Infinite Wander | Ajahn Brahm | 11 December 2020

that's a good idea just on somebody's t-shirt over there they've got the words infinite wonder so that's the title of tonight's talk again all of a t-shirt infinite wonder because saying sometimes that people feel in buddhism the wandering mind is a bad thing just talking about someone how to overcome my wandering mind don't try and overcome it i wander around a lot in theory anyway always that story that whenever you can actually fly again you know that has so many places you've got to go to take the invitation to go here they're all over the place to give talks conferences and stuff which i don't mind going to it's sometimes good fun and you meet many many different people and go to different places and see different things and you know all for free it's great being a monk you don't have to pay anything on the aircraft just it's difficult sometimes because sometimes you don't have any money actually don't not sometimes all the time but you know that i've seen in some of the customs forms when you enter some countries they say if you don't have a certain amount of money they won't let you in but they never actually ask me thank goodness maybe i'll just look at them and zap them with my mind and they just let me strike and go straight in but anyway just wherever you are in this world instead of uh worrying about what you're doing you just do it see what happens which is a wonderful way of living the infinite means you're not putting a boundary on anything you're not just saying it has to be this way and it has to be that way you know even though you know people look at myself and venom was he sitting next to me we're monks and monks have got lots and lots and lots of rules we're supposed to be keeping we do keep them but they're so easy rules to keep easy because it's just not just being simple and being kind and being peaceful you keep those three rules most of those uh you know you're already keeping just being kind being simple and being peaceful can you keep those three precepts if you can then you understand where all these rules which they come from but even though we keep many many of these were also again they're easy to keep and number two there just makes sense to keep them just because they make life much more peaceful and happy and joyful i mean who wants so much stuff do you want lots and lots of stuff i just really found wow how come in your house you've got so much things do you really need them [Music] in my residence i've got this beautiful residence and many of you seen my residence it's called a cave and i can tell you what i've got in my cave uh and this is a mattress on the floor about an inch and a half thick it's got a sheet over the mattress it's got one blanket a pillow it's got a little clock and there's a water bottle a cup and there is a dehumidifier because sometimes in a cave sometimes the humidity goes up and you need to sort of get the moisture out what else have i got there i've got a bat i have a bat and the bat you know where the bat came from this is my cave from ikea it's a toy bat somebody put in there to give the ambience so they came and that's it that's my my um my possessions my furniture in the cave this was a simple thing to live in a wonderful place so anyway the keeping things simple and free is i don't know why more people don't do that we have such a complicated life and the more things we have the more finite is our life the less we have the more infinite it is i'll tell you why it's an old little trick about meditation about emptiness about freedom is when you come into this room every friday if you come every friday you come into this room what do you look at what do you notice so many people they come in here they notice the chairs notice some of their friends they notice maybe the monks a big buddha statue behind me the walls with hardly anything on but you know what's mostly in this room is nothing there's more space in this room than there are things we don't notice the space we just notice things if you look you know between the ceilings and the floor between this wall and the back wall the entrance ways there's so much emptiness we don't notice that the same way that whenever you know we try and do some meditation you know we look at all the thoughts in our mind and actually even in your mind there's more space than there are thoughts even in your mind we don't notice them we only notice the things the objects in life instead of what connects the objects what surrounds them what's between them it's a different way of perceiving life a lot of times to solve problems it's not just thinking more deeply it's just seeing it from a different perspective that's all changing the way you look at things in this particular case not looking at events what's between events not looking at say a couple but what's between the two of you this is something which i've often noticed and this is i'm putting the story in again it's one of the classic stories of whenever i do blessing ceremonies for people getting married and they should always look at the two of them and just say very simply it says from this moment on you must not think of yourself it's marriage and once you're married you must not think of your partner either you must never think of the other in a relationship you must not think of him or her or me only of us so the third option changing the perception it's all about us not about me or her or him it's about us there's something much more than the two objects it's what's between the two of you and what's between you that is where you you get a little bit more into the infinite the finite of things what's between things is much greater much closer to infinity just like this great planet earth even though so many buildings we put up there's still so much emptiness as well thank goodness we don't go to those empty places they're a bit too remote and hard to get to thank goodness but nevertheless it's lovely to know that they are here there's more emptiness in this world than there are things i always love it when you see great mountains you see ground mountains and what do people do with great mountains in our world and why do they do this when somebody gets the top of a great mountain what do they do put a flag on top of it that's the start of destroying its pristine emptiness once they put a flag on it what happens next maybe it'll put like a kern on top of it and in the end they put a restaurant on top why can't they leave mountains alone but anyway they don't put a actually they do something else with it now they put a mobile phone tower up there or whatever why can't they leave things alone why can't we live things alone and not interfere and just allow that emptiness which is infinite it's we try and make things finite mind try and make things accountable try and find you know the bottom line sum it all up find the total find the meaning what if life doesn't have a meaning all the meaning is wide great what if like life's meaning is what you create it's not something already there to control you but meaning is what you make out of your life i must prefer that idea years ago when i was very busy and tired and somebody asked what's the meaning of life and i said whatever meaning you give to your life not to life in general to your life so what meaning to give to your life you make the meanings and that meaning which you make why do you make it a meaning you make it a meaning for the time being to create this beautiful peace and happiness and joy because there you know this must be the meaning this was some advice which the buddha gave to one of his monks he used to be his barber and also to the first nun mahapa japati he said to tell them we know what's the truth what's the dhamma what's the teaching of buddhism by what it leads to does it create peace does it create sort of joy meaning happiness there's a profound thing inside of you which everyone recognizes you know which is called truth and truth has to be peaceful it has to be joyful has to not separate people to divide people has to be something which unites everybody and if one understands that is meaning but not because it's even written in a book somewhere not because it's intellectually satisfying but because it's emotionally satisfying that is much closer to the truth of things that's why just coming into this room and always remembering to see the emptiness of this room even when it's packed with people to go you know through perth and teach us how much space there is in perth to see the planet earth and just to see just how empty that still is and make it stay that way for a long time to see the spaces between our planets he got really cool studying astrophysics of the galaxy at university it came so cool when you started to let your mind ex just explore this fast this huge thing called our cosmos they're not just a galaxy for the whole collection of galaxies i couldn't finish the course i just got blissed out i remember that just in the lecture theater just wow wow wow simply because it was just so amazing they didn't want to make it finite with all these equations and ideas keep it just unbounded by ideas and theories and words if anything if you are going to try and describe the cosmos describe it in poetry because poetry is never meant to be precise it's always meant to just to be that infinite as wide which you can't really peg it down into any one idea or thing something which reflects the nature of this universe wide unbounded infinite i want you to have that infinity there you have the wonder wondering about something means you can't capture it there's a an aside you know many years ago we're raising funds for something or other i can't remember now and we've made all these ideas to try and auction this and auction that and i decided what to do was to auction myself sorry auction i jumped up you know a lot of people criticized you can't do that you can't auction yourself so why not there's no one in here according to buddhist theory that's my excuse but when they auctioned me the person who won me gave a big donation to the night's monastery i think was anyway a big donation to the night's monastery and they took me to bhutan that's wonderful going to bhutan when i went to bhutan and going to um the uh they made a little tour and because i was a monk and i was quite a senior monk i got so much respect from me from the tour guide that when i asked him these interesting questions he had to give me honest answers because in bhutan to actually to lie or fib to a mark that was a really really bad camera so i asked him are there any yetis in bhutan why not ask interesting questions and he told me and he's an intelligent fellow spent half his life when it got too cold in bhutan to take in tourists he spent that time of the year over in the united states in california he's very highly educated he told me yeah of course there are and he said his family had a yeti skin in the house which i thought was really weird have you ever seen a yeti who knows that's what he said to me wow i asked him where it was can we go there he said what if you've got about 10 days to walk through the mountains in the snow because it's remote areas of the place which are amazing things it's one of the reasons why they're just a wonder when we don't try and tie things down so this idea or that idea the other story which came up when i was thinking what nice story can i tell this evening because again i wrote this down in one of my books because somebody told me the story it's an amazing story especially for those people those people who just worry about things like economies because this was a story of a monastery up just know around bhutan actually towards the the east of now the west of bhutan in ladakh prophets and there was a very well known monastery but they the monk passed away the head monk the abbot and once he passed away they had to you know choose another monk to actually to take over so they choose this young monk a very good monk and so you know he started being the advert lots of responsibility but one day the other monks they asked him he said well it's coming on to the winter time in the himalayas the mountains is it going to be a cold winter is it going to be a warm winter or an average winter what type of winter is it going to be so the previous abbot you know was really good meditator it could go into meditation i don't know how he did it but could actually predict really accurately what type of winter was going to be and they relied upon that so they asked this new app and said well is it going to be really cold or warm or what's it going to be and even though the new advert he didn't really know how to meditate that deeply he said i'll leave it with me tonight and i'll let you know tomorrow morning he needed to preserve the reputation of being the boss monk in the monastery so that night he meditated this meditation wasn't that good so maybe about 11 o'clock midnight he got out his mobile phone and he ran the meteorological office not just the ordinary meteorological office he went to headquarters in delhi and got through to professor and he said didn't say who he was he said up in the himalaya mountains this year is it going to be a warm winter cold winter or average and a professor said oh actually it looks like it might be just a little bit colder than usual you ask professors and they always have to give an answer something like that just like i looked at the news the weather this last week i said it must be storms and lightning around our monastery was none of that i was really disappointed i like rain it was really hot and muggy but there were this professor he said yeah i think it's you know pretty good chance of being a bit colder than usual so the following morning the abbot got all the new monks all the monks together and said this year is going to be cold but not as no exit certainly cold but be colder than normal so i think we need to collect more firewood so all the monks went around collecting wood and storing it in the monastery and one week later they said is it enough and the head mark the other said leave it with me i will let you know tomorrow morning so that night when all the other monks were asleep he got out his mobile phone rang the professor again and said professor how's it going and the professor well actually the signs are much worse than last week i think it's going to be quite cold in himalayan mountains thank you very much and he hung up in the following morning he said last night last night i reckon i have the message he said it's going to be colder than usual so another week of collecting wood so all the marks were busy collecting from here collecting from there as much wood as they can to keep the monastery warm during the cold snowy winters and after one week they said is it enough leave it with me he said and the same thing when all the monks were asleep he rang out the professor how's it going he said whoa surprising the signs are that's going to be one of the coldest winters on record wow okay thank you so the following morning okay monks another week maybe two weeks of collecting wood wherever you can and so after another couple of weeks this monastery was stacked with wood all over the place isn't enough and so the head marks leave it with me tonight i'll find out and so he rang out the professor about midnight so how's it going instead of her face you wouldn't believe it this is one of the coldest winters i reckon on record i said are you sure i'm a professor of meteorology the signs are it's going to be really really freezing i didn't know there's a monk asking but the man couldn't help himself but i said how do you know how are you so sure and a professor of meteorology said well actually you know all those monks in the holy monastery being collected with like mad that's why i know it's going to be a very cold winter [Music] we always follow other people what they do and there's no reason behind that but anyway that's because we just don't allow life to be you know why do people collect so much wood or collect so much money and destroy so much of the planet why why do we destroy mountain tops by putting a restaurant can't people bring sandwiches do they want to go up top of a mountain they want the view what do they view they see the person sitting opposite them in the table they don't see the mountains even if they see the mountains they don't feel the mountains if you want to feel the mountains of being a mountain you've got to get outside the restaurant feel the cold air crunch the snow you know that's a wonderful thing the infinite wondering because that's one of the other little stories i love telling these stories especially this one simply because it brings back to me the feeling of just such utter peace in some of the most unusual places and this was so many years ago when i was visiting um uk and it was i don't know why i did this i was really stupid monk because i decided to go to visit uk during the winter time you know why christmas so that's your tradition go it's a stupid tradition see because it's so cold and it's also depressing that is where i learnt it's my brother he's picked me up from the airport i actually thought this is a true story i couldn't believe this i came out of heathrow airport and as was my brother he supposed to be picking me up he didn't recognize me i said look i'm wearing robes i'm the only person to come out with rubs oh yeah okay [Music] i don't know why he didn't anyway that's a true story you can ask him if you see him but anyway just i went to this monastery and it was just a new monastery and this particular year was incredibly cold here the source of the year when any monks would be putting lots and lots of wood in their monastery where they could find it but because you were visiting mike i had no responsibilities i love being visitor sometimes i pretend to be a visitor involving a monastery where i live honestly i do because then i because i don't own it i can enjoy it just like you do can you enjoy your own home if you own it you've got responsibility it's not clean enough it's dirty it's just need this here and that there and if i think i own body not a monastery then i've got all these responsibilities i can't enjoy it every now and again i'd pretend to be a visitor just like you and it's so peaceful it's so beautiful when you pretend to be a visitor always try that in your own home in your garden that house with you or apartments you've paid so much money for pretend you're visiting you don't have to wash up you don't have to sweep anything just enjoy it freedom anyway because i was a visitor i had no responsibilities no duties so i decided it was it had snow the night before the following day that i saw in the newspapers the temperature if i remember it correctly minus 36 degrees really incredibly cold so they closed down the airports there was nothing on the roads so when i went out and they say only mad monks an english man and go out in the [Music] same midday summer this is in the the wintry cold i had boots on and scarves and woody hats and everything so i was quite insulated from the freezing cold it was one of the most magnificent experiences of my life because when i went out into the snowy forest the snow was thick and there was no vehicles to be heard anywhere there's no aircraft in the skies because they couldn't take off from the airports there's no cars on the roads the roads were too icy and even the animals there's no birds in the sky they were all hibernating keeping warm all human beings were the same they were hibernating in their beds keeping warm and all the little animals usually scurry on the floor on the floor the ground of the forest they were all hibernating as well everything was just perfectly still except for me walking in this forest but when you're in great experiences like that as if like you're alone in the whole world there's no one else in the world you own that forest but you've got no responsibility for it because there's no one else to be seen or heard anywhere that wasn't scary that was just brilliant every time i had one step and you could hear the snow crunch under your boots that was the only sound then i stopped now the whole world stopped with me that was powerful it was beautiful it was worth the freezing temperature to experience the whole world stopping in europe just for a second more than a second a few seconds those sorts of feelings of silence when the mind has wandered but now it pauses and stops as you experience and appreciate the wonderful space between things and one thing you notice when you experience that space that silence that's what connects us the emptiness the peace the beauty and that is what is really holy and spiritual the word spirituality is not just words or acts act another time it's a silence for those of you with partners to sit together every now and again in silence being with one another but not disturbing that silence that trust that peace be able to sit silently in a forest like one of the anna garricas did a few years ago just on the opposite side of kingsbury drive to body knowing a monastery he was sitting there so peacefully under a tree and his big animal came to him it was an emu and he knew there was a few emus around there we see them every now and again but they are very very timid and they will just run away from human beings but this training monk was sitting so still so peaceful he had his eyes open and the emu just came right up to him with his big beak just sniffed him and he didn't move and the image just hopped away again peacefully not disturbed at all what a beautiful experience that is to be so still and peaceful that you can connect in that silence and that peace with these amazing animals like emus of course you know when i was in thailand you connect with other animals like snakes not just in thailand but also in australia because i haven't seen it for a while now because i've been staying in the my cave you don't see anything in my cave but i remember on the time when i went on a six-month retreat i just finished with my food on a hot summer's day and went outside to watch my bowl there's this big dugout snake i realized it was coming because all the kangaroos were hopping away it was really weird this huge snake is 2.8 meters long and i know it's 2.8 meters long because it came to shade itself from the hot sun of my huts and i built that hut i know the wall where it was shading itself was 2.8 meters long and it just fat there his head and his toe you know without sort of curling up when it first came i was just washing my body came right up to me as if to look who is this fella i was just you know quite happily doing my bowl and so i just paid it no attention at first because i had to wash my bowl when i looked again it had turned around and its tail was pointing at me its head was the other direction he trusted me so much this huge dangerous animal very deadly you could be its friend because what you connected with was the peace and the kindness and the fearlessness and there was nothing which i would ever do to harm that little animal that big animal very big something the biggest snake i've seen over here in oh there's another snake i remember i don't know where it came from i don't know where it went but it was it's a python somebody let go of python in our monastery and i was doing my walking meditation under the shade of my walking meditation roof you know that sometimes you know you're doing a walking meditation just looking in front of you sometimes you feel that something's watching you i looked up this big python up there his head was coming down from the rafters looking at me and i was looking at him or her i'm not quite sure what the gender is actually i don't know how to find out the gender don't ask them but there must be some way they know anyway but anyway i just had a look said hello and carried on walking and of course if you're so peaceful like that the animals never harm you at all but probably the couple of most interesting snake stories i'm not i think i told last week the story about um giving holy water to a snake remember that one last week there's another time we were doing a ceremony once and i was doing the chanting there's seven we do every two weeks so i was up there doing the chanting there was another monk in front of me he was had his hands up like this and i noticed just from his back his head popped up snake the snake had crawled up his back and the snake so you guys could see its head and the snake could see me the snake couldn't see the mic and the man couldn't see the snake yet but i realized something was going on so this wonderful bizarre moment when these two animals the monk and the snake turn around to look at each other you know sometimes you have these experiences and i'm not exaggerating or you wish you know you had a camera like a this is so many years ago they didn't have cameras especially that part of thailand but to photograph it that would be wonderful this little snake and the mic just looking at one another eyeballing only just a few inches apart and now the snake wasn't afraid the mark wasn't afraid he just very carefully just put his robe down so the snake could just go down on the ground and just crawl slowly away why did that happen why wasn't he bit again it's because of the kindness between the two of them something which we focused on what connects us not what divides us different species who is the dangerous one the snake or the monk human beings are far more dangerous than snakes more snakes are being killed by humans than humans by snakes so when we just kind to one another of course the snake doesn't bother at all just comes down and just crawls away somewhere so little by little you can see that when we see what connects us what's between us rather than what separates us that's where we can have so much more infinity and peace and wonder about our life in this world people still have too many problems with religions and sometimes unfortunately religions divide people they don't need to do that so many years ago when i was teaching at a a conference in uwa a chaplaincy conference that whoever was organizing this was great because they put me to present alongside the abbott of new norcia monastery for that time was albert blessed who you know became a really good friend of mine if ever you go down to bodhinyana monastery in the room where we have all the food put out you look at some of the pictures on the wall there and you see the picture of all the monks from new nausea and all the monks from boating down the mountains where we met together and the god lovely picture was all next to the bell tower in buddy nine of monastery with a huge smart apple placid and huge [Music] we became such good friends that when he actually passed away that i was allowed invited he said you have to come to the the funeral massa saint joseph's what it was one of the catholic churches in subiaca but anyway because we were good friends we'd talk and we'd also crack jokes together because i remember just when he took me around this old monastery in new norcia and i took me around there gave me the private sort of uh tour around and i asked him if he ever been inside that place was pretty spooky it's so old so i asked him he said no about placid you know we're friends you can confide in me are there any ghosts in this monastery and he turned around a lot to me said john barba i thought you know better as catholics we don't believe in ghosts he said in all seriousness and i looked him in the eye and said what about the holy ghost dead got you [Music] so we used to tell jokes to each other you do believe it goes at least the holy ghost but anyway so it had this conference presenting a uwa and that was the time in the audience they had this gentleman there called father frank brennan from sydney or around the area anyway and he's his intellectual heavyweights i read about him you know he's like a professor and he was one of the people he was the person selected by the government many years ago to write a so to have a little committee to write an addition a human rights addition to the australian constitution so this was really a heavyweight sort of intellect so he was in my audience so he asked me this question and i realized you can't you can't tell a joke to a person like that i was tempted but no i better not so the question he asked me was a wonderful question very simple he said you know you've been listening to me and he said what what is the buddhist idea of god now you just can't say well buddhists don't believe in god that doesn't take things anywhere said well i mentioned that albert placido was next to me i decided to give a really honest answer but i'd answer which takes things deeper i said well my friend aber placid has been telling me for years and our friendship he'd been telling me that one of his basic ideas of life was that everyone is searching for god now from a catholic leader you know you can think understand that but let's stop for a while i respect this man i'm not a catholic i'm a buddhist so what are buddhists what are they searching for what are you searching for when you come here what are atheists search for so going on that direction that line of exploration what you're searching for you can add many more things to this list i'm going to give you now you know we seek for meaning in life for joy for purpose so we can add something to this planet earth and not destroy things after our time here we won the the joy of being loved and the wonderful pleasure of giving that love to somebody else you want the wonderful joy of search exploration finding out new things safety or research for what many people search for is something as simple as respect we want to be respected that opened up a huge area for me when you explored and found yeah so many people with mental uh illnesses physical deformities thinking their failures in life things not going well for them what they really really really really want is just to be respected by others they've tried their very best they're not nothing wrong with them because things haven't worked out so well how much is respect such a variable thing which we all search for and so look whoever you meet in life that's a very simple thing you can give and so well-regarded you give respect to somebody and they respect you back and you've made a connection there so i had all these lists of what people search for in life what you search for in life what you would want in your life peace as i said earlier peace is a huge thing and to find out what peace actually is and to know it so well and be able to abide in that piece personal inside of yourself no matter what happens in the world sometimes things go well in the day sometimes they go terribly welcome to our world our life we want to be able to find peace no matter what when your loved ones you know pass away or get very sick there's tragedies in this world to be able to know where peace is where everything goes wrong well you can find that who you found like a gold mine these are what people search for so then i said well if everyone's searching for god what my friend abbott blessing said that's what everyone is searching for who i know that must be what god is saying that's the buddhist idea of god peace respect meaning kindness love both to give and to receive and many many more things i remember father frank better to say well yeah i can accept that well done and getting a well done from an intellect like that was a catholic i was very proud of that but what it was was that just it takes our world deeper and the reason why i was very happy with that answer which was just again like many things which i do on the spot another reason why you do it on the spot because if you follow the texts if you follow what other people tell you it's not alive anymore it's just dead stuff all people's ideas but you say it from a new and it has much more power to it and it's also i said it's something which no one needs if you're a muslim or if you're a christian or if you're a presbyterian or what it called a pentecostalist isn't that what most people would like to find in life what they search for so some of which unites people it's not based on dogma anymore it's based on the emotional truths of our life when we connect with one another and so sometimes when we wonder about things if you are wondering if your mind is wandering and just exploring please let it explore but don't let it explore in all territories where you've been so many times before if you have a wandering mind how about wandering somewhere new this time not in your old fears in your old sort of you know fantasies how about wandering somewhere fresh into these beautiful ideas of peace and respect meaning even something like it's weird you know sometimes we mention these words but how much of these emotions do you really know properly even something like love do you really know what that word means and do honestly do you find me a caring loving monk you know mark can you know how to love and i think you probably will know that yes you do i was first no how do you know what that meaning is you could take it much a bit if you want to wonder wonder and find out what love truly means and i got my first hint from my father of course who told me that son wherever you go in your life whatever you do however you turn out that's wonderful saying which he gave which i'll never forget however you turn out please remember this one thing the door of my house will always be open to you son he said something like that had so much meaning to me but i never understood it i was about 14 years of age at the time maybe a 14 year old boy who was emotionally you know just growing and didn't really know too much about you know that part of his world but of course one of the nice things you know is you being a monk you just have time it's something which i please i invite all of you please don't work so hard in your life please find times to go on retreats times by yourself times you can actually allow yourself to explore some of the unexplored parts which you put off until some later time when you haven't got time because you're so busy looking after family friends you know work and stuff oh it's great to be able to have a time on retreat where you can just not try and get into deep meditations or get in line or stuff like that just to see what your mind the unfinished business it needs to bring up and that was one of the unfinished business what did my father mean by that it was important yeah i knew that much but i had the time as a monk to be able to explore and find out why was that such a powerful statement which i couldn't forget he realized it wasn't his house not the physical house it was his heart that's what he was opening up to me and of course from that you get whatever you do in your life the door of my heart is open to you wow when i realized that that really did blow me away it was one of the first ideas of what i know as unconditional love not i love you if you behave i love you if you'll always tell me where you are i always love you if you do what i want and earn a lot of money for me and just look after me in my old age and all these other things i love you no matter what and it was meant it was true and that opened up so much of my life as a mind he's supposed to practice loving kindness and compassion for other beings and love other beings whether it's snakes or whether it's emus or whether it's human beings to be able to do that to open up your heart to other beings no matter who they are no matter what they do that is cosmic that's when you come to infinity and you wonder about that how far can you take that you take that so far you know i i admit i actually did this that you know when donald trump got covered i chanted for his health i don't agree at all with his policies he's a bit of a crazy fellow but you know if he's anyone who's sick of course you'll chant for their well-being and health and afterwards it was natural why not it's easy to do may all beings be happy and well donald trump in the door of my heart is open to you no matter all the stupid things you do that'll be a wonderful way to heal somebody like that people with mental disabilities mental illness you don't need to change the door my heart's open to exactly as you are come in now that is really sort of amazing when somebody feels that they don't have to be different they don't have to change that's why i often said that in buddhism we don't try and change people we don't try and cure them we care for them it's so different not curing but caring that's what you do to yourself you don't try and cure yourself with your bad habits you care for them you've got a wandering mind don't try and cure it and stop it care for it and turn the wandering mind into something which is exploring exploring new parts of yourself new parts of the world new parts of who you are and how you work and how you relate to others so wandering good places kind places trouble is that a wandering mind has got a really bad rap in buddhism especially meditation i should have a wondering mind people call it a monkey mind monkeys are okay what's wrong with monkeys so little by little if you learn to love this world open the door of your heart to it go out in the cold snow and just appreciate just the amazing teachings of silence and solitude and peace real deep peace and just how you can take some words from another religion which you know when i was a young buddhist i would just argue against like hell yeah there's no god uh you can't say there's a god oh this is stupid stuff i know it's a theoretical physics physicist so no there's kindness there's joy there's respect these pieces is wonderful things when you wander in those areas it does become infinite because there's no boundaries anymore there's no this is christianity this is buddhism this is this type of buddhism this is that type of buddhism that just drives me crazy sometimes you know what type of buddhist are you actually i'm from what tradition do you come from i said buddhist tradition if you want what type of buddhism okay i can see the time i better finish off pretty quickly and open up for questions and answers but i tell people many of you have heard this before the three main types of buddhism hinayana mahayana and and i say i don't like to separate them i like to bring them all together so this is my buddhism the vision i belong to is a synergy between the three major types of buddhism hindiana is like the terravada stuff not really but it's close enough mahayana is a chinese type of buddhism and zen buddhism wajayana has just you know been briefed the tibetan type of buddhism so i try and synergy bring them all together no barriers infinite so i take the h from hinayana say the next three letters aha for mahayana and i take the yana from watriana what does that spell and that's my tradition the hahayana buddhism thank you for listening okay i don't know how that went but i didn't know what i was talking about but never went so any questions about hahayana buddhism why not okay some questions from overseas let's see what they are i might get in trouble again here we go wow a lot of questions today cassandra from sweden i find it hard to grasp the idea of the higher and lower realms i wonder if i might become more clear and deep meditation if one experiences china's of course you will so the higher realms if you go across the border from sweden to norway up there in the mountains that's the higher realms and the lower realms you know the swamps that's where yoda lives so high realms and lower rails i don't know why we call them higher in realm sometimes different realms but higher and lower realms some beings have made more karma but those people who have you know more wealth they're supposed to be higher beings they have more problems as well and those people are ordinary little beings living in their little houses they have much more freedom and happiness you know mega wealthy people i've seen make a wealthy people i went to this one person's house over in kuala lumpur and i couldn't believe as i was driving in they had guards at the gate with machine guns he was a no he wasn't a general or anything it was just a very wealthy person but he was having to guard his house with guards with machine guns and i thought does this guy live in a mansion or does he live in a prison you look more like a prison than a mansion for me i live in a cave got far more freedom but the higher and lower realms of like other beings that's really cool so maybe one day you you see a ghost or a heavenly being and heavenly beings exist amazing beings but anyway one day you you just leave that on the back burner for now because you don't have to decide whether you want to believe this or not but as a theoretical physicist unfortunately there is evidence these things actually exist why not isn't it nice it's just so many different parts of existence which we don't really know about you get into deep meditation you start to explore these things oh amazing stuff you don't need to feel afraid as well snakes won't harm you ghosts will never harm you and other beings they can't harm you sometimes like a person who is having a mental breakdown or something they can shout and scream or whatever they won't harm you if you've got kindness you're not afraid so even these other beings are suffering so much and a monk or meditator or none can give them so much kindness and that will calm them down anyway from indonesia do you have any advice for teenagers who are struggling to find finding their talent hobby or passion having no idea what career to pick up in the future please help thank you look i never thought i'd become a buddhist monk when i was young as a teenager that was weird i think i told a story that when i went to time to become a monk i thought i'd go there for two years get enlightened and come back and carry on my life find a nice girl to get married and start a job i had no idea what life was that's why life is for exploring so don't make decisions yet teenagers struggling and fighting their turn or helping your passion just first of all believe in yourself have that confidence which is most important and if you've got sort of someone in your family who gives you that amazing gift that's the best inheritance i ever got from my father when he said that all of my heart's open to your son no matter where you ever go in your life wow that was worth more than a billion dollars honestly to get a teaching like that was worth much more than any money so anyway you find that life and sometimes you explore this way that way and all over the ways and you go back again and sometimes you find something when you find that something just when i became a monk first three days in robes i had nightmares honestly mugs know this story i was i woke up in middle of the night in bangkok nightmare you know what my nightmare was that i was a lay person honest and i remember that i would open my eyes and be like ah and i've seen my rose by the way oh yeah i've ordained i've made it yay i just turned over when in this really beautiful peaceful sleep that really that told me something that you know this was going to be for a long time this was you know i discovered by chance by karma i don't know that this was my life being a monk i found that at 23 just what a wonderful thing no i told people i'd like to be a monk forever yeah they all say that nah nah nah nah nah i'm still a monk i mean about we'd had my 46th birthday as a monk what day's today it was actually last week last friday is the 12th today or 11th okay six days ago 46 years as a mug and still going strong so that's where you've helped your passion just believe in don't be afraid and just check out just where your talents lead you everyone's got incredible talents from new south wales in a time of uncertainty with a possible loss of jobs income and a roof over our heads i feel like we need something to trust to keep us hopeful can you suggest to us those things that we should trust not the dhamma is one that comes another one what else it's again just you trust in your yourself that you'll survive you're not survive but you do wonderful things trust in kindness you know there's so many kind people in this world and it's not just you know because i'm among people are kind to me but you know sometimes that people surprise you you need a job and somebody comes up and finds a job for you where she i think i saw her earlier there was the woman who had a little dog and she was came to perth and trying to find a share house where she and her dog could stay she's still here girl with the dog oh but if anyone i don't know where she's going to but was she came to me a couple of weeks ago no she had this beautiful little dog very lovely no young woman was trying to find a share house where her dog and her could be accepted so if anyone has share house like that or can help out please let me know find her somewhere i think has the details so trust in other people and if you give trust to another person just that's such a valuable thing and don't sort of throw it away because someone makes a mistake or cause someone's in a bad mood that day and they just shout at you they say something wrong it's a kindness there's a love which can allow other person to actually to say rude things to you simply because they think you can understand it they're not criticizing you they're criticizing themselves and just their reactions to the very difficult day they've had it's one of the reasons why if your partner comes back and just is really upset give them a big hug don't get angry back don't fight ill will there's more what do you mean by that just say are you pausing you must have had such a difficult day today let's go out for dinner or something surprise them that way giving kindness back my name is treat you anyway um this is from south australia i am new to buddhism what is the difference between the brain and the mind what role does the brain have in mindfulness and meditation love your talks that's your book the brain is temporary it only lasts your lifetime but the mind the stream of consciousness goes from life to life it's much bigger the brain where does the brain live the brain lives in your head where does your mind live okay i've got time for this this is a classic story which is in one of my books i'm sure you've heard it before this was one of my friends first grade at school first grade kids are marvelous because they are free from education in other words they have original ideas which haven't been stifled by our systems so when the teacher was asking the question what's the biggest thing in the world you've heard the story before it's a beautiful bit of logic my daddy i said one kid no an elephant no a mountain and the kid the six-year-old child of one of my friends from university said no my eye is the biggest thing in the world and it shut everyone up what do you mean that was totally unexpected what do you mean your eye is the biggest thing in the world and she said there's an amazing logic well my eye can see her father my eye can see an elephant my eye can see a mountain and so much more if all of that can fit into my eye [Music] my eye must be the biggest thing in the world it's actually brilliant i let people know that eventually she as many years ago she became a phd professor in i think biochemistry or something in oxford so you know she was showing signs even in that age of just thinking amazingly well but anyway i wrote back and said yeah nine out of ten but you haven't gone all the way yet because your mind can see everything your eye can see and you can imagine things you'll never see in this real world you can hear real and imaginary sounds you can smell taste touch real feelings and phantom feelings and it's got its own amazing place of knowledge what the mind knows if all of that all that you can ever experience can fit into the mind the mind is the biggest thing not in the world because the world can fit into your mind and the brain can fit into your mind not the other way around that's really cool logic and it sees things in a different way you're changing your perceptions because sometimes our perceptions are so limited so finite this is infinitizing your perceptions anyway uh from poland when i meditate a great fear of death comes the fear is paralyzing i'm trying to accept it every time this fear becomes an obstacle what can i do to achieve peace and meditation you have get fear of death when you're meditating how many times you died in meditation none so it's a fear without any ground to it but what actually are you afraid of it's not actually the fear of death it's almost like a fear of a spiritual type of death of losing control losing your sense of self the one which would always try and protect you and it doesn't protect you it just causes you lots of stress and problems so little by little just keep on meditating a tiny bit more and you find that you push back the barrier of that fear little by little you go deep into the meditation you find it's wonderful and after a while you find what on earth was i afraid of this is great this is beautiful this is blissful don't try to overcome it all at once just little by little but push it back a little bit and a little bit more a little bit more and you'll find that what you're afraid of was actually nothing worth being afraid of at all we're afraid of so many things in life a lot of the time afraid of ghosts you know this is true that ghosts can give you lottery numbers these are true stories which i know that yeah they've given real lottery numbers so i did see a sign was it three million dollars tomorrow is that right i think i saw it on a sign somewhere coming in today do you want three million dollars tomorrow anyone want three mil do you need that would that would be a nice boost to your finances if it is maybe go to fremantle cemetery tonight and see if we can find a ghost and say hey come on guys so no need to be afraid of stuff okay um last question dear adjunct being a scientist how do you explain stillness in scientific terms you explain not stillness in scientific terms you explain science in stillness terms so you change the importance and the priority what is science and i remember just the founders of science which was um yeah it was um was it the oh the fellow i often quote who did absolute zero what's the name the temperature kelvin lord kelvin he was actually a a scientist and a bit of a philosopher as well and he said the only way that science should continue is a way of the negative so he said that people should put their proposals up the sides just like the law of gravity or something then all the scientists should try their best to disprove it because he said you can never really prove anything or you can actually show you haven't seen the fault yet but once you see your fault and you know it was wrong then you can improve it unfortunately science these days and i say this as a scientist they don't try and disprove a theory because there's too much peer [Music] not pressure but peer involvement in making sure that you know this particular theory works and so there's not that same tense of breaking new barriers in science as there was some years ago people are not courageous enough to try and disprove science sciences become a bit too dogmatic like religion became too dogmatic this is my theory and you're not going to disprove it so stillness but stillness goes beyond those serious stillness you can know that yourself you don't need to sort of read a scientific explanation of stillness every one of you has moments of stillness and if we can notice them that's you know maybe the best part of this talk tonight if you can notice stillness you know what it is i really get to be a friend of stillness that will create so much great happiness health and innovation the last little exercise what's this which i'm holding up what is it yeah it's about what else is it come on describe it give me some more descriptions maybe you know you know what you've done this but i've done this before people say it's a piece of wood it's got cloth on the top it's maybe about nine inches long it's cylindrical blah blah blah after a while after a while you just you haven't got any words for this anymore all the old concepts of what you thought this was what you were told it was get exhausted now your mind becomes still you can't think anymore because you're exhausted all your knowledge everything you've been told what this is and then you can start to see it afresh you can innovate it with this well that feels really nice yeah i should have done that a long time ago that's where you get breakthroughs in science not by taking a thought a concept and just taking it deeper by stopping it by being still and i told a story like that that was one of the best stories i gave at the world computer conference in daejeon in 2018 i think when i gave the keynote address there he was a buddhist monk doing giving a keynote address at a world computer conference i'm not any good at these things now very good at doing things differently so there we go so any questions from the floor before we begin oh yeah from the back there could you come close to one of the oh yeah microphone yeah hi hi is that your question nothing very good um just about like kind of science and physics and all that kind of thing oh yeah um obviously scientists believe that the brain is the mind and you know when you die like the brain is dead and you know there's nothing um i believe in an afterlife but i am kind of interested in neuroscience and sometimes i'll watch those kind of things and you know i've just got that interest in it um that sometimes i do get quite terrified because it kind of it makes me s skeptical and i'm just thinking is what they're saying really true and what if there's nothing afterwards and like how do you kind of i don't know i mean that's science that's like it's black and white this is how it is that you know how do you have that faith and i mean i do believe in an afterlife but it's i don't know it's just now look it's there's many scientists and just to make the point that when we had our last conference global conference here in perth convention center i invited one of my friends who is called professor bernard carr emeritus professor of theoretical physics in queen mary college london university and i never realized just how close a disciple of stephen hawkings was until he told me and i and i just watched the film on the airplane once that film of the life of stephen hawkins and bernard said you know he was actually featured in it one of stephen hawking's close assistant researchers and he wasn't actually in the movie but he actually got to go on the red carpet in the the opening of the what's it called the premiere in leicester square he was just a theoretical physicist but he was also my mate who was a buddhist the first buddhist i ever met and also we used that we joined together we had so much common interests of the psychic research society we'd go hunting ghosts together he was one of what i call a real scientist who would break down barriers and he was the president of the london society of psychic research and gave so many wonderful anecdotes about life beyond this world and he was a hard-nosed theoretical physicist the evidence is not sort of um what was it called x-files the evidence is out there and this is in there and to me quite frankly it's been proven beyond any sort of doubt that things like rebirth reincarnation there are such things as ghosts and other sort of life forms there's people who do have near-death experiences and their brain is just not working it's not functioning and they're still very much alive there's so much evidence out there it's one of the reasons that you know i sort of get frustrated with some scientists they refuse refuse actually to follow the evidence because it's too tough for them so quite with you there is such a thing as rebirth and when you pass away you won't pass away you just continue to go on to your next life in between lives see what happens next sometimes i ask this question how many of you have seen or heard a ghost a few people yeah okay there's a few people are you crazy people you're not at all these things are real sometimes people have seen but they refuse to admit it or they hear they think of something else or that something has tried to connect you but you're just in denial you just listen too scary no no thank you as much being a monk you don't have that fear the weird thing about i've got to stop talking after this going not too long the weird thing is what i found is that ghosts are afraid of you weird it's the monastery in town where i lived was a cremation ground there's lots of ghosts there so remember just early years as a monk just went out to see the ghosts and the ghost you can see us they were terrified the monk could actually see them weird anyway there we go little anecdotes to finish off with [Music] i'll come to eddie you're too late now next week okay go in the back there's another one something's really bothering me my dogs are very old and how do i make sure that they're gonna have a good life next life there are such things as ghost dogs as well there's two cases of ghost dogs there's one fella i'm going to see him next friday that you know his next-door neighbor sort of his dog passed away i think i didn't tell the story last week or we could do his next-door neighbor's dog passed away died in his arms had to take him to the vet and get sort of euthanized the next morning he was about to go to work open the front door of his house and the dog sort of came in and he said it looked exactly the same as his dog but he couldn't have been because he was euthanized the night before and so he came in and he just went to every corner of his house where the dog would usually curl up just for a few seconds and he said he went to the back of the house there was always a leaky tap and that's where the dog would get a drink when they was thirsty and then went up it was one of these units and went upstairs and this man's wife you know this is a builder uh this man and his wife has not got out of bed yet and the dog would always before he'd go to work with the master the building site would always go up to the his wife and just kiss and the wife was half asleep and forgot the dog had died and so when her dog went up and kissed she kissed the ghost and then the dog went downstairs she found out later on and you know she wasn't afraid at all she thought what a wonderful thing that was so the dog went out of the front door and they the owner was about to go into his ute to go to work as a builder and the dog went to jump in and he said no that's enough you've got to go so the dog turned around and ran down the street never seen again the ghost dog one last visit to the house of where he lived for so many years and just even kissing the owner when your dog died wouldn't it be a wonderful thing the ghost came and gave you a kiss yeah so never underestimate dogs and they're good people good dog yeah good animals here okay look i can keep going okay eddie you've got a long question or short question we already yes say something because it's not the same without eddie saying something be quick if somebody needs to go please go so make a quiz quick sorry you talk about god in the god oh yeah yeah you know in the buddha's teaching he emphasized a lot on mining oh yeah yeah you know mind is foreigner of all states yeah yeah and then the yeah in the um and he was studying us his teaching is on suffering and ending of suffering yeah yeah and then in the buddhist cosmology you know okay 31 place of existence the 14th plane that's the plane of great brahmana yeah great god you know that is yeah but it's not really a country so what do you think of as of great brahma in the oh no the great brahm is just somebody who has first general experience in brief so that's not sort of the creator of this world or anything it's much nicer instead of having like hard and fast cosmologies about the nature of the mind and make it more emotional that's why what are people searching for make god something more real something which all people can worship don't you worship respect enough and kindness and peace meaning that's what real emotional truth and that's something which everyone can believe in and agree on okay thank you very much oh thank you eddie okay so that's now for those of you who haven't fallen asleep and left [Music] pay respects for the world of dumb sangha thank you for all the questions [Music] mommy i'm stiffened up

Channel: Buddhist Society of Western Australia

Views: 33,051

Rating: 4.8168392 out of 5

Keywords: buddhism, Dhamma, Dharma talk, Buddha dhamma, Ajahn Brahm, peace, kindness, unconditional love, wandering mind

Id: aEMJ3neFhM4

Length: 80min 13sec (4813 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020