How To Live in The Present Moment

How To Live In The Present Moment by Ajahn Brahm

Transcription

So very nice to see so many people here this evening. Even though 60 of the hardcore on the weekend retreat. I call them the hardcore when they go off and spend their long weekend in a meditation retreat. But this evening has a couple of requests for a talk, and one came from last week, which I remember and thought was a great title for a talk is actually How to Live More in the Present Moment during our Daily Life. And that fits in with another question how to live life with more equanimity. Because if you look at the word, even equanimity, which is actually being in the middle of things, there is nothing more effective than being in the middle of time in this beautiful place between the past and the future. Remember just this old lady who was very close to death, which I was looking after some years ago, and she told me that at the end of her life she was in her 80s. She had no regrets. Amazing thing to say that after 80 years you had no regrets. But unfortunately, she was suffering from dementia. So I could understand what she. This is a wonderful thing to do, but the meaning of that story is you don't need to have dementia to let go of the past. Why can't we just stop it? And that's one of the reasons we can't stay in the present moment is because it is the prison of our past. And of course, the other reason is because we just can't help. It is worrying about our future. And of those two, they're thinking about the past. Come on, guys, why do you worry so much about things which have already happened, which you can't change? It's one of the reasons is because we really think the past is important. We give it value, which it doesn't deserve. And we think it's important to deal with the mistakes of the past. One of the reasons why we can't stay in the present moment, because we've got a really perverted view of the word justice. We really think that justice needs to be done. So I have to mend all those terrible mistakes. But someone else did. Usually, um, a lot of times. Sometimes if what I did want to sort of mend that. I remember a story from one of the people who came here a long time ago. He told me this personal story of how he was born in Sydney. Unlike many people born in Sydney, they lived very close to the water. And when he was about 5 or 6 years of age, he was playing with his best friend on a pier, and he pushed his best friend into the water for a joke. And his best friend drown. And his best friend lived next door, and he had to face her to face the tears of his best friend's parents. The tragedy of a five. A six year old child dying in such a way because he pushed the boy in. And he said, even though that his best friend's parents, who lived next door, who knew this guy, even though they said, we forgive you, it was only boys being boys. 9999 times out of a thousand, no one would drown and just be one of those childish pranks which we do to each other. He never meant to kill my son. But even though that his parents forgave him and his, uh. So the parents of his best friend forgave him. He can never forgive himself. He said it was only when he was an adult. He said about 17 or 18 years of age. I think, if I remember correctly, only then did he wake up one morning and he said it was as simple as that. Wake up one morning. And he gained the insight. He didn't need to feel guilty anymore. He could let it go. He was about 12 or 13 years of his life was ruined because of that feeling of guilt. He could not let go of the past. Unfortunately, that many of our cultures, many of our cultures, almost insist that we feel guilty or bad about something we've done. And I was very relieved when I met Buddhism. To understand from the Buddha, from all the teachings and the great monks and nuns I met, you didn't need to feel guilty. In fact, guilt was not part of the Buddhist psychology, something which somehow we've got in our Western culture, but not in Buddhism. Instead of thinking we need to be punished with what guilt is all about, you done something wrong. Therefore, you need to be punished. You all know that in Buddhism we don't have guilt and punishment. We have the AFL code. And he said, oh, I know what the AFL code is right now. Acknowledge, forgive and learn. Simple. You acknowledge what has happened, what you've done, what other people have done is real. You don't hide it or deny it, and then you forgive it. Forgiving means no punishment, no hurting yourself, no hurting other people, no denying yourself happiness and success in life, or denying other people happiness and success. And you learn from that support for strategies to be smarter, kinder, so you don't get in those situations and problems again. But as far as justice is concerned. We leave that to? Karma has put it. There we go. Now you're totally forgiven for not turning off your mobile phone. You acknowledge that that's your mobile phone. You forgive yourself and you learn not to do it again. The great thank you for that opportunity. But if you do feel guilty about that or is saved. Oh, my God, I feel so terrible. If you do, you haven't understand what Buddhism is. How many times you've made a mistake. You do something stupid like that in front of other people and you feel so guilty or ashamed. Oh, I shouldn't have done that. That just shows that you don't understand the AF. Okay. Because that shame is a sense of like, bit of self punishment. So please, we let it go. We let go of that past. Karma will sort that out in the end. You'll be having a nice meditation next week about to become enlightened. And because of your karma, someone else's mobile phone will go off and stop your enlightenment. That's how it works. But we don't have to feel guilty about this and want to punish people. We don't sort of find out who was that person. I get Dennis, a president to take you outside afterwards and beat you up. We don't do things like that in Buddhism because we are not the agents of justice. If you think you're the agent and it's your responsibility to make sure that justice is done, then you won't be able to let go of the past. I don't know how many times I read in newspapers about people still searching for perpetrators of the Holocaust over 60 years ago, and I still see, unfortunately, reading about the trial in Cambodia because of the Pol Pot ears. I know many of those Cambodians who came over here as refugees. It was very beautiful time in my life when the first group of Cambodian refugees arrived here in Perth. I was with, uh, the second man catcher. My other is a senior mark to me at the time. I changed after we got a call that these Cambodian refugees were over in the refugee and the, um, Shenton Park. Uh, what's it called? Refugees or whatever. And we went over to see them. And as I started talking to them, they just come from Cambodia. They didn't know a word of English. They could recognize, sort of, that we were monks because they were all Buddhist. And then I decided, I said, let's stop the talk. Let's do some Buddhist chanting, because the chanting is common to all the Theravada traditions. And as soon as we started chanting, one was wonderful experiences. I'll always remember this group of refugees coming to a strange country with nothing that they could relate to, heard the chanting and they all put their hands up and started crying because it was the first thing they could recognize in this new country. Which I could recognise from home but is charity. And after that they all came here because they had a contact. I remember this other story, one of these old bugs. I'm just really rambling. This. This other man who who I grew up with, who was one of the monks in Thailand in those early years. He just drove and he got a job in immigration department in the customs, and he told me that he was actually on the the counter. I think in Brisbane it could have been Sydney, it was Brisbane because he lives in Queensland. He was on the the counter there when all these homeless and refugees came in from the refugee camp being resettled into Australia, and he could speak some lotion. And I remember these are villagers, these are very poor peoples, hardly any education, maybe for years. And they flee their country because they're being killed and they go to refugee camps and they see these Westerners and, okay, we're going to resettle you in United States, in England and Australia. And they cancelled out. It's a totally foreign to them. I'm going to clue what's going on or where they are. In Australia. Where the heck is that? If you live in sort of a village in Laos, it's like going to Mars. Sometimes places look a bit like Mars too, but in the middle. But anyhow, the first of these refugees which came to his counter, he greeted them in Lao Madhesi, which is like a way of saying no, it means literally means where you come from. It actually is a little greeting to say, I could believe it. The first person they met in Australia who speak their language, and in a few seconds, all of the refugees were crowding around his counter where all the other aisles were totally empty. Because they were being greeted in their language by someone who could understand them. And that made all the difference in the world. But anyway, I don't know how I could enter this when I'm talking about how to live in the present moment, thinking about all these wonderful stories from the past. They're a good story. So if you're going to have a good remember the past, but you remember the wonderful stories in the past which make you happy. Now leave all the rubbish stories from the past aside. But the point is, I was going actually like Justice's Cambodia's, which I got to know really well. They were very happy to let go of all that pain of the past of those Pol Pot years, and to deal with it in a very beautiful way. Again, one of those other meaningful stories of how they let go of the past, as one of the senior Cambodian gentlemen here still see him very often. He had a very tragic story. For those of you who see in The Killing Fields, the movie that was very true to life, apparently. And here was one of these simple living people in the village. He was actually a monk, but he was forced to disrobe or be killed, and he chose to disrobe and keep his life. And in the camp or in these killing field communes, you know, he got married to a nice girl and he fell in love, got married, and after many years of hardship, they escaped. They did that route over the the jungles and mountains between Cambodia and Thailand. And they both made it into the refugee camp at Aranya, just on the Thai side of the border. However, that on the journey she had contracted malaria, they got to the camp. By the time they got to see medical attention, it was too late. She died. They got so close. So close to freedom and a future home. She died at the very last moment as a tragedy. But nevertheless, there was no time to grieve or no time to settle that terrible pain of losing someone at the very, very last step before you find freedom. And then he was taken here to Perth. He had another met another girl in the refugee camp in Thailand, were there for 3 or 4 years. They got married over there. And I remember just he invited myself and the other monks to his house for a little ceremony where he offered food and amongst us some chanting. And while the monks, while we started the chanting, he started acting strangely. He was sitting next to his wife, and then he took a few steps forward and sat down in front of the monks and out of his pocket his shirt pocket. He got a donkey. A picture of his first wife. Why we lost in the journey from Cambodia into Thailand for freedom is the only memory he had of her. It was black and white. I saw it just creased in the corners. He got it out, put in front of himself and his sweat, and cried and cried as he remembered his first wife, and with his grief. And after the chanting was completed, only lasted 15 minutes. He stopped his crying, put the photo back in his pocket, and went to sit next to his current wife. I thought, what a beautiful way of dealing with the past. He needed that time. That beautiful opportunity where the monks were chanting with the permission of his current wife, to mourn for his past wife. And as soon as he done that, he could completely let it go and be free. Sometimes that's how we deal with the pain of the past. We acknowledge it. We have to sometimes do what we call these forgiveness ceremonies, and we learn to be able to let these things go. But the forgiveness ceremony, the way of letting go of the past, especially the pain of the past, is a very beautiful way of being free from this past so we can live more in the present moment. The forgiveness ceremonies is where you either do it in front of the monks or the nuns, or even better, just know you come into this place in a quiet time in front of the Buddha statue. Or you can do it at home. Do it the beach. Do it anywhere where you find it's a beautiful, sincere place. Because this is serious stuff. Because you need to acknowledge something. Something which at the time or because of the circumstances, you weren't really able to sort of face, to bring up and to deal with. So the little forgiveness ceremony is the couple who came here, who once told me that when they were young, because they were both students were brought, they had already got married. She became pregnant. They couldn't afford to keep the child. So they had an abortion. And that guilt had stayed with them for a long time, even though they know that sometimes. How can you how can you feel so guilty? It wasn't done out of malice. It was done out of. Basically practical need at the time. But when I said that, how can we deal with this past which is still keeping us imprisoned in the present moment? I told them, come into here and do a forgiveness ceremony and just sit in front of a Buddha statue or someone you really respect, or a situation you respect. And when with great integrity, you say that this is something which I did is understandable, but you still feel bad about it. Whatever I've done body, speech or mind, intentional or unintentional, or things which I didn't do, which I should have done. I ask forgiveness not from God, not from the Buddha, from myself. There is only one person that can forgive you, and that always has to be you. No one else can do that. It's like that young man who killed his best friend as a 5 or 6 year old. Unintentionally, he had to forgive himself. And to say that if an important case, whatever I've done, my body speaks her mind. I ask forgiveness and then hear that forgiveness being given to you. And it doesn't stop there. You have to learn that a learning is the most important part, because that's going forward into the future. In a peaceful, better way. So you learn. Make sure you don't put yourself in that situation again. Make sure that you have strategies so that it doesn't occur again. So you don't have to face that pain and difficulty of such decisions. That's why we have the knowledge. Forgive. Learn. And if we can use that to our past and have this beautiful forgiveness ceremonies for yourself, for others, it means you're not imprisoned by this terrible past which eats inside of you for such a long time, creates so much psychological and physical problems that you can't be healthy and happy and successful in this life. We have to learn how to deal with that person no matter what it is. And if it's somebody else's past, what someone has done to you which has really hurt and harmed you. Remember that famous saying which I've said here many times? I tried to get this in that calendar. You know, every last couple of years we have these calendars with sayings. I try to get this in this calendar last two times, but it got edited out. And I think you'll probably understand why, because it had an un monkish word in it. I don't know why I can't say this word, but everybody else can. And I say, you don't need to seek revenge because karma will get the bastards anyway. And I only say it that way so people can remember it. Why do you want to seek revenge? So why do you want to hurt the person who hurt you? If somebody hurts you, we let it go. It's their problem. One of the sayings in my book, which impressed I'm the former premier, Geoff Gallop, was to keep in contact with who was obviously here for our opening of our retreat centre. One of the sayings which he was really impressed with was why allow other people to control your happiness if another person is misbehaved, cheated, abused, giving you a hard time, why do you allow them to upset you and destroy your happiness because of their stupid, mean, cruel, selfish actions or speech to make any sense? What other people have done, if they've done something stupid, that's their problem. They've mistreated me. I'm not going to be unhappy because of the stupid things they've done. It was a great revelation to realise you don't have to react. You don't have to carry that pain which someone has inflicted on you. Into your future. You don't have to. You can let it go. There have been some wonderful experiences I've had as a monk. You meet some very wonderful people and some real scalawag people in the jails and prisons. But I remember once going into Fremantle Prison when it was still a prison, not a tourist place or a cafe. And at that particular time there were some very, very, very bad. I was supposed to be bad criminals, but I really liked those guys in there. Very honest. And I remember seeing the social worker there who invited me for some tea afterwards, and one of the most amazing women I've ever met, and her name was Dasha SIM Cova. I still remember her name after all these years because she told me her story with a name like SIM Colver. She was a Czech East European and she said she was 16 years of age. 16 year old young girl. The prime of her life, facing a future with hope, with excitement. And now was the time in 1968 where the Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia, invaded Prague. They were having a movement towards greater democracy, freedom for their people, and the Soviet Union decided to invade and crush what became known as the Prague Spring. It was a 16 year old. She loved her country and she was hoping for her freedom. So she was one of the people who stood on the streets to demonstrate against the invasion. She was one of the people picked up by the Russians and sent to jail for about 20 years for protesting for the freedom of her country. And she said what an East European jail was like under the Communist regime. Beatings were regular, but she said every time she was being beaten by those guard, she was all. She's a very amazing woman, never to get angry and upset. Because they could take away her freedom. They can take away her health and her pleasant feelings and give her pain. But they would never. She would never allow them to take away her mental peace. She refused to get angry. And that was amazing. She said she did that over 20 years, and that's why she's one of the strongest people I've ever met. Really admirable. But she also has had a great sense of humor. She said when any of these guys had Fremantle down a little about 20 years ago, whenever they complain about conditions, I just bring them into my room and tell them what a real prison is like, and they go back and say, well, Fremantle Gaol is a wonderful place. I was so lucky to be because that's what it was like. But the thing was that she could do that. She could actually let go in that that that pain of being incarcerated, the unfairness, the injustice. He never even wanted to seek redress. He'd let the whole thing go and she refused to get angry. It is possible not to allow injustices, what you call injustices of other people, to take away your happiness when you know it can be done and it can be done in such an extreme situation like that. It means it gives us encouragement and hope that we too, can let go of the lesser pains which have been inflicted upon us unfairly. Why can't we let it go? Why can't we let it go of what that person did or what they said? No matter how unfair it was, or how mean it was, or how much it was not really warranted. If we don't let that go, then we're going to be hurting again and again and again. As I saw Tolson tie kickboxers this morning at a diner, the old story. If somebody calls you an idiot or calls you stupid and a Thai kickboxer said they never call us out, they call us much, much worse. Then I said, well, I'm a mind the limit to what I can say. But if somebody really calls you bad words and they call you so stupid, and if you think they call me stupid, why did they call me stupid? I am not stupid. You allow them to call you stupid three more times. Every time you remember what they've done or said, you allowed them to hurt you again. Now, this is an important point. I've heard you've heard it before, but I'm going to stress it again. Every time you remember what a person has done to you. You're allowing them to hurt you one more time. Why do you do that? No need to. Justice means that justice will work out quite fine without you. You don't need to be the person who keeps it happening for what you are doing. You're letting go of the pain of the past so you can be free in this present moment. If you can learn how to do that, you'll be a much happier, successful, compassionate person. However, if you carry the pain of the past, I don't know how many psychologists. How many times you've read this psychologist know this too well. If you've been abused, you tend to visit the abuse on other people. If you've been hurt, then you turn to hurt other people. And so the cycle of abuse, of hurt, of bad speech and bad actions goes round and round and round and round, causing more pain and suffering in this world. There has to be that circuit breaker and Buddhism has that circuit breaker. It says, let go of the past, forgive it. Don't be a prisoner of the past. Doesn't matter what a person has done to you. You don't have to carry that into the present moment. You don't have to be a victim of abuse. You've been abused, but you can let it go. You can draw a line. Say pass. Gone. I'm not going to allow that event to carry on hurting me. Just like that person literally woke up in the morning and said, I don't need to feel guilty anymore. I don't need to be hurt anymore. When you can do something like this, which is what we train ourselves to do. When I keep speaking like this, a few people have been ringing me up about a new book. They're running by this Mr. Dodge or something. The great word because dodge means how to avoid the pain of the past and difficulties. It's all about the plasticity of the brain, how you can actually rewire the brain, how you buy certain trainings or what we call here brainwashing. Every Friday evening you can actually recondition your mind to actually do this. You do let go of the past because you get the brainwashing every Friday. And it actually does work. It rewires your brain. You give it a try. It works. And so you become a person who has more ability to let go of the past and give much more in the future. There's another reason why that people find this difficult to let go of the past. Because even if you've had painful experiences in the past, sometimes people identify with that pain so much, or with that difficulty so much, it becomes such a part of their ego. They find it almost impossible to let it go. One of the key events which many, many years ago is actually with our president, Dennis, I went to a grief and loss conference that was in a Scarborough Beach hotel years ago. I remember giving a presentation about the Buddhist approach to Cleveland, just how we can let it go very easily. And it is not just theory in these countries where I grew up in, in real traditional Buddhist countries, people do let go very easily, much more so than in Western cultures. And training of people, giving them the opportunity and the skills and some stories to help people let go of grief. This lady came up to me afterwards. She was really angry. I mean, I can't be I can't have grief. Said you're trying to take away my grief. And I thought, what a wonderful thing to do to take away people's grief. But for her, it's like I was stealing her most valuable possession. It was such a part of her sense of self. The very idea of letting go, of grief, of the pain of the past, was taken away to such an important part of her identity. She would attend all of his conferences on grief and loss. She was one of the people, Mrs. Grief. It became part of her, the grieving mother of the daughter who was brutally killed. And I saw from that experience as how the past sometimes defines us so much that to let go of that past means some of our sense of self has to disappear as well. And for a lot of us, we become so attached to that sense of self. I am the victim. I am the person who was raped. I am the person who was abused. I was the victim of the war. To become such a sense of self that to actually to let that go takes a huge amount of courage, a huge amount of letting go of a part of oneself, even though it's a part of oneself which hurt, which is in pain. So we're so used to it, we just cannot let it go. So this is where the last week's talk is connected to today's talk. One of the biggest problems of letting go of the past is fear. Even though it's painful, even though it's causing us a lot of unhappiness. Still, we're afraid to let go of what we're so used to. Sometimes people suffer so much, and they keep on holding onto that suffering because they don't know anything else. So we do need little tricks to try and show a person what it might be like. If you do let go of the past just for a few seconds, and it's not going to be a tragedy for you. This is one of the reasons why we teach people how to meditate. Because in meditate, I'm tricking you to let go of the past for half an hour in a nice, safe environment. Afterwards, he can take up your pain and difficulties and guilt and anger from the past after you leave here. But for half an hour, you're testing out the waters. What's it like to be free from the prison of your past when you're just here in this moment? And this practice of meditation is testing out being in the present moment, finding out what it's like. It's how we overcome that fear. One of the biggest obstacles to letting go of the past, because we try it out and we realize, yeah, it is actually quite nice to be in the present moment. It's actually okay. It feels good. And we do get the realization if we stay a few moments in the present moment. I don't have to keep carrying this past around. I'm still here in this moment when I let go of this identity. It's not a crisis anymore. It's a catharsis. And it's a beautiful catharsis. I can be free. The past is like a prison. But the door of your prison cell is always open. You just have to walk out, that's all. You're not locked in a prison. The pass is a prison cell with an open door. They were too afraid to go out, especially if we've been in that cell for such a long time. Like institutionalized. But with meditation, it's like having parole for half an hour. See what it's like outside. Then you go back again, but is for half an hour. You find some freedom, and after a while you don't want to go anywhere anymore. You want to be free. And that's actually the strategy we use for getting people to be more in the present moment. And the other, why we can't live more in the present moment is the second thing. Our fear of the future. And I dealt with that so much on last week's talk. How do we worry so much about what is going to happen next, and that consumes so much of our present moment? The red dot really here? That was actually from my age, John Lennon saying life is what happens when you're busy thinking about something else. So whenever you're planning, you're actually not in life. You're not enjoying it. And sometimes you wonder, why do we waste so many minutes of our days, so much energy of our mind, planning and thinking and worrying about the future? If you just stand back a bit and look just how you use your mind and how you spend your day, and don't mean what you do outside, what you do inside, how many moments are you really here, and how often are you a few steps ahead of yourself? Is the retreat happening at the Jardin Grove this weekend? The one my other monks is doing that retreats? But one of the little exercises which I teach in retreat. And you can actually try this this evening if you wish. If you haven't had your dinner yet, it's called the one spoon at a time. Eating practice. Though I've noticed that when a person is using a spoon or chopsticks or for her use, he got a whole mouthful of food in their mouth. Chewing it though. Got another on their spoon waiting in line. They got a third on their plate heaped up, ready to go, and they're looking for what's going to come afterwards really easily, 3 or 4 spoonfuls ahead of themselves. So if you're that far ahead, you're not paying any attention to what you're eating right now, which is one of the reasons why many people suffer from indigestion. This is true. If you're going to have a good digestion, you've got to be mindful of the food you're eating and also be mindful of the beautiful tastes, because the more that you are mindful of the taste of the food in the mouth, the more the saliva, the bile or the other juices which are important to digest that food are secreted. I can prove that right now. Right now, think of your favorite food, the one you like the most. Think of it. Visualize it. Can you smell it? Can you see the steam coming out? Now, do you notice how much saliva is coming out of your mouth? Just even thinking about it creates saliva and the stomach starts to move. So if you're not paying attention to the food you're eating, how can all these juices actually come out and digest the food? So we're not actually here when we're eating. So how can we enjoy it? How can we digest it? The moral of this story is if you are going out to dinner, please be mindful of what you're eating. And if you're going out with someone when you're eating, tell your partner. Shut up. I'm eating now is good for my digestion. You can talk afterwards. And then when they're not talking to you, you can actually enjoy the food. And it's actually well digested. And it's one spoon at a time. It actually in the moment you're actually enjoying things and it's good for your health. The more you are in the moment, the more you actually do enjoy your life. Sometimes people think, oh much, what do you know about enjoyment? You know, you just those sex. No movies? No this? No, that. But actually, as you should know by now that monks and nuns have more fun than most of you, because we know how to enjoy life, to enjoy the moment, to be here when life happens, to taste the food. That's why you always see us eating in silence. We don't talk to one another when we're eating our food. It's too delicious to talk. That's actually why I get fat. I don't eat so much, but it's so well digested. Hardly anything is wasted. The last we did. Very bad for the very alert. Because this mindfulness is bringing your attention into this moment. Forgetting about the future. And because, as I say every week, now is the time your future is being made. It's a very wonderful insight that why do people have mistakes? Why do people's future go wrong? Because they're not paying attention to the place where the future is being made. They're not here when life is happening. And no wonder you're not successful. No wonder you get sick. No wonder you get ill. No wonder you can't keep the relationship together because you're not here. When life is happening. When you're not here, how can you control anything or do anything? There's so much off in the future or the parser in fantasy land, no wonder life goes wrong. So if you really want life to go well, live more in the moment. The place where life is happening. And again, the reason why we find that difficult is because we are afraid. We're so conditioned to making all our plans to having it all worked out. What are you going to do this weekend? So long weekend it got all your plans all fixed. I guarantee your plans are going to go wrong. They always do the why you made the plans anyway. Why not just live for the moment? Yeah. Tentative plans, but really keep them very, very tentative and just see what happens. Because if you are seeing what happens, you're beginning to enjoy the moment. This is your long weekend. It's a holiday, for goodness sake. Why are you sacrificing your happiness? Because your plans are going wrong. You get all stressed out. So live more in a moment and you'll find that that way you're not late for appointments. Who made your appointments anyway? You're doing your very best. Live in the moment. Don't worry about what's going to happen next. And you find your stress levels go down. You become healthier. You become happier. You become more successful. You stop worrying what is going to come next. That way we can live more in the present moment. And as you learn this, because again, when we do the meditation here or these other little exercises, you find that you do learn that you don't have to plan so much. And this feeling of insecurity which people have when they stop planning. You learn to be at peace with that feeling of insecurity. You realize that you are more secure the more present you are, because you're doing the very best you could possibly do for your happiness, peace, success in the future when you're here in the moment. So when you've got a task to do now you've got all this work on your desk. You just do whatever is at hand right now, the one thing at a time practice if you're laying bricks. That's how I built monastery and serpentine one big at a time. Do that first of all. And then afterwards you can think of pick number two, this letter, and then the next letter. But don't go thinking how many letters you've got to write. Don't have all this list of things which you have to do. Why do you have this? Because you are afraid that you might forget things. The more you worry, the more you forget. One of the things which I learned by meditation practice that if you stop writing notes, your memory gets much better. You don't need to try to remember. Just be more peaceful, more alert, and then memory happens. And even these days, sometimes you gotta do and do something. Make an appointment. You've got to ring somebody the next day. All you need to do is to program mindfulness. Say to yourself, tomorrow afternoon at 3:00, I have to ring my mother. Tomorrow afternoon at 3:00, I have to ring my mother tomorrow afternoon at 3:00. I have to ring my mother. Program your mindfulness. Forget about it. You will be surprised at 3:00 tomorrow morning. That program will come up. You have to be my mother now. You don't have to worry about seeing so much. The very efficient way to live in the present moment, but still have a bit of attention for the future without worrying about it so much, without having to put writing on your hand. 3:00 I have to bring my mother. Or telling your friend, your fellow mother, can you please remind me at 3:00 to ring my mother? And he goes and tells the next mark down the line, you must remind me to remind him I'm proud to be his mother. 3:00 in the morning and everybody forgets. Such plans like that, they just make life more stressful is when you worry so much. I have to do this. I have to do this. I have to do this. That means, of course, you can't enjoy the present moment. So much of your life is wasted when you're busy trying to remember things because of anxiety. And if you do, forget. So what? It's not the end of the world. You forget things. You can always blame algebra. Whatever it is. So it's not the end of the world. So you don't feel so afraid. And that way the one can have less fear of the future. And it also means that you don't have to worry so much. You can spend more time in this present moment. But when you're in the present moment, please learn how to appreciate it and enjoy it. Very often, it's only when you're very old you realize how much of life has passed you by. And where did it all go? Because you're always planning something in the future that you can never pause and stop where you were right now in meditation. Now sometimes giving us similarly this present moment is like a bench, a bench by the path of your life. And that bench is inviting you to stop for a few minutes, to stop the journeying from the past into the future, to sit down in the present moment for a few seconds, just to enjoy the view from where you, where you, where you've come. Where you've arrived. Unfortunately, that bench is made out of stone. It's very hard, cold and uncomfortable when you first sit down. But if you persist in sitting down on the bench called the present moment the place where you can stop and pause, you will find that after a few seconds that bench feels more comfortable. After a minute, it becomes very soft and warm, and after a few minutes it's such a wonderful place to stay. The first when we get into the present moment is not comfortable. This is nature. If you want stays in it longer and longer, it becomes more and more comfortable, more and more peaceful, more rewarding the longer you stay there. And this is one of the great rewards of being in the present moment. The longer you stay, the more enjoyable it becomes and then you can start to value it more. It's not a boring place to stay. The reason why it becomes more enjoyable the longer you stay there, because it takes a while for that peace to create the sense of rest. Which creates a sense of joy and happiness and energy coming back into the right. Because when we're always racing from the past to the future, we finally get so tired when we first sit down. That tiredness is still there. If you stay there for a while, the tiredness disappears. This great tiredness of life. We're always lingering in the past or worrying about the future, always having someplace to go, something to do. There's always a sense that something is missing when you're going for the past or the future. The only place where you feel fulfilled, at rest, at ease is when you come to what I don't said are real hope. The present moment. Now, after a while of a person investigating this present moment and learning how to stay there more and more, you find it is a very comfortable place. It is a very worthwhile place. You get more things done in this present moment. You get more health, more happiness, more success, more energy. After a while, you tend to hang out there more and more and more, and the present moment becomes a place you can abide. A good example of that is when you're driving in a car, when you're going somewhere. Remember, whenever you're going to work or going home, yeah, you're going home. But you also are existing. You are someplace. You are somewhere. Please remember not just where you are going, but where you are being a present moment. Every now and again you come to these wonderful inventions called the Red Traffic Light. Again, I mentioned this in my book. I heard this as a story, but I had never seen this because I've been to these places. Me. As I was told that in Delhi, in the capital of India, because India was a very spiritual land for a long, long time. The local council decided that on their red lights they would not call them stoplights, and apparently that when those lights turned to red on those red lights, you'd see the letters not stop, but the five letters i.e. L, A, x. They became not stoplights, but relaxed lights. Now. What a wonderful thing that would be if Maine Rose A would actually rename all the red traffic lights in Perth. Not stop lights, but relax lights. So when people are going off to work and they were in a rush trying to get somewhere quickly, they come across these red lights with the word relax on them because that's all you can really do. You can't go forward. You can't go back. You have to wait, so why not relax? These are opportunities to be in the present moment, to be here, to be now, to collect your energies and rest, for goodness sake. Don't you work too hard already? Why can't we just take these precious moments of just being here? I remember some years ago coming up to Nola Murray and getting caught in a traffic jam on the freeway just south of the Narrows Bridge. It was wonderful being caught in a traffic. It was actually at a stop because I looked out of one window. You could see the beautiful Swan River there where the Canning and the Swan come together. It's a beautiful view there. You look to the other side of the window and you could see the, uh, the South Perth golf course. What a wonderful place to get stuck. So I was actually quite disappointed when the traffic started moving again. That's what we call living in the present moment. Can't we enjoy these moments when we can't go forward? We can't go back? So why not just enjoy being still? Isn't this really what we want in life? What are you journeying for anyway? You've worked so hard to get here. Why are you just trying so hard to get somewhere else? What is the meaning in your life, isn't it? Whenever you get somewhere, you always want to go somewhere else. You never stay still and enjoy the moment. Nice long weekend. Is it going to be a long weekend or is it going to be very short for you? Just passed in a few moments. Are you going to linger and enjoy every moment of this holiday time? Linger in this moment and have a weekend with no plan. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Can you do that? Please don't feel guilty if you do. Doesn't matter. All these things which don't get done. How many times you just wasting all your life getting things done. What for? What's the purpose of getting everything done? Because you think once I get things done. Once I get things out of the way, then I can have a rest. Then I can be in the present moment. And that's the next important lesson. Don't expect life to be perfect before you can take a rest. Otherwise, you'll never find any rest whatsoever. It's not that life is perfect. You have rest, even though it's imperfect. Even there's so many things to be done. Enjoy the moment. That's the only way to have some peace in life. As I said here a few weeks ago, when you go home tonight and you look at all the dishes to be washed in the sink, you should always look at all the dishes which are up on the shelves, already washed. And if they are more in number. Quit while you're ahead. Never do today where you can put off until tomorrow because you might die tonight. My favorite sayings. It is true. Otherwise when one. When can you rest and enjoy the moment? Too often we're always rushing off to get things done so we can never enjoy this moment. As though life is here. And it's just God don't know how old you are. I'm 5758 now, but I've had a lot of good times. I haven't rushed too much. I have enjoyed many of my most beautiful moments in my cave in the monastery. Meditating. Just being in this moment is remembered as in Thailand. Does you so much in the moment because you were in an abbey, it had no responsibilities and just time lost all its meaning. You're in the present moment so often. And I remember just once this person come to the monastery, and I had to fill out some form, and part of the form was I had to fill in the day, in the day of the month and the year. And you think that maybe you forget the date. Maybe it's a bit weird. If you get the month, you can accept that. But I couldn't even remember the year. That was true. I was so proud of that. I didn't know what year it was. Literally. That's how much you're in the present moment. And there was such a beautiful free time. But what is the difference between this year and next year that will feel the same to me? And months? The days. So you get up in the morning, you look at the clock. What time is it now? Minutes past now. On the ninth day of the ninth month. 2000. And now. That's living at the present moment. The trouble is. So that when I came to Perth, I had one of those experiences which quite shocked me because I thought it was really good to live in the present and not know what day of the week it is. But then at our first centre, which we had in Magnolia Street, there was one gentleman had an epileptic fit and so we had to call the ambulance and I was just with him making sure he was okay. And the first thing the ambulance drivers asked him is, you know, what's your name and what day is the week? Is it? And I thought, gee, how would I be able to answer the first question? But I fell the second one for sure. And apparently if you don't know the day of the week, they put you straight in the ambulance and take it to hospital. So from that time on, I tried to remember what day of the week it was. This is one of the questions people ask you. That's really strange, being a monk, because you probably end up going to the hospital because most of my body won't know what day of the week it was. But that was what happened. When you live in the present moment, it's just so beautiful to be able to live in the present moment as much as you possibly can, because then you don't have the pain of the past to stop you enjoying the moment. You don't have the anxiety and the plans of the future to stop you enjoying this present moment. It's beneficial for you. You can be with your kids. I mean being with them rather than taking them somewhere you can be with your wife. You can be with your husband. Rather than planning what you're going to do tonight, you can actually be with them instead of worrying about the future. You let go of all this stupid thing which happened in the past, so you can be free from that past, totally free, just like a kid again. Children can let go of the past just seeing that so often, shouting at each other. Hitting each other next moment. Playing as if they were being the best friends all their lives. What exactly human beings do that? Wouldn't it be wonderful if husbands and wives were like that, hitting each other next minute, just cuddling and just as if nothing ever happened? Can you do that? At least we should let things go. For goodness sake. And remember that justice will come. You don't need to be the person who makes justice happen. So that way everyone can be free and enjoying this moment, enjoying this life. And then you can live life with far more equanimity. Hardly any worries, no concerns. Free at peace. Liberated. That has to be the first liberation. The liberation from time and the past. From the future. If you haven't got that liberation, if you're always a prisoner of time, always worried about where you're going to go, what's going to happen, or is carrying around the pain of the past. However, can you know what freedom is? Freedom doesn't exist tomorrow. It cannot be found in some golden age of the past. Freedom is only now the door is opened. Please walk through it and be free of time. Enjoy this precious moment. It won't come again, so be in the moment. Learn to be more in the moment. Not totally in the moment, every day, every moment of the life, but a lot of the time. And then you can have a much happier, more peaceful, more healthy life. Thank you.