Gratitude and Expectations | Ajahn Brahm | 9 July 2021

so for the the talk today uh unusually i did have a title which i wanted to talk about this evening and the reason i'm giving this title uh given this subject is because it was suggested to me by the the monks down at uh the great southern in albany for those of you won't hear earlier i was mentioning that last week there was quite strict carved restrictions here in perth but the restrictions over in the great southern weren't so strict so i could give some talks and anyway that they want so i went down to albany last weekend and it gives some instructions there this is a nice beautiful little um hermitage we have got down there with the venable mudo and the water there at the moment with anagarika paul and it's the first time i could spend plenty of time there to really feel out the place it's gorgeous and also for the monks there they exceeded my expectations one of the reasons they exceed my expectations is because i don't have expectations i always tell people lower your expectations and then wherever you go you feel so uplifted we have all the expectations that the people who want to live with expectations of our parents expectations of ourselves expectations of buddhist society and sometimes those expectations are so great that we get depressed angry disappointed fed up and the main reason for that is one of those little sayings which i made up we're asking from this world things it cannot give us and you see that with wisdom so it can't be the way you really want it this is a human world this is where we're learning if this world was perfect there'd be no point being born here this imperfect world and that's where we learn how to change our attitude to the world we can't change the world we can always change our attitude and when we change our attitude then we find it's a very beautiful world and that's what i'm talking about this evening how to change our attitude from seeing the defects and faults and what's wrong with ourselves with our partners with our parents with our government with our monks and nuns or with whatever and learning how to overcome that i don't know i may be wrong here but the last six months twelve months covered time i noticed that that's just added an extra dimension of negativity to people's lives people get quite fed up there are more lock down more restrictions we can't do this we can't do that and it goes against people's no what they think is a freedom and of course those two types of freedom i'm not going to go off on too far attention to you the two freedoms of freedom of desire freedom from desire the freedom of desire to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it why should i not be able to do this and the freedom from desires when you say no no desire then you're always free but anyway a lot of times we have negativity because of you know the situations of life how do we deal with that unfortunately here in western australia we've done pretty well but still many people here in western australia would love to go and visit our friends here go overseas invite our friends overseas to come and visit us because we can't do that and if you do manage to get overseas you have to pay a fortune for an airline ticket so the whole thing is just very difficult these days now you can see what i've just been saying in the last two minutes is all negative seeing the faults and when i went to um albany the the topic of the talks they wanted to help me to talk about was on gratitude and i saw that and i thought wow what a great topic because when we have gratitude we've not seen the faults in others in ourselves in the government in life because of these viruses which restrict us we're not seeing the the force we're seeing the goodness of beauty in things when you have gratitude it sees things in a totally different way and one of the examples i gave was i've only got so many stories you've heard this before i am sure but in a sense of gratitude it was the story when i got an invite to teach at the morning assembly at christ church grammar school the reason was is because i've been going to teach at the cancer support association in railway parade cotterslow for so many years every year for about 30 years or more and actually they're coming to monastery in about 10 days time to visit so anyway i've been going there such a long time one of the other people who would be going there who became a good friend of mine again i don't mind what where the friends come from and this was a anglican priest called frank sheehan and frank became a good friend and he was also the chaplain at christ church grammar school so he invited me said you give good talks you're fun to listen to why don't you come to our school and teach the kids there which i did now it's nice to give talks here at buddhist centers you know sometimes when it's a weird talk you know that's when i really get into it i've been some very weird talks in my life i mentioned that one of those talks was the keynote address of the world computer conference in south korea that was that was a cool talk and if ever you see me on a computer it's very difficult for me to use a computer i'm 70 years old now next month so you know i'm not really the sort of person who knows about computers but nevertheless i went there and of course all these people i mean these were really experts and they said what the heck are you doing here i kind of like that when people say what are you doing here it challenges me but i gave a nice talk there and they were very so impressed they gave a was a 2 000 donation to the buddhist society of west australia i don't get anything out of it except fun and also going to this big conference over in in london they paid all expenses and uh cs our iro invited me to sydney to give a talk there once get some really nice nice gigs as they say but anyway just in this particular um occasion just when now i've forgotten what i was going to say i was going through all these other things i was supposed to do and not doing whatever where was i oh yeah it's it's sometimes that when you get negative to things you lose your energy you lose your inspiration you lose your happiness so instead i do remember that the gratitude is not just seeing the faults in things but seeing something which is much more beautiful in things and so when the time when kofi'd came i the first thing i said to myself and to others i've said so many people say one of the biggest problems in life is not having time we used to start talking about money or material rich but time poor and i started thinking about being time poor and to say well covert is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy your time in lockdown you can't go outside you can't go meeting people you can't go to the shops to buy you know unimportant stuff you learn how to live simply and peacefully and have all the time in the world why do people get upset at that so first of all i was trying to see something good and be grateful for lockdown right now one of the reasons we couldn't send someone here last week as i was mentioning was the person who was supposed to come here last week in adjuncting he went over to sydney and had to do two weeks quarantine and now i think oh how lucky he is and i was thinking that maybe i should go to sydney next week just for a day and come back so i can do two weeks of quality and no one can argue about it or something sometimes you see the benefits what everyone else thinks is terrible you're grateful for these events in life which challenge you i don't know how many people get upset when they have somebody who who leaves them it could be like your partner in life you know if you've had a long relationship with someone and they sort of depart for one reason or another do you get upset and depressed of course you know i've been a monk for so many years but i wasn't born a monk even though my mother did tell me that i was born with no hair it must be an omen but but nevertheless that um i remember having one girlfriend once and she dumped me at six months we were going out together it's a long time and i'm so grateful to her for dumping me otherwise i would have never had the opportunity to be a monk so whatever happened even that time i thought yeah you know you're just missing somebody but then you gain your freedom you can always see the beauty in things and my father died he was sad that he wasn't going to be in my life anymore but i was so grateful for all he taught me now when i decided to become a monk yes i didn't have all that food which i used to like but i was so grateful to having the the opportunity and freedom of being a monk and it was that gratefulness a gratitude sorry that was where i could see the beauty in things and we developed that there are people in your life that are not the best people in your life and sometimes they may have hurt you is that all they've done for you just to hurt you of course sometimes that when someone has acted in an inappropriate way towards you and cause you distress can we not have some gratitude for them to see something else in them which they did for you gave to you because there's no person i've ever seen is all bad never and for those of you who challenge me on that please have a look in that book which i wrote open the door of your hearts and in there you'll find a beautiful poem written by this aspiring poet artist about his mother it's a beautiful poem because when i first read it it was a nice poem about being grateful to your mum and always just even though she's very demanding when she gets old remember she looked after you when you were young brought you up and sacrificed so much for you and the reason why i like that poem and i got permission to reproduce it in that book open the door of your heart it's easy to open the door of your heart to good people but this was opening the door to your heart to someone you never expect because that poem was authored by adolf hitler and you see that in the book what did i make a mis a representation of its author no and sometimes we always feel that some people just bowed to the core but there he was showing us beautiful love for his own mum and that was just an example you never see or bad you always see something good in people and if you can see something which is good inside what you think is an enemy when you have gratitude for them it changes the whole relationship anyway the story which i forgot i was in the middle i was going to christ church grammar school that was actually where it created some harmony between for me anyway uh christianity and buddhism and seeing it in a different way because when i went there we had to wait outside the franxxian myself and the principal forget who the principal was the time don't know his name but he said he was a devout christian and he said you're a buddhist how do you guess that i said i wish i had said don't know but anyway you're buddhist i'm a devout christian so is the chaplain frank sheehan so when we go inside the building we're going to do a quick bow to the statue of jesus there you're a buddhist you don't have to do that i said no i'm going to demand my right to bow to your statue of jesus and of course that was something you never expected i like saying things which people don't expect wakes them up see things in a different way because then i said to him i said i can see something in your stature which i respect not everything i am not sort of a christian i'm a buddhist i know there are very many bad things which adolf hitler did but there was one part of him you could see what you could respect is love for his mom and that can change the whole way you look at somebody and the whole way you look at your husband your wife your parents yourself covered life and death and so when i went into that hall i did a quick bow to the statue of jesus what happened next was very inspiring for me because the result of that i never did this on purpose but two or three weeks later the kids of christ church grammar school came to visit bodhinyana monastery in serpentine together with the principal and the principal arrived in his car i met them in the car park and then together the two of us the kids came in later we went inside the main hall of puerto monastery with this big buddha statue sent from thailand and the two of us we bowed to the statue of buddha together i bowed to his statue of christ he about to ask that you buddha and that was actually breaking the things the barriers between different ideas i don't see why more people can't do that when they respect other people's ideas and opinions and views and if they can do that it does mean that we create more peace in this world we have gratitude towards others but if you do remember that book for the opening of the door of your heart it's been out for about 20 years now that in there is one of these stories called the most beautiful sound in the world and that most beautiful sound in the world was an old story which i read somewhere of an old man who lived up in the mountains and he worked very hard in a very poor village so that his children could have a really great education and their children they did work hard at school then at university and then they went to town into the city where they established themselves in good careers and after they had established themselves they decided together to invite their father into the city for the first time and this father had worked hard all his life he never seen a major city before and so when he went into that city he saw things he never ever seen before and one of the things he didn't actually see he heard it this really terrible terrible terrible sound but even though the sound was very hard to listen to he couldn't resist finding out what was causing what he decided was the worst sound in the whole world and he followed it to a house in the back room of a house he saw a little child trying to play the violin he never seen a violin before in his life and he saw this little child it was a terrible noise and so he thought violins are bad you never wanted to hear a violin again same day in the afternoon past another house this time he heard a beautiful sound one of the most beautiful sounds he'd ever heard followed that to the front room of a house there he saw an old woman playing the violin the same instrument was an old woman she had learned how to play that violin and she was a maestro of that instrument and he thought straight away that he'd made a mistake judging the instrument rather than judging the person or we're not even judging the person the person was still learning it's so easy to judge people they're still learning their craft when you learn it well sometimes people can make some beautiful music with their religion philosophy faith ideas and then the next day he heard the most beautiful sound in the world and i remember writing trying to express what a beautiful sound was said more beautiful than the sound of the rain up in the mountains more beautiful than the sound of the creek after the heavy rains or the birds at dawn up in the mountains or the wind rustling the leaves i live up i'm not really a mountain but hills down in serpentine in bergen yard and monash very often there's some beautiful music of the wind or the silence the silence is what i like the most but anyway even more beautiful than that the next day he heard this sound which captivated him the most beautiful sound in the world and of course those of you who know this story on read it in the book who remembered it would know the most beautiful sound in the world was the sound of an orchestra and he said it was the most beautiful sound for two reasons the first of all everybody in the orchestra was a maestro of their own instrument they have trained for years until they are experts but secondly they'd all learned how to play together in harmony with incredible movements and symphonies and that's why to him was the most powerful music in the world because they'd learn their instruments well and they'd learned how to play together in harmony i love that story because so often that people argue so often instead of just learning how to play together to combine our understanding i haven't said this story here i started saying it i don't in albany a couple of days ago about the the old elephant story the old elephant story the blind man in the elephant what is an elephant the one who felt the the blind since birth never felt an elephant before the one who felt the the leg said it was tree trunk the one who felt the tail said it was a fly whistle one felt the body there was a rock one who felt their heads there was a was it called a a pot one who felt the the tusks said it was a plow used by the farmers one who felt the ears said it was a it was a fan one felt the not the tail so the one who felt the the uh the trunk said it was a snake and they argued what it was they were all right which one was wrong they're all right they had no respect for one another no gratitude for what other people said when you respect and have gratitude for other people's ideas which are different than yours you find out an elephant is a big rock on four tree trunks with a fly whisk at the back a pot on the front with two plows on either side and two fans behind the plows and a snake in the middle which is not a bad description of an elephant for one who will never see them i also remembered that once there were seven elephants i wanted to find out they were blind and the seven blind elephants wanted to find out what a man was so how can they find out what a man was they found one each and felt they felt the man when they came back they weren't like human beings they never were argued elephants don't argue they all agreed their man was flat you know i say one of those interesting gigs i did years ago there was at this this seminar in haman island and i told that story to uh what's her name uh julia gillard yeah julian adam wayne swan when they were up there so they enjoyed that but anyhow just when we have respect of gratitude for things it even really helps in our spiritual practice so we're not here to find fault with ourselves or find fault with others even those people who do have any sicknesses right depression can you be grateful for your depression it's a very looking at it in a positive way you can certainly find some positives in it i remember talking to this guy in our armadale group years ago no not maybe a year ago he came up to me afterwards he said he was really suffering with depression he was came to my meditation class to try and find a way out of it and try and get rid of it and i said to him why do you want to get rid of your depression can't you see its benefits you don't have to go to work he said oh yeah that's true you can you can lay in bed in the morning you don't have to get up you just say to your wife i'm depressed that's good idea and the other thing he said that that morning you know he felt like he wanted to have some ice cream ice cream in the morning for breakfast usually his wife and family members would never let him have ice cream for breakfast he felt like it so he had two bowls of chocolate ice cream that is a privilege you get with depression you can eat whatever you like when you when you like it he said yeah so i told him look the depression is not going to last that long so when it goes please keep it a secret don't tell anybody so you can enjoy all the benefits of indulgence so you got that there's always some benefits in whatever you have in your in your life and that's why i'm grateful for whatever happens it might be difficult it might even be painful but you know that sometimes when it's really painful you learn so much and of course one of the biggest pains are not you caught it painful yeah it was but it was just that those sorts of sickness which just really exhausted you and have fevers that was that time in that hospital in in uban for 45 46 years ago somebody reminded me of that story a couple of days ago because i contracted scrub typhus which has the same symptoms as typhoid and people did in the hospital didn't know what it was it wasn't a really heavy fever i was getting sicker and sicker and sicker so they put me in hospital and when they put me in hospital because they didn't know what it was this was in a third world country in the the back waters of that third world country you know northeast of thailand was just you know a place where you know the intelligent people didn't go honestly i'm being honest with you and the hospital was really third world and the monks ward in that hospital monks are supposed to be tough so i do remember that there's any nurses here and doctor there's like one doctor here in that hospital now you have a fever you feel terrible they put you in a bed put a drip in your arm and then at six o'clock in the evening i noticed the nurse there's just one male nurse at the opening to the ward disappeared by seven o'clock the replacement nurse had not come and i told the mug in the next bed should we go and tell someone the the replacement nurse hasn't turned up and that's when he told me there is no night nurse ever there's only a nurse for 12 hours of the day 6 a.m to 6 p.m if you get sick in the middle of the night that's just unfortunate karma you know that wasn't very helpful that wasn't very reassuring but worse the worst pain there was the injections now you all know these days when i had my first covered injection about two months ago he hardly felt it those needles were really really sharp but not in those days those it's true those days the needles were recycled honestly they would actually sterilize them hopefully and use them again and again and again so it's only a theory but i think it's probably got some justification to it they usually used it in bangkok first of all where all the wealthy people were and then after they used them in bangkok then they'd send them up to the northeast we couldn't afford new ones and then they would keep using when using them and they were lastly used on the marks because it was supposed to be tough guys that's what it felt like anyway because it was so dull i still remember the nurse a female nurse who would inject me twice a day morning and afternoon actually she never injected me that's just an exaggeration she stabbed me that's the only way you could get it in so these nurses sometimes people you know thai girls and they're really nice and cute beautiful and petite and nice not in the northeast honestly i tell the marxist that's why they reminded me of this story especially in my mind they said that nurse i said and it's pretty accurate was built like a water buffalo really strong had to be to stab you was really painful but i'm grateful for her to give me another story to tell on a friday night that wasn't that bad but i still recall that time because the way that my my fever stopped was about three or four weeks i think nothing was working and when you feel really really tired not tired that's the wrong word exhausted no energy at all and nothing is working long way away from home and feeling really really bad for days and days and days that's when i did you know what i'm not supposed to do what i teach you as well learning how to meditate properly and i'm so grateful for that experience because i learned just doesn't matter how weak you are how tired you are how exhausted you are it doesn't matter about what physical position you're in your posture you can still get into the deepest of meditations because what i did just let go i didn't have enough energy to put forth efforts into the meditation and let things be i stopped fighting allow things to be your mind gets really really still when your mind gets still it gets very beautiful so beautiful that the body just vanishes you can't feel it anymore you're just really enjoying the inside just you know that sometimes you may be watching a soccer match or a movie or something you don't feel the pain in the body your legs gone to sleep or you need to go to the toilet you don't feel that because you're just taken out by the beauty inside so that's what was happening i came out afterwards and felt wonderful best i'd felt for weeks it taught me a lot and for that i've got a lot of gratitude to that illness i can always see the positive things in it and when you see the positive things that whatever you have to do in life whatever happens to you in life you see it's beauty a lot of times that changes your whole attitude to what's happening in life life gives you many gifts you know you see your partner which you freely chose most of you have you got gratitude to them you know if you can see all their faults very easily can you see the positive side or the wonderful parts of them because this is something which i've been a monk for maybe too long not because i'm going to stay as a monk but sometimes i see people having difficulties in their relationship i look at both of them and they're both they're really good people i thought how come you know you can't see the beauty and goodness in your life i can't come you can't see the wonderful qualities in your your husband we just get into this native only seeing what's wrong with them rather than seeing the beauty in them just like you know living in buddhist monastery it's very easy to see what's wrong with the monastery seeing its faults the monks talking too much talking about the wrong things and getting involved in the internet too much and just it's very easy to see that but to see the beauty in it there's a men young men old men really trying their best the best they possibly can to create create peace to find truth to find something of meaning in their life and give them that opportunity our grateful that they're there so grateful that after all that hard work we have bikunis fully ordained women here in western australia that's it's mind-boggling i don't care about you know how good they are how bad they are whatever just the fact they're there i feel a lot of joy and happiness in that and then what happens i teach that to the monks who meditate how was your meditation today can you not feel this beautiful sense of gratitude for your body and mind they got so far in meditation you can sit quietly for half an hour when you want more you can't enjoy what you already have when you don't have gratitude you miss out these amazing benefits which you take for granted in life so you don't enjoy them so they slip away from you it's like life gives you these wonderful opportunities to rejoice in whatever you have in peace reasonable health you're alive you've got someone who can look after you and care for you we often miss the great benefits of gratitude i'm a bit tired today because i came in rushed in early because of the great storm we had that there's traffic chaos on the quinana freeway so we got in here late but it was it was to do a funeral service for someone i always remember the story a true story of someone who did a funeral service while they were still alive they now had some sort of disease which was terminal disease they weren't going to recover and so about one month before they died they decided to hold their own funeral so they could actually attend it with consciousness thought what a brilliant idea that was because you've been to funerals and people say all these wonderful things about you and usually you're dead you can't hear it so wouldn't it be wonderful to you know you're gonna die anyway the doctor said maybe a month to live two weeks three weeks but it's not gonna be that long so you have your own funeral service where you can actually benefit from it and that's what he did and good on him so all the people who came they said it's wonderful words about him and he could actually listen to it and apparently he also took notes of who didn't come so you could cut them out of his will we've ever noticed that the gratitude we have or we express at a funeral service that's one of the reasons i love doing funeral services honestly i enjoy them because i'd like to listen to the actually we missed the eulogies today because we came late i love listening to the eulogies where people look at these people you've known or you've been married to your mother your father and you feel what's really important for you and the gratitude which you have towards them which is really quite moving so because of that the gratitude is something which is a shame we don't show that before a person passes away it's one of the reasons why we always remember people with love gratitude we take all the wonderful things they've done and forget about any faults which they have we're grateful for their goodness so little by little by little we change our attitude towards our life and even towards your meditation practice just to be grateful to have half an hour we can be peaceful i wasn't good enough i want to get some deep meditation now i get that from many people because i'm a meditation teacher i said look if you want so much depth in your meditation you'll never get it there's many people they know their buddhism they want to be a soul one a stream winner before they die you'll never get it with that type of attitude are you grateful for what you've experienced what you've understood so far it's wonderful i've had this wonderful opportunity to practice buddhism to offer dharma and listen to teachings to help to serve isn't it a wonderful thing that's the way to become a stream winner to get deep meditation to enjoy the happiness you already have which you see in front of you and let that take you into deeper happiness it's one of the reasons why in the meditation i've been teaching here for years i say that when you relax can you not enjoy the the delight of a relaxed body oh yeah that's nothing just relaxation i want to go deeper i'm going to be enlightened i want to get this kind of just enjoy that be grateful for the joy which is right in front of you i have an old saying that once there was a man and he was cooking his rice in the evening for dinner he had the rice and water in the pot he had the the wood underneath the pot but he couldn't find the matches to light the wood he's looking for the matches where did i put the matches you know he was looking for the matches with with a candle where's the matches i can't find the matches if he only knew what fire was he could have cooked his rice much earlier and sometimes that's an old story which i think is so appropriate we all want to get some peace health deep meditation happiness meaning and for those of you who are really getting deep into your meditation want to get janus these deep beautiful meditations we all want to get some deep insights if that's what you want you'll never get them what are the deep insights what is the happiness of meditation it's right here you don't go searching for it you stop the searching and what's left is the happiness just i don't know the last time i said this but this cartoon is still well the last time i went to china grove it was still there on the wall very easy teaching about how to become enlightened about a very angry man who came to see the monk and the angry man had a sign like a protest sign which read i want happiness i mean how many times you've been coming to this buddhist center we've been promising you happiness have we have you got happiness yet you should protest you monks have been promising this and promising everything and just buddhism is supposed to make you enlightened i haven't got it yet this is not right it's not working protest and so he had this protest sign i want happiness really upset and angry and so he uh the monk took it so your first problem your first mistake sir i you scrub that out second problem sir second mistake want you scrubbed out the want then about hold up the sign what's left happiness very simple but actually very profound i want happiness the two problems there is the eye and the want scrub those two out is only one thing left happiness you might say i want enlightenment want someone i want jhana the eye and the want is a problem so little by little we learn how to be grateful and gratitude is another way of saying no desire learning to appreciate what you have and to appreciate the good qualities in your partner and to appreciate the good qualities in your children learning how to appreciate the good qualities in a beautiful city like perth those qualities are there if you don't if you allow your expectations you'll never be disappointed like i was not disappointed with those monks over in albany last week my expectation was so low okay how can you be disappointed they're great bucks so thank you for listening so far okay so now we get some questions about some questions from people here any questions if you ask a question you can take your mask off it's true you're allowed to okay okay so you notice the the tablet hasn't got a mask on asking this question oh my goodness me or from indonesia how do i meditate through sickness my diseases diseases sometimes get worse after meditating sometimes it's better how do i focus on the leg if my lung is painful whatever is the most painful part of your body that's the one which you focus on because that's drawing you in it's asking for attention and i don't you know i just do the sweeping through my body because my body's pretty healthy but if i had a bad leg i'd go to my legs straight away or bad what does it say bad a bad lung if you've got a bad luck of course you focus on that because the body is drawing you in to focus on it and so it's right in front of you you're kind to it you get this beautiful softness that's one of the things which i just mentioned earlier that sometimes when you practice like this you don't choose the meditation objects now whatever is right in front of your mind right now that is almost like chooses you it's in this moment and you care for it you don't try and cure it big thing which people make mistakes of is trying to cure it trying to get rid of it trying to be someplace where that pain isn't but be with it because it's one thing which the the buddha said which you know i practice and it's so true the physical pain is only just about five percent of the suffering it's the mental emotional reaction is 95 and if you can somehow notice that physical pain doesn't disappear but it's added to enormously by your reaction to it the emotional part of it and you can lessen the emotional response that's why that one of my favorite men in catholicism was his san lorenzo and you still find out why i thought it was really cool now he was a bit of a heretic i've said a few people and you can you can i've said a few people in buddhism and nothing much happens to you but in those days 500 600 700 years ago if you upset too many people in the catholic church you get sort of killed you get burnt alive at the stake but it wasn't actually burnt on the steak that's really cool they had us like grill like a barbecue toaster or something they put them on top and just to burn him to death and imagine how painful that must be his last words apparently before he went unconscious and translated into english was turn me over this side's done he said that apparently i thought you know he's dying anyway he can't escape so i might as well make a joke about it it's pretty cool i like telling jokes i'm not sure if i can do that but that's pretty impressive so you could do something like that it's possible so sometimes it makes us think again sometimes get worse after meditating you're not meditating to try and cure your sicknesses or secure your pains it's caring for them so put more care in the meditation rather than trying to control them from bolivia i jump on what is the buddhist point of view about donating blood thank you it's great when i was in town i donated a lot of blood to mosquitoes but no i you know i used to donate blood all the time over here not all the time but maybe regularly remember just uh that was where i remember this one young monk i went with him to the red cross over in wellington street to to donate blood and when he donated blood first of all i had to check your your blood pressure and then um i was next to him and the nurse checked his blood pressure and said hey something's wrong so quickly what's happening he said your blood pressure is low lower than before who's he used to donate blood before when he was working for western power you know the electricity supplier and she had a look at him and said you're a monk now you change your profession he said yeah i'm a monk now i said oh that explains it you've been meditating haven't you so even though the nurses in those days when meditation was this was 35 years ago 36 years ago when meditation wasn't that well known nurses knew that when you meditate it lowers your blood pressure i was really inspired by that but yeah we used to donate blood regularly and then i think when i went over to thailand and i think malaysia singapore and places they said oh no that you know that uh there may be some malaria over there or and so you shouldn't donate your blood i'd be disappointed about that because i enjoyed donating my blood all the time it's also you have a free health check as well that's where you found out my blood is not the best type of blood it's a positive i think you know the best type of blood be positive it's obvious isn't it be positive oh this is hey we've got a lot of good people here this is the next one is from india director and you had once said that being a dustbin without a bottom is achieved by getting the getting to the heart of the matter similarly what is the way to open the door for your heart opening the door of your heart is just learning not to control life and learning that it's much better to be kind and to care for people you get much further much more benefits with caring for people rather than trying to punish them and control them example of that many years ago this lady you come here to meditate when we first started here and after seven years of coming here she came to see me after a talk and she said i'll come here to not just to thank you for thank our channel and all the other monks who've been teaching here and now she had this beautiful smile on her face and said why and then she told her story she'd come to our buddhist society this such a long time ago because she was a victim of domestic violence it wasn't like 38 years ago at a time when we didn't have the appreciation of you know how much suffering the woman has goes through didn't have all the resources she said she wasn't a buddhist at the time she was now but she just came here as a place where she could be safe for a couple of hours and that's what she said but little by little you know she was listening to these teachings and they worked it took her seven years she said what she did was the positive reinforcement gratitude every time her violent husband was kind to her she just made sure just how much her partner realized how grateful she was she no overdue the kissing the hiking the thank you so much and the other thing which was very hard to do when she was punched or hit she forgave straight away it's very tough it's not it's not recommended but that's all she could do and my goodness she did it so well she said it doesn't hit me anymore now we have this beautiful relationship had two beautiful kids he said i changed him she really did change this man being a kind caring man just with that positive reinforcement what i've often said watering the flowers not watering the wheats that's very hard to do but she did actually open the door for her and her husband really appreciated obviously being changed into a very good man anyway from singapore i have bipolar and have great mood swings no energy or will to live when depressed and lots of energy despite steep disturbance red manic what can i do to alleviate the swing first of all you may say you have bipolar but remember you're much more than that so it makes you not just uh be a prisoner of any mental disease you find times when you're very aware of your mind and you have strategies when you find that you're getting too much energy with my with just mindfulness and kindness just don't overreact to it when you're very low energy don't get depressed about being depressed and little by little you'll find the lows are not so deep and the highs are not so extraordinarily high you'll start to even out some more with mindfulness and kindness little by little you know you'll find what really agitates you what really calms you down so take that being bipolar as a great teaching for you as an opportunity to learn more awareness more mindfulness and more kindness to your own body and mind from denmark i have meditated a lot lately and it seems i'm experiencing more negative thoughts and actually become more unhappy recording bad memories during meditation any advice i'm not quite sure what type of meditating you're doing but if the meditation is trying to control things trying to own things your sense of self becoming too strong that's usually when you experience more negative thoughts a lot of the times when your meditation is becoming more peaceful because you are relaxing more you're following the instructions you're not trying to aim for something you're being at peace which means you don't need so much thoughts thoughts in meditation are usually a sign of a disturbed mind they're like the waves on a body of water like a lake if that lake is reasonably relaxed peaceful then there's no waves on it so the waves aren't you they're showing that there's a wind blowing or something underneath is agitating the water so if the water is not agitated the wind is not blowing you're protecting your mind you find the thoughts go less and less and less and become very very absent you have to become more unhappy i sometimes i can't really understand that you meditate properly your happiness increases and increases and increases your happiness gets less if you don't meditate so the meditation isn't being done sort of properly or accurately so check the way you're meditating and do it with less force lastly from new zealand when the buddha says hatred is not still by hatred is he talking about hatred between people or hatred in one's own heart mostly hatred in one's own hearts but also transfers to hatred between others you may not like what a person does to you but again you learn you realize that this world is never going to be perfect and you're going to be disappointed and some people are going to do things and say things we say why on earth did they say that because they too are imperfect human beings just like you that you are an imperfect human being but you're learning trying to do better each time hopefully we doesn't expect so much of people so you don't expect so much of yourself so you make a mistake don't feel guilty about it don't try and be ashamed of it you acknowledge it learn from it and grow from it become a better human being because of it but hatred still by more hatred of course it doesn't get stolen by more hatred in your own heart it means we call that like double suffering double dukkha know i'm hating someone i'm a senior mark i shouldn't be hating anybody and of course that hatred gets worse you're reacting to it so don't react to it hatred comes okay i made a mistake there let's learn from that be kind for it and if it's somebody else gets angry towards you while they're getting angry towards me they got even angry towards the buddha everyone is subject to anger people got angry towards the buddha because well his father got angry towards him he says enough losing you but now i lose my grandson because he's now a monk i'm so little by their told us we can get angry for anything and i don't know why people do that whatever you're feeling angry for the feeling of anger is much worse i always used to say that anger is like taking a hot cold and throwing it at your enemy hoping you hit the enemy with a hot coal and they will hurt most times you miss but you always get burnt so anyway there we go any questions from the floor before we depart any questions you sure there's no questions you're not going to line up in front of the shoes of afters okay never mind so anyway that's uh next week we'll be back again on friday and on saturday but on sunday no because we're holding our entry to the rains ceremony on uh sunday week tomorrow week not tomorrow week and nine days time and the entry to the reigns ceremony that's when that you know we are monks we'd like to do retreats ourselves and that's when we all stay at bodhinyana monastery for monks at kusurawihara that's uh where in rhodes stone where is antutu will be over in uh albany for venerable mudu the non-sovereign dharmasara as well as over mike's over east where we can have a bit of uh peace and i as a teacher over in bonnie and monitor can spend a lot of time just teaching the monks and the novices and anagarikas there so they get more special attention at that time it's an old tradition of having three months of retreating monastery we all allow to visit and uh hopefully if you don't visit then uh after the three months retreat you'll find me very thin so please visit okay so now let's play respects to buddha dharmasang and then we can go back if we need to [Music] awesome [Music] mommy you

Channel: Buddhist Society of Western Australia

Views: 28,285

Rating: 4.9403872 out of 5

Keywords: Buddhism, Ajahn Brahm, Dharma talk, Dhamma, gratitude, expectation

Id: MzT3W1jjTYY

Length: 65min 18sec (3918 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021