If you love life. Life will love you back | Ajahn Brahm

that's one of the reasons i just when i was training in meditation just the gongs were something i'd never look forward to because either they were run too early i was just really getting into some good meditation in gong oh they were rang too late when i was really hurting oh please ring the gong it was like controlling the meditation rather allowing the meditation to be this natural quietening and calming of the body and the mind and going deep deep deep deep within and sometimes the body and the mind just wanted to carry on going deep and just ringing the bell just and sometimes here i tell funny stories and jokes one of the ones which always makes a point what would happen if the buddha had someone ringing a gong under the bodhi tree while i was getting enlightened gong bong [Music] silence is more beautiful than any bell but anyway for today's talk it's so often in this when i want to give a talk that i pick up on the audience which is and there's hardly any audience here at all tonight they're all listening online maybe so it gives me more freedom it's amazing you may not believe this but a few times i wanted to give a very deep talk but the audience did not let me and we could feel that happening that the ideas were like blocked because giving a talk is getting connection with the audience getting the relationship with them and with kindness with peace with depth to see what you could teach but tonight there's always one talk which i wanted to give haven't given for a long time now was just on transcendence it's a deep talk it's actually going further than you've gone before sometimes i've told jokes about that you know like baldly going where no monk has gone before so those people who know star trek is they say boldly go this is bald leaguer you know it's just a little play on words but being able to to take one's understanding once experience once penetration to a much deeper level than you've ever done before and to use that to experience things which you haven't experienced before wonderful safe things but also enlightening things in order to do this there's something which i'm just giving a talk last night to a group of students in monash university in malaysia we're talking about mindfulness and i'm going to start with mindfulness but go much deeper than ordinary mindfulness and to say that mindfulness for most people is just ordinary it allows you to be safe it allows you to be maybe successful but we don't take it far enough we don't get into a transcendent state of mindfulness where we can be just so aware deeply aware and this is what happens to you when you start building up your meditation and it's one of the reasons one amongst many why i prefer to do this half an hour meditation first and the talk afterwards so that when i'm meditating deeply my mindfulness can really increase i can see so much more deeply and there's many stories just to begin this talk and what that means in real life most people's mindfulness was workable but it doesn't penetrate deeper into the reality of things one of the first experiences of that of penetrating deeper be able to see and hear things which most times i couldn't do was the first so the first meditation retreat which i gave sorry which i practiced i gave myself to the retreat i didn't actually teach it still a student and we were allowed this walk every morning just for an hour before breakfast and because this retreat was held in the university town where i studied i knew the town very well and i knew we were close to the botanical gardens in his english city and i spent eight of those nine mornings walking to the botanical gardens maybe a five-minute walk to the gate but then what happened when i walked inside those botanical gardens went through the gate was something which stunned me because there was this clump of bamboo at this entry to the gate and even the first morning i would get up early do lots of meditation before going on this walk alone in silence when i saw this clump of bamboo it was beautiful the most beautiful clump of bamboo i'd ever seen in my life and i started to imagine why bamboo was always featured in classical chinese watercolors it's because it's shape and the way that it bends under its own weight it's tall long and very slender and it almost got like sensual to the eyeball and the colors and it was very very refined and i saw this clump of bamboo just swaying in the gentle morning breeze with the greens and the yellows of the the trunk and just the slender leaves you know thick at the base and then go into this wonderful point and the whole of the bamboo just captivated my attention and i did have enough other mindfulness to realize if somebody had seen me just staring at this clump of bamboo early in the morning they probably would have thought i was on some drugs and taken me away but there was a seat a park bench close by so i sat on that park bench and just stared at the camper bamboo until i realized i'd have to go back to get my breakfast i went back there the following day eight out of the nine days i went to see the most beautiful club of bamboo i'd ever seen in my life and every day i just stand there or sit there and so i'm never done with that cramp of bamboo i never finished exploring it after 50 minutes you'd have to tear yourself away to go and have your breakfast and i never realized what was happening to me i had some wonderful meditation on that retreat the first experience of a deep meditation was on that retreat but i didn't really understand why or what or what to make of it but what happened next was a couple of days after finishing the retreat back to university with all the socializing the talking the studying all that busyness i kept thinking of the most beautiful clump of bamboo in the world i just wanted to go and visit and when i got on my bicycle and cycled through the traffic to the cambridge botanical gardens the back entrance and i went in there to see my most beautiful camper bamboo i was shocked because what i saw was this dry desiccated thin dusty plant which did not belong in that part of uk or even that part of the world it shocked me because all the beauty had gone all the slenderness the colors i just could not see them anymore even though my eyes were fine they were normal but it was something which was missing which took away its beauty and that was one experience of many i had doing meditation because when your meditation gets very deep and powerful you can start to see beauty you can start to taste flavors which you haven't tasted before in the food you eat you can start to to hear sounds which are far more melodic and soothing than you've ever noticed before those sounds are there all the time but you only hear a fraction of them and to feel with your hands or with your body sensations which are like amplified which you're not aware of in your normal states of consciousness your mindfulness is getting powerful and that's one of the reasons why the when you know you are on a retreat we have these beautiful places where you can meditate and sometimes i've seen other meditators do this i've done it myself so often just you stand for half an hour or an hour just looking at just a little blade of grass you can't imagine just how beautiful that blade of grass is you've never seen it like that before the greens it's like it's been polished like it's and all the dust the dirt has been taken away and it and it's clear powerful and very very gorgeous to watch and it's just a blade of grass or sometimes in january the meditation retreat center which we have next to our monastery sometimes you can see it on the the stupas they're called these monuments which were offered by some very generous indonesian monk and its followers for our retreat center you can sit on there and just look at the sky at night and it's clear there's very little visual pollution you can see the stars and the stars are just like all polished and this is not going crazy or mad as i'm like we don't take drugs or alcohol what happens is our mind becomes very clear this is what you see and this is i said last night from william blake's wonderful little poem to see a world in a grain of sand a heaven and a wild flower hold infinity in the palm of your hand eternity in an hour this is where all those boundaries are being removed the bamboo in the fans of london they're not supposed to look beautiful so we won't climb it for them and the same was just a blade of grass it's just a blade of grass for goodness sake but when you're very mindful it becomes gorgeous because it's gorgeous you stay with it you can't pull your attention away you don't want to pull your attention away and that gorgeous aspect gets even stronger and you go out with big silly smiles on your face and all those boundaries come down to see a world in a grain of sand you're not supposed to see a world in a grain of sand the grain of sand is ordinary you see the extraordinary units your transcending the boundaries of perception see a heaven and a wildflower you know we have wildflower season here in perth in west australia and they're tiny little flowers and most people if you're not looking if you're not still if you're not peaceful if you haven't trained your mindfulness you don't see the absolute wonderful colors and how just pretty they are they're they're just like like daffodils carcasses roses roses are big and maybe gross or like all kids but these are even more beautiful they're tiny you allow your mind to settle on them and they are just wow this is such showing that your mind is transcending and to hold infinity in the palm of your hand now that's what transcendence is infinity is not a concept it's not an idea it's an emotion no boundaries you're not limited anymore all those things which measure and control which makes me things finite have gone past this is one of the reasons why that controlling which many people realize is a big problem in our world all comes from measuring when you measure then you have the means to control and you have the the incentive to control you measure first and then you control it's one of the reasons why that little quote which somebody actually here in this hall many years ago asked me and i don't know why they asked me this question but it was a wonderful question because it was an answer which i never expected the question was that what do you think about lord kelvin who was a pioneer scientist is saying that before we control nature in our world we have to learn how to measure her accurately first of all and this was the beginning of the industrial revolution to get standard weights and measurements and clocks so when we could measure our world measure nature precisely then we could have control when we stop measuring we go beyond measuring then we are free free from boundaries free from control we can't do anything yay how peaceful and beautiful that is when we go beyond we transform our lives from measuring judging away how much time is this talk how much time do you meditate how long can you meditate you know when i was a young monk i used to do stuff like that see how long i can meditate for see if i can break my pb personal best i would be measuring and the meditation would never be really peaceful then but there comes time in your meditation and many of you have experienced this you meditate there and you get really really peaceful when you open your eyes you haven't fallen asleep you had a wonderful time there's no doubt about that because after you've had a really good meditation you're just full of energy if you're fallen asleep you're dull that's one of the best ways walls of thumb if you like to know if you've been asleep when you've been meditating you've had a very deep one how much energy and joy have you had got afterwards and quite frankly that if you had a very deep meditation afterwards it's like you're you're walking on air these are so light-hearted you're so joyful that's a sign your meditation was really really transformational really deep so this is where even time now is not measured see a world in the grain of sand or heaven the wildflower hold infinity in the palm of your hand in eternity in an hour basically an hour has no more meaning even a moment has no meaning time has vanished you've gone past time because you don't measure it anymore it's just a simple thing which i noticed that when you're meditating if you're wondering how many minutes have gone past you're wondering about how many minutes are left you're measuring things you can't be peaceful if you forget time you're not interested in time anymore then you can meditate so peaceful and just 10 minutes or an hour or five hours or whatever it just is and you're free of time time is a prison i think we all know just the worst parts of time but imagine that you're you're not bound by time you're just peacefully in this moment enjoying every part of this moment and you open your eyes and oh quickly a couple of days have gone past that happens so sometimes that when we learn how to not measure things then we go past things we can get very very very peaceful but you know that sometimes what happens when people's mindfulness gets that strong they get afraid the fear comes up in their meditation and that stops them going past things and they stop transcending because they don't want to the sense of self gets challenged all their ideas their comfort zones they don't want to get beyond them which is one of the reasons why that in any spiritual life that always come to those parts when we do get afraid when they do get afraid first of all yeah well done it means you're challenging some of your old ways of looking at things your own perceptions but if you look very carefully the origin of such fear is the fear of letting go of something it's a fear of going beyond something which you don't own anyway a place where you don't really belong why are you afraid afraid is always when our attachments something which we delighted has been taken away from us by taking away an ice cream from the little kid and of course it's my ice cream you can't take it when you will you remove the idea it's yours the ownership the attachment the sense of self it doesn't matter and little by little you can let go of more with no fear what usually happens is the first time you feel a little bit afraid somehow other you go beyond that as a teacher as part of my job is to try and encourage you to just transcend even small things and i often quote this little anecdote the time when i was teaching just a very short meditation in singapore a lunchtime meditation to many business people had enough confidence in me they took half an hour off during their lunch hours and came to a meditation class they don't have any many things a couple of thousand and all businessmen and women and during the meditation about half an hour that's all so afterwards one of them put their hand up and said that was scary so what happened they said because their hands vanished they couldn't feel their hands wow what's going on and it was just a simple example that when you're meditating your body disappears you go inside and the body is quite happy it's just very comfortable varieties but of course having taught this doneness for so many years when your body disappears or just past the body disappears because your body is relaxed your mind is at peace oh it's amazing just how many therapeutical benefits that has how you just heal yourself how big diseases disappear how one little girl just how she she straightened up her own spine which was deformed brilliant stuff out cancers tumors just disappear arthritis gets goes just how you can take a disease like food poisoning or how you can take not diseases but simple things like colds i remember one of the best talks which i ever gave it wasn't a good talk because of the content of the talk it was an inspiring talk because of just the circumstances of giving the talk was the first time when i visited canberra so many years ago and i didn't do research we didn't have computers in those days i didn't realize just how cold canberra could be it's supposed to be australia supposed to be warm but anyway there's people are supposed to be kind to me but they were trying to do their best but they took me touring around and outside of canberra and up and down and it was getting more and more late and i supposed to give a talk that evening and by the time i got to the talk i'd been out all day really busy talking to people going places and and i developed a cold and my my nose was streaming you know with the stuff which happens when you have a cold snot was just coming out just lots of it my eyes were watering i was coughing as well i was really sick and usually when you're sick you just say okay i'm just going back and going to bed or something but all these people have come for this talk in canberra and there's something about me that's oh come on i jump um you can do something for these people i tried to give a talk it was one of the worst talks which i'd given only took about 15 minutes or in less than that 10 minutes because you had such a bad cold all this terrible yucky stuff was coming out of your nose and going into your mouth and trying to wipe it away and sneezing and saying another couple of words and you couldn't put more than a sentence together at a time so i just asked everybody is it okay if we meditate for half an hour first and they all agreed and that half an hour was all i needed i know how to meditate know how to go inside to go very deep and i had to sometimes it's just the incentive is the fact that i don't want to harm anybody or disturb people or disappoint them so just half an hour is all i needed when i came out of that meditation i gave this perfect talk but not one sneeze nothing was coming out of my nose no coughing my eyes were clear and i knew that so that was really unusual that was transcending something transcending the cold it just disappeared not taking any medication couldn't even get a cup of english tea and some chinese tea i think there and so no energy but the energy came back and they the health was just there i've done that many times just how wonderful the ability is to understand just how through stillness and strong mindfulness when you let the body be still you transcend your body how it becomes really healthy wow what a great gift that is it's one of the reasons i teach that to encourage everybody is one of you you can do that too and i just told this story just yesterday last night to these uh buddhists over in monash university in chao and he wants to see the story of that that book which i wrote open the door of your heart and the wonderful gift which somebody gave me because of that book this woman a white elderly woman arrived in bodhinyana monastery for lunch and she was old and she was carrying this probably the most well used copy of my book opening the door of your heart i'd ever seen you know when you've used the book a lot it's all dog-eared this is gray on the outside and there's creases in the front cover and she'd been using this book so much when i asked her who she was she said that she'd come from switzerland from the city of burn b-e-r-n-e and the reason she'd come she'd arrived that morning in the airport in perth and she got a taxi to bodybuilder monastery and she you know waited until her lunch time and she came up to see me and she said i come all the way from switzerland just to see you and thank you and ask you to sign my book for me would you do that and of course i did that and she wept she was crying a lot i asked why and she said that she'd had these terrible diseases like many people not one disease many sort of associated diseases you know the cancers anxiety depression or what else she had and she said that all of the therapeutic advice counselors psychology psychologists psychiatrists medical specialists all of them hadn't helped at all but that book had she said that book saved her life and she just wanted to see me thank me and after signing the book she got in her taxi and returned to perth airport and got the next flight back to switzerland and to me that was just wow that was something which you never expected there's some power in those teachings especially healing powers which transcended anything that i've expected and it actually worked it wasn't just me just blissing out in deep meditations or being able to see a blade of grass and wow that's so gorgeous but it was being able to share them with others and to see how much it helped it's huge but anyway how that works is you do get fear at first what's going on this doesn't make sense and sometimes that stops people innovating understanding transcending that is our problem so little by little we learn how to see things not the way that others teach us we see things just transcend all of those ideas and see it very deeply and powerfully it's one of those uh little symbols which i use this a piece of stick i don't have many visual aids so you know you don't have a screen which you can pull down and have power points so just pick up whatever you've got here this which i picked up now it's actually the gong bong for one of a better word but i did this similarly once when i got invited to the 2019 world computer conference in daejeon south korea that was really such a nice gig world computer conference what they're inviting our job from there for i don't know much about computers what i know about innovation seeing things which other people haven't seen that's one of the reasons why they really loved my 15-minute talk keynote address at the very beginning of the conference to set the tone something different and they liked it someone had already given me business class tickets to go all the way from perth to south korea a nice hotel and they gave buddhist society west australia two thousand i think it was two thousand um us dollars as uh thank you nice little earner as they say where i came from but picked up as you pick obviously i picked up a water bottle we don't allow water bottles here anymore plastic once i said what is this what is the thing which i'm holding up so doing this exercise here you say a piece of wood gong bong it's got some it's brown it's maybe eight inches or nine inches long it's cylindrical yeah come on say some more little by little you run out of ideas everything you've been taught at school university by anybody about what this is you've said that already keep looking look deeper transcend all of those ideas and labels you've had before it's not doing this in theory it's actually doing it and as you look deeper and deeper and deeper you keep on looking more ideas come up different ways of seeing things it's a bit scary because you don't know where you're going to finish you don't know what you're going to find and it might be challenging for you because all the things you've said are all the things you've been taught all the things which your culture has approved now you can actually see it in a different way you are transcending the boundaries of your knowledge that is innovation but again you go past that fear simply because i always say the fun of it just a pull of seeing new things it seems to be part of the human condition that we always want to when we see don't touch the wet paint we have to touch it don't walk on the grass we have to walk on it we have to test it out we have to go a little bit deeper we're not just going to believe what other people say we're going to test it transcend the boundaries that is sometimes scary but even in little things in life those of you who have had relationships marriages or long-term partnerships and it doesn't work out and it hurts so much when you break up with divorce what are you going to do now ask that question many times and sometimes you have a choice you can put your heart in a concrete bunker so you won't hurt anymore you're not alive anymore either we can get out there and see what happens again but i'll be hurt again you know sometimes your life means you are hurt life is sometimes dukkha but we're willing to give it a try just to see how we can take our understandings our life deeper and sometimes it's a urge to go deeper to challenge boundaries which takes us past that fear but it's also just the sheer joy of it i mentioned this before they know sometimes when you get these deep meditations this is a simile which you got from years and years ago about the really powerful meditations and genres where you really are transcending you're going way beyond this world not into some space world but deep inside of it and that is when oh you're just almost standing on the edge of janus you're really peaceful very still lots of bliss and you realize the next step is you really be letting go of a lot a huge amount all you're letting go of is of your identity who you think you are your personal existence that's what it seems like we have enough awareness that what's going to happen next is going to be amazing incredible blissful the joy the love the acceptance the freedom what do you do i can't be so nice as i can't oh but it's so wonderful oh what the hell i'm going for it and sometimes it pulls you in you just can't resist it even though it's fearful at first but when you go past that fear it's freedom similarly for that which is quite accurate when a prisoner has been in jail for 30 40 50 years imagine the prisoner is told by the authorities that tomorrow they're going to be free and go outside of jail i can't i don't know how to to live in freedom so many prisoners won't like to be released just like a human being you've been in prison in the world of the five senses now you can be free no i don't want to go that was just like that gentleman who was his hand started to disappear small thing that terrified him he had enough understanding to know that maybe the whole body might disappear the person he identified with maybe his knowledge might disappear maybe his attainments in degrees who he thought he was might disappear but this we're going to transcend all of that has to vanish our personal achievements who we think we are and to come into this deep state of bliss of bliss and those become like the janus this is where the five senses stop for a while when you're in the realm of the mind just mind nothing else beautiful mind it's such a beautiful pleasure everything which you thought was pleasurable before is nothing as intense as peaceful as pure as something even like the first jhana which many people take to be union with god perfect peace bliss love you understand why people say that because after a while if you don't go any further that's what you conclude but after a while that morphs into a second channel where there's no will left for you choice i was reading an article which somebody sent me from the guardian about free will so many philosophers arguing about it but we haven't experienced like those deep meditations you don't argue anymore you've got direct knowledge of the ending of will choice all gone and that is real freedom it's it's not other people have power over you there's no power left just bliss deep power and these are the sorts of things where you do transcend and you really learn from experience not to be so afraid and as you transcend even further i just was going to say the joy of those janus there was a beautiful saying that the joy of letting go may come a renunciation what are you renouncing what are you letting go of your five senses and you your identity and little by little you go deeper and you'll even go other than knowing as well that starts to disappear next and that challenges you challenges you right to the core you are transcending your identification with being this body for being a boy or a girl or being transgender or being anything being a monk being a nun being a lay person you're transcending everything and living by little you just see everything subject to disappearing dissolution until there's nothing left that is the most challenging for people empty gone nothing left at all so many many people get afraid many people say there's a point of buddhism and meditation just so you can vanish and disappear yeah i don't want to be a buddhist anymore you can't resist sorry it's too late to transcend to go beyond is something which keeps pulling at you you can't resist and soon you transcend all of this and with it all of the suffering and the wanting and the doing because all of this you cannot want it to transcend one of the biggest things which are going beyond is wanting anything what do you want if ever notice the more you want the more stress you have in life the more you try and get things is the more work you have to do and when you don't get what you want you get upset it causes you the ill will when all of that vanishes oh freedom of lust freedom the taste of freedom and that bliss of the first ghana even was called somebody sucker enlightenment happiness it's not enlightenment but it's so close it's got the taste of nibana freeing so little by little you get pulled into these deep meditations and these deep meditations those hindrances of god they come back later but much weaker which is one of the reasons why your mindfulness is incredibly powerful and sometimes when people talk about mindfulness training and i don't know what they're talking about the real deep mindfulness training when the mindfulness you can feel it growing stronger and more powerful more intense and to see deeply into things really see deeply into it it only comes from the great stillness of the mind the power of the mind the joy of the mind you can feel things like psychic powers and stuff all this weird stuff sometimes you can feel that power and sometimes why not sometimes there's too many people around so sometimes you can feel these things you are transcending you're transcending you you are vanishing going beyond and disappearing gone so that's how we transcend things there's so many beautiful benefits on the way more you go the more free you are go a little bit and you're certainly healthy and happy and whatever you do in this world you do have innovation you do have happiness and power and good health that's not bad so anyway that's a talk for this evening on transcendence so now we can have some questions maybe is there are any so those here we usually say [Music] so see what we've got here okay oh seven questions here we go i'll try and be uh brief with the answers not to take out too much time new pooney from uk how to draw the line between letting go and caring example in the relationship we worry about a partner's well-being and it can be stressful it is stressful remember in a relationship it's not about you it's not about your pardon it's about us and that's just changing the whole idea of relationships look it's you know some of these stories about relationships why do they ask someone like me i've you know i haven't been married but still people with marriage problems they come and ask me so that's when i say look the person you're you know when the people get married this example that i look at the bride they asked me to do marriage blessings why the heck do they want me to do a marriage blessing when i've never been married anyway i look at the bride and say from now on you're a married woman you must not think of yourself yes she thinks not so head you the guy you're the married man you must not think of yourself yes then still looking at the guy now you're married you must not think of her your wife from this day on don't think of your wife and the then look the look of the wife and this day and you must not think of your husband i could you manage to get out escape bye-bye you must not think of your husband because once you're married you must not think of yourself you must not think of your partner you must only think of us you're in it together it's about us so when you're in a relationship please care for us not for yourself not for your partner but for us you're in it together and then if you're worrying about your well-being you're not caring for anybody you've got to care for our well-being then the stress gets reduced from india there's a part of the mind that just grasp or that is onto things like the will and wants just telling it to let go doesn't seem to work what is the this part of the mind grasping it is you know your idea of a self which then makes the illusion of wanting and controlling and stuff which is one of the reasons why the the only way that you can experience this is to not to tell your mind what to do is through kindness opening the door of your heart to whatever is happening right now being aware of this moment and being kind to it and little by little you calm down because very still and as you get very very yeah you find that letting go of things is just beautiful and they encourage you to let go of more and more and more and that is where the grasping stops not through telling it but through letting nature let go how to deal with feelings of inadequate seed is very hard in these times of our society to love our bodies and feel weird enough i always hear comments about my body that make me feel less of a woman how can i deal with these comments remain confident is look at yourself look at other people there's nothing which you you are lacking and one of the nicest ways of feeling confident is actually to just go out into a forest it's the old story the most beautiful tree in the forest is not the one which is perfect i live in forests forest tradition monk another trees in the forest which i like are the ones all bent twisted crooked and the bark is all marked and damaged those are the beautiful trees go into a forest and find a beautiful tree and you find it's not perfect it's twisted bent and damaged then you can understand the way you look at yourself you're looking yourself in truth not the way that other people look at you other people haven't got a clue who you are what you're doing so you look at yourself and see its beauty nice thing about those damaged trees they all belong in the forest and the damaged ones the most damaged are the most beautiful one i like to sit underneath so in our society to love our bodies love your body the beautiful damaged body you have twisted and bent see it as beautiful get different ideas of what perfection is could you please tell me the buddha's thinking about transgender people i ask because i haven't come across much information thank you transgender people i'm gonna change that word around you're a person who's transgender you're a person first you're part of this wonderful again forest which has so many different types of trees and all of them are welcome you're a person first a living being and when this asian couple who were buddhist they emailed me and said we just found out our son is gay what should we do what do you mean what should you do to love him to bits i don't you always say may all beings be happy and well your son is a being give him that respect and happiness and well-being that's what you've been chanting every day so love whatever being comes in front of you was it uh lesbian gay uh transgender bisexual or uh sometimes i'm getting a bit tired now i forget all the words lgbtqia plus i love everybody so you're a transgender person welcome we have many transgender people over in our buddhist society of western australia the most not they're just welcome just because we're trying to be cool or woke or something they're welcome because they're human beings welcome um may i know how to let go of stuffedness that things have to be done in a certain way well just every now and again have some one hour a day which is rebellious time so don't do things in a certain way do it differently i said this years and years ago if you do things in the same old way you're stubborn about it you get very dumb and just get boring so i i'd actually do this even today i decided when you brush your teeth in the morning evening and whenever you do it where do you start when you brush your teeth however you started today start in a different place tomorrow inside different place every day of the week sometimes the top middle sometimes inside bottom or whatever in other words challenge your habits do it slightly differently and even when people are doing meditation retreats i said don't always sit in the same place sit somewhere else i have to sit in the same place because that's where the cameras are it's focusing on me but sit in a different way don't always sit in the same place and then you don't get bored you get more alive you're more aware so that don't be so stubbornness try to doing things in a different way and you become you just do a little bit of different way and you find out you feel more alive and you also just feel more joy in life doing things a slightly different way is it possible to manage or cure personality disorders and mental illnesses like bipolar personality anxiety depression etc with mindfulness and meditation without any professional help yeah of course easy see in a different way there is no person i've ever met who has personality disorder no person's got mental illness no person's bipolar no person who's got anxiety or depression they're a person who sometimes shows symptoms or behavior which people say a bipolar or personality disorder whatever more measuring and control instead say you've got depression instead of getting depressed about depression you have depression be with it be kind to it get to understand and know it but not with measuring it but with respecting it you respect depression when it comes into you you'll find this many times we're not depressed at all and little by little when we focus on the positive side of ourselves that grows and takes over that was the teaching which i was so respected from the head of the professor of schizophrenia unit in singapore mental health professor he was a catholic but i asked him how do you treat schizophrenia in singapore i always remember this conversation because he said just as you explained that john trump i don't treat schizophrenia in a schizophrenia unit of the mental health campus it was in woodlands over in the north part of singapore and i said yeah what do you treat then he said the other part of that patient i treat the part which is not schizophrenic and i understood what he was talking about said sardo sardisada excellent what's the what's the results he said so much better than classical treatment there's no such thing as a schizophrenic it's a person who has episodes which we recognize as schizophrenia treat the other part of them and that grows all those times which i went into prisons to teach never ever saw a criminal never ever saw a murderer a rapist a thief i saw many people stolen even people had murdered i never saw a murderer they were much bigger than that terrible hurtful crime for which they are put in jail persons schizophrenic no they're people who have episodes of schizophrenia they're much bigger than that water the flowers don't water the wheat from indonesia dear raja what do you suggest someone who is still working earning for a living but really wants to practice and learn dhamma yes that's what we have monasteries for unfortunately it's just sometimes so hard to build monasteries and because i've been doing this most of my life will now give it to other people to build monasteries it's got six new hats aboard in the animals they haven't been finished yet such a hard amount of work been rewarded there's lots of the electrical work on those six huts but i guarantee as soon as i finished now before what we're gonna do i don't know but anyway we'll see what happens but still working early for a living but really wants to practice and learn dharma simplify your life you don't need that much to live you don't have to wear you know expensive clothes you don't have to go traveling overseas you know for for holidays a small house small flats what apartment keep it tiny and then you don't have to eat expensive food that means you can live very frugally that's what you can do in the meantime until it's a possibility to live as a a monk or a nun simple peaceful beautiful and all those monks and nuns living there working very hard to try and make the opportunity available for others remember just there comes a time in your life when you need to go and retreat for yourself take that opportunity bliss out become really peaceful why not you can do it okay so there we go that's the seventh question any questions from the audience here okay so there we are that's the talk and questions for today thanks for listening i hope it was okay so if it wasn't well never mind you know i gave this talk to the people over that's some of the thai people i gave a retreat only three days and people give me some feedback so it was a wonderful retreat and there's a lot she'd been teaching some deep teachings to the entire community here they loved it when can you do it again [Music] so it's nice if it's you know uh people enjoy it but you know it's only a limit to a number of times you can do these things so anyway now we can actually uh do respect to buddhadharman sangha and then we can go back to where we need to go so i'm stuck there we go [Music] me [Music] um [Music] [Applause] um [Music] [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] uh [Music] now [Music] now [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] um [Music] i am i

Channel: Who I Am

Views: 17,795

Rating: 4.8441558 out of 5

Keywords: ajahn brahm, Buddhist monks, theravada, sutta, nikaya

Id: PHK0An59E60

Length: 74min 7sec (4447 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021