Realising or revealing religion?

Realising Or Revealing Religion by Ajahn Brahm

Transcription

For this evening's talk. On the way up here, I was reading the newspaper and see what's going on in Western Australia. And many of you may have seen that there was one of the my favourite cartoonist, Austen had a picture of her, a bishop preaching to an empty church, and it was a lead, a column about the future of religion in Western Australia and saying that, uh, the growth religions, uh, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and uh, people saying, oh, the reason why those religions are growing is because of migrants. But we haven't had any migrants for a long time now. We haven't had people coming from overseas, except for myself, because I'm always coming from overseas. Just came from Thailand last week. But that's not really called migration, but no other reasons. When you think that Buddhism is growing in this state and throughout the whole world, uh, is is an interesting topic. And I thought I'd talk about that this evening just to know what is the difference between, like, Buddhism and some of the other religions, and why is it the religion whose time has come? And the first thing I'm going to be talking about is, uh, to understand what Buddhism is, that talk about two different types of religion. And, uh, this point comes up has come up recently, just as I've been teaching at schools. When people ask, well, you know, tell us something about Buddhism, and especially we all know that Christianity has a Bible and the Muslims have the Koran, and the Jewish community has a Torah. What does the Buddhist have? What is their holy book? That's obviously a common question asked in schools. And many years ago I would say, oh, it's, you know, the typica, you know, the suitors if you like. But these days I think, no, that's not accurate. That's not true. The Buddhist holy book I say these days is meditation because from that insight, the meditation is the holy book of Buddhists. You made a very important point that the two types of religion in this world today are what I call revealed religion and realized religion. Revealed religion is what you are told to believe in her, which has its origins in a holy book or a holy person. In other words, they have the the wisdom, they have the information. They've got the direct line to God or somebody. And you just have to trust that, you know, the person they call up every morning actually is the real thing. In other words, they reveal the truth to you and you can't argue with it. You can't test it out. You can't investigate it. You just have to believe it's called revealed religion. And the other type of religion is called realized religion and realized religion. When it's not revealed, all that's revealed is actually the way to find out for yourself. So you realize it. Each individual for themselves. And that's always been, you know, Buddhism. You know that even one of the most fundamental basic chants, which we do and many of you did that just before we came in here. They chanted it at between 7:00 and 730. It says, this teaching is to be realized, each wise person for themselves. In other words, it's not revealed and given to you and say, this is you know what Buddhism is. Take it or leave it. It's actually showing. This is how you can find out for yourself. It's a realized religion. And because it's a realized religion, it also becomes what one commentator say, a democratic religion rather than authoritarian religion or authoritarian religion. Again, you're taught to believe. You're taught to behave. This is it. Again, if you don't like it, go somewhere else. And this very autocratic and authoritarian, and hopefully that you never think that, you know, what myself or other monks or other nuns teach up here now is authoritarian. These are all ideas which you can take home. You're free to disagree with them. Never once have we excommunicated anybody from the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, because we don't have the means of that. It's not part of our tradition, nor do we burn people at the stake or put them in jail because they say the wrong things to the monks or the nuns or to anybody else. We don't have that because this is not an authoritarian religion. It's a revealed. It's a realized religion, sorry. In other words, each one of you have to take these teachings, consider them, and if you like them, great experiment with them. Take them into into your hearts. Practice them some more. If you don't like them, great, reject it and nothing is said. So that democracy of religion where you have choice. Fits in with many of our modern Western societies, where we have moved away from authoritarian states into a democracy where you have choice. And this is actually what we demand these days from even religions. You know, we want the choice to sort of of our truths. We want to feel them for ourselves, understand them for ourselves, rather than taking them from some sort of book or or, you know, holy person who, who somehow knows better than we do. So instead of doing that, we have a way of feeding the truth out for ourselves, realizing for ourselves, and because we have the emphasis on a realized religion to be found in everybody's own hearts straight away, we avoid so many problems in the Buddhist tradition. Now, the problems which they have in the Anglican Church at the moment, where there are problems with the place of the the gays, lesbians, transgender community, and of course, you just don't have that problem in, in Buddhism. Now there is no book which says that the homosexuality is an abomination and quite fact, quite the opposite. Where the Buddha says specifically, may all beings be happy and well. In other words, our loving kindness goes to all beings without discrimination. And that's very certainly the gist. Know how I read those teachings of the Buddha and how you try and practice, sometimes imperfectly, but you try your very best to have no discrimination towards anybody. And when you have no discrimination like that. Now this feels right. Now, why should you discriminate between one person and another person on the basis of their gender, on their sexual preferences, you know, on their race, on their age? You know, it doesn't make sense. And we all know that in our in our modern societies, it feels right. And because you have the option and the ability, the freedom to follow those innate feelings because it's a realized religion rather than revealed religion. We don't have these these problems which faced in churches, religions which base all of their morality, wisdom and truth in a set of books which was written a long time ago. We don't have that problem. So because we don't have that problem, the realized religion means when you have something like basic morality. Because that was what, um, the Catholic archbishop was writing about in the newspaper. He said, oh, without religion, there's no morality anymore. Now, that's not actually accurate at all. Actually, that many people find that sort of religion is the cause of a lot of the problems in our world. A lot of the, uh, wars, a lot of the sectarianism, uh, a lot of the, um, ability to promote one community against another community and to have disadvantaged people just because the religion creates boundaries between people. And actually that anyone who wishes to research this. Someone showed me an article by the sociologist Gregory Paul. Gregory, Paul. If anyone likes to put his name in Google, who actually did a wonderful piece of research that using publicly available data, he wanted to find out whether there was any correlation between church attendance in a community and the morality of that community. The Who is using indicators like now homicide rate, divorces, teenage pregnancies, suicides, you know, violent crime. Those statistics were readily available. And the number percentage of people who attended church in that community to see if like religion actually lower does indicators of social morality. And he found quite the opposite in the churchgoing community throughout United States and Europe that the more people went to church, there was a positive correlation with increase in homicides, suicides, divorces, uh, and all these others have negative and negative instances of social well-being is seen. The sexual secular societies were doing better, more ethically. When I actually saw that report, I thought, well, that's very interesting. Why why is it that people who went to say the churches, they had more homicides, more teenage pregnancies, more suicides and more social ills? And there is a reason behind this, which I think is the cause that where we have a revealed religion, basically we pass all responsibility over to the pastor or to the Jesus, the Allah, the God, whoever it is, we actually give our responsibility for our well-being to another. And I always thought ever since I was small, as a very, very dangerous thing to do now, because investing your well-being in another person, you know, you can't really trust us, trust that at all. But with the realized religions, we realize we it's our job to realize what is right and what is wrong, to feel it inside of ourselves, to know it for ourselves, and then to take responsibility for ourselves. And I think when people start to take responsibility for themselves, for their own happiness and well-being, they achieve a greater sense of happiness and well-being than if you just let somebody else sort of take that burden for you. It's very. Hum. Compelling. Very attractive. Now, to have a big daddy in the sky or a big mummy in the sky who will actually make sure that everything is okay for you and will make sure that all your problems disappear. But. You know, we're grown up now. You know, we should have gone beyond such an idea and actually take responsibility for our own well-being and happiness. And of course, you all know what that law actually is of how to make your own happiness and well-being and avoid suffering. It's the law of karma. There's a wonderful Buddhist teaching. It's not saying that you know that you are going to be punished or you are going to be rewarded. You make your own punishments and rewards. A whole lot of karma is an internal cause and effect relationship, which shows you that you have to take responsibility. Because in short, when somebody asks me can please, I'm in a hurry. What is the law of karma? In short? And I told him, you get everything you deserve. And I thought, oh, that's not very nice, because isn't it the case when you're unhappy, you always want to blame somebody else. You know, it's my parents for now. They abused me when I was a kid. I came from a poor family. You know, I've been disadvantaged that. How many times do we put the blame on somebody else? And sometimes people go and blame God or blame Buddha or blame Allah or whatever. And that's just. I think that's quite infantile, but not just infantile. It also doesn't help the problem. Blaming other people never works. And as many of you should know, the famous one line up from Ajahn Chah, blaming somebody else is like having an itch on your head and scratching your bum. Great one liner there, but someone you always remember. I'll repeat that now for those of you hearing it for the first time, because remember this this is important. Having blaming someone else is like having it itch on your head and scratching your bum. They itch doesn't go away. You get two itches instead. This is what happens when you blame somebody else. Your problem never goes away. We really do have to take responsibility for our problems. But it's not just the negativity, this law of karma. It's also when things go right for you, when you're having a happy time. You deserve that as well. Which is why sometimes people say, Is Buddhism really down on wealthy people? You know, because you, monks say, should live simply and does not have too much stuff, as if, you know, if you win the lottery and you're a bad Buddhist and there's not that, you know, if you have got what the Buddha actually said, if you got righteous, well, if you worked hard, you've been smart, you've done the right thing, and you haven't got your wealth at the expense of other people. You haven't harmed other people. Well done. It's your karmic reward. You got good health, so karmic reward you've earned it. If you've rightly earned it and say, well done. Because this is you've got what you deserve. If you steal an exploit, you cheated and you didn't really deserve it. So you're going to suffering eventually with that, that wealth. But if you've earned it properly, well done. So it's you get what you deserve in life. If you have a happy relationship with your partner. You know, I know how hard it is sometimes. You've worked for that. Well done. And if it hasn't worked out, don't blame him. It was his fault she'd never married him in the first place. You chose to marry him or her, you know. Why didn't you see that coming? So you know that you have to take responsibility. Now, the thing is, if you take responsibility for that now, it's not his fault. I just married a wrong, wrong guy, you know? I just know I was stupid marrying her. Take responsibility for him means you learn from the experience. You don't go blame other people. You learn from it. And because you learned from it, you don't blame others. You actually move forward. The law of karma is not retributive but rehabilitative. It doesn't look for punish. He looks for growth, for growth. He wants to make people better. So we learn from our actions and from our mistakes and we move on. We do better next time, and obviously if we're doing better next time, we have a healthier, happier, more moral society. We learn from our mistakes rather than get punished for our mistakes. It's well known in psychology if we go on a path of punishment and many authoritarian revealed religions, they are big on punishments. And though it is the the authoritarian religions which want to bring back capital punishment or corporal punishment and stone people and and kill people for the love of God, or because it says so in some holy book. Well, what did the Buddha say? Put aside the rod. Put aside the stick. Everybody fears punishment. You should not do that. That's what happens in Buddhism from early on. And also that if somebody does something wrong, what happens? The AFL Code of Knowledge. Forgive. Learn. If someone has done something wrong and he came to confess to the Buddha, then I do this terrible thing, said great. You've acknowledged it. You brought it out to the surface. You realize that you're taking responsibility for your actions. Now learn from that. But forgive it. Don't have any punishment. Don't sort of put yourself down. Are you a human being? You make mistakes. We all make mistakes. Come on, don't be so thought. Find and give people a break. No one is perfect. Let's learn and forgive and grow from our mistakes. You can see how positive that is. I was so positive that I don't mind praising myself and praises deserved. But one of my finest moments, happiest moments, was receiving a telephone call from one of the prison officers. I think he was in not hell. Used to be the whole canyon Vail town. They changed all the names. Acacia, I think it's called now. I'm not sure, but he rang me up one day and said, when are you coming back to teach in my town? And I said, look, I'm an abbot now. I travel all over the world. I'm just so busy. It's just I can't do it. Some of my other monks are teaching in prison, and some of the volunteers from our Buddhist society teach in prisons now. And he said, now we want you. I said, look, why me? You know, a monk is a monk teaches a teacher. You know, they all know Buddhism. So we want you. And said, why? And then he said, one of the compliments which I'll take with me to my grave if I get in a grave or, you know, in the box when I get cremated. He said, oh, and I get put in a recycling bin because I don't know what the monks will do because, you know, maybe we can't waste sort of land or or energy because there's a gas shortage now. Not sure what they're doing. Cremations at the moment with no gas. Anyway. Those yellow recycling bins are very good. You can put them in the black bag. No, I'll really no save a lot of money too. Anyway. Um, we also say. Prisons. Thank you very much. Yeah. This guy says. I don't know how I got onto that. The fellows said. They said, oh, he said he's been in the prison service for so many years. And he said, I noticed one thing. All of the prisoners who came to your class when they released never come back to prison again. He said I was weird and strange. Are your students went so out? They're out forever. And that was a compliment, which obviously pleased me. But I also thought, why? You know, one of the reasons why. Because I taught those prisoners in my class not to punish themselves, but to respect themselves in spite of whatever they've done. I taught them how to forgive. And because they forgave themselves. They never needed to go to prison again. They never needed to repeat. So the bad actions, the stupid actions which had done before their morality increased with this beautiful acknowledge, forgive, love and take responsibility for your actions and learn from them so you don't repeat them again. I think that's one of the reasons why, and I think a lot of people do that in secular societies, but especially in Buddhist societies, as one of the reasons why you find a lower rate of homicides, divorces, child abuse. Psychological depressions, sort of in societies which take responsibility themselves and have a forgiving, compassionate ethos. You know, in their religion. Now, when I say that you don't believe me, I hope. But you look in your own heart and it makes sense. In other words, I do say the words and you just realize the truth for yourself. That's what I mean. I realized religion, so the ethics of Buddhism has always it's always been known as a peaceful, good religion. And even sometimes, you know, I meet in my work, meet people who aren't Buddhists, but almost all of those people, they respect Buddhism. They always say, ah, you're a peaceful religion. You're you're nice people. You're good people. And there's something to that. I will say, why? Why is that the case? And I think it's because the responsibility we take for our ethics. If we do start, take responsibility for our ethics. We also take responsibility for our happiness as well. In other words, we look at our life and say, well, we have all these problems and difficulties which come in life from time to time. How do we deal with those? We don't go praying to a God. Oh, may my marriage succeed and we don't go praying. And those people who do come in here and pray to a Buddha, you know, I don't mind saying that's really dumb. You know that statue up there? Go up there and feel it, pokey. You know, it won't sort of scream in agony. And it won't. It's a metal statue. It's not a god. You know, sometimes people actually imbue these icons, that is, images with powers they don't have. I remember the story of a young. Yeah, I know he's an old man when he told this story, but he said that he always wondered why in some temples they put oranges and apples on the altar in front of the Buddha. He saw. My goodness, does the Buddha eat them? Can never put any sort of sausages on. So obviously was a vegetarian. And don't put any rice and just fruit. Must only eat fruit. And it was true because in the morning it had all gone. Sir. So this little is only a novice at the temple. At the time, he thought. I've been watching all day. And the Buddha statue hasn't moved. And when I go to bed at night, in the morning, it's all gone. So the Buddha must eat at night. And so this is true. One evening, apparently, you know, he hid behind a curtain just after the evening meeting. And he stayed up there as the abbot locked up the hall trying to catch the Buddha out. And he was up there just looking at the Buddha. He was only about 10 or 11 at the time, looking at the Buddha, seeing if the Buddha was going to move. And of course, suddenly being a young guy, he fell asleep. And he was woken up as the abbot came in to open up and there were covers. He saw the abbot take the food away and give it to some poor people or another. He realized, you know, the Buddha doesn't eat. It's only a statue, that's all. At least he got wise. But still you see people with the incense. Come on, Buddha, please help me win the lotto. Come on. Buddha, please. Even in the lottery stalls in Perth, even if they're not Buddhist, they still have the Buddha. And you're supposed to stroke that. Why? You buy a lottery ticket now come on, get real. How ever. Buddhists should not be superstitious like that. The Buddha statue. As I mentioned many times, it's just a symbol to remind us of peace, happiness, forgiveness. I think I mentioned a week or two ago that Buddha statue you see in gardens. I know some traditional Buddhists say, ah, they shouldn't be in gods and not being respected. No, they're doing a good job. The Buddha would be quite happy. It's much better having a Buddha in your garden rather than a gnome or a naked lady. Because now they have these statues of Venus or whatever, or on some other sort of, uh, statue over there, because it gives people a feeling of peace. And there's that anecdote that one of the monks went to visit Chartwell, which was a country which was the house, the home which belonged to Winston Churchill. And when he went in there as a painting of a Buddha statue right in the entrance, the painting was done by Winston Churchill. And the story was that that was a statue of the Buddha, which he had by his bedside throughout the Second World War. Now Winston Churchill, now the Prime Minister of Great Britain, to in the Second World War. I don't know if he was a Buddhist, but he had a stout Buddha statue next to his bed because he gave him peace and calm in as difficult days. Now of of the leader of a nation struggling for his very survival. The statue gives people the feeling of peace. But it's not to be worshipped. It's like an image which we can connect with of calm, tranquility, especially to give us hope in difficult times. That is all. And so when we explain those icons again, it becomes a realized icon. In other words, we look at that and we realize this effect, which it has on us, inside of us. Though sometimes some of those superstitions which even occur in Buddhism, we need to really sort of stop. Sometimes people say the Buddha statue should always be facing east, and they notice which one is where is is facing no west and a little bit north. And it's been like that for many years. One day we had a visiting time and it's about 25 years ago visiting Taiwan came to our temple over in serpentine. The Buddha statue there is also facing west and they complain. So these Western monks, they don't know. Said, you know, can you tell them that the Buddha is facing in the wrong direction? And the man said, listen, if the Buddha wanted to move, he turn around by himself. So very happy there. And this one over here and the one at serpentine. They have been happily facing west for 25 years, so you don't have to worry about it. But. So it's great. We don't have to worry about those superstitions, even though it might say in a book, even though it may be received wisdom, even though it may be tradition because it's a realized religion, we feel it for ourselves. We don't have to follow the old tradition or the books if it doesn't feel right, if we know it's not right. Because not just the ethics, but even a wisdom comes from within. Which is why I kept on saying that the Holy Book of Buddhism is not some set of ancient sort of, um, manuscripts written on, on palm leaves. It is the meditation of wisdom within you. And so once we know that it's a reveal, a realized religion, which you realize for yourself, a lot of the duty of the monks, the nuns, the lay teachers, men and women is actually not to tell you what to believe, but to help you find the truth for yourself. To give you pointers. And also, the heart of Buddhism from the very beginning was the meditation, which is why we make meditation the beginning of our service every Friday. Service because we can give wisdom, peace, compassion to everybody. Share it out amongst everybody. We have the meditation because that's the way you can access your own wisdom. You can realize it. And again, sometimes I thought, why do people do stupid things? Now why do they act in a sort of a way which harms themselves and harms others? Basically, it's because we're not aware enough. We haven't trained our mind to really to not to think, but to feel too much thinking. Just lead, you know, into a chaotic mind, but to feel it, to know it, to intuit it. And when you do practice your meditation, you know, just exactly as you were doing here before you or you're doing a start of the afternoon, what you do at home and on retreats. When you practice meditation, you developed your ability to access that self-realization. You feel it. It was strange for me because I became a Buddhist through meditation. I meditated first of all, the theory and the books was interesting, but it was a meditation which I loved more than anything else. And as I really got into the meditation, I became far more ethical. And it was weird. Now I used if I went on a bus in London and they never asked me for the fare. I thought, well, that's good enough. I'm not going to pay you if you don't ask why, why pay? And I would, you know, go with my friends and drink alcohol. You know, if you had a girlfriend, you wouldn't think twice about sleeping with her who was nice and pleasurable. And many of the things which I did at the time, I did because everyone else was doing that. What's wrong? But when I started meditating, you became more aware. In fact, you became so aware that these things, they just. They didn't feel right. Notice someone had to pay for that bus so that someone was actually losing out if I didn't pay my fare. So after a while, even if they never asked me, I'd pay the fare and they gave me the wrong change. I'd say, no, you'd give me the wrong change here. This is what you should pay it for. I became so honest. Now in transactions even a few years, which I did work. I'd always pay my taxes to the fool because I thought it doesn't feel right if I don't do that. My mindfulness, my self-awareness was strong enough. I knew it wasn't in my interest or anyone else's to cheat. And same with alcohol. After a while I thought, what's the point of taking this liquid? You give it to a dog. The dog won't take it. Human beings will. So why? What's the point of it? People say it makes you happy and makes you relax. But now I can get much happier without it. And one of the reasons why it's got more money in my pocket afterwards is really expensive stuff. So I just gave it up. And as for, you know, your relationships with. No. As a man with a girl, I became far more sensitive. Not just to mine needs, but to her needs as well. I actually began to care about people rather than just use them. Where did all that come from? And I say directly from my meditation because I was becoming more aware. What was I becoming aware of is my effect on other people and my effect upon myself, the effect of my actions. You can actually feel them calmer again. And sadly, when I became a vegetarian and didn't read it in a book, it just felt right. So all those things all came from inside. And I still remember I used to go to the Thai Temple in London. I remember one of the reasons I went to the Thai Temple, rather than the Sri Lankan temple or the Burmese temple or the, you know, the time the Tibetan monastery was because the Thai man smiled almost. It's true at the time, because I always thought that, yeah, you know, if someone is actually getting somewhere in their religion, I want to see happy people, not miserable people, because religion is supposed to make you happy. Otherwise what's the point of it? So that's why I like going to the Thai temple. But I've been going to the Thai temple for a while. I'm meditating, listen to some of their talks, and then one day the monk came up to me and said, you've been coming here a long time. It's about time you took the five precepts. So what is that? Five precepts. That's the first time I'd heard of them. So I said, what are they? He said, not deliberately killing any living being said, oh, actually, I'm a vegetarian. I'm better than you, I. He said, okay, not sort of stealing. No, I never steal at all. Or my taxes I pay. Bus fares, train fares. So they don't ask me. I just pay them anyway. Okay. I'm not committing adultery. Look, no, I'm really sticking with one girlfriend no more. And I really care about her. Not just in it for my own sensual gratification. Okay? Not lying. I don't I always tell the truth. Been doing that for a long time. Not taking alcohol and drugs? No, I gave that up years ago. I said, well, I don't know. You don't need to take them then. I just came for them myself. I don't know if I wonder about that. Where did that all come from? It wasn't no, no past life. I wasn't born like that. I mentioned these things because sometimes people think, oh, actually, I was just born with a bald head. Actually, my mother said I was, but now maybe that's just a bit of luck, but. You know, it's just an ordinary guy, you know, just doing what other people did. But because I found out meditation, I became mindful and self-aware. And all this morality just came as a result of that. And so that's why I say meditation is the source of the wisdom of Buddhism, or the practice of Buddhism or the ethics of Buddhism. When you become aware, a lot of the sort of little things which we do cheating, it doesn't feel right. I just can't do that anymore. A lot of times that people who aren't aware, they think a lot, they get distracted a lot because deep down they know they're doing something wrong, but they'd rather not think about it. And they just go and watch too many movies, go and get drunk, take drugs, make themselves busy rather than sick. But if they stop, if they just stop and just reflect on how they feel when they do these things, no way would they do that. Even little things like anger. When you become aware and mindful, because meditation brings you into the moment and you know what you're doing to yourself. Anger is like killing yourself. If anyone was really aware when they got really upset at someone else, you could feel the tightness and tension in the body and how it, you know, they felt it has on you. It's just really very destructive force on your own body at the time. You get so tight and tense. And if you have any awareness at all of your body, you realize just how that is killing you, that's destroying, that's taking hours, days, years of your life if you feel it. What am I doing that for? What am I kidding myself for making myself sick? Because that stupid idiot over there did something stupid. I'm not going to allow them to control my happiness or destroy my health, no matter what they do. I am not going to get angry. And that's it. Which is why the self-awareness just lessens the anger. Listens even like the the other anger towards yourself, which is called guilt. Because when you're mindful and aware, sometimes you make a mistake and you feel what happens when you start punishing yourself. Another reason why people feel guilty because they feel if they punish themselves, they'll be better people afterwards. If they give themselves, you know, a battering, then they will learn not to do it again. Psychologists know that doesn't work, but that really doesn't make any sense because you think intuitively it must work. But check it out for yourself. Every time you feel bad about something you do and punish yourself for it. What happens? You see that negativity which you get usually leads to denial in the future. In other words, you'd rather just not own up. You just hide all of your mysteries. Which is why that many people lie lie about what they did. To other people, but most importantly to themselves. There's no way forward. So the punishment just actually hides the truth from yourself. It goes deep inside. That's why many people that they need to go to therapists and psychologists to access the pain of their past because they've been in denial for such a long time. That creates huge emotional and physical dysfunctions. You're not healthy and you can't have a proper relationship with other people or with yourself. But when we stop punishing ourselves, we just say, I made a mistake. We all make mistakes. And we have this beautiful compassion of forgiveness. Then we don't don't have that anger towards ourselves. You stupid me. You're a stupid man. Why did I tell that stupid show? Why would I say that stupid thing? You don't get angry at yourself. It's hard to let it go. Learn from it. Try and do better next time. That's obviously gross. You're acknowledging your weaknesses, and because you're acknowledging them, you can actually do something about them. You can grow if I strategy so you don't get angry anymore. You make a mistake. Find a strategy. Okay? I'm not going to get into that guilt trip anymore. What can I do? I mentioned this in the book is the story which comes to my mind years and years ago. There was a woman who came to see me right here in this center after the talk. She had a lot of guilt. And the reason she had guilt. She was working up in the north northwest. This was years ago, before the boom. Getting a lot of money with a few friends. Lot of money, but nothing to do. One day, when they had her time off, her best friend, a girl and her boyfriend said let her go, had the day off with her. She suggested, let's go off in the bush or drive in the in the Land Rover or whatever they had. And the two friends said, no, I don't feel like going. And I come on with nothing to do. No, we don't want to go. Come on. So she argued and badgered them for going on a ride in the bush, and of course, where they were going for a ride, she was driving and lost control of the car. The car turned over her best friend. And I had the best friend's boyfriend was killed and her best friend was quadriplegic. She was fine. And she came here and she said that if I hadn't suggested that afternoon ride, my best friend would have her boyfriend and her legs as well. But now, because of my decision, she's confined to a wheelchair for the rest of my whole life. And the love of her life is dead. She felt so terrible. Now those are some things which happen in life. So, one by one, acknowledge her number two. Don't punish yourself. But as forgiving was not enough for her. So I said, well, if you really want to do a penance, do something positive. Go and volunteer for work done at Shenton Park in the rehab center. Go and do something. Because sometimes we need to do something positive now to try and learn from what we've done, to make sure it never happens again. But also now, even though I can't really say she did something wrong, but she thought she did something wrong. And I know we always have to acknowledge how a person seems to be with them first of all, and let them find out forgiveness rather than telling them you should forgive yourself. Because she was feeling guilty about feeling guilty, everyone was telling her not to feel guilty. So actually, I was the first one who said, yeah, it's okay to feel guilty. Don't feel guilty about feeling guilty. And that was the key for her totally to get beyond what she had done. But that. So this is realized religion. We realized this for ourselves because when somebody comes and says something I've never heard before. I try and empathize. I try and really be with them, rather than telling them what to do and give them suggestions. So not to be an authoritarian, but ready to be a helper, a friend, and even we can go even further. One of the nice things about Buddhism is that one of the teachings which always attracted me and was his getting growing, her acceptance, even though it's grudgingly growing, is reincarnation. I had a beautiful teaching about Buddhism, but you can realize that for yourself. This is not a revealed truth. And I love teaching people how to find out who they were before. To see if reincarnation is true or not. And again, meditation is the key. Even just recently, when I was teaching a retreat in Cal like and as one of the girls here went on that retreat with me over in Thailand, teaching at the very end. Anybody who has any deep meditation, just ask yourself at the end of a deep meditation, what is my earliest memory and see what happens. That is the way you can access these incredible memories from your past and realize for yourself, not be told that reincarnation is true, or told that it's not true, but find out for yourself. Because that I always thought was so important because I didn't know who to trust. How can you trust anybody? Because, you know, some priest says this, another imam says something else. Monks say this, nuns say this. Who the heck can you trust? You trust yourself in your own wisdom. What? You realize yourself and you can actually find out. Access these things. And what a wonderful thing it is to know at last for sure you have lived before, and you know what's going to happen when you die. Wow, that's such a relief. At least it gives you a sense of certainty. And the nicest thing about that, it makes all this death and dying business much, much easier. Sometimes we say that as long as there is death, there will be religions. To try and explain what happens afterwards and also help people through that time. Nothing psychologist would ever be able to do that, but religious people always have a reason once there is a death. But we all argue about what happens after death. It's important to actually to find out what actually is truth or not realize it for yourself. But certainly the idea of reincarnation is a beautiful idea. It means you have another chance. If you stuff up in this life, don't worry, you can have another go next time. If you married the wrong guy this life, you can have another try next time. Do better. Learn to do better. If you don't want to get married next time, great. You'll be a monk or a nun. Next time. It's no. Swap it around. Try different things. But no. Sometimes, every now and again, you have funeral services for young kids and people who don't understand reincarnation find that very, very hard to accept. Because the fellow didn't have a fair chance. 4 or 5 years. Seven years? Ten years. What sort of life is that? There's no getting to know what life is. If you even do know what life is and all that. All that care and nurture. All gone 10 or 12 years. And we don't understand about reincarnation. Okay? They didn't make it this time. Next time they'll do much better. But I always give the the example from real life. And sometimes these are examples from my life because I go travelling a lot. If you go to the airport and you get bumped off your flight, you usually get an upgrade on the next available flight. That's usually true. So if anyone comes into this world and they just don't quite make it, they die at birth or just a few days afterwards. It's like they get bumped off the flight, the next available plane leaving the terminal. They get the first seat and they get upgrade. It's nice to see your child who didn't quite make it gets an upgrade to the next life. Isn't that a beautiful thought. And that's actually very accurate. So it takes away a lot of the pain of life if you can understand what's going on and why. Because isn't that what everybody asks? At least in my experience. And how often do funerals are performed? A funeral this afternoon. Isn't it the case that when someone young dies, the question in everybody's mind is why? Why so young? Why did they have to die? We have an answer for that. It makes far more peace and contentment in our life. And of course, many of you know that answer. If you read my book, story of the Falling Leaves a wind, a storm going through the forest. It isn't just take the old leaves. It takes some green leaves as well. Next time is the storm. There seems to be lots of storms in Perth these days. Next time there's a storm, go and look in the in your garden or in the forest. See what leaves are on the ground. Mostly, though, be old leafs leaves, which lived their full life on the twigs and branches. You'll also find a few young leaves. They're torn off the tree of life, lying dead on the ground. If you look carefully, you find a few of these very bright green leaves which have just shot forth the day before. Also on the ground, just like babies die, kids as well as the old people. The best thing is when you look to see what leaves are left. And even though young green leaves are on the ground dead, you always see these old curly brown leaves still clinging on to that tree, doesn't they? Been there for years. These old people, 1899. Nothing kills us how they do it. Gee, this old brown leaves, this huge cyclones and storms, they still hang on. It's beautiful, isn't it? That's like. That's nature. That's truth. That's the nature. As far as Buddhism is concerned, we know the nature outside is the nature of us. We're part of nature. We don't own nature. We're not in control of nature. We are part of nature. We are controlled by nature. Our job is to understand that nature and stop fighting it. But to just be with it, understand it. Controlling nature has got us on to all these environmental problems, respecting nature, working with her. And the same way we work with the nature of life and death, success and failure, praise and blame, happiness and suffering, working with these things. And that makes this religion pertinent. It makes sense, and it gives us a way of dealing with the problems of life, taking responsibility for them, understanding them, transcending them, becoming a peace with them. And so the religion actually has a meaning for us. It has value when it has value. We keep on coming back and we'll keep telling other people that this actually works. It gives us a meaning for our life. We know where we're going. Why are we doing this? We're learning about ourselves. We're learning about life. And if anyone wants to have a quick answer, what's the meaning of life? It's learning. Understanding. Getting to know. Because that knowledge gives you freedom. It gives you peace when you understand why. Now I know what's going on. Then you can be free. Like I said at the beginning of the meditation class. Why do we think so much? I ask that question to myself when I was meditating and I was found for me anyway. I think when I'm discontent, when I'm not at peace, when I'm not happy, I'm trying to think I've got a problem because therefore I think about it. When I'm happy, I stop thinking. I realized that, I think, and I'm not happy about thinking. I keep on thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and the tips going on. So when I'm thinking, I think, oh, I'm happy to think that's good enough. I'm concerned with thinking I'm content with having a crazy mind. I'm content with sleeping. I mean, I'm going to be content with editing when I'm meditating. Even though the wonderful gentleman or lady who snored. Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. I'm content with everything. When you're content with things, then you stop thinking. Then you're at peace. What are you doing? You're understanding. This is what the meaning of life is. To understand how things work and how to find peace. Sometimes when people ask, what's the goal of life, it's always peace of mind. It's a beautiful word, peace of mind, not health in the body because that can never be attained. Comes and goes. You try your very best, but peace of mind is something you can have no matter what happens in life. Rich or poor, married or single, gay, heterosexual or celibate. As a third option. No matter what you do, you can always find peace of mind. It's beautiful to know that. And that was the most wonderful insight. To know doesn't matter what happens in the world. Doesn't matter what happens to me. Doesn't matter how my body feels. I can always find peace of mind anywhere, anytime. And that's the most wonderful realization, most valuable thing you can know. This is actually why Buddhism is going to be growing and growing and growing. I haven't told you what to believe. I just told you how it all works and how you do this for yourself. As a monk, I'm not supposed to have power just to empower you. Empower everybody here. I often say that my goal in life is as if to get rid of each and every one of you, so you never have to come back to this place ever again. So you can know everything about your mind, about nature, in your expert, in meditation. Wise, enlightened. So you're free. That's why a teacher always tries to get rid of disciples. If you're a school teacher, you want people to graduate and never come back to school again. Unfortunately, I am a very bad teacher. Incompetent. 25 years I've been teaching here and some people I've known for 25 years ago. And I still come into the same class. Hopeless. We get the idea and revealed religion and authoritarian religion wants to keep people, wants to own them and keep them coming back. That's why that cartoon, which I began this talk with in the West Australian today with the the bishop in an empty church talking, I think, to two people. If that was me, I realize I succeeded. If I give a Friday night talk and no one comes because they're all enlightened. At last I've done my job. So those are the differences between the two types of religion, the revealed and realized how modern people we're not going to take revealed religion anymore. We want the choice. We want to find out for ourselves. We don't trust revealed religions. We don't know which one to believe realized. You've got everything, all the means to find out for yourself, to realize it for yourself. You take responsibility. You learn. You meditate, you get it, and then you understand why it works. And people go around saying, yeah, it works. People see you're more peaceful, less angry, less critical, more compassionate, more wise, more ethical. And that's the way this is going to grow. If Buddhism grows in Western Australia, it's nothing to do with me. Everything to do with you. Just the way you teach, you behave, who you are, the way you relate to each other. It's not even word of mouth. It's the actions of body and speech which ripple like the proverbial pebbles thrown into the pond. What a wonderful world we live in. If people will take responsibility, ethical and more mindful of the way they relate to each other, more caring and sensitive to the way we speak and act towards one another. Take responsibility. Less guilty. Less angry. Learn, grow and find that wonderful peace of mind. What a wonderful world we live in. Why not? Let's live in hope. Thank you for listening.