Endurance | Ajahn Brahm

Endurance by Ajahn Brahm

Okay. For this evening's time, we'll talk again. I was searching around until. I'm not even searching. I didn't have time to even search for what I was going to speak about this evening. But someone gave me a beautiful topic about two minutes before I came in. And the topic of this evening's stomach talk is on endurance. Because there are times in our life when we have to endure, when the going gets tough. And as the old saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough come to dump like a Buddhist center on a Friday evening to listen to a Dharma talk. You know what else? But in this teaching, which we give a really positive attitudes, training the mind really is very skillful means of Buddhism, which has been developed over 25, 26 centuries. These can actually really help you bear with the difficult times of our life, and actually bear with them in such a way that you can gain a huge amount of wisdom and a huge amount of compassion to get you to use those start times for positive growth. And so every one of us, from time to time, has to be able to bear with things. Look at me. I've been bearing with being an abbot for the last 12 years. Oh my goodness. So you have to have some degree of endurance. So this evening I'm going to talk about what that endurance really means. Now first of all, there's the stupid endurance which is the the tough guy endurance where when things are painful, when they're difficult, one just stands one's ground as if one is some Rambo thinking that you'd be able to resist just the flow of negativity, of pain, of difficulty in one's life, or with anyone has ever tried that. You know that sometimes you can't really keep going for very long. You know, sometimes it's the arrogance which we sometimes have thinking we're really tough. The point being that willpower will never be strong enough. Instead, in Buddhism, we use something else we call wisdom power, not willpower, wisdom power. For example, that in 2 or 3 weeks time we have one of the holiest times of the year in Buddhism, the waste sack ceremony. Here, we're holding it on the 22nd of May as the anniversary of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and finally passing away. And I recall the first major Buddhist ceremony, which I went to to celebrate that day was when I was a student, 18 year olds in Cambridge, and I was just so inspired by the story of the Buddha's enlightenment, because a monk came to read out that story. And I remember the most inspiring part was where the monks said that have been searching for so many years for truth, for enlightenment, for freedom. The Buddha sat down under a tree and resolved. Even if my blood dries up, even though my bones turned to dust, I will not move from this seat until I've gained complete and utter enlightenment. When I heard that, I thought, wow, I was so inspired. I couldn't wait to get back to my little room in college. And there in my room, I sat down and said. Well, if the Buddha could do it, so could I. And I was. I've been meditating for about three months by this time, and in the arrogance of the young man, I said, right, this is it. Even if my blood dries up and my bones turned to dust, I too. I'm not going to move for my cushion. Actually, not one cushion is about 3 or 4. Until I had to pull in, like when I was a busy young man, I had many things to do in life. I had to get enlightenment out of the way so I can get on with other things. You know how much time it takes to meditate. So I sat there now, before I'd only managed about 20 minutes at most. You know what it was like when you start meditating here, you're really, really good. You do half an hour every Friday. That's wonderful. It took me a long time to reach half an hour, but there I was, 20 minutes, 25, 30 minutes. I got to about 40, just under 40 minutes when I was in utter agony. That everything was burning with pain. And I thought, no, I'm going to push through. I'm going to enjoy. Even though my bones turned to dust, my blood dries up. That's my resolution. I can't stop now. I lost another minute and when I opened my eyes, it was just so disappointing because not only had I not become enlightened, my blood was still wet and my bones were still as they were when I started. And I realized that there's more to this than just willpower. And sometimes when understands, it's such endurance. There was this, uh, the stupid endurance when I thought I could actually fight my way to enlightenment. But sometimes we can do the same in our other little struggles of life just to endure. I've got a pain. I've got a difficulty. I've got a divorce. I've lost my job. I'm getting old. Somebody's dying. I'm very sick. How often do we have that same sort of attitude as I had as a stupid young man? I can push through this. I'm strong enough to do this. I will ask, who does that cancer think it is? I'm better than that cancer. And we stand our ground like that with just pure willpower, arrogance to think that we're in control and masters of the universe. And of course, when that happens, most people actually make things much worse. For me, not only did I not get enlightened, but I was aching in pain for quite a few hours afterwards. I pushed too far. So that that is not the correct way of enduring, not through willpower. Instead, we use what sometimes we call wisdom power. So I see what's happening there. What is the problem? Instead of just forcing it, we investigate and find out exactly what is happening. But sometimes when we're sort of in pain, when we're aching, and sometimes we ever have that time when you can't stand the pain anymore, you've had enough. When you really investigate and use wisdom power on that, sometimes you end of your endurance. I can't take it any longer. Enough. Now, what's happening there? As a Buddhist, we really investigate. Sometimes what we call investigation is well summed up by the metaphor when what you're really afraid of, when the ghost is running after you, if you're keeping running in the opposite direction, you never know what that ghost is. Whether it's fear of pain, whether it's fear of death, whatever it is you're afraid of, which keeps you running away, I can't stand it any longer. There comes a time in this metaphor of being chased by a ghost. When we turn around and we face the ghost. And the strange thing happens. When you face a ghost. The ghost goes, ah! And the ghost runs away. It's one of the things I've said here on this site before. I found out that ghosts are very, very afraid of monks. And they're afraid of you. If you're confident enough and you see again. And scare the ghost away. But this is also a metaphor. In other words, is a simile, because sometimes what happens is what we're afraid of, where we're writing the opposite direction. He will always have power over us. So if we're always running away from pain, say, pain will always be in control, have power over us, and we be just a servant, a slave of these physical feelings. So there comes a time when we just turn around and we look at what's really going on. And this is where we really investigate and what actually is happening. What do you see? As soon as you actually face pain or any difficulty here, you find the reason why you can't stand it is not the pain, but it's the thought of longer. How long is this going to last? Thinking is going to last for ever. It's when the mind actually projects into the future that pain difficulty appears to be unendurable, which is why that wise person will always remember about the flux of life, impermanence, change. You know it's not going to last is that story which many of you might know. When I had this terrible scrub typhus about 4 or 5 weeks in a hospital in northeast Thailand, not a very pleasant place to be in very awful illness. And I was so happy. One day when my teacher adventure came for a visit. I never expected it. He was already a big monk and I was only just a newly ordained little monk when his great master comes to see you. Wow! You felt so good until Agent Cha opened his mouth. Because what he said, as many of you heard us before, what he said was Burma Wang. Sir, you're either going to get better or you're going to die. And then he left. He didn't waste time. This. This great monk. He had me. I thought that's not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear how you're feeling today. I hope you're getting better. You're getting some nice food. You know, you just didn't mess around straight to the point. But when I thought about that, is this how true that is? I didn't really have to be afraid of the pain and the sickness. It wasn't going to last either. I die and then the pain would end well, I get better. And as it happened, obviously, because I'm here now, I got better. But that's always something which pointed out to me the problem, or one of the great problems of pain, because we think it's going to last forever. We can't see the end of it. And so the wisdom power which we use to have endurance is to know this too will pass. Whatever it is you're experiencing, you know it will always change. When we think it's going to last forever. Only then we will not be able to stand it where we know it's always going to be changing. Then there's no problem anymore. We don't know when it's going to disappear, and very often it disappears when we least expect it to go. So what happens? So whenever you are in those situations, it's one of the basic Buddhist teachings to always remember this too will pass. This was the story of the Emperor's ring. I had to amend this story in my little book, the original story, which I read somewhere else, even though it's an ancient story, because someone else published it, they thought maybe they might be in trouble. So I just changed the story very briefly in my book, Opening the Door of Your Heart. But the original story was an emperor, a young man who came to a position of power when he was still immature, and every time things were going well in his life, in his kingdom, they'd have parties and celebrations. In fact, so many parties and celebrations that he didn't do enough work. And so the good times never lasted very long. And when things started getting bad in the kingdom, when the citizens were revolting, when they were rioting, when there was lack of peace, when crime was going up, I think Mr. Gallop understands this. When I was probably in the kingdom. He gets so depressed he'd just stay in his room and sulk. You know what it's like when you're depressed. You just can't do anything. And so because of that, he. The bad times lasted longer than normal. And of course, they minister. So this is no good. We have to help our emperor. But emperors are not very amenable to advice. They think they know it all. That's why the Emperor is. And so they had to be very smart. They got this device, this trick. They presented the king, the emperor with a ring, as well as call the story of the Emperor's ring a very simple gold ring. Except on the outside was engraved the words this two will pass. They told the emperor to keep that ring on and always look at it, which he did. And that changed his whole life. And also the prosperity of the kingdom Because when things were going well. He would still look at the ring and say, huh? This too will pass. He never took the good times for granted, so he worked even in times of prosperity. And because of that, the good times. They lasted longer than expected. And when the cycles of nature did turn, he would never got so depressed or upset he could endure because he knew, looking at his ring, reminding him of a truth which he should really remember and should really know. He reminded him, this too will pass. That gave him hope. It gave him encouragement to keep working even through the difficult times. And of course, the difficult times never lasted so long. The good times lasted long, the bad times not so long. And he became a very successful emperor and a very happy person. Simple story. Some of you heard it before, but it needs repeating because it's incredibly powerful. What it does is it teaches us one of the wisdom powers when those faculties, so that when life is tough, when we go into those pits of depression, despair, grief, whatever happens when it looks like it's really black, we always understand this too will pass. And it does. I used to give that story very regular to prisoners in jail, when I used to go and visit the many prisons here in Western Australia. Imagine what it's like being a prisoner, being a criminal, wearing the green when you actually put yourself in that position. Shame, lack of freedom, humiliation. And sometimes, you know, that's not going to just be 1 or 2 days, sometimes many years. Sometimes prisoners get depressed. Sometimes there are suicides in those cells. You can imagine why I think I read in the papers there were many. Rifkin committed suicide because of the pain or the shame, rather. Because they don't realize this too will pass. I asked those prisoners who said, I don't know how long your sentences, but what would it be like five years from now? Ten years from now, you'll be looking back at this time, which was so terrible for you while you write in it. And you look, look back upon it. I don't know, maybe with a bit of nostalgia, I don't know, but at least you look back upon it with a completely different perspective than when you're right in the middle of it. You know it will pass, and it does pass. And the day does come when it passes, when you walk out of that jail, when you're free. In the same way, you know that whatever you have to experience in life, whatever difficulty, whatever problem, you know that they must come when you walk out of that problem, when you walk out of that depression, when you walk out of that grief, that problem, the day does come. You're free Why can't we remember that time? When we're right in the middle of the pits. A good metaphor description of this which comes from nature. For those of you who know the cycles of nature in Northern Europe. If you've ever been served in a forest or in the the moors or the pastures at winter time in northern Europe, and I was brought up in England, I know this very clearly. All the leaves fall from the trees, and the trees are just like skeletons that look very similar to what you see after a bushfire here in Western Australia. Except the trees aren't black, but again, there's no leaves. Everything is dead in winter time. Nothing is moving. His soul is just so bleak and so grey. I'm not going to tell the old grey story now, but I'll tell you one thing. Well, first time when I went to visit London. And November time, December time, my brother told me that they just discovered a cure for depression. In fact, they had a name for this type of depression which happens in Northern Europe at that time of the year. All they did to cure the depression was anyone who was really down. They'd put them in a room, they'd dress them up in Hawaiian shirts. They turned the light up. They'd have very, very loud, sort of vigorous music and just the stimulus of bright lights, loud music, whatever it was, it stimulated the model of depression. That's what it was in the greatness of their life. Where everybody in that time in England wears overcoats. They're all the same color. All this actually is no gender anymore. When you go and see those people in England at that time of the year, boys, girls, even monks who probably all look the same, just old grey overcoats. Or maybe the Maxim banner, because I don't know. But certainly you can't really see much life going on. But in this particular simile, some of you told me once that when it is winter time in your life, when it seems to be all grayness in the skies, when it's cold and gloomy, when it's nothing green growing in your life, always remember that after winter inevitably comes the spring. And even during that cold winter, you know that just a few inches under the surface of the ground there is seeds. There is potential life and growth for those beautiful flowers of the springtime Her right there in this moment, just a few inches under the surface. They may even have germinated. Now they're growing. They're pushing up. You sure you can't see them? But you know they're there. You know, spring does always follow winter. In the same way the tough times of your life, the depressive times, the lonely times, the times of grief, the times of loss, the times of disappointment. You know the spring is following in the wintry days of your life. You know something is moving under the surface. If you look carefully with deep mindfulness, you can sometimes see things moving in the deepest depressions of your life. Things are happening. You know this tool will not pass. In fact, you can almost intuitive passing. Now you know what I mean about this tool pass. You know it is going to change. It has changed. It's always changed. That's what your life has been. Seasons as summers and winters. Her sunny days and rainy cold days. That's everybody's life. But why is it that people don't manage to keep their head above water in these changes? Is because we forget? This is why we need a reminder. We need a little ring on our fingers. I was just counseling one lady. She seems to have got over her troubles and she says she's going to buy herself a ring. Now. She's going to get a simple gold ring so you can get someone to engrave that message on it, because it helped her enormously. So this too will pass. After a while, though, we actually look even deeper into the dark days of our life and the difficulties. Sometimes we have to keep pressing on, but sometimes if we keep pressing on, it's gonna pass. When's it gonna pass? I won't be going to pass today. When is spring coming? And as I said, spring is coming. It's not working. It doesn't work for me. Give me my money back. I've a tally of all the donations I've ever given to the Buddhist society. I want it all back. It doesn't work now. Of course, again, one is not understanding completely. Okay, it's going to pass, but actually you can make it pass much quicker if you're wise. So how do you make these things pass quicker? When you learn about sort of meditation, you also learn about life, what you do, sitting down for half an hour is what I call like a microcosm, a reflection of how we live one's life. So what are you doing when you're meditating? Number one, I say no, keeping the present moment. If you keep in the present moment you. There's no thing about the future anymore. You don't fear the future. This sort of the insurance becomes very easy, but it's still not enough. The other part of meditation, which many of you know, I talk about a lot. The only way to get real success in meditation, to get peace and depth in meditation, is to put joy into your meditation, to put joy in it. And that's why I ask people when they start meditating. When you become aware of your body, become aware of your mouth and for goodness sake, turn the edges up. That's right. Have a little smile. It does make it easier to meditate. The first time that I learned this again, back to my student days, I was not into sport at all. Sport for me was fun until some people used to take this sport really seriously. And I couldn't understand why they're stupid. But I was. One day I was in a boat, you know, on the river with eight other men, one cocks and seven other people. And we're in a race. And my goodness, that was a long way we had to race. And by the halfway mark, I'd had enough. I was tired, I didn't have any energy left. Putting those blooming oils was just too much for me. And then there was many of you who see these boat races. They have them obviously here in, uh, in Perth on the Canning River. There's always like a coach in the small rivers in England and just that, just on a bicycle by the, the towpath over here and all boats. I know the coach did. He shouted at me and he told me, he said, you're making a really ugly face smile. And I probably was making an ugly face. Same with sometimes when I opened my eyes to meditation. Some of you may ugly faces as well and said enough to make even a monk depressed sometimes seeing when you're you're mad. But he told me, said smile grin. Now, are these towers malleable enough? When you're very young, you're open to suggestions. And so I did that. I did smile, I grinned and straight away to stay all was easier to pull. I had more energy. The whole thing got better. It was obviously all coaches know that trick. But do you know that trick to coach yourself in your life? The other thing, when times gets very difficult, put fun into what you're doing. It doesn't matter to us how difficult it is. You can always manage to smile and it does. Through that smile become a little easier. This is why at funerals I tell jokes. When you go visit people in a hospital, I tell jokes again. Sometimes I get into trouble. I remember this one lady who she rang me up is the first time she had a very serious illness. It was only a hysterectomy, but she was over in. And I can say that because I'm a man. I saw a few people think, how can he say that? So she had a hysterectomy and she was very sort of, uh, upset about the whole thing. So she called me and I went to visit her in was the King Edward Memorial Hospital. And as soon as I walked in to her room, she said, Edinburgh, please, no jokes. That. And when someone says that, I mean encourages you, doesn't it? The poor lady, you know, she had this big sort of, uh, wound in her side. I tried my very best, but it was beyond my ability. I mean, she enjoyed it, so never mind the point being. The point being here, when you make fun of sickness, then people don't feel so miserable anymore. Because you got to do it in the right way. Because sometimes you're not laughing at them. You're laughing with them. You're trying to get people to say, you know, smile with your sickness. That way the thing is easy to endure. It's the same if anyone comes here and they're having a divorce. I say laugh. I said no, no, no. The lawyer's laughing. No. What else? But you can do that. Now, when you put a little bit of fun and joy into what you're doing, you find that you're able to achieve much more. The whole thing goes more smoothly. Just the whole of the. The tough times get much easier to endure. They don't last so long and they're not so painful. You actually taken away the pain, the difficulty of life. So it's not just endurance, you know, with standing up. I'm going to just no matter what happens, I'm going to just get through this. It's using wisdom. Power number one is tool pass and seeing if you can put some more fun into what's going on You do tell a few jokes. You do make it a bit more interesting, more joyful, and then you find it's much easier to get through. You know that just in your day, when life is just all so negative, when people are always fighting for, when you're always picking out what's wrong and you have to manage what's wrong, you know, in your office, in your home, if there's no laughter. Life becomes hard to endure. Sometimes people are amazed when they come here on a Friday night and they say, my goodness, people listen to you for a whole hour. Do you actually lock the doors or something to keep people from going out? How do you manage to sit and listen to a lecture for an hour? Even then, I think universities only have 45 minutes or 50 minutes at very most. But how do you do that? You put a few jokes in there every now and again to make it fun. Not just interesting, not just informative, but a little bit of fun as well. And then it's so easy to endure. I don't know if any of you had to endure sleeplessness You know, sometimes it happens to me. Sometimes people give me too much tea. I accept it. So I'm not really there for I suppose, but it's just my conditioning. I was born in England. I take the next thing after you. You move off your your mother's milk, you go into tea. I didn't have a chance. So sometimes people give you lots of tea. When it gets to late at night, it's probably going to sleep, but you can't. So how do you enjoy? Have you ever had, like, sleeplessness? Insomnia? Well, how do you deal with that? Have fun. What do you mean? So you kind of have fun with insomnia when you wake up in the morning. Isn't it just wonderful to be in your nice, soft, warm, cozy bed? The trouble is, when you wake up in the morning, you can't really enjoy it because you're going to get up and go to work or do something. So I got this idea that, okay, now I can't sleep at night What a wonderful thing, because I can enjoy the most comfortable place in my whole monastery. My bed. Who wants to go because it's wonderful and it's beautiful. Nice feeling, nice blankets, nice and cozy and warm was the go to sleep. This is nice because when you get up, it's cold, especially this morning. So we've got to have to go to work or someone comes along and tells you their problems, or the phone rings and you ring up me with your problems. We call that dial up monk. Terrible thing. Dial about the service. It's amazing. It's amazing what we get for dial back. Sometimes you've got to chant because someone just sick, you please chant on the phone. I've done that before many times. So I chant for a dog, whatever. So sorts of stuff. I don't put down dogs. They're nice. But the point is that sometimes that when you're in that bed and it's a there's no frozen, no one can get you, no one's going to ask you a question. No one's going to come up to me when I'm in bed. So I'm just one more question. Just one please. I'll never come back to you and say, can you please come and sign a book? Not when I'm in bed. That's a wonderful place to be. So what I did. I said, I'm enjoying myself. And when you actually took away that negativity, uh, because a lot of time, I realized that what insomnia was, the reason why it was a problem was because if I don't go to sleep soon, I'm going to be in big trouble if I don't. There's only a couple of hours left if I don't get to sleep soon. If I don't get to sleep soon. That was the worry which was keeping me awake. It was a negativity which was adding to the problem. So it wasn't just endurance. I used wisdom and I said, I'm sure I don't want to go to sleep. Next thing I do, I woke up a few hours later because you'd relax. This is wisdom power. So a lot of time when you're wise, you don't need to endure. The problem disappears. Well, the Buddhist said, and this is basic Buddhism, but powerful Buddhism, you said. Suffering difficulties problems as two parts to it. Please always remember this as a physical part and this a mental part. It is the way of the world nature. You can't do much about that. So many years. Sickness, cancers, deaths, sometimes divorces, separations, people coming, people going. That's life. The seasons of the year. Winter, spring, summer, autumn. You can't do much about that. The physical part is our life. But the mental part that suffering. The Buddhist said, you can do something about how you relate to what you have to experience. What you do about it, what you think about it, how you perceive it inside. Because it's two parts to say sickness, the physical pain. But also the mental pain. Two parts to insomnia and the fact you can't sleep and whether how you react to that. I don't want to sleep is terrible. It's awful. There's two parts to depression. Just the low energy and the fat. I don't want to be depressed. And you understand that second part? I don't want to be depressed. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to be in hospital. I don't want to be old. I don't want to die. I don't want to give a talk every Friday evening or I don't know what. I do this when I go. I'm going to Sydney tomorrow, another talk tomorrow. And I don't want to do this now. So that's a mental suffering. So instead of adding the mental suffering to life, what wisdom does. Which means endurance is just so easy. You don't try and change the situation. I don't go south. Leave me alone. I don't want to give a talk tonight. You don't go and say, oh, leave me alone. I don't want to go to Sydney tomorrow. You don't go and say, I just want to be a simple monk. You go and you've got all my talk. I've just seen in a library. They got these mp3 talks with God. I don't know how many talks I've got on these mp3 CD players anymore. Look, I will give you one each for free. Haven't put on your iPod so you never have to come to Dermalogica Centre ever again. You've got all the talks, hundreds of them. You can listen to them at home if you leave me alone. That because that's not the way it works. What is most important is instead of being so complaining, so negative, so grumpy, giving a talk or not giving a talk is not the problem. Being able to sleep or not being able to sleep is not the problem. Being sick or being healthy. Being all being young is not the problem. As I said last week, is how you are these things, your mental attitude towards these things. I would have said, that's what you can do. So you don't just have to endure when it's in pain or difficult, or when things aren't going your way. Look inside of your mind. Be mindful and say, what is my reaction to this? How am I dealing with this? And you can put fun into your life. When you put fun into the moment when you're laying bricks or it's hard, it's under the sun, make fun of it. See if you can. No load of bricks the wrong way round or whatever it is. That's actually how you get innovation through playing. A lot of times people have actually put fun into what they're doing. Done things differently, messed around, and they got these amazing new discoveries. For example, just on the cutting edge of of culinary expertise of gastronomy is the monks sitting in front of you right now. Because when you give us food, we don't know what we're putting in our bowl, but it all gets mixed together and we get some combinations which no one has ever tasted before. This is research. Now and we found some amazing combinations. One of my favorites is custard on spaghetti. You try it. You see, I thought you were on the cutting edge. We've eaten things which we haven't even dreamt about yet. Of course, many of our experiments go wrong. It is terrible. But nevertheless, now and again. That was. I had some ice cream today on my fish. That was nice. That was true. Loads of ice cream went on the fish. That wasn't so nice. I must agree that was a mistake. But nevertheless, when you make fun of these things, you see this is actually where we get growth. We're where we get sort of new ideas, where it's like, uh, creation and stuff like that. So. When you bring your poke fun into your life. That way you don't have to endure anymore. What used to be sort of negative. Why'd you have to do this for? Actually, it's not endurance anymore. You don't have to force yourself. You don't have to stand strong. It's not a Rambo anymore. A Buddha is so wise. You are so wise. But all those things which other people say. Oh, that must be so hard to do. That said, no, it's actually good fun. That's why some people say, you monks, how do you live like that? Must be terrible. No sex, no movies. Just no no no no no. That's why they call the female monks. Nuns. But. If somebody says they. Could. Just not do anything It's just like. How could you do that? And I. Look, you've all seen. We don't hide in our monastery. You come and visit us, you hang out with the monks. Sometimes you go and I pilgrimages to India. And you're with the monks all the times. You know that we're. You know, this is how we are all the time. Just messing around, having fun. And sometimes people think I should be a bit more serious. But I refuse to be so serious. I put fun into my life because that's how I could endure this. And it's not enjoyed anymore. It's just like good fun. So you have to do something. Okay, let's make it joyful. And also let's make it useful as well, because that's the other part with endurance, because sometimes you think you're wasting time. What I mean by that is just saying, I just got to get through this so I can go and do something else. This is not valuable. This is not worthwhile. I just got to, you know, just bear with this until something more useful, more wonderful is going to come along. That type of endurance again is missing the wonderful opportunities of life. This is why my teacher, Adrienne Shah, always used to give teach us the meaning of these old words which you hear now, every now and again. You know that I am called Edinburgh Asian sister Yama of the nuns of monastery Ajanta, Tamil Nadu. Actually, you know what this word Ajahn means? It means teacher. And I understood what this really means. When in the first years, when I was a monk, one of the things we had to endure was mosquitoes. These were the jungles. This was a time when you didn't have mosquito repellent or fly screens, and they were all over the place. These mosquitoes, and they were just so vicious. They really hurt. And so we'd complain. Adventure. Help. You know, we're not. So we're not born into this type of country. You know, we sort of we were hurting. It's giving us problems. Please help us get some repellent or something. And what the teacher said, what I just said, he said, now these mosquitoes, you don't have to enjoy them. You can enjoy them. Now, I can now start calling these action mosquito because again means teacher. He said, they're going to teach you things. And my goodness, they taught me a lot. They taught me the benefit of mosquito repellent. Now they did. They taught me a lot about how to meditate because, you know, in some of these Zen monasteries, they have these monks with a big stick. And if you start sort of nodding, they sort of hit you on the back of the stick with a stick. These mosquitoes is not just one of them, is hundreds of them. And if you don't make your mind still and peaceful, they come and bite you. I found out later it was only about a couple of years ago in a medical article in one of these journals, that mosquitoes are attracted to the karma dioxide coming out of your pores. That is what attracts them. The higher metabolism you have, the more carbon dioxide is secreted, the more you are visible to mosquitoes. So the more you worry about these mozzies, the more you think. The more you try them, almost the more your metabolism goes up. The more carbon dioxide comes out, the more they come and bother you. That's true. So if you meditate, make your mind very calm and peaceful. Then your metabolism goes down and the mosquitoes literally can't find you. That's how I learned. Mosquito taught me how to meditate. Because if I worried, I started thinking they'd get me. I made my mind very still, very peaceful. Relax. Slow down. Then they couldn't find me. And it happened many times. You sit there and be hundreds of them around and afterwards you wouldn't feel them. But afterwards, there's no bumps on you, on your arms or on your head. They couldn't find me. So they taught me how to meditate. Same way that pain can teach you a lot of wisdom. Just how to stop controlling. How to let go. Because of difficulties in life. They are our teachers. They teach us what real life is all about. Sometimes that we have our loved ones and we all know that Buddhism says be careful of attachments when that person dies or they go off somewhere else. We understand what attachments really are, but we should at least learn from that so we understand what life is all about. When you understand these things, it's not that you have to live by yourself, afraid of relationships. What it means is you understand the rules of the game. You understand that people will come together, but not for eternity, only for a while. This too will pass. You know that from the very beginning. If you know that from the very beginning, the whole thing with relationships completely changes what Arjun Shah used to say. Holding up a glass he always used to hold up glass is like I hold up this glass. You say, see this glass you would say? He said, can you see the crack in it? And I said, I don't. Shah, you need some glasses. There's no crack in the glass. And he said, there is, but it's microscopic. One day this glass will fall over or some will kick it. And that crack which is in here right now will open up and the glass will shatter, he said. Because that crack is in here, therefore you have to look after your glass. Therefore you have to care for it, because if you don't, it won't last very long. And then he explained the simile. He looked at me and said, Brother Wang, so you've got a crack in you as well I know in my head I'm not cracked in the head. It's all over. You might not be able to see that yet, but you have your potential death which is there in you at this moment. One day you're going to die. You got to crack this glass because of that. You have to care for your body because it's not always going to be there. The same with the person you live with. There's a crack in them. One day they're going to die or they're going to part. That's why you have to care. If this glass he said was plastic unbreakable, then you would need to care about it. You could drop it. You could kick it. Who cares? Because the glass is fragile. That is why we have to care. Because your relationships are fragile. You know that one day they will go. That is why you care. If once you got married you had to live with each other forever and ever and ever and ever, not just one lifetime for the whole eternity. You will need to care anymore. Now you understand what truth is. These understandings that the passing away of things when it does pass away, when the relationship ends, when the people leave, when your children go off to other parts of the world with their own partners. When your best friend dies from a cancer. When everything disappears. You all know I expected that. The glass is now cracked, but during the time it was whole, I cared for it. Where would there be any sadness? There would be just the truth. You've done your very best. You've enjoyed the time we've had together. And now it's time to part. What a beautiful part of life that is. It's not attachment. It's not just being afraid of relationships. Is this beautiful middle way where we understand the rules of the game. We understand what life truly is, and then there's no such thing as endurance anymore. When the glass breaks is not painful. We can even put joy in it and celebrate the party. When one relationship ends, the opportunity for another one. Isn't there? All I've been fed up with relationships is the opportunity for going to the monastery. There's always opportunities there. Always. At times, teaching us what can happen next. So that way, where we are not just joy, but wisdom and understanding into the the phases of our life, especially those things which we took as negative phases, things which we thought were hard were very unpleasant. It's incredible. They're not unpleasant anymore. Even what other people would get have to go and see psychiatrists for, go through therapy for, and be so upset for. You find you're not You don't have to endure anymore. You have wisdom. You have joy. I've seen many Buddhists do this. Incredible, just to say just their power. They have to go through these terrible operations, but they just smiling all the time. And I mean it. They're just told they're going to die and they're cracking jokes. I will always remember one of her disciples years ago. She was always having trouble breathing. She thought it was allergies. When she got it checked out, it was lung cancer, but she got it checked out far too late to do anything. Waste of time even having any surgery or chemotherapy. So as soon as the results came through, uh, she called me up. She was at. Is it Charlie Gardner's? Well, well, Perce forget now, but anyway, she called me up. I went there straight away to see her, and by her bedside is only a couple of hours since she'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Know how she started cracking jokes. She was a Thai, she said. Tell my Thai friends they can come and see me, but not now. They can come and see me in my coffin, you know? Oh, no. She was just a great. A great fan. And she 2 or 3 hours earlier, she'd been in and out of the blue. She'd never expected this to have been told she was going to die. So that was what I call a real wise Buddhist. But the trouble was, as soon as I spent an hour discussing her funeral arrangements and what to do about her children, when I was walking out this nurse, she was the matron, the sister of the ward. The head honcho in this ward said, oh, I'm so glad you've come. So why? I'll come over here. And she she almost pulled me aside into this room and said, that lady is just seen. She's in denial. She doesn't realize she's going to die. And I said, oh, don't come off it. She just spent one hour planning her funeral, doing everything. And I always remember just this look of complete, uh, confusion on the face of this nurse. She said. But she's happy, so why not We're all going to die sometime. She's. You know, she knows what? She's going to die. She can plan for it. She's had a good life. Why shouldn't she be happy? We're not. If you're a Christian, you're going to go to heaven. Why shouldn't you be happy? It's much better than over here. If you're a Buddhist, accompanied by lots of good karma, she knows you can have a wonderful life afterwards. If you don't believe in heaven, you don't believe in rebirth. You're going to disappear. So isn't that happy? Because otherwise, what's your turn? Nursing homes. No walking frames. Is that really what you want? So she was happy. I said, look, what's wrong with her? But the point was, she'd never seen this set before. This nurse. And she'd obviously been in the business for a long time. And I was actually marvellous, actually, to see that. To see that this lady who just been said she had cancer was about to die. She didn't need insurance. She had wisdom. She had fun. Sure her body was hurting, but her mind was at peace. Two parts of suffering. Physical part. The mental part. Physical stuff you can't do much about. You'll die one day. You've got a crack in you. Your relationship is going to crack in it. No matter how perfect you think your partner is. One day has to happen. But don't be afraid of that. That is action. Separation is going to teach you a lot. And if you know how to deal with this, make your mind peaceful. Learn from it. Grow from it. Saving. Put fun into no matter what you're doing. And that way you understand how endurance really happens. No longer do you need to grit your teeth. You just take your teeth out. And You take the problem away, which is a mental problem. And that is how we learn endurance. So I'm very happy that you've endured this talk. And you've laughed a lot, so you've understood it. So thank you for listening to the Buddhist way. Rejoice! Any questions about today's talk? My recipe book. Oh, yeah. I think one day I've already given you a recipe. Try that custard on spaghetti, I dare you. I challenge you to try it. Give it to your husband tomorrow. And then you'll also be able to understand about how to endure separations. Chile. Pavlova. Pavlova. Yeah. You know, you got pavlova and you put chilli sauce on top. Why are all of you screwing up your faces? How many of you have ever tried pavlova with Chilean? So how do you know? For goodness sake, give it a try. I never tried it. You can tell me afterwards. Okay. Thanks a lot. Married. Healthy. Announcements. Thank you for listening. Ah. Some. Ah. Somebody up I go. Ah. But ah I got one dong ah b what day me. So ah I got up, I got, I got um all the money my something. So party planner bag a water song. Walk a song. Go sung gonna mommy.