these buddhist monks he was also our neighbor down the hill at the time and he was the mayor and he basically he ran the council to check us out and he came if you think i'm fat he was probably fatter than me wearing a suit you know mares have to wear suits and i really felt felt for the suit because the buttons were almost coming off it just only just managed to button it up and it was just stretching and the button could pop at any time but then what happened next really shocked me this time monk ajahn ganghar saw him first and i was a bit too far away to stop adjunct i went right up to him and started patting him on the tummy that's okay to pat me on the tummy maybe but to pat the mayor this australian guy who was came to check us out to make sure that we were legitimate people and i thought oh no that's the end of our buildings it will never give us approval anymore but you know what i saw next was just so wonderful and again i'm saying it accurately this man this really important person is he got a smile on his face and he was gurgling like a baby loved every minute of it could do that to a man it could do that i don't know to donald trump clive palmer he'd do anyone like that you know especially clyde palmer he's a bit tummy fat and if he if i can't gun [Music] it's just so much kindness people love that and it's so much so that you know no problem with our building licenses after that but what was for me he became a really good friend in the end unfortunately when he died i went to his funeral service i i love these little extra stories his daughter currently you know she knew how much he loved our monks and the good friendship we had so you know what happens in australia after a funeral sort of you know she came i came up to give my best wishes and she said uh can i give you a hug you're not supposed to hug monks if you're girls and i said no you can't do that she said yes i can now don't any of you try that because she would wrestle sheep she was a fireman farm girl i didn't have a chance i mean i don't remember her for that is there any way that uh that was a power of kindness now imagine you can do that to mares and snakes members of your family will give you a hard time should be very easy tries you to change into really beautiful people because your kindness is just too strong so that's one of the reasons why that this part of our meditation practice buddhism you know to give this love and kindness to all beings and i know sometimes we do the chanting here sometimes we do it in retreats it's not to be underestimated how powerful that can be you know over in serpentine there's heaps of snakes there's heaps of snakes over in monastery in thailand never would bite anybody how can you bite a friend and cause him injury how can you just harm anybody you know who's kind to you we really got into that it was such a wonderful way of living even small things one of the huts which i built it myself and i lived in there for a couple of years that's you know the the a-frame huh and at that time there was this big answer in front and we said well it's a lovely place for a heart but we can't harm the ants so don't worry i'll just build this myself and make sure we never ever harmed that answer that made sure that got lumps of wood concrete or whether make sure we just always put it somewhere else so we never harm the anthill or its tracks it was extra hard work for me to build it that way but we finished it and i lived in there and those ads when i came out of my heart i always make sure i would always step over their lines never on top of them they were very smart so smart though remember one day we got this sugar cube we put it on top of the ant mount to see what they would do with it because you know the sugar is like okay fast food for the ants they didn't have dentists but who cares anyway it was an experiment because what would they do with that and i really thought they would just take lumps off it and then carry it underneath to the the heart of the ant-man underneath they're much smarter than that i never realized how great engineers these ants were and they'd never been to any university every day i noticed the ant um not the end the sugar cube went a little bit lower every day they were excavating from underneath it they excavated it and when it got to the level of the top of the mound then they got the earth and put it on top that way they excavated it down day by day by day until it was down to where their food store was i thought that's a brilliant sort of engineering solution to a problem they'd never had before no one else had given any ants in the darling range a sugar cube i'm sure and it started me thinking about what intelligence is and and respect for such beings and so i never i had no trouble at all with them they would never bite me they would never come into my heart you know what happened next when i moved out to go to another hut i just and sometimes this like hurts me to him remember this one of the the anagarika said they drove over the ants mount with a vehicle and you could see the damage there and i i went there to say sorry but that was it that's never trusted us anymore so they'd come into that hut and that's absolutely true that if you're kind to the animals around you the animals will always look after you weird but that's true remember this old monk told me this story beautiful story he was he was living alone in a forest loads of animals around and one day it was a big storm in the middle of the night i think that he had a knocking on the door of his hat he said no one lives here and someone was knocking he opened the door it was a little monkey outside a female monkey carrying a dead baby this little monkey had a little dead offspring in his arms little monkey just gave it to the monk he didn't need to understand monkey language but it's obviously that mother had just given birth you know to that young and it was dead and so the the mind didn't know what to do because you know it can't bring it to life again but just did some chanting for the little mother monkey he was just so upset that when i lost the young and then afterwards apparently what he did then he gave the little baby monkey back to the mouth and the mother took it away and you can imagine yeah even a monkey different species and human beings but still you think maybe these human beings may be able to do something but couldn't we did a little bit of chanting and that was it there's a beautiful little stories like living living in nature and just how animals obviously my animal stores i don't make these these these stories up but i really respect the animals even these animals over in thailand in the north of thailand close to the burmese border in the jungles i never expected to see this happen and this was uh i put just a simple bowl of water out you know in the hot season so the the birds could have something to drink you don't know what it's like when you're really thirsty that right next to my heart put the water out there filled it every day and it was like a knot hole in the wooden planks of the the the wall and i could see the birds come in the afternoon to get some water but what i never it was fun watching the birds bathe and drink but what i never expected is please excuse me especially in thailand was to see all these birds of different sizes and species line up in the queue have you ever seen birds queuing i have and it was true that's what they did then i might be eight or nine birds maybe a dozen of the best you know and there were big ones small ones and i was sitting there just waiting until the one in front finished and then the next one would actually come in and of course those are fascinating and then there was always every afternoon one bird would come in i would actually jump the queue and try and get in there first couldn't wait to have a bath or gave a drink weird but you know what the other birds would do they would all get out of queue jump on that cue jumper pick him and beat him and whatever and that scooter would fly away and then all those birds will cue up in exactly the order they were before is that unbelievable absolutely true and so what that really did was you know increase your respect for you know the animals in this world they don't just think they don't understand what you're saying and then understand much more what you're saying than you believe so anyway that is another reason why you can be kind to them and they'll look after you and as human beings as well sometimes human beings are not as sensitive so they take a little bit more kindness to melt them and feel so safe with them and so often in life even the times when i used to go to those jails and it's a long time since i've been in prison i think i've done my time [Laughter] but every time i went into prison to teach the prisoners i always kept a record of how many hours i spent inside to use as credit in case that you know some of these prisoners were just they were just really tough people and i haven't told this story for a long time but this was you know my first book the story and it was also the title of the german edition of my book and that any german-speaking people here oh yeah that was the coup de vainti the cow that cried i probably pronounced it totally weird the cow that cried and that for 20 years has been the best seller in germany the spiegel bestseller list but anyway the this was one of the i went into the prison to teach meditation this huge guy he just grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me aside and this guy he was i could tell straight away because i was brought up in uk he was from northern ireland you know and that place was a very violent city i used to call it the troubles the catholics and the protestants just were killing each other and but anyway that you could see he was covered in scars really big and he said he had to tell me what happened to him the week before he was waiting for me and he gave background he said he was born in belfast brought up in belfast he said and he was first stabbed when he was about six years of age in school it was a primary school and you know what six-year-old kids are like tiny kids they're just going to school for the first time and then this bully in the school asked for his dinner money the money he had for his lunch he said no and the school body never asked twice just got out a kitchen knife and just stabbed him in the arm teaching molesting don't say no to bullies and what he did this kid you know obviously blood running down his arm apparently and just he was he said he never felt pain so much it's just so much confusion why would people do this in the school and he ran to his house which was just around the corner fortunately and his father was home unemployed daddy i've been stabbed and his father took him to the kitchen he never even washed the wound let alone dress the wound he just opened the kitchen drawer took out another knife and said here you are go and stab the boy back and that spoke volumes of now how that kid was brought up and he said you know he told me he confessed he murdered many people killed human beings and you could see just how big he was and scarred he was but i wasn't scared because he could see that something had changed in him and he said that in that prison next to this was many years ago kind of prison from they would have a slaughterhouse there they'd raise there's a farm they'd raise cows and sheep i don't know what else there and they would kill those animals and they would send them to the different prisons for the food supply and also i can't understand why on earth they do this why that this was teaching those prisoners a trade so when they get out of prison they can get a job in the slaughterhouse makes no sense to me but apparently and this was true the ones who would be the head slaughterer you had to fight for that job it was the most prized job you know for macho men to do that job and he won and was a head slaughter in carnap isn't fun and he just described what would happen there this is it's amazing i just what i remember this the because it transfixed me there's these big metal bars you know wide at the entrance but narrowing down so at the far end only one cow could come in at a time and he would be standing on an elevated platform next to that cow and it was he said he had this electric stun gun and said the cow would always be trying to escape so the first shot would be to stun to keep it steady enough so he could aim properly he obviously was trained the right place to you know just above the ear or somewhere i'm not sure we can actually aim the second shunt and the second shot would always kill and the next one would come in he'd be doing this for months and then this day they were told they needed cows so all the cows came in as usual one shot to stun one shot to kill i remember him saying that but then one cow came in different from all the rest all the other cows would make a sound i don't know what that sound is they're not a moo is this sounds of stress and they're about to be executed they know exactly what was going on they couldn't escape but this cow came in head down and just walked like purposely to its place between those two strong still pass and only when it was positioned he lifted up his head and stared at this executioner silently without moving without trying to escape and he i can't repeat what he said because he started swearing now he said to me it's god's own something truth that cow stared at me and i just couldn't pull the trigger i never seen anything about this he was stunned but what he noticed next just really threw him into what the heck is going on not the heck is going on something else another expletive and he saw in the you know the cows had his huge eyeballs you you're seeing the eyeball of a cow it's mammoth but above the lower lid of the right eyeball water started to accumulate and it got more and more and more and more and so that water started trickling over the the cow's eye you can imagine the confusion you see when this happens and the cows are eyeballing really still not showing any fear with something else this sadness and then you notice the same thing happening in the left eyeball above the lower eyelid more water accumulating until that got so so much that also ran over the right left eyeball of the cow you saw these two streams of water coming down the the cow's face and that broke him violent people could never break that uh i thought it was protestant or catholic but that very very violent man that couldn't crack him the cow did he threw down his gun swore like anything apparently i checked this out with the other prisoners afterwards yeah that happened that was true he said he can do whatever they like to him but that cow's not dying and he gave out that job when he came to see me then he started he started grinning said i'm a vegetarian now and he was a murderer before incredibly violent man that's why these are true stories that's why you can imagine why that that was the main story in deku davanti which means the cow that cried in the german edition of the book sometimes how do you overcome your slaughterer who's about to stun you once second time to kill how can you do that only with this beautiful beautiful kindness not fear looking at the person's about to put the bullet in your head smiling really doing it properly with kindness and so you can see that whoever you have in your life is causing you so much misery and fear or whatever it is they're causing you can you try some kindness sometimes it takes a long time the last little story again is it's from the same prison because i after that happened you know i often used to mention it to the prisoners there and you know just one of the nice things about teaching in a prison that you may think this is weird to say but many of those prisoners were honest they said look now we're in prison now i mean no point in lying and they said to me said i don't believe that loving kindness works maybe with some people but not with all people some people just you can't get through to them you might call them like psychopaths or whatever but this is one of those stories where i sometimes doubt that that you're not really going long enough or persisting because this was the case of the prison officer and one of the prisoners there he's really nice how can i say this really nice fella as a prisoner for goodness sake he became a good friend afterwards but he said i asked him said okay i want to have a bet with you no stakes at all but challenge you said in this prison who is the person you hate the most and he didn't it didn't need to sort of uh even hesitate it was one of the prison offices he was a senior prison officer on the staff and he said well he actually he called him a pig and that was actually been quite moderate and i said what do you mean what sort of stuff does he do he said well this happened last week one of the prisoners you know it's kind of a piece of farm it's hard to get to unless you've got a car there's no no bus service there and he said one of the prisoners wives managed to get a lift to see her husband he had had to visit for weeks and so you can't just walk in you just gotta go and register first of all and so she registered at the entryway during the visiting hours and this prison officer saw her and knew exactly who she was and so he immediately got on the pa system and said this prisoner he said can you please do a job for me on the other side of the prison at a place where the pa system won't reach he did it on purpose because a few minutes later could prisoners so-and-so come to the visitor center your wife has come he couldn't hear that it was done on purpose and this prison officer never told you know where that prisoner was and when the other prison officers finally found him located him i'm sorry the visiting hours are over better luck next time and it's why do people do such cruel things you know a visit from you know your loved one so hard to do and he had one there he wasn't misbehaving it was a prison officer who was misbehaving sending a place in the prison so he couldn't get his visit so he said this guy's a pig oh no so it wasn't a pig he said a dog i don't know prison slang but anyway that was low so anyway i said right we we have a contest what i want you to because this guy also he would serve tea and coffee to this fellow every day that was his job and clean up afterwards so every time you make a cup of coffee for him a cup of tea or get a biscuit or a sandwich whatever he wants always say to this guy please enjoy that sandwich sir i hope this tea is nice for you say that every time and it's only because this prisoner actually respected me he actually did this other people thought he was stupid and every week i would go there how's it going hopeless it's not working at some point look i know these prison offices there's no way this guy is going to sort of no do anything i just serve him the tea and i really put effort into it try and make it really nice i give it to him and he doesn't even know i exist he just carries on working whatever he's doing he totally ignores me and i remember the story because i made me so happy that about about three or four months when i went how's it going and he couldn't wait to tell me something had shifted he managed to find some special tea or coffee or whatever and handed it to this person office and said i find this really nice coffee i hope you like it sir and the prison officer went uh the priest officer granted acknowledge this man existed and that really encouraged him you may think that's nothing but in prisoner for a prison officer like that to actually know these existence when other prisoner by just going uh that was huge and i i said i know how these things work it was only a matter of you know a week or two then of course the crack was in the wall and the damn totally burst a couple of weeks later when he got him some special sandwich i hear you really like these sandwiches i hope you like this one i made it especially for you sir and the prison officer turned her out and said thank you [Music] and i was told by these prisoners that that went all around the prison grapevine in western australia i don't need to doubt them you know there's a great fight there you know what goes on one person they managed to find a way of letting everyone else know that that prison officer could say thank you to a prisoner was unheard of i won my other loving kindness went how does it take about four months so whoever told me that story about you know your uh close family member just give a cup of no him a cup of tea or something i hope you like this so i hope you like this hope you like this may this be nice and maybe who knows after a while they may grunt [Music] once they grab that's it they acknowledge you and they know just the rest is pretty easy it's nice to receive kindness it's lovely to be kind why can't we give that a try you've got to be careful sometimes because as i said to this person first of all you've got to be kind at a distance there's an old chinese saying love the tiger but at a distance otherwise you get your hand cut off a little by little the tiger becomes your friend have you seen that old movie it's not a movie it's a movie clip on youtube of this fellow he tried trained and it was that line or type i think it was a line and then just you know freed it so the line could actually live in nature where you know it was felt happy and then just the line just went off into the jungle and go back to nature he came to visit a year or two later and the lion heard it and just went running towards him i just jumped on him not to eat him just to meet an old friend so that's what the kindness is it's just goes way beyond species or gender it's something which is beautiful it seems like everybody recognizes that so that's one of the reasons why if you're having a hard time with somebody at work it could be a boss be kind to them it was the last little story i don't know if they're here this evening they thomas three or four years ago they were just in the same level in this big company one of them got promoted became the other one's boss and as soon as she became boss the whole character changed and they're ordering around do this do that do this whatever and this lady used to come here not sure if she's here this evening she said i made my life hell you know in the office you know what was once my friend was actually giving me orders all the time and getting really upset and angry at me and they said what changed everything because she knew the type of coffee she liked they'd always go out for coffee together at their break time so she went out and got a special cup of coffee the thing which her boss liked and just gave it to her you know you need to like this coffee drinking with me this is for you let's simple thing like that changed the whole relationship yeah the other lady was still her boss but now they were friends tiny acts of kindness have huge effects thank you mr gong okay i've got to be careful because i keep on talking too much but i think that's really just a beautiful way of acting in life have some kindness okay so okay okay so another story i haven't said this story for now okay one last one i'll take this can you get this for me and there we go this is that story of the burglar in a temple not this temple another temple somewhere the middle of the night if you had any burglars come to your place middle of the night the senior monk the abbot was woken up about one or two o'clock in the morning thinking that maybe one of the monks had got up early to meditate but then he thought he could say no not my monk said don't get up so he got out of bed and went to the shrine room and he saw us a burglar the burglar had a knife and was trying to open up the donation box and the burglar saw the mark and said don't do anything i'll kill you and the man just put the old mic not that old but put his hand in his pocket don't do anything funny i'm serious and the monk brought out a bunch of keys he said these are the keys to the donation box here you threw them over gently help yourself is this a trick no look we're buddhists we're supposed to be kind you obviously need this money more than the temple does i shouldn't say that if the treasure's not here either please take it and so the the thief and they had one eye that's why we have two eyes one eye opening the box the other eye on the monk in case he did any funny business and then the mouse said when was the last time you ate none of your business be quiet am i convincing being a burglar [Music] no okay i try so they said in the cupboard just above there's some food left over from our lunch yesterday take as much as you want and so the burglar is stuffing cash in his pockets and so there was food above so he stuffed food in there next as much as you could carry and don't call the police why should i call the police said the the monk i've given this to you please enjoy it for free and then the the burglar ran away and the following morning now if that was suppose that was me and i told you would you sack me as you know the senior monk because he's not president don't answer they said that's a wonderful thing to do you know you're being kind isn't that wonderful that people are actually kind in the world so anyway money will come again later on we can put that in the budget you know for burglaries but anyway anyway just the next day you saw in the newspaper the burglar was caught you know he was robbing another house and people weren't so kind there he was given ten years in jail another ten years went past the mom was much older now and maybe because he didn't sleep so much but the middle of the night heard the noise again he went to check out what was happening and who did you think he saw with a knife next to the donation box the burglar the same guy 10 years older and the monk said hear the keys and that's when the burglar put down his knife and smiled at the monk he said monk i've come here to steal again you can take what you want it's okay but i last time i realized i stole the wrong thing for 10 years i've been in jail 10 years i've been thinking about you can't get you out of my head you're the only person who was kind to me [Music] who never wanted to hurt me i was stealing from your donation box pointing a knife at you and you just thought i was hungry which i was you gave me food as well as that money i've come here to steal again but not money or food please teach me the secret of kindness and generosity that's what i want to steal from you how to be kind how to be generous i thought it was a beautiful story isn't that what you would like to steal because we've got so much of that here you can have as much as you like and that will not affect our budget it's what we're here for okay thank you for listening oh my goodness that gets me that story and it's it's not a true story but it was adapted from the stories which have happened in places like sri lanka and thailand where monks have just given them money away was this monk i think in a long time ago in thailand i heard this that someone came to steal boats because that's how monks would travel from place to place in those days in thailand with boats and the guy sort of had a stick or a knife or something a machete and the monk just got the keys out to take it and then the next day they found out that one of the boats was missing said oh yeah i gave it away to the burglar last night and people were so impressed the next day they got four or five boats given to them donations really good stories of course you know people would help out anyway uh i have a question for our jumper my dad passed away two years ago i don't know where his niche i've been dreaming and thinking about him any advice well usually no because we buddhists believe in rebirth if your loved ones passed away and you have successive dreams exactly the same such as your dream is in this place or that place then it's liable to be maybe some truth behind it but it's different dreams different sort of closes wearing different occasions it's probably just noticed dreams that's all i would say if it's like three dreams in a row looks exactly the same then maybe there's something to it from indonesia i heard hypnotherapists saying that under hypno hypnosis some of the clients went to a stage where there's this beautiful light inside their minds could it be the same as the nematode what's the difference between deep peaceful states coming from meditation from hypnosis could both lead to the same insights and same impact of removal of mental blockages it could be the same thing but because under hypnosis it's actually almost put inside of you it's not natural in the sense it comes just from within your own stillness it's never as powerful so the difference is that if that comes in like a beautiful light which appears in your meditation because you know it's just natural you've been letting go a lot it's not um imposed upon you by the the therapist that's way way more powerful from usa uh i want to be a good dad and take my kid to the pool but seeing the women in bathing suits lead to many lustful thoughts affects my meditation i feel really guilty advice i already gave the answer to that because when i went to that bunbury beach i saw an incredibly beautiful young lady 17 in in bathe in bikinis one on either side of me did that affect my meditation of course not it was just you know i was only scared you know trying to explain it to others so i had nothing to do with this oh yes so because of that uh for your take your kid to the pool you can you can't sort of uh okay put your kids apart and put some uh eye eye shades on them now sometimes you have to expose people to just you know the desires and lust in this world they don't have to taste them but they have to see what it does you can't hide things from people otherwise if you try and hide things from people your kid finds out about it anyway what is it those books which are banned become the most popular anyone said don't watch this this is really just evokes too much lust in you everyone wants to see that just take it as normal and to take the kid to the beach right to the pool and say that's all it is it's just human beings so please take your kid to the pool is that with me it's from the united states not the paul club however they play paul i don't know for uk thank you for your wonderful wisdom and calming talks i struggle with anxiety and fear of my mental health getting worse and causing me to lose what i love how can i heal this please the biggest problem there is worry and anxiety worry it will get worse why don't you worry it might actually get better always think it's going to get worse it's going to get worse it's getting worse and it does get worse i think it's going to get better it's going to get better it's going to get better but you know you do lose a lot of privileges if it gets better you have to go to work you can't take so much time off when things get better that's why with people with depression sometimes i told us this guy years ago i said look when the depression starts to go don't tell your wife don't tell your boss at work okay once you tell your wife and boss at work you'll have to come and help with the housework go back and do all these jobs at work you've got very many privileges being depressed and i remember this because he told me i was yes so true new this morning i had two bowls of ice cream my wife would never let me have two bowls of ice cream when i was okay but now she thinks i'm depressed oh you have a third bowl there's very many advantages to have that the main reason i was saying that don't be so depressed about being depressed there's many advantages to it so but with mental health don't ever think it's going to get worse because then you make it worse because i just know they come and go what goes up goes down so you should be fine okay my goodness for malaysia i'm having this cancer journey since 2018 and doctor told me that i have to go through camera every three months oh my goodness should i continue my chemotherapy treatment or should i stop because the journey is tiring i felt like my body were tore apart every time i went through i i then i read this article years ago that sometimes doing exercise is almost as good as doing chemotherapy i'm not an expert on this but i know how much your mental attitude affects you know the the cancer so i don't know exactly how far you've gone with that cancer since 2018 doesn't know what stage it stage it's in but if you have to go through camera every three months and that's the three months is a long time so it is between the camera you lost on and the next camera which is due how about doing some really good exercise nice meditation change attitudes do good stuff and then see what happens when they they usually give you a test before they give you the next chemotherapy see if they look at that test and one of the nicest things that's happened to a few of my people i've taught they do a test to scan and they say oh we have to do the scan again something wrong with the machine nothing wrong with the machine the cancer is gone and that's happened many times people have told me this so in the meantime between those bouts of chemo just see if you can do something else and those doctors maybe see that tumor or whatever it is get this lastly california my 26 year old son told us a year ago he's going through a rough patch and needed some space and then cut off contact with all friends we are really worried what to do that you cannot force him to contact you it's a year ago just to let him know that you know that the door of my heart is always open to you you know you're his father whatever happens to you in your life you know just i'm always your dad and you can always come home i'd always look after you got your mom here as well that's all you can really do open the door of your heart because sometimes it's your son's fault i say this because i remember the saying of oh what was his name before he was mark twain uh you know the the um the author mark twain what's his name a real name okay anyway that was his pen name but anyway that he ran away from home when he was about 18. he ran away to have some adventures his father was you know he didn't like his father too controlling or whatever it was always having arguments and he ran away for a couple of years and when he went back to visit his dad he wrote you know in the typical mark twain way a bit of satire said i can't believe how much my father has grown over the last two years and how much he has learnt obviously the meaning was his father was the same but mark twain you know just going out into the big world had learned so much it was nowhere near as critical to his father once he had more experience of the world so that sometimes we have to let our kids go they go out in the big world when they come back sometimes they come back to such amazing kids they've learned so much you know the first time i left home with my father had already died my mother's consent i don't know why she'd let me do this it's only 17 years of age i had a guitar and a backpack i went hedgehog hitchhiking from london all the way to north africa morocco algeria it's really dangerous i wasn't into drugs or anything i just wanted some freedom and experiment and see what's in the world and she let me do that i really gave my mother a hard time shouldn't have done that but of course the hardest thing i did for my mother if you want to leave you can leave but did i tell that story about the birthday gift i gave her was that last week was it no here okay because you know sometimes people think oh i john bob you're probably born with a bald head you must certainly have such a good be a good kid when you were young it was my but my mother's birthday and there was i needed to get a present for us about seven or eight years of age i think somewhere around that age seven or eight i was really smart sneaky and get away with all sorts of silly things and this time there was a type of food available in london called uh mashed potatoes and jellied eels no eels i think i did tell this story didn't i somewhere i told it turn it here no somebody said anyway i was only s i was seven or eight years of age i went to the shop and bought an eel a live one and i had a shoe box don't get any ideas shanty over there for your mum a little kid over there used to sleep good and i bought a live eel had a box already put the eel in the box still alive and had this beautiful birthday wrapping paper you know just with beautiful flowers and i love my mummy on it and i i wrapped it up as much care as i possibly could and the nice little gift card on the outside to mummy happy birthday from your son and when i gave that to my mom she almost melted oh so sweet such a surprise did it all by yourself yes mommy please my mother never suspected a thing until she opened it and she screamed so loud she got a live eel and one of the things i do remember the eel actually raised his head when it came it's only an eel it's not dangerous we raised his head in front of my mum almost like it was trade and i ran away and hid for two hours that was me as a young man anyway so sometimes you have to let your kid just experience things but going to the rough patch you need some space cut off contact with all friends we are really worried what to do i don't know maybe you're thinking my if you can't get someone to just kind of trace him without you knowing his trace make sure he's still alive and okay there's about as much as you can do there's no friends maybe get the private detective just to check out on him without you know that you he knowing that it's you looking out for him and so it shows you still care but still give him his freedom to work out his whatever he's going through himself okay there we go talking too long again so we can now pay respects to put a dumb sango and then those of you wish to stay longer for some more questions you're most welcome [Music] oh [Music] very good thank you for waiting because i'm sorry i keep on talking too much you

Channel: Buddhist Society of Western Australia

Views: 24,280

Rating: 4.9351034 out of 5

Keywords: Buddhism, Dhamma, Dharma talk, Ajahn Brahm, family, kindness, patience

Id: 7SKiukqiAK8

Length: 76min 43sec (4603 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021